RPG Horror Story: A Fair and Unbiased DM

0:20 Hello, measures, Welcome to another episode. Today. We are doing another RPG horror story, one of my favorites. I read this one a couple of days ago. Eighty is crazy, but there's a lot to get to, so let's get right to it. Coop sounds great, awesome. Yeah, this is coming from Ready to Use Your Pure Giraffe twenty eighty one. This is titled GM is Fair and Unbiased during PvP, so it starts off nights lavery and Unbiased and then we can the word PDP and writing the title, so this is yeah, let's let's do this. I was playing with this group for three years in the same universe as another group by the same GM, two groups sometimes affecting each other in universe, and at the end was supposed to be the big conflict between the two groups before we even continue, What do you think of that? Interesting? For sure, I think it's not a game i'd personally want anything to do with in any way.

1:19 But I know that there are people that like that kind of thing, so I'm going to attempt to maintain an open mind as you progress. Jason Sjor. But I have a feeling the fact that the fact that that is the opening to our horror story. Yes, tells us what we need to know about that particular stung. I will say, I like the shared universe idea, and one one's decisions affecting the other is very cool. And as a DM it sounds like a logistical nightmare. But if you can pull it off, that sounds cool. The intention of the ending with the conflict between the two groups is where you lose me. Well, yeah, so that's I already see a possible issue. Just going to make a note that the intention is that there's going to be a conflict between these two groups somewhere down.

2:00 Okay, so let's with that in mind, shall we continue? Of note, my party is arguably the more evil one. We've done some bad things and we generally go our own way, which does set us up for this final conflict with the quote unquote good group. Also, there's some strange homebrew items in our party, specifically a coat that allows us all to merge into one, each taking our own turns inside the body, moving and taking actions, taking the greatest of ac saving throws. I don't hate that idea. Actually, what was that? What was that show before Power Rangers? It was what was that cartoon Voltron vultron. Yeah, so it's very vultral. Sure, yeah, it's about it. You're thinking of this way cooler than I am. I'm thinking three goblins in the trench coat if we were doing all if we were doing all Goblins or all cobalts campaign, and we gotta we got a magic trench quote that lets us merge. I'm a thousand percent At this final session, we're hanging out in a tavern we were building when the big bad, a GM controlled NPC appears with the other group. So it's us versus the other party and the gms PC. Also with the other party are four wizards that surrounded the battle arena, holding a shield up to prevent any of our allies from getting in. Notably, the GM would frequently use these NPC wizards to cast counterspell at ninth level for the benefit of the other party. We kill their cleric and the GM jumps in to decide that when one of us dies, they get a legendary action to do one thing

3:31 and he mass heals his party. Okay, fine, they kill one of us and she heals us as well. During the fight, in a critical moment where an athletics check would decide if we lost. The GM decided to allow the other party to use their inspirations to make us reroll the check. This has no precedent in the campaign. We've never used inspirations offensively. We rolled well enough anyway to win about four rerolls as the other party used inspirations on our athletics check. And then the GM said that he'd been keeping track of the joke inspirations that we had awarded to him throughout the campaign that the players awarded to the DM. Folks. Let me just stop right there.

4:13 I don't know if everybody could hear it. Hear my eyes roll into the back of my head just then, but they did hard. The GM said that he had been keeping track of the joke inspirations that we had awarded to him throughout the campaign, and see he started using his own inspirations to make us reroll. So the GM is explicitly making us reroll using his inspirations to try to kill our party. We survive anyway, so then we finally gain an advantage reviving one of our dead party members and polymorphing her to keep her alive. This was not counter spelled because the Wizards had used their reactions.

4:54 At the top of the next round, the GM tells us that a ring on the dead cleric's finger starts glowing. The GM controlled NPC Big Bad, who's at the top of initiative, then retries the ring and reveals to us that is a ring of three wishes which recharges every hundred years, which had just elapsed just now. That's my favorite part of this. Ninety nine years point ninety nine. A hold on, come on, how many rounds has it been? One minute? Passed? Ten rounds? One minute has been? I remember because because it was right around lunchtime one hundred years ago, is right now, Jason, I want you to ask me, ask me what the secret to a great DMD fight is. What is the secret to a great DM Jim, it's blown out your mic, of course it is.

5:47 That's exactly what it is. I don't know if that came through it now, but Jim said, timing at a really inopportune time, so timing I might even mad. I'm not even mad, I might even mad. The GM then uses the ring to wish for our party to be dead, which we'll get. We're gonna do a whole episode on wish rules that ain't one of them. After that, the GM and the other party gleefully describe how they use the other wishes to undo all the things we've done over three real life years. In this campaign, the GM swears up and down that he was completely unbiased and it could have gone either way. I mean, it could have gone either way. At some point there was that. So here's a quick faq that OP put at the end of the story. So what happened after? What was yetmath? Well, this was two days ago at the time of writing this. The only aftermath thus far is this post and some rumblings between those of us that got screwed over. That campaign was the final session of the campaign. There are no more games to be played.

