I started a discussion with someone that led to unfair GM tactics that could be viewed as punishing players or just giving an unfair advantage because the players wouldn't necessarily be prepared for the tactic. I don't consider myself to be an unfair judge/GM/DM (depending on the game system), but I am curious now as to what kind of experiences people may have had with bad judges.

So let's hear your horror stories. What kind of power-tripping, character-killing, player-abusing storytellers have you suffered in the past, and how did you deal with it?

As a player, I dealt with a DM in old school (first edition) AD&D who would forbid me from taking some actions because my "character wouldn't do that" because of his class (fighter), alignment (Neutral Good), religion (I can't even remember now), and other factors. Basically, he had a story to tell, and if you chose to do something he wasn't prepared for or just didn't want you to, he'd find an excuse to tell you why your character wouldn't do it.

The same judge had a very unusual amount of natural 20s rolled against players... behind his screen, of course. He would roll a die and announce the 20, then lift the screen to show us. I remember one occasion where he one-shotted the party barbarian with a thief backstab for maximum damage, then proceeded to roll four more 20s in the same combat against the rest of the group. When our characters woke up, we were stripped of our gear and left tied up with a note instructing us not pursue the bandits into the forest. They took our stuff, so we ignored the immediate quest, went back to town, got some replacement gear, and went into the forest with a plan... only to be surrounded by thieves and druids working together with a green dragon to protect that area of the forest from "outsiders." Suffice to say, the party died and we all spent the rest of that night rolling up new characters for the following week with the DM reminding us repeatedly that we were warned.

I played in that group awhile longer until something else came along.

When I was in the army, this GM was constantly taking away everything the players earned, ignoring good role-playing and rolls so his NPCs would remain powerful and so on. We'll call him Bill.
Case in point, WEG Star Wars. Originally another guy was running it because we got tired of Bill's "style" and wanted a break. So after about 5 weeks of play-time Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday nights, my Arkanian Failed Jedi had 5D in Control, 6D in Sense, 2D in Alter,and 6 Force Points. We had been hunted by an Inquisitor for a while (we also had a Wookie Alien Student of the Force, a Mandalorian Bounty Hunter, a Twi'lek Noble,and a Human Kid, played by Bill) and he finally caught up with us,but we had traded ships so he had no real reason to know it was us. I made a hell of a speech and then rolled pretty high,including three extra sixes on my Crit Die, and we were going to get away. Well, evidently Nate, the Star Wars GM,and Bill had been talking about trading, since I guess Nate was running out of ideas and thought that Bill would now understand it's more fun for the players if they aren't always being screwed. So that's where we quit for the night.
Nope. Nate took over the Kid,and Bill decided that the Inquisitor knew everything, role-play and rolls be damned. He cornered us in a planet with a couple of hundred Storm-troopers so he could do the usual Bill take everything away, and kill or capture the players and make them start from scratch as far as equipment and ship and all of that goes.
I spent all 6 Force Points, activated Lightsabre Combat, and rolled I kid you not 16 6s on my damage Crit Die to... crack the planet in half, killing everyone. The rest of the party cheered and laughed, we passed beers around, but Bill was ticked. I quoted, "The power to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the Force."
He decided to run 2nd edition AD&D. And while he still pulled the same crap as usual, I got the brunt of it most of the time. We all got tired of it so he decided to run World of Darkness. Same thing. So after a few more months,everyone was getting sick of the crap and elected me to run,which I did with Marvel. Bill was then constantly trying to derail stuff, and hated that a party member had Remarkable resources. Another member decided to run Mythus,and some of us rolled pretty well on the Social table,and Bill hated that; "Player Characters shouldn't be rich!" was something we heard more than once during the three hours of character creation. He didn't roll,he picked some peasant class and then was ticked when his Social class was too low to be a wizard. He ended up being a Bandit and was constantly trying to do away with our stuff. He killed my war-horse with poison and so on.
After a couple of weeks of that,we finally, though we hated to because he was a friend and comrade, voted him out of the group.

Sounds like "Bill" had all the wrong ideas about roleplaying games.

Thrudjelmer Wrote:
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> Sounds like "Bill" had all the wrong ideas about
> roleplaying games.


