HERESY!!
— Every Commissar ever
From Khornate Knights to general rage involving the fluff. Lets keep the crunch out and chew on the angry bits of rage.
Keep in mind:
- Sign your entries with your own handle. We can see it in the edit history.
- This is for in game fluff only, not for gameplay nerfs or the Killer DM.
- Specific moments only. Don't just say something like, "Everything he said," or "The whole game."
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- No natter.
- Try and make entries actual DMoSs, not just a protracted whinge about how the game has become.
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- Correcting grammar, spelling, format, and punctuation,
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- Removing inappropriate uses of ALLCAPS, bold, and italics
- Blackjack 254: The Introduction of 6:5 blackjack (in which a Blackjack will only net you $12 on a $10 bet instead of $15). Back when it was first introduced in the early 2000s, it was only used on Single Deck games, where it's a little bit acceptable, but now some casinos in Las Vegas have 6:5 Payouts entirely, regardless of deck count or minimum bet. Apparently they don't know if people don't lose so quickly, they'll have more fun even if they do end up losing and will want to come back. The low house edge on standard 3:2 Blackjack is what makes it so appealing in the first place.
- Shadow Revolution: Khornate Knights of Warhammer 40,000 is pretty much one of the major problems with the writing of Matt Ward, apparently the Grey Knights are not resistant enough towards corruption even though Word of God states no Grey Knight can be corrupted. So why did they need the blood of surviving Sisters Of Battle anyway when the GKs have been proven to be resistant to the Warp?
- Miri Ohki: Katherine Steiner-Davion was a frustrating enough character as it was. Much of her storylines were one Moral Event Horizon after another, starting with her assassinating her mother, and doing her best to kill or frame just about the entire rest of her family. So she's heinous. But that isn't the problem. She prosecutes a seven year long Civil War and commits a multitude of crimes, not only against FedCom citizens, but killing the daughter of the ruler of an uninvolved nation, just because she was dating Katherine's brother and the leader of the enemy forces. She finally loses the battle and is arrested. You would think there would be people lining up to lynch her throughout three fifths of the Inner Sphere. Then suddenly, Vlad Ward of the crusader Wolves swoops in and rattles his saber, saying that if they didn't surrender Katherine to him, the Wolves would invade. It was mostly a bluff but nobody even considered trying to call him on it. Now to be fair, he didn't come in quite as a Giant Space Flea Out Of Nowhere, as he had secret dealings with her that he wouldn't want to come out, but her Karma Houdini status is especially frustrating.
- BattleMaster: On top of the reasons mentioned already, Vlad coming to Kathrine's rescue was also a DMoS for how badly it fit the Clans. Vlad had spent the last ten years shaping the Wolves into the most hardcore Crusader Clan in the Inner Sphere. Meaning that they were devoted to the idea of completely crushing the Inner Sphere and forcibly converting it to Clan rule. He then comes to the rescue of an Inner Sphere politician with no military training at all. This should have gone over about as well among the Wolves as a leader of the KKK announcing his intention to marry a Jewish black woman. Yet neither Vlad nor Kathrine suffered any repercussions from this, and Kathrine was given warrior status within the Clan despite having absolutely no combat skills.
- Mr Insecure: In-canon metaplots tend to devolve into flame wars and Broken Bases on a good day, but special mention must be given out to Samuel Haight, all time king of template-stacking bullcrap and authorial favoritism. While he started with a fairly interesting premise- a mortal man from a clan of werewolves seeks out means to steal their power out of a combination of jealousy and spite- the Dethroning came when writers started granting him more and more powers from different corners of the World of Darkness. By the time the writers realized how unpopular he was, he had already become one of the most powerful people in the setting, with the powers of werewolves, mages, kinfolk, and an independent ghoul, all at once. Fortunately, this problem was solved when he tried to take on a Methuselah by himself, which resulted in him getting killed and subsequently soulforged into an ashtray.
