"Worst GM EVER!" Topic

Recently my friends and I played a game of pathfinder with an old…acquaintance. he said he had an adventure for us, and that we should hang out again (after a 2 year hiatus) and play this game… we thought "ok, fine. Free food, and a nights worth of roleplay, this might re-establish some sort of friendship"
We made our characters and set out.

We started in a bar, part of the pathfinder society. Fine.
Our characters were "Dunn morakk" a barbarian played by me, "alabaster snow (lame right?)" A vampire? Rogue, and "xendar" the ifrit wizard.
Dunn was hanging out having a drink (but the GM refused to let Dunn speak common.)
Xendar was talking to an elf, and alabaster hadn't yet arrived.

This is where the shenanigans started. In order for alabaster to enter the bar, he had to roll a d20. Somehow, he tripped and busted his head on a table conveniently placed by the door.
That is when a man screamed "he"s a vampire!"
A patron rushed at him, so Dunn, not understanding what was happening, drew his sword to protect the meek little man. Dunn was suddenly surrounded by eight level 7 guards, and forced to put his sword away.

Out of nowhere, a dire wolf jumps on the patron attacking alabaster, saving his life.
a large man walks In the door. The gm says "this is Solomon, the level 17 ranger/sorceror. Hes a human but is more than 700 years old… but you guys don't know it yet."
alabaster is told to stand, then Solomon says something in a language none of us understand, and the dire wolf sits by his side.

Solomon aggressively pulls alabaster to the bar, and signals xendar over as well. Dunn is having a drink to calm his nerves.

Basically Solomon forces us into a party because we all have the mark… whatever that means. When alabaster tries to leave, because his character wants no part in Solomons plans, Solomon threatens his life….

The gm says "two weeks later, you are on a boat, nearing an island.." WHAT?!?

Solomon immediately puts us to work on an island. Threatening dunns life when he complains about the heat…. somehow Solomon understood me.

Then 5 gnomes come out of the jungle with crossbows and nearly murderer the party, Dunn slips and falls in blood, loses almost all of his Hp, and the gm won't let xendar help Dunn up… I was too stubborn evidently. It required a d20 roll (as did every action)
finally Gandalf… I mean Solomon finishes off the gnomes by staring at them intently….

There was way more at the bar.. but this would be LONG(er than it is)
Wow… right? Was it just me or was that bad?

Let me know

Thanks
Austin

Why did you stay? Was the food really that good? You don't sound like you enjoyed either the game or the company, so it seems like you were just being masochistic.

No ride home…
plus pizzaburgers.

Thanks
Austin

The gm says "two weeks later, you are on a boat, nearing an island.." WHAT?!?

Austin, I hope you all stay friends for a long time. The reason I say this is because long ago we had a similar WHAT? moment happen to us with one of our friends, R, who was not the best of DMs.

Nearly 40 years later we all still say, especially to R; "to make a long story short, you're caught!"

Guf

Sounds like a game I played with two brothers at a convention in Salt Lake City once, except the two brothers kept competing for control of the campaign!

I think "two weeks later you are on a train" would be more appropriate. :-)

I thought it was very entertaining. Like watching somebody elses car wreck.

Was there at least a cool training montage with a kicking soundtrack to fill in the two weeks?

Doug

No ride home…
plus pizzaburgers.

Thanks
Austin

I am not sure that even pizzaburgers (whatever weird culinary concoction they are) would be reward enough for an evening of that particular campaign.

No soundtracks (eye of the tiger woulda been a decent segue ;p)… no anything.. just 2 weeks later XD it was hilariously bad.

Piazza burgers are hamburger topped with sauce, pepperoni, and cheese, on grilled buns. They are delicious.

This adventure was awful. Just so bad…

The company was fine, just lame names.

We actually had a really bad falling out with our GM… but the rest of us are still friends

Thanks
Austin

Are you sure you weren't being "punked?"

Sadly it was real… the longest 4 hours of our lives…. the kicker was when he called us bad PCs

Thanks
Austin

sounds like a bad acid trip

No ride home…

Call a taxi. Find a bus stop. Phone a friend. Walk.

Wow. It sounds like your DM is the same guy who wrote the D&D movies. BTW that is not a compliment.

I live in a small town, and we were in the country lol

It wasn't miserable… it was funny. Just bad.

