Last night I played in my face-to-face group and something happened that irked me.  It's a low-magic fantasy setting with supernatural creatures sightings extremely rare to nil, and goblinoid races are myths that live in the deserts to the south of the kingdom.  Our group are soldiers in army of the Prince.  Orcs and goblins have started moving north from their deserts and the Prince and his army mobilized to the southern fortresses and defenses.  Meanwhile, the most powerful Duke, and Marshall of the kingdom's army, sets into motion his plan to take the throne.  Eventually, his troops openly attack the Prince and his army to the south nearly shattering the Prince's army in one fell swoop and killing the Prince.  

The Prince escaped along with some loyal soldiers and advisors, and went into hiding.  We find the Prince and start doing jobs for him.  Eventually, one of the jobs tasked to us by the Prince was to recover horn of the Boggy Man- an ultra powerful demon.  It was not on the demon.  We jump through hoops and recover the McGuffin... er, demon horn.  We were instructed to bring the horn to the Prince in the capital city, and to make contact with an inn owner there to find the Prince in the city.

We get to the city and talk to the bar owner.  He doesn't know anything supposedly and sends us to see an old flower woman in the market.  We talk to the lady and she doesn't know anything.  She sends us to see another guy who 'knows things.'

There are four characters in the group.  The leader of the group is a human lad (20-years-old, IIRC, or even still a teenager), and a Sergeant in the Prince's army.  My character is a dwarf and a Corporal in the Prince's army.  The other two characters are Privates, and one is an elf wizard and another a half-demon spawn in disguise.  The elf and demon spawn stay back at the inn where we stayed for the night (not the inn of contact), but the elf casted a Mind Link spell which allowed the leader and him to mentally communicate.  

After talking with the flower lady, the leader contacts the elf and tells them to follow us to the meeting with the knowledge dude.  He tells them to hang back and not to get close to us.  We find our way to the meeting place and the information dude steps out of the shadows to greet us.  He then tells us that our friends could come forward as he just 'knew' they were with us and following us.  OK, it's clear that this dude is supposed to be some kind of uber stealthy and rogue-type guy.  Fine.

We talk with him and he asks us all sorts of questions about how we know the Prince and where we saw him last, and etc.  However, he won't answer any of our questions.  At this point my dwarf is getting pretty upset with all the run-around.  My dwarf goes to ask him some questions and he says that he has to go.  I tell the GM that, no, I still want to talk with him.

The GM then says that he just walks away and disappears into the trees and shadows.  I say that before he walks away that I'm going to try block his way to talk with him some more.  The GM says that he just gets away.  I asked him to put it on the battle map then and let's play it out.  He uses GM fiat and says that the information guy just disappears and there's nothing we can do about it.

I thought that this was lame since the characters were standing face-to-face having a conversation, and then he just steps away and disappears before our eyes as we are looking at him.  I asked if his disappearance was magical and was told no- he just was so uber that he literally vanished in the shadows while we were looking at him.

/rantover

most lame....bad DMing skills there...

sadly,this sort of thing happens all to often though.

I smell a gmpc in the making thats gonna become elminster like on the annoying scale and drizzt like on the "can kill everything if he wants to" scale.

Quote from: Broken-Serenity;411130I smell a gmpc in the making thats gonna become elminster like on the annoying scale and drizzt like on the "can kill everything if he wants to" scale.

Yeah, that was confirmed later on in the session.  Although, I don't know if it's a GMPC, but the uber stealthy guy part was confirmed.

After the meeting and his disappearance, the Sergeant and my dwarf go to the Sergeant's church and get an audience with the head of the church.  The Sgt. tells him about the demon cult dudes we've fought and encountered at ancient ruins and sights, and also that the dead are walking in the south.  Undead were unheard of before we started encountering them.  Then the leader wanted to show the Pope the demon horn.  My dwarf was carrying it and I refused to show it to the Pope.  OOC, the leader asks me why I won't show and I say that I'm being cautious because we might under the surveillance of the shadow-stepping dude.

We leave the Pope meeting and following shadow-Dude's instructions, which were to return to the inn of contact and order something specific from the owner.  Fine, we go back and make the special order.  The innkeeper takes us into his basement and then leads us into a secret tunnel that hooks up with the sewers.  The innkeeper tells us that the Prince and the Thieves' Guild has hooked up, and the Prince is hiding out with the thieves in the sewers.  The innkeeper hands us over to a Thieves' Guild member who lead us through the maze and to the Prince.  Guess who the guide is?  You got it- Shadow Dude.  He leads us to the Prince and we hand over the McGuffin... er, demon horn.

Then the Shadow Dude says to the leader, "that was an interesting conversation that you had with the Pope."  My dwarf just gives the Sergeant a knowing look.

GMing Fail.

Quote from: Drohem;411122It's a low-magic fantasy setting with supernatural creatures sightings extremely rare to nil

My character is a dwarf and a Corporal in the Prince's army.  The other two characters are Privates, and one is an elf wizard and another a half-demon spawn in disguise.

