DM/GMs: Times your campaigns went tits up

Times players acted unexpectedly and changed the entire course of a campaign?

>D&D 5e, playing fast and loose with lore
>Party arrives at a small island colony, only just met each other on the boat
>Two towns, port is mostly human capital is mostly dwarves
>Original inhabitants of the island are goblins, forced from their homes
>Intended the quest to be party rescuing dwarf mayor's daughter from goblins
>Party instead sides with goblins, asks if goblins want their homeland back
>goblinsfw
>Party retrieves dwarf mayor's daughter, presents her for reward
>As dwarf mayor is giving thank-you speech, cleric caves his head in with a mace
>Party loots the mayor's home, opens gates to city and signals goblin army to attack
>Party steals ship from port and skips town as port town is being burned down by goblins
>Entire colony is burned down less than a week after party arrived
>Party is now pirates

I would explain it in detail but looking back on it makes me frustrated. Short story it was a sci fi setting, the players decided to become space faring murderhobos while at the same time promising their homesick crew they would get the home and never even coming up with an inkling of a plan to do so. It came to a point where I could pettily push back against my hobomurder players or end the campaign and I choose the latter.

You have awesome players
That is an awesome story

Storytime faggot c'mon.

I think the most hillarious time was the first time I ever DM. None of us had ever played D&D and we had mostly internet and one book. I had prepared a story about peoples getting kidnap by an evil cult an how they needed to help stop a rebellion.

First thing my player did was figure out that slavery was legal, liberate an entire market, kill the city governer and jump on a pirate ship to go visite the other side of the ocean to go on arabian adventure.

It was a rought first game for me.

>push back against my hobomurder players or end the campaign
You never challenged your players once during the game? No wonder they were bored out of their skull and decided to act out.

OP here, why would you just end the campaign?
As soon as my party started discussing their plans to get the goblins their homeland back, I just put my notes away (will probably re-use them for another campaign) and let them have fun.
One of the first jobs of a good DM/GM is to never say "no." It's the party's job to make decisions, and you as the DM/GM can try to persuade them and tell them that it's a bad idea, but in the end it's the party's say.

This. The story GM has in mind is just a suggestion, but it's the players who make the decisions.

I'd apologize in advance, but I'm really not sorry if this thread turns into as much of a shitshow as the last thread that this came up in.

>One of the first jobs of a good DM/GM is to never say "no."
This is still the most entitled bullshit I've ever heard from players, and what surprises me is that even GMs repeat it. As GM, you are not a servant to whatever whims the party has. You are there to have fun too, and sometimes watching the players act like retards or completely ignore everything you say/do is not fucking fun. I'll never understand how it's "bad GMing" to look a player who has only thought of their own fun in the eye and tell them "No, you're not going to do that. That's not cool." ESPECIALLY when a player tries to do something that would be unfun for other players. Your first job as a GM is to make sure that there's enough order for the group to have fun as a whole (yourself included), not to bend over every time one of your players has a dumb idea that even they won't enjoy in two sessions.
And yes, I am actually kinda mad.

If you want to write a book then don't waste other people's time by pretending to run a game.

Sounds like you missed an opportunity to play The Odyssey in space.

>not getting your fun out of letting players make bad decisions and punishing them severely for it
Why are you missing out on the best part of being a gm

If you only want your fun to matter, go play a video game.

not my campaign but it went tits up all right

in dark sun second edition, a module made a huge mistake. the dungeon is hard, lethal and almost treasureless. theres a huge metal door at the entrance. we took the door and left, never did the dungeon. opened a merchant caravan and lived in luxury for the rest of our lives.

It's not entitled. It's how the game should work. If you as the GM are ever standing in the way of the players making a decision, it is no longer an open-ended roleplaying game. It's a campfire choose-your-own-adventure story that the players are being dragged through. It's just as much their story as it is yours.

This. I love when my players do stupid and unexpected shit. Whenever it goes bad for them its all worth it for me

>the only options are as follows
>Let the players do whatever they want whenever they want, regardless of whether or not you or another player has a problem with it
>Don't ever let the players do anything except follow the rails
Surely there are no other options. And surely you aren't entitled. After all, it's not like believing that other people shouldn't be able to say no to you, but you should be able to say no to them is the same as "believing oneself to be inherently deserving of privileges or special treatment."

Any challenge I presented to my players they refused to accept.

"The space station's lost its gravity and debris is everywhere. Through the junk you see one of your crew members is floating helplessly towards a volatile generator."

"Well I don't have Zero-G and I don't want to endanger myself, guess he's SOL"

and

"A rescue signal is coming from a series of canyons. Do you-"

"Nah once we refuel we're off this planet"

It wasn't fun anymore. It was a combination of in and out of game apathy and like you I had to shelf a lot of missions and that took some wind out of my sails too. I was making missions on a week by week basis and it was frustrating for me to prep all week long only for them to say 'nah I'd rather stay inside our spaceship'. In game players never sought out anything (like a route back home for the crew) or were proactively about anything and out of game players were constantly showing up late or cancelling without telling any of us

It's hard to reenact the Odyssey in space when your players refuse to do anything. One time I sat them down in a Mos Eisly Catina like space station and told them "Tell me what you guys want." They ended up sitting in their space ship and ordered space chinese food. That night was a waste of 4 hours. One player wanted the 'obligatory anime beach episode' so I set them down on a planet that had a mardi gras vibe to it and they refused to pursue any mission hooks.

