Goodman Games

Having just read the last comment by Iceberg in the last thread (the one on group size). He mentioned that he also hates the player knowledge person. This has inspired me to ask everyone: What is the most annoying thing that ever happened in your campaign?

And I don’t mean that ‘Bob’ eats all the potato chips and never buys any himself. I mean the one incident that kept you up half the night fuming, and was the first thing you brought up when the group met again a week later…

well... this isn't an issu for me, but...

<_< ... >_> ...

some people in my party still can't get over the fact that i snagged a 100,000gp evil gem and sold it on the black market, keeping most of the profit for myself

and, in character, so far as they knew it was only worth 20,000, becasue that's what i appraised it as before i had it's magical properties discovered, and i gave each of the other 5 members of the party 2,000gp (from OOC pressure, i might add, i didn't want them killing my character for his cash)

worst part is, i'm true neutral, so i can be excused for my actions, but the rest of the party is some variation of good alignment, for the most part, seems to get ignored in my party

----

next session, i'm sure i'm going to hear about the fact that i casually mentioned that our dwarf cleric may have a problem with looting the store rooms from some abandoned shrines to some paladin gods, which, in a round about way, lost us a couple magic items, since the DM decided the cleric maybe should have some problems, being lawful good and all we were able to convince the cleric to allow us to take what we needed (and we didn't, apparently, need any extra +1 long swords)

*sigh*

it's not easy being the true neutral voice of reason

I hate it when players don't roleplay their alignments!

I hate that, too. There's a guy in my current group whose PCs always tend to lapse into Chaotic Neutral rogue types, no matter what he says they are. We generally don't let him get away with it. He doesn't do it to be obnoxious -- he's just not a terribly good role-player.

I think the worst incidents occurred with another group about 7 years ago. We had a husband and wife in the group, and guess what? Yes, they were having problems! Worse still, they were treating our group as a therapy session! Their characters would go out of their way to be complete and utter jerks to the other PCs and especially to each other, but they would always say that they were simply role-playing. Uh huh.

Two incidents brought things to a head. In Shadowrun, he and the other runners were questioning a corporate exec for info shortly after we accepted the contract (about 30 minutes into the session). Bizarrely, he started insulting the helpful-but-condescending exec. When the exec didn't cave in to his threats, he shot the guy in the head! In his office! There was no absolutely no reason for it. The runners fled the scene before the cops showed up. The adventure was completely FUBARed. We spent the next hour yelling at the player, who refused to admit that he did anything wrong. The game master's mouth simply hung open in shock.

Shortly thereafter, while playing Birthright, the wife got into the act. Playing the cleric of a CG war god, she picked a fight with one of the other players and cut his arm off! Her excuse, again, was that she was the priest of a war god, so she could act crazy. (Uh, you do see the G in the CG alignment, right?) The victimized player was ready to walk off right then and there (both in character and out), but we talked him into staying. We then said that the husband and wife were not invited back until they dealt with their problems in an arena other than the weekly game.

--Ken

Wow.

Wow, Ken, that definitely takes the cake! I had some minor examples but I think I'll defer to you on this one.

wow!!!

I would give problem players a "wrist slap" for bad role playing. Most DM's give a role-playing XP bonus after each session. Give them a smaller bonus or even a negative bonus for very poor play and smack them with a forced alignment shift until they learn to play their ALIGNMENT....(BY RULES THE CHARCTERS ALIGNMENT MY BE FORCED TO CHANGE IN STEPS UNTIL IT FINALLY REACHES THE ACTUAL WAY THEY PLAY THIER CHARACTER.).....dang cap lock key lol

Maybe I'm in the minority -- I get annoyed when players roleplay alignments. I ban them in my D&D games. You ought to have a basic idea along the good-evil axis, since some useful magic uses that one, but I've known a lot of people who let alignment limit their choices or provide an excuse for group-busting behavior. That's something I hate.

Yeah, I can't compete with Ken either.

That's pretty good alright.

