…I seem to recall a thread here that described a hapless player in a superhero RPG surviving an explosion in a subway car (Through some “Creative” interpretations of the game rules by the other sympathetic players), but being left singed, and wearing only a pair of armored gauntlets.
I’ve looked all over for that thread, but I’m afraid it was erased during one of the times the message board was down. A pity. It recounted an impromptu Elf-lynching, as well. THAT was interesting. :eek:
Ranchoth
I’ve been gaming for the past 8 years or so, both as a player and as a GM. Sadly, I can’t think of one story of staggering idiocy at the moment. I’ve contracted a cold that is kicking my ass mercilessly at the moment, so I’m not really in top form. I will say however, that there’s a very good reason why the announcement that somebody had come up with a plan in one of my gaming groups was immediately followed by another player asking (in a bad "We don’t need no stinkin’ badges accent), “Eez it a bad plan, boss?” The proper response was, “Oh, de very worst, Pepe, de very worst!”
None of us could remember how exactly that started, but it was a fixture of our gaming sessions…and we did manage to come up with some plans that were an offense to logic and common sense. Why do they always seem like good ideas at the time?
Anyway, in lieu of my own amusing tales of gross incompetence, I’d like to share the following link with you. The author has an archive of stories in the same vein as this thread. I laughed until my ribs hurt the first time I read this.
Probably my worst blunder was when I played Call of Cthulhu years ago. I was playing a Professor of Architecture at Miskatonic, and the “villain” of the campaign was Dr. Isreal Fiskeman, head of the Science Department. He’d be there foiling our investigations by casting spells and whatnot. My character got jealous, and wanted a spell of his own, and finally came across one for summoning dimensional shamblers.
After a disaster which led me to flee to my home and lock myself in, I kept hearing these strange noises outside, and was convinced that monsters were trying to break in and grab me, so I brought out the Summon Dimensional Shambler scroll and started reading from it. The GM then asks me, “Do you have the Control spell?” I said “What Control spell?”
2nd worst D&D session I was in — joined a group that explored Tomb of Horrors. These were some serious Freudian cases involved here…the GM had a female paladin NPC accompany the party, and she basically held their hands for them and pointed out any traps they were about to stumble across. At one point the session was held up for 20 minutes as one of the players was arguing with the GM over taking 2D6 damage from falling debris when he kicked down a door. We got all the way to the end where the Demi Lich was located (because the female paladin had the power to teleport us there), and as we were discussing what to do, the GM said that the female paladin (that’s what he called her, too. No name, just the “female paladin”) went ahead and hit the thing with her Sword of Disentegration while we were arguing and killed it.
First worst — I sat in on a session where the player next to me showed me his sheet and all his stats were 25s. I said “How’d you get all 25s?” He said “wishes.” I said “I thought wishes only gave you a tenth of a stat point.” He said “That’s right!” It was because the corps group of players were worshippers of Ishtar, and she liked them so much she gave them 7 wishes a day. I said that was bogus. Another one of the cor eplayers agreed, saying they should only have 3 wishes a day. I was gone soon afterwards.
This example is short and sweet. High level campaign set in the Dark Sun milieu. We decided to give my own campaign world a bit of a break so I could do some more development.
We had all read the Dark Sun novels (we were 15, so sue us). Naturally there was a mul gladiator in the party, and naturally he was a melee monster. And wore a full harness of braxat plate mail.
Braxats are large, powerful, and stupid, yet they are a threat even to a relatively high-level party when they travel in groups.
And a group is exactly what the party found, minding its own business. The general vote was to ignore them and move on. But the gladiator wanted a fight. So he charged. Naturally the rest of the group backed him up.
What he evidently forgot about was his armor.
Maeglin: So you are going to charge into a party of braxat wearing their skin as armor?
Gladiator: Sure, why not?
I was nice, I really was. He had nearly 200 hp, and he dealt out a staggering amount of damage.
He was dead within two or three rounds.
Old FASA Star Trek campaign. Landing party is in trouble on a colony world; colonists have tied them up and are field-testing illegal drugs on them. Caitian PC has a bad reaction to the drugs (it doesn’t help that all the Caitians in the campaign were played as if “Caitian” was synonymous with “Kzinti”) - in the resulting confusion, a PC briefly grabs a communicator and gets the beginnings of a distress call off to their starship.
So, how does the highly trained, highly professional Starfleet executive officer, currently on the bridge, respond to the abortive distress call? Beam down a security team? Run sensor scans? No…
“Phaser banks! Wide angle fire! Stun the ENTIRE colony!”
(The subsequent board of enquiry was fun.)
Betwen the ages of 10 and 14, I was a very bad dungeonmaster to several groups of bad players.
