Living Campaign Horror Stories

[erik]

Mod Edit: Split from the "What are you supposed to do?" thread, which is a commentary on the Red Hand of Doom mega-module.

Of interest to me since I play Living Greyhawk tripe from time to time...

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=lg ... Apparently WotC is gonna be adapting mods, including Red Hand of Doom for RPGA play.

I'm afraid. Very afraid. Most LG parties aren't what you'd call optimal as you're often playing with strangers, some of which barely can keep from drooling and crapping their pants when exposed to loud noises- let alone capable of making a decent character and using agreed-upon half-way decent tactics. Oh, I've got horror stories.

Anywho, I can't imagine trying to play a mod with encounters this rough without a decent group of players. LG modules try to strive for a semblance of fairness in encounter levels (and occasionally succeed), and I don't see how one could meet that goal and have anything similar to the Red Hand of Doom. It's not really even possible to co-opt a flying mount zombie in LG, so that makes life all sorts of unpleasant if I get the gist of things in RHoD.

I'd still be tempted to try it out with some decent players, starting new characters just for that shindig.

[Hey_I_Can_Chan]

Oh, I've got horror stories.

Start a new thread and let's hear 'em.

[Username17]

My (admittedly limited) experience with Living Greyhawk is that it is basically already like that. At first level you expected to:

[*] Fight a small group of Gythyanki next to a bottomless cliff (you all must save or die every round until they are defeated because they have telekinesis at will).

[*] Fight an Ice-Element Octopus under water (it has nine attacks that all inflict bonus cold damage and it gets a bonus grapple that is really weak, but nonetheless enough to instantly kill you if you drop).

[*] Fight an animated object with hardness 8.

In the same adventure! You don't even get to rest, just to die (unless you're super good at this bullshit).

In another adventure you are expected to:

[*] Fight a Yeth Hound at first level while in an entangle effect.

And of course in all of them you lose if at any time you rest. If you don't have at least two rules ninjas in the adventure, you're dead. Every LG module I've ever seen has just been a death run solvable only by hyper-motivated bullshit on the part of the players.

This contrasted with Living City (the FR version). I only played one game, and the first level characters were:

[*] dropped under the sea by an arbitrary and non-repeatable mechanic
[*] Captured by Sahuagin with no chance of escape.
[*] Forced to sing and dance for a while with no meaningful effect of success or failure.
[*] Saved by a fvcking God performing direct intervention to save your first level asses for no reason.

That was my last experience with Living City, for obvious reasons.

-Username17

[RandomCasualty]

Wow Frank, I had no idea the "Living" games were that bad.

It's sad to see that D&D has devolved into a pure DM vs. PC mentality where you're forced to cheese out everything to win.

[Crissa]

The last (and I mean last) Living City game I was in had my character raped while on downtime with no mechanics or notice. to me, the player.

Literally raped. I got a nice little note at the bottom of my character sheet which said 'miss next period, pregnant'.

Thi of course was the campaign where I had to assassinate the party leader and paladin for not attempting to complete the mission.

-Crissa

[dbb]

1145492036[/unixtime]]The last (and I mean last) Living City game I was in had my character raped while on downtime with no mechanics or notice. to me, the player.

Literally raped. I got a nice little note at the bottom of my character sheet which said 'miss next period, pregnant'.

I honestly did not think there was anything that could make me more glad that I never got involved with the "official" D&D campaigns. This does.

--d.

[RandomCasualty]

1145492036[/unixtime]]The last (and I mean last) Living City game I was in had my character raped while on downtime with no mechanics or notice. to me, the player.

Literally raped. I got a nice little note at the bottom of my character sheet which said 'miss next period, pregnant'.

Wow... I'd think the whole PC party would rise up against the DM if he did something like that.

[Book]

Whoa. That warrants an official grievance filed to the Living City administration, no?

That's really, really wrong.

[Neeek]

1145492036[/unixtime]]The last (and I mean last) Living City game I was in had my character raped while on downtime with no mechanics or notice. to me, the player.

Literally raped. I got a nice little note at the bottom of my character sheet which said 'miss next period, pregnant'.

:jawdrop:
Uh...I think I'd just get up from the table at that point and quit the entire Living whatever thing for good.

[User3]

Wow... I'd think the whole PC party would rise up against the DM if he did something like that.

I think that would be the point where I'd toss my hot coffee on the DM.

Not my PC.

Me.

[Crissa]

Well, I'd already assassinated the party leader at that point, so there wasn't a party to rise up against the DM.

And file a greivance? For what? Those story themes are grist and gristle of Living games, I found out later. It was 'off screen' so wouldn't be 'offensive'.

Whatever.

