What gets under your skin?

[Jasper]

I have foiund out the easyest way to re-educate a powerplayer is let him run wild for a few games to get it out of there system.

Run a campaign set in a genaric world and let that player run a 15/15/10/10 Necromancer/Ninja/Monk/Wizard 1/3 dragon 1/3 drow 1/3 fiend that inhetited all the powers of each parrent and is aslo a vampire to his hearts content. Let him kill red dragons with his bare hands, decapate a Tarasque and suduce LLoth in her own realm.

After about ten sessions of this he will beg you to play a nice normal game.

[Igor the Henchman]

Jasper, don't tell me you actually tried this.

[Jasper]

I have and it worked quite well.

At first it was rather fun to see how munchkiny of a character my players could make using only offical 2nd ed rules and products (And they came out with some %##ed up stuff). But they soon got tired of playing after they a few sessions.
With the thaco and damage rols they had they no longer had to roll to see if they hit, only to see if they rolled a 1, taking a lot of the fun out of it.
And with the monsters I had to throw at them fights turned into a hour of rdice roling to see who got a 1 first.

[Algaris]

I once asked a friend if I could play as Asmodus. He said no the spoilsport.

In the first game I DM’ed, using the D&D basic (red box set) game, a new player came to our group. Being new and all I let his already existing character in without asking many questions, which I hindsight I should have done.

He played an elf but being fairly new I had no idea what it meant when he told me this elf had dark skin, white hair and welded two short swords (I later found out this is because the basic game did not have scimitars). Further into the game I found out his swords were able to produce an on hit automatic lightning bolt spell, enabling him to quickly kill one of the main enemies (a huge 2 headed black dragon). Then when they had to march to the enemy wizards lair (by now a lich) and sneak past his armies, this player informed me that his character had a huge dark elf army at his disposable. While the group snuck into the wizards tower he had his army lay siege to the tower to create a distraction.

In the end the other players got fed up with his character. They surprised him, knocked him out and then tied him up leaving him behind in a dungeon somewhere. To be on the safe side they then used a horn of blasting to seal the tunnel behind them so he couldn’t follow.

After the game group disbanded I met the player again and we reminisced about old times. He then went on to tell me how his character had now become an immortal (using the immortal D&D box set).

In short, knowing what I know now, I dislike Dritzz clones and am not particularly keen on Drow, believing they have been well and truly over done. You won’t see or hear any mention of Drow in my Ravenloft Campaign when it gets going, my own personal opinion being that they have no place in Ravenloft, but that’s just me.

I’m also of the opnion that anybody can do what ever they want with their game. I might not think it’s a particularly good idea or goes against the sprit of Ravenloft, but it is their game. I’m just not keen if someone tries to force their vision of what Ravenloft should or shouldn’t be on someone.

[Wiccy of the Fraternity]

RUnning a game where the characters are supposed to be stupidly powerful can be fun. What is even more fun though is if you make them stupidly powerful and make them the villains of the story, so they are constantly facing the heroes who are trying to thwart them and often succeeding in delaying them by taking out a small part of their grand master plan.

In the villains campaign I played in, we were trying to unify the 30 tribes of bandits in our country into a powerful army under our not-so-obvious command. We would charm that leaders of each tribe and have them sign documents and form alliances so that they would be under our control, but now and then we would lose the backing of one tribe or another due to the heroes removing our influence. Of course, when they rallied 4 of the tribes against us and hadus on the run for a couple of months, tat was really fun.

After playing that game, we were ready to get down to some Ravenloft again.

It just goes to show that a break can be good for oneself, especially a break from DM'ing after doing so constantly for 5 years

[Brandi]

I?m just not keen if someone tries to force their vision of what Ravenloft should or shouldn?t be on someone.

Well, yeah, I'm not really into telling other gamers they're having Bad Wrong Fun (unless maybe they're playing RaHoWa or FATAL) and if someone wants to play Ravenloft like a particularly amped-up version of the Van Helsing movie, more power to them.

I doubt it'd be my cuppa, though. Then again, with the right people and attitude it might well be fun, if not Ravenloft as I usually think of it.

[Algaris]

I couldn’t agree more Brandi. If people want to play Ravenloft like Van Helsing good for them. I sort of doubt I would want to play such a game though.

(To do a little sidetracking from the main topic here). I've always though of Ravenloft as a cross between The Name of The Rose, Sleepy Hollow, Dracula and Snow White A Tale of Terror. May be even a little of American McGee's Alice for the Shadow Fey. Ravenloft being all about the haunting / dark / romantic atmosphere with all the truly horrific / mature things happening in the background.

