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Posted by: Chrysalis May 25 2009, 05:10 PM

Greets,

I was thinkign about worst gaming experiences and several other rants.

I have had a few worst gaming experiences. I think the worst was when I was 22. It was June, I had come back from a night club at around 5 AM and I was still hung over at 10 AM. We were supposed to start a new GURPS game that day, so character making was the thing.

There were two guys who I have played with before and one other who I did not know. Anyways, I pulled out my books and did some work on my character. The conversation was really lurching, as in it would start get really entusiastic and then peter out. I was starting to wonder if I was wearing garlic, dead albatross or someone's head around my neck by the way they were looking at me.

They were being super creepy and I felt really uncomfortable. Especially when the new guy pointed out how empty the university was. The tension in the room was palpable. At that point I made a phone call to a friend asked her to phone me back, pretended there was a full blown emergency going on and I picked up my books and left.

Anyone else had similar experiences, which would fal under the heading "worst gaming experiences"?

Posted by: BlueMax May 25 2009, 06:00 PM

Long ago, in the land of my youth, we had a gamer flip out on us.
In the middle of a session he proclaimed "You are all evil". It was out of context for the game and after some clarification, it was clear he meant the players and not the characters. Out came a laundry list of reasons why the rest of us were scum and he was a righteous dude. The details of our evil would only derail this thread but let us suffice to say the backing of his claims was religious in nature. Being that we had been a group for a handful of years, we tried to talk with him but he just kept getting worse. It was at this point that I invited him to leave and not return. And then, I had to follow it by getting up and making it clear that the invitation aspect was only an attempt at politeness.

In the years since, I have been threatened by a gamer with a fork and knife at Denny's, encouraged to do mind altering drugs to "fit in" and offers to gain carnal knowledge of entire gaming groups ("Uh, no thanks. Not gig. I'll be going now...) . As freaky as all those had been, they pale in comparison to the day a young man I know for 5 years flipped the fark out and lost it. The experience certainly hardened me for the future.


BlueMax

Posted by: SincereAgape May 25 2009, 06:05 PM

The name of the game is Cyberpunk 2020.

This took place a few years ago at a local gaming convention in Central New Jersey. This was my first time coming back to table top Roleplaying Games in six to seven years. I sat down with four other players and one game master. Each player selected an archtype. There was a nomad, street samurai, a doctor, and a face. The game begins with all four characters waking up in an abandoned hospital. We look outside and see that the surrounding city is a post apocalypse wasteland (Think the movie "24 Days Later"). Our four characters went down into the parking garage of the hospital and discovered a zombie. The street samurai (Shotgun) and the nomad (pistol), whom were the only characaters with firearms blew the zombie away. We then get into a ambulance to try and get away.

Nothing big so far right? Good.

So the four characters get into the ambulance. The street samurai takes the wheel, nomad rides shotgun, and the doctor and I (<---- The face). Get into the back of the ambulance. The closed parking gate into the underground garage begins to rattle as hundreds of zombies begin crying to eat our brains. They burst through the gate and begin chasing us. We begin to make our getaway, but alas we're surrounded! Zombies begin chasing the ambulance, litteraly on our asses.

The nomad, being a great team player, tries to shot them, and then asks the street samurai to pass his shotgun to us in the back so we can use it to decapitate zombies. The street samurai promplty says "No" as the player physically acts out what the character is doing, which is holding the gun away from the rest of us as if it was his firstborn child and we were a pack of blood thirty wolves.

The nomad gets frustrated, and tells the GM he is attempting to make a roll to disarm the street samurai and pass the gun back to the doctor and face. Nomad critically glitches!!! We're fucked. Wait, we get even more fucked. In response the street samurai PC tells the GM he would like to make a roll to shoot the Nomad. He acts this out by pointing a pencil to the Nomad's head, OOC. Critical Success. >_<

The game master looks at the Nomad PC and tells him. "You're dead." The doctor and I stare in disbelief. The Nomad PC gets up from the table, and leaves obviously pissed off. He tells off the street samurai PC. I start laughing to myself, trying to keep in my laughter because I was a immature douche bag at the time. There is a moment of uncomfortable silence. The doctor looks at all of us and says.

"Guys. I've never left a table before but I believe I'm going to leave this one. The game has a really eery feeling to it, and it's really weird. I apologize ahead of time, btu I can't have fun in this atmosphere." The doctor leaves. The game master looks at me and says, "Yeah. I agree. I can't run this module anymore."

The game promptly ends. Welcome back to roleplaying games SincereAgape.

All was not a lose though. Later in the night, I ran into the GM at the hotel bar. He was spending time with Michael Stackpole (Special Guest of the Con). We chill for the rest of the night and pick Stackpole's brain about his creations as he offers both of us tips on writing and gaming. The GM and I are really close chummers now and will always have this disturbing story.

-Here is to Michael Stackpole. Here is to Cyberpunk 2020.

Posted by: SincereAgape May 25 2009, 06:08 PM

QUOTE (BlueMax @ May 25 2009, 01:00 PM)

Posted by: eidolon May 26 2009, 03:25 AM

I once tried to play D&D 3.x.

Yeah. I know.

Posted by: Bert May 26 2009, 03:39 AM

We were playing Rifts at a friends house. I vouched for a friend of mine to tag along, as he had never met my gaming group before. We all rolled up our characters and he asked if he could use my friends phone. My friends' dad, who is probably one of the nicest guys in the world and a gamer to boot, said "yeah, no problem. But we only have one line so keep it short if you could."

My friend who I vouched for then proceeded to call his girlfriend and talk to her for an HOUR AND A HALF. After he finished his call he then sat back down to the table like nothing happened. Last time I ever brought him to THAT group.

Posted by: Critias May 26 2009, 05:47 AM

Gencon 2007.

I'll leave the name of the group out of it partially because I can't be bothered to go look them up and partially at a half-assed attempt at not ratting them out or ruining their livelihood or whatever. The game was a Serenity/Firefly LARP. My random character draw was to be the Captain of a rag-tag ship, and my crew and I -- all strangers -- totally hit it off OOC as well as IC. All should have been right with the world.

Alas, it was not to be. My instincts first warned me something was amiss right during their breakdown on how their home-brewed system worked, when they mentioned you could make a cash donation to their gaming troupe in order to get extra character points. I was further worried when they went on to explain the precise money-to-xp ratio, for those that wanted to attend their games at other cons, to advance characters in between sessions (not just with an up-front payment there, face to face). Sirens began going off in my head when they described it as a living universe/campaign, populated by their own personal characters.

I did my best to ignore all that, to socialize with my "crew," and to spend my several hours of gaming getting my money's worth (from core Gencon ticket prices only, I refused to hand over extra cash for better stats). For the most part, the evening was a good time, until I actually called on one of their GMs for something. I asked OOC for them to come join us and referee a staredown that might turn into a gunfight...and instead of overseeing our rock-paper-scissors game as my pilot held a gun to a rival pilot's head and I initiated some social skill rolls, the GM suddenly went IC as her character, "The Sundance Kid," who just happened to be the sheriff of the town our game was being played in.

