Talk about your shitty GMs

>Talk about your shitty GMs.
>play AoR
>Keeps wanting to give the players equipment he thinks is "cool".
>then repeatedly throws hordes of enemies at us. both on the ground and in space.
>just want to stay in the hangar and fix ships.

>GM gets too high
>GM tries to teach us his home-brew system
>An hour in it was clear he had no idea what he was doing
>Five sessions of lets sit and pretend for two hours

>All players know each other outside D&D and everything is always extremely fair and even-handed
>"Hey guys, wife is going to play this session."
>His wife is a purple-haired, Harley Quinn cosplaying, insufferably randumb, manatee
>Should have said something. Should have told him to fuck off. Should have told him that she has cooties or some shit.
>I didn't
>Next week, session starts.
>Usually the group is a semi-serious and tries to solve things through problem solving that doesnt include kill first ask questions later
>We all start in prison and need to escape, have a few other NPCs in prison with us
>wife - "I kill the other prisoners with us *audible laughter*"
>We are looking at each other all apparently thinking, you need to attack them by rolling your dice and begin combat phase you can't just say that you ki-
>DM - "Okay *lololol XDDDD*"
>Red flag #2, wife was being able to just do whatever she wanted after that
>Steal things without doing the appropriate rolls
>Successfully cast spells in an anti-magic field
>We still had to roll for our actions and when we would make decisions a little outside our alignments dm-wife had the balls to say we weren't playing our characters properly
>Eventually we get fed up with it and gang up on her character, killing her in combat
>She leaves the room pissed and DM says thats probably it for this session then

We never let him DM again.

Me! *kills self*

Why can't we just use a system man, maybe even a modified system to patch up some issues with that slipped through

But no, instead we play his homebrew piece of shit system that undoubtedly took him longer to make than it would have to just learn 5E or some shit when the whole point of making it in the first place was "DnD's too complex"

So then, we end up with a system where there are no core stats, there's flat chances to succeed for actions except he modifies them at every chance, what once was a 4 is now a 5 on his whim. Then, our armor makes our HP higher instead of some sort of resistance or save, and all attacks don't roll to hit, so it's almost made useless. Finally, he decided that different parties were a good idea so we ended up looking at our phones for 30 minutes between parties because that was fucking fun

He's fun to play with, but he ain't a good DM

Err...

Why the fuck, exactly, did you want to cut her legs off?

For your reply.

For players like you there is better solution than in game action.
The door.

Lol. now I know you're just trolling.

Something like that happened with my group once. We were all kind of going through our "let's fix 3.5 phase" and for one of the group when he making his attempt and listing through his changes when we were asking him about some dead levels for classes where nothing really happened he explained it in some way incomprehensible way, but the line "It's a math based system" has stuck with us since

Maybe he wanted to make sure she couldn't fight back and didn't have any rope?

I don't understand why you couldn't just talk to him about it. Just say "hey it's great you're trying to share your game with you wife, but she's not quite fitting. Can you do your job and explain how the rules work?"

i knew there'd be one of these threads tonight, because boy do I have a fucking story to tell.

>be me, basically a nordic warlock, use the runes to cast spells, flavourwise i'm a dark viking warlock.
>party needs to recruit various powerful magical entities because of an encroaching battle with forces outside of time and space
>we're in the faewild but can't get in because of space fuckery leaving us unable to actually talk to the archfae
>some fairy dragons approach us and talk to us, we have a nice meal (except me, i've heard what happens when you eat the fairy food so decide to eat my rations instead) then we dance and go to sleep
>in the morning, the leader of the fairy dragons tells us that he will help us meet the archfae but only if we help him with a problem first
>there are satyr in the forest, who are partying, normally this wouldn't be a problem but apparently this time they're being more destructive than usual, so we're supposed to go in and stop them non-lethally
>as we approach, we have to engage in non-lethal combat with two of the satyr who were outside the party.
>we go inside the party and toss their two unconscious forms in front of the rest of them, then I roar a challenge to a drinking contest, succeed the performance check to entertain them, and we start.
>let's go back in time a bit, to when we were in the last town we were in, the town had a brewery, and the brewery made a classic pan-galactic gargle blaster, strong alcohol, which me and the dwarf drank a lot of.
>on our last night in that town, i rolled a nat one for my constitution save against the alcohol, passed out immediately and then the next morning we went on our way
>at this crucial moment in the drinking contest, we decide to bring out our heavy weapon again the satyrs, the burning talisman, because we think it's strong enough to knock them all out.
>i go up against their leader, take a swig, roll for constitution-
will continue

