Worst. DMs. Ever.

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JonSetanta
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Re: Worst. DMs. Ever.

Post by JonSetanta »

Maxus: looks like an interpersonal issue. Young or immature players, perhaps?
Consider online gaming, or maybe even pursuing the entire Final Fantasy series?
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Maxus
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Re: Worst. DMs. Ever.

Post by Maxus »


sigma999 wrote:Maxus: looks like an interpersonal issue. Young or immature players, perhaps?
Consider online gaming, or maybe even pursuing the entire Final Fantasy series?


I'll own up to a hearty dislike of Mark. But, in my defense, I only started to dislike him after I mentally gave him chance after chance to quit piling up all the little-to-medium annoying things he consistently does. As I said way earlier, he's probably a lot more suited to being a player rather than the DM. I'd play beside him, but neither love nor money will get me to be play with him as DM again.

I'll put the root cause down to personality conflict and differing senses of cool/fun/worthwhile and spare you the more heinous details.
He jumps like a damned dragoon, and charges into battle fighting rather insane monsters with little more than his bare hands and rather nasty spell effects conjured up solely through knowledge and the local plantlife. He unerringly knows where his goal lies, he breathes underwater and is untroubled by space travel, seems to have no limits to his actual endurance and favors killing his enemies by driving both boots square into their skull. His agility is unmatched, and his strength legendary, able to fling about a turtle shell big enough to contain a man with enough force to barrel down a near endless path of unfortunates.

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Re: Worst. DMs. Ever.

Post by Neeek »

I think the DM that annoys me most is the "the bad guys predict everything" DM. The guy who sits there listening to your plans and has his enemy NPCs set up to counter it, when there is no way they could have that information.

I find this is most often used by grossly incompetent tacticians who need the advantage to avoid looking foolish, but it pisses me off, nonetheless. So much so that I tend to make plans without letting the DM in on them these days.
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Re: Worst. DMs. Ever.

Post by Draco_Argentum »

There were DMPCs in two out of the three games I've played. Worked really well. In my first ever game it was me and a DMPC for quite a few sessions until some more players joined. Even as half the party he never took over.
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Judging__Eagle
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Re: Worst. DMs. Ever.

Post by Judging__Eagle »

Any DM whose had a DMPC that was a higher level than the PCs.

On the other hand, the DM seriously had a 9th lvl Healer hanging out with a (very large) 6th lvl party. The Cleric he removed since we had OMGWTF amount of divine casters.

We had 1 PC cleric Turning-Lord (who posts here seldomly as Arturian), 1 PC Archivist who dumpster-dove for spells (me); an NPC cleric (who was a beat-stick + bandaid, with the tossing in of Prayers and Blesses) and an NPC Healer (whose level increased to allow her to cast whatever ressucitation spell was needed next; the only reason I know she was at least lvl 9 was that she could cast Revivify; that that I'm complaining, as she ressu'd my archivist, although the Cloud Giant Skeleton should have had 1 Morning Star + 2 Claw attacks, that extra claw attack did me in).

Also, DMs who make monsters more powerful than they are listed in the monster manual.

Taking an over-CRed or high CR monster and stripping them of powers is okay.

Giving them powers or extra stuff is not though.
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Re: Worst. DMs. Ever.

Post by Koumei »

Judging_Eagle, I assume there is an exception to that of: unless of course they actually add those powers by way of a template/class/whatever that increases the CR, right?

I very rarely use a monster out of the book, and add a few class levels, racial hit dice or whatever. But the CR increases as a result and everything works out fine.
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Re: Worst. DMs. Ever.

Post by Judging__Eagle »

No, it was straight from the MM, he just wasn't reading the entry right.

It has the option for 2 claws or one claw and one morningstar, he thought it got a morningstar and 2 claws; which is impossible since it has a claw used up with holding the monrningstar.

Believe me, it wasn't the first time he misread an entry.
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Re: Worst. DMs. Ever.

Post by Koumei »

Oh, misreading the entry can be fatal, I know, but I meant

Eagle wrote:
Also, DMs who make monsters more powerful than they are listed in the monster manual.

Taking an over-CRed or high CR monster and stripping them of powers is okay.

Giving them powers or extra stuff is not though.


If you specifically apply a template or whatever that gives them the extra abilities and increase in CR, that wouldn't apply. Or are you even wary of that?
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Re: Worst. DMs. Ever.

Post by Jacob_Orlove »

Personally, I like to boost monsters using items, because that way the players get an extra prize out of the deal. You can get a LOT of mileage out of those low-level maneuver-granting items, for instance, or anything that allows alternate movement modes (spider climb, levitation, flying are all good).
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Re: Worst. DMs. Ever.

Post by Kaelik »

I've only ever had one DMPC that was okay. He was a 5th level Paladin to our 3rd level Party, but he didn't level in the time we did.

He upstaged my Cleric with Turn Undead (he went before me in int) and stole glory other ways. But it worked okay because we all sort of new his days where numbered. I once accidentally saw his character sheet (we were playing Axis and Allies at the DMs house) and started mentally divvying loot then and there.

Sure enough, he was axed as part of a plot development right when we hit level 5.
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Re: Worst. DMs. Ever.

Post by Judging__Eagle »

Koumei at [unixtime wrote:1194990302[/unixtime]]Oh, misreading the entry can be fatal, I know, but I meant

Eagle wrote:
Also, DMs who make monsters more powerful than they are listed in the monster manual.