Aside from the usual Monty-Haul campaign stuff (never gave much thought to how a party of four was carrying around over 3 billion pieces of gold bullion…), I presided over several incidents so spectacularly awful, I’m almost ashamed to brag about them here 
For instance, my party killed several of the gods described in the original Legends and Lore. I think they were third-level when Loki went down.
My parties always ran out of rations the first night of the campaign, and nobody would mention it ever again.
By far the best (worst?), though, was one time when I rolled the random encounter “sheep.” One of the party members – and this was a first-level party of a new campaign – decided to butcher them for extra XP. At 12 years old, it didn’t occur to me that the sheep would run, or at least need a morale check.
I had the sheep attack back in full force. The entire party was wiped out.
In junior high, I remember the game in which we killed a giant rattlesnake. As we were searching for a lair (hey, even snakes like shiny treasure, right?), the thief said, “I inject myself with the rattlesnake’s poison.”
“What?!” we all said.
“Just a little bit of it,” he insisted. “I want to build up an immunity to rattlesnake venom.”
I trust, however, that you’ve all heard the inimitable tale of the Head of Vecna? If you haven’t, go read it now. It’s the funniest stupid player story EVAR!!
Daniel
I think your DM was being unreasonable here. I’ve picked multiple, heavily trapped locks in the middle of a melee. I’m not talking tabletop either–it was in a LARP. We were outnumbered by nastier things than kobalds, too–unlimited regenerating gargoyles and werewolves were the order of the day. My team formed a defensive rank behind me while I sprawled in the dirt and picked the locks.I only took about three hits the whole time–strategy works.
As for my own stories–
In a battle with Lloth (yes, that Lloth):
The cavalier has our ranger skewered on his lance (Lloth was controlling the ranger) and storm giant strength. He decided that flinging the ranger at the Spider Queen was an interesting, if not actually good, idea.
Cavalier: “He’s wearing +2 armor. Does that give me a to-hit bonus?”
Later in the same fight, the cavalier is considering a strategic withdrawal (via a Rod of Sanctuary):
Cavalier: “Where’s the ranger?”
Cleric: “Your mount is standing in him.”
Cavalier: “Oops.”
When he finally used the Rod, he accidentally left two of us behind–a renegade drow fighter-mage and an out-of-spells druid against a (very battered) avatar. We won–just barely–and beat the crap out of the cavalier when he came back, besides.
Then of course, there was the fighter who took a dump on an altar to Lathander in our low-level silly campaign. That campaign also boasted a badly-wounded 2nd level priest chasing a squad of 4th-level drow fighters (sheer dumb luck let him get away with it).
I DM’d with this one player that was just neck-wringingly frustrating. His character, a brawny meat-headed fighter, was obsessed with the possibility of there being hidden treasure. He would search everything in every room we went into no matter how mundane.
Me: You are walking thru a pasture
Barzon: Are there haystacks?
Me: Umm, sure…
Barzon: I go search the haystacks for treasure
Me: It’s a big pasture, over a hundred haystacks
Barzon: That’s ok, we search them all.
Rest of party: groan No, you search take the three days to search them, we’re riding on, you can catch up with us at the dungeon.
And on like that.
The worst was when the party entered an inn for the night and sent Barzon to stable the horses.
Barzon: I put our horses in a stall. Are there others there?
Me: Yes, the inn is very busy, probably a dozen horses.
Barzon: I take out my sword and kill them all.
Me: WHAT?
Barzon: I kill them. Treasure you know.
Me: What are you talking about.
Barzon: Hidden treasure. Innkeepers will feed gems to the horses to hide them.
Me: Come again?
Barzon: Gems, they really do that. They stuff gems into a sheeps bladder, then make the horses swallow it, that way they can get them through the city gates without the tax collectors noticing. Just like cocaine smuggling at the airport you know?
Me: Oh god…
Barzon: Cool. Yiaaaghhhhh! a few moments later Did I find any gems?
A long time ago, Johnny Angel posted the finest RPG story I’ve ever read, the story of the Mighty Honknar. Look on his story, and marvel in awe:
<hijack>
Check out Dork Tower, if you’re interested in RPG humor. It’s not entirely RPG-based, but it’s consistently funny, and you don’t need any knowledge of any of the games to enjoy the humor. Nothing knocks a bunch of wanna-be Star Wars characters out of character faster than the opportunity to massacre Jar-Jar Binks, for instance… 
</hijack>
My players generally liked me as the Dungeon Master because I told a good story and allowed plenty of hack-n-slash, as long as the party new what they were dealing with.
One thing about D&D is that I sometimes found it unreasonable to come up with a back story; why were the characters together, and wouldn’t they be better off doing other things? This was especially true since two of the players insisted on being evil, and often found themselves at odds with the clueless Ranger played by one of the other players.
