The "bitch about your GM" thread

Heh, overpowered enemies should only be used if a) a GM is trying to make it obvious that retreat is the only option and/or b) the GM wants the players to think strategically for a change.

The best session I have Gm'd (out of my admittedly limited experience) came when I had my decap-happy and obviously under stimulated player face off against Dracula (from Castlevania, since this player was already a whip-wielding undead hunter anyway) in a non-canon side story.

The fight was pretty one-sided until dracula transformed, at which point he smacked Ash through a wall (we were using the Army Of Darkness Unisystem and he happened to make a good plot hook) and our eager vampire hunter into the conveniently placed throne (a grace on my part.) Switching out of power-gamer mode, the player pulled an old action movie cliché out of the book and dropped a chandelier on the beast, then jammed torch through its skull before it could get to its feet.

So, to summarize, overpowered mooks: bad. overpowered Puzzle Boss : potentially badass.

edited 15th Oct '09 5:06:43 PM by darnpenguin

And now, for something other than bitching: I started playing a PBEM (more exactly play-by-discussion-board) Vampire The Requiem campaign with a different GM. The cast consists of:

• Armande - Hot Librarian Mekhet from Ordo Dracul, played by Blue Oni
• Barry - psychotic Ventrue mobster with low Humanity
• Domingo - aged Mekhet wanderer who often runs around using Obfuscate like he's a very ugly Nosferatu that doesn't want to be seen. Funnily enough, not many vampires in N'awlins saw him. I didn't. ]:->
• Lena - slutty Daeva played by the GM's wife. She's got some beef with Mike, my detective, after he unknowingly admitted he's looking for her runaway ghoul.
• Matthew - Mekhet doctor, most probably a Morbus in the making since he's already infected with HIV, or so it looks from his description.
• Mike - aged and arrogant Mekhet detective with high Humanity who treats low-Humanity Kindred like animals (not like he's wrong in that opinion, no siree). Played by me and taking a lot of cues from my old Masquerade character (also Mike).

The problem is, people have to eat. Mike has to eat. So, at the moment, he's banging a prostitute and getting ready for a bite. And I had to describe that, trying to avoid Ikea Erotica. Daaaamn.

edited 24th Oct '09 11:31:03 AM by NotSoBadassLongcoat

I played a game under a GM who was creepily obsessed with a certain Darklord's poisonous assassins and kept trying to push a 'doomed romance' with one despite our (player and character) disinterest in the subject. And said poison woman got her hands in so many cookie jars it was absurd - in a sad attempt to keep us interested in her (Kargat? seriously? HOW many secret societies? How did she get her hands on THAT item?). Eventually he gave up.

Actually - the GM really loved his tragic romances, tried one for my male Morninglord Paladin with a newly embraced female vampire... except he ignored the fact my pally likes men. Tried to keep pushing it - eventually our Party's Anchorite decided to end it by ducking the vampire under the river before pouring oil over it and lighting the whole river on fire. The player said the dark power check and failure was worth it for the look on the GM's face.

And not only that - he was VERY liberal with the dark power checks, I'm surprised my Paladin hasn't failed one during his G Ming since a lie was enough to get the dark power's attention, and actually fighting against monsters? falls under 'murder'.

we ended up making him turn in GM privileges after a full-party rebellion against yet another stupid dark power check.

Depending on your paladin, then yes, telling a lie would qualify as "breaking a tenet", yes.

Tried to keep pushing it - eventually our Party's Anchorite decided to end it by ducking the vampire under the river before pouring oil over it and lighting the whole river on fire.

That is awesome. Ideally all problems would be solved this way.

edited 2nd Nov '09 6:19:34 AM by Haven

Bless me, Tropers, for I have sinned.

Earlier this week I was staying with a friend of mine when he decided to look up popular memes relating to Dwarf Fortress. I should have known right away that the voice in my head saying "wouldn't that make a great RP" was no less than the voice of the RP devil himself, but I nonetheless set about the diabolical mental machinations of devising the deadliest RP ever devised.

Later that night, as our regular GM grew tired and wanted to play in a game for a change, I set my plan into motion. As the oblivious explosives expert waded out of the plane wreck into the river, he was tackled by a blurry streak of death, nearly killing him on the spot. As recovered and prepared for a counter-attack, two more of the abominations flanked him and went in for shots of their own.

"What are these overpowered abominations?" he called out as he prepared to blow himself and his opponents away in a glorious blinding flash of C4.

I nonchalantly replied, "They're carp."

The Dwarf Fortress guy lost it.

Oh CARP!

