Have you ever ruined a campaign /tg/?>have good on-going campaign with a few players>add other players to it who don't take it as seriously>let them play freakshit races that weren't originally in the setting>everyone including the original players wants to update game to newer edition>now they have access to broken abilities>can't get rid of them because narratively it would make no sense they suddenly stopped using these powerful abilities>game devolves into the same high-level D&D 3.X-style slop that's basically a powerwank, and the only things that challenge PCs are narratively unsatisfying bullshit like wizard ninjas>only realize how good the campaign was after you fucked it up
The only campaigns I ruined were basically ruin in the planning stages. I brought PCs into the game which all wanted something different out of the game. They are the only players I could get but they could not form a coherent group and while a few of them were joking around trying to "be funny or cool" others were complete "power gamers". None of my campaigns have lasted longer than 10 sessions despite running around 6 campaigns over the last 2 years.
>>98578110Meant to say 20 years
>>98578110I guess I shouldn't complain then, at least I get long-running campaigns.but that makes it even more heartbreaking when I fuck them up.So many people get that one campaign where everything comes together, and you are so certain that it could be adapted into a best-selling novel (it couldn't, obviously, but you still can't shake that feeling). Now imagine ruining that with cheat-code magic and freakshit.I'm not even playing D&D or a d20 game, that's the saddest part.
>>98578127I used to allow players to use whatever source books they wanted so parties were often freak shows but as I got older it stopped caring so much about mechanical prowess I switched to playing Deathwatch so every character is a Space Marine and they do Space Marine things.
>>98578071We were playing through one of the published PF1 adventure paths and at one point we were attacked by pirates. The path must have assumed that the PCs would just kill the pirates i guess and my GM was not the type to stray from the path but I didn't know this at the time. My character attempted to negotiate with the pirates even though the GM was adamant that they wouldn't. I was a paladin and i had a pretty decent diplomacy skill and tried to argue that I wouldn't just go around killing random humans without trying to reason with them first and he proceeded to have a small breakdown basically shouting that the only option was to kill them and stop arguing about it. We finished the session but put a "temporary hold" on the campaign that never got lifted. I assume it was my fault anyway, I didn't think it was a big deal until he freaked out.
>>98578243It takes a certain type of non-autistic person to DM properly.
>>98578243holy shit that's some severe autism>>98578161I don't mind it for D&D, but for a game where I really liked the storyline, introducing teleporting and scrying and divination and resurrection just fucks the setting into oblivion. I had to put so many restrictions on that magic, especially resurrection, to prevent it from completely breaking the plot of the game.>ummm asczschaully sweatheart your game shouldn't have a plot!It doesn't have a plot planned by me, but things happen, and if an NPC dies, letting them just resurrect him because you can do it with no gold cost by RAW, completely ruins any tension.
>>98578548If your story doesn't work in the setting then don't have that kind of story. Before I quit playing D&D I wrote plots that would work inspite of high level player abilities.
>>98578580The plot still works, it just feels cheap and retarded when the characters can teleport everywhere. I'm not against it being done from time to time but it's just a convenience now and there's really no point to any other mode of travel.
>>98578071Yes and it was 100% my fault as the GM>Have final fight for a two year campaign figured out>Player dies the session before fight>Use this opportunity to offer him a chance to return to life as an envoy to a God>He turns down the offer and was okay with how his death turned out>Never had any issues with any of my players>Everyone plays great together and have been for decades>Decide that I don't want him to sit out next session>Scrap everything I had planned>Sort of bully him into playing an evil revived version of himself>Have the party fight him instead>He kills more than half the party before being taken down>Wasn't funI still don't know why I did it and see it as my biggest blunder.
>>98578743What were you thinking? Back when my group played 3.5 I mandated everyone must have a Cohort so if their PC died they were not out of the action. Of course I ran the most rat bastard difficult encounters I could come up with like flying invisible wizards or fighting kobolds in a dungeon built for small sized creatures so everyone was at -2 to -4 at everything they tried so they needed all the help they could get.
>>98578743yeah you should've had him come back a different way. but I feel that. we all make mistakes.
>>98578298But /tg/ told me that anyone can DM and guilted me for admitting I'm too autistic and unassertive for the role...
>>98578743>Sort of bully him into playing an evil revived version of himself>Have the party fight him instead>He kills more than half the party before being taken down>Wasn't funTake this as a hard lesson that no one ever truly learns until the dark day when they experience it for themselves: regardless of circumstance, regardless of what sense it might logically make, and ESPECIALLY regardless of what supposedly-interesting plot hooks you think you can do with it (as player or GM), PVP is always -- ALWAYS -- bad and absolutely cannot be permitted for the game's overall health.It isn't just social "prevent party members from infighting" people skills, the advice means any form of Player vs Player activity. TTRPGs are collaborative and most are not built for this shit. At most, you can do in-the-moment brainwashing, and you better include a mechanism to cure it like "kill the charmer" or "roll to snap out of it".
