The Ballad of Mardnob

Me, “Weren’t you the guys who refused to take a shuttlecraft? Second, what’s this about you having a native fiancé? Isn’t there something in the Prime Directive about, thou shalt not stick thine genetics into the local gene pool? I’m pretty sure it is under the Kirk clause. This wedding is a week long, when does the Actual event of the wedding take place?”
Computer, “The last day of the event.”
Me, “Why don’t we just clear this place out, you’re ridiculously powerful, we’ll clear this out in like half a day at most.”
Using my previous knowledge of the module, I knew they were more than over-leveled for this entire campaign, and this one didn’t take my previous party terribly long to clear.
To which the group replies, it took us three months of playing to clear the last one. My mouth dropped, how these people took three months to clear the First dungeon with a level sixteen wizard? Completely baffled me. If I had had that character? It might have taken me at most, a couple of hours.
Rubbing my forehead, cause the rest of the group had decided we were going. We get transported away.
Arriving at the wedding, we arrive in this glorified version of super magic kingdom Egypt. We’re given a villa, cause we’re a famous adventuring party (This comes up later), not only that, but the Bride use to be a member of our adventuring group (some previous player’s character). Huzzah… I think to myself, let’s just blitz through these “days” and get back to the plot. Oh no my friends, the DM had a spreadsheet, on this spreadsheet were activities for Every hour of each day, and each event had a Detailed description the DM had written up. We had to turn in an itinerary of which events we’d be attending, including time enough for our characters to get rest and food, and there were random encounter rolls between each of the events (if you changed location). That could cause you to miss an even entirely! Hooray…

Nearly slamming my head into the table repeatedly by this point, I look over the “events.” One in particular has caught my eye, “Meet the Federation.” I mentally start crying, as I once more raise my hand, “Why is there a “Meet the Federation?” To which, it is explained that the Federation has a public facing branch on this planet, that hasn’t “fully revealed itself.” I nearly flip the table, as not only have they bent over and cornholed everything the Federation stood for, but these people had the audacity to even use the Prime Directive as an excuse? There was no Prime Directive, this wasn’t the Federation, and this went beyond even the levels of bastardization one could find in the most heinous of fan-fiction. This was anathema.
Calming myself, I retain my composure enough to bare through the DM’s Tolkienesque levels of description for each event. I will give the DM this, he could provide you a clear mental picture of the scene. However, when every event of this week long wedding is at least thirty minutes of DM’s glorious mental masturbation. All of the party quickly sought the “fast-forward” button. While attending these events, I discover a plethora of more irksome facts about this realm. First, the world is geographically the same as Earth. Later, it is revealed to be Earth. Two, the original (TV Series) Federation was actually in the distant past. That the new Federation was created by a group of Immortals, and a previous party having gone into the past, gotten the Enterprise D, and brought it into the present.
Now, you might ask yourself, how is it that the Federation collapsed? Fey. That’s right ladies and gentlemen, the fucking Fey not only toppled the Federation, and they destroyed the Borg, the Klingons, and all of the other technologically advanced races. Leaving only their people behind. Cause you know, it’s not like they couldn’t figure out how to quickly rebuild their lost technologies.

How can you top this? One might ask? Oh, dear sweet honey child, we’ve only cleared the first drop of this rollercoaster.
The next revelation? The previous Federation before its collapse? Had enslaved all of the psionicists, so that they could be used for Dune-like travel for starships. Apparently, this was a well-known fact in the Federation. At this point, I can’t find any reason why my Lawful Neutral psionicist can support the Federation. I had already decided by this point to quit, but until I could leave. My character’s goals had changed, to now wanting to destroy and supplant the Federation, before its Chaos and Evil could spread.
So I attended the future events of this wedding, attempting to use my adventuring group’s “influence” to make “powerful allies.” Only to be arrested when I attempt to attend the Merchant’s Gathering. Despite being a member of this prestigious group, and being personally invited by the future Empress to this wedding. I was not allowed into the event. I look at the next event, the “Beggar’s Gathering.” I ask if I could even attend that. No. That’s right ladies and gentlemen, Beggars had more privilege and access to exclusive events, than a member of this famous adventuring party. It is at this point, I give up all hope of “supplanting” the Federation.