I think he played too many Gygax modules when he was a kid.
Those used to drive me into a fury.

I remember once upon a time playing with a very power consumed DM, whom often targeted people he did not like at the table. Would go out of his way, where even if I saw a die roll going in my favor he would reroll it really quick and such. Didn't play with him long at all in the 5th grade.

I remember in my 6th grade, he was out for a prolonged time due to some illness. So the other players wanted to play MSH and I volunteered to be a run a game for them. It was based on our New Universe game we were already running. They absolutely LOVED the idea of it, as I put them into a role where a national lottery had been done to find 5 6th graders, whom were going to prove the new model of space shuttle was so good they were all that was needed to go on it. Only as they left on the test flight, they hit the Cosmic Ray storm and would become the Fantastic Five (five as there were 5 of them). I made it clear that it was a New Universe game and that the characters I already played had already shown up in world. They were cool with that.

But when I did a mission where, I had made a supervillain named The DungeonMaster and had based it entirely off the kid whom was out sick. They exploded with laughter at that, as I clearly used his mannerisms to portray him, but with his mask they could not tell it was him but the way it sounded and acted, it was clearly him, even though on the NPC character sheet on his REAL NAME it said "unknown".

One of them tested it and was like, when the DungeonMaster was making some speech or rant they were like ".....Gene......Gene Martin? Is that you?" and I in his role was like 'Uh...what....uh no? Who is he, is he that really cool kid....." and stuff like that.

Of course, then there's another type of GM I've had: the power-gamer as player, and stingy GM type. These GMs also usually have omniscient NPCs who know things they honestly shouldn't.

Ha!

This brings back some memories. When I first played D & D I usually played a Magic user or Cleric. Much later I preferred the Paladin class.

My first Fighter every created had an 8 dexterity. The Dungeon Master wasn't happy with me breaking from the roll as the group really needed fewer fighters and a magic user or 2nd cleric. So the character wasn't treated fairly!

The DM used to say and I trip or clumsily miss, mocking my character purpose! It was annoying and I knew why he was doing it. Being that he was only a second level guy, dared to risk it with him, purposely trying to kill him off. Oddly enough it worked for a while but you can't risk dangerous battles forever and the character died.

Then I used the DM's pet's name and made a 1st Paladin, and the DM behavior changed as he wasn't going to mock his beloved cat. The character made it up to level 10 before cashing in his chips at the hands of a black dragon raid. The DM was a stickler with death, but more moderate on the rest of the issues. We let him roll for a henchman or two to keep him busy!

Later on, someone found a regeneration ring in a tresure roll, allowing 0 to -9 hit point characters to make it back to life so death wasn't such a huge issue when the Clerics were out of healing spells for the day.

The group had a rule with a celric spell called word of Recall where the 1st player to die in the group was automatic transported out to the sanctruy for recovery if needed.


The below link is a must see for D&D fans

[www.d20srd.org]

I haven't had that many games over the years, although disillusionment tended to simply leave me just not interested in continuing playing in them since I no longer had trust in the GM.

One I didn't get much past the starting gate (the one I created Vixen for) because for one the GM was REALLY determined to have my character be killable, then nerfed Immortality so that it didn't actually allow for healing so my character could be permanently crippled. Also vetoed my original character concept because even though he didn't have Catalytic Control on his banned list he promptly banned it when I selected it claiming he felt I could do too much with it because he didn't really understand the power. Mind you everyone else in the group was way more powerful than the original concept or what I ended up going with, but the player with the 'no way that was random' uber-character had obviously been slandering me to him first and I felt the game was just too poisoned for me to get a fair break and just stopped responding since I just didn't see any point to saying anything because when things are poisoned nothing you say matters, you'll always end up the bad guy.

So many horror shows....

There was this one GM who was a big deal in Pathfinder Society but was an absolute terror as a GM. He was a complete rules lawyer in the most rulesy of all games, completely inflexible, disallowed RP choices as he felt that would derail the games, fell asleep at the table (while GMing) and my wife said he slapped her hand away from the mini (I didn't see that or the game would have had a different ending). That dude was so bad I had to email the head of PFS and complain about him at GenCon and I hear he was removed because so many others complained.