I may be a bad GM, but I've seen kindergartners with better senses of role play and exploration then these players.

Christ, can't we go one thread without arguing about how to GM? Let's get some fuckin' stories going here.

>Party is crossing forest to get to Evil Necromancer #47's Palace
>Bear stands before them in the forest
>Party is standing such that bear doesn't smell or hear them
>Party planning on how to take out the bear
>Druid asks if he can use Nature Magic™ to make the bear a party member
>Humoring him, I say only if he makes a high enough roll
>Natural fucking twenty
>Party is now druid, cleric, barbarian, ranger, wizard, and bear
>Party immediately forgets about quests, turns around
>Uses their bear ally to intimidate their way into city capitol building
>Party overthrows government, places bear at supreme position of power
>Sovereign Nation of Bear Land becomes international superpower by capitalizing on the previously untapped bear workforce
>Players live in wealth and luxury for the rest of their days

What do you think conflict is, if not player actions being challenged? The GM isn't some fun and story dispensing robot that you hold your hand out to. The two of you work together, both conceding to make the experience better for all.

Now the above and is only when players are challenged IC. If the guy meant the player is being told OOC not to do something, he's still in the right. The ad nauseum argument of 'GMs who say no you can't are wannabe novelists' is the mark of self-centered players. Most of the time, the GM is just trying to run the best game he can. Players need to play along just as the GM plays along to the players. Going back to the first point, it's a gaming group. Neither the GM's one man show nor yours.

You're a fucking retard either way.

>natural fucking twenty
I'm convinced that you only posted this story in order to give more fuel to the people arguing about how not to GM.

I'm speaking AS the GM. I think it's genuinely fun when players throw your ideas out and go down a completely new path. It's exciting for both parties. This is my attitude towards GMing as someone who has never played and only GM'ed.

I'm impressed that you find it so hard to see that others can have differing opinions on how to run games.

Ridiculous point to raise now when this conversation started with you telling someone the 'right' way to GM is to never oppose or obstruct a player's decision.

And of course I can see we have different opinions on how to run. My way is inherently open to compromises between player and GM. Yours allows nothing other the player to have the final word.

The example of the OP is one of the best outcomes of the players not doing what they were supose to and he did a great job at it too, but the people complaining usually have to deal with players playing dungeon crawling in a political intrigue game, or showing up with a cyborg ninja in their low magic conan style setting, there should be a limit on how much a GM should say "Yes, go for it", that's what they're saying

>Be playing some shitty Gundam homebrew a friend threw together
>Party splits up to do multiple missions
>One guy is infiltrating a Russian base
>Is already in, has a disguise and no one is bothering him
>Decides he needs to skin some random girl and wear her like a fleshsuit to blend in
>GM says if he gets a nat 20 it'll work
>He does

That game had a lot more stupid bullshit if anyone wants to hear about it.

I'm a forever GM too and what you're saying is only half right, if that much. If you tell players to get ready for a Resident Evil 1-esque romp through a scary mansion and the first thing they do is haul ass away from the mansion and try to find the nearest city they aren't actually playing your game.
It isn't railroading to prepare materials and then use them. Not only that but making up bullshit on the fly is only fun sometimes and believe it or not your fun matters too.

I don't think you can argue with a nat 20.

Storytime.

Poe's law you ass

Here's something that happened to my GM, and it was all my fault.

>D&D but in an alternate One Piece universe (only the world, politics and such stayed the same)
>There's a being with immense powers showing up to mess with us once in a while, named Sorana
>Sorana is near omnipotent, can open dimensional portals, sees itself as a symbol of order
>We don't agree with Sorana's world views and overall hate her guts
>somewhere along the way we find an amulet which increases one's powers and seems to be used by Sorana to control people
>One of our players left, afterwards Sorana steals that character away
>I knew our GM made this happen for it to be easier to plan that character's "disappearance"
>my character didn't know that
>We manage to reach Sorana, she gives a "bad-guy speech", I'm tired of listening
>I load my gun with the amulet because whythefucknot.jpg, Sorana's not gonna see this coming, right?
>"You better roll a 20, you know how powerful she i-"
>I roll a 20 and the shot burrows the amulet deep inside her shoulder

Needless to say, she is no longer a symbol of order. She is now chaos incarnate, with the power amulet unable to be removed.

My GM and I have since had a love-hate relationship. I regret nothing.

They sound like shitty players.

I personally find GM'ing and roleplaying kind of like playing a game of catch. You give hints on what your player wants and throw your ball to the GM, the GM gives back. If the players do illogical shit, they should get reprimanded in some way, and rewarded for playing well.

Everyone's there to have fun, and if only one person is having fun then it's better to just stop and move on to greener pastures.

Now this is good bait.

Nice analogy. Keep the players who are good sports, dump the ones who kick the ball into a river and expect you to swim after it.