My Pally was never the liar, but I'm talking little white lies, even good lies (like telling the 'Vistani hunters the wrong direction to help out the Caravan lies')

New GM turned out to be a stuck-up retard. First, he described the club that just happened to be located near the hunting ground of one of the vampires as being the aforementioned hunting ground, with a lot of Purple Prose describing what may be happening in the VIP room (but, actually, does not). As what GM describes should be what the character sees and knows, my detective was misled into accusing the vampire in question of some unsavory things. Second, similar thing happened when mentioning a NPC, described previously to be an incredibly annoying JerkAss, to a different NPC who, surprisingly, reacted with fury without a reason. Then, the GM gave a different account of who that jerkass really is, of course thinking that I should know that. And finally, when I said I quit, he gleefully sent my character to Alaska. Like I wanted it. What a dumb fuck.

You just bought some adventure module somewhere to have some filler for your campaign. Problem is, it takes place in a city on the other side of the continent. As a good GM you could adjust the module to our current location, let us jump ahead to the planned location between sessions or write some Road Movie adventure or even a Walking the Earth campaign to get us from our current location to the city where the module takes place. Or, you know, A Wizard Did It.

<Sarcasm Mode>But noooo, a fully played out and yet completely uneventful death march from point A to point B, keeping the stops in between long enough to be annoying and short enough to deprive them of any roleplaying opportunity is just genius in comparison to THAT. Yeah, that was a complete 8 hour long session well spent. </ Sarcasm Mode>

edited 20th Nov '09 2:18:07 PM by Ana

I've got some doozies from when I played Tabletop WAY back when...

Guy ran Cyberpunk for us, as he had all the books. Not a problem, guy who knew the rules typically made the better GM, but this is different.

He ran everything. You rolled your character, and then he 'helped' you. Gave you all sorts of junk, back-story, weapons, creds out the behind... My guy was given an FN-RAL with API ammo. Not very normal. Cybernetics, the whole bit. At first, we were all, sweet, he'll let us run rampant and munchkin the hell out of stuff.

It got worse.

We were little more then the guys holding the sheets, as he pretty much told us what our characters were doing. Nearly every minute. We were along for the ride, and it was crazy. Sure, he told a good yarn, but it would've been nice to have provided some input into the storyline, you know? We got to control dialogue, what we ate, and precious little else.

Second mentionable: Homebrewed system, think AD&D 3rd edition tossed into a post-apocalyptic future and magic stripped out of it. I was the first playtester, so I got to help grow the game, work out kinks and whatnot. Groovy at first, got old after a year and still not making much progress. Well, he hadn't really put thought into what telepathy and telekinetic mutant powers did, and my character had them. Well, after the dust cleared, we had figured out together that we (as in, I'm partly responsible for the fur ball this created) should strip most mutant powers out of the game and stick to slugthrowers and melee. Basically, it was a system that wasn't nailed down, so it was ran over to hell and back by everyone. We ditched the whole thing after I picked up a used copy of the RIFTS base book. For the record, RIFTS was FUN when you used just the bsae book and winged the rest of it.

edited 1st Dec '09 2:22:40 PM by pvtnum11

My DM, who is fantastic in his ability to balance out combat despite our characters' obscene level of power, is tremendously patient with our groups near-constant interruptions, and is just a pretty cool guy in general, has one flaw that rears it's ugly head a bit too often in our campaigns: A love of Mind Screw plots and a tendency to forget to give the players any information on what's going on. He's getting better, and it's actually helping with the development of my character (Lawful Good Undead-hunter/gunslinger) in an interesting direction, but it can get freaking annoying for a character who just wants to do the right thing.

edited 2nd Dec '09 1:06:51 PM by Dreamaniac

Boy howdy, my usual GM is starting to impress me. He managed to explain a potential Character Derailment convincingly, making the Big Bad an Ax-Crazy Yandere Matsu bitch who wasn't above using firearms (banned in the Legend Of The Five Rings world) on helpless peasants. On the other hand, Blue Oni almost tripped on her tongue, trying to talk the new Lion army commander into pulling a Total Party Kill, after our Mirumoto tank died and I got floored. Ain't she smart, eh?

ARMINAES YOU SUCK

WAAAAAAAAHHHHHH

It's not exactly a 'bitch', but my DM has some... interesting... notions, sometimes. Like the time the Big Bad of our current campaign tried to inspire a Heel–Face Turn in my Mage... by threatening his family.