Taking an over-CRed or high CR monster and stripping them of powers is okay.

Giving them powers or extra stuff is not though.


If you specifically apply a template or whatever that gives them the extra abilities and increase in CR, that wouldn't apply. Or are you even wary of that?


Well, the specific manner in which the monster was made more powerful was that it was missread.

The DM was looking at the MM to see the stats of the monster that the Eberron adventure directed the DM to look at and somehow thought it had a 3rd attack in its sequence.

I doubt that he had time to add any templates other than:

"Follow adventure guide on monster HP" and "Missread statblock, get extra claw attack"

Seeing as he didn't own any of the core books.



Templates I don't care about, so long as the math is done right and the CR is calculated properly.

My real concern is basically a DM making a mistake that somehow turns the CR 9 Cloud Giant Skel into an easy CR 10+, by giving it maxed HP and an extra claw attack.



I on the other hand run utterly random strings of encounters that bizarrely make sense.

Somehow, by chance I seem to end up with monsters that are appropriate not only for the adventure, but also for the environment.

For instance, rolling off of the random dungeon room tables in the DMG a herd of nightmares when in Hades, only to find out while I'm reading the MM entry that they are native to hades. Which is something I'm perfectly fine with.

On the other hand I was able to turn the Dretch and Celestial Charger encounter that was randomly rolled into being an RP encounter, where the PCs paid the CC's price and found out (pulling out of my ass) why it was in a fiend city in Hades.

I think that improvisation helps a lot with that though.
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JonSetanta
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Re: Worst. DMs. Ever.

Post by JonSetanta »

No excuse, not owning the books. Anyone can use the SRD... unless it hadn't arrived back then?
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Re: Worst. DMs. Ever.

Post by RandomCasualty »

Judging__Eagle at [unixtime wrote:1195020049[/unixtime]]
Templates I don't care about, so long as the math is done right and the CR is calculated properly.

My real concern is basically a DM making a mistake that somehow turns the CR 9 Cloud Giant Skel into an easy CR 10+, by giving it maxed HP and an extra claw attack.


Mistakes are something that's going to happen occasionally. Even the best DMs are going to screw up occasionally. As far as giving monsters extra benefits, I don't see the big deal. As long as CR is increased accordingly, I don't mind if my DM makes up unusual monsters with new abilities, or throws it some extra benefits.

It's not like the existing template system is anywhere near balanced or anything, so whatever. So long as the DM knows what he's doing and keeps the numbers reasonable.
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Post by Neodymium »

Most of my friends and i are mediocre to decent DMs at best, a couple of us i'd say are plain bad and one is truly maddening. Of course he's one of the folks most likely to be willing to run a game. Mainly because he's always coming up with stories that he wants to turn into books despite being blatantly taken from other fantasy books and settings(mostly Rifts and Dragonlance).
What these magnificent story ideas mean for the PCs...
RAILROADING. and tons of it.
Frequent use of "You have to role a 20..."
DMPCs that are disliked by the PCs, but have to be around to play some crucial role.
gratuitous use of Diplomacy vs. PCs. And nigh unbeatable charm effects.

He would throw overpowered bonus equipment/abilities at us when we didn't even ask for them, and then turn around and try very hard to foil the things we tried to do with our characters.

unfortunately, despite his grand plot, he'd spend almost no time planning encounters. It was only planning of basic plot devices to move his story along. So most of the encounters were haphazardly done and usually lacking flavor. He admitted to coming up with most of the mundane happenings on the spot. I don't know how he managed to fit some of them into his storylines at all.

Oh, and i can't forget the spontaneous house rules. He was convinced that he could make D&D better by incorporating ideas from palladium/Asheron's Call/random MUD. Constantly "trying out" new rules that were quickly forgotten or raged out of the game by the players(mostly me) because they fit so poorly with the rest of the system.
At the start of his second campaign(yes i played through all of his first one), he said he wasn't going to bog the game down by trying to create random houserules on the spot. i assumed because he noticed that he didn't actually know much about the system and didn't feel comfortable trying to alter it, but i was wrong. He said that the only variant rules would be ones from books. I decided to write down every house rule and make note of which ones were purely his invention. By the end of the first session i think i had 2 or 3. By the time the game had fizzled out(although it's due to start back up soon) i had probably 15 or so. Most were for specific situations, but it still was rather annoying after the promises of a campaign that would consistently follow rules we might recognize.

I could continue bitching but when it comes right down to it, I never quit playing. I had enough fun with that group(and was desperate enough) that i continued playing his games, and will continue where we left off in them when he returns to the state.
Of course, i'll fight with him tooth & nail nearly every session.
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Post by Deesix »

I used to do the DMPC thing upstaging players all the time. I've gotten better, realized the error of my ways, and rarely use them any more (if I do, they're a healbot cleric to keep the party alive because no one want to play a cleric).

Now, as for worst DM's? I can't say I've had many, but I still hold a grudge against my first DM. Honestly, it was half my fault, as I was just starting to play D&D at the time and barely understood most of the things that were going on. I'd ask a lot of questions, roleplay dark emo characters, and generally do small things that annoyed others without knowing it. So, he picked on me. Random effects would happen to screw me over, ussually with no save (Beetle Wine is a famous one). Enemies would target me. Rust monsters would destroy my new favorite weapon I was glowing over. A wizard would randomly fireball my fighter and fly out of reach in a solo encounter that I had no way to win. Things like that. Sure, he was trying to put me in my place, but he was really being a dick about it.
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