>” I nearly flip the table
lol

Whilst playing with my phone, another member of the party mentions buying us lower level characters gear. Quirking a brow, I’m like… “Wait, didn’t you guys lose all of your money and gear from being enslaved?” Nope! Turns out, in the Federal Bank of the Federation, these people had millions (if not billions) of gold. Aside from wanting revenge against their captor? These people had No reason to even bother with the slavers. They didn’t care about bringing an end to them, saving people, or hell, the fact that the Federation had assigned them do it. But whatever, they’re going to give me free gear. Might as well. A few hours later, the magic shop we had bought our gear from explodes.
Figuring it’d actually give us something to do, I start to investigate. Some kind of magic was used, and I remembered some speaker of one of the events was a specialist in it. So I go to find him, ask him questions, and see if either he did it or at least gain better insight as to how this was done. As I sit down to casually eat lunch with the man, the rest of my party is about to go Seal Team Six on his ass. Rushing forward and accosting this man, whom I just wanted to ask a few questions. We have the guards called on us, I get arrested, again. At this point, I give up. The rest of the party say’s they’ll try and get answers out of him, I more or less blow them off, and return to our villa. At least there, nothing can go wrong, right?

After a night of stalking this poor wizard, the rest of the party returns to the villa, all but one. The DM’s wife’s character. You see, the DM had a rule called, “The Omni Rule.” If you obviously meta-gamed, the DM would roll a percentile. If he rolled less than or equal to the total number of times you had “Omnied.” Your character would magically get scooped up by some deific being, and you would have to sit out of the game for an amount of time in real life weeks equal to your total Omni score. He bragged about having forced a previous player to sit out for six weeks, while they were using the man’s house to play the game. I don’t know about you, but I’d have thrown them bitches out after the first five minutes. Cause the rest of the party could opt to “fast-forward” through that time. That’s right, not only had the DM suspended the player, the rest of the party kept the man out of the game for six weeks. This had apparently happened with a previous group (excluding the DM’s wife). Else, I would have cursed out the players who were there. For having done that to their host.
So, the DM’s wife had “omnied” and she was scooped up. How might you ask? Magical Ravenloft-like mist? Just suddenly vanished? Nope… Ancient Red Dragon swooped down out of nowhere, grabbed her, and then poofed. So all those magical defenses, Federation defenses in the area, and other stuff the DM had described? Not worth a damn. However, making sense of any of this, was like shoving the square peg of logic into the triangular hole of insanity. Even if the hole is big enough, the peg will just fall through into the abyss of madness.

At this point, my Halfling just looks out the window, goes, “Huh.” Before returning to leisurely relaxing in the villa. A few moments after the rest of the party returns, they had put forth an effort to find out where she had gone. All they had discovered? She wasn’t on this plane. Only to then hear a knock on the door, you remember the Wife’s character’s fiancé? Turns out, he was some prince of a powerful nation, and he demanded to know where the Wife’s character had gone. Claiming we were under arrest, and we’d be killed unless we gave him answers.
Wanting my character to just die by this point, so I have even better excuse not to come back, I get up and explain what we knew to Prince Dickmonger. He demands we go after her, to which I reply, “Why? Better yet, how? All we know, is that she’s not on this plane. Given that she’s an incredibly powerful wizard, who can travel between planes by her own power, and she’s still not back? How in the hell do you expect a party with two level one characters to do a damn thing? Further, if he’s truly this all powerful prince, with the resources of a nation behind him, why doesn’t he get off his own ass and find her?” Apparently, being upfront with him was the correct answer. As he decided to just let us go.

So you’d think after all of this I wouldn’t return? You’d normally be right, except I had become friends with the player of the other Psionicist in the party, and the player of the cleric/wizard. I went over to their place, and they asked me to give the game one more shot. I like to think it’s out of friendship I went back, maybe it’s because I’m a masochist, that or it was just a train wreck I couldn’t look away from.
So in preparation for the game, I decided to at least try the DM’s three step bs. If I was to come back, by God I’d at least have a level or two. So I “research” and present various options, including using this point system the DM had, where at the end of each session players would reward “points” to each other. They didn’t really do dick, so I figured, might as well put them to use. Exchange X amount of points of Y levels/experience/experience boost, something to help the lower level characters catch up and survive. So I present my case, and at first the DM responds with, well the party could go to a “lower-level zone.” To which I quirk a brow, this is Dungeons and Dragons, not World of Warcraft, what is this “lower-level zone” bullshit. Apparently, like in an MMO, the closer you are to a city the lower the level of challenges. To counter this, I point out the party’s revenge boner. Where after they had revealed how much money they had, and I pointed out they could just buy their stuff back. They flatly refused to give up hunting down their captor and gear.

