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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.

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.

It was a D&D game. The GM ran us through this game that was filled with traps. The catch....every trap and every encounter had to do with lycanthropes. Needless to say the whole party died. Waste of 2 hours.

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.

it was a rifts game and my players were stalking a shifter to the Devil's Gate [he had something we desperately needed to save a phase town from being wiped out and he was also a very bad guy] when we came across a CS armoured battalion, needless to say we went around them. so a few short kilometers away we ran into a CS S&D [seek and destroy] and seeing as we weren't magic users or d-bee's we stopped to ask for directions.

this is when everything started to go bad. really really bad.

the new player to the group [having never met him before that night] comes out of his shell [having said maybe two words up until this point] and he says "i use my prowl skill to hide".

fair enough, he hides and the rest of the party continue on with their conversation with the CS soldiers. the CS are all heavily armed by the way, so we are on our best behavior.

the new player pipes up again "i'm hiding right, they can't see me?"

"yes you are hiding, we have already established that" i say while wondering what this guy has been smoking. So we continue along in our conversation with the CS soldiers who are more than willing to help us take out a shifter that has wandered into their neck of the woods.

the new guy pipes up again "so i'm hiding and they can't see me?"

"yes, we already know that."

"i shoot the CS soldier in the face with my sniper rifle."

at this point everyone pauses and looks at the new guy with a big question mark hanging over our collective heads. "umm you what?"

"i shoot the CS soldier in the face with my sniper rifle, is he wearing a helmet?"

so i have to think about this for a minute "no he has taken off his helmut to be civil." i think i had said as much earlier in the session and the other players confirmed as much. not one to go back on what was already established i left it at that.

so the new guy continues "i'm hiding so they can't see where the shot comes from and i shoot him in the face."

believe it or not the new guy rolled a natural 20 and hits the CS soldier in the face, even after i reminded him of the battalion that was not to far off. needless to say everything went down hill from that point. not to mention the new guy was pretty upset when he was summarily riddled with plasma and grenade fire from the surviving CS soldiers. i figured that after his bone-headed sniper shot the soldiers would have seen where the blast came from. so anyway there is a big ole b***s to the wall brawl and the CS are now in a very very bad mood.

during the raging battle, what remains of the CS S&D team is able to radio for help. shortly after samus and sky-cycle air support arrive and go about skuz-whumping the party.

two of our PC's parrish and the others are so badly beaten up that they can no longer continue with their original quest and are now captured and being interrogated by the CS. not fun let me tell you. the worst of all! despite throwing everything i could think of at the new guy's PC, he manages to survive. i have never seen so many lucky rolls in my life! i even gave him a new set of dice thinking he was cheating, but his friggen luck continued!

then to top it all off, the new guy pipes up again! "i don't think i like Rifts, it's all hack n' slash."

some people's children ... sheesh!

so that was the end of that player, i had an NPC assassinate his PC in their sleep and told him to never return.

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.

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

I think the worst I've ever played in was a D&D game that took place in the Hollow World setting. Our 1st level party spent 20 silver hiring a lizard man guide not knowing it was a pet NPC of the GM. The "guide" took our party out into the swamp, blew on a whistle that didn't make noise (dog whistle? close...) and summoned a group of young dragons (gold or bronze, I can't quite remember). So we mount up on the dragons, because who would turn down a free ride, even if it doesn't make sense, and the "guide" had the dragons kill our horses that we had just bought. Yeah, made sense.

We then flew towards our destination, running into an equal numbered group of young red dragons, naturally. There was a massive battle where our party members did squat (holding on for dear life) and the dragons killed each other, even using breath weapons that didn't hurt any party members. Of course, our side lost no dragons and their side was all killed, so we got an experience reward for the dragons split between our party...naturally. We all hit 2nd level in the air and didn't do anything to deserve it. Nice.

