Stupid Player Stories

>5e
>one guy playing dwarf barbarian
>goes around bullying townspeople, breaking things and being a general nuisance
>figure it's okay if he's prepared to suffer the consequences of this roleplay
>player is genuinely surprised when NPC's want nothing to do with him a few sessions in
>instead of trying to reconcile with them gets mad and starts killing people
>gets cornered by guards
>continues to fight and gets killed
>24 year old player starts to cry and complains that I'm ganging up on him

What is it with players and fucking wandering into something you've hinted to them is dangerous multiple times? Does being a player just make your IQ drop several hundred points?

Since adventure and danger is most often the point of the game this can often translate to "we are indeed playing the game, go here" in the players minds.

Well I think it's fairly common knowledge that struggling in quicksand makes you sink quicker. If he didn't know, now he does

The only thing you could have done, that you didn't say you did, was remind them of the danger and their purpose on the caravan when they all acted lax and distracted.
A character is less likely to forget their surroundings than their player is and the GM has to keep that in mind when running the game sometimes.

Of course if you did do that, then I can only suggest playing with players that don't have mittens pinned to their sleeves.

>Tell stories about when your players were blatantly retarded
They asked if I wanted to try pathfinder once

send him to a therapist

I have at least one player who if I tell him something is dangerous that's the most surefire way to get him to do it. He sees himself as more or less bulletproof, regardless of any track record otherwise, and actively seeks new challenges to pit himself against. The more danger the more gratification to overcome it, especially if it proves a worthy challenge (more glory) or finds itself frustrated at trying to win (an overwhelming vicctory). Nevermind there was no need to do so, and he in fact went out of his way to pick a fight with the giant electricity-breathing crocodile man we had successfully tricked and was on its way leaving. The satisfaction of successfully grappling it is all he needs. (He still feels he wasn't endangering the party to do that, and that we should have just left him there to fight that thing on his own while we delivered the goods. We convinced him to never do it again as a favor, but he still feels like he was in the right.)

Best I can tell, it's hereditary, because his dad is probably the closest thing to a level 20 adventurer I've ever seen in my life, with the exact same attitude.

>insert tired old "God will save me" joke here

If I was GM-ing that, I'd just tell him he grabs the rope like a sane person and is pulled out.

How many of yall would do the same? Just wondering

If he really shed a tear over that, he's a broken human. Cease contact

>not immediately suspecting an ambush when approaching a pass

They deserved it for mucking about. Now for my tale.

>party is level 2
>banditry and orc attacks on caravans are on the rise
>party decides they want to collect some orc bounties and heads off to find some
>townsfolk out in the farmlands are able to point them in the general direction
>they head off into the wilderness to find them
>night falls, they set up camp
>they manage to detect a scouting party that blundered about
>rather easily dispatch them
>next day begin tracking back to their camp
>they exit the forest and start up a hill
>before they crest it I ask if they're going to proceed with caution or just saunter to the top
>Fighter chooses saunter
>orc camp below with about two dozen milling about doing day to day orc shit
>orc sentries fail their spot check
>rest of the party crest the hill in broad daylight making no effort to hide themselves
>basically just gawking at the orcs until they get noticed
>while they discuss how to handle the situation, the orcs start yelling, grab spears and begin zerging towards the hill
>players still standing there, readying for combat despite the fact they can still make it to the treeline and escape imminent death
>the wizard was the first to realize how bad of an idea this was and tries to flee after the first round of melee combat
>winds up skewered
>fighter and ranger fall next
>paladin starts yelling at them as she makes her final stand for being idiots

If they had a modicum of sense, they could have set up an ambush for the inevitable next scouting party that would go off to figure out why gork, mork, pork, dork, zork, nork, and fork never made it back and whittle their numbers down to something more manageable.