So I pressed my point to a vote. The DM then refused to let the vote occur, and instead have us wait another week. I demand to know why, because I had played by his rules. Turns out, “I didn’t have all the facts.” The actual current rule of the game? Was that you came in at the same level of the lowest-level member of the party. You remember the cleric/thief monkey thing? He happened to be a kid who had joined the game before I had, and the DM had convinced to start at level one. So there-in-by I had to start at level 1, and if a kid could start at level one, so could I.
Now in our one encounter we had with the 800+ orcs (that’s right, we hadn’t had a single encounter Since), I saw what the kid did, he had his character run and hide. While the rest of the party took care of the problem. So I ask him, is that what he did every encounter, and he replied, “Yes.”
I turn back to the DM and state, “That isn’t how you should be playing D&D.”

The DM responds with, “Not all characters have a suicide wish like yours.”
I shake my head, “My character isn’t suicidal.”
The DM retorts, “Why did she fight in the battle with the orcs?”
I reply, “Cause when people play D&D, they want to be heroic. No one wants to spend every encounter hiding while others actually handle the problem. You’re not playing the game by that point, you’re just watching others play it.”
At this point, the DM demands we table the issue. As we happened to have a guest player with us! Yay… Turns out, he was from the DM’s online group, and he’d be playing his literally immortal character with us. Huzzah…
First though, we had to wrap up the wedding. That’s right, we’re still at that fucking wedding. I point out, that our only reason for being here is gone, as the Wife’s character had been magically whisked away. That we should really focus our attention back on our assignment. Nope, they wanted to stick it out, and we’d fast forward to the wedding, cause the Wife’s Omni timeout happened to end Right before the Wedding. How convenient. At this point, I gave very little care, I had already resigned myself to actually quitting this time. After the DM had pulled the rug out from under me with his system. Also, I was once more parked in.

Thankfully, due to fast forwarding, we skipped the rest of the wedding’s nonsense and arrived at the actual event. Yet again, it’s the most magnificent thing our characters have ever seen, all these NPC’s I don’t give a shit about are there, and they get married. Finally, we can return to the adventure.
However, the rest of the party decides they want to continue dicking around here. At this point, I force the issue. I tell the “Computer,” to teleport me back to the mission. The rest of the party finally decides it’s time to do something. So they follow me, but yet again, before we can do anything we’re visited by an immortal! There were literally so many of these ass-goblins, I could have thrown a brick down the street, and probably have hit one of them. This time, it’s Merlin! Because you know, we already had Morgan le Fey, let’s just keep adding cars to this pileup.

He tells us about “Quest Magic,” and how if we recite this chant, magic will help guide us through our desired quest. I’m thinking, oh it’s like those helpers or pointers in like WoW. That or a means to herd these ducks. Sure! If it means getting this over with. So we perform the magic, and everything should go much quicker, right?
Oh… Oh no… I should have learned by now, that getting my hopes up in this game was a mistake. So we get the entry point I had discovered, way back before we attended the wedding. I climb up, to again force the rest of the party to actually do something. However, the two wizards refuse to climb the rope… Why? They’re afraid of an at most twenty-foot drop. So I tap my comm-link, because fuck it I don’t care about integrity at this point, and have the computer just beam them to my location. Oh... Oh yes, I was going to start spamming the hell out of this Federation bullshit.
So we get moving through the keep, and we are literally passing by every corridor/room I know has a magic item. Cause they’re just wanting to find the target of their revenge, oh and their gear, cause you know, it could be literally anywhere in one of these keeps. However, at this point, I’m still trying not to meta-game too hard. So not to ruin their fun. Eventually, we come to a courtyard, which has archers lining the walls about to shoot us. It’s at this point, I hear the Wife proclaim, “My character strips naked and turns green.” I was like… what in the hell? Is she just one of those green aliens from the original series? How the hell is that going to help us? The first archer shoots at her, and his metal tipped arrow? Bounces off. That’s right, if she stripped naked, she would turn green and become impervious to metal.

