Why I Shouldn't Be A GM

[Aeridus]

You find yourself in a smoke-filled tavern. A tall man in a black robe sits at the bar, a lute strapped to his back. For some reason, the bar wench is standing in front of the Wheel of Fortune letterboard.

The mysterious minstrel stands up, turns around to face the bar patrons, and suddenly whips off his robe to reveal.... nothing at all. He takes his lute and starts playing showtunes as a manic grin spreads across his face.

The bartender puts his hand over his face, muttering "Not again...", and offers free drinks for people who will stay after seeing the horrific image. A few patrons reluctantly agree to the offer as the bouncer grabs hold of the minstrel. Unfortunately, the minstrel was singing a Charm On Touch song, and the bouncer suddenly feels the intense desire to anally penetrate the crazy minstrel. He gives in to his baser instincts, only vaguely aware of what is going on. The patrons give up and look the other way as they hear moans of pleasure.

[Lulujayne]

Nonsense dearheart, this is exactly why you should be!

[Xero]

I came up with something like that once
it was epic
my CAPP teacher wasn't pleased though

[Kittyboymuffin]

I had a relatively clean idea for why I'm not the GM ... :3

The player uses some kind of Wish spell and asks, very carefully so as not to invoke the Literal Genie, for a Legendary chainsaw-weapon, created by a God of War, that can throw fireballs that do Superb damage with a blast radius which the user specifies at the time of the casting whenever the caster wants and at no other time, that will not break or jam or anything like that, and will not possess him/her or anything else like that, or force him to do anything, or cause any chaotic side effects that causes it to hurt anyone the user doesn't want to hurt (but will hurt anyone who the caster does want to hurt).

So, the GM rolls the dice, and then a column of light descends, in it is a Goddess! Who actually appears to be a fourteen-year-old girl, dressed in pink, and with a bright pink heart on her shirt (or maybe just Skuld); she turns out to be a goddess of psychological warfare. She proffers the wisher what appears to be a Fisher-Price chainsaw, in bright cheery colors, which plays "Pop Goes The Weasel" when active, and throws pink heart-shaped fireballs, but which otherwise fits the wish exactly. Because the wisher never specified that he'd have to have a shred of dignity when using it.

[Lulujayne]

Y'know Muffin, I think I've actually had nightmares that are quite close to what you just described.

[WangyJohn]

Where's that old topic about RPG anecfotes, i would have a few additions.

[LeftTentacleGreen]

This is why I make a demented DM:

For a Ravenloft adventure, I once had adventurers track down a mysterious cult of children who were after five magic items representing Grave, Mist, Blood, Pyre and Insanity.

Revelation #1: The magic items were all rings.

Revelation #2: The power of the rings brought forth a powerful demon with those elemental abilities.

Revelation #3: The demon, once summoned, had personality characteristics and the same name as a certain movie character played by Dom Deluise.

This was the first time any player has ever thrown dice at me while making a saving throw.

[Churba]

I was playing D&D once, and my spellrouge(A conman/rouge, but with a heavy reliance on magical and spellcasting items, and a few spells up his sleeve) was stuck in a old stone shack at a ruined castle with two brother warriors, a Bard, and a Priest.

Incoming - A veritable army of orcs.

Party is running low on Items, having participated in a long running battle, and all that is left is the warriors axe and sword, the wizard is down to three spells(A healing spell, a light spell, and a Magical wall spell), The bard's dagger and the priest's staff. My spellrouge has a longbow he looted in a previous battle, three Fireball arrows(Arrows that act like small fireball spells on impact, used for lighting things on fire at a distance), two Daggers, a Kuri, and some climbing rope.

In the shack - A bunch of barrels of Black powder, and Three crates of Small, Glowing, orange marble things, each crate holding about a thousand marbles

The shack is set out like such -
___ ___
| |
| |
| |
|________|
With a ladder at the back leading to a trapdoor on the

The other characters prepare for battle, what does my character do?

Starts shoving the marbles into the black powder, thinking of using them for shrapnel, and shooting the barrels with the Fire arrows to set them off.