We arrive at the plot location and land, only to find a mine where evil hill giants were enslaving other smaller races to dig gold pieces. Yes, I'm not kidding, they were mining gold pieces, straight from the mouth of the GM. We also discovered, after sneaking past the Hill Giant slavers, that the real masters of this mining operation were dragons! Not only that, they were silver dragons! We discovered this by opening a human sized doorway and finding a silver dragon sleeping on a pile of gold coins! Naturally, there were no other exits in that cavern, so we shut the door quietly and moved on.

Next we found the Mother Of All Treasure Hordes (MOATH, nice acronym) which was a HUGE cavern filled with the before mentioned gold pieces, mined by the slaves for their dragon masters. Not only that, there were magic items mixed in with the gold! It wasn't like "You find a sword that might be magical" it was "What kind of magic item are you looking for?" then the GM consults the book when someone would mention "magical plate armor" and come back with "You find +5 Plate Armor of Missile Deflection!" and we all looked at each other. After that shared moment, we realized that Monty Haul himself was running the game, so we took advantage of it. Naturally.

After discovering and equipping about every magic item in the DM guide, all carefully labeled so we knew what it was, we set back out to do harm. As soon as we left our fantasy shopping spree a large silver dragon charged down the hallway on the attack. There must have been an alarm on the door, like a record shop, that buzzed when you left with an item. Our 2nd level characters rushed bravely into the battle, which we won without a single casualty on our side, and we promptly left with our ill gotten goods. We didn't clean out the rest of the caverns or even free the slave, there was no motivation for it after finding every magic item desired and as much gold as you could carry. The DM just didn't understand, but we didn't care, and the campaign ended right there, thankfully.

It was truly a bizzaro D&D adventure.

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.

I couldnt keep track of all the "Bad" Games I have been in.......
But I will share one of my favorites.

One of my own worst GM experiences, I was running a homebrew Aliens game (Like the movies). And one night a bunch of us players got together and the GM for the night wasnt ready (I dont remember if he was sick or if he just wasnt ready yet.) So they asked me to run a quick Aliens Campaign. Although at the time I had nothing, but I said ok and basically ran them through a remake of the Aliens movie. The players all formed 2 Fire Teams of marines. One player (None to bright) wanted to be a demolitions expert. Well the players make it through the Main complex and head for the reactor. There they come across the Aliens and it devolves into a massive fire fight. The player acting as squad leader calls for a retreat, the Demo player pulls his demo kit and sets about 10 pounds of C-9 (About 4 Times the power of C4) And throws it into the coolant tank beside the primary reactor. (I have a rule in my game that if you want to do something with out anyone knowing you can write it down as a note) He sets the timer for 20 minutes and falls back, not mentioning it to anyone. The squad leader moves the team back to the main complex to pick up the survivors they found. Once they get them the team leader calls for an extraction. (I remind the Demo of his actions) I stated at the begining that an extraction will take about 20 minutes from call to pickup.
The Demo guy then tells the Leader about his "Suprise" Meanwile the bomb now has about 4-5 minutes. The demo guy dosent even know exactly since he didnt bother to check his watch when he Fused the bomb.
Needless to say the other players used the 4-5 minutes to kick the crap out of the demo guy.

So after they meet their flaming end, they want to start over.
And I agree and we start from the insertion and the game is going as planned. Then they hit the reactor again this time captain explosives sets the demo kit with a switch. So it can be triggered remotely.I figure ok. (He then slips me a note that he sets a safety timer for a HALF HOUR!!!!) I even ask him if hes sure and he says "Yup, We will be long gone before then" So the team falls back to the complex to regroup and go after some other survivors they contacted while they where in the Reactor. The Demo guy proceeds to tell them again that he has once again doomed them all.

