#bad gm

[spiritburger]

A bad GM ended this character immediately upon his creation. The character sheet took longer than the gameplay.

[tixelsketchbookuniverse]

My awful D&D experience

And the dangers of having a really bad GM.

Warning, it’s quite long. So my apologies!

So picture this. I’ve just arrived in college and am making new friends that are on the same page as me. We all love art and making characters so I suggest “Hey why don’t we form a D&D group together?”. Most of them had never played before, but that was fine, we could teach them. 

One of my classmates, a guy who loves drawing big muscular men and women, offers to be the GM. All good all good.

I already had my little cleric character, named Elio. He came from a city in the desert, his large clan worshipped a home-brew Goddess. Yna, Goddess of the sun. His devotion to her granted him powers, he can materialise crystals with his mind, but he can only do it during the day, at night it didn’t work. Elio in particular was so devoted to her, that he vowed to become the next High Priest. The High Priest had to have long long hair, and a perfectly preserved body (aka a virgin), because they would be the perfect vessel for when Yna returns to the earth. Elio was also the son of the Queen of said city, but kept that little bit of info a secret.

All that seemed to be random info, but it’s important later. 

The other members of the team were: Delaine, a upperclass woman who was a total tank; Seera, an alchemist who likes to bugger off and not contribute a lot; Brise, a wind sorceress with a split yandere personality (not a fan); Kalisie, a nudist black elf; and Elias, a witch who manipulated threads of fate. 

So fast forward to our first session. We’re all in a circle, eagerly waiting to begin our quest. At first, this are well. But one thing was weird to me. Our DM was having us use a 100 side dice. Weird, I thought, shouldn’t we be using a 20? Our first session was actually pretty okay. I mean Elio got stabbed in the shoulder and bitten by a snake, but I figured it was fine.

Later our GM asked to see all our character sheets. Elias’s creator and I were the only people who’d played before, and both had very detailed and extensive character sheets. Well, the normal kind for any D&D character. 

Our DM looks them over for a few days, and at our next session pulls out some sheets of paper. He said our sheets were ‘not appropriate for this game’ and had photocopied our original sheets, and removed everything he didn’t want. We were left with: Strength, Wisdom and Social stats, two abilities, and 2 spells each. We were not happy. According to him “detect good and evil” was a spell only a level 10 and up could use. We called bullshit and he said “it’s my game, I can make the rules however I want”.

And from that point on he became crueler and crueler to my character in particular. Got into a fight with some bandits? All lunge on me. In a torture dungeon (he liked those a lot)? Guess who got put on the stretcher and whipped again. Walking along the street and cross paths with a beggar? Stabbed in the side. 

At this point I was getting annoyed. I’d been keeping count on how many hitpoints we were all getting per game. 3 sessions in, and while I was on 20 per session, Kalisie on 19, Elias on 16, Seera Delaine and Brise were all on 0. So I began to think, is this personal? Did I do something wrong? Or am I just playing like an idiot?

But then it hit me. 

Elias, Elio and Kalisie were black. 

It couldn’t be a coincidence.

I talked to my GM about this, but all he had were excuses and ‘it’s my game, I can do what I want’, and said that if I kept questioning him he’d destroy my character’s home-city and kill his family. That, I was not happy with. 

Elias’s creator and I realised that our GM had lied to us when he said he’d “GM’s for countless other campaigns”. OR he’d only played with people who’d never played, so would believe everything he said. I’d start making an understudy for Elio (as GM had said multiple times that his goal was to kill all of us, except for Seera because he had plot armour) and I wanted to either make a dragon-born or a tiefling. I text DM to ask if I could, and the guy didn’t even KNOW what they were. After I explained them, he said “no those don’t exist”. This guy seemed to believe that the only civilised people in D&D were humans, elves and dwarves.

This guy would change the rules, spells, meta-game the shit outta us. And this was an extremely dark, racism universe. You couldn’t talk your way out of a tough spot, you HAD to fight to the death. And through some eavesdropping, I discovered that team White characters were the “main characters” of the other, and we were nothing more than minor, disposable, waste. 

So Elias’s creator and I started calling him out on his bullshit. We’d use spells were were meant to use right from the start, bring our own 20 side dice, and actually play the game the way it’s meant to be played. GM was not happy. 

And on our last session, he starts things off by brutally murdering Elias’s husband (despite her asking him beforehand to NOT DO THAT), and ends it with Elio getting kidnapped by the bandits we were investigating. You see in the town we were at, Elio discovered some of his clan members lived in the slum part of the city (because of fucking course) so goes to ask them for info. Our DM decides to play them using a very racism voice imitation, racist slurs and has Elio’s distant cousin attempt to sexually assault him. Wonderful. 