My best friend has a reputation as a killer GM and will often toss the entire floor of monster at us. When we build min/max'd characters he complains about us powergaming. Our response is we HAVE to or we die miserable deaths.

Finally I had to walk out on a game at the FLGS when this old fart was out to kill. He added magic items to his NPCs that countered spells and special abilities of the characters. I ended up telling him how crap he was as a GM as I got up to leave in the middle of that game.

My tale of unfair GMing comes from the other side of the spectrum, partially.

I got into roleplaying through my brother, who was my senior by 10 years. During much of my teen years we played weekly sessions of D&D and Star Wars with him and his friends, who were all in their twenties at the time.

My brother, however, was always a bit of a problem when I was around. He was a good storyteller, and he was often very fun to RP with, and so were his friends, but....whenever I was doing anything, he would always start to fudge rolls and mess with the mechanics. I don't remember ever failing a save of any kind while he was GMing, and it got to a point where I would pretty much be able to state things like "man,I'd sure like a magic sword right about now", and I could be almost certain of the fact that I'd own a Holy Avenger +5 by the end of the session. It was so very obvious he was treating me differently just because I was his younger sibling. I would pretty much get what I wanted 100 percent of the time, and it made me feel super awkward because it was unfair to the others, but there was also just no challenge left. It felt like there was nothing at stake for my character, ever.

In spite of the fact that I was pretty vocal about not wanting any of that, one of the guys we played with, let's call him Bob, definitely resented it, and when it was Bob's turn to GM, he took it out on me. Bob basically wouldn't let me do anything, I was constantly being singled out in combat, usually being eliminated (sleep, paralysis, that sort of thing) even before my first action, and in roleplaying situations I was simply ignored. One of my characters was killed by taking an arrow to the head while we were conversing in the streets of a major city - we weren't even in combat, it was simply the GM's idea of "a plot twist".

Looking back at it now, it almost feels like I had to create a new character each session in Bob's campaign. Not fun, and I dropped out after 5 or 6 sessions. Bob later admitted he was "trying to get even" with my brother for favoring me so heavily during his games. Still a dumb move.

I remember someone on the Palladium forums complaining in a similar thread about the GM he once had. They apparently dealt with a modern setting dealing with criminal organizations or similar, the GM would give them the set-up for the latest event, they'd stake it out, make plans, then the enemy would ALWAYS be prepared for everything that they'd planned for (as they'd always break when they were done planning so the next session would be the actual conflict). He finally got tired of it and just declared 'you know what guys? Just screw it let's forget the planning and just kick the door in and go in guns blazing!' which he did. The GM promptly rage-quit and that was the end of that campaign and him as GM.

I remember someone else telling me about how he's applied for, built a character, and was ready to join a game with a GM he'd never been with before. Come game day he's told his character pre-game was subjected to something catastrophic, left in a coma, and didn't have the same stats as before. If memory serves the ONLY thing that the character had in common with what had been created was the name and gender. So he said he politely informed everyone that he wouldn't be in the game because it didn't look like his character was there (which it wasn't).

That's probably the most unfair GMing, where a GM puts you through all the process of joining their game, you jump through all the hoops and make all the concessions that they want because you're trying to be reasonable and give them a chance only to find out that they were stringing you along and never intended to let you into the game. They just hoped they'd make it so unpleasant a process you'll drop out and they can say you weren't up for their game and make it out you were the problem rather than them. They aren't adult enough to say that they aren't going to let you in and not even waste the time trying, just power tripping to suit their egos and pretend that they're the better person.

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Nightmask
I remember someone else telling me about how he's applied for, built a character, and was ready to join a game with a GM he'd never been with before. Come game day he's told his character pre-game was subjected to something catastrophic, left in a coma, and didn't have the same stats as before. If memory serves the ONLY thing that the character had in common with what had been created was the name and gender. So he said he politely informed everyone that he wouldn't be in the game because it didn't look like his character was there (which it wasn't).