>same forever-DM for four years
>starts running campaigns in a big homebrew setting
>constantly reminds us that the setting belongs to all of us and that we're welcome to add anything that makes sense
>keeps up a wiki for all of it
>asks us what kind of story elements we want to see (in general terms) and builds the narrative accordingly
>tries various things to break the ice and get the roleplay moving at the start of the session
>comes up with NPCs who feel like real, interesting people on the fly
>is as invested in our characters as we are his
>generally cultivates a sense of immersion so thorough that I sometimes forget that it's just one person bringing all this shit to life
Whoops, I've accidentally listed reasons I love my DM instead.

>except I don't roll for constitution, our beloved DM says
>no, because I rolled a nat 1 the last time I drank it, I now automatically fail and cannot roll a constitution check from now on, every single time I drink.
>understandably, I say this is bullshit, and me and the dwarf bro in my party berate him for it.
>no, I failed, and now the satyr are winning the contest against our rapidly dwindling party.
The session happened earlier but I left before it ended because that was just so much bullshit.

to make it worse, he actually told me "i'm the DM, so what I say goes"
the fucking gall, The purpose of a DM is to let us have fun, being auto-knocked out against any sort of poison test is not fun, nor was it called for. It's not even a magical beverage it's just strong.

>Get wasted by alcohol once
>You will now get automatically wasted every time afterwards

The fuck?
You get dulled to alcohol over time, so you should get an additional +1 save for each time your character has gotten drunk.
Once you ultimately have enough saves to chug without worrying about losing consciousness you should probably start rolling after 20 drinks for a save against alcohol poisoning though.

>AK-74
How did nobody notice this?

>playing 5e Princes of the Apocalypse campaign
>DM is new
>discover lair of some cultists
>as soon as we enter a cultist runs towards a side corridor and blocks it with falling rocks
>attempt to use the Command spell to get him to approach me or get on the ground instead
>"Uhhhh, no sorry. The book seems pretty clear on this cultist just gets away without you being able to stop him."
>tell him that I can obviously say "Stop!" before he runs down a corridor and pulls a lever
>"Nope, sorry. Gonna have to side with the book on this one."
We've been friends since third grade and he's a nice guy, it's just that he's not the tiniest bit flexible when it comes to DMing.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AK-74
Get /k/nowledgable.

>it's a "things that never happened" episode

>check out DnD club at local library that does one-shots and long-runners at different tables
>one-shot DM isn't there yet but has a list of approved races and character sheets set up on the table
>Human, Elf, Dwarf, Gnome, Halfling, Tiefling, Half-elf
>so far so good
>Shinigami, Parasite, Mertaur, Lamia
>uh
>Half-Slime, Chakat, Sergal
>welp
I didn't join the club

What's wrong with that?

because people can't use words.

Fuck, I already posted my story on the That Guy thread

I thought he'd gotten it backwards. My mistake.

ahaha, it's ok, the AK-47 is the original and the most well known, I can't expect a gun novice to appreciate the lesser known version.

>used to play on a forum
>almost as many homebrew systems as official systems
>didn't see the rules, but all seemed solid
>all games were fun
>also a few Vampire systems modded for sci-fi

Feels good. It couldn't last, of course. The old Admin had made starting topics there impossible, except for mods. So when a new one replaced him people who never touched the RPG board convinced her that it was an abberation of the rules. Stupid whore that she was, she listened to them, and they proceeded to ruin the board out of a sense of elitism, and because they didn't like some of the regulars. We moved to a new board, but it wasn't the same, and shit quickly died out.

They were loudmouth American liberals who wrote huge essays about how right they were all the time. One of them was of Egyptian origin, and denied terrorism while moaning about racism, then turning around to celebrate when Serbians died. Is that relevant? Not really. But it's the only sort of personality I remember of these cunts, so I'm mentioning it.

