What was the WORST game/group you ever ran or ran in?

[thirdpower]

As a nice comparison to the "best" thread.

Mine was after I was trying to recover from sever GM burnout. I hadn't GM'ed in several years and planned a nice intro adventure w/ an obvious plot hook. One of the players intentionally sabotaged the game. I killed him off but it put me off GM'ing for another two years.

[Aaryq]

Worst game eh? Well, it was back in high school when we ran it. Our GM was pretty cool, but the other player (2 Players, and a GM) was just overly political in his gaming. It peaked when one night he started negotiating a contract with a larger mercenary company (we both had 2 characters) so our mercenary assault team could be partially under their payroll, basically giving us a garrison to return to for protection in exchange for a percentage of the pay. It got kind of boring after about a half hour of him negotiating. I FELL ASLEEP for an hour and woke up and the guy was still working our contract. He finally agreed on one and made the GM type up a contract and they both signed it. After that little milestone in our gaming it went downhill really quick. The GM (who's normally an outstanding GM) worked more and more useless politics into the game until we'd do less than 1/8 of the time doing true gaming. Terrible campaign.

[rc_brooks]

Any and every game session I have ever played where the DM has been stoned (or the players to a lesser degree) has ended in disaster. Now when I see anything like that, I turn right back around and leave.

Aside from stopping game sessions because they ran out of food, not being able to focus on what they were doing, let alone remember what the adventure was about, they tend to drop about 50 IQ points and either march in canon fodder or bring in world annihilators (anything that is so terrible and devastating there is no chance for anyone) and destroy everyone without any RP, because they think its funny. I love a little joking around in game sessions, but to waste other people's whole nights and destroy in 15 minutes a good game that has been going on for several months (or years) really ticks me off.

Pot+gaming=waste of a night.

Same goes for copious amounts of alcohol.

[The Beast]

Every D&D game I ever played in. Except yours Nick! I really did enjoy it!

I don't know what it is about that game, but everytime I play something about the rules, or the players, or the DM just flips that one switch that kills my intrest in it.

As far as PB goes, there was one game where we started out with a CSSF team, and a seperate band of adventurers. We were supposed to play with the CS team as our mains and the others as backup, but a couple of the people dropped out, and we ended up using the other team as our main.
The goal of the CSSF team was to start out as 1st level grunts, then be finely tuned into a SF team, each with their own role (the pilot and heavy weapons expert dropped out). After the break up, the GM upgraded all the remaining PCs to where he wanted them to be when he united them, which was fine with all of us. As the other team we eventually found NORAD and made it our base to reestablish the USA from.
The problem with this game came when we went to China's Hell. We then ran into the Lich son of one of our PCs (the mother went back in time and was stuck there before we knew she was with child). He offered us a way out as long as we helped him with his plans for Atlantis. Having just finished a battle with a demon that killed our dragon we accepted,and he presented us with three doors. Each door lead to a different timeline on Rifts Earth and we foolishly chose the one that took us to present-day Earth. It was at this point this story line fell apart as half the group didn't like it.

[Kryzbyn]

...any game where I've gotten a character to 10th level, and the DM/GM calls of the campaign.

[CyCo]

The worst group I've encountered was also probably one of the best I've played with.

Let me explain. They were all veteran gamers, no one with under about 6 years of gaming at least, with the exception of one of the guys g/f, who only had been playing a short while before I joined the group.

So far so good.

But, they actually had formed themselves into a group. IE, they had a few elected positions, mainly President, Vice President and Treasurer. Mind you, the President was also the Treasurer.

I kid you not. Though it was mainly the idea of one guy, and he was the only one who seemed to enforce it. You guessed it, he was the President/Treasurer.

Why the need for all this? I really had no idea. But we had to pay (yes, pay!!), $2.00 for each session. And not only the ones you turned up at, which I found out one time I had the flu real bad and stayed in bed for a few days. I turned up the next week, and was told I had to pay $4.00 because I missed the last session. I gave the Pres/Treasurer a 'yeah right' look, gave him $2, and walked over to my seat for the night.

So, why the money? Well, it was to pay for all the photocopying of character sheets, handouts, and the like. This was back in the old days, so photocopying was a mainstay of gaming. That, and only one person had a computer, who eventually made a 15 page character sheet for AD&D...!
I think it was also meant to for pizza/munchies/drink, but I never saw that.

I resisted at first, but figured that because it was otherwise a great group, and it was only $2, what the hell?

So other than that, it was golden for awhile. Some 2 or so years. Then a couple of the guys discovered pot/booze. It was ok at first, they didn't bring it to the game, nor would they turn up under the influence. But after a while, they did start turning up stoned or tanked. The quality of the games started to suffer, as did some friendships.