Thanks
Austin

"I think "two weeks later you are on a train" would be more appropriate. :-)"

*I see what you did there*

I thought that the worst GM of all time was the Chevy Edsel. Seriously though, was this guy always like this when you played before? We had a guy in our group who always cheated. Sometimes we would have shadow character sheets on him. We use to play Napoleonic Naval Games and his ships never took damage, oh they were hit, sometimes they were shot to pieces, but somehow magically I guess the damage never affected them. Same thing with his characters, he always had this incredible healing potion. He always had flame arrows, etc.. We put up with it early in high school because he was rich, I mean he had a DRIVER, not his Mom, an actual driver. And he would treat us to movies. Of course once we got Driver's Licenses and cars and jobs we decided tat life was too short to put up with him. It's sad now that I think about it, he was buying us as friends and we were stupid enough to do it. My advice? Make your own pizza burgers, life is too short.

As a GM I have been known to start with… You wake up with a hangover in a prison cell…

I am just starting an RPG sci-fi campaign next Tuesday night. I hope I GM better then your guy did. :-) Sounds like a terrible game.

Sounds like he had a super-bad-ass NPC that he wanted to tell the story of, and the rest of you were just along for the ride. Very sad, and unfortunately, also extremely common in the GM community!

-Will

If he's a friend, talk with him.

If he's an acquaintance, offer to run a short game and demonstrate the sorts of player interaction you were expecting. See if it hits the other gamers as entertaining. Take your turn organizing, buying the food, and putting the work it takes into making the game happen.

If it's not worth any of this, decline next time.

Life is short, and gaming experiences can be hard to find. Try to help make it fun, realize these people are ones you might choose to call your friends.

There's a saying on rpgnet forum:

No gaming is better than bad gaming.

Austin he may have been a bad GM but it made for an entertaining story (educational too…I had never heard of pizza burgers ;)
Thanks for sharing…

When I started DMing 4E, I decided to use the "Star Wars" method of storytelling… a quick synopsis of events leading up to the present (including flimsy reasons for the group to be together) and a table already set up for the encounter. If the synopsis was emailed or txt'd beforehand, the game session would often start with "roll for initiative!" I was also meticulous about balancing encounters and ensuring the PCs were the focus of the action. There was a recurring NPC the same level as the group, to fill in whwn someone was absent. The name was Pidgie, and Pidgie was a dog. The players would take turns rolling dice for Pidgie, whether biting, tracking, or staying. They loved Pidgie, and often passed on their own healing to make sure Pidgie survived.

Sadly, I've had worse experiences… but not many.

Your GM doesn't sound hopeless though… if he's open to feedback.
Mostly the guy doesn't seem comfortable with letting the players choose their own direction and deal with the consequences… and he doesn't get that he's playing the game WITH you rather than AGAINST you.

The big thing that would bother me in your description is the GM's uber-powerful NPC.
There must be a strong temptation to do that sort of thing. Just about every GM I've played with has done it at some point… and I've been guilty of it myself, way back when.
It never fails to bug me now that I know better.

Part of it, to me, is the Levels/powergain that so many RPGs still use… making it so even regular humans NPCs can be untouchable by lower ranked PCs. Mirrored in video games like WOW where an upper level potato farmer is a demigod as far as 1st level players are concerned.
I much prefer systems where power comes from social connections and resources… vs. personal stats.

Really, the GM needs to be open to discussion/complaints… if he isn't that's a bad sign and good reason not to go back.

@ Space Monkey

When we confronted him about our thoughts on the game, he took it as an attack. He blew up. He said we were bad players who wanted to " with the direction too much." He said it would level put as we went on, but he refused to go on because he didn't want to "waste time" with "bad PCs"

Despite having a good story to tell from it, ultimatelynit was a negative experience.

Thanks
Austin

Buddha said, "Eat when you are hungry. Sleep when you are tired. Play games for fun."

Sounds like the GM has control issues and wants the players along as passengers on his power trip.

Yep
Ditch him and have someone else run the game.

THIS--> "Make your own pizza burgers, life is too short." <--THIS

'He blew up. He said we were bad players who wanted to "Bleeped text with the direction too much." He said it would level put as we went on, but he refused to go on because he didn't want to "waste time" with "bad PCs"'

That tells it all really. If he pulls you in again, its on you.

"Part of it, to me, is the Levels/powergain that so many RPGs still use… making it so even regular humans NPCs can be untouchable by lower ranked PCs. Mirrored in video games like WOW where an upper level potato farmer is a demigod as far as 1st level players are concerned."

Absolutely agree. It also distorts game decisions. Every threat should be something of an unknown, and the highest should still be vulnerable at some level, however unlikely, to the lowest. Few players want this however. A majority want to god mode their games – which is why so many of them are unmemorable drek.