My character, something of an accomplished gunslinger according to his character bio, according to what we'd been told our numbers scaled towards, etc, etc...was promptly and soundly beaten in an initiative test, then forced to "dance" while her two-gun pistolero shot at my feet and demanded my surrender, all IC. When a member of my crew attempted to shanghai her using their ambush rules (since he'd been lurking to protect my character, albeit not planning on protecting me from a GM), she then beat him despite being caught flat-footed and distracted, and a second GM suddenly came IC behind him and soundly trounced him in a social/intimidation roll to send him running away.

At which point I went back IC long enough to gather the rest of the crew together and just hang out with them for a while, fly off-planet, and the lot of us walked away from the game to go eat some Steak an' Shake.

Fuck those guys. Fuck their greedy schemes to snatch up money from lazy gamers. Fuck their campaign where their characters rule and their paying customers -- in my case, just the ones shelling out money for the advertised price of the game -- are just a rotating list of suckers and guest stars, to be one-upped by their superheroes as they swagger from episode to episode.

Posted by: PBTHHHHT May 26 2009, 06:26 AM

After reading all y'alls posts... wow, I'm pretty happy with basically all of my gaming experiences.
The worst experiences I have is nothing compared to these.

Posted by: paws2sky May 26 2009, 02:19 PM

One of my worst gaming experiences was entirely self-inflicted.

It was Marcon 29, the first con I really had the opportunity to go to for more than a day. For some reason, I decided it would be a good idea to not sleep. At all. I'm still really not sure why I did this. (It might have been due to the fact that we had an overbooked hoitel room and I didn't feel comfortable with all those other people crammed in there).

Anyway... about 38 hours in, I lost all perception of time. Minutes seemed to stretch into hours. I got stuck playing the most agonizingly long game of Magic ever. I mean, the guy I was playing with was a "long turn" anyway, but his normally 5 minutes turns seemed to take forever. I recall wandering aimlessly around the convention center early in the AM - I didn't want to sit down for fear of going to sleep. Around 48 hours in (maybe more?), I started hallucinating. Mostly, I was hearing sounds. People talking. Stuff like that.

A friend walked up to me as I was examining a newly constructed Magic deck (I had just gotten into Magic and was fascinated with it). I'm not sure what he said to me (probably "hi"), but I replied, "H? What about H!?" Apparently, I got irrationally angry about it, like I he'd just badly insulted me.

He went and rounded up some friends who flatly told me to got get some sleep because they were concerned about my health. I told them I no longer needed to sleep. It was, as I hazily recall, very much like an intervention. I still don't know how they convinced me to go up to the room. I'm told that they came back to find me sprawled across at least three cots. I remember getting up, going around the corner, leaning up against the wall, and falling back asleep.

And to this day, anytime I mention Marcon, I'm reminded of that fateful con. Usually, by my old buddy who will quote, "H? What about H!?"

-paws

Posted by: Wesley Street May 26 2009, 07:54 PM

So the lesson here is don't play RPGs with people you don't know.

Or sometimes with people you do.

Friend got a dog. Dog was abused in a past life. Dog growled and snapped at everyone, even when I stood up to use the toilet. My fiancee and I never returned to that house after that night.

Crate your dogs.

Posted by: Adarael May 26 2009, 09:52 PM

Man. Y'all are reminding me why I never game with people I don't know or have many friends vouch for. Chrysalis' post is easily the creepiest, though, just for the "This had no explanation for it" factor.

I don't think I've had a bad gaming experience... But I did have a really FUNNY gaming experience that others probably qualified as "bad".

I used to play in the Camarilla before I exhausted every World of Darkness character concept I could think of. I used to play regularly in the Sabbat vampire venue - a sect of crazy religious fanatics hell bent on kicking the crap out of everyone who wasn't them. We'd picked a fight with the local werewolves, and basically agreed to throw down on them and wipe them out rather than have them pick us off one by one. It was a huge game. Maybe 50 players, and about 20 GMs and people running NPCs. Most of the people running NPCs were regular players in the werewolf venue, and had been tapped to help us because they knew the rules.

Because the vampire players were vicious, smart people - because most of them played Shadowrun with devious GMs - the vampires were winning. Not without losses, but they were winning. Vicious combar resulted in many fatalities on all sides. About 3/4ths of the way through the brawl, one of the people running the NPCs starts to cry. A couple of the others are looking grim too.

One of the vampire players says, "Hey, what's wrong?"
Girl says, in an anguished tone: "It's just NOT FAIR!"
I say, "What's not fair?"
She says: "That these vampires are WINNING!"

And then she and two of the other people who are running NPCs go off about how the good guys - the 'noble warriors of Gaia' - are supposed to win, not these evil blood drinking vampires.

I laughed in their face, because that statement was so insane I had to. Which makes girl cry harder, and her friend starts to sniffle, too. Queue cries of "It's not FUNNY!"

I left and went OOC shortly thereafter, lest words come out of my mouth that I could not take back.

Posted by: Backgammon May 27 2009, 01:38 AM

There's an old, old thread about this somewhere - may even have been on a previous incarnation of DSF. Wish I could find it cause that had tons of stories that make you go "I can't believe that". Well, with one exception. I won't even mention what it was. It was seriously disturbing.

Posted by: Critias May 27 2009, 01:57 AM

I will, without hesitation, believe any story anyone tells, ever, about how seriously World of Darkness players take their games. My eyes were opened on that score -- just the sort of crazy person that can be drawn to those games like a moth to an otherwise benign flame -- when I met a guy at my campus LARP who had branded himself with the Wendigo tribal symbol from Werewolf: The Apocalypse.

Not just gotten a tasteful tattoo, mind you. Physically branded himself one night, in a ceremony he saw as a coming of age rite.

Posted by: Wesley Street May 27 2009, 01:33 PM

I'm not a LARPer. But it sounds to me that the middle-of-the-road, Joe Six-Pack WoD players are fleeing that game in droves and are leaving the crazies behind. A friend wrote a long, scathing note to the Cam leadership about corruption in the sanctioned Indianapolis-area group storytellers along with examples of how the players had become a depraved, intolerable lot with poor standards of grooming and behavior.

The Cam's response was to ban him instead. I suppose no one likes the rabble roused.

What's funny is that the ban is unenforceable. What's even funnier is that the official letter was marked CONFIDENTIAL. He posted it to his Facebook page for the world to see.

Posted by: paws2sky May 27 2009, 03:07 PM

Some of us rats saw that particular ship sinking a loooong time ago and abandoned it accordingly.

I could go into details about the Camarilla and One World By Night games in OH, but its nothing worse than has already been mentioned, really. Blatant XP whoring (often literally), revolving door Inigo Montoya characters, and so on.

Okay, I have to share this one: I remember one guy going through four (or was it three?) character is a single night. I believe he actually came prepared with multiple characters because he knew his actions were going to result in multiple deaths.

-paws

Posted by: ravensmuse May 27 2009, 03:19 PM

Playing Maid: the RPG last year in Gencon with a table full of other guys.