Around this time, I started running a Ravenloft campaign. And though there were some major issues cropping up, it became out mainstay where the Greyhawk game seemed to retreat into the background (the DM, who was also the Pres/Treasurer, had gone political with it, and had taken it a tad to far).

Then as my campaign swung into top gear, everyone seemed to chill out. I was getting some amazing feedback from the group, and even attracted a few extra gamers to the table who had heard through the grapevine about my game. I had to cut the numbers at 9, and had to turn people away at our doors a few times. Mostly because there was no more room, but also I wanted to focus on the people we had there already without adding in more. I had a feel for every character in the group, and didn't want to loose that.

One of the players wanted to run two characters. That was ok by me, especially when this guy was a but psychotic and wanted to play a dark elf. Normally I'd probably say no, but as this was Ravenloft, and we had a 1/2 elf ranger who was proud of his woodland and elven heritage, I thought this was some great dynamics. It proved to be a great move, but sometimes it went too far. The player of the 1/2 elf, used out of character knowledge that the dark elf was indeed a dark elf. The 1/2 elven player, was the Pres/Treasurer... Of cause, the dark elf had a disguise. Plus, he had vowed to the group Paladin that he would convert to his faith. A lie, though he did vow to a goddess of the night to change to her religion, a more neutral alignment.

Anyway, this ended up with the 1/2 elf ranger attacking the darkelf in the middle of the night, on a full moon, in Ravenloft, with no cause. Just a suspicion that the dark elf was a darkelf. This ended up nearly killing the darkelf, the 1/2 elf lost his good alignment and became more neutral, loosing his ranger status and started down the Dark Path. His weapon hand took on the colour of drow skin, and gained the ability to farie fire at will 3 times a day. He also tried to absolve himself by burning his hand in flame. To bad it was in Ravenloft, but without a major, near epic mission in the cause of nature, he could not regain his ranger status. Which really pissed the player off.

We played for a few more months, maybe a year after this, but eventually the group fell apart. Partly because we found out that the Pres/Treasurer was using the 'group' money to fuel his gambling and alcohol habits, as well as collecting music cds and tapes. He had, at his own boasting, over 500 cds and 250 tapes/cassingles. It was the other way around, but he was converting his tapes to cds. He said he was going to get a job as a DJ , and needed the music. He did end up as a DJ. He sucked, only hired to do weddings and such. And they thought he sucked as well. I believe he ended up working in a trashy club/venue in Sydney.

The player of the dark elf nearly killed himself though drug abuse, another player nearly drowned himself in his own vomit from drinking way too much alcohol. A couple of them eventually moved over to Western Australia to work in some of the mines there. Good money, and I believe they smoked or pissed most of it away before moving back around here a few years later. One ended up in a relationship with his stepmother/guardian, who has been abusing the system for many, many years, as well as her corpulant body...

It's not all bad. One joined the Army, and now has a good life, a house and a wife, with plans to sell to developers for a squillion and move north to the quiet country and build his own house. I ended up with the g/f mentioned above (don't ask for that story....!!), we stayed together for 4 years before a mutual split up. We both realised we were growing in seperate directions. I now work for the Ambulance Service. Another was a gifted musician. And I mean gifted. Give him any musical instrument, tell him how it works and how you play it, and a few hours, maybe a day or two, and he will be able to play it like he's been doing it for years. He ended up in a tribute band (can't remember what band..), and traveled overseas with them. The US, Africa, Europe. As their drummer. Not bad for someone who never had a music lesson.

[Kryzbyn]

people will complain about being given free money...
Its more of a human condition than a gaming one

[DocS]

The worst party?

I had the worst party for the grandest campaign I had ever planned. It was a Robotech/Rifts crossover, a grand magnum opus of a campaign, where I was going to play with magic, protoculture, culture shock, dreamscapes, and every element I could find up unto a climactic Mecha Rampage through Splynn in order to shut down the force field pyramids so the SDF-3 could Relfex Cannon right up a Certain Splugorth's butt...

But to do this, I needed to first see if the party would *trust* me.

I walked into the first session with a sealed envelope. I tell them, "This is the first Sealed Envelope, this is how I will give PC's unique information as the campaign progresses. Now keep in mind, when one of you receives this envelope, you are to read it, and the rest of the party will learn whats in it within roughly 15 minutes, usually this will be when one of you is separated from the rest of the party for a short time. When you rejoin, I heartily suggest you tell the rest of the party, and tell them in character. The contents of these envelopes will never be malevolent, they will never be for secret agendas, and when one of you reads one, the rest of you will know soon enough what it says."
At the very least, one would think they would notice this unusual practice, these guys have supposedly decades of gaming experience, I thought they would see it and talk about the 'million and one tricks' they had seen done with this sort of thing. Nope, they schluff it off, they've never seen this sort of thing before, but obviously it's not important (despite my drawing focus to it), so they promptly forget everything I tell them.