My character Runs fast as possible, with the help of the bard, Stacking the barrels in a pile.
Under the rouge's instructions, the bard writes on the barrels, in orkish, "There is gold in these barrels, which are protected with a spell. Only when the entire battle horde is here, and the horde speaks the magic word "Kaboomba!" will the barrels split open, and much gold will be had by all!"

The orc commander notices the sign, gathers the entire horde around the barrel pile(this is a MASSIVE amount of orcs - as far as the eye can see sort of thing), and commands them, as one, to shout the magic word.
As soon as the word is shouted, my rouge fires at the barrels, and the wizard throws up the wall spell over the front of the shack - well, thank christ for that.

The barrels detonated with the requisite spectacular boom, setting of the marbles.
Ever single orange marble was part of the treasure for the entire quest - Each marble containing the equivalent of a Fireball spell cast by a level 15 wizard.
Kaboomba all bloody right - not an orc left standing.

[Aeridus]

Nonsense dearheart, this is exactly why you should be!

Maybe I'll run a freeform M-rated campaign one day.

And Churba, you have won the millionth internet! As a secondary reward, you get a giant box of puppies. Tentacled puppies.

[Kingofthemorlocks]

In my Cthulhu campaign, a player is soon to find his hand possessed by one of the Great Old Ones, a creature of sadism, perversity and depravity known as Y'golonac. A mouth is going to appear in the palm of his hand, moving in sync with the voice in his head telling him to beat the neighbor's cat's skull in with a brick and jack off in its pulped brains, telling him that a woman's trachea is ribbed for his pleasure, encouraging him to break a female friend's arms and legs, leaving her helplessly screaming for mercy that'll never come, as he rapes her and then takes his pistol and shoots her clit off.

[Foolosophy]

my spellrouge

yay for magic make-up!

[RevChris77]

Years ago (AD&D 1st Ed), we were all 15-20th level, and had finally made it to the island at the end of the adventure.

One of the first things we did was use a Wall of Iron (you could cast them vertically with no supports in our system) as a giant guillotine to stop one of the ships from escaping. We later learned that it contained silks, food, and a lot of other non-water-safe treasure. ~250k gp lost.

Then, we found the keep where some of the high-level bad guys lived. In that final battle, they forted up in some room, and the only thing we could manage to do was get the door open occasionally to shoot spells into the room (and then we'd heal up from the damage we'd taken in the process). Finally, we threw in a Necklace of Fireballs that we'd found and fired in a barrage of our own fireballs, which set off the necklace, whereupon we learned that it was a custom item - containing something like twenty 20-50 die fireballs. We slagged the room. Another ~500k gp lost.

Eventually, we found the secret tunnel to the end boss. We were loaded heavy with loot (portable holes all full "should we dump the gold to make more room for the gems and platinum?" kind of full). Then we met a beholder. My character had just thrown a barrel of Dwarven Alcohol (think Naphtha, or maybe even more flammable) at it, figuring that that stuff in your eyes can't be helpful, but missed (hit a stalactite), and then was hit by the beholder's Fear eye, and dropped all his stuff and took off running. Another character, thinking that the barrel was oil, threw a lantern. The resulting explosion brought down the tunnel roof, killing 3/4 of the party and making the rest drop all of their stuff in order to outrun the ceiling collapse. Another 1M+ gp lost.

When we finally added things up, we'd lost 6 of our 8 party members, destroyed the only ship big enough to sail the seas back to the mainland (having lost the only party members that could teleport or fly that far), and somewhere on the order of 2-3 million gp of loot and equipment. I don't remember how the other guy escaped, but I think I walked back (a Necklace of Adaptation, a Ring of Free Action, and the Mantle of Celestian let you do all sorts of underwater stuff).

[RavenxDrake]

Fave moment so far in DM'ing had to be the "Evil Dragon-bitch(tm)".

The party had heard of a white dragon that was terrorizing a local port city and demanding tribute (inlcuding spices, alchemical supplies, and young male virgins, as well as gold and gems). Upon ariving and meeting with the mayor, they witness an attack firsthand as a huge white dragon strafes the city, showering the city in frozen energy, flashing freezing the populace in retribution against them for trying to She takes her tribute, includeing the mayor's son, and flies off.