One kept looking at me a little too closely.

*shudder*

Edit:

I should add last year's Gencon True Dungeon experience too.

The set up was that there was this cursed item, blah blah blah. Get your party through all of the traps and combat, face off against a maelevolent demon while another party simultaneously tries to figure out the puzzle to unlock item that cancels it out, or something. I don't remember all of the details.

Here's the catch though: you can't talk, can't even interact, with the other party. In anyway.

So we do our business, kill the demon, and then have to wait for this other party to figure out the puzzle. We stand there for about five minutes while they desperately try to solve it until the timer goes off and everyone fails. Nothing for killing the demon or even getting this far, you're just told, "oop, you fail" and the bunch of you are escorted out.

This was mine and my so's first experience with True Dungeon and it'll be awhile until we do it again. That was just not fun.

Posted by: Adarael May 27 2009, 05:18 PM

QUOTE (Wesley Street @ May 27 2009, 06:33 AM)

Posted by: Wesley Street May 27 2009, 05:29 PM

QUOTE (paws2sky @ May 27 2009, 10:07 AM)

QUOTE (Adarael @ May 27 2009, 12:18 PM)

Posted by: BlueMax May 27 2009, 06:03 PM

And people always wonder why I don't LARP. This thread will be bookmared.
Not saying what I do is any safer but I don't need anymore headaches than what I get!

BlueMax
/who may stand up and act but does not LARP
//split hairs

Posted by: Adarael May 27 2009, 06:06 PM

Don't get me wrong, BlueMax. I LARPed for years and years and for the most part, it was awesome. It's just that in such a public game, you open yourself up to the occasional experience that is awful.

Posted by: Chrysalis May 27 2009, 06:46 PM

We did a LARP ages ago called Pohonjanmaa by Night. A Camarilla delegation was coming north to find some Antideluvians. They found them, but things went sideways. I was supposed to play their Camarilla contact (usually they nailed me to barn door when I gto uppity. There was everything from half-mad vikings, to a redneck family. Half way through the game they even had mass.

The group that represented Camarilla were your traditional WoD players from down south. One or two of them got the humor side, the others didn't. We found it nonetheless vastly amusing.

Welsey, could I have a link to the letter. You piqued my interest.

EDIT:
Worst gaming experience though was with RPGA. We ended up having a module which we were opening up for the past time. I remember blurting out to the gaming group five minutes after we started playing, "I bet that the couple who hired us are actually the evil cultists and that the rest of the adventure is about us black washing the honest clerics as we supposedly figure out the origin of this plague." The DM then gave me one of those withering looks, and asked if I had looked at his notes. I looked at the rest of the group and said I have not even been on his side of the room! You know what was the worst part? That was the plot.

So far RPGA modules I have played in and once GMd were consistently bad.

-Chrysalis

Posted by: Wesley Street May 27 2009, 07:34 PM

Chrysalis,

Though I don't think he'd care, I've blurred my friend's name to protect his privacy. The rest is untouched. http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q128/wesleystreet/n723032704_1454320_9096.jpg.

EDIT: Oh, that's the letter he got from the Cam. I'll have to dig a little more to find the one he wrote.

Posted by: paws2sky May 27 2009, 08:05 PM

QUOTE (Wesley Street @ May 27 2009, 03:34 PM)

Posted by: BlueMax May 27 2009, 08:05 PM

What you describe is a Living XXX problem. Years ago, when RPGA was just about playing and not about power gaming it was an entirely different affair.
As for predictability, sometimes its good. We did a marathon gaming session this holiday weekend. One could call it an at home con, and during the parts where everyone was tired we ran Tunnel Vision.


BlueMax
Now, get off my lawn.

Posted by: Warlordtheft May 27 2009, 09:19 PM

The worst game I ever had was at my FLGS waaay back in HS (almost 20 years ago, god I feel old). There was one player who insisted on the fact his character could invent anything.

Worst Game design-an RPG mag-I forget the system but it was Cathulu like-had an adventure that was supposed to revolve around us figuring out who trashed a lab a killed a couple of scientists. I asked-"what do the security cameras show?" To which the GM said-crap-it aint covered-and said the leadscientist standanding next to us transformed in to monster trashing the lab.

Not as bad as some people's experiece.

OT-I larped in HS for a year or two. In college I took up Fencing (foil mostly) and after college-paintball.

Posted by: Black Jack Rackham May 27 2009, 10:11 PM

QUOTE (Critias @ May 26 2009, 12:47 AM)

Posted by: Critias May 28 2009, 03:11 AM

Yes, I did, and I wasn't alone in doing so. Several of us from the game posted to several forums (RPG.net is another), shortly after the game. One concession that resulted from the complaints was that the game company/group in question now has to state in their game advertisements that additional funds are optional. So at least folks aren't going to get blindsided it when they show up and Richie Rich is playing The Operative while they're handed a character sheet for "Guy River Tam Beat Up In The Bar #7" or something.

When I was already shelling out $13.50 for the four hour LARP (the LARP with no props or anything of the sort), it struck me as especially ridiculous they wanted more money to get a competent character.

EDIT: It looks like Gencon flushes their forums every year or so, so I can't seem to get ahold of our old thread there. The RPG.net one is (while locked) still there, and goes into a lot more detail about what a shoddy game it was. Truth be told, I'd forgotten about how long the thing took to get started, and the way I got called a cheater, on top of everything else. In the couple of years since the game in question, I guess I've focused more on the cheesy GM/NPC nonsense that went on.

EDIT AGAIN: Hahahah, I found the old Gencon thread, too, not just the RPG.net one. Rereading these -- my rant in particular -- is funny and pathetic all at the same time. http://community.gencon.com/forums/t/4288.aspx?PageIndex=1 and http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=280464. Because it just occurred to me that I want this gaming troupe's reputation ruined, so I don't mind naming them (or linking to where they've been named).

Posted by: Black Jack Rackham May 28 2009, 10:41 PM

I'd forgotten a bunch of that stuff. Wow, sorry to open old wounds.

Mark

EDIT: Forgot to mention, I tried looking at this years GC larps and they weren't running anything. Then I tried to look at their old website, and when I couldn't get through, googled them. No Dice. Looks like they're either gone or renamed in the hopes that no one will remember them.

Posted by: Wounded Ronin May 28 2009, 11:12 PM

QUOTE (Critias @ May 26 2009, 01:47 AM)

Posted by: Wounded Ronin May 28 2009, 11:19 PM

QUOTE (SincereAgape @ May 25 2009, 02:05 PM)

Posted by: Spooky Jack May 29 2009, 02:19 AM

My worst experience was actually with some decent role players and RL friends.

We were playing table-top D&D FR (can't recall which edition) and our party consisted of a Naga Monk (a true neutral judge), a human Paladin and myself, a charismatic halfling rogue who somehow managed to avoid pissing off the Paladin.

At one point our party was travelling through a forest in order to investigate a mysterious resort for the wealthy and influential that we suspected had ties to a mafia like criminal underground. Our suspicion was supported by the fact that we had been attacked by some bandits who just happened to possess the ID badges needed to access this resort.

