What's the worst DM bad habit you've encountered

[AlexanderHowl]

Well, you have to have something that gets the PC going and that keeps the interest of the players. Of course, red herrings are fun, but they often end up becoming the main story. For example, I had a Dragon-Blooded character in a Exalted game who decided to free 100 Ghost-Blooded girls from slavery who were going to be sold to the Deathlords (something I had tossed in as a bit of flavor) and the game quickly turned into figuring out how to take care and protect the supernatural girls because the players realized the potential inherent in having 100 potential necromancers under their authority.

[Andrew Hackard]

Originally Posted by Mark Skarr

I'll be honest, I think this was an awesome way of telling the designers that there was a flaw.

Thank you. They weren't as pleased as you were, and I believe they ultimately scrapped the entire thing rather than go through the trouble of rewriting it.

Originally Posted by Mark Skarr

Have I had stories where an NPC "won" the game? Sure. Was it intentional? No. It's usually comedic, where the PCs can't roll worth a darn but that danged NPC keeps getting critical success after critical success.

Originally Posted by Phantasm

A GM who had our PCs fight up a 30-story staircase to get to the climactic scene, only to have his NPCs - who arrived after us - already there and already defeated the BBEG/forced the BBEG to run away. So, what was the point of having us fight our way up when the NPCs have the key to the back door?

For a counterexample of a GM doing this exactly right, let me brag on my current DM in our 5e game. A few months back, we were in a tense adventure that we knew was likely a make-or-break for the group. If this campaign is a trilogy, this adventure was the last section of book 1, and we were heading toward the battle right before the epilogue. We broke it into two sessions (not entirely on purpose, but we ran into a scheduling snafu):

Session 1: The PCs run around town putting out smaller fires (literally, in a couple of cases) and fighting scouting parties while trying to learn more about what we're going to be facing when we Go Inside.

Session 2: We Go Inside.

The choices we made in session 1 had a profound impact on how session 2 played out, both in acquiring allies for the fight and in how much advance warning the bad guys had about our abilities and plans. When we got to the final battle, we recognized that it was going to be very challenging, fighting our way through the mooks and the greater mooks to try to prevent the Big Bad from completing his plan. TPK was definitely on the table for this one.

We made several smart tactical moves, had a couple of lucky rolls, and were in decent shape but certainly not out of the woods. And that's when our choices in session 1 started paying off, as some of the people we had helped and rescued showed up to lend their bows and swords to the cause. They didn't dispatch the Big Bad or even have much of an effect on the greater mooks, but they DID take the pressure off us to fight everything in our way so we could concentrate on the most dangerous enemies.

And we won, thanks to their help. Well, we mostly won. The Big Bad was defeated and killed but he finished what he was trying to finish before we got to him, and that has given this part of the campaign more urgency than it might have had otherwise -- we're on a clock and we know it. OTOH, after the game the DM told us that we really couldn't have done much better. Part of that was timely assistance from NPCs but it was our actions that brought them there and they weren't overshadowing ANYONE in the game; they were there to cover our backs while we did the job we were there to do. It was a very satisfying adventure.

[AlexanderHowl]

Allowing PCs to make friends with NPCs can be quite useful. For example, I had a group of PCs in a Pathfinder campaign run into an Advanced Half-Dragon Medusa. It was meant to be a really challenging fight, but the PCs decided to try diplomacy first, and the bard managed to charm her into letting them pass by seducing her. Long story short, she ended up tagging along with the group and was capable of doing aerial scouting for them on occasion. At the end of the campaign, the player of the bard PC retired his character so that he could marry and have children with the NPC, and the two of them became NPC characters who would occasionally help the party (they ended up the rulers of a petty kingdom that the party had liberated from a vampire coven in a previous adventure).

[kirbwarrior]

Originally Posted by Prince Charon

Changing the rules in the middle of the [CENSORED] game.

Seriously, a friend that I used to game with (haven't seen him in a while) would all to frequently make a rules-change in the middle of a session, sometimes in the middle of combat, and claimed that he couldn't GM without doing that. Not so bad if you don't know the rules very well and are just participating in the collective story and riding along with those that do know the game pretty well, but very frustrating if you know the rules and realize that the change means that your character is now significantly less useful in some important way. It's not malicious, he's not trying to screw over any character or player, he just can't help himself when he gets an idea for a new or modified rule.

Ugh, you're lucky, I've had GMs do it intentionally because my character seems better than they anticipated and thought that the best way to solve the problem was to make me so useless I was a liability.

I'd like to repeat; GMs. Half the time I try being a player I get screwed over because the GM and I aren't on the same page.

Originally Posted by Anders

Had a DM who punished us for not knowing the system. We didn't know how the spells worked, and instead of telling us - or let us read the rules - he would have our spells fail horribly.

Yeah, another example of a DM I just wouldn't play with again. I know someone made the point about righting a book if you want an exact story, but similarly make a video game if you want to punish the players and make it a competition.

[namada]

Hack much?...
Google "terrible-GM stories" and wonder why this thread hasn't already been closed, just like me...

[Andrew Hackard]

Changing the rules in the middle of a game because the PCs are too effective is practically malpractice. If that screws up your game so badly, call a halt and discuss it; don't make a unilateral decision that drastically affects people's characters.