- yunatwilight: At least Samuel Haight didn't take down the entire setting with him. Planescape started building up a long "something is going horribly wrong with the whole multiverse" arc that worked on the high concept level but had wretchedly poor execution. The capper to the whole thing, though — and the final product in the Planescape line — was Faction War, based on the premise that the city of Sigil descends into anarchy. The adventure itself is completely mundane, and the only evidence of any "war" in its story is that all the NPCs have "gone to ground" and can't be found. The metaplot concludes with an incomprehensible set piece — one the book sheepishly admits the players can't possibly understand without reading the module! As a final slap in the face, the Lady of Pain is apparently so pissed off by all of this that she dissolves the factions (and, in the process, Sigil's government) and boots most of the named NPCs out of Sigil, wrecking what made the setting interesting in the first place.
- justanid: A bit of trivia: Faction War was published in January 1998, after TSR was acquired by Wizards of the Coast in the previous year. It was written during TSR's financial troubles and was possibly intended to Trash the Set. Instead, Sigil only shows up a few times in WotC's 3rd edition D&D. Nevermind Hasbro's 4th edition.
For me, the biggest DMoS is in the 2nd edition, 2000 adventure Die Vecna Die! At the climax Vecna (from Greyhawk) actually sets foot in Sigil, getting past the Lady of Pain's previously impervious defenses, which is nowhere near as bad as her new portrayal as a generic NPC. Oh, and only the heroes can save the day because Vecna has Joker Immunity. - bobbitwormhobbitwyrm: The really awful thing in my opinion was the radical shift to a much more dogmatic and Judeochristian tone. In Planescape the origin and nature of the multiverse was incredibly ambiguous, and the setting was centered around philosophical debate. Then in later additions we just get told verbatim that the gods created the multiverse even though this makes no sense given that they need mortal belief to survive, not to mention that there are canonically beings who are very clearly more powerful than even Greater Deities, such as the Lady of Pain, and the fact that divine magic doesn't even function in the Phlogiston outside the crystal spheres, so how on earth could they have created that portion of the Prime Material Plane? To top it all off, the Devils are just fallen angels as opposed to the much more interesting option of them being the souls of mortal sinners who are forged into members of a race of infernal conquerors descended from the essence of law released when the first creations of a race of proto-fiends potentially older than the universe purified themselves of ethics. Instead of debate about philosophy we get The Book of Exalted Deeds which straight up tells us what is right and wrong; not with an explanation mind you, it just states them and claims that this is always the case. Examples of its bizarre moralism include the claim that it is wrong to commit an evil act even if it saves thousands or millions of lives, and that good people never come into conflict with each other. To contrast, the celestials of Planescape, while unquestionably virtuous, were often at odds with one another's agendas (though rarely violently) and were willing to fund a plane-spanning war between demons and devils because they realized how much worse things would be if they concentrated all their forces on other planes of existence. Instead of a detailed investigation of what the right way of life is (which is basically the basis of ethics) they just decided to make a completely abritrary list. The worst offender was without a doubt the book Guide to Hell. While Planescape portrayed deists and Naytheists as people with the same potential for virtue or vice as any other (and as fairly justified in personally abstaining from worship given that a myriad of Gods have died off due to lack of belief), Guide to Hell states that anybody who doesn't worship a god automatically goes to the
Lawful Evil Nine Hells, where they are devoured by a Satanic Archetype as the, and I quote, "true damned of the multiverse". Yes, even if you are a Lawful Good paragon of virtue who dedicated your life to charity, after death you will still suffer a fate even worse than the one a serial killer would, just because you didn't dedicate your life to beings that are quite obviously not all-mighty (you can go see their corpses if you have a portal to the Astral Plane). Even individuals who are theists, but believe that the true god is an inscrutable divine clockmaker type, and not one of the many polytheistic deities populating the absurd number of pantheons suffer this fate, because reasons.
- justanid: A bit of trivia: Faction War was published in January 1998, after TSR was acquired by Wizards of the Coast in the previous year. It was written during TSR's financial troubles and was possibly intended to Trash the Set. Instead, Sigil only shows up a few times in WotC's 3rd edition D&D. Nevermind Hasbro's 4th edition.