Whilst making camp one night on our way to the resort a mage suddenly stepped out of our campfire and warned us that we were not welcome in the area, and that it would be in our best interest to leave. I believe he called down a meteor swarm on the trees nearby just to make his point before he left. Soundly warned, we warily decided to continue on, though treading lightly.

Getting into the resort was easy for the Naga (who had shapeshifted into human form) and myself, as we both had a badge. The Paladin, not exactly the best investigator, was left behind to talk with his horse and do whatever it is Paladins do when they have no evil to slay. Later that night, the Naga ended up at a dinner party with the host who, you guessed it, happened to be the mage. Whether or not he recognized her in human form was besides the point, he was gracious and well mannered and likely wouldn't have said anything aside from having her escorted from the premises after dinner. I, less inclined to table fare, searched around for clues. The Naga's first indication that trouble was coming was when a servant came in and whispered something to the Mage, causing him to become visibly angry and leave the room in a hurry. Fortunately, she excelled at reading lips and departed as soon as her host was out of sight. I happened to be outside, and hence saw the lodge that the Naga and I had been assigned disappear in a massive fireball. That was my queue to hightail it.

What happened?

Apparently the Paladin, bored with his role, approached the guards and demanded to be let in to the secret resort. The guards weren't having any of it. When a representitive showed up to find out what the problem was, the Paladin was already at the verge of hacking the guards to pieces. The Mage's rep asked what the issue was and again the Paladin demanded to be let in. When he was told that he couldn't be granted access to the area without a pass, the Paladin then informed him that his companions had gotten into the resort with passes that didn't belong to them.

On the spot the GM OOC told the pally that he had lost his alignment and both the Naga and I were staring at each other dumbstruck by the paladin's stupidity. The GM was kind enough to let the Naga and I get off lightly (I was allowed to stealth out at full speed despite the mage knowing of my presence and the Naga, who was caught leaving, was merely given a quest by the mage to pay for our disturbance).

Normally our friend played his characters really well, but something about playing a Paladin messed up his psyche.

Posted by: Voorhees May 30 2009, 02:54 AM

Well that, and the GM should have been nice and given him something to do while you two outshined him.

Posted by: pbangarth May 30 2009, 04:12 AM

QUOTE (Chrysalis @ May 27 2009, 11:46 AM)

Posted by: Chrysalis May 30 2009, 07:05 AM

QUOTE (pbangarth @ May 30 2009, 07:12 AM)

Obviously, you haven't played any I wrote.

Did you play any SR modules from Virtual Seattle?

Posted by: Bob Lord of Evil May 30 2009, 07:18 AM

My philosophy on gaming at Cons...

Gaming at Cons is like casual sex, meaningless, unfulfilling and often can result in unintended consequences.


Worst gaming experience...

Had to sort through some dusty neurons but this one is the worst. Took place more than 20 years ago. D&D, I was running the game had a good sized group and we were more than just passing acquintences. So, it was decided that we would use the characters from the other DM's campaign which had just wrapped up. I asked one of the players if she would be willing to involve her npc follower. She said yes. Now this is a character that she had been running for years and I knew that her npc was valued! And I explicity told her that the npc would not be killed, maimed, or harmed. The big day comes and I start the game, informing this player's character that the npc had been kidnapped by some slavers. I figured...emotional connection...would serve to make the game more intense (I had NO idea how much more).

The group set off with an unmatched fury after the slavers but were lagging behind considerably because the slavers used teleport spells. The female character was finally able to get a hold of a crystal ball and see her npc. It was night and the npc was in a large ornate bedchamber scantily clad (think harem dancing girl) with a golden collar and a leash tethered to a marble column. She was unharmed but weeping softly and (god forgive me) there was a rotund sleeping man on the bed. Now at no time did I utter the 'R' word and to this day I still maintain that the fat man was more interested in food, drink and treasure then anything more depraved. I had her crying simply to tug at those heart strings. And that was the end point for that game session.

Now everything seemed to be fine, maybe I was just impressed at how motivated the players all seemed to be to save this npc and felt like they were really involved. I go home and go to bed. At 3:30 Am my phone rings and I am half asleep when I answer. Seems that none of them had gone home they had stayed there 'discussing' my adventure. I proceeded to get a verbal ass kicking the likes of which I had, to that moment, never known or come even close to experiencing since. Instead of being angry at the accusations I felt horrible (and still do to this day). The female player was incredibly distraught over the whole situation, she was a very nice person and I would never set out to intentionally hurt her. The fact that I had unintentionally done so really rattled me. We patched things up but there was a scar there that never fully healed.

Moral of this sad tale, 'be very careful for what you wish for.'

Posted by: Bob Lord of Evil May 30 2009, 07:24 AM

I should add, that the other DM was also involved in the discussion (as well as the game) and had defended me (taking a lot of heat in the process). He didn't think that I had gone over the line. Given the reaction I got from the player though I think that it was obvious that I had.

Posted by: Wounded Ronin May 30 2009, 03:53 PM

QUOTE (Bob Lord of Evil @ May 30 2009, 02:18 AM)

My philosophy on gaming at Cons...

Gaming at Cons is like casual sex, meaningless, unfulfilling and often can result in unintended consequences.


Worst gaming experience...

Had to sort through some dusty neurons but this one is the worst. Took place more than 20 years ago. D&D, I was running the game had a good sized group and we were more than just passing acquintences. So, it was decided that we would use the characters from the other DM's campaign which had just wrapped up. I asked one of the players if she would be willing to involve her npc follower. She said yes. Now this is a character that she had been running for years and I knew that her npc was valued! And I explicity told her that the npc would not be killed, maimed, or harmed. The big day comes and I start the game, informing this player's character that the npc had been kidnapped by some slavers. I figured...emotional connection...would serve to make the game more intense (I had NO idea how much more).

The group set off with an unmatched fury after the slavers but were lagging behind considerably because the slavers used teleport spells. The female character was finally able to get a hold of a crystal ball and see her npc. It was night and the npc was in a large ornate bedchamber scantily clad (think harem dancing girl) with a golden collar and a leash tethered to a marble column. She was unharmed but weeping softly and (god forgive me) there was a rotund sleeping man on the bed. Now at no time did I utter the 'R' word and to this day I still maintain that the fat man was more interested in food, drink and treasure then anything more depraved. I had her crying simply to tug at those heart strings. And that was the end point for that game session.

Now everything seemed to be fine, maybe I was just impressed at how motivated the players all seemed to be to save this npc and felt like they were really involved. I go home and go to bed. At 3:30 Am my phone rings and I am half asleep when I answer. Seems that none of them had gone home they had stayed there 'discussing' my adventure. I proceeded to get a verbal ass kicking the likes of which I had, to that moment, never known or come even close to experiencing since. Instead of being angry at the accusations I felt horrible (and still do to this day). The female player was incredibly distraught over the whole situation, she was a very nice person and I would never set out to intentionally hurt her. The fact that I had unintentionally done so really rattled me. We patched things up but there was a scar there that never fully healed.