By this death I was done and wasnt in the mood to run anything. But the
player acting as the squad leader takes me out for a smoke and says "Come on one last time." We talk for a few and finally he begs me into it.
So we go back in and start from the insertion again, As I go around the room finding out what each character is doing, I get the usual. "Grabbing ammo, Lock and loading, check the tracking on my M-56" I get to the demo player and he says "I grab my demo kit" I turn to the squad leader. "And you?" He smiles and says "I pull my service pistol and blow Demo's head off....." of Course everyone but the demo guy thought this was histarical. So with a dead character and my complete lack of intrest in playing with him, he sat and watched us play. Ranting at every oppertunity about how all the characters would wind up in the brig for murder.
Of course with him out of the way the game went off with out a hitch.

I see a theme......it seems that most of these stories are D&D related

Well, when it's the most popular RPG in the world, it's bound to have a larger share of the morons as well as the good RPers

It has nothing to do with the gaming system it is because the WOTC forums are to slow to post complaints.

Not to derail this thread... but what? They have literally hundreds, if not thousands of threads, with people who complain about almost all aspects of Wotc, and gamers in general, in one form or another.

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

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.

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

I know your pain DamonS, I think i may have run it that guys twin.

I had another guy who was a walking rule book, and actually wanted to argue with me about how to run my own game. About 3 years ago I was running a Cyberpunk 2020 (although the year is 2030 in my game) and we had a new player. (Bare in mind I have been running Cyberpunk since the days of 2015(early 1990's), and since then have almost completely rewrote the game, Fixing the system, new charts weapons/ Roles/ Vehicles you name it. Basically making the game the way I wanted it) So I proceed to make new characters for the players (I think about 4 or 5 if i remember right) From the get go this guy starts saying "Thats not in the book." Or my personal favorite "That dont exist." So I explain to him that I have spent years reworking the game and it will be different. Even then the guy wants to argue, even going as far as trying to quote rules right from the book. Already I am getting sick of this guy, but we make it through the character generation prossess and start playing. Now I have a little rule of mine and its (As little rolls as possible, I prefer Role-Playing, to Roll-Playing. If its something important I make the characters roll, but anything less I dont bother) And we play for roughly an hour, through this time the characters are doing the usual, outfitting weapons and one buys a van and drives the group to meet a contact. During this time the new guy does very little and just seems to sit and pout. Ocassionally just rolling his eyes. By this time I am tired of this guys attitude and start passing him up in turns. The driver player is taking the group by van to meet their contact. Now the in game timetable got a little messed up so I told the Driver that they get stuck in traffic for awhile (So the time table gets back on track) Then the new guy nearly yells "OH COME ON!" Of course this suprises all of us. And he proceedes to rant about how I have the driver in rush hour traffic and dont even make him roll a drive skill. I tell the guy im not going to bother with a drive roll for something as lame as traffic. He then continues to go off about how you cant change the rules of a game just because it suits youu. That the game rules, are laws and if you dont like them you shouldnt play. Then the guy goes off about how he has played for 3 years (I have played Cyberpunk for over 10 years at this point) and he knows all the rules by heart and that Im just a noob and dont even own any books (Since my game as been compressed into a huge file book with all the info I need so I dont have to carry 20 pounds of books everywhere I go) I considered arguing with the guy but I didnt have the will power (Or Deoderant) for this fight. So I turn to the other players and say his character has just had a heart attack. Immediatly the other players start dividing the guys gear. OF course this pisses the guy off to no end and starts yelling at everyone. So the guys whose apt we were playing at kicks him out, and as he is leaving we can hear him out on the sidewalk yelling and talking to himself on the way to his car.

Mine, A Paranioa game that was supposed to be my "First GMing" game. It was sold to me by a friend as a fun and quirky game, where the playser are preaty much there to make each other laugh and stab eachother in the back! It's easy to gm as it's mostly your call, but for sticky situations there si alwasy the handy guide pages. So I went and prepped a quick game, I was going to run just one night, a fill as the regular GM was sick and had a test the next morning so was forced to try to recoup and study at the same time.