6:53 Also, this session was held in person for most people. I was remote, so I don't have insight into what happened when the call ended, but I doubt there was much drama, as were all adults in all long term friends. You are not anymore. Was there no indication of this behavior before none? He was a reasonable GM in all of our previous sessions. In his defense, he had only had to balance one party's interest before that time, And it's my belief that the GM had attached his ego to the Big Bad NPC, and his explanation for the inspiration debacle when I confronted him was that he was mad that he had forgotten to counterspell the dying action of our party member, so to make up for it, he decided to allow the inspiration stuff and use his GM inspirations to try to kill us. He clearly felt he was on their team and was unable to act fairly when it came to his rulings. I can forgive a mistake like that, but to plainly deny it and pretend you're completely fair it made me lose a lot of respect for him. This is this is amazing, is what they say.

7:50 It's Hello Adventurers, thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed the show, the absolute best thing you can do to support us is to subscribe so you'll be notified when new episodes are released. You can also leave us a review five stars. Of course, that will help us get seen by more D and D players, and more than anything else, just tell your friends about us. If you like what we're doing here, then there's a good chance that your DM or your players will enjoy it too, and you don't need to loop gold to do any of that. We appreciate you're listening now back to the show. Who wants to chime in on this? So I'm like, if I sat through that, I would be annoyed that he didn't just kill everybody with the ring right from the jump and save me four hours of bullshit. Yeah, because if that's what he was going to do at the end, we can get into the whole thing about how like it stopped being D and D the moment you had PCs fighting other PCs, because the game's not designed for that. It's not designed for that, it's not balanced for that, it's not built for that. Anytime you're doing PCs versus PCs, you're hacking the game. You're doing something completely different. And that is not Dungeon Dragons has written. It's not five edition is written. It's you doing your own thing off the you know, completely off in a corner.

9:11 And and they absolutely are our right to be to be pissed about that. Yeah, and let's let's forget the four hours of combat. How about the undoing three years of a campaign? Oh, that's just just ye that that's just contempt that's that's clear. He had beef with somebody, right, Like that's whoever they had the GM had beef with somebody in the quote unquote evil you know the the op Yeah here, That's what that says to me is like you had an issue with somebody and instead of resolving it, you know, like an adult, you decided to just destroy a D and D game and it was the last session. Like, it's just really strange.

9:56 It's happens when you play it wrong. Yeah, it comes off as mean, not mean, but but Eddie Petty just eddy and vindictive and yeah, passive aggressive right in a way like you have a real maybe a real world problem. And I don't know that to be true, right, but it just that's what it gives to me. They did know, I will say they knew going in that and they agreed to play a PvP game. And that's okay for me. Right If you say, if everybody's clear up front, hey we're gonna you know, this is going to end in a huge PvP you know, battle to the death. Cool, fine, right, if you want to do that. Not a game for me, sounds like probably not a game for you, Jim, But well it's it's not D and D. It's a game. It's a different game than D and D.

10:46 Yeah, and and I would agree with that. But I'm saying that I think that it happens plenty in home brewed D and D esque tabletop RPG games that people play. And you know, the gateway drug being five Y or the gateway drug being being D and D. But I could I could see myself agreeing to any on PvP in a short game, maybe like a month or two, maybe there's under six months, I might be okay with the building towards that. In a three year game, well maybe they play once once every other month like we But all I'm saying is they knew that it was PvP. That isn't the issue. I don't think that's the issue.

11:30 The issue. I think that, I mean, it was the least of the issue, okay, right right. I think that it was the prelude probably. I think Jim, you probably called that early on. Oh yeah, well, I mean that that was the guarantee that something was gonna go badly. It's just how badly and for whom. I don't think this is the question. I don't once you commit to PvP, Yeah, I don't think this gets posted on Reddit if it's just fair, right, Like, I don't think it even get gets posted because and that's the point I'm trying to make, I guess, is that they agreed to They were like fine with everything else, right, even though that sends off alarm belts for us. They're fine with all that. But it's like, oh no, that's just a joke inspiration, Like that is so child. Let's okay, there's there's like two things I really want to unpack here. Let's let's get to that one first, since you brought it up, the joke inspiration first of all, in what universe so angry about? Can a player give a DM inspiration? Let's let's just start with that. Let's just say, if we're going rules as written, I'll even go rules as intended. It definitely isn't Yeah, it's not our Where are the players? Says the players jokingly saying to the DM, I'm gonna give you inspiration for that, and then they have him throw that back in their face years later, Rack of the junk inspiration. I can't wait to pull that on you. Job. Well, I've been keeping track of keeping track of it. Here's my notebook of