I began the campaign, the SDF-3 gets rifted into Rifts Earth Orbit, and the PC's are the ones given free reign to do a task-force to explore this new planet. The satellites will cut them off from the mothership for long periods of time, so they should keep longevity in mind....

The party gets free reign, any equipment they want, and what do they want?

After 2 hours of planning like kids in a candy store, the final list is in, and they not only want shadow mecha (I expected that), Shadow Cyclones (I didn't expect the 'shadow' part, but what was the harm), crates of ammo (I expected that), AND they want 150 people, construction vehicles, Building materials, in order to set up an entire base in the middle of Kansas (That this sort of blatantly hostile action may be *noticed* by someone, this doesn't faze them).

I'm thinking this will be the most obtrusive 'reconaissance' mission I have ever heard of, but lets give them what they want and see what happens.... I can work with this. The CS may be ticked, but as they're human, I play it off as a tense standoff. CS Troops show up, some threats and posturing happens, then the CS troops go away with a 'We Will be back'. Here is where the party begins to get testy,

"But how did they know we were here?" one of them whines

"You brought down construction vehicles, large spaceships, and started building a rather extensive military facility in the middle of a giant flatland, people literally heard the noise and sent people to check it out." I respond.

That night, they go to sleep, and I tell them "You all wake up and step out of your tents, the base is gone, and in its place is a giant corn field. Standing near you is a man in brown robes holding a black cat with a white face. You notice rats in the corn field"

Here is where one of the PC's (Bob) snarls "You KNOW, if you didn't want us to have the base, you could have said something, taking it away this arbirarily is really stupid"....

I reassure him "This all has a reason, just go with it for 30 minutes" (I am shocked, I thought that this was a 'dream sequence' was obvious to the extreme.... these guys claim to be gamers with years upon years of experience, but instead, this guy is getting mad, as if 'spontaneous appearances of cornfields' is a common mistake that GM's make).

The man in the robes talks amorphously and vaguely about 'rats in the fields' and how 'there aren't enough cats' and they need 'help on the rats'... And the idea that this is a dream sequence is not occurring to *any* of them.

One of them, God Bless Him, steps foreward and says, "I know how to deal with rats!", whereupon he pulls out his pistol and shoots the rats. I tell him that he shoots one rat, then another, but two more appear, and then three more, and the more he shoots, the more appear, and they swarm all over him, crawling into his collar, up his legs, all around his body, and that the party loses sight of him in the pile of rats..

I hand this guy the envelope and say "When the rats go away, you all see nothing left but his picked clean skeleton, now <To the ratted man>, please open the envelope, read the contents, don't tell anyone what it says yet".

HERE is where one of the party members goes BALLISTIC! Yelling, screaming, throwing paper, about how I'm being unfair, arbitrary, and killing PC's for no good reason, that this is the most horrific abuse he had ever seen. This is the biggest tantrum I've ever seen at a gaming table. He's a 35 year old man, screaming and stomping like a 6 year old, becuase I've killed a PC, and he's not even noticed how the player of the character I've just 'killed' doesn't seem mad at all (Could it have something to do with the envelope I just handed him? naaaah).

"Ok Bob," I say, "If that is how you feel, then I'd like you to read the paper I handed Dave. I am sure that after you read it, you will apologise".

Bob stops, and seethes, "No", he says simply..

but someone already opened the envelope, he's already read the text that says "the rats swarm all over you, biting, clawing, eating, until it goes dark. And then, you wake up. Sit up, hit your head on the bunk above you. Everything is as it was when you first went to sleep, with the exception that you've taken 1 SDC point of damage from bumping your head".

After much snarling and gnashing, Bob finally looks at the paper, and it makes him pulsate with barely contained rage. He swallows it, and after a five minute break for everyone to cool down, he says 'we may continue'. There is no apology, there is only a "ok, we will continue" as if I've somehow 'earned' the 'privilage' to run for 'King Bob'. Unbeknowest to him, I'm mentally throwing away the previously planned epic incursion into Rifts Earth and replacing it with a "I think I'll have these guys kill Xiticix for the rest of the session, and then I'm never running for these tossers ever again". So that's what I do.

Lesson, never be afraid to punt a party/GM, if the first session is just that bad, then subsequent ones wont be any better.