The gaming area we had to use was a meeting room on campus, rather rice in my opinion, the room was about 10-12' acrost, and I'd guess about 20' from the dorr to the back wall, where the posium the Gm used was placed. The table was the standard corp meeting room look, Oval that left enough room for the chairs to be occupide and still ahve traffic flow around it, and bolted to the ground. The chairs were realy comfortable roller types, abit taller than average, not as tall as a bar stool, but taller than normal. On the right from the Gm's Podium along that wall, from the back wall to almost the door, was a blackboard, that was used to detail beter anythoughts or who combats as they played out. On the left was a bank of bookcases, that wre usual locked, their contents shown through plexiglass doors.

I had it all layed out, as much as I ever do at least, and it was going great, I had excuses for them being able to get their Clones out to the rest of the group, I had a list of "simplistic and outdated" way to explain the tech that they would encounter, and right in the middle of it, the "Leader" gets told that they must check out ( to us a hunters lodge) an possible "Commie" weapon Depo. So our party beatstick, I'll call him by his usual "inspired charactor name" Thag Mc Pop-n-squish, said "I walk through the door!". Now I dunno if anyone here has played paranioa, but one of the first rules of it, the fundemental ideas is, that if the Gm can twist it, he must do so with a side of dry wit!

So I check the book, I wanna see what will be needed, and I was shocked he didn't try the knob, what was done at the last "commie depo" they encounted, when the gun bunny opened the door in propper Military fasion, only to get a suprise grenade from behind, the party leaders if I recall correctly. It said nothing on it, so i checked his sheet, it was the look of any typical brainless "mungo follow orders, mungo punch good!" type, low to no social, low to no anything that wasn't tied right to combat, and his combat stats were godlike (I'll admit I didn't watch him create his char, nor anyone, I "trusted" them with that duty, everafter, I watch.)

So I had him do a quick check, strength based, which I figured he couldn't fail, I mean he was built to take on anything in combat, but be a fool anywhere else, and as he pushes anything to combat, that or sleeps through RP when he's not trying to start combat, intra-party or with NPCs.

Lo and behold he passes the check, skunks it compleately. So I start to walk around the table, he was on the right from the poduim, two chairs from it, I was decribng what happend, and i emtioned that he nned to take a single point of damage as he turned a Solid oak door into stack of scattered solid oak toothpicks (I had a love of Hollywood theatricks back then, still do to be honest) and I was decribing the rest of the scene with my backtward him when one of the others shouted "Fletcher! Duck!" and I hit the floor, i didn't turn and see shy, I just dropped, and I'm glad I did.

As I hit the floor, the chair Thag was in went sailing by, and into the bookcase, bouncing off the plexiglass doors withnarri a scratch and ending up back on the other side of the room. I got up horrified, I mean, come on, what the heck! He just grunted something out about "he shouldn't have to take damage", and stormed from the room.

maybe I'm too nice, for a verbaly rude person that is, but I still game with him to this day. Everytime anyone mentions "That game" (Paranoia) I look at them like I'm here to administer their dayly dose of beatings, and start rambling/ranting about "The Chair", needless to say, I won't touch this game anymore.


I've had disruptive players, rules lawyers, drama queens, and god only knows how many other types in my games, but nothing is as bad the chair incedent. He got some help from the school shrink, and my friends talked me out of pressing charges, but I remind him, next time he goes for a chair, it better take me out perminantly, cause if/when I am able, I'll return fire, only mine will be a Lazy Boy at point blank, not a comphy office chair from a few meters.

This is the worst I have, I have others, Rules layering, players taking ingame acts too far (not this far but <beep> close), games of magic that neerly resulted in fights, and times I just wanted to throttle some sod who pushed the idea of "creative roleplaying" too far and made me hate anyting diceless.

It was MERPs. I hate MERPS. (middle earth role-playing sytem). I spent 2 hours learning the sytem, building a character...a monk...to get in 1 fight, of which there was only 1 action. I attempted a flying kick, missed, fell and broke both my legs. The enemy simply walked over and cut my head off.