After they had been hired to retrieve a powerful magic sword (which they did), they found themselves in the good graces of the local royalty, and enjoyed some fine times before needing additional employment.
Knowing of their heroics, a band of retiring merchants hired our heroes to escort them south to a large port city. From there, the heroes would sail with the merchants to an island with a small town where the merchants would live out the rest of their lives fat and happy, and the heroes would be well-paid and respected. In addition, a neighbouring island was the setting for an already-published AD&D module, so I had their next adventure in mind.
Once they reached the island, they decided to mutiny. They killed the hapless merchants and murdered most of the crew. The PC’s managed to flee the enraged townsfolk and remaining crew under the cover of an illusion created by an NPC Illusionist whom the (evil) Magician had charmed into helping them.
They took a small launch and escaped around the back side of the island with much of the merchants’ wealth.
Unfortunately, now they’re stranded on this island. It’s too far to journey in anything less than a serious sailing vessel. The Illusionist, having been captured by the townsfolk after the charm spell wore off, spilled the beans, and gave vivid descriptions of the other party members via her magic.
… so now they’re hunted men on an island, and have no way off.
Since Wes, the Ranger, felt that his character would really want to leave the party, he wanted a new character: a Monk. Not that I think that monks belonged in my setting, but we figured he might be a one-off weirdo.
I then hatched a brilliant plan to get the game back on track: the PC’s took their small boat to a nearby island which they were sure was uninhabited. I placed a small band of pirates there, and set it up so the characters might have a chance to overwhelm them and take their ship. As a bonus, the pirates had a prisoner: the aforementioned Monk! Were the players to free him, he’d join their party and they’d have enough warm bodies to crew the pirate’s small vessel and return to the mainland.
The campaign ended when the PC’s attacked that night. The Ranger and Thief moved in to attack the sentries while the (evil) Warrior and (evil) Magician were to back them up. The evil players backed off, leaving the hapless Ranger and Thief to their doom, and with over half the party dead, there was no point in continuing the storyline.
What a bunch of losers!
My character was in a party that needed to meet up with our contact in enemy territory. We found someone, in a crowded city, who appeared to have somehow kidnapped or otherwise done away with our contact, so we subdued him and began to interrogate him. Obviously, we didn’t want to kill him, so I threatened him by pointing a gun at his thigh. Then I realized that that would make too much noise, so I put a pillow up to the gun.
GM: “He refuses to talk.”
Me: “Okay, I pull the trigger. The pillow will muffle the sound.”
GM: “He screams! He screams bloody murder! The whole city can hear it!”
Me: “Wait! I mean…Err…crap.”
In a friend’s game with only two players:
GM: “You’re a ways outside town. You need supplies, but you’re low on money. You see a hobbit boy, riding a sheep by a stream.”
Player1: “I go up to the boy and demand he give me all his money.”
GM: “Uh, okay, he says you’re bad men and he’s going to tell his dad. he starts riding away.”
Player1: “Oh no! I shoot the sheep out from under him!” [rolls dice]
GM: “You missed the sheep, and [rolls] you hit the boy. He’s dead.”
Player2: “Uh…we get some rope and tie rocks around his neck and throw him in the stream to hide the evidence.”
GM: “The stream isn’t really deep here, you discover, when you throw him in. A foot is still sticking out of the water. A Hobbit man appears around the bend. 'Now where’s that son of mine…Oh no my son’s drowning!”
Player2: “We can’t let him find out! I attack with my sword!” [rolls]
GM: “Okay, he’s dead too now…”
My character was in a party that needed to meet up with our contact in enemy territory. We found someone, in a crowded city, who appeared to have somehow kidnapped or otherwise done away with our contact, so we subdued him and began to interrogate him. Obviously, we didn’t want to kill him, so I threatened him by pointing a gun at his thigh. Then I realized that that would make too much noise, so I put a pillow up to the gun.
GM: “He refuses to talk.”
Me: “Okay, I pull the trigger. The pillow will muffle the sound.”
GM: “He screams! He screams bloody murder! The whole city can hear it!”
Me: “Wait! I mean…Err…crap.”
In a friend’s game with only two players:
GM: “You’re a ways outside town. You need supplies, but you’re low on money. You see a hobbit boy, riding a sheep by a stream.”
Player1: “I go up to the boy and demand he give me all his money.”
GM: “Uh, okay, he says you’re bad men and he’s going to tell his dad. he starts riding away.”
Player1: “Oh no! I shoot the sheep out from under him!” [rolls dice]
GM: “You missed the sheep, and [rolls] you hit the boy. He’s dead.”
Player2: “Uh…we get some rope and tie rocks around his neck and throw him in the stream to hide the evidence.”