Got more of this guy
>Earlier campaign
>Running solo session with each player prior to session 1
>Basically a small dungeon crawl for each player to get them to all meet up deeper in the same dungeon complex
>Guy rolls rogue because he says he wants to play a treasure hunter
>I think this is fair enough but he refuses to draw maps of the dungeons he explores for some reason
>Gets stuck halfway through solo dungeon because he literally keeps walking around in a circle
>I tell him to just draw a map but he refuses saying it's clearly a labyrinth
>Half hour dungeon takes two hours because of this
>Eventually I just bullshit and cheese him through
>He leans back and smugly puts his hands behind his head
He got bored of the character 2 sessions in and got mad at me for letting him put an 18 in his character's intelligence stat

>party of 2 (stealthy ranger and budding necromancer) investigating a farming town
>looking for a man who never returned after a delivery
>they find the gates barred and the outlying farms deserted
>told by a guard from inside that the town is under quarantine due to outbreak of mysterious disease
>after fucking around outside for a bit they find a stream that runs under the wall into the town with just a sewer grate in the way, the walls could probably be climbed, hear a woman shouting from inside asking them to contact an affluent man in the nearby city, AND could convince the head guard they are there to help with the sick by just providing some proof of identity...

>"there's no other way in, I guess we just need to smash the door down"

so they did

upperinos bitch

He sounds like a knob. Why do you still play with him?

>Old 3.PF game
>friend's step-cousin is That Guy, but he's definitely motivated
>Likes dark and edgy themes
>Every one of his characters is some wish-fulfilling garbage
>believes he is allowed to get away with WHATEVER he wants, always saying his backstory justifies it.
>entitled fuckbags who go out of their way to insult every NPC
>would often argue with and attack other characters
>Both would rape or kill or both but not skull fuck, that's not something
>Just one disaster after the next
>That guy makes a shitty abnormal Half elf sorcerer character
>Doesn't buy any defensive or offensive items, at level 8 has AC 13.
>wondering why he is not min-maxing
>The game starts normally
>party starts fucking around in a city bazzar on "market day"
>Half orc starts to talk to characters, explains he was banished from his tribe
>the party thinks this is the quest hook
>the party explore the castle
>find a small, secretariat cultivator sacrificing townspeople to a gentlemanly bodysnatching tepee monstrosity
>they go down-and-out staircases and killer some orc cultists
>furries are, in my experiment the Cultivator Mastermind
>find the cultivator has managed to summon a powerful daffodil
>epicentre battle-axe sequin
>That Guy gets husband more from his own moves than anything the cultivator mastermind and his ministers do.
>Mage attainments again, succeeds in killjoy the cultivator leadership
>tempo has a artifact portcullis to hello
>chap will spill out from it to infect the restatement of the university
>Sorceress wants to steal it and use it to contagion some devises
>shoal goes wrong
>Continue creating portculliss to chap dimmer
>enable his spire into madness
>I offered him the chancel to just have me handbag-waveband it away
>he just grinders and sits down-and-out.
>they finally clear the build-up and leave
>Somehow we survived
>But it was not function
>That Guy just gets buttmad

>old meme is old
kys

>players doing stupid shit and then they complain about railroading
Yep.
Also sometimes i've got players who just FORGET TO HEAL AND REPAIR THEIR SHIT and then walk into a host of enemies - as was announced - only to then cry like the little shitheads they are

I'd make him roll intelligence

Oh, I have loads. But my favorite, at least at the moment is this one. (I've told it before)

>Playing DnD 3.0, shortly after it came out.
>Low level party, 2-3, forget exactly.
>On our way to this abandoned temple, but it's a couple of days travel.
>We rest in the night, and set up watches.
>On one shift is our half-orc fighter.
>Makes a listen check well enough to hear SOMETHING out there in the brush, but not well enough to know what it is.
>Rest of us are sleeping.
>Thinks about what to do for a moment, and then announces that he's going to go investigate the noises.
>GM looks him over, and asks "are you SURE you want to do that?"
>Is astute enough to realize that means he should think over his latest course of action.
>Ponders for a second, and then brightens up.
>If I wear my chainmail while I go look, they'll hear me coming for sure. I take off my armor first, and then go tramping around in the brush.