And, I didn't go on another Living campaign.

-Crissa

[User3]

So you're saying that sort of thing happens regularly? Do male characters get to be raped for fun too, or is it just their special way to make female characters (and players) feel welcome?

[Hey_I_Can_Chan]

Jeez, Crissa, when I asked for horror stories, I meant, like, "Dude, one of the PCs totally cast magic missile when he should've cast grease… what a lamer."

I honestly wasn't expecting true horror.

How is this even possible? I can't understand how that would be an offscreen, plot-based item. What if there were no female PCs? Does a Post-It get stuck to the bottom of some male PCs' character sheet that says you raped someone; pay child support and enjoy castration or… um… gender-switched offscreen or something?

That's ugly. Could we have the funny now?

Please?

[MrWaeseL]

I got raped in a campaign too, once. ON screen.

[erik]

1145511916[/unixtime]]Well, I'd already assassinated the party leader at that point, so there wasn't a party to rise up against the DM.

And file a greivance? For what? Those story themes are grist and gristle of Living games, I found out later. It was 'off screen' so wouldn't be 'offensive'.

That sounds pretty odd for a living campaign, or living greyhawk anyway. Merely attacking a player without their consent will likely get your character immediately taken away and turned into an NPC.

The horror stories I had in mind are more of incompetently designed and incompetently played characters... and of course poorly designed encounters (mod-specific single use mechanics are my favorite... though a rarity).

Apologies in advance for typoes and excessive rambling or non-sensical grammar. I just worked a 12 hour shift last night and am about to go to sleep.

Lemme see, in one of my early games with a character we had a bunch of level 1-3 characters and one guy who wanted to play and only had his level 11 character (8 fighter/3 wizard), so we were bumped up to APL (average party level) 4. Of all the characters in the party, his was the least helpful, bar none. Start of every encounter, he moves away from combat and casts enlarge person on himself (maybe another buff like shield, too). Rest of encouter is him being a frickin pansy and never taking more than one iterative attack, and certainly not tanking in the slightest.

In one encounter we fought a construct with an admantine weapon whose tactics were supposed to be that it sundered all our weapons (it had some feat that gave a cleave after breaking a weapon). The stupid construct was gonna kill us all since he didn't want his expensive weapon busted up, and he was the only one who could potentially do real damage to it. Only after my riding dog animal companion tripped the construct and we disarmed/robbed it of its admantine weapon did we get our big bad fighter to contribute meaningfully.

I've played with one moron griefer who seems to be trying to get other players killed and/or ripping money off them, while doing it within the system. I could almost respect that if he weren't so dumb. His characters (I've seen a gnome wizard and a human swashbuckler... yes, I wound up having to play with him more than once in order to make a table) are fairly ineffectual. They don't carry any potions or healing, so if we don't want to let him die, we have to waste *our* resources on him.

In one encounter we had to bypass a resetting lightning bolt trap at the top of a stairwell (we had no rogues nor dispel), meaning we had to make consecutive jump and balance checks on a stairwell and proceed single file down a stairway into a room where a spiked chain trip specialist with combat reflexes kept us from proceeding down the stairs, whilst 3 hidden rogues in the darkness sniped up on the stairs... and a hidden caster threw down glitterdusts. We barely survived enough to have me and my wife's characters drag the rest of the party back up the staircase and escape with our dying party members.

On our second take at that ridiculously anti-PC stacked battle he went around healing the enemies during what was a very close fight (half the party got blinded in the second fight). The quote above is what he was telling the enemies whilst they were kicking our ass and he was healing them.

This guy has a black mark on one of his ARs (adventure records) for knowingly lying and endangering one of my friends by accusing him of being an evil doppleganger in the middle of a town square. He's a class act.

... my wife is here reminding me of stuff, and apparently I ignored this dumbass and so did the DM when he told the Sheriff that my lawful good character was in league with criminals who stole a starving town's food shipment. I wish I'd heard him when he said that.

I have played with people who were multiclass bard/wizard, bard/sorcerer, or monk anythings, rogues who won't use their sneak attack (don't flank, don't do anything really) etc. They were enormous drains on resources since the more people there are the harder the battles go.

I've had an ally turn down his chance to take an AoO with sneak attack damage even from being hidden when they are unlikely to get another chance at an AoO, or even a sneak attack... and the enemy drawing the AoO is likely to down another PC (mine, in my first living greyhawk adventure ever, playing up with a higher level party. Grrr, I got lucky on the damage rolled, otherwise would have died).

I've played with an entire party of incompetents (except for my wife and I). In the final battle, our tank got blinded but as luck would have it, he was next to an unarmed gnome cleric caster and rather than grappling that guy into submission, he took a couple swings and did minor damage before the gnome just walked away and totally negated the barbarian's usefulness.