[Kryzbyn]

Wow do you live in Omaha NE, casue i know someone JUST like that guy...

[Dash]

Wow.... I guess I never had a 'bad' gaming experience. I mean.... I thought I had plenty, but no, after reading your horror stories, I have lucks WAY out in my gaming experience.

The worst thing I have to deal with is one of my friends, who is alright as a role player, but he can barely read or write. Which means I have to explain EVERYTHING to him about ANY game system I every play with him. The other players end up getting annoyed at his character the first couple sessions, keep killing him off, but once he understands the game play, he does just fine.

PS: Someone gives me free money, I sure won't complain!

[Kryzbyn]

It's an automatic language filter. Nobody goes in behind you and **** out your words.

[Dash]

That's ok my nieces first words we're "awww S**t" in the middle of a Red Skins game. My mom was happy for the comment because she was about to say it my sister was completely embarrassed most of the rest of us in the room were laughing .

I do believe a friend of mine's 3 year old daughter thinks the word for mommy is 'female dog in heat'. Really. Thats what the kids mom calls her mom, and what a lotta people call the kids mom too. Its sad in a funny way.

[The Beast]

Heh, my niece picked up "frak" from her father, and would walk around saying it over and over again. My sister then dropped the kid off with our parents for a few months while I was living with them before 9/11. I was carefull enough not to let her hear me saying it, so after a while it seemed she forgot the word. Then one day I start playing Perfect Dark while she's watching me kick the Sims' butts. At one point, just as my mom comes walking into the room, I get killed, the death view begins, my niece turns to me, and says "Frak!" I sat there for three minutes explaining to my mother that I never said that around her.

But I got back at my sis and her husband. Not only did I let her watch the WWE with me at the time Stone Cold started his "What?" catch-phrase (which my niece picked up rather quickly), but I also taught her the letter R by saying it like a pirate everytime she'd try to read the letters on my PT uniform.

[Josh Sinsapaugh]

Hey...how come my "[female dog]" got starred out but Josh Sinsapaugh can write "poke" in a post and it's left up there? Whatever, dude.

Apparently I can't.

Why could I post the word that "poke" now substitutes when you couldn't post the alternate word for female dog?

Quite simply: it wasn't recognized by the swear filter as a word to be opted out at that time.

Either that or it was the work of a reverse vampire.

~ Josh

[Kryzbyn]

I know that feeling, I played for years with a Gm who did the same with his girlfriend. She got everything she ever wanted and everyone else had to fight tooth and nail just to get the smallest things. It got really annoying after a while. But we (The other players) just started following her character. Since she never got hurt, and could take on anything and walk away unhurt. It was really sad, since he was a awsome GM when she wasnt there, but when she was it was like the games turned into a showcase for her characters......

Sounds familiar. Had a D&D GM who was decent, but would do the same thing for his wife.

In one situation, a red dragon breathed fire on three other characters, killing 2 out of 3 (my priest was crispy-crittered with a failed save), then turned to his wife's character and demanded something or he would hurt her. Then she, and another player following her agenda, managed to fight off the red dragon and his magic using rider by themselves. WHAT?!?! Needless to say, that game didn't last long.

I think everyone's been subjected to this.
See if you can pick out the Gm's GF here:
1) Normal joe
2) Normal joe
3) Queen of the Elves (yes ALL of them)
4) Normal joe

Yes, I played in that game. No, it did not last long.

[Nxla666]

Well there was the Shadowrun game where the players were just an audience to witness the GMs awesome NPCs.

Then there was a Rifts game where the party (4 members) were all first level and had to fight 6 (yes, six) Murder wraiths in full Mankiller EBA riding Tarantula jump bikes.

[Damian Magecraft]

I’ve been Playing for 11 years and been a Game Master for 5 of those years; worst game I’ve EVER played in was run by a guy who had a dragon ball Z obsession...

That has to be one of the most terrible games, if not in fact the very worst game, I've ever heard of.

i dunno the gm with the naruto obsession is pretty bad too...(yes i met one) he claimed he ran a rifts game...by the description of his game i would swear i had just met Percy Ferkelberger...

[Svartalf]

I can commiserate with the "my character got killed by a housecat" tales... after all, my very first character (a D&D thief) got killed, along with the 3 or 4 other party members, by a single bugbear... which I still find funny when I compare with some rather tougher monsters (like an average adult bull ogre) some other 1st level characters of mine managed to beat. Still, I later came to heartily despise the GM with whom I played that game, I can't stand a GM who feels entitled to mess up by fiat with what your character thinks and how he sees the world and himself (like by deciding to change your alignment, and even the deity you worship, without consulting with you and without your having done anything to warrant it)...