My Number 1 DM Pet Peeve due to Frequence of Occurence:

Haggling with the NPCS.
NPC: "Thank goodness you've arrived! The princess has been kidnapped and only a week before the wedding! We are offering 20,000gp for her return <or Insert favorite plot-hook/tie-in here>"
PCS: "What's in it for us?"
NPC: "I-- just told you... 20,000gp!"
PCs: "You expect us to risk our necks for that snotty broad for 20K? No you better up the ante a bit if you want our help."
NPC: "WHAT?!?! All right, FINE! I'll offer 30,000gp but not a cent more."
PCs: "That'll be fine. Now where's our army?"
NPC: "What army?"
PCs: "The army we're leading into the forest of darkness where the princess is supposed to be?"
NPC: "But.. but...!"

I finally resolved this issue by introducing a goody-goody NPC party lead by a paladin of the PC cleric's religion, who always swooped in to save the day, removing any leverage the party had in negotiations.


Most Disruptive Event Ever: The so-called "Beaver Incident".

This happened a couple years ago. A group of players had run their characters up from 1st level to about 7th. While exploring White Plume Mountain, I replaced Sir Bluto's band of merry men with a recurring enemy NPC party. (If you know WPM, you'll know which room I'm talking about)

As the party entered, they were netted, grappled and variously incapacitated. What followed was one of the most brutal combats of my DM career. The party knew they were in for a no-holds-barred grudge match and they were giving as good as they got until the dice turned against them. One round both PC fighters fumbled and an enemy rogue got in a sneak attack on the already-wounded party cleric.

At this point, the untouched and full-loaded party druid -a highly chaotic player but with loads of experience- decided to use his wild shape to swim away. We were all a bit surprised by his actions. He swam away from the fight, spent a round eating goodberries, then swam back to survey the fight. (Remember, the party cleric was at negative hp at this point).

He comes back the next round, sees that the fight has continued to go downhill, with one of the party fighters dropping (actually dead), and the cleric is continuing to lie bleeding on the ground. He swims away again and spends a few rounds chasing some fish around in the underground stream.

Unbelievable. The entire table was stunned. Speechless. While he was "chewing on a fish" the cleric finally died. The party pulled off a technical victory by one of the players blowing himself up with a necklace of fireball missiles, killing the enemy rogue and dropping the raging enemy barbarian, whilst the remaining enemy fighter and cleric retreated. All told, two characters died, one permanently. All the party curing was used up and most of their limited use items consumed. I remember asking players for their hit point totals at the end of the night. A solemn chorus of single digits was read back to me until at last I came to the druid.

"Uh, I'm at full."

For all intents and purposes, it was the end of that campaign.

A spot of venting! Hurray!

Maybe I have DM'ed too long to care or perhaps I have finally accepted my players as what they are. I'll figure that out later and complain for now.

Every player brings good and bad with them to the table. The bad drives me nuts, the good keeps me coming back. One player demands to be the center of attention and turned to defacating on everything (in game, in game!) when bored. Another is the master of survival, so much so, that he'll convince the group to leave the princess if it is too dangerous. I've got about three non-listeners who regularily have no idea what is going on. They tend to get the backlash of the traps a lot, not because I'm being mean, but because everyone else backed up and they didn't.

Our group got very large and then split. People who were having problems with each other moved to different groups. The die-hards ended up in one group and the other group(s) fell appart until they stopped. It was a very odd way of solving the problems of conflicting personalities. None of the other players have ever come back to the core group which is too bad sometimes.

Now, for the worst gaming events.

I had a one-on-one grudge match in Battletech with my best freind many years ago because our characters had blood between them. I not only shot down his mech, but kept on firing until the pilot was killed. That was our last game of battletech. I did not play again for ten odd years and he still doesn't play anymore.

Imfamously known as the Epic Summer, I had planned a spectacular epic d20 campaign during one summer. At one point the players were all cloned, but they did not realize it. One player was furious about the deception when they found out. Later a player dropped a chain lightning on the monk fighting the pit feind, assuming the evasive monk would make his saving throw. He didn't. The player got up and left, and has never come back to my gaming table.

We didn't play again for some odd two months afterwards and all whiinter games were canceled because of low attendance. This was actually the event that caused the split in our gaming group.

Mark Charke
www.Charke.ca