Moral of this sad tale, 'be very careful for what you wish for.'

Posted by: SincereAgape May 30 2009, 04:34 PM

QUOTE (Wounded Ronin @ May 28 2009, 06:19 PM)

Posted by: Voorhees May 30 2009, 07:08 PM

QUOTE (Wounded Ronin @ May 30 2009, 07:53 AM)

Posted by: Bob Lord of Evil May 30 2009, 07:17 PM

QUOTE (Wounded Ronin @ May 30 2009, 03:53 PM)

Posted by: Bob Lord of Evil May 30 2009, 07:21 PM

Voorhees

If this person was a friend and just an all around good person...would you still? I am not talking about just a casual bud but a real friend.

Posted by: Critias May 30 2009, 08:19 PM

That's the sort of thing that just comes down to gaming style and player comfort, really.

On the one hand, the players and GM need to be on the same page about what level of gritty realism (implied or explicit) the group is comfortable with. Me? I run Shadowrun stuff right out of Sin City or Hardwired or the like, and my D&D games are more like Thieves' World than Tolkien. Plenty of blood, plenty of sex, whores, strippers, bunraku parlors, slave trading, yadda yadda yadda. Other folks might want a more light-hearted Robin Hood sort of game...the trick is to figure out what everyone's there for, and cater to them ("everyone" also counts the GM).

On the other hand...well...bitch needs to get a grip, yo. Keep the in-game drama in-game, there's no need to go calling folks at their house in the middle of the night and yelling.

Posted by: hobgoblin May 31 2009, 12:31 AM

and this is why i worry when i see people post about bringing more emotions into games...

Posted by: Bob Lord of Evil May 31 2009, 01:29 AM

Critias...
"On the one hand, the players and GM need to be on the same page about what level of gritty realism (implied or explicit) the group is comfortable with."

Amen and pass the ammunition! Since that time I have not had that problem reoccur (only got to smack this pup in the nose one with the newspaper!).

Posted by: Backgammon May 31 2009, 02:01 AM

May seem sexist, but I think true moral of the story is make sure your themes aren't gonna offend the girl of the group. I think I've heard more stories of girls getting really upset over in-game events that guys. Rape and abuse in particular - you just never know if it's gonna trigger something. Like I said, may be sexist or preferential treatment, but I think it might be worth to double-check the themes that are gonna come up before getting into them.

Posted by: Critias May 31 2009, 03:06 AM

Well, I'd say it's worth it to double check with everyone (not just the gals at the table). For every female gamer that might take special offense to something pertaining to rape or abuse or whatever due to a personal experience of that sort of thing, there's a guy gamer whose wife, girlfriend, sister, daughter, etc, could be in the same boat.

It's not a gender thing to me, it's just a group agreement thing. Work out a comfort level in advance, agree on what rating (PG13, R, or whatever) is right for the table, and call it a day. Whether male or female, it's all about everyone having fun.

Posted by: Bob Lord of Evil May 31 2009, 03:10 AM

QUOTE (Critias @ May 31 2009, 04:06 AM)

Posted by: pbangarth May 31 2009, 06:26 AM

QUOTE (Chrysalis @ May 30 2009, 12:05 AM)

Posted by: tete Jun 17 2009, 04:53 PM

My worst I'm not even sure you could call it a game. We show up to play a one shot of Exalted 2e, none of us have played Exalted 2e before and only one of us has ever played Exalted. So the GM has only one book and he just tosses it at us and says make characters. One of us asks what type of character and hes says it doesn't matter he will work it into the story. So we make a physical, mental and social character. Then he leaves so we sit around trying to figure out character creation and eventually do and make characters and he hasnt come back yet so we chit chat and he shows up again. He has us walking down the streets and get attack then says "ok thats all I planned thanks". Then he has the nerve to see whos intrested in doing a campaign with him. We just spent 4 hours building characters with no help from you and your one shot is a 15 min combat? No Thanks...

Posted by: paws2sky Jun 17 2009, 05:46 PM

@tete
That's the sort of thing that makes PnP groups hesitant of newcomers. I have people in my group who pretty much refuses to play with people that haven't been vouched for my someone else in our gaming circle. Makes it really hard to recruit new blood.

-paws

Posted by: Maelstrome Jun 17 2009, 08:43 PM

my worst gaming experience was when a player wanted to substitute gm a game of mst.i gave him all the material at the end of the last session and we had agreed to meet to play a week later.

now il explain a little about the system. the game is scene based not round/turn based. there is no equipment system. there is no combat system. there is a magic and science system that is much different than any other game.

ok back to the pregame. i would ask him if he had read the rules and if he had any questions about any of it. he claimed that he understood the mechanics and would have no problems. i asked him about the magic system and he said the same about it. ok so it seems like all is good. i let him to work on the game.

the time to play roles around and we get everybody together. we start the game and everybody is automatically separated from the start. everyone has their own mission to accomplish unrelated to the others. as time goes on everything seems fine. i dont remember who started but as a whole the gm railroaded us constantly we were all forced to fail our missions regardless of our actions or rolls. the gm also didnt know the rules so instead of letting the players call certain actions he handwaved that they failed.a few examples when a few players tried to talk to or interrogate people they would turn violent and the characters would kill them without the players choosing to do so. the worst example was. gm: when you try to speak to him he ignores you and tells you that he will kill you. player: ill subdue him i wont even draw a weapon.*opposed roll player succeeds* gm:you pull out your sword and cut his arm off then the man turns to ash.

stuff like that happened over and over again. all the players we fed up with it. we all just wanted to finish it up and move on. after we all failed our objectives he decided to give us epic loot. stuff that didnt conform to the rules at all and was extremely over powered. also his character that wasnt even in the session at all was also given a god item for no reason. all in all the experience was garbage. the session was horrible in concept and execution. now that gm runs an sr4 game on occaision but still has a bad habit of handwaving and not knowing the rules.

Posted by: Byron Jun 19 2009, 01:52 PM

Well, I had a world of darkness game completely meltdown but that's a story for another day, a better story is why I now hate paladins (from D and D)
I've never liked paladins that much in the first place, they always seems too "goody-goody" but hey, I'm playing shadowrun, so i guess that kinda goes without saying. And in addition their alaignment stuff always seemed to restrictive. The thing was, this was all just annoying, the worst time I ever had though, was with my friend playing a paladin who interpereted "Lawful Good" as "Lawful suicidally stupid" The problem was of course, he wa also really lucky and managed to get away fine whenever he did something stupid that should have gotten him killed.
It was back when I was playing some 1st edition with my friend (the paladin). We were going on a classic adventure, "Journey to Castle Ravenloft" While he did a host of other things, two inccidents really stand out in my mind. Things went well until we found the bones of a dead paladin inside the castle, so he decides, "I'm going to go out into the woods around a vampire's castle at night to go bury the body in the middle of an adventure!" He was attacked by a pack of wolves but was lucky with dice rolls and I think he had boots of striding and springing so he got off scott free. Next inside the castle we heard a voice saying "Help me! Help me!" at this point we also knew one of the vampires in the castle was an ILLUSIONIST, but my friend, not caring, went after the "helpless person" As I predicted, it was the vampire creating an illusory cry for help and we were lead into an ambush. I was nearly killed cause I rolled poorly and he managed to kill one of the vampires by consistently rolling really well.
Later, there was another campaign we were in in which we were facing off against a force of half giants, or quarter giants, i'm not sure, that's not the point, the point is that, he decided, "Oh! I see three of them, rather than staying with the group I'm going to charge them!" Needless to say, at less 4 he was pounded, very luckily, just enough to get knocked out, but not enough for him to start bleeding to death.
And that, my friends, is the story of why I hate palidins.