But that's definitely not my Nightmare game yet ...

As a player, that honour has to go to one of those GM/player BF/GF teams... that and the fact I think I was set up because the GM wanted to get back at me for having taken some of his characters down a few pegs in my notorious munchkin bashing games ... So one day, the guy tells me he's playing this campaign, and the group did not have a wizard, and would I like to play mine with them. I, unsuspecting, said yes.

So, I had that character (an AD&D mage) whom I had played up to level 12 in a single campaign, but the campaign had been dissolved because the DM was going back to the USA, and so the characters were free to travel to other worlds in search of power and adventure. That character was known around, as one of the very few I had managed to raise to a high level... most of the others had a tendency to die early. And it was known he was in search of a powerful artifact belonging to his clan (it was a sword and he could not use it, but he had a brother who could, and it was nice background). Here comes my introduction to the campaign. My wizard was quietly studying at home, when all ofa sudden, a dimensional rift opens above the High Cathedral of Arawn (the Celtic god of Death being the Official State Deity there, and the Cathedral the focal point of his cult on that world)... nothing too unusual yet, the world being highly subject to dimensional anomalies. Through comes something... a man sized skeletal being, with a red flame inside the left eye socket, but the right conspicuously empty, and the left hand missing... yep, Vecna himself. Whereuon Vecna starts disintegrating and otherwise demolishing the hell out of the Cathedral, the GM playing with a world that's not properly his to fiddle with in the first place, and refusing to take into account the fact that the God might not take kindly to the desacration, and is rather powerful in this focal point of his cult, or that the temple might be defended by several personages of lever 20+ and commensurate abilities... So my wizard gets out of his study, grabs his gear and gets out, if only to avoid getting crushed in the general destruction... and out of nowhere come a vision of the family sword, and Vecna starts promising me that I'll get it if I help him accomplish his purpose on another world... so I say yes, both to cooperate in getting into the adventure and to put a stop to the insanity... and there I go to another world...

Then I get introduced to the rest of the party, and I get like a nasty cold shower... my character is a lawful evil wizard, the kind with no qualms about membership in a cult that practices human sacrifice, having orcs in his army, or passing agreements with supremely evil beings to meet his goals... so, I knew that something was amiss from the start. The least objectionable character was the rogue... (or maybe bard) not evil, not really lawful, but at least somebody you could be reasonable with. Next comes a barbarian, Chaotic Good, worshipper and Chosen of Thor, and he loathed me as much as I him. Last of the PCs comes the GM's g/f's character : a cleric, Chosen of Athena, even more bigoted against non good characters than the barbarian was against wizard types... Of course, the party tended to follow her wishes a lot... and she managed, while I was there, to get away with a number of deeds that could not very well be described as either good or lawful, with no repercussions. The icing on the cake was the two NPCs that completed the party: one was the cleric's husband, and the GM's not even disguised surrogate PC : a 25th level paladin Demigod (and yeah, Us PCs were about level 10-13) by the name Sergei von Zarovich if that rings any bells with you... and their son, ac seeming baby by the name Ajrarn (borrowed from some demon lord in a Tanith Lee novel IIRC) who was as close to omnipotence as I ever saw a character with regular game presence and not officially of deity or assimilable status... I may add that even though my character was rather munchkinny (high stats, major psionics, good spellbook, tremendous equipment... had to, he had gone through, and survived adventures that he had no right to), he was semi weakish by comparison to those characters that were even of lower level than himself.

Then we start adventuring and do a few things, and I rather quickly grow dissatisfied... we're always following the goals of those infernal "goodies", the paladin, cleric and barbarian, and I do feel they resent me, and I can never do any of the things *I* am after... like looking for that sword, or even settling down for a few days of week to recuperate, analyze stuff, create some fresh potions and scrolls... and my supplies get dwindling, and I get tired of bowing down to those...

So one day I try banging the fist on the table and telling them that I have my agenda too and I'd like to see it addressed (I mean, I had had a major role in defeating an Arch devil and preventing his plans from coming to fruition on their world, I deserved some slack and humoring, didn't I?) so they decide to turn on me just then... guess I should not have admitted to low supplies and needing to replenish, they thought me weak. Well, my defensive measures protect me (god, I LOVE 1st ed Stoneskin) and since I know theirs, and know I can't hurt them seriously, I just use probability travel to pop out to some world they don'(t know... and that was the last time I played with those people.