I hope you don't mind me posting it again:
>Invited to a friend of a friend's game by association to him
>"What's the campaign about?"
>Not going to tell you, spoilers
>"What should I roll?"
>Whatever you want, anything will be ok, but I only allow these books and from these books only this list, maybe, just maybe in a not so distant future I might allow more depending on what you want
>Pretty fucking restrictive but I'm game starved so I go with it
>Try to choose something that goes well with the group
>Blaster caster (warlock), Martial (fighter), utility halfcaster(bard)
>Go ranged scout because rolls didn't help much
>Turns out the game is set in Eberron meets Revenloft full of constructs and undeads
>"Well fuck me"
>Also we have some premonitory visions and a magical tattoo that mark us as the chosen ones for something we don't really know
>Deal 0 damage in literally all encounters
>Whatever I roll for stealth GM rolls higher for spot/listen
>Whatever I roll for disable device traps have higher DC
>Die in the first session
>Get ressurected with -2 to Con
>Stumble as we continue
>Still dealing 0 damage and not accomplishing anything
>Spend poition over potion till I'm out of money due traps
>Sit while combats
>"GM can I reroll char?"
>No, you're all the chosen one, your PC are of the most importance
>Now I know why I got ressurrected as a 1st level
>Die a couple of sessions later becasue clearly what we have access to (feats, classes, magic items, money, etc) are not balanced to the level of encounters
>ressurrected again, already have -2 to Con and one level behind everybody else, and I already rolled worse than anyone
>"GM, srly, I'm fucking useless and I'm not having fun at all"

(cont.)

I've had nothing but shitty GMs, and groups, where do I start. I've mentioned these stories in a couple of threads, so, to those who've endured my stories, I apologise

Star Wars D6 system: Significantly overhauled by the GM, my first tabletop. Looks fun, scroll through races, find something interesting. Party is composed of various military and Jedi types. Being me, I like to go a little different, usually to fill a niche.
So, I specialize in Technical and Mechanical skills. I had the idea of going with a scrap mechanic, capable of crafting whatever I need out of whatever I have to hand. A crazy sci-fi MacGuyver if you will. I'd also wanted to have a basic combat droid to protect me, seeing as how I would have absolutely no skill in self defense, and likely would get into trouble.

GM assures me having a combat droid would be fine and reasonable. Game actually starts, I need to come up with more than 20k credits for a basic, shitty droid that rolls 1 more dice than I do to handle a blaster (2d6, no bonus to hit)
I have maybe 400 credits. Total. Furthermore, Tech and Mech checks are basically useless, or needed when I am unavailable to that part of the party, so I'm largely useless. The only thing meaningful I could do was to upgrade my own blaster to have a custom Grip, ot tuned up Power Core, to give +1 to hit, or to damage. I couldn't do both.

So, whilst I am basically neutered, useless, and incapable of doing basically anything I wanted, the Jedi and mercenaries are running around, blowing stuff up and having a kick ass time in the limelight.

The cherry. The fucking cherry on this god damn cake though, a little over a month in, another guy joined, with a similar concept to my own. Only, he picked a race that gets 4 mini cluster droid things to do combat for him, and the GM allows it, no problem. I even tried to martyr suicide myself a couple of times, but was forcibly brought back to continue playing the useless comic relief.

Moar stories?

>constantly making mistakes
>fucks with continuity
>bring it up when it happens in hopes he will correct them
>"If you don't like how I run my games don't play"

>look up Mertaur
>first image result
Seems like a solid game.

>Be patient, things are going to change for better
>Now encounters have elementals too
>"GM, look, can I at least pick this feat (swift hunter) and multiclass into ranger for the next level?"
>Fuck no, that's broken, also why?, instead of being a muchkin powergamer who picks the best stuff why don't you try to follow a logic evolution with the character?
>Also, condescending as fuck, tell me that he's not there to provide me fun
>Fuck, that's fucking it, leave
>Friend tells me how the GM ranted about me being a spoilered fuck, humiliated my character and then killed it
>He also tells me the game died like 2 sessions later because they couldn't deal with the shit he was throwing at them, but before they left GM just quit using personal matters as excuse

I was boiling mad when I left, srly, how can people like that exist, what the fuck do they gain with any of this? what the fuck moves them to be so petty?

some GMs feel they need to be your rival. These are not good GMs.