Posted by: Byron Jun 19 2009, 01:55 PM

QUOTE (Maelstrome @ Jun 17 2009, 04:43 PM)

Posted by: Byron Jun 19 2009, 02:01 PM

QUOTE (paws2sky @ May 26 2009, 10:19 AM)

Posted by: tete Jun 19 2009, 05:31 PM

@ Maelstrome what game were you playing?

Posted by: paws2sky Jun 19 2009, 06:30 PM

QUOTE (Byron @ Jun 19 2009, 10:01 AM)

Posted by: Maelstrome Jun 19 2009, 06:31 PM

to everyone asking what the game i was playing(mst). it is maelstrom storytelling. i made a post about it awhile back. might not be around anymore. i have all the books in dead tree format but i have the revised core book and a setting source book pdf if any of you want to take a look. the game itself is very smooth and fast. what would take 3 hours sr can happen as fast as 1/3 the time. character creations is very quick. i have a few house rules on character creation to give a little more depth. if anyone is interested i was actually thinking of starting a play by post either here or somewhere else for me and my friends.

Posted by: deek Jun 19 2009, 07:10 PM

I can't remember if this it was a module or something the DM made up, but this was back in the early 1990s and a friend just loved the Ravenloft campaign set for DnD.

IIRC, we took a group of some of our favorite characters and were exploring some odd mists off the shore. So, we were on a boat. I believe something occurred and we were in Ravenloft now. Well, the DM's younger brother, who didn't like one of the players (which happened to be my best friend at the time) pushed him overboard in plate armor. So, my friends sheds his armor as best as he can and when he gets back on-board, the DM rolls some dice and says that his hair is growing really long and gnarled. Any attempt to cut it and it grows right back.

They get into some words, because again, this is like his favorite character. The DM's brother likely knew this would happen (the DM didn't really like my friend all that much either), so didn't stop it. So, my friend, having lost his armor and getting the wild hair decided to jump in again and go for broke. Ended up getting disproportionate arms and legs to go along with his wild hair.

My friend never came back after the one session. I felt bad cause I didn't think that personality conflicts out of game would carry over, but I was young and naive. I played a bit longer, but eventually, Ravenloft was not my cup of tea. And really has turned me off to those types of settings since.

Posted by: Critias Jun 20 2009, 07:15 AM

Huh, weird. I never played much Ravenloft, but the few times I remember folks mutating like that, it was those who did evil, not just those who fell into some friggin' water. Seems to me like it should've been your GM's little brother (who was shoving folks in plate mail overboard) who started to get twisted and turned inhuman by the supernatural, evil, nature of the place.

Posted by: hobgoblin Jun 20 2009, 09:59 AM

QUOTE (Byron @ Jun 19 2009, 03:52 PM)

Posted by: Warlordtheft Jun 21 2009, 02:02 AM

QUOTE (hobgoblin @ Jun 20 2009, 04:59 AM)

Posted by: Wesley Street Jun 21 2009, 03:40 PM

QUOTE (deek @ Jun 19 2009, 02:10 PM)

Posted by: Byron Jun 21 2009, 08:44 PM

QUOTE (hobgoblin @ Jun 20 2009, 04:59 AM)

Posted by: The Jake Jun 22 2009, 12:38 AM

I have stories - one self inflicted, the other not.

1) I am running a Vampire The Dark Ages campaign and we started a new campaign with new characters. I was aiming for a relatively high powered campaign.

Now due to an interested backstory I allowed one player to make up a 5th generation elder. He was well acquianted with the game lore and rules so I didn't see an issue with it. Another player, who is more of a power gamer wanted to make one of the same age/potency and I declined. My mistake but I thought being adults they would both cope with the difference in power levels if they were more interested in the plot. I was woefully mistaken and about to learn a very important lesson.

Anyway, this power gamer got upset and decided for vengeance he would give himself additional XP to advance his character in silent protest. It wasn't until I caught him with Disciplines waaaay above what they should have been.

He yelled at me for being unfair by not having him start at the same level. I said he's self serving prick. It degenerated into a massive yelling match. Long story short - I stopped roleplaying with that group ever again and stopped playing for a year as the experience left me so embittered and distrusting of players and sucked out any fun I got out of GMing.

I learned the hard way that all players should start at exactly the same power level and while its nice to trust your players, its more important to verify what they are doing.

2) New group. New campaign. I join in a general World of Darkness campaign. I'm told its a very high powered game mixed with Vampires, Mages, Werewolves. I'm told that the GM has a very different idea of how these entities would interrelate and that his world view is non-canonical. That should have given me a tell tale sign right there but anyway... (at least I was warned).

I find we're part of some super collective of insanely powerful supernatural beings basically called on to fight threats to the world. The best way I can describe it is basically DC Heroes using WoD rules.

It degenerated out of control very quickly.

I've managed to block out my memories of most of the evening, but I distinctly remember a Malkavian methuselah PC who had two players for the one character, both acting as the voices inside his head. The GM had a particular bias/love affair towards this PC that was nothing short of sickening. I recall said PC distinctly tearing vampires apart with his bare hands and using bloody stumps to club other vampires NPCs into submission.

I still play with this GM (the above player no longer games with us thankfully) and I've forgiven him since for this abomination of a campaign. Occasionally he offers to run Vampire/Mage for our group but I've since told this GM while I've forgiven him, I will never play in a Vampire of WoD game with him at the helm again.

"A game of personal horror" - Indeed...

- J.

Posted by: Critias Jun 22 2009, 08:33 AM

Posted by: pbangarth Jun 22 2009, 11:37 PM

QUOTE (The Jake @ Jun 21 2009, 06:38 PM)

Posted by: The Jake Jun 24 2009, 08:07 AM

QUOTE (pbangarth @ Jun 23 2009, 12:37 AM)

Posted by: Blade Jun 24 2009, 01:58 PM

QUOTE (pbangarth @ Jun 23 2009, 01:37 AM)

Posted by: Mr. Mage Jun 24 2009, 05:49 PM

Not sure I could pinpoint an absolute "Worst" gaming experience, but I tend to have a bad one whenever someone besides me tries to GM (Though I have played in many successful Rifts and DnD games with good GMs). This me saying that I think I'm the only good GM in the world...but amongst most of my firends I am... and not by choice, I usually get forced into the job because none else wants to.