Elio follows a seemingly trustworthy kid to his house, and tells the kid of his royal status, before SURPRISE! The bandits were waiting in the kid’s house to jump Elio and kidnap him. Meta-gaming at it’s worst. 

Our GM then describes the 10 bandits tear off Elio’s clothing, and proceed to brutally torture and sexually assault for 5 hours. He then says “roll a social” to see if he’s mentally damaged by this. (I rolled a 99, critical failure). 

At that point, I was done. Elias’s creator had to leave early, so I KNEW he’d waited for her to leave to do this. 

I said “You can either take all that back and actually fucking play fairly, or I’m DONE with your game.” He was shocked by this. Like someone being disgusted by rape was news to him. He said it “wasn’t so bad” and that I was “over reacting”, so I said I was done. The session was over and I’m not playing anymore. 

So moral of the story? Idk if there really is one. But for any aspiring DM’s out there, here’s some advice: -Communicate with your players. Actually take some time to lay down the rules to them and STICK TO IT. -If you’re letting people into your fantasy, try and find out what people will or won’t be comfortable with. -Be respectful of your player’s wishes. -Don’t be racist.  -Don’t pick favourites or main characters. This kills everyone else’s want to play.

Side note, after I left, so did Elias and Delaine’s players. Kalisie then left too, and I think Brise’s player’s gonna leave too. I’d feel sorry for our DM, but I really don’t.

Thanks for reading, and I hope your D&D sessions go a lot better than mine!

[cheskamouse]

True story,

Was playing Pathfinder and my Sorceress Halfling decides to toss Fireball since none of her buddies will get hurt in the blast, but the enemy is gearing up to lay down some pain.

GM: Ok, roll damage, but is only 1/4 because of Halfling strength.

Me: It is a spell, my Strength does not even come in to it at all.. the make is based off my Int anyway. and since I at a level where I have 20 Int now.. the smack down should be awesome.

GM: Well, I read that all halfling damage is reduced by 1/4.. and that is what we are doing.

I am happy to report that the entire table blew up at him and calls of bullshit flew like arrows from an army.

needless to say, we did not game with him again as he had a fucking tantrum and said if we did not like his ruling.. we did not have to play.. we went an Got pizza without him anyway.

[nepnepnepnepnepnepnepnepnepnep]

Perhaps one of y'all have a suggestion on how I can my GM is final boss is fixing stupid. It's an enemy we've fought twice before and he's boring as shit and unfun, the last time we killed I cannot physically emphasize how dead he was, we splattered across a 30 ft area then scrapped up the goop and incinerated it. I even said I said pretty directly said "don't do this again, this guy is boring and not fun to fight, figure out something else if you really want a recurring villain" and we made jokes about how secretly it's one character who showed up once and then just never got resolved. He said he had planning this for months and was starting to get kinda upset. Like, sorry your secret bbeg that wasn't actually a secret and you didn't really ever allude being as such is ass, maybe try get better at writing? Maybe don't try to shoehorn a poor JoJo's reference in at the very end? Maybe actually work on yourself as person and improve your skills instead of blaming your mental illness? The final session is next week so I don't know, whatever I guess.

[i-had-bucky]

Y’know, it’s pretty fuckin’ childish of an adult DM/GM to suddenly just ghost on a group the night of the game and then block us all without explanation. We’re all adults, there was no reason for that. 

[sadiealexanderholmes]

I cannot stand

One thing I cannot stand in D&D is encounters for the sake of encounters. If you want to give us Exp, then do it through meaningful encounters. I was playing and it was encounter for exp after encounter for exp over and over again. I want to smash my head on the table I am so bored.

[erisacolyte]

“Whenever possible, a man should have a cruel mouth, particularly if he has blue eyes – the bluer the eyes, the crueler the mouth; a man with cornflower-blue eyes should have a mouth like a genocide”

http://the-toast.net/2015/04/14/things-ive-learned-about-heterosexual-female-desire-from-decades-of-reading/

[mathemayjicks]

I am bothered by unnecessary anime monologues a lot for someone who when game-mastering begins every encounter with a goddamn unnecessary monologue

And I am as surprised every time my players start talking before the monologue is done. I am so bad. like. no, my friends, I know more than half of you watch one piece, you know damn well that this is that moment when all action inexplicably stops so that this NPC can explain their sad backstory.