Who was your WORST Dungeon Master? #1 (r/askreddit)

this is a sponsored video by craig's cottage who was your worst dungeon master my worst dm has to be a former friend let's call him null noel wanted to finally run a campaign after a year of myself and our mutual friend steve taking turns running a campaign we all rolled up our characters and for this campaign we were all told to min max the holy hell out of our characters since it was 3.5 at the time and in 3.5 it is super easy to do so the campaign was set around trying to liberate a small kingdom that had recently been taken over by vampires and was poised to invade the surrounding kingdoms if no one reacted quickly enough which at the time was a pretty good sounding campaign hook for us players and we were all looking forward to it i wanted to try out playing a monk one of the few classes i haven't had a chance to play at that time for the life of me i can't remember his name but he was a half surfaced elf half drow who had the half vampire template added to him since his mother was kidnapped when she was pregnant with him and had contracted vampirism kind of a blade type scenario i was just about to say that steve had a bronze or gold draconian wizard my girlfriend at the time let's call her vivian she played a half elf half celestial scion and ran a dmpc that was a half minotaur half dragon paladin although contrary to most people's opinions on dm pcs they can on a limited scope be run successfully if they are used sparingly which in this case it definitely wasn't the exception not only would his paladin plow through all the enemies he would use his position as dm to directly interfere with my character unknown to me at the time before i had started dating my then girlfriend he had made a pass at her and she shot him down it wasn't until a few sessions in did i find out what was actually going on he would have all the really tough and dangerous monsters target my monk any item i found would automatically be cursed regardless of whether it had been examined by any npc wizard that i had paid specifically to discover the first time of this is when as part of my share of the treasure i asked for a pair of ac boosting bracers to boost my already ridiculous ac score to 30ish for a fourth level monk and he said sure fine the second after i had them tested and checked out to be safe and had the monk equipped them he immediately said they were cursed and if i didn't go out and collect the rest of a completely pulled out of his ass set of armor my monk would die within the next three months i personally don't mind having a cursed item or being cursed as a player since it can be really fun to role play but if i spent my monks hard-earned gold to specifically not be cursed and to then be cursed because the dm is being a jealous douche then it is a totally different thing altogether there was a few really fun times during the 5 month campaign he was a good storyteller and combat never got bogged down but he just couldn't keep his issues outside the game from influencing his decisions in-game the culmination of which was when we were set to start our invasion into the kingdom he had the king give us a patently ridiculous sum of money to hire mercenaries for the invading army and i kid you not the amount was 100 000 platinum coins and tasked me with coming up with the hiring and tactics for the mercenary army during the two-week period between that session and the next spending a couple of days thinking of the necessary composition of a muric army needed to do what we needed them to do and outfit them and come up with plans and during that period he stopped by my place to inform me that i would also need to come up with bases for everyone to stage from during the rest of the campaign while we slowly made our way to the capital so i hired our armies planned out our bases and came up with the battle plans and tactics that would be most effective so fast forward to the beginning of our next session and he asked to see my carefully thought out plans takes about 10 minutes to read them and go over my base plans and tactics then he looks over everything again and looks at me then the plans then finally back to me and says the king is just going to have everyone teleported into the enemy's main stronghold and to hell with my time and my plans i honestly was a little more than pissed off at the time but i took a deep breath and said sure noel you are the dm and it's your game i could clearly tell he had no idea how he would be able to as a dm to be able to stop the pc's army from completely destroying all of his carefully laid plans steve a few months later said null said to him when he read the plans he knew that he was totally screwed he had been planning for us to make it halfway to the capitol before he crushed everybody and have us dragged before the vampire's leaders honestly if he had said hey greg if i can't beat your plans can we try something else out or maybe tone down the plans a little i would have gladly gone with it the point where i left the campaign was when we the players in about half the original mercenaries were teleported in mass into the leader's tower about 150 of us which all but the party and a small handful of them party surviving the trip with the rest plunging into the gruesome deaths over a hundred feet down outside of the tower with my monk barely managing to make a reflex save to grab a hold of the window of the tower as i appeared midair outside of one of the windows of said tower after pulling himself into the tower partly was immediately swarmed by the leaders and two or three dozen vampires were pinned to the floor by a homebrewed spell that had a save dc around 35. he decided to end the session for that week at that spot at which point i told him i was done with the game if he was going to be constantly adversarial for the rest of the campaign i asked him if we could spend some time talking out whatever problems or issues he was having with me and our friendship at this point we had been what i thought