>>98578743A character coming back but evil is the kind of idea that sounds really cool on paper, you shouldn't fault yourself for trying something that sounds really cool.
>>98578071You, specifically (you), have made a whining thread on teegee before.
>>98581339yeah I wanted to make a more general one for other people to post their stories
>>98578071Two, one by accident and one purposefully.
>>98583530I appreciate your honesty, so I'll greentext the one campaign I ruined.>be me in 2009~2010>never played any RPG before >the closest I got was Neverwinter Nights video game I haven't even finished the tutorial>somehow stumble on a niche RPG forum because they were talking about Gothic video games and Pratchett's books >they had a whole big section to play by post with built in dice rollers and stuff >I saw it only as "GM makes up stuff then players make up stuff">I wanted to join so I made a recruitment post and wrote a silly parody of Discworld >I haven't even known at the time there's stuff like system so when people asked I just described freeform without knowing the term "freeform">I was constantly making and deleting posts in the thread to keep it at the first page >somewhat I got two players >they barely get to introduce their characters before I realised I have nothing planned other than the introduction to the parody >I ghost the whole thing, the forum, abandon my account >it's still sits in the back of my mind as embarrassing first contact with roleplaying as a concept>I should have just lurked more
>>98583910How do you make a parody of Discworld, it's already a farce.
>>98583943With bad writing and lol randumb.It wasn't a good parody.
I once started a campaign of 3.5 at level 10. That was enough to derail it because the caster PCs were so powerful practically every town they went to the enemies they fought were also so powerful it would end with the town burning down. It happened to 3 towns before the PCs decided playing at this power level was stupid and the next campaign was 4e.
That image is peak wholesome. I hope that kid is doing well.
>>98583910That's sad but hey at least you tried. The nice thing about forum posts at least is that you can take time to make stuff up that isn't complete improvised trash.
>>98578161>DeathwatchI was invited to play this with a then near-stranger who has since become one of my best friends. The GM was new, but we had a few good sessions including fighting insectoids in a mine, torching orks in a warzone, and a few other events that slip my mind. Then came Murder Alley.Murder Alley was a parody of a western town with flimsy wooden buildings occupying a single long street. Every single building was full of a Dark Mechanicum Magos' cybernetic minions, many of whom had anti-vehicle weaponry. The buildings were shit as cover. We could not bomb the place, because our objective was a pile of abducted neophytes and the GM said it would kill them. We could not use the Corvus Blackstar as close air support, because it was apparently piloted by an NPC tech-marine who was unwilling to do so. We could not call in heavier support such as a vehicle or a dreadnought.The mission ended with us pulling out in defeat because we were two marines down. The orks attacking our ship didn't help.Anyway, this somehow wasn't enough to kill the game so the GM said we'd be fighting tau next, and told us to prep for battlesuits. Halfway through determining our loadout, I decided Know Thy Enemy and took a look at some stats, then panicked about our guns not being big enough and urged two other players to retool appropriately. Apparently this combined with the complaining about Murder Alley was enough to trigger a full-on sperg-out about how we as the players did not trust his "vision as a GM" and the game was shuttered.
>>98584482There's another story about a Black Crusade game that didn't make it past session 1, the GM was utterly disinterested in anything resembling a serious game and opened with "You're on a spaceship, there are three planets, a forgeworld, a hiveworld, and an agriworld, which do you wanna go do chaos at" coupled with shitty slaaneshi jokes.Aforementioned friend was hosting it in a group chat and brought me and two others, the remainder of the players plus the GM were randos. I was planning to play a Heretek, and the system had been hyped up to me so I was ready and raring to go with some serious knives-out intercharacter politicking. Inside of an hour, I was so mentally checked out I lowered the VC's volume to fuckall and did homework instead. A while later I hear the disconnect noise, go to look, group chat's fucking gone. All the friend had to tell me when I asked was "Sometimes you gotta rip it out root and stem, man."
>>98584504I've never heard of a Black Crusade game that didn't implode.
>>98578071I am in a poor mood right now, so currently I'd say: "every campaign I've ever run."In truth, maybe it wasn't that bad. My players generally were having fun and were engaged, as was I. But many of those campaigns had out-of-character drama. Most never got a proper ending. The few that told complete stories were strained and perhaps insufficiently satisfying at the end.But I've never had any of OP's problems, nor can I point to any single decision that ruined things.
>>98590276Is that a party from one of our campaigns?If so, they look cool, I wanna know more.
>>98578071Sure enough. Everything was prepared for a summer campaign, I was supposed to be GM, then I had a heart attack on 20th June (according to medical documentation. I have quite a big hole in memories) and had to lie in hospital bed for two months with head tied up to bed because I raised it once and instantly crashed.