This is despite the fact that my mage gets along exceptionally poorly with his family, since it's a high-ranking warrior family in a kingdom where mages have been considered third-class citizens for centuries. Oh, and this backstory was at my DM's suggestion, since it fit his setting and it was my first character, and I had asked for some advice.

I still can't figure out why he was surprised when my mage's response was "Eh." and trying to set the Big Bad on fire...

edited 16th Dec '09 10:49:28 AM by TeChameleon

Just one thing:

-6 dice for trying a headshot from 30 feet away, with a pistol, against an opponent who doesn't expect you to be there? BULLSHIT!

edited 18th Dec '09 2:05:02 PM by NotSoBadassLongcoat

A previous DM I've had... the plague campaign. Thanks to the Plot Coupon, my group doesn't get turned into zombies when the black wind blows, but that doesn't stop everyone else around from turning into zombies. And the DM RAILROADED us to any city he could think of.

Zombies in a village, not bad. Zombies in a town, not bad. Zombies in the largest city on the continent? WAY TOO LONG OF A BATTLE.

I'm actually making a list with another player (my L 5 R GM - Oh the irony!) what our Requiem GM is doing wrong. It grows RAPIDLY.

Eh, Dungeons and Dragons TRAP ROOM. Where every other step was a trap.

Try Ancient Domains Of Mystery. Once you're in a trap room, every square contained a trap...

Thank god one of these came up!

My GM for my first 3.5 game ever was this infantile litlle acne ridden faggot who had a crush on one of the players that manifested in one of two ways.

A) He would neglect the rest of us so he could flirt (poorly, I might add) with this poor girl, or give her special treatment, or...

B) Stand right next to her with his hands all the fuck over her while G Ming.

It was her first game too and thanks to that creepy little bastard it'll probably be her last.

edited 17th Jan '10 5:32:35 PM by JohnnyCakes

I finally have a true complaint about my DM:

I don't care if everything in the campaign is deliberately overpowered.

I don't care if the rest of the party DID end up surviving it.

You just don't give a PC race a racial ability to unleash the magical equivalent of a NUCLEAR BOMB from their eyes, and stick the price tag at a -2 penalty to spot and search with eventual blindness.

And you don't let the player who wants his character to be a psychopath to play as this race which you shouldn't have made.

Oh, and for specifics? The range is a 20 x (character level) foot radius, and the damage... well, you roll a number of d20s equal to your character level.

We survived because an NPC we were traveling with teleported us away (except for the player who was exploding, anyway). As punishment for nearly causing a Total Party Kill, the DM described said player waking up to find above NPC looking down on him with the following dialogue:

NPC (known as "Your Employer."):"Two hours."

PC (known as "Ravano." : "What's that supposed to mean?"

Employer: "That's how long I've been waiting.

Ravano: "Waiting for what?"

Employer: "For you to regain consciousness. I wanted you to be awake when I killed you." *separates Ravano's body into five pieces, causing instant death*

Meanwhile, the rest of the party got dumped into a desert, which after some inspection appeared to be the place where things people have lost go.

Ugh.

edited 8th Feb '10 1:49:26 PM by Dreamaniac

ALRIGHT DM! You've earned this.

Difficulty is NOT the only way to make a game good.

Having interesting characters is awesome, but If you make it damn near impossible to talk to them it doesn't matter! It effectively removing them from the game.

If you know that a certain player can manipulate what he does to ALWAYS get what he wants, or at least something positive, maybe you should avoid giving him so much in comparision to the other players. Or at least give other players a freaking HINT as to how to get the same stuff, or equal stuff.

ALSO if the same Power-hungry character is obiviosly Putting his nose in other characters buisness, and only getting what he wants out of them because he wears them down by talking. For half an hour. at them. With no other purpose then to boost himself. GARGH!!!!

Also, again, Difficulty is not the only way to make a good game!

As well, (I'm so abusing those) If you're goal is to give the players powers based off of the personality or theme of the character, there is nothing wrong with giving the paladin the ability to heal after combat. I don't mean Lay-on-hands heal, I mean Regen slowly when you're not taking damage, heal.

AND FOR PETE'S SAKE, not every SINGLE detail has to be realistic. I don't care if the police care chasing us wouldn't ACTUALLY explode, its OK to add some dramatic touches.

</Caps>

Wow. I needed that.

I just wish that his game wasn't actually good, then I could quit it no problem.

DM, you can't tell us that "the point of the game is roleplaying your character" when we barely get any chances to roleplay, and don't get anything for it. We did spend maybe half an hour preparing for a big battle, but that still did nothing for us.

edited 8th Mar '10 2:30:02 PM by EgregiousEric