were pretty good friends for a couple of years at that point but his response was if i didn't show up next week to consider both the game and our friendship ever he wouldn't even attempt to talk it out with me whatsoever and at that point i was feeling really fed up and i told him if we're gonna be like that then get back to me when he pulled his head out of his ass and then maybe we could talk like adults so that was the worst dm i ever had today's sponsor for the video is our near and dear friend craig over at craig's cottage don't you love collecting all of those shiny and themed dice sets but hate never having anywhere to put them except that plastic sorting box or the one you made out of legos well craig's cottage has a solution for you in the form of beautifully crocheted diced bags made with 100 acrylic yarn these bags come in a variety of shapes that include cacti money bags cupcakes and his flagship baby the mushroom each bag can hold four full sets of plastic or resin dice or two metal cast sets supporting a total of one whole pound of dice which is almost as heavy as i am you can even use them as set pieces for your next game session best part is that he also sells the patterns too in case you want to crochet something yourself and get your creativity on using code rip daddy good through october 20th of 2020 you can net 20 off of your order as long as it's over 5 bucks and anything over 35 gets free shipping automatically go grab your coin purse ladies and gentlemen so you can buy one of these excellent bags today i've been lucky that i haven't had the worst dms compared to some other stories i've heard my worst dm though he didn't like 3.5 because he said that in 3.5 everyone is overpowered so we played second edition i made a character with the standard rules and created a nice background that could be brought into play the other characters were entirely overpowered one character was a class that dm created himself basically she was a goddess her power levels were extremely high and he created new spells for the class that could wipe out swaths of enemies with a single sweep he later said that the homemade class was just as he'd hoped it would be as he designed it to be able to handle an entire adventure alone with no other players which could be cool though still a bit too easy for a solo adventure but it left the rest of the party obsolete other players just pretty much added any abilities they wanted with just to say so with no replacement for other established abilities like the cleric he had several skeleton servants and had the ability to make more with any bones he found that was kind of tacked on to his normal cleric abilities just because he had written it into his background he wasn't so much of a monty hall dm as far as treasure goes but he would give players anything they wanted as a dm i would ask for character goals and wants and then try to let the characters earn them he on the other hand just handed everything out the paladin wanted a holy sword with other abilities and so he had it not too bad there he also wanted as a goal to have a dragon mount and a castle for us to use as a base luckily he didn't start off with that but he missed the second session and when he came back for the third he just came back with a dragon that he somehow got in a background adventure while he was away from us then we gained control of a castle with very little challenge an easy combat that ended in one round gave us the castle with the paladin having magical control over it and it also granted him additional magical powers this was the dm who didn't like third edition because classes were too overpowered but kept piling more and more non-rule abilities onto characters i mean maybe it was my own fault for building a character as per the rules but i could have just come in saying that my character could fly had a billion gold and plus 20 armor and had two 20 plus to hit axes that he dual wielded my consolation in this overpowered party was that i was the only rogue so there were a few things that only i was relied on for until a later session when another player joined with the party who played as a halfling rogue and oh yeah he can breathe fire another player wanted to play as a monk since the dm couldn't find a monk for second edition he just found the third edition monk and just had him play that completely unaltered that doesn't make any sense i think most are familiar with the differences between additions but if not classes in 3rd edition get abilities every level or few in second edition you don't get abilities until several levels first and second are similar enough that they could be fairly well balanced against each other but a third edition fighter is much more powerful than a second edition fighter in addition the monk had a shotgun and laser gauntlet from some anime and a flying rocking horse what the hell is this another player played a gnome illusionist he just let her make illusions rather than casting illusion spells i don't think either of them actually looked at how the class works like she would say that she cast an illusion of barrage 100 arrows fired at the enemy if they didn't save to disbelieve the illusion then they took the damage of 100 arrows no spells prepared or spells slots spent just said what they wanted to make an illusion of like green lantern's ring the start of our adventure the dm was clearly just winging it he may have had a basic idea of what he wanted but that was it he sat cross-legged from us without a screen or a map or any notes in front of us obviously was making it up as he went now a good dm should be able to wing it and even pull an entire adventure out of their ass but it shouldn't be obvious it doesn't let you feel invested in the game if it's just being made up as you go none of the clues or information seemed to really matter because he just made that up right that minute so if he does tie it in later it could be anything that he's just going to make work when we rested in a spot while climbing a mountain i just