Ah, sorry I'm rambling and de-railing this thread a little methinks.

[Tommy Brownell]

It bugs me that most of my RL players have read (and refuse to seperate) many of the RL books...or even game info in general.

Recently, I ran my first 3.5 RL adventure, the Quist adventure from CotN: Fiends. When I hit the big reveal and describe the little bugger, what happens?

Player 1: "Imp!"

But I did get a little satisfaction. That same player's character got dropped into negative hitpoints when Quist won intiative and scored a critical hit with his tail.

UNFORTUNATELY, when Quist made a break for it, the immediate logic than became "Well, no use i trying to chase him. He can fly and turn invisible."

Is it wrong to outright kill PCs like that? =P

[The_God_Brain]

More specificaly, what is the most irritating thing PCs(or DMs) have ever done or tried to do? My current group of PCs wouldn't play unless I let them make non-standard charactors. Know what they chose? A half-dragon, a natural werewolf, and an elf-dwarf crossbreed he made me invent! I thought I could at least convince the werewolf player to reconsider, telling him it was foolish because he would be continually infecting enimies he fought. But he would have none of it. And they all were shocked when they were not greeted with open arms in Mordentshire.

I don't really ever let my PCs pull nonsense like that. My players know and respect that the DM has final say on what is allowed in the game. I did once have a newer player print out some un-official prestige class from the internet that he insisted I allow him to play. He said I had to, because it was from the official DnD website. Actually, it was from a fan site that, for reasons he still can't adequetly explain, he THOUGHT was the official site. In any event, I had allowed him to play a lycanthrope...actually, I'd suggested it because the character was actually pivotal to the storyline and no one else wanted to play a werewolf...he lunged at the opportunity. The presige class was a rediculously over-powered classed called the Master of the Sword, or something....but since his lycanthrope didn't use a sword, he wanted to modify it to specialize in his werewolf's bite attack. Thats right...he wanted to be (and he actually called it this, in front of the entire group) the Master of the Bite. I said no. He protested, and I said no again. That was pretty much the end of it. That was really the only time I ever had that problem with him, and as I said before he was new to the game so he really didn't understand quite how it worked.

Anyway, I think the most annoying thing a player can do in character is forget about stuff written on their character sheet. For example, once a fight went on for several rounds with the half-orc paladin with a Str of like 22 dealing 2 to 4 points of damage with every hit. I kept asking him if that was right...it just didn't seem possible for him to only do that much damage. Then, he realized that he hasn't been adding in his Str. bonus to damage. In another fight with an invisible monster, over half the part wound up at less than 0 hit points because the fight went so poorly. After it was over and they'd expended all their healing potions and part of a wand and rested for a night, one of my players remembered he had a feat that might have come in handy. The conversation went something like this:

Him: Hey, I have the blind fight feat. I forgot to mention that...would it have helped in that last fight?
Me: No, not really. The blind fight feat only helps if you are fight in total darkness, or against an opponent that you can't see...like one that is invisible.
Him: But wasn't that what we were just...oh (hangs head in humiliation)

I think the most annoying thing a DM can do is NOT prepare for a fairly obvious contengency. In other words, if there are two paths in the woods you should plan for your PCs to go down either path. It sounds fairly intuitive, but you'd be surprised how often they don't do it. Now, no DM can prepare for EVERYTHING...I mean, what if the PCs decide they want to spend the night prowling through every single building in the city? But, under normal circumstances you should have some idea of what will happen if the characters do whatever they might logically decide to do. At least, thats how I DM.

[BlackBoxGamer]

The_God_Brain said:

"I think the most annoying thing a DM can do is NOT prepare for a fairly obvious contengency. In other words, if there are two paths in the woods you should plan for your PCs to go down either path. It sounds fairly intuitive, but you'd be surprised how often they don't do it."

I generally haven't had a problem with the obvious contingencies. But it's the unexpected ones you have to watch out for (strange as that may sound). IMHO, a DM definately needs to Know Thy Players. All I mean by this is analyze your players styles of play and look over your copy of their current character sheets before game begins, just to make sure you aren't forgetting something (like a pesky, but little used magic item that will kill your major bad guy off in a few hits or a special feat that will completely circumvent the plot).

The_God_Brain said:

"Now, no DM can prepare for EVERYTHING...I mean, what if the PCs decide they want to spend the night prowling through every single building in the city? But, under normal circumstances you should have some idea of what will happen if the characters do whatever they might logically decide to do. At least, thats how I DM."