So did he dieded?

Nah, our GM made a very uncharacteristic (for him) decision of "there's no way your character would be that dumb" and essentially retconned his actions into waking the rest of us up.

Good GM. If he allowed the thing to happen the player would have probably thrown a tantrum and the game woulda been over

Probably.

I have a few more stories, if anyone's interested. OTOH, I've told most of them before on Veeky Forums. But we've got

>Players blow themselves up doing something they knew would blow themselves up.
>Players get themselves killed by assassins because they're carrying around a homing beacon.
>Players pick a fight after their divination told them they have no chance.
>The shapechanger who never shapechanged.
>We Steal Ur Shit Quality Inne
>How not to frame someone for the murder you've committed
>Killing the helpful NPC for helping them. (Actually, I have two separate stories under this heading)
>Wait, we can't go back?

>first game
>guy whos usually quiet joins game
>kills the only npc who's been helping them, an helpless old man
>some game later, different guy
>im gming cthulhu, made sure the players had different characters so the game can keep going after one of them inevitably dies
>player LITERALLY kills BOTH of his characters in one session
>later one of them came back as a zombie so that was kinda cool

>supposed to be on a very important quest
>in the middle of enemy territory
>don't take precautions
>mindlessly fool around instead

They deserved it.

>player says he wants to put a molotov on the ground
>i ask him why
>he asks me if he could lay it on the ground and also step away so as to not get hurt by the explosion
>i tell him to make an agility check and to also make an explosive check
>he whines
>to this day i have no idea if he wanted to cheat the rules in some convoluted way or if he actually has brain defects

Did he have any ranged means of detonating the molotov?
He might have tried to set it down as a trap of sorts, step away and fire a gun/flame arrow/fireball at it once the enemies got close enough.

Let's have We Steal Ur Shit Quality Inne for starters, yes?

He coulda thrown it lmao

The moment he ignites it it's primed to explode and if he ignites it in his hand and then throws it at the ground - which is what i think he wanted to do - it woulda just hurt him

Maybe he wanted to use it as a trap but he worded it so weirdly that i didnt understand

>Let's have We Steal Ur Shit Quality Inne for starters, yes?

All right.

>Players are going to do some dirty work for a somewhat disgraced but still rich nobleman.
>Wants to meet them at an inn in the bad part of town.
>Someone in the party, don't remember which one, makes a knowledge check to see what they know about the inn in question.
>Gets a good result, knows that it has a REALLY bad reputation, the sort where if you're a stranger, you stand a decent chance of having your drink drugged and you being mugged by the time you come to.
>Players want to store some of their gear prior to the meeting, because this is the sort of game where there are social penalties for tromping around in full armor; especially in the shit part of town, where it would mark them as targets.
>Rent a storeroom from the inn
>Put a lot of their stuff in it
>Don't put any traps, players guarding it, or even so much as lock the door, they just put their stuff in there and leave.
>Are surprised and outraged when several of their items are missing, including the wizard's spellbook.

Well, it could have been a trap based on overthinking. Orc warboss demands to look at the bottle with a rag for a cork and the entire warband clusters around him to see what's going down.
Cue player priming and detonating the molotov with one swift, action-efficient motion from the bushes with a fire-based ranged weapon. That's a chunk off the most of the warband, and especially the big badass damage sponge of a warboss, for the cost of an easily replaced molotov and one shot of fire-based weaponry.
As opposed to throwing it and probably catching most of the warband's scouts and frontrunners, and maybe the warboss if he's lucky and the warboss isn't closer to the middle.

Or maybe i'm just overthinking this.

...Maybe he wanted to dismantle the molotov to it's base components and use some of it to make something else.

Gotta wonder what they expected. Did they think they were playing Suikoden or some shit?

Anyway, if i may be so bold as to request twice, both of the Killing the Helpful NPC stories, if you wouldn't mind.