[Svartalf]

As a GM, I have to top nightmares...

one was when I was GMing Rifts. Since the game is so suited to it, I tried to be accomodating as to what I let players have, even if tended to be Uberpowerful... Problem is there was that guy who was an Overmunchkin. his game was not playing a character, it was finding the most obscene ways to rape the rules and produce characters able to singlehandedly say "who's your daddy" to a dragonking and send it fleeing for his life... plus, he tired of them even quicker than I could find countermeasures. He dropped the first after ruining two sessions, lost interest in the second when he found out that being immune to energy attacks was not the same as being fully invulnerable, and that NPCs would not insist on using obviously useless methods of attack after noticing they didn't work... he found a third that ruined a fourth session, and then I quit in disgust.

My worst of all was another D&D 1 game, though... I was mastering the infamous Ravenloft adventure... you know, D&D, but real gothic horror, a game that needs atmosphere, the closest you can get to geal horror RPG while still playing D&D... well, all my players started smoking pot shortly after the game started, and I did not know what to do about it, and they started finding everything funny... and I guess the fumes did affect me too, as my memories of the session's end are rather blurred... They did not kill Strahd, but the game was a definite dud.

[Nxla666]

I used to play with some pot smokers, they where great players till the bongs came out. Then their characters became brain dead morons, and sadly when they started smoking it up. They started to want their characters to aswell thus, spawning a double layer of stupidity

Was GMing a game once when someone pulled a joint out while I was running the adventure and lit up then got all offended when I slapped it out of his mouth and crushed it.

The fact that we were in a FLGS game room didnt make a bit of difference to him, nor the fact that the store didnt even allow cigarette smoking, or the fact that there was a small group of kids playing D&D at the other table.

Just one of the reasons I stopped running "public" games.

[Damian Magecraft]

I used to play with some pot smokers, they where great players till the bongs came out. Then their characters became brain dead morons, and sadly when they started smoking it up. They started to want their characters to aswell thus, spawning a double layer of stupidity

Was GMing a game once when someone pulled a joint out while I was running the adventure and lit up then got all offended when I slapped it out of his mouth and crushed it.

The fact that we were in a FLGS game room didnt make a bit of difference to him, nor the fact that the store didnt even allow cigarette smoking, or the fact that there was a small group of kids playing D&D at the other table.

Just one of the reasons I stopped running "public" games.

if that were to happen here...he would have been arrested...and banned from the store...

[Nxla666]

I used to play with some pot smokers, they where great players till the bongs came out. Then their characters became brain dead morons, and sadly when they started smoking it up. They started to want their characters to aswell thus, spawning a double layer of stupidity

Was GMing a game once when someone pulled a joint out while I was running the adventure and lit up then got all offended when I slapped it out of his mouth and crushed it.

The fact that we were in a FLGS game room didnt make a bit of difference to him, nor the fact that the store didnt even allow cigarette smoking, or the fact that there was a small group of kids playing D&D at the other table.

Just one of the reasons I stopped running "public" games.

if that were to happen here...he would have been arrested...and banned from the store...

He was.

[Nxla666]

my experience was caused by me lol. beaing new to rifts at this time and havign a gm who lets a newbie play a glitter boy..... im guessing you can see this alreayd going badly.


so the first adventure is nearing a closing with a MASSIVE combat between us (GB cyber knight and a head hunter) and a group of CS samas. we took no losses in the combat and were winding down to make camp/ finsih the session. out of nowhere the headhunter and CK start a scuffle. ME not realising the radius of a boom gun blast decide is a good idea to try and make a called shot for 10 feet above there heads as a sort of "HEYYYYYYY stop that" i end up rolling a low number (1-5) and end up nuking both the other player (good time to roll 3 6's lol)

Umm... the Boom Gun doesnt have a blast radius.

The only radius it has is the 300' sonic boom that causes deafness and a bit of property damage to SDC glass.

[cyber-yukongil v2.5]

while one night over at a friends house making Werewolf characters for an upcoming game, some of the other guys, who I had just met this night, decided they wanted to do some roleplaying. Always up for a pickup game, I perk up and agree. Mistake numero uno. So after they talk it out for awhile, they come down to the desicision of Transformers home-brew system or Sliders, also home-brew, (that's the show with Jerry McConnel, whom I absolutely Hate for some bizarre reason). For some reason I don't immediately flee, Mistake Dos. I decide that maybe I'll just quietly finish my Werewolf character and then pack up and leave. Well they become over eargerly insistant that I stay and play with them. I fall for it, mistake Tres. I decide I'll humor them, but just finish my character and then do something suicidal in the game and go. Well they decide finally on Sliders and I openly groan. So everyone goes around real quick saying what they want to play. It gets to me, so with my head still buried in a Werewolf book, I say I'll play a big stupid dog, hoping that this would get them to notice I wasn't really interested. Unfortunately it's the greatest thing they've ever heard, then they start arguing over who's dog I'll be. So finally the dude who wants to play the Dominatrix/Stripper Computer Goddess, gets me. So the uber-dorks start their game, and it's bad, real bad, the kind of bad that makes you want to crawl inside yourself with a gun and end it all. So I just try to ignore them and flip through World of Darkness books, and give the occasional growl or bark when they ask me what I do. So a couple of hours later, they do something and something happens, frankly I couldn't have cared less, they meet up with the cast from Sliders, and it comes back to me and what does Big Stupid Dog do? Siezing the moment, I declare that I kill Jerry McConnell's character and defecate on the body. The GM, and I use the term loosely, allows it, and I grab my stuff, and the friend I came with and we left, never to see those dweebs again.