The party is determined to catch up with her, so they do some quick searching for magic items knowing they're assulating a prepared dragon in it's layer, and come up with some good stuff. Several flameing weapons (including a new weapon of my Devision, an Inferno longsword for the Palidan, which deals fire damage for weapon damage) and lots of cold protection gear.

They fight thier way up into the mountains where the dragon lives(divination is impossible as the mountain is lined with veins of lead, and teleportation does not work for an unknown reason[Teleport ward spells set up by the dragon]). They fight thier way past several cold themed enemies, frost salamanders, a couple of specially created Glacial Elementals, etc. Their gear is kicking ass and they're feeling pretty invulnerable.

As they work thier way through the cavern network, fending off traps and monsterous guards, the work thier way deeper and deeper, and it slowly beings to heat up in the caves. Finally working thier way down, they trip a final trap and get dumped down a stone chute into the middle of the dragon's treasure room, full of meticulously stacked columns of coins on the bottom floor with chests and piles of equipment on higher stone shelves. Basking in the center of the room, surrounded by scalding jets of steam and guysers of water in a boiling hot volcanic pool is a large red dragon laughing at the party.

She twists a ring on her talon finger as she speaks to the party, taunting them, and she changes, by Alter Self, between several colours of dragon(the ice breath came from a special metabreath spell in the Draconomicon for 3.5, though when I first thought of the character she simply used a staff of Cone of Cold to fake it).

The party was actually one encounter level above the dragon in question, but was improperly equipped for the fight. They worked hard, and even though Evil Dragon-bitch(tm) had several surprised up her scales (the columns of coins, while providing cover from her breath weapon, contained explosive alchemical barrels and alchemists fire, if they hid behind one, she simply breathed through it, igniting the chemicals and creating a flaming shrapnel of molten copper), they were pretty evenly matched and managed to get her down to about 3 HP on a lucky power crit before she dispelled the teleport wards and took off.

The party got several nice custom items from the lair and found most of the kidnapped men alive, but in increasing states of shock and catatonia. The mayor's son was unhurt.

They tousled with her several more times after that, and niether she nor the group was ever quite able to really outdo the other enought to call it a win, it generally ran as a protracted tie...

[Churba]

yay for magic make-up!

Fuck you, I've got Shapely cheekbones.



Can I help if they need a little powder now and then?

[WangyJohn]

Favourite moments in our Hero campaing;

Frreing a kid from a storage full of armed guards (we all had a code against killing). We teleport into the main office room where the kid is. I knock out one guy etc, then the speedster of our team decides it would be a good idea to do a flying tackle at full speed. The guard is knocked out, the DM throws for knockback. The guard flies at the plywood wall. The guard flies through the plywood wall. The guard flies several dozen feet, at a brick wall. Everyone in the storage is looking at us. Long story short, I took several bullets (but it didn't even do body damage, because I was in brick form), got rammed by a forklift, threw said forklift, and finally threatened to blow up everyone in a trailer with a grenade (it was bluff, and it wasn't even an explosive grenade). The kid was teleported to another storage with the half-dead guard. Because the teleporter forgot to say anything to him, he had animated several fashion manequins (he could animate inanimate objects), that had then killed the guard dead. The teleporters comment? "I think we could call this a success"

Few days later, we get to fend off a zombie invasion (animated from Night of the Dead, different guy, and doing it unintentionally). I smashed about 15 of them with a bus, while the teleporter and speedster opened a teleportation hole, that teleported anyone who went into it one kilometer straight up. After they dropped, they became more or less jelly. Another guy in the team (shapeshifter, with the form now used with electricity powers) accidently blew one of the zombies through a door into a nightclub where we had just ordered people to evacuate inside. He fixed the problem fast, but it included blasting the zombies cranial matter around the night club. literally, he used full power...