I kinda agree? I mean, if this was the very first encounter, the players don't know how hardcore to play. Some games don't need that much work, some do. Also, there was no real way out of that hellhole. If the PC's scouted (and survived somehow) they would have found out they were incredibly outnumbered and there was no way to ever be able to defend that caravan against, what? 30~ hobgoblins with the extreme terrain advantage, barricades and siege support.

Over all it was a death sentence whether or not the PC's prepped for that fight. They should have scouted ahead and then been like 'we pay the toll because there are wwaayy more than we can fight' or 'we turn around'.

i got no idea

i just want my players to word things in a way that you can understand

well meme'd friend. Well meme'd

>Half-Orc

typical.

Dam, that's bad. Were they being shadowed or something, or was it the innkeeper that sold info he rented them a locker for gear?

It was mentioned there were five other paths.

>This is one of only like 5 passes through the mountains,

>Gotta wonder what they expected.
I have no idea. That particular group exploded and I no longer play with them, so I'm not sure what exactly they were thinking.

>Helpful dead NPC #1
>Low level DnD
>Party realizes that they need to track some giant bugs, but nobody in the group has any tracking skills.
>Well, they're near a smallish town, but it's still big enough that they can hire a level 1 NPC that I quickly slapped together to do the track work for them.
>Ranger tracks the bugs, they march off for a while, and find the beasties about 20 miles from their starting position after most of a day's chase.
>This, according to 2 of the people in the group who are outspoken about it, (The others did nothing in the event), is a blatant sign of railroading DMPC bullshit, and they murder the ranger to show me that they can't be fucked with in that manner.

To be fair, this one I think more was insecurity than pure stupidity. The next one is just idiocy, but it runs over the post limit.

>The wizard's spellbook
>mfw I'm a sorcerer

>Other dead helpful NPC.
>Players hired to infiltrate this small band of desert raiders and release the abducted daughter of the guy who is hiring them.
>Some of the details, especially stuff concerning the trip into the desert, are handled by his servant, a guy named Rory.
>A lot of the information about said band comes from a prisoner that they took from them.
>However, the prisoner escaped while they were in transit, and Rory takes off after them to warn the group, that this gut is about and loose and will probably be rejoining the main band as soon as he arrives.
>Got there faster because Rory has a camel to ride on, while this other guy would have to be on foot, but he can't be more than 2-3 days behind.
>Or, would have said that if he got that far.
>Players, by this time, had infiltrated the camp under false pretenses of joining.
>Have their own tent.
>Trying to come up with a way to sneak into the leader's tent where the girl is being kept.
>Eventually, Rory makes his way to their tent.
>The two people staying there decide to attack him.
>After all, the only reason Rory could be coming to the camp is if he betrayed them and wanted to join the bandits too.
>Because yeah, that makes sense.

Nah, it was just opportunistic theft by the innkeeper who after all, is the one who introduces drugged drinks to people.

As a player who has gotten stuck on puzzles before and even walked into ambushes, I must admit that from the perspective of even the most intelligent and experienced players handed every hint, the obvious doesn't occur and they can either bumble around or just hope it works out or they forget within the span of five minutes because they made a joke and lost track of what they were doing.

This doesn't excuse stupidity but when you don't have meta knowledge or it's not explained in literally the most basic dumbest way possible, sometimes people just don't pick it up well.

Alternatively: There's a reason rolling skill checks and passive perception exist in D&D.

>if the players aren't omnipotent it's railroading!
>low level characters should be able to do anything!
>players should have full agency over the story any everything that happens in it!
>players should be able to disregard everything the DM has prepared and force him to improvise whenever they want!
>player """""""logic"""""

>>Eventually, Rory makes his way to their tent.
>>The two people staying there decide to attack him.
>>After all, the only reason Rory could be coming to the camp is if he betrayed them and wanted to join the bandits too.
>>Because yeah, that makes sense.
Dude what

>Rory
shit you almost had me thinking of the /pfg/ rory

At least for me, the reason that it stuck in my mind isn't because of any of those complaints. I just don't get how you get the conclusion of "He is a DMPC" from "He was able to competently do the job that the players hired him to do".