I try to do the same thing, mainly working from understanding the various NPC's motivations to know how they will react to the PC's actions. But sometimes, especially if you have a group of players who like to solve problems through creative means (as in my case), you need to have as many cotingencies laid out as possible. And even then, you need to be able to improvise when those same players decide that they are going to take all of those contingencies and throw them out the window.

BBG

P.S. One last thing I have discovered from DMing and playing in various campaigns: Avoid having your players have access to some sort of organization, institution or government that will assist them in their problems (like an adventuring guild or a spy agency) unless you put strict restrictions upon the power of said support group. Smart players will take advantage of this resource and exploit it for everything it is worth, many times completely circumventing or short-circuiting a plot by having their contacts or flunkies do the leg work, and only coming in with the "big guns" when it is clearly safe to do so.

[The_God_Brain]

I agree with pretty much everything you said, BBG.

A blast from the past...something annoying that 2nd edition players could do would be exploit a rule loophole and create an unstoppable dart throwing machine. By giving your character high strength and dexterity, then specializing in darts, you could make an unstoppable killing machine that defied all the rules of logic and common sense. It was the dumbest thing ever, but I had one player who would INSIST on me letting him play one of those. When I finally told him he couldn't do it, he made an identical character who specialized in throwing daggers (which was slightly less powerful than the dart-chucking variant) and expected that to slip by me. This was many years ago and I wasn't as good a DM as I like to think I might be now...as a result, I let him play the character then put him up against an NPC who exploited the same loophole. The group did manage to kill him, but it was so tough that they asked that I never use something like that again. The player finally agreed that we should seal up the loophole and he made a different character. Had someone tried that NOW, I just never would have let him or her play it.

[BlackBoxGamer]

I think you can do something like that now, only with shuriken (I can't remember off-hand and am not near my books at the moment to check). I was just discussing this with a friend of mine last night who is playing an artificer in an Eberron campaign (hence he has been studying twinky magic items). He had the thought of making a dozen or so returning shocking burst (or flaming burst or icy burst) shuriken and handing them off to a character that was twinked out for throwing shuriken who was also skilled at poison use...

<shudder>

Sometimes, I'm glad I think of these things before my players do so I can create ways in and out of game for not allowing it, while sounding reasonable at the same time. ("I'm sorry, but in order to have a character who is so proficient in shuriken, which is a weapon of the Far East, you will have to be from Rokushima Taiyoo, and I'm not allowing that for this campaign.")

BBG

[ScS of the Fraternity]

I think you're right, gamer. As I recall, the shuriken is an exotic weapon, available to monks, which allows the user to throw three for each attack available. Naturally, the obvious way to exploit this rule is to set up a multiclass monk/assassin with poison use to use these low damage weapons to their fullest. Of course, those magical returning burst shuriken would make the combination even better. Just like watching an anime movie, or even better, ninja-master Kenny taking out Professor Chaos.

[BlackBoxGamer]

ScS said:
"Just like watching an anime movie, or even better, ninja-master Kenny taking out Professor Chaos."

Frighteningly enough, the comparrison to ninja-master Kenny and Professor Chaos came up during the conversation...

I knew it! There were listening devices in that Denny's!

BBG

[Maximillian]

A few months earlier, I would have written down other, more trivial and less important things. But after my last experience I am pretty darn sure that the thing that can get REALLY under my skin, and annoy the hell out of even my poor bones, is when a DM who has a really creative imagination and otherwise creates a wonderful campaign, insists on leading the story with an iron fist, actually making the characters and the players mere puppets who dance according to what HE finds logical, even when everyone else insists that some of his brilliant ideas are actually completely, utterly and irrevocably RIDICULOUS. That kind of DM can actually get your beloved characters and pretty much everyone they knew DEAD and CONDEMNED TO SUFFER IN THE ABYSS FOR ALL ETERNITY, UTTERLY HUMILIATED BY THEIR NEMESIS, because after putting the characters in an insanely difficult situation and making a complete mess of his attempts to save the day, suddenly he is inspired to let the DICE (OH, YE GODS, THE DICE!!!) decide the outcome of months of story telling and character building... And naturally the dice betrayed us.

It has been over three months now. I still cannot possibly comprehend how the hell did this campaign affect me so, but I still can't read a page of a Dragonlance novel, or even think about the campaign without getting depressed, angry, or both. Anyway...