- Icarael: If one had to name Magic: The Gathering's nadir (in terms of design, anyway), it would have to be Homelands. While the flavor and Worldbuilding aspects of the set were well-done, it had a lot of things that brought it down in comparison to its successors. The set's power level was absurdly low, even by the time's standards; it introduced no new mechanics; had little synergy with itself; and had awkward design. If one were to take a lesson from it, as Mark Rosewater has, it's that Magic lives and dies by its mechanics.
- Glimmer: If one had to name its low point in story, the recent set Eldritch Moon makes for a good contender. Ignoring the questionable design choices behind it (creating the third white-aligned Planeswalker of the set, reintroducing an Emrakul card hilariously underpowered compared to its prior appearance, making some of the most powerful creatures of the set require two cards to play), from a story perspective we're treated to the series' Eldritch Abominations being shoehorned for no reason except to give us a Big Bad (Emrakul) and to make the local population talk annoyingly, the local angelic protectors being totally helpless and distraught in the face of invaders... again, and a genocidal Nahiri getting off scot-free after trying to destroy an entire plane for petty revenge ("only" managing to destroy just a couple of provinces and countless lives in the meantime) and somehow defeating one of the series' most powerful characters and imprisoning him in stone. You'd think that Arlinn, Chandra, or Gideon could have just taken time away from doing nothing to thrash her, since, besides Sorin, she managed to peeve off at least 7 other demi-god-like beings with Emrakul's emergence.
- And the worst part? No new Tibalt!
- Zenblade: The moment where I absolutely turned my back on Magic lore was with the reveal that Sorin trapped Nahiri in the Helvault on Innistrad. For those not keeping track, a long time ago, Sorin, Ugin, and Nahiri trapped these reality-munching monsters called the Eldrazi. Thousands of years later, the seal keeping the Eldrazi trapped is starting to weaken. Sorin tries to summon Ugin and Nahiri to seal the Eldrazi again, but neither of them answer. He has no idea where they are or what happened to them, something that he explicitly says more than once. Leaving the seal weakened is a pretty bad idea, so he goes off to do it himself. The seal is destroyed completely by another character, thus unleashing the Eldrazi on the multiverse again. While the Eldrazi are busy destroying Zendikar, Sorin retreats to his home plane, Innistrad. He doesn't really do much there, but it's important to know that while he's there, the Helvault, essentially a supernatural prison he created, was destroyed, thus unleashing everything that was inside. After Innistrad, Sorin heads off to Tarkir, Ugin's home plane. Sorin still doesn't know where Ugin or Nahiri are, and even wonders if it's possible that Nahiri killed Ugin. Turns out Ugin is dead, but killed by Bolas instead. Due to time travel stuff, Ugin returns alive and talks with Sorin. Ugin asks Sorin where Nahiri is. Sorin says he knows where Nahiri is, and will retrieve her. Wait, what? Sorin had no idea where either Ugin or Nahiri is, but now he suddenly knows where Nahiri was this whole time? But it gets worse. It turns out Nahiri is in the Helvault because he put her there. She was in the Helvault. The Helvault that was destroyed. Destroyed the last time Sorin was in Innistrad. During the period where he had no idea where Ugin and Nahiri where, or what happened to them. You can see the problem here. Ever since then, I've been completely unable to invest myself in the Magic story, because I just don't trust Wizards not to completely ditch all continuity and rewrite everything in a few months. Beyond the major contradiction, it makes absolutely no sense at all for Sorin to have imprisoned Nahiri in the Helvault in the first place, and the excuse is incredibly flimsy. By the block's conclusion, Sorin gets completely shafted and fused into a wall, despite being one of the most powerful planeswalkers ever. Meaning the most interesting planeswalker in Magic has been Put on a Bus indefinitely. His relationships with Avacyn and Nahiri, who are essentially surrogate daughter figures, could've been incredibly interesting to explore, but are instead destroyed completely, with the former dead and the latter turned into the most insufferable wangsting villain I've ever seen.