My character (rogue) was the only one to fail a saving throw from a fear effect so I had to watch in horror as the monk, rogue and barbarian fvcked everything up and my wife (cleric) just took beatings from being surrounded by a couple rogues and a fighter. The monk drew at least 5-8 unneccessary AoOs on his own I think... why did he do that? I have no idea. Anyways, it was enough to get him unconscious even after some healing.

The rogue was particularly sad as she never got one sneak attack die ever, and somehow she was mechanically inferior to mine in every way. I mean we had the same skill sets (diplomancer, trapper, spotter) and I had better skill checks, better AC, better to hit bonus, better initiative, better everything almost. I felt really bad for her since we were both level 2 and started with the same point buy and everything (she was half-elf with crappy equipment and I was deep halfling with tweaked equipment).

Anywho, eventually I came back from running from the fear effect and managed to kill the gnome caster with some alchemist's fire. I couldn't get any sneak attacks in because there is almost nobody left in my party to flank with, and the enemy cleric was only the first baddie to get dropped. The only remaining conscious ally was the useless rogue. I blocked off the 5 or so bad guys in a desperate attempt to let her get out of there so she could heal up some party members with potions and rally our forces.

Of course, I find out she doesn't have any frickin potions of cure light wound later, and I fall to the bad guys who rolled ridiculously to nail my AC of 25 when fighting full defensive and bring me to staggered... which was my doom.

The DM felt fairly charitable and had the bad guys seal the doors and then bargain with the remaining conscious character such that they looted our bodies, and let her cart us away, in exchange for us not siccing the authorities on them and not returning before they fled their hideout.

This is a short tale of adventure-specific mechanics. We were in pursuit of some peon (with 30' move) and in this party were a barbarian with 40' move, a centaur with 40' move, a wizard who swift-fly'd to be right next to the peon, and my character who could have cast expeditious retreat for a move of 60' but it was overkill. We had 3 characters within a single move of this guy, and the wizard was right next to him. The barbarian was higher in initiative than the peon and she was going to be getting an attack on him next round even. But according to the module, once he got to spot "X", the chase mechanics came into play- regardless of how owned the guy was.

So we had to make dexterity checks which had incredibly tiny tiny modifiers (+2?) due to faster movement in order to chase him through a crowd, followed by spot checks in order to keep an eye on him. This guy who was dead to rights wound up rolling natural 17+ on 3 or 4 dexterity checks in a row, and nearly escaped. The only reason we caught him was because he had failed a DC 10 jump check to jump a ditch or something on the side of the road (details are sketchy for me because my character and the centaur had already given up pursuit by then and made our way to the nearest bar), and was caught after falling by the barbarian (played by my wife... she insisted that I give her credit to ending this otherwise ridiculous encounter).

I haven't played in this adventure, but many many players have complained about a certain encounter where the party is surprise attacked by dire tigers hiding in grass that is less than 1 foot tall.

A nasty encounter that I did have to suffer through was an APL 6 adventure where during night when most of the party is sleeping, 4 griffons pounce upon the party all at once, from farther than 60' away (so no chance of spotting them with darkvision even). In just the surprise round my animal companion was killed, our useless centaur player was almost dropped to dead, and the dervish was also almost dropped to dead. Again the only reason we survived this ambush was charitable DMing. The DM had the griffons fight over the bodies of my character and the centaur (who weren't quite dead yet) and my riding dog (who was terribly dead). On a random roll they finally carried off the dog (1 in 3 chance essentially of choosing the dog). And left us to lick our wounds (with 1 remaning conscious player who applied potions to everyone).

Our next encounter in that adventure was against a hidden stone giant who had a lot of scree terrain around him along with cover, and a nigh-infinite supply of boulders to throw. My druid cavalry had to summon a bunch of wolves to use as mounts since I had no animal companion, and after the stupid giant had killed 2 of our party members I finally got into position to start spirited charge ride-by attacking it (off of the stupid scree terrain), and barely managed to kill it before it finished off the last party member other than my guy.

By this point we are a party of a halfling druid cavalry without a mount, and a useless centaur. We decided to call it a day and give up on the adventure. Our net profit from these fights was *4* gold. The stone giant had 4 gold pieces and the griffons had nothing. So take into account the costs for 2 raise deads, lots of living expenses, and that was our most useless adventure ever.