GM: “The stream isn’t really deep here, you discover, when you throw him in. A foot is still sticking out of the water. A Hobbit man appears around the bend. 'Now where’s that son of mine…Oh no my son’s drowning!”
Player2: “We can’t let him find out! I attack with my sword!” [rolls]
GM: “Okay, he’s dead too now…”
I was in a group of power-mad Champions gamers once. Everyone concentrated mostly on making indestructible combat gods (myself included 
). On our very first adventure we realized…none of us could do more than run. To get from place to place we all had to pile into our archer’s jeep or call a cab…
My very first D&D character was half human, half “Leopard Man” (character was female but this was 2nd Edition, so…), and the first session had us in a bar. I took exception to something another patron said (something about my tail, I believe) and decided I was going to start a bar brawl. Ooh, first combat ever. Look sharp. Okay, we’re starting with nothing, so I want to arm myself, right?
So I asked what a broken beer bottle does and, the DM said 1d4. However, this was a level 1 character and I rolled poorly. I ended up damaging myself instead.
Did I mention my character was half Leopard Man? Guess what the claws she already had were capable of doing. Yep, 1d4. :smack:
Survived, but in light of the quality of my strategic thinking, I can’t really claim credit for that.
Casting teleportation spell for travel from IMHO to The Game Room.
When we are low level, there is a reason I name my horse “Emergency Rations”.
A couple of years back, same campaign, I was set to run an NPC Wizard along with my Bard, just because the GM had a lot of other things to do. Well, most members of the party had some basic fire resistance, and we were fighting two bad guys and getting our asses kicked, so I dropped a fireball on top of the group hoping we’d survive and they wouldn’t.
Turned out they were actually Devils and had more fire resistance than us. :smack:
Also turned out that I rolled exceptionally well on the damage roll and dropped every member of the party except the fighter. :smack: :smack: :smack:
The GM sped up the deliverance by the local wizards guild that was planned for a couple of rounds later if we hadn’t won by then (on the basis that we were wrecking the town with the battle).
A couple of sessions back, we were trying to get into a place in the War of the Burning Sky campaign setting, but were getting peppered by archers atop a tower. Our party Warlock (the player’s characters are often a little suicidal, this being his fourth character in this campaign) ran into the tower, up the stairs, threw open the trap door…
And got absolutely murdered in one volley of arrows.
He fell to the bottom of the tower, where I was just walking in the door. Fortunately for him, I was able to pull off Elegy Unwritten* and restore him to life.
I was GM’ing a Battletech game once where the two players were going head to head. In the first game, Mike finds a reinforced concrete building, hops up on top in a lightweight mech and uses his vantage point to unleash fiery death upon Ken.
The second match, Ken finds a building and decides to emulate this by jumping up on top. A wooden building. He falls through the two floors and crashes into the basement, damaging both of his mech’s legs. Then Mike blows the crap out of the building, collapsing it on Ken. Then Mike sets it on fire and jumps on it. Then Ken stopped playing.
These situations are usually my husband’s characters and it was always his dwarves too.
We were in Underdark and came upon a massive cavern with a large castle in the middle. Fires could be seen, torches and guards seen patrolling past the arrow slits and a large wooden gate in the center of the front wall. There are 6 of us and this castle must hold several hundred.
While were huddled in an alcove outside the cavern discussing what to do the dwarf gets bored. We’re used to that, normally he just wanders away and we find him sharpening his axe on a squirrel or something but apparently he couldn’t find anything to amuse himself with so he marched up and knocked on the front door.
This was a packaged adventure and the DM actually brought it out to show us the line in the adventure which read “The most colossally stupid thing the PC’s can do is knock on the door” I believe we left him to his fate that day and travelled in the opposite direction.
Not quite in the spirit of the OP, but my favourite D&D memory:
We were travelling through a forest and one of our party members started having cursed dreams. This resulted in him being convinced that the trees were trying to take over the world and were going to attack. Each day his ravings got worse and soon the jests we were making weren’t enough to counteract the irritation his behaviour was causing. So we plotted. The three women in the party went out on a hunt for berries as we were setting up camp for the night. What we were really doing was piling fallen leaves. Lots and lots of them. We left them wrapped in our cloaks just outside of the camp.
Pat wasn’t sleeping very well and he had this flying broom instead of a horse, so during the night he would sleep lying on his stomach with the broom underneath him. A couple hours before dawn I was on watch and I woke up the other two women. We slipped to our cloaks and carried them as quietly as possible to where Pat had finally fallen asleep. In unison we all flipped open the cloaks covering him with leaves while one of them muttered “The trees shall rise and humans shall fall as the leaves do”.
Pat woke up and screamed like a little girl. He didn’t stop screaming until he was about 40’ in the air above our heads while we rolled in the leaves laughing. He didn’t speak to us for WEEKS.