- Arix Odragc: I originally thought of War of the Spark as the lowest of the low points when it came to the game's story. From a horribly forced heroic sacrifice to a redemption arc that forgets to actually redeem the character to a painfully bland villain to putting the focus on the wrong characters, everything about it was bad. But ultimately, War was just a fittingly terrible ending to a terrible story arc. Hour of Devastation, on the other hand, legitimately angers me for how grossly incompetent it was. Let us begin with the fact that it is literally a 'white saviour' story - a group of protagonists, who are only the protagonists because they just up and declared themselves the heroes of the multiverse one day, have to venture to a foreign land that none of them have any prior knowledge of, let alone connection to, with the goal of convincing the natives that their entire culture is evil and wrong. No agency allowed for the actual inhabitants of the plane, the ones who are actually affected by the conflict. No, it's all about these randos who just show up declare themselves the heroes. When Hapatra turned to them and said "Bolas is your problem", I actually screamed, "WHY? These are your people he is killing, your city he is destroying, and you that he has deceived and manipulated your entire life, why in hell is he their problem?" Then when they meet Razaketh, we have yet another moment where a villain has the heroes completely at his mercy, only to do absolutely nothing until the cavalry can arrive to save the day. Because doing that with Ob Nixilis in Zendikar and Baral in Kaladesh wasn't enough. Who wants to see the heroes use their own skill and ingenuity to get out of a tough situation? Nah, just have the villain do nothing so they can last long enough for someone else to save the day. Again. And then there's Bolas. You know an easy way to absolutely kill any level of threat your villain might have had? Make him more interested in destroying a civilisation that's mindlessly devoted to serving him even in the afterlife, than in causing any real harm to the heroes. Sure, he's powerful, but since he clearly has no idea how to effectively use that power, who cares? He's an incompetent dumbass. And rather than making the Gatewatch look like vulnerable underdogs by having them lose a fight, they lose a fight...and then are immediately able to pick themselves up, dust themselves off, and try again whenever's convenient. Even when one of the most powerful beings in the multiverse completely wipes the floor with them, they still don't actually suffer any real consequences (short of Jace's 28th or whatever bout of amnesia which doesn't actually lead anywhere, of course). All of this and more, coupled with the terrible prose typical of Magic story, and the usual wasted opportunity of creating interesting and unique creatures only to keep them shoved in the background to continually glorify their favourites, made this the absolute worst of the worst. The Gatewatch arc was already bad beforehand, but this was the moment I completely gave up hope.
- Doctor Ztar: After more than a decade, we finally return to Dominaria. How many sets do we spend there? One. One measly set. And then the next set jumps straight back to fucking Ravnica. Did Wizards break its "two sets per block" rule specifically so they didn't have to spend time in the literal center of the multiverse, or was that just coincidence? Either way, it's a gargantuan waste of potential.
- Maths Angelic Version: While I was displeased with the 2022-2023 Phyrexian arc starting with Tamiyo's compleation, it was Dominaria United that made me say "Too Bleak, Stopped Caring". The Phyrexians not only corrupted the lovable Ajani, but had him kill the cool Ensemble Dark Horse Jaya, purely for shock value. What's the point of getting attached to anyone if they're just going to kill them off like this?
- Glimmer: If one had to name its low point in story, the recent set Eldritch Moon makes for a good contender. Ignoring the questionable design choices behind it (creating the third white-aligned Planeswalker of the set, reintroducing an Emrakul card hilariously underpowered compared to its prior appearance, making some of the most powerful creatures of the set require two cards to play), from a story perspective we're treated to the series' Eldritch Abominations being shoehorned for no reason except to give us a Big Bad (Emrakul) and to make the local population talk annoyingly, the local angelic protectors being totally helpless and distraught in the face of invaders... again, and a genocidal Nahiri getting off scot-free after trying to destroy an entire plane for petty revenge ("only" managing to destroy just a couple of provinces and countless lives in the meantime) and somehow defeating one of the series' most powerful characters and imprisoning him in stone. You'd think that Arlinn, Chandra, or Gideon could have just taken time away from doing nothing to thrash her, since, besides Sorin, she managed to peeve off at least 7 other demi-god-like beings with Emrakul's emergence.