Pic related, what reading your experience did to me inside. I hope you find a much better group, you sound like you need it.

Just imagine not knowing what a Chakat or Sergal is and rolling up in that group.

>Shows up with no notes
>Doesn't do combat, ever
>Takes ages to respond to players
>Lets everyone run wild without direction
>Keeps cancelling for flimsy reasons

The shitty GM is me.

The thing that's most often called an AK-47 is actually the AKM, which is an improved version of the AK-47. The Russians couldn't stamp complex steel forms for a while after the war, so the original AK-47's had to be milled from a solid block. This makes them sturdier (yes, even sturdier), but also 2-3 pounds heavier.

Might be neat to know for a game.

>every character is a snarky asshole
>they all talk in the same way, I'm not even sure how to describe this properly
>every village we go to is afraid of us
>characters don't really do anything aside from being fighting fodder or giving quests
>get fed up with it, regard everybody with the suspicion they deserve
>kill some of them because we need to complete our goals but diplomacy doesn't work no matter what we do
>the GM can't figure out why we kill his characters so whimsically
>"You just never got to know them!"

just fuck my shit up

Hey, it's not the GM's fault his autism gives him a monotone voice. Sign him up to a dialogue coach.

Also, tell him "your characters all sound the same, you dip."

Laid it on a little thick, didn'tcha?

We play online, in-character is in text.

>Sign him up to a dialogue coach.
Those exist?
I've thought about taking a few casual acting courses to help with my GMing before but I'm kind of shy so it's always been more of an idea than anything else. A dialogue couch sounds a lot easier to work with.

>>Pretty fucking restrictive but I'm game starved so I go with it
Multiple books offered.
>restrictive.
Even at this point of the story I know that you are ether bullshitting or you are the idiot in the scene.

First two points are positive though.

Those poor kids

I still go to the library for casual card game meetups and see the DnD group sometimes. They're...something else

>one or two shot
>railroading the shit out of us
>At one point, the point of interest is literally a train that is full of cultists, about to leave the station
>Instead of doing what he wants, we bust the fucking tracks up while ONE DUDE stands toe to toe with the train, preventing it from moving
>Beat the fuck out of that train
>GM says we're done for the night, visibly pissed
>Tells us that the train was supposed to get away
>Start shotgunning drinks around the table, shouting TRAINWRECK TRAINWRECK as our strongman chugs

Listen guys, just so you know, I'm going to sacrifice myself here and be the only replying to this obvious bait, so please, don't follow my example and ignore him. Thanks.

Then he needs a writing coach. He shouldn't be writing dialogue until he can write in different tones of voice.

...

F

Is he a new DM? Running a module AND not being willing to deviate from it in the slightest seems like a lack of confidence thing

Nevermind, I'm retarded.

Yeah, my last DM rolled like that. He's an OK guy, but he's used to this really weird min-maxing Gygax-esque style of playing. As a player, his characters are also kinda.... random. But it's not malice or anything, he never spergs out, simply wants to have fun. He DM'd our first game, and we had tremendous amounts of fun.

Buuuuut we were told a lot after the fact that some sort of answer was in front of us all the time while we just didn't expect it. I suppose in his games everyone always knows what's what, and we just don't.

Half of these stories are obvious BS. I refuse to believe anyone is that autistic.

We're all new with the DM, his brother, and I having the most experience with 5 sessions under our belts. The other two only had one or two under their belts.

When you're GM brings out 'the cutscene'.

I blame video games.

How does this work? What if someone says they do something during the "cutscene"?

He'd basically be like 'Alright guys cutscene time'. And just describe what was happening.

If anyone tried to do anything he'd say 'hold on' and just keep going.

To be fair to the guy he eventually got better. Was a newbie GM with newbie first time players.

GM ignores you
My character got killed during a cutscene once because I had a feature to negate one attack that target me 8 times a day. It was a good feature but wasn't broken in the slightless even the rest of the table agreed with me but GM was a bitch because his DMPC got angry with me and couldn't knock me out ingame without showing himself as evil

>Alright guys cutscene time
>he'd say "hold on" and just keep going
Holy kek, that's comedically terrible.