For instance: DnD game (Oh no! D20 is the devil...lol) and I get to play a Dragonkin ( basically a humanoid, human-size dagon guy...wings and all) and he is a sorcerer. Not only does the DM have absolutely no idea what he's doing, but most of the other players don't either (most were new gamers, so I can forgive that). We were sent against a creature that was nearly 3 times our level and demolished most of our party immediately, and all because the DM said he wanted to give us a slightly more challenging encounter. Keyword there: Slightly.

Suffice to say, my character was the only to survive, only because he had wings and coul fly away really, really fast.

Fortunately (or unfortunately) for me though...I tend to GM the games that my fineds and I play...so all goes (relatively) well...

Posted by: Critias Jun 24 2009, 06:45 PM

QUOTE (Blade @ Jun 24 2009, 08:58 AM)

Posted by: Shamrock Jun 24 2009, 08:08 PM

Worst gaming experiences...

Well, I've only got one, and it happened when I was acting as Keeper for Call of Cthulhu with an adventure called "Mr. Corbitt"...

The game was going great, once my players had gone into the house while Corbitt was away, I managed to ramp up the tension and they were really getting into the game. One of my players even shot the empty crib on the second floor thinking something might be in there (they hadn't gone in to check it out, so I never told them it was empty).

By the time they got down to the basement, it was great. They argued about who would go first, refused to touch anything for fear they would regret it, and made damn sure to keep in a group instead of splitting up for fear something would get them (this was after finding the journals).

Anyway, they find the false back to the closet in the basement that frees Corbitt's 'son' (a ghastly creature which is basically a fleshy mass with surgically added arms and legs, roughly 15 of each).

At this point, my group stops taking the game seriously. They couldn't think of a moving pudding with arms and legs as anything but hilarious. I tried my damnedest to make the creature seem important, but all that happened was they ended up fighting it, and quickly dispatching it on account of some lousy rolls on my part.


So yeah, that went down in history as the biggest letdown in my history of GMing. Luckily Shadowrun hasn't let me down.

Posted by: Blade Jun 25 2009, 08:58 AM

QUOTE (Critias @ Jun 24 2009, 08:45 PM)

Posted by: Wesley Street Jun 25 2009, 02:03 PM

Has anyone ever sat in on a game where a "losing" player flipped the table over like an angry gunslinger or something equally dramatic?

Posted by: Critias Jun 25 2009, 02:16 PM

Closest I've come to that is in wargaming, when someone threw a pewter miniature across the room, used his arm to sweep the rest of his hundreds-of-dollars army haphazardly into his case, and stormed off, shouting expletives.

Posted by: paws2sky Jun 25 2009, 02:41 PM

QUOTE (Critias @ Jun 25 2009, 10:16 AM)

Posted by: pbangarth Jun 25 2009, 04:57 PM

By the time I was seven or eight years old, I was beating my brother, older by nine years, regularly at chess. Once in a while the frustration got too much for him and he would toss the chess board and pieces. It made the victory both less appealing and more savory.

At other times he would brag about my chess skill to his buddies.

Brothers.

Posted by: deek Jun 25 2009, 08:02 PM

I've got a couple more, replying to the getting physically angry. I didn't think of them as "worst" experience cause from my POV, they were quite funny.

1) My buddy Dave came to visit one weekend, bringing his copy of NBA Jam with all his custom players. We played it all weekend, with Dave winning most games because of his high "level" custom players. It was a few hours before he was getting ready to head out, so my roommate and I challenged him to another game. We had been upping our newly created custom players over the weekend and we thought we had a chance. The game was close at right near the end of the game, Dave was getting ready to score a basket to put the game out of reach when we blocked his shot. He got it back and shot again, but we grabbed it off the rim (which is legal in the game). This happened a couple times, but finally we got the ball down the court and scored to bring it within 2 points. Dave took it out and we stole the ball at mid-court (we were never able to steal the ball from his player all weekend) and at the buzzer hit a three to win. Dave was livid. He threw the SNES control at the TV, cursing. He broke the controller, which wasn't his, so we told him he owed us a new controller. Even more pissed, he walked over to the couch where his friend was (that also came down to visit for the weekend) actually kicked him and told him to hurry up cause they were leaving. Needless to say, it was hilarious. Dave's friendship with the guy on the couch ended, as I heard he berated and argued with him the whole drive home (about 2 hours).

2) Dave again...this time Matt, Dave and I were finishing up a heated battle of Eurorails in Matt's basement. No one had been talking for the last 15 minutes, as we were all on our last runs and the first one to drop off their payload would likely win. Well, Matt drops off a payload and we all sigh, thinking he just won, but he didn't. He needed to drop off another one, so pulls from the deck...and what comes up? An avalanche card. Basically, an area on the map gets all built tracks erased and any trains in that area lose a single payload (at the other players' choice). Dave is in the "kill zone" and is furious, but...he looks at us both and admits to cheating his last move and moving 3 spaces too many, so he shouldn't actually be in the kill zone. Matt and I are taken aback, as Dave just said he cheated. Anyways, we don't let him move back...basically saying that he cheated so he is going to have to live with that mistake. He calls bullshit and then says fine. Looking at where he is at and where he is going, we then pick the payload for him to drop...we pick his big moneymaker, basically costing him any chance of winning. He gets insanely irate, swipes his hand across the board, curses and then storms out of the basement and actually leaves to go home! Again, pretty funny to me...I think Matt and I finished the game as best we could and I ended up the winner, but even if I didn't still a great moment and still gets brought up to this day.

Posted by: Wesley Street Jun 25 2009, 08:44 PM

QUOTE (paws2sky @ Jun 25 2009, 10:41 AM)

Posted by: paws2sky Jun 26 2009, 02:23 PM

QUOTE (Wesley Street @ Jun 25 2009, 04:44 PM)

Posted by: paws2sky Jun 26 2009, 02:48 PM

Here's Team Fortress 2 story...

A couple weekends ago, my son - who's probably too young to be playing TF2, honestly - was doing his usual thing as engineer on some random 2Fort server. At some point, he comes into the laundry room and asks me if I can help him build a sentry. That's extremely basic stuff, that he's long since mastered, but he seems upset so I decided I should see what's going on. I sit down and some guy is shit talking at me because he's pwning me. blah blah blah. Typical, immature trash talk. At that point, I was kind of glad my son is still wokring on reading. *cough*

I go out to the courtyard and start building a sentry, covering the battlements and courtyard. One of my usual spots. Spy drops cloak, headshots me with the Ambassador (an unlockable pistol), and saps my sentry. More trash talking.

So, rather than do the obvious thing and switch to pyro to flush him out, I switch to spy and disguise myself as one of his teammates. He's still just standing there, disguised. As me. So, I backstab him and get revenge. He gets pissed. Calls me a nub and starts threatening me.

I start wandering around the base, backstabbing to my heart's content. Then I see a spy, again disguised as me, wander underneath the grate room. I wait a second to make sure no one is following him in, then drop down. Another backstab. More threats and cussing. A few more backstabs on the same guy and I'm dominating him.