At this point, I call bullshit. There is no way in hell that is legitimate. Turns out, she was some daughter of the King and Queen of those Fey who had previously destroyed the Federation, oh and they had been forgetting a rule during the encounter with the 800+ orcs. Her Charisma was so “high” that to look upon her, you had to make a save or instantly fall in love with her. I once more call out bullshit, pointing out that there should never be an encounter in this game, as literally everyone would fall in love with her, even if they didn’t they’d turn on their friends who’d try to harm her. They just ignore me by this point, but despite her being… impervious to metal, and making literally everyone fall in love with her. These chucklenuts were still having difficulty with a group of archers. Why might you ask? Cause walls are high, and they can’t reach the archers.
It’s at this point, I give up any pretense of not meta-gaming. As I state, “Man, wouldn’t it be nice if there were a spell that let one fly? That or maybe one of those handy flaming spells, you know it was like a ball of flame you cast from your hand. Boy howdy, one of those would sure wrap this shit up quick.”

>I saw what the kid did, he had his character run and hide. While the rest of the party took care of the problem. So I ask him, is that what he did every encounter, and he replied, “Yes.”

That 'dm', should be horse whipped until dead.

The DM glares as the Wife finally remembers she has, I don’t know… Spells. I’m just looking at him like. I know I’m only technically not meta-gaming, but I don’t give a damn. As we continue, we enter a garden, where in the trees are these particularly annoying apes I remembered. However, I can’t say anything. Not even when the Wife has her character teleport up into the trees. Now, why would any sane high level wizard teleport herself up to the front of the line? You have to remember folks, this individual forgot she had the spell fly moments earlier. In this case, that green impervious to metal flesh of hers? Didn’t do a blessed thing to save her, as a level sixteen wizard died to a group of apes. It took everything in my power not to laugh. The rest of the high level characters rush forward to recover her body and revive her, leaving the two still level one characters to fight off the remaining five unharmed hobgoblins.
You remember that small blessing I mentioned, way back at the start of all this? Being able to buy whatever I wanted? I had bought a bag of marbles. Tossing that down onto the ground, and telling the monkey to climb (thankfully we were both thieves, so we had the Climb walls skill). I then tell him to start shooting, and if the hobgoblins climbed up, smack them back down. He? Decides to climb further up into the trees and hide, leaving me to solo the remaining hobgoblins. Cause he had been more or less schooled into thinking, all he could do in a fight was hide and occasionally heal. Through a combination of tactics, marbles, and using a bag of flour to blind the hobgoblins so I could sneak attack. I was able to hold them off, long enough for the high level characters to remember, oh right, they’re still fighting.

With our level sixteen wizard back up, I then not so subtly lead our party to a hidden door. Allowing us into the keep, and letting us avoid a plethora of the worst traps in the place. As we start through the dungeon, the Wife proclaims it is taking us too long, and that we shouldn’t be wasting our time investigating every room. Rather, we should go back down to the front door, and go in that way. You know, through all those traps I had gotten us to avoid. Hell, I offer to openly meta-game and direct them to every boss fight in the place. The rest of the party overrules me, so we end up back at the front… We start making our way through the front, I volunteer to help trap find. Cause, I know that any one of these traps can easily kill my character. Finally giving me the sweet release of giving any pretense of a shit about this game. However, right before we get to the first trap. We hear something behind us, the Wife has her character turn round and chain lightning the ever living shit out of it. Turns out, the DM had added in this random encounter. Where some ancient lore preserving things from some obscure book happened to be passing through this slaver infested fortress. Why were they here? Who knows? Did they add anything to the plot? No. Were the needed addition to the module? No. What was their point? No idea. Other than to I guess make us feel bad? Cause you know, you can blame adventurers for blasting the ever living shit out of you, when you’re in an evil infested dungeon, and just magically appear behind them.

Returning to the trap at hand, I “happen” to fail my roll, and luckily our werewolf thief does too, triggering one of the 8d6 traps in this place. I fall to my death, and I’ve achieved my triumphant moment. Of being able to just ignore the rest of this game. You remember that guest character? He finally appears, and happens to have an item the will revive my character. God. Damnit. Then I remember, I can always have the character refuse to come back. Nope, this item doesn’t allow for that. Your soul is dragged from heaven kicking and screaming, and this case, back into the company of the Federation’s Finest. The DM at this point, mentioned how well I was taking my character death that he hadn’t seen such an understanding response over a character death, and asked that I never quit his game. Little did he know, that on the inside, I was furious, not because I had died, but because they had brought me back.