That's probably the most unfair GMing, where a GM puts you through all the process of joining their game, you jump through all the hoops and make all the concessions that they want because you're trying to be reasonable and give them a chance only to find out that they were stringing you along and never intended to let you into the game. They just hoped they'd make it so unpleasant a process you'll drop out and they can say you weren't up for their game and make it out you were the problem rather than them. They aren't adult enough to say that they aren't going to let you in and not even waste the time trying, just power tripping to suit their egos and pretend that they're the better person.

This is why I only game with friends. If a "friend" did this, I'd know that person was not a friend and I could drop the pretense and do other things with my time.

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Thrudjelmer

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Nightmask
I remember someone else telling me about how he's applied for, built a character, and was ready to join a game with a GM he'd never been with before. Come game day he's told his character pre-game was subjected to something catastrophic, left in a coma, and didn't have the same stats as before. If memory serves the ONLY thing that the character had in common with what had been created was the name and gender. So he said he politely informed everyone that he wouldn't be in the game because it didn't look like his character was there (which it wasn't).

That's probably the most unfair GMing, where a GM puts you through all the process of joining their game, you jump through all the hoops and make all the concessions that they want because you're trying to be reasonable and give them a chance only to find out that they were stringing you along and never intended to let you into the game. They just hoped they'd make it so unpleasant a process you'll drop out and they can say you weren't up for their game and make it out you were the problem rather than them. They aren't adult enough to say that they aren't going to let you in and not even waste the time trying, just power tripping to suit their egos and pretend that they're the better person.

This is why I only game with friends. If a "friend" did this, I'd know that person was not a friend and I could drop the pretense and do other things with my time.

Well that's the thing, hard to tell who's really a friend and sometimes you're going on what a friend says about how you can trust the person only to get let down (worse they don't even recognize or admit that the person let THEM down too). I suppose I'm also too quick to think someone a friend as well, I think they're a friend but to them I'm just an acquaintance at best.

One case of unfair GMing I remember was at a convention, a game of Evil characters with a goal of recovering some magical device. Fairly low level mages for the party. I killed off one guy because he rejected my reasonable offer to work together only for the GM to later rewind time to bring things back to before my killing him and by the end of the story everyone BUT that character was dead (my character decided 'screw this I'm out of here' only to get killed while invisible in an empty corridor). Come to find out HIS character was actually a Neutral Good agent of the Harpers and his job was to kill everyone else and retrieve the item, the GM deliberately skewed things to ensure he succeeded and the rest of us died.

I do remember years and years back playing old school AD&D and having the DM shoot down my actions more than once in a game session, telling me that it was out of character for CN fighter to do various things because it seemed like I was being too honorable... and I was like "I can still have my own code of honor that I sometimes follow and sometimes don't... and he said nope because I was being too lawful at the time. And I asked if he wanted to run my character for me and I'll just go home and find out the details later. Needless to say I left and he killed off a character of the same name and profession... but my character lived on in another DM's campaign.

Never played with that guy again.

I think all my worst gaming memories are from old D&D games with super rigid DMs,

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Thrudjelmer
I do remember years and years back playing old school AD&D and having the DM shoot down my actions more than once in a game session, telling me that it was out of character for CN fighter to do various things because it seemed like I was being too honorable... and I was like "I can still have my own code of honor that I sometimes follow and sometimes don't... and he said nope because I was being too lawful at the time. And I asked if he wanted to run my character for me and I'll just go home and find out the details later. Needless to say I left and he killed off a character of the same name and profession... but my character lived on in another DM's campaign.

Never played with that guy again.

I think all my worst gaming memories are from old D&D games with super rigid DMs,

Mine are scattered around although the rigid DM seems to be the core for most online and off. I just want to kick back and have some fun not spend my time jumping through hoops and hearing 'no you can't do that' or 'X is jealous so you can't have/do that anymore' or what have you.

The worst GM/Player I ever dealt with was of an intimate persuasion. She was by far the worst. She pulled the "DMPC" "Shop keeps that may as well have been gods" "Make one player miserable" and then when she played, she'd bring in her DMPC to play as with no reduction of power, she'd try to kill other players, spontaneously have extra special abilities. By far the best game session I had with her was when another player that hated her spent the whole game causing her strife in a modern setting where she couldn't just kill him. She was so busy dealing with him and he was a problem player in his own right that the rest of us were able to accomplish the goal.