He comes back as a pyro. Another backstab or two and he get so pissed he switches to my team to scream at me on voice chat. Of course, I keep voice chat at 0 volume except when I'm playing late at night so I don't hear a thing. People are telling him to shut up.

The admin (who was on my team) kick/bans him after about a minute. The notification of why lists Mic Spam, Racism, and a couple other things.

I lol'd.

-paws

Posted by: deek Jun 26 2009, 03:59 PM

Here's my favorite DnD 2nd Edition story ever:

I ran a lot of solo games with my best friend early in my gaming career. We each had a couple characters and we got to really high levels. Well, a couple of my friends, also DMs, but with different circles of gamers, also had high level characters, so there was always fun chat about how "my character could beat yours".

Anyways, my friend and one of other DMs always butted heads. The DM was certain that his character could destroy anyone...he was an psionic which I banned in my games early on and was just super overpowered of a class anyways. But, so be it. He had a large ego, so I figured he'd accept the challenge from my friend, who was much lower level.

So, being my best friend, I wanted to help, so I looked around and found a few things that I thought might work. Between our four characters, we had some bags of holding, an amulet of the planes, a portable hole and a ring that allowed one to go with air for several days. So, using information from the DMG (basically item descriptions) and manual of the planes, we set the plan in motion.

We let my DM friend choose the "battlefield" and I would ref the thing (we actually did this as a 3-way phone call). So, initiative was rolled and the DM friend won, doing some sort of self buff. My friend ended up pulling out his portable hold, which I had one of my characters in, wearing his amulet of the planes. We opened a bag of holding and dropped it in the portable hole, which had some language stating that everyone would be sucked into a vortex that dumped them on the astral plane. My friend and I immediately use the amulet to get back to the prime material plane, and based on RAW, it was something like ever 6 seconds on the astral equated to 1 year on the prime...so we arrived back about a year after we started the fight, no big deal.

Anyways, I described to the DM friend what he saw. Basically, my friend opening up the hole and bag, seeing another humanoid for a split second and then both blink out of existence. He didn't really know what to say, as he didn't have anyone to attack. I told him that I figured he would figure out a way to get back, but it probably would take some time, which he agreed with. I let him know that time on the prime was several hundred years into the future when he returned, but he didn't really care.

That was the first and last time I ever did a player vs. player type encounter, solely based on two people hating each other. And when I look back on it, I think it was a lot cooler for my friend, than anyone else, cause I doubt anyone else really cared. But, if I was the psionicist and got screwed from playing my character in a campaign I wanted to be in, I'd be pretty pissed at this outcome.

Posted by: Oregwath Jul 9 2009, 01:24 AM

I only have two experiences I would call bad.

The first one was when I was running Changeling: The Lost. I had recently moved and this was the first game I ran for this group. My previous group had been big into role playing and would often go through whole sessions without bringing out dice. They also worked together without being told they needed to. This group was... different. After a few months of complaints about changelings not being powerful enough (they didn't make any pledges) I finally agreed that they could make new characters from NWoD during the next down time in the story.

I ended up with a changeling, a vampire, a werewolf, a mage and a promethean. So they all are in a run down bar when their reflections sort of morph together and pours itself out of the mirror behind the bartender. The next scene reveals to everyone that they aren't the only supernaturals around. After the fight, the promethean steps outside and starts drawing large symbols on the front of the building. When asked what he was doing, he said that he was warning others that there were vampires, changelings, mages, and werewolves in this town. Of course, they didn't like this. The promethean kept saying "this is what we do, we leave tramp marks for each other" the changeling flipped out shrieking that "changelings hate people knowing about them" the vampire thought it would be a good time to try feeding, and the werewolf went garu. The mage sat back to "record" it all. I called the game and took a four month break from WoD. I started back up, but I only invited two of those players to the next attempt.

The second bad experience happened just a few days ago. I have been wanting to play shadowrun for the better part of a decade now, but I haven't been able to find anyone else interested in it. I finally found someone who is willing to run it, and my excitement couldn't have been greater. I spent nearly two months working on a mage, with the help of the fine folks here at dumpshock. Then the day of the game is upon us. I sit down and ask what the other two players are playing. I normally like to build characters together, but it didn't happen this time. One says he is going to play a sammy and the other one responds "I don't know, what are the classes in this game?" Appearantly two months wasn't enough time for him to read the book. So we spend some time trying to explain to him the system, and I am not really helping because remember, this was going to be my first game.

We finally convince him that he can't play a guy who is a technomancer in the matrix and a mage in the meatworld, so he pouts and says he will just use the premade combat mage. I am a little leary about their being two mages and no one who has any tech skills, but I figure I will see what happens. Then the guy who said he was playing a sammy says, "Hurry up with the book, I need to make my character too." No game that night. Oh well, I figure next week would be a rousing game, and I even manage to talk the gm into letting me switch to a technomancer so that we can have some tech support.

Unfortunately, next week was gencon, and the gm was going. Fine, more time to fiddle with the tech stuff and figure out the matrix. Then last sunday we were to try again. The session starts out with the guy who had grabbed the pre-made calling to tell us he wasn't going to make it. I am hopeful that we can do a little bit with just the sammy and I. Then the sammy asks for a character sheet. Appearantly he lost his character in the two weeks between sessions and wanted to make a new character anyway. So, I have made two characters and sat in two sessions... and still haven't played shadowrun.

Posted by: Wounded Ronin Jul 9 2009, 02:24 AM

QUOTE (paws2sky @ Jun 26 2009, 10:48 AM)

Here's Team Fortress 2 story...

A couple weekends ago, my son - who's probably too young to be playing TF2, honestly - was doing his usual thing as engineer on some random 2Fort server. At some point, he comes into the laundry room and asks me if I can help him build a sentry. That's extremely basic stuff, that he's long since mastered, but he seems upset so I decided I should see what's going on. I sit down and some guy is shit talking at me because he's pwning me. blah blah blah. Typical, immature trash talk. At that point, I was kind of glad my son is still wokring on reading. *cough*

I go out to the courtyard and start building a sentry, covering the battlements and courtyard. One of my usual spots. Spy drops cloak, headshots me with the Ambassador (an unlockable pistol), and saps my sentry. More trash talking.

So, rather than do the obvious thing and switch to pyro to flush him out, I switch to spy and disguise myself as one of his teammates. He's still just standing there, disguised. As me. So, I backstab him and get revenge. He gets pissed. Calls me a nub and starts threatening me.

I start wandering around the base, backstabbing to my heart's content. Then I see a spy, again disguised as me, wander underneath the grate room. I wait a second to make sure no one is following him in, then drop down. Another backstab. More threats and cussing. A few more backstabs on the same guy and I'm dominating him.

He comes back as a pyro. Another backstab or two and he get so pissed he switches to my team to scream at me on voice chat. Of course, I keep voice chat at 0 volume except when I'm playing late at night so I don't hear a thing. People are telling him to shut up.

The admin (who was on my team) kick/bans him after about a minute. The notification of why lists Mic Spam, Racism, and a couple other things.

I lol'd.

-paws