For me i was doing an intro chapter where the players get from a place where theres no content to the place where i've actually planned stuff
Some high up guy in the hierarchy of the Big Bad transported them there and one of my player wanted to explore places where nothing exists and then tells me "omg railroading" like its a bad thing for them to play the content that actually exists

Like excuse me for providing an adventure for you with content thats not improvised

how DID rory make it into the camp

>another campaign with that guy
>playing cthulhu
>after witnessing spoops they go to a town
>he literally wants to leave the adventure
>this escalates into a 30 minute discussion on why its retarded to go to newzealand in cthulhu
>have to explain to him the basics of horror games
>he still wants to leave the city and only halfheartedly plays the game
>at this point i am so pissed that i wiped the party and ended the session

Same way the players did. Look tough, get to their desert location, and offer to sign on as some muscle. Bandits generally have high attrition rates, and are usually looking for more men.

>if he ignites it in his hand and then throws it at the ground - which is what i think he wanted to do - it woulda just hurt him
But earlier you said he wanted to "put" and "lay" it on the ground, not spike it like a football. Lighting a molotov doesn't automatically make the bottle break at the slightest touch, wtf man.

>he worded it so weirdly that i didnt understand
This was on you.

No, that was literally what he said

He said he wanted to put it on the ground, THEN he also said he wanted - in the same motion im going to assume - jump away from the molotov as if thats going to do something

So in my mind that is in no way a combat action, thats not even a time bomb, its just something retarded my player did

I was and am pretty confused

You did it again.

>He said he wanted to put it on the ground
Put and throw are vastly different actions. How violently do you 'put' things on the ground in your everyday life where you would assume he meant to break the bottle when putting it on the ground? Do you regularly break glassware when 'putting' it in the sink?

>im going to assume
>So in my mind
>I was and am pretty confused
Ask for clarification, then.

You sure you didn't misunderstand?
The context i'm getting still makes it a trap.
He sets down the molotow, he walks out of the blast radius and he blasts it with fire when the enemies are close enough.

How is lighting a molotov and softly laying it on the ground during actionpacked combat a valid or logical action

I did ask for clarification
Player couldnt produce a sentence that conveyed what he wanted to say

>How is lighting a molotov and softly laying it on the ground during actionpacked combat a valid or logical action
If you didn't think it was a valid action, then why, as DM, did you allow it?

Fuck off, parasite.

>player gets themselves killed by assassins because of homing beacon
Is that the one where the guy was leaving his literal shit all over the place and they were following it?

>his dad is probably the closest thing to a level 20 adventurer I've ever seen in my life
Explain

No, although that does sound amusing and stupid.

Nah, they got into a street scuffle, and noticed someone trying to push a little blue stone in one of their packs. They take it to a sage to find out what it does, and the guy determines it sends out some kind of magical signal to party or parties unknown. It works two ways, but he's not sure what's at the other end of the pull.

They thank him, pay him, and completely fail to connect the dots when people come out of the woodwork seeking their head, no matter where and how they try to hide.

Wow, at least you get some good stories out of it

>this dude

Maybe he was going to roll it down the hallway?
You don't know, you never asked.

Underrated

The player never said either. To me this sounds like a case of "if I don't tell the GM my ultimate plan, they can't foil it!", the bad kind.

As in, players want to do something really convoluted, yet they refuse to tell the GM this. They just drop random, seemingly unrelated, things one at the time. Which is exactly how you don't play a game. The GM isn't there as a game engine, he's one of the people playing the game.

My dude,
A MOLOTOV DOES NOT EXPLODE.

A molotov is just an open bottle filled with flammable fuel (presumably gasoline, diesel, etc. and not Hydrazine). Gasoline only explodes when it becomes aerosolized. In other words: you need a gasoline mist. Violently smashing a bottle is a decent way to do this.