That system out right sucks! Stupid damage charts.!

My buddy GM'd his first Rifts game and made the mistake of allowing characters to use whatever characters they wanted. He approved them all automatically without perusal. So the party was as follows:

A mid-level Glitterboy
A sixth level Dragon Hatchling
Some home-brew mutant with oodles of MDC and supernatural strength
An adult horned dragon.
Then finally my character: A first level Shifter from the RMB.

The first (and last) major enounter of the game: We come upon Xiticix (sp) hive.

All the other characters annihilated a small pack of them while the Adult Dragon brews a spell. My turn comes. I fire my laser rifle. "Yes! I got 'em. Take that!" I dealt a whopping 17 MD to one of the bugs.

A second later the Adult Dragon finishes his spell and summons a hurricane which wipes out the entire hoard and demolishes the hive. That was the end of that game.

wow, that was, kinda, llama...
I'm sorry man...

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!

I've had bad GM's and bad players, The reason (so many years ago) I stopped playing AD&D was when a house cat killed my mage. You can imagine the language that was used when the GM said the cats claws do 1d2 each and it has 4 claws my 1st level mage had 6 hp. He died from a loving embrace of a fur ball. Most of the other players soon left the group after I did.

Wow, J, that's a terrible MERPS story. I played Rolemaster for awhile, and let me tell you, those critical tables are a *****. I have never been angrier than when my bada$$ dark elf sorcerer got attacked by a couple of panther golems he should have been able to easily dispatch but, instead, one of them got a lucky swipe in and clawed his effing eyes out.

My worst campaign was D & D, too. My freind's neighbor was a gamer back in the day so my friends and I got together with him to game. The guy would makes rules up off the top of his head as he went along. I had a sixteenth level character get taken out by 6 hp of damage "to the back of the head," like there's critical tables and hit locations in D&D. He was very creative but eventually his bizarre behavior made us leave.

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.

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

Yah I had the same problem, sept I got killed my a common rat, my first "fight" 5 minutes into playing........... God I hate D&D

Well ya see, there's your problem. Run one problem through the other. The Cat kills the rat, the rat weakens the cat, and you kill the cat.

Easy as Pie.

"At first level I'll challenge a Dragon but please GM keep the party away from any pet store, I beg you let us die with honor."

WHERE WAS THAT BIT OF INFORMATION YEARS AGO!!!!!!

Hah! No way! The moderator Gods are mocking me! Now Sinsapaugh's vulgarity [synonym for male genitalia] got changed to "poke." Curse you, moderator Gods! You can't rewrite history!!!

It makes me laugh sometimes. First off, because the words it substitutes in ususally don't make sense, and make me sound like a total dork. Then i laugh some more, because i didn't even realize what i was saying would be considered "bad" by some...and then i wonder what kinds of things my 5-year-old must repeat to his Nana, because i apparently lack the ability to censor myself

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.

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.

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

I have mixed feelings about this group...

It consisted of a long time roleplayers- a guy, his fiancee, and her sister. The guy was DM and he was all about roleplaying, didnt care much about the rules and couldnt understand them. His girl was the Anti-Munchkin munchkin, taking Bards(read rogue scholars) and trying to make them powerful enough to mind control the party without being of any use against most enemies.She constantly berated her boyfriend into bending the rules. Well for 5 minutes at a time inbetween telling the same 10 stories about RPGs past countless times. And stopping a session to buy a waffle iron.

But I will always fondly remember the cursed Treant(treeman) that was woodshaped into an evil spicerack, and the night they all battled to redeem his twisted soul...

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.

Most of this seems like interpersonal conflicts. Which makes a ton of sense given the hobby we all seem to be doing.

I have a mountain of bad sessions for the same reasons.
But my complaint is actually somewhat rules related. This is how I really got turned off of Dungeons and Dragons. I started playing in 2nd ed,and got sick of it by 3.5.