[Hotrod]

My worst game was my first. I was 11 or 12, and it was a PF game at a Boy Scout camp. I'd never before seen a roleplaying game, and I asked if I could join in. One of the players gave me one of his backup characters, and I joined them.

Our party got hired to take care of some raiding gang that was being run by a summoner. We got a tip that the raiders would hit a certain town on a certain day, so we travelled there.

On our first night out, one of the players had a private conversation with the GM. He then offered to feed my character for the night. I thanked him. He made some chicken. Next thing I knew, I was rolling some percentile dice, and my character was dead from poison. The rest of the party divided up the character's belongings. The poisening character took my character's skeleton to sell (he was elvish, and those bones were worth a lot in the old edition, not sure about the new one).

Kids are mean.

[Josh Sinsapaugh]

My worst game was my first. I was 11 or 12, and it was a PF game at a Boy Scout camp. I'd never before seen a roleplaying game, and I asked if I could join in. One of the players gave me one of his backup characters, and I joined them.

Our party got hired to take care of some raiding gang that was being run by a summoner. We got a tip that the raiders would hit a certain town on a certain day, so we travelled there.

On our first night out, one of the players had a private conversation with the GM. He then offered to feed my character for the night. I thanked him. He made some chicken. Next thing I knew, I was rolling some percentile dice, and my character was dead from poison. The rest of the party divided up the character's belongings. The poisening character took my character's skeleton to sell (he was elvish, and those bones were worth a lot in the old edition, not sure about the new one).

Kids are mean.

Wow... what the hell.

Dude, I am amazed that you didn't swear off RPGs altogether after that (seeing as it was your first time).

~ Josh

[Shorty Lickens]

Only once did I get stuck with a group of people who had the "Final Fantasy" attitude toward role-playing.
They wanted to aquire a butt-load of super-powered items with every adventure, didnt believe in finite ammunition, and always fought me whenever a mage or psychic messed them up, because they were too dumb to have a mage or psychic of their own.

And it was totally my fault. They were big Final Fantasy/Diablo fans. The most on tabletop we had ever done before was Hero Quest. They had the same attitude there. Lots of goodies and no challenge. "Just give us toys!"

I tried to get them into D&D 1st edition with the Rules Cyclopedia. They never grasped the concept of just getting together and having fun. They all thought they would kill a dragon on their first adventure and make off with a bunch of instant-death swords and invincible armor.

After about three sessions (where I honestly tried to dumb it down for them each time) we finally broke apart the group. I sent them back to Final Fantasy and then found another group.

Everything else I have been able to deal with. The stoners and the pary animals, the drinkers and the eaters. Even managed to calm down a group story-tellers long enough to get a Rifts game going, (provided I allowed plenty of necromancers and shifters and supernatural PC's).

But the video game crowd never got it.

[Vrykolas2k]

I know that feeling, I played for years with a Gm who did the same with his girlfriend. She got everything she ever wanted and everyone else had to fight tooth and nail just to get the smallest things. It got really annoying after a while. But we (The other players) just started following her character. Since she never got hurt, and could take on anything and walk away unhurt. It was really sad, since he was a awsome GM when she wasnt there, but when she was it was like the games turned into a showcase for her characters......

Sounds familiar. Had a D&D GM who was decent, but would do the same thing for his wife.

In one situation, a red dragon breathed fire on three other characters, killing 2 out of 3 (my priest was crispy-crittered with a failed save), then turned to his wife's character and demanded something or he would hurt her. Then she, and another player following her agenda, managed to fight off the red dragon and his magic using rider by themselves. WHAT?!?! Needless to say, that game didn't last long.