My party of 6 just fireballed and dive bombed into middle of an enemy garrison of around 500. Who ya got Veeky Forums?

>run vampire the requiem game
>one player is a newbie
>try to be a bit more forgiving about any mistakes he makes
>first thing he does is drink a Baron's ghoul messenger to near death
>second thing is talk like a smartass asshole to said Baron
>third and last is to publicly drain a man and run away with a knife sticking out of his head
>the campaign immediately turned into the party attempting to undo the damage he has done against everyone vampire and the new hunter infestation in the city

long story short, new dm (i was a player) allowed people to play evil characters, one of the guys brings a multiclassed rogue sorcerer, played in a chaotically stupid way; greedy, petty, and annoying

tries to murder guards that "looked at him funny"
the classic of trying to get the loot before the rest of the party and then claim there to be nothing at all
pissing off authority figures that we are actively negotiating with
stealing in broad daylight, gets caught, brought in to the captain who would normally just hang a petty thief, that has been established from day 1 and repeatedly mentioned
we manage to talk it down to have some of his dragon scales cut off.
when his shirt is removed the dm freezes
"what's the color of your scales again?"
"i don't know, i never wrote that down.... green i guess?
it had been established _several times_ that the captain hated green dragons with a passion, because the city had nearly been raised to the ground by a green dragon, with him losing his father to defend the city
the captain gets a sadistic grin and demands the skinning knife
the rogue panics, makes a scene, bribes the "anything for gold" type cleric to help him out
party escapes while burning almost half the town down, flees the country with the help of a magic item dealer, who we've indebted ourselves to now, in exchange for a quest (the dm had worked a long time of the city and had a lot of stuff planned, the look on his face while this was going down almost broke my heart
1/2

I didn't know Voyager had it's own Star Trek supplement

...

In that situation, the proper response is to put them in Resident Evil 2.

Kind of hard to haul ass out of a city littered with auto wrecks after you get caught in one yourself.

we gotta get the mcguffin in the evil cave for the magic dealer that helped us, to get there so would we need to travel quite a long bit. during this journey the rogue keeps being a dick, threatening to kill someone who's helping us after we painstakingly saved his life
breaking into an inn just to not pay the two silver or something fee for a bed
all this while still being petty, greedy and annoying, a lot of our time was devoted to keeping him out of trouble or getting him out of it.
kicking a dog because it snarled at him, unleashing a chain-reaction of idiocy, ending with a lynch-mob with torches looking for him and a bounty on his head. he comes to the party for help, but after having given him several "final warnings" so had everyone had enough, and we delivered him to the authorities, collected out bounties and were told that due to his crimes he was going to be hanged (note, the chain-reaction of idiocy i mentioned contained failed attempted murder, arson, breaking and entering and some other stuff, it had taken the majority of a session of what was supposed to be a quick "you guys rest in the town for the night and resupply") and if we wanted to, now would be the chance to defend him. the whole rest of the party went "na, hang him, it's alright" the rogue hangs, the party has a feast, paid with the bounty money, and a big juicy bone left over from the feast is given to a limping dog

the rogue player is whining while all of this going on, with the cleric player getting really fucking sick of it. he walks over to the gallows where the rogue is still dangling, pays the several hundred gold to have him resurrected out of his own pocket _while he is still hanging_
the cleric player is staring the rogue player in his eyes while he is choking to death _again_

the campaign lasted surprisingly a few more weeks but it was clear that the dm kinda lost the passion when the first place burned, the group split a few months after the campaign ended.

>Party arrives at a small island colony, only just met each other on the boat


>Entire colony is burned down less than a week after party arrived

This is something that happened to a friend of mine. Let's just say the GM had a bit of fun over a player's expense (but it was totally justified considering)

So, my friend used to play an Elf named Denelian, and this Elf made horribly bad life choices. You could say that this particular story started with him wading through a swamp for some reason, and a giant centipede took a chunk out of his leg. He needed lots of stitches and medication, but overall, he recovered fairly well. His doctor did tell him he needed to take a certain medication regularly.

He forgot to take this medication regularly.

Fast forward a few weeks. He and his fellow adventurers had hired mercenaries to storm a garrison, to kidnap a certain someone. But first they needed to cross a perilous swamp by horse. They all agreed to make Denelian the leader for this expedition for some reason.

The moment he set foot inside the dark swampland, the GM asked him to do certain rolls. He continuously failed these, and had to mark the failures in his character sheet.

So, riding in front of 20 mercenaries and 4 friends on his trusty horse Illiana 3 (a story in itself, let's just say Illiana 1 and 2 are not with us anymore), in the middle of the swamp, Denelian finally fumbled yet another hidden roll. A giant caterpillar crawled up on his horse, and in a panic, he started cutting away at it.

Unfortunately, he was just crazy bananas and stabbing his own horse, which created a massive panic among the other horses, throwing their riders off and storming around, disturbing any and all horrors lurking in the murky swamp waters, killing nearly everyone in the party.

His madness killed like 20 people. Because he didn't take his meds. Who'd have known getting your legs nearly ripped off by caterpillars in a swamp would cause a phobia for swamps?