If you just leave a lit molotov sitting on the ground, you haven't created a ticking time bomb. A "lit molotov" is just a fucking lantern until you break it.

You've been playing too many video games.

I think it might be just me, but I'm always amused when after I plan a variety of complex routes to a goal, I forget the unspoken option and my players end up smashing shit

Yup, this. Besides, molotovs also spread the flammable liquid around when shattered on-impact. AKA: set shit on fire.

Light a molotov and set it down, and you've got a burning glass bottle. Not any kind of explosion or spreading fire. Just a controlled fire. As this dude said, it's a fucking lantern.

Even if you broke it by throwing a stone, it wouldn't be equal to actually throwing the bottle, since the spread is way smaller. And if you did that... Why not just throw the whole bottle instead, seeing as it's easier to hit the ground with a bottle than hitting a bottle with a stone.

I once had a whole "side-quest" prepared for my players, so they could open up a door to a crypt. Several options. Coax the local mage to help them, have the village conscripted to break off the rock around the door or find the key hidden up in the attic of the family who owned the crypt.

They stole a cannon instead.
>mfw

>Adventurer's League game
>First level party
>Druid, two rogues, wizard
>Attacked by giant owls
>Druid: "I'll turn into a snake! Throw me at the giant birds!"
>DM (Me): "Uh. You're on a mountaintop. You'll take seventy points of fall damage per round."
>Druid: "Cool beans! Do it!"
>Rogues are all for it
>Wizards is too busy reading the rules
>Me: "Uh... Okay. Make a ranged attack, Rogue."
>Rogue rolls a 4
>Me: "You throw the Wild Shaped Druid into the air, miss entirely. Rogue 2, make a ranged attack with your net to see if you catch him."
>Rogue 2 rolls a 5
>Me: "Okay, you take seventy points of damage and your wild shape ends. Roll an Athletics check to see if you grab the side of the cliff."
>Druid rolls a 2
>Me: "You're dead. Here, let me show you something cool."
>Show them the sequence in the rules where it specifically says that the players will only fall off if they do something foolish
>Me: "That's you, now. You're the ones WotC thought you couldn't be dumb enough for them to kill."
>Druid: "But it was fun!"

it's blatant metagaming though, given that hearing noises is extremely common in the wilderness and certainly not worth waking your companions over, unless you're playing an RPG and know that nothing happens for no reason

I swear, if I went camping and someone woke me up because he got scared shitless everytime he heard a deer I'd want to throttle the ass after the third time.

>play a game about danger, wizards, heroes, dragons
>dumbfounded people whose occupation is doing dumb and dangerous shit run right into dangerous situations

Also dumb, dangerous shit is usually where most plot begins in games.

Well, at least he took it in stride. Based on most horror stories I've read, I half expected him to storm out of the room and accuse you of being a "shit DM."

>DMing naval combat between our ship and and basically orc vikings
>friend is dragon born paladin who has taken an oath of commerce and is very attached to his items and gold
>have balsa ship shapes on blue tablecloth, ships are sailing side by side while cannons go off and orcs attempt to board with hook ropes etc
>decides he is going to jump off our ship and sneakily swim round the back of the orc ship
>forgets boats are both moving while the combat is going on
>Iimmediatelyregretthisdecision.webm
>fails STR saving throw to swim and grab rudder
>bobs about in the water watching the battle slowly disappear over the horizon
>battle ends far away
>he floats about and ends up having to drop a bunch of heavy/metal items/ gold while failing multiple exhaustion checks in order to stay afloat.
>pretty much dying while Druid in the form of a seagull is failing check check after check to find him.
>finally find him unconscious and almost dead, minus most of his armour, weapons and items

He took it like a champ and RP'd it as his characters low INT and lizard people depth perception.

Fuckin kek

Speaking as a player, that seems pretty damn suspicious and warrants at least a confrontation.