Well that's what you get for trying to interrupt the story.

In that case, it's forgivable. New GM's tend to have quirks like that. A friend of mine GMed a nice enough first (and only) game, but he had this annoying tendency to make something obviously shifty, and then basically force/expect everyone to still go along. Very strong railroading

But he also ran two of the best quests we've run so far, and a very nice campaign in general. We had loads of fun. Ironically enough, in one of those sessions I had to encourage him to railroad, because we were doing random shit. So nothing is absolute, I suppose.

Yeah, OK, that is pure shit.

Shit, I should watch this.

>complaining about railroading in a one-shot

No, it wasn't.
I was playing a melee sorcerer (claws and bite) in 3.5 and the feature was a spell (wings of cover). Group also had a swordsage and a crussader.

GM was already doing some annoying shit but we stayed due politeness. GMPC was a shaddy cunt blood mage or something, gish that could spend HPs to cast spells during a full attack, cast extra spells, etc, never before seen this class and never found it again, GM said it was from Dragon magazine, like I said, shaddy as fuck and I already caught it in a fib several times, guy was obviously working for the BBEG and wanted to kill us, I managed to convince the party that the guy was bad bussiness but he managed to force a fight, I (because I have that spell and was trying to force his hand) decided to not attack and he wanted to knock me out (something like coup de grace but to leave unconscious but like coup it takes a full action) and I stopped 2 of his attacks, because i wasn't retaliating and he kept attacking me he showed himself at least as a not nice guy, the other PCs decided to enter and we part ways. 1 session later my PC got killed in a cutscene by a vampire using domination (didn't let me roll Will save) and then draining me as the rest of PCs could only watch. I thought it was going to turn me or someone was going to save me but no, it was just to kill my PC. There was a heated discussion and we all ragequit, never seen the guy again.

What's the difference between a "cutscene" and describing something?

Some GM's describe something plot relevant that occurs away from the rest of the story that helps the narrative for the players but not the characters.
Example being flashing away to an argument between two gods in heaven as they discuss their plans. That's a tradition cutscene, where you literally cutscene and change perspective.

In cutscenes the GM takes control of your PCs or simply doesn't allow rolls and things happen as he wants.

If you never saw the guy again, how do you know he got better?

I wouldn't even call that a cutscene, though. That's just straight up rocks fall.

Did you even read the post you were responding to?

Your definition was wrong, what you described was a description, cutscenes are like in videogames where you don't have the control of your PC and stuff happens like for example one of your team dying just because, even if you could have ressurrected her with phoenix fuckign tails

>not railroading your PCs because your story is objectively the best for them
>not creating sure-death situations to make things exciting
>not letting your players in the dark to create an air of mystery
>not making artificial NPCs to blend in with the setting
your DM fails.

I'm not the guy you were originally responding to, I'm a third user, but I don't particularly see why that should be a "description" instead of a "cutscene" necessarily. There's nothing about a "cutscene" that means it HAS to involve the GM taking control of the characters, like in the example given. There's no reason that there has to be a distinction made between "cutscene" and "descriptive scene that cuts to somewhere else" instead of just "good cutscene" and "bad cutscene."

You might be right, maybe is my autism renaming stuff I don't like different than stuff I like, like with NPCs and DMPCs.

>playing 3.5 with some house rules to make shit a bit less retarded
>I'm usually the guy who GMs but one of the players says he has a friend who wants to GM
>we all give him the OK and he tells us to roll up our characters
>tell the guy about the house rules that we use, he says sure, so we assume he's on board
>session starts
>everything is going pretty normal, we all meet in a tavern as standard meetup 101, and start to trek through notengland to find something interesting to do
>this is when things start to get a little weird
>dragon swoops down out of nowhere and swallows our mage whole
>GM describes in extreme detail how the character is being swallowed and eaten
>everyone is giving each other the "magical realm" glance
>actually the dragon is winged by a group of dragon hunters, and our mage is mostly fine
>turns out he's just describing EVERYTHING way too much
>spends about 10 minutes describing the tiniest details of one of the dragon hunters I roll a spot on
>we continue on our way, following the hunters to their nearby castle
>continuing with the very oddly long descriptions
>eventually we've spent all of the 8 hour session walking from one location to the other, and I approach the guy after the session and ask him if I can keep GMing, and if he'd be fine with just playing for now
It actually worked out pretty well, as he's a great player. He's a cool guy, but just not a very good GM.