Our G.M. was a good guy,loved the game had excellent quality story lines and a world thats as epic as lord of the rings yet original and completely seperate. He had been working on the thing since he was 12 (he's nearly 30).He has run countless campaigns using his home brewed world as a back drop. All my prior experiences in this game world were amazing! They made me truly want to role play.

I'm talking about the kind of games where you have a **** week and your down and exhausted and you go to the game and come back actually feeling refreshed. We've all had em,but there rare.

Now this was the case for nearly a year. With us showing up and him delivering every time.
It was two of us playing. A human sorcerer of royal blood, (the grandson of a previous character)his name was Avalar. And a Half-Orc Ranger named Imsh. I played Imsh. I loved that character,I wrote down every single hit he took and its location from the start to when I stopped playing him.
I could go in to detail about how awesome these two characters were,but so could we all, right?
I show up one day and find out using a bunch of rules option books,he has massively over hauled the entire way we play...

here are the changes that I remember:
I dont like ranger anymore you have to be a prestige ranger (I was like okay not entirely out of character,could be fun)

All magic is done with spell points (in the worst possible way: when you run out of spell points your character is exhausted. And pretty much cant do anything physical)

ALL armor is damage reduction (so my ranger went from an ac 16 to ac 12,with 4 points dr. This also means an ogre goes from AC 15 to 11 or so with something in the nieghborhood of 11 points of dr)

Your stats are too high your characters will be remade with 32 point buy (he says to the guy who has 3 stats that provide any kind of bonus 22str(2points to it from lvl),16con,14dex respectively. When many other characters in the game world routinely had more than one eighteen)

And there were many more that I dont remember. All of a sudden things became a LOT harder to do,even simple things. And then he had to fudge his rolls just so we survived.And this was going on almost all the time.

Understand I dont have a problem with house rules or optional rules of any kind. And hey sometimes fudging your rolls has to happen.But thats something as a G.M. you should be "getting away with" because when its to obvious you know the game is going to suck. But this effectively PURGED his game. So this game wich had a strong sense of narrative and dense storyline suddenly and abruptly stopped. It became not worth the trip.
And then a seemingly endless spree of pick up games began. And I completely lost interest in D&D.

I played in a group run by a guy who writes gaming books for another company. He never uses the standard system, he turns D20 into DNightmare with random rolls needed to even begin fighting (not ini rolls). The game changed every two weeks -space adventure-aladin style middle eastern-gurps fantasy with all the dice rolls being backwards. It was horrible, and to top it off the two husband wife combos started hating each other over a pregnancy (in real life), and the two that didn't leave the group always started fighting, then the girl would leave to go take care of the child. It was so horrible.

To start off, I was running my first real Campaign in 3rd Ed. DnD. I had run other games, but mostly they where one nighters and really all we did was joke around and get nothing done.

So we play a couple adventures when we come to a old dwarven mine where they want to find a magical weapon. The search the upper levels and they fight some orcs and what not. Then they come across a room with only two ways out, going back, or going through an iron door. I ask, after they searched the room if they wanted to use the door.

So they try and, seeing as the door was locked, I tell them so. So the rogue trys to pick it. No sucess. They try again. He fails by barely one point. I hint him in that the almost has it. Then guess what the decide to do. The pack up and leave. It ended a big adventure right when they almost solve it. No fun.

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.

Shadowrun? Old School. I did go through this one DnD campaign when I was, like 13. My friend's brother was a DM, he and his gang were about 17. He wouldn't let us play with them unless we all played pudgy barbarians with straight 13s for stats. So me and my freinds decided to have our revenge by constantly having our characters act like idiots, ruin dramatic parts of the story, and irritate other players. Good times.

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

Setting the Stage

The world was set up that the CS and NGR has an exchange program in which they will ship troops over to one another’s side to aide in one another efforts. The group dynamics were weird anyway, as the GM asked for each of us to play the particular characters editing and changing the storyline as it go’s. He had people playing CS military OCC’s and then highly magical OCC’s and even had a dragon in the group his simple phrase is, “they get along.”