Next day, we got to fight Predator from the movies. First thing it does, FIRES IT LAZORS at me. he manages to hit me two more times later, but at one point, we cover it with pink paint, shortcircuiting its invisibility chip. My plan was to get it in handcuffs so I could cover its nuke-arm before he decides to use it. Turns out it had so high DCV that I would have needed three ones to hit it(next session, before we started playing, i tried out the dice, guess what I threw?). So instead, we tried to knock it down from the block of flats we were fighting above. Finally I managed to push it down. It didn't take any body damage at all, but was knocked out. We disarmed it (and for a moment contemplated adding the nuke to our equipment. The DM then looked thourgh the sourcebook, and told us we'd need about 900 Hero points (we get about 2-4 per session) to use it. Oh well, it dissapeared magically next morning, so no probs.

We connected the occurances to a local film festval, so the teleporter stole the next reels, burnt them, peed on them, and buried them in the countryside. Meanwhile, after I had transformed back into human form, I had zero body, as, well, I had taken three laser blasts...

Next day, we fought Neo from matrix. I felt sufficiently bad-ass after he hit me, and did zero any type damage, and actually got some stun damage for hitting my brick skin. The teleporter opened a hole for me to grab a car and whack him with it. We were on a roof of a suburban house. CRASH. Whoops. Before we dispatched of the tranch-coated menace, he used a force push to throw the speedster thirty feet through the air.

Next day would be gozilla, so we needed an awnser. The monsters came because a kid (dragged to the theare by his big brother) had nightmares that woke them. Finally the guys decided we could get the older brother grounded. So, we teleported in the house and dropped booze and porn in his room for his mom to find. And high-fived on the adjecsent roof when we heard his mom shouting. The day was saved by booze and porn.

[Aeridus]

That's... convoluted.

[Ghastly]

I was playing D&D once, and my spellrouge(A conman/rouge, but with a heavy reliance on magical and spellcasting items, and a few spells up his sleeve)

My character was a moulin/rouge.

[Xero]

I had an level 3 RO style monk in a custom game

I broke half of a bone temple with a natural 20, hit the monster, it fell over and the dominos effect took over
I got a niffty magical bone out of it though

[ManaUser]

My character was a moulin/rouge.

Part vertical tunnel carved in a glacier by debris and part pink makeup?

[Boring 7]

Heh, magic bone.

I ran a campaign where the party was a Chaotic neutral-turning-evil rogue-turning-wererat, a Lawful Evil Cleric of Vecna pretending to everyone (including the party) to be a Lawful Neutral Cleric of Boccob, and a Chaotic Good Barbarian-going-mage slayer.

Hilarity was bound to ensue anyway, but I added to the mix as best I could.

The angry mind-controlled Ogre fighter was fun, but the real trick was his master, a seemingly normal Evil Wizard (tm) who they killed. Then he showed up again, then he showed up again, and they never did manage to find where all the clones were coming from before the campaign ended.

But my favorite joke of all involved the doppelganger cult. The party cleric/mystic theurge was bolstering his anemic magical might with expendable minions in the form of animated skeletons. The Skeletons themselves were a source of endless amusement because in their "off time" when the Vecnite did not have any active orders for them they would be doing everything from a vaudeville dance (we are unsure where the hats and canes came from) to gambling their own finger bones with various NPC's. (What else would "the help" be doing during downtime?)

Back on track, the party had just finished slaughtering all the cultists in a large warehouse. Fearing "the law" they immediately prepared to run away as inconspicuously as possible. This worried me because there were numerous bound and unconscious captives the party had not managed to search for and/or stumble upon, and they were about to be abandoned and die of starvation.

Then the party hits on the BRILLIANT PLAN of stealing a large covered wagon to hide their illicit skeletal minions, their ill-gotten gains, and themselves from prying eyes. The Vecnite commands the skeletons to get inside the largest crate in the wagon, the skeleton gets inside but does not fit. The vecnite, exasperated, tells me, "Okay, I order him to empty out the crate, get inside, and close the lid behind him."

"All right, the skeleton reaches in, pulls out the bound-and-gagged human, sets him aside, gets in, and closes the lid."

(to the other players) "Okay, here's what we're going to do we-*full 5 second pause* WHAT?!"

Truth be told, that was the most satisfying moment of DMing I have ever had.