>As a player he wants everything, the brokest the better, specially untested homebrew obviously Tier -5 (yeah minus 5) stuff
>As GM he allows core only, no magic items, dirty farmer (unless you're caster but he only alows one arcane and one divine in the group), humans only (though world is full of other races) and always uses overpowered dmpcs
Like two different sides of the same coin

Thank god I became less retard after I turned 18 and fucking left that group, for a time I thought that was how ttrpgs were played

It is precisely that, user.

It's the most (depressingly) accurate movie about nerd/dnd culture I've ever seen.

I watched it. I laughed. And cringed. Good movie.

He managed to destroy a game in session zero. I'm kind of impressed in a way.

Elaborate

Well, he's our resident Tolkien nutter. And I mean he's really serious about it. He tries to get people to read his essays about how a lot of Tolkien's Christian influence in LoTR is derived from various Finnish and Icelandic sagas written after adoption of Christainity and thus Christianized pagan beliefs and crap.

And he got asked to run a CODA LoTR game, and then decided he had to tinker with it. Completely re-wrote the magic system, re-wrote half the races bonuses, added in a whole bunch of crap about fate and prophecy and how it can actually fuck over your actions and whatnot.

By the time he was done, he had basically eliminated the usefulness of everything but a human fighter/ranger type, at which point nobody really wanted to play anymore. To be fair to him though, he said that he wouldn't be a good DM for this, especially if you wanted it to be like the books, which a few of the other guys in the group said they did.

>He tries to get people to read his essays about how a lot of Tolkien's Christian influence in LoTR is derived from various Finnish and Icelandic sagas written after adoption of Christainity and thus Christianized pagan beliefs and crap.
I hope you're paraphrasing, because honestly the Catholic influence in LotR came from Tolkien's ardent Roman Catholocism, not from Christianized myths. As the author of a seminal Beowulf translation, he would have been fully aware of how the written version of those stories would have been transcribed and edited by monks.

On an actually related note, though, he sounds like a cool guy, even if GMing really isn't his thing.

GMs who's games are like... one combat encounter and then they're out of ideas. Where you spend more time making your characters than you spend playing.

GM's who have short attention spans and get bored with the game after a few sessions and want to do something else.

The purpose of the DM is to guide the story and play referree. Your guy was a cunt, yeah, but don't be an entitled bitch.

"she's not quite fitting"

Not quite fitting into her Harley Quinn t-shirt.
Get it?
Because she's fat.

Just out of curiosity, has anyone had a bad experience with somebody who played a dwarf? I never had, all of my dwarf players have been fantastic dudes.

I am jelly.

I'm not paraphrasing exactly, I'm simplifying, and adding in a dash that I've only skimmed his essays and barely understood them.. While certain aspects (morgoth and the music of the ainur) are very obviously Christian stand ins, or how that story that they tell about the "fall" of humanity into mortality is very much a Garden of Eden analogue, even if it's own truthfulness in universe is doubted. Where he draws christianized pagan influence is how the conception of the 'active deities' is a very much limited Norse style pantheon, and how you have an incredible lack of anything resembling overt formalized worship in the legendarium works. There's belief in both Illuvatar and the Valar, but the most explicit you get to people actually doing homage to a deity is when Sauron comes along and gets the Numenoreans to worship Morgoth.

But the biggest example of the "paganist" literature influence had to do with Frodo himself; because his name isn't elaborated upon in the appendices concerning hobbit nomenclature; and how if you accept that he has one of the "meaningless" names like Bilbo, Bungo, etc., and would necessarily switch the o at the end to an a, you get Froda, who is from the heroic literature, the father of Ingeld, but that the old norse equivalent is "Frothi" and Frothi's most famous accomplishment is how he turned away from war, and something about how he was a deliberate Christ analogue, and therefore Frodo is supposed to be a similar sort of figure, a "quasi-Christ", cast in a Christian rendering of a heroic pagan tale, except this one set in our not quite earth that is Middle-Earth.

I get it!

>he shouldn't be writing dialogue until he can write frikkin sounds.