I then turn to the son of a bitch who had brought me back, and demand to know who he is, and why he is here. We find out, he’s an immortal who happens to have personal vendetta against this cartel of slavers, and he’s an epic level paladin. I pointedly ask, then why didn’t the Federation just send you in the first place. If you’re Immortal, hate these people, and an epic level paladin, why are we here wasting our time? At this point, I discard any attempt to not abuse this setting. I tell Chuckles the Immortal, good luck and leave him. I teleport back to our ship, and inform the rest of the party, if they want their revenge boners sated to join me. I then ask for Federation intelligence to bring up the current whereabouts of their captor, behold! He’s found in an instant, nowhere near where we were, and his ship is right up on the view screen! What plan does the Federation’s Finest come up with? To raid this guy’s ship, using silence stones to cover their approach, a decent plan, if almost all of your party isn’t spellcasters who’d be in said silence. The Computer then mentions the captain has a mirror that lets him teleport. This causes the rest of the party to bicker for minutes, I ask the computer for a spare Federation badge. Teleport down into the hold with the mirror, plant the badge, and teleport back with the mirror. Done. I thought about doing the same to their captor, but decided to watch this latest train wreck of a plan play out.

So we all teleport down, they’re making their way up, dropping these silence stones everywhere. I grab one, cause why not, and yes in a moment of pettiness, passed the DM a note stating that I’d just happen to be following the Wife’s character just close enough to keep her in the silence bubble. They get up to their captor, the ginsu knives decide to attack everyone but their captor, and of course the casters can’t cast. Cause, not only am I stopping the Wife from casting. The ginsu’s had also dropped a plethora of silence stones on the deck. The stupidity is almost poetic. However, despite their captor being in silence, and where before he required a “mirror to teleport” he somehow is able to teleport himself away. At this point, I’m just writing it off as DM-fiat. He doesn’t want these people to kill him, and I tell them attempting to kill him is just a waste of time. They then threaten to enslave my character like they had been, so I can “experience” their pain.

At this point, I flatly refuse to help them anymore. They end up calling in some form of favor with, like some immortal or other thing, I stopped paying attention by this point. Somehow he magically teleports to where the guy is, they finally capture him, tie him up, torture him, and demand the location of their gear. They even demand that I use my character’s mind probe powers to get the answers, my character refuses, stating that she wanted nothing more to do with these people or their Federation. When pressed why, my character just stated, “You’re evil, and if I could. I’d stop you myself. For now? I do the only thing I can.” She turned around through the magical portal that was still open, and left.
The rest of the players get upset with me, I point out, you guys threatened to enslave her only moments before. The only reason she was still with you, was because the portal dragged her in with you.
The icing on the cake? One of the players remembered they had some device that was a two way portal, one end was in their bank account, and the other had been taken with the rest of their loot. So they use the portal, teleport to where their stuff is located, and then wrap up the session. If I hadn’t stopped caring by this point, I’m pretty sure I’d have flipped the table.

I sent the DM a resignation e-mail, detailing my objections to his game. To be fair, I had drank a bit while writing it. So I might not have been the most diplomatic. Needless to say, I was not invited to return to the game. The DM telling me to never speak to him or any of his players again. I remained friends with the two players I mentioned before, and later found out the game collapsed shortly after I left. Looking back on it all, I can’t help but find the humor in it all. How they could have avoided the entire debacle, the incoherence of the setting, and the insanity of it all.

>Looking back on it all, I can’t help but find the humor in it all. How they could have avoided the entire debacle, the incoherence of the setting, and the insanity of it all.

I'm not a fan of more government meddling or laws.......but sometimes I'd support a law banning certain people from ever running a game.

>Have you ever mixed Star Trek, LoTR, and D&D? Yes? BANNED
>Ever had a powerful DMPC? BANNED
>Ever made your RL wife's charc immune to projectiles and so beautiful that everyone falls in love with her? BANNED

DM'ing after a ban, is punished by death.