13:00 every time you guys said I give you inspiration, that's the thing you can't do. I keep track of the things you can't do that. And then the the Ring of Three Wishes, like just waking up after one hundred years and like it's like three two one and yeah, Nail, what do you know, it's right at the top of initiative when I get to go next, sir, I wrote it on my character sheet. Yeah. Yeah. Somebody in the comments said, what a coincidence. My family heirloom amulet of wishblocking just got his charge back too. Since we're just making it up now, me and Kyle Patterson had and I know, I understand that nobody knows who this is. I don't know. It's this guy that I grew up with. We used to have these arguments all the time because we had like like I'd be like, my red dragon would absolutely demolish your ninja, and he'd be like, well, my ninja has a stone of three Wishes and I would just unwish that. Yeah, and this is we were seven years old. Yeah, you know, having arguments like you know, rock, paper, scissor gun, missile, Like you're just like you keep escalating.

14:07 You just you're holding like one fingers like, okay, what is that this time that this is my my my anti nuclear blocking, like you just just tack onto whatever they just had. Yeah, these were arguments I had on the on the playground. I was just gonna say this is this is very playground. So I kept track of all the times you said I can have advantage even though it's not a thing you can do all the rings Joss waking up. Oh look at that. Yeah, play you play POGs for a few rounds and then all of a sudden, you know, the other kid wins and he said, we're playing for keeps. By the way, you're dating us by like a lotier. Okay, he's with the pog talk, right, miss pod Man mean too simpler time you can use POGs as miniatures. By the way, Yeah, that's what I was looking at your coin.

14:48 That was like a small pod. Yeah, I mean like all the Sorry, once it turns into Pog versus Pog, I'm not interesting. It's PvP. It's the first that's the oj BVP person versus Pog. That's much easier, and I've definitely played Pog versus person. That's where you just throw it at your little brother of the slammer. I'm not evil much pog talking episode. So the the issues with the story are glaring and numerous, and you know, there's nothing to be learned from this except like, don't do that. But just like, I don't know, this is just a funny story. This is this is hysterical to me. I think if I'm a player in that game, I need to be physically restrained from striking. He was remote, you know he was remote. Yeah, yeah, I'm coming to your house. Then I'm smacked and that's funny. He's like, well, I wasn't there, So I assume I brother is pretty cool because the adults like as soon as the camera I am an adult. I have played D and D with other adults. I often play with adults. That is not a situation where adults like like it is okay for adults to lose their ship in that situation. Just that I'm just going to say that if you here's here's what's here's what you can take away from this. If you undo three years, were those story progress in one little snap of the finger?

16:06 You deserve the off camera beating and yeah, man, whatever it is you resent about that group. Talk to them way before that. Don't let that that is clearly like like weeks, months, years of built up frustration, some kind of resentment, some kind of you know, contempt for that particular group that was expressed. God bless you and I sneezed exactly, and what was supposed to be there, you know, like like the kind of the triumphant moment where everybody had fun and you chose to use that as the vessel for this built up contempt and you know, in frustration that you had. Oh my god, please have that conversation with the players before that happens.

16:47 Yeah, so yeah, I hope you know your next three year game goes better. We'll find out in three years. And also you should let that G play with that person. Well, Tony should let that GM know that they are not allowed to play the Dragons anymore, you know, invite that player to play your game and start keeping start keeping notes. That's that's the story. That's it. That's all I got today. It did as a player. My god, I even know, like how how much is relatable today? You ever give it a GM joke inspiration? Let us know at a Hello adventurers, what what is the pettiest thing a DM has ever thrown back in your face? Okay? Or if you're a DM, what's the pettiest thing you never thrown back in your player's face? How would you really searching inside yourself and be honest for this, Hello Adventurers Podcast at gmail dot com. Tell us your story or tell us yourself at Hello adventures Podcast dot com slash voice And if you love your story, we're put it on the show. That's gonna do it for today. We're gonna do more RPG HERD stories just like this one. If you like these episodes, let us know.

17:49 If you have a story to tell us, let us know. But that's gonna wrap it up for today. So andres and Portiso. I'm here with Joe McCall and Jim Crocker. This has been Hello Adventurers. Music is by Nick Sperrier Artworks like us to Broderick. And we're gonna do this again real soon. We'll see you then, So until next time, Goodbye adventures MHM.