decided to check for secret doors just cause you know might as well well there turned out to be one and inside i found a pendant just hanging from the ceiling later he told me to make sure to hang it onto it as it was very important to the game turned out it was a key to some stairs in the castle so this very important key was found in a completely separate area with no connection to the area it was a key to and no logical reason for it to be there the area the stairs led to was just a minor encounter that really wasn't important at all hence the problem with making it up as you go a later adventure was a pre-published module that it turned out he didn't read before playing or at least not closely enough he just sent us there with instructions of why we were going there you heard there might be some treasure there so you all some separately head there even though it didn't fit why any of our characters would actually go there my new character was a bounty hunter that i had listed would seek and retrieve specific items for people if he would have read the adventure and taken the characters into consideration he could have easily come up with the idea that i was on a hunt to retrieve a specific item for a benefactor or not reading the adventure made up an item and just include it in one of the rooms at the end of the adventure we encountered a demon even though it had been previously established that no demons existed in this world he created oh i guess there are demons here now read through the module first and change what may not fit we never had a single fight that was a challenge most were finished in one round of combat often with zero to minimum damage to any of the party the most difficult battle was against a beholder that lasted a full combat round and then two attacks into the second one worst damage taken and that was six points out of their 100 hp he talked about if we were ready for him to take the gloves off i left shortly after that but as i understand they have still never had a combat that ever seemed challenging i don't want a tpk but some chance of death would make it exciting rather than feeling like there is no challenge he pretty much came up with the idea for this campaign world because of an anime he watched there was a background event that was never explained in the anime so he came up with his idea of what had happened basically this was playing out during our time it didn't seem like we or any of our adventurers would have anything to do with it actually happening though more like it was events playing about in the background that we would occasionally meet people or see stuff about that were playing this out and it seemed like we were just going to be spectators to that while we were doing other stuff also all of his npcs every single one of them had the exact same personality confused and disinterested i want to add that he is a very nice guy and a very good friend of mine just not a good dm hey everyone brian here hello and welcome back to all of our subscribers and friends and a big warm welcome to all those coming to the channel for the first time make sure to roll d20 and if it lands higher than one please give us a big subscribe and leave a like on the video and if it rolls lower than one you need to sub twice which is going to be impossible on both ends too be sure to ring that bell to get notified whenever we go live or upload and check out our subreddit at mr ripper if you want to submit any tt rpg stories you have that you'd like us to read you can also follow mr ripper on his twitter for more updates to special goodies as a help action however you can come follow me on youtube or twitter and join my discord too i'm a voice actor posting voice acting goodies and streaming games weekly so find brian von va and give me some love too links are in the description below business talk aside today's positive message has a bit of a loving theme to it like they all do but one we've heard before connectivity the power of connections in this day and age is way too undervalued a simple hello a reply to a comment or even just a random wave to someone is sometimes enough to make someone happier or brighten their day every little thing that you say or do online or in person can establish that kind of connection take craig from craig's cottage i love the guy and i promote his stuff all the time because i really genuinely enjoy everything he's made but i met him through mr ripper's narrations here and now not only is he a partner and sponsor for me as well as mr ripper but he's a genuine fan of my content and in my opinion a friend though we're stuck indoors and the world is really chaotic still we can find friendship as long as we're willing to not worry about life and just put ourselves out there a little bit of course you're bound to run into some rotten apples in the basket but you're going to find good people out there too who much like you just want someone to talk to every day so keep trying keep being nice to each other and everyone around you i mean so not only your friends and family but strangers too but one more person deserves love and attention as well yourself so be happy and kind to yourself no matter how hard that is i know it's hard some days but look at yourself in the mirror take 10 minutes away from the whole world and just give yourself a little bit of a pamper every day because you deserve to be happy and loved as well alright all the love from me to you we will see you next time

Channel: MrRipper

Views: 140,694

Keywords: DnDStories, DnD, DungeonsAndDragons, dnd stories, dungeons and dragons, ask reddit, dungeons & dragons, askreddit top posts, reddit stories, dnd, dnd 5e, dnd stories reddit, dungeon master, dnd campaigns, dm tips 5e, dungeons and dragons online, best of reddit, dungeons and dragons cartoon, dungeons & dragons florida edition, gm tips, role playing game, askreddit funny, d&d beyond, reddit funny, critical role

Id: I8kl7p7KWcM

Length: 18min 26sec (1106 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 10 2020