I wonder if this is why everyone was so shocked waaaay back in my group's 3rd game, my wife did something silly with her character and the character died... is favouritism really such a common thing?
At any rate, the worst game I ever played in was with this fellow who was always changing every rule, even his own house-rules, as far as the rest of us could tell... when it suited him. We also never got to really keep anything. We bore it long enough to reach levels 6-8 in AD&D, and the half-elf fighter had a two-handed sword +1 {he was a Swashbuckler kit fighter) and a set of chainmail, the elf mage had never managed to find a spell-scroll or capture an enemy mage's spell-book and had a Wand of Magic Missiles (which he was almost afraid to use, it might have only had 5 charges or somesuch), the halfling thief (assassin kit) was lucky enough to have a dagger +2 AND a Ring of Jumping (wow!!!!), the finhead paladin had a battle-axe +2 and a set of bronze plate-mail, the dwarven cleric had a silver-coated mace and a small shield +1, and I was playing an ogre mage sellsword fighter... I still had the katana I started with, and a dagger +1. We had about 500 GP among us when we quit. No mounts, or pets, or henchmen... they always died, got eaten, whatever. We tried to start a base of operations in a town in the area we were operating in, and spent most of our money on it (and the mage's spell research), but then a huge ancient red dragon came along and destroyed everything, including the town, while we were away looking for a wyvern's lair.
Basically, the GM in question ignored the treasure tables and gave us what he wanted us to have most of the time, or managed to destroy/ make vanish anything really good we found when he did use the tables. All monsters were at maximum HP, the townspeople didn't respect us, and on and on and on... it turned a whole (admittedly small) group into rules lawyers from then on. There have been other GMs over the course of my gaming life about that bad (I'll never play in Ravenloft again, no matter WHAT edition it is, because of another GM), but that was the worst.

[Amberjack]

Worst game/group/DM, was in college, roommate and I invited join a D&D game, I started out 5thief/5mage, they had been playing for a while, got wand of lightning to start as well, was drow female( because made others go " wha..") , should have realized things would not go we when asked the other players what their characters looked like and they had to look at their character sheets ( always bad sign), so playing little drow ( looked like normal elf, had mask) who had personality of Klingon warrior.
First night players all complain the need some experience, so random giant lizard attacks, a stands still so they can kill it from hiding, then went town, they didn't under stand what i was doing when lured man into alley Charmed him , had him give me his valuables, and strip naked and go dance around town square to prove his love to me. The rest of players are like " wha..." which it turned out was a common phrase .
DM allowed one of noob's change his character personality and appearance every session, would hide and rush out to claim his share when monster was dead. After my fourth death, and resurrection, told them not bring me back again, so we attack a dragon. I die first attack, the rest fight dragon, who never takes wing, or uses magic, just stands fights to death. Killed almost single handedly by dwarf with fling boots, and crazy powerful weapons and armor.
Dm , would not allow any type of wall spells( no walls of stone/metal, etc.), as some one earlier had killed his major villain by dropping wall on him. His world, each city was exactly one days travel from the next, and each had the same 'tard' of a gnome alchemist, was actually happy when dragon killed me.
I had actually figures that I would Die, so had even went to trouble of writing up a event my death would trigger when, Lloth came to claim my soul, what was thwarted as it wass sworn to a god of nature. Dm read the event as if reading the back of cereal box.
Was happy to leave, found out a few weeks later, that flying dwarf died when pissed off red dragon, then tried to hid in forest which dragon proceeded to burn down, player apparently actually had temper tantrum for 10 minutes when character died. Glad I missed that.

[asajosh]

I haven't read the whole thread yet, but the post about a GM having a chair thrown at him withing the first few minutes of play compelled me to post.
The first group I ever played Rifts with had a long standing GM (I was the new guy to a group of 4). One of the players and the GM apparently had a long time rivalry going that would spill into more often then not. At the start of every game session, they both swore to behave but that never lasted.
The player would thwart the GM's story and the GM would always blitz that one player first and hardest. More then a few times they threw dice at each other. Me and the other two just stepped back and watched. More then once we would quietly gather our gear and leave the house with those two shouting.
Then one day, they actually got into a fist fight over something stupid, i dont even remember what. We never played as a group again and the GM and that player never spoke again (10yrs known eachother), not even after the GM's little brother was struck and killed by a car.

The good side is the other players and I continued to play together and we managed to attract a few other players and never had a serious disagreement between us. Never let unstable players continue to play, even if they GM.

[Myndtrip]

I keep reading these bf/gf combo horor stories. I've managed to avoid those. I actually feel like i over compinsate by not giving my gf enough credit. I've been gming with our group for a lonm time and she's a new addition. I'm overly careful not to give her special treatment to the point where i think sometimes i don't give her enough. Oh well...the caualties of love and rifts i guess.