So the campaign starts out and takes place in the NGR territory where the NGR mobile base tank from the NGR book he upped the size by about x5 making it a massive moving fortress of death. So he has the group meet and instantly become friends (no RP required it seemed) and go off saving this super-fortress from being destroyed by the gargoyle invasion that seems to be happening. So after defeating … 5,000+ gargoyles by themselves and the aide of the fortress that later on fired it’s main weapon and shot right through the team which didn’t harm any of us but he described it as the SDF-1 Main cannon. The thing that obliterates anything it strikes.

So we are given grant awards, and oddly the ruler of the NGR … which is cyborged out John Paul 2nd, yes the Pope that died years ago as the ruler. The campaign quickly takes a religious turn as the entire group becomes … holy, in his mind holy means EVERYONE even the cyborgs of the group become magical and gain powers. One of these powers was played by the cyborg of the group who got this energy wave ability, right out of dragon-ball z, in which he can shape it so it only affects those he wants and does something like 3d4x10, per hit … mind you he could do this every action at will no PPE cost.

So somehow the campaign takes a quick turn to go into this series of rooms or caverns, in which the group has to trail past creatures, traps and who knows what. The best part about it is the GM placed these disks say about … 5 feet in diameter and if you stand on them it quite literally acts as a save point. It regenerates, repairs, re-arms your character AND if you die you re-spawn right there. So the group quickly taking on a morbid turn, decided to simply start trying to bull rush and run through the little maze he set up which brought the 2 session game to a close with the GM being spiteful and getting even. When the CS Special Forces member had enough, he didn’t like magic and didn’t like D-bee’s tried to commit suicide, oh BTW all SDC people had become minor MDC creatures.

The CS SF pulled the pins on the belt of grenades he was wearing while inside of a NGR glitter boy. Okay, I admit I was playing the CS SF member, and I know my explosives, I had 6 plasma grenades strapped to his chest inside power armor. Lets see 1d6x10 per, in a confined zone … ouch. Guess that I only have 67mdc, and he lived, I rolled near max damage and I lived. The GM pulls me aside (or well outside of the place it was being hosted and tells me) “Why are you doing this, well wait never mind, you don’t kill yourself however you do re-spawn in front of the CS Special Forces Operations Center in Chi-town, but those Dog Boys start sniffing and look right at you… enjoy” and left it at that, the group after that quickly committed suicide, barring the awkward immortality the group gained the morbid aspects continued with group members killing each other in very … interesting yet awkward ways. Sense then the player group has not seen the particular player.

The funny note he returned to play in another gamming system and ended up insulting, challenging and then getting his character magically blown to little bits, yet complained it was only teasing. Well that’s my story

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...

Yeah, well the game was pretty bad after mentioning it to one of the players from that campaign, he reminded me that once the CS Special Forces Member tried to kill himself and … successfully yet unsuccessfully blew himself up. One of the members of the team who could do like 5d6 MDC punches pretty much went, “Hey who wants to die” and pretty much pulped people to death, of coarse nothing happens and his character was hauled off by the NGR holy police and shot …

That was one game, another game was a Star-Wars game while not related to rifts bares mention in boarder line stupid and obviously retarded. The GM obviously liking the SW campaign but had an itchy case in how he wanted the group to follow the storyline he gave. (Rail-roading the group) Long story short the group ended up running into some sith, badass who pretty much showed the group how pathetic and un-important they were. So our runner who at this point was sick and tired of it charged the sith, this full blown badly guy wielding two sabers. Kicks him out of the way, knocks him out and then realizing he did too much damage to him healed him using the force.

Sense both of these episodes, both of these people the person form the first campaign and this SW’s one were expelled out of the group. Some of us felt bad… for a few minutes after shaking out heads and making plans for the next campaign.