It seems our ideas on "low magic" differ somewhat.

Quote from: Drohem;411122After talking with the flower lady, the leader contacts the elf and tells them to follow us to the meeting with the knowledge dude.  He tells them to hang back and not to get close to us.  We find our way to the meeting place and the information dude steps out of the shadows to greet us.  He then tells us that our friends could come forward as he just 'knew' they were with us and following us.  OK, it's clear that this dude is supposed to be some kind of uber stealthy and rogue-type guy.  Fine.

We talk with him and he asks us all sorts of questions about how we know the Prince and where we saw him last, and etc.  However, he won't answer any of our questions.  At this point my dwarf is getting pretty upset with all the run-around.  My dwarf goes to ask him some questions and he says that he has to go.  I tell the GM that, no, I still want to talk with him.

:rolleyes:

OK, this is bad...

Quote from: Drohem;411122The GM then says that he just walks away and disappears into the trees and shadows.  I say that before he walks away that I'm going to try block his way to talk with him some more.  The GM says that he just gets away.  I asked him to put it on the battle map then and let's play it out.  He uses GM fiat and says that the information guy just disappears and there's nothing we can do about it.

:eek:

...this is horrid...

Quote from: Drohem;411122I thought that this was lame since the characters were standing face-to-face having a conversation, and then he just steps away and disappears before our eyes as we are looking at him.  I asked if his disappearance was magical and was told no- he just was so uber that he literally vanished in the shadows while we were looking at him.

...and this... who the fuck is your GM, Ed Greenwood?

Soon you'll find out that the Prince and the Shadow-dude are one and the same, and that his name is Aragorn.

Quote from: The Butcher;411135It seems our ideas on "low magic" differ somewhat.

Well, it's supposed to be a low-magic setting, but PCs are the exceptions of course.

My character is basically a dwarven woodsman/survivalist and has no magic abilities whatsoever.

Quote from: Benoist;411145Soon you'll find out that the Prince and the Shadow-dude are one and the same, and that his name is Aragorn.

We've already been dick-slapped by shape-changing demon, which is basically a Rakshasa.  Earlier in the game, the demon posed as a merchant we were traveling with and took the Prince's messenger from us in the middle of the night.  He gave the messenger to some Orcs, and later found him dead.  So, we had a bone to pick with this demon.

After we recovered the horn and were traveling to our meeting with the Prince, he showed up on the road talking about the horn.  A fight starts and he's uber.  He's kicking our asses for a bit, and then the Sergeant starts tripping the demon (he's a martial artist).  The demon gets dirty and pissed off and bails.

Later that night in camp, the Sergeant is on watch.  The demon mind controls the Sergeants and has him piss on my sleeping dwarf.

I'm already suspicious that Pry (the Shadow Dude) is the Rakshasa in disguise.

Quote from: Drohem;411182Later that night in camp, the Sergeant is on watch.  The demon mind controls the Sergeants and has him piss on my sleeping dwarf.

What the FUCK? That's what this DM's uber-NPCs do?? Mind-control characters to PISS on a PC?

This is ridiculous. This GM has to suck.

Quote from: Benoist;411186What the FUCK? That's what this DM's uber-NPCs do?? Mind-control characters to PISS on a PC?

This is ridiculous. This GM has to suck.

Yeah, I was pretty fucking pissed off about this.  At the time, I thought that the demon wanted to take the horn from us and wondered why he just didn't take from us since he's so uber.

I confronted the GM and asked him point-blank if he wanted me to leave the group because I was ready to walk with this bullshit.

We talked and the demon merely talked about the horn and never said that he actually wanted to take from us.  The demon is a trickster and dickish, which the GM tried to emulate through that bullshit scene.

I told him that I thought it was bullshit and he apologized and said that he didn't want me to leave the group.  I told the other players- and characters- to never, ever, mention that scene again.

Overall impression: GM fail.

However, would you mind telling us what system the game is running under?  Not that it makes it any less shitty, but I suppose there are certain games giving the GM a currency of some kind that would allow for a free escape or "dick over the players for free" card.  I'm assuming he was just being an inflexible dick.

It's a home brew system by the GM heavy based off 5e HERO, Revised with 3.5 D&D trappings.  The setting is taken from some computer game called Sacred.

Quote from: winkingbishop;411192However, would you mind telling us what system the game is running under?  Not that it makes it any less shitty, but I suppose there are certain games giving the GM a currency of some kind that would allow for a free escape or "dick over the players for free" card.  I'm assuming he was just being an inflexible dick.

When the GM wants to suck, he or she can really suck ass. There are levels of suckage that definitely transcend whatever the game is teaching to newbies, in other words, and the actions depicted here on this thread definitely qualify, as far as I'm concerned.

This GM needs to read GMing 101 in actual role playing games, and not make up his homebrew rules. Really.
First learn how to drive. Then, some time down the road, you'll be able to go off the road with your 4x4. Not before.

Weak. Extremely weak.