Okay, last one before I go to sleep. We did something a little illegal and played a 3 person party (rules require 4-6 party members). It was made fair by that my character and my wife's character could deal and take enough damage to be the equivalent of 4 players. Our first 2 encounters, including one where we were ambushed in our sleep, were so easy that the DM just called them in our favor after the 2nd or 3rd round of combat (my wife's barbarian was on watch for that fight, and I think she killed the 4 of the 6 bad guys before we even got up).

Our next encounter was a pit trap. Which contained a gelatinous cube. 15' down (so out of range of reach weapons). I and my mount fell in- whilst archers across the pit took pot shots at my allies. Our 3rd player, rather than using either his potion of levitate or his potion of spider climb (both were coincidentally offered at the start of this adventure and he bought both) to circumnavigate the pit, he decided to be heroic and jump the pit (needed to roll an 11 on his jump check to succeed... so 50/50 chance of success).

He failed.

So there it is, just my wife firing arrows into the pit to kill the cube. Of course, since a cube's engulf attack counts as a grapple, she also wound up hitting us a few times (well, due to my luck, only hit the other guy). She thus got the awesome distinction of killing a player character without it being an evil act or getting her character pulled. The sad thing for that encounter was that she almost ran out of arrows and I actually became un-paralyzed before the fight was over.

Before the guy tried his jump, I strongly advised him to use one of those potions, since they were put in the mod for a reason. Response: "I might need them later." Sure enough he did, he sold them at half cost to pay for his raise dead.

[Crissa]

Well, there was the diplomacy that turned to combat, and the fact that Living Cit doesn't use (or didn't) miniatures, so to pull back while the fight started involved everyone getting the attack of opportunity (old 2nd edition style) on you while you fled... This from a situation where no one came with weapons ready, and my character who should've been told if the foes were armed...

...And the party leader was the one who was making things worse. Because he was the one in shining plate and with the letter of decree he was basically putting himself ahead of the other characters - and there was no way I was going to let him barter the party's lives for his own.

-Crissa

[Count Arioch the 28th]

1145512826[/unixtime]]So you're saying that sort of thing happens regularly? Do male characters get to be raped for fun too, or is it just their special way to make female characters (and players) feel welcome?

Not a living greyhawk thing, but I was in a campaign at the local gaming store where one of the male players had his character raped without any ability to resist.

[User3]

There are certain levels of subtle courtesies and decorumss that should be present in Living City campaigns. What happened to Crissa breached those protocols because of some socially juvenile notion that female character rape is always interesting, game relevant, and socially acceptable.

The DM should have asked Crissa offline and in private what his intentions were - and solicited her advice on how to best present the situation to the group that allowed for a certain level of player dignity to be held while still allowing the game to show its edges.

Seriously, that DM is a juvenile jackass.

No wonder women continue to get bad vibes from many members of the male D&D gaming community.

[User3]

1145565271[/unixtime]]
The DM should have asked Crissa offline and in private what his intentions were - and solicited her advice on how to best present the situation to the group that allowed for a certain level of player dignity to be held while still allowing the game to show its edges.

Heh.

Indeed. Whenever I rape someone, I make sure to get their permission first.

[MrWaeseL]

So a good player in Living Campaign carries healing potions? That seems kinda counter-intuitive, since those games are apparently even more difficult than normal games and drinking a healing potion there is already a waste of an action.

[erik]

The notion being at level 1-2, the healer for the party (if *any*) can easily get dropped in one round from full health. You are essentially on your own until higher levels for healing, and if nobody has a potion to pour down your gullet when you go down, then you might likely be dead.

By level 3 or so you are likely to have run into access for a wand of cure light wounds and had better buy one so you can have somebody use it on you between battles or to keep you from dying during battles... but until you find access for them, you had darn well better have potions of CLW on your body.

[MrWaeseL]

You don't get to simply start a new character when you die?

[erik]

Oh, you may but then you have to start all over from level 1 with no access to anything special (limited prestige classes, feats, or spells), and you lose all the favors from NPCs and organizations, and item accesses as well. If all you have are level 1 characters then that limits the modules you can play, and how easily you can form a table. Leadership becomes an awesome feat for level 9 or 12 simply so that you can form a high level table more easily (those folks have the hardest trouble finding peers with nearby levels, balanced party composition and decent characters).

There are also a limited amount of modules that one can play (especially if you don't have a range of characters from low level to high), though usually enough that you won't play them all. There are some authors that I will try to avoid and that limits things further... however I recently started travelling to nearby states to play mods only accessable in those regions, and that brings up the amount I can play.

In short, dying is something to be avoided except in rare circumstances.

[Crissa]

I suppose a footnote of 'offline' would've been hard, as it was always 'offline' twenty years ago...

...And like I said, it was a footnote on the DM/City version of the character sheet. Heck, I don't even know if they do that anymore, have two versions.

-Crissa