A tale of bad GMing. For your reading pleasure.

It physically pains me to even think of playing in that game.

DM'ing isn't for everyone, just like major league sports and the military, and for similar reasons - not everyone is cut out for it, as much as they'd like to think they were.

nm

Those aren't game mechanics; they're quantum mechanics.

Maybe it's a VR computer simulation, or maybe the opposition has some kind of time machine.

I would just quit that game. If the GM put effort in it, his loss. Maybe he should have put more effort in not being a dick.

I have to agree with and second Hermit on this one.

I concur: it moves to the floor for a vote.

Read down the thread a bit. You find out why the world is against the players.

Suffice to say, it gets worse. It gets WAY worse.

All in Favor Say Aye!!!

Aye!

Aye!

It sounds like they're playing paranoia. Maybe telling the team he's making his own rule system is just The Computer making sure they don't try to commit treason by knowing the rules.

It's clear that they're not having fun playing Surprise! Paranoia. A troubleshooter is being dispatched to fix the issue.

Countrary to the game in the link, that sounds like a very amusing Paranoia adventure.

Y'see, the "quantum orc" illusion of choice concept CAN work. Where the GM adjusts the adventure so that no matter the path the PCs take, they meet that orc the GM needs them to meet.

HOWEVER, it ONLY works if the players don't realize it's happening, or at least it's done in such a way that they can rationalize the events as plausible.

It's call "illusion of choice" for a reason. In the example, there is no illusion at all, it's obvious there is no choice.




-k

It's one thing to have a key NPC show up when needed, whether the group goes to the Le Snootier restaurant or the Tres Hip nightclub. That's good GMing and making adjustments on the fly as needed.

It's another thing to tell them "No, um, the restaurant, um, burned down. You have to go to the nightclub." "Okay, forget it, we just swing by McHughes and get some sloppy soys to go." "No! Um, I mean, the McHughes has burned down, too." "Okay, we swing by our worst enemy's place to see if we can mooch some food from him." "No, no, his place has burned down, too...waiiiit a minute..."

It's worse than that.

If you scroll down a bit you'll find that... well, let's say that the PCs have plan X and plan Y.
Plan Y assumes that the easiest way to thwart plan X is true. For instance, Plan X requires a tree. Plan Y requires that there are no trees.

The group attempted to implement plan X. There were suddenly no trees. Switch to plan Y. Trees. Plan X again. No trees.

Yes, the GM did that.

For those taking the TL:DR approach it's because the Author Avatar GMPC becomes a god at the end of the story and is retroactively changing the world to ensure that everything goes according to plan. This is dumb on every possible level. I'm actually not doing things justice with this summery.

Are you implying malice on the side of Friend Computer, citizen?
Do you suppose one can commit treason unwittingly, simply by seditious thought?

for example, you didn't mention the part where the PCs can do anything the NPCs can if they qualify, and the reason the PCs don't qualify to have equivalent god-characters is because both the player and the character have to be psychic.

I think my mind intentionally shielded itself from that part as a defense mechanism. Stupid might not be contagious, but I don't want to take the risk.

What annoyed me and made me stop 10 pages in was the feeling the primary narrator stayed in the (unquestionably horrible) game for bragging rights on GitP (and positive reaffirmation by that), which isn't that much better than the GM running a campaign that features author insert Gary Stu to such a degree.

It also makes me call a few bits into question, like the part about the GM thinking himself a psychic (if he really does, however, HE NEEDS HELP and bragging about the shittyness of his homebrew wannabe D&D is not the first thing that should be on the minds of his friends).

The narrator leaves the game around page 25?-30. total of 3 players out of 4 weigh in and none dispute GM's depiction.

Ah, Well, at least that.

The GM, if he really believes he and his OC chare a psychic connction and the world is a multiverse of fiction, needs help, though.

Reached page 41. We now have all 4 players posting.

I've got to go deeper, I must know how this ends.

And there's a blog written by the OP about the system in question
But first, Shadowrun!