In today’s episode of DnD horror Stories, we have a few tales of bad dungeon masters playing dungeons and dragons. First we have a tale about a DM giving the party a puzzle with a solution that will shock you. Then we have a story about a Dungeon Master going for gritty realism, but the results aren’t what they hoped for. And finally, we have a tale about a DM killing a player with a stupid reason.
0:00 Intro
0:45 Puzzle
6:15 Gritty Realism
15:11 Teleport
#dnd #dndhorrorstories #rpghorrorstories
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What makes dark fantasy so interesting is how it forces everyone in it to make hard choices. The Witcher in particular is excellent at this, both in the books and the games there's a constant theme of having to make choices where there's no real right answer, and where any decision that is made will have consequences, especially choosing to do nothing.
Aww. Shadow void and sherbet cat cuddled together.
Story 1: Oh god, this one! It's bad. Very. Yer DM licenses are hereby revoked by the court of the crab, crow, rat, drake and doge.
Story 2: Oh, this one; the "realistic" one. These "realistic" horror ones all have the same elements. Why, DM!
Story 3: Yer an ass hat DM.
These games sound like the opposite of fun. I thought games were supposed to fun, but evidently some DMs do not agree.
In regards to story one, even if the DM wasn't possibly a sadistic, sociopathic, and narcissistic a-hole the puzzle is just stupid. I mean how can the puzzle determine the difference between blindness by "blinding" or by eye-gouging? Essentially then, the player would have been irreversibly been punished and penalized at a disadvantage for doing the puzzle the "smart and right" way. No reasonable person would just gouge their eyes out unless absolutely necessary, or in this case, if given the choice.
First story: OP, is your DM John Kramer, by any chance? Because this puzzle sounds like it came from one of the “Saw” movies. If I were you, I’d rewatch all of them, just in case, and also leave that campaign.
Second story: There’s a fine line between gritty realism and just bullying the players. This DM crossed it big-time. The barbarian made the right choice in quitting.
Third story: Yeah, the DM was being an asshole. You can’t just kill PCs without even letting them save! If they seem inclined to do something that would instantly kill them, they deserve some kind of warning! It doesn’t have to be a straight-up: “If you do that, you’ll die.” It should be more like: “This looks extremely dangerous,” or depending on the situation, you could have an NPC demonstrate how instantly deadly the action would be, or even just the classic: “Are you sure you want to do that?” Also, you should warn players in session zero if the campaign is going to have possible instant kill scenarios. Basically, do anything but what this DM did.
Yes gritty realism only means every thing sucks lmao. O guess the DM's life is just really shitty.
Story one reminds me of a 10 year old dungeon I played in grade school called druids and dryads. Premise was simple, you go up and knock on the trees in a Grove asking if the occupant is a druid or a dryad. If the occupant was a druid they would offer clues to the location of a very important guy we had to retrieve, but if it was a dryad she'd pull you into her tree and make you her sex slave lol.
Anyway turns out the old dude we were sent to retrieve was scared and utterly insane (for good reason) and in order to enter the moon gate and confront the bbg we'd have to castrate the poor old bastard under a full moon. We were forever haunted by his pathetic whimpers and cries of "Not again!"
The fact this old guy had been successfully dewanged several times and likely by the bbg every time he had to go home… Anyway old nameless dude, I speak for the group when I say we are very sorry for what we did. 😞
Laughed out loud when I heard the doge say a week to long rest was unfeasble for a game. BECMI rules had 1 hp recovered per day of rest and required a hour of spell prep per level of spell. You would routinely spend weeks rebuilding the party's strength in town if you did not complete the dungeon on the first run, and that was a rule set in print for the better part of 30 years.
You do know that if you get to a safe spot, a week passes as fast as the dm saying, "OK, one week later…"
DM in the second story was giving mad “i WaNt A gAmE wItH CoNseQuEnCeS!”
Scene. At a tavern
DM. “Roll Persuasion”
Player. “Ummmmm, why I’m just getting a drink.”
DM. “Roll Persuasion”
Player. Rolls Persuasion “OOF! That’s a Nat1”
DM. “Okay, the barkeep pulls out a Jericho 9mm and shoots your character in the face, killing them instantly.”
Player. leaves
DM. “EXCUSE ME FOR HAVING A WORLD WITH CONSEQUENCES!”
Actually short rest being 8 hours and long rest being week is optional rule in DMG
First two were about different expectations of play style; not really bad. First was a more old school type of play; there used to be things like that where you had to make irreversible choices on a leap of faith from time to time. They eye of Vecna was first released as a magic item that only worked if the PC removed their eye and inserted it, so they assumed a PC would find a magic eye and pop it in to see what it did. Generally, they were right, from my experiance. Who knows, the blind, mad cult might grant blind vision if you complete a ritual; OP will never know…
Second one is pretty tame compared to most games of Warhammer Fantasy I have played. Life is cheap and crippling injuries are a thing. Grim dark setting are not known for having happy or helpful characters, so this is more of an issue of the players not believing the dm when they said they were running a grim dark game. They said they would use a critical injury and fumble chart and the players are upset when that it worked against them; again, they had mentioned all the rules and world features in session 0, so kind of on the players in my mind.
Gritty realism rule of a week being a long rest is from the dmg, as is the critical injury table the dm used, so these are technically rules as written from the hand of WotC. I have used both; good for highly exploration focused games over hex crawls. My group liked them; you just have to adjust you random encounters (which the op never mentions so probably were suitably low). Do notice the game was about them doing dangerous things for money, which is a great way to engage players and keep them adventuring.
The surgery system is unique and home brewed, so that sounds like it needs a bit of work. Rules as written, hp is a combination of luck and stamina, so healing spells are not really intended to stitch together flesh or uncollapse a lung. I like the idea of the healing check being used to do that, so you can have a world where doctors are a thing. Like I said, a little bit of a clumsy application is all; needs some work. The giant botched surgery is still more in favor of the players than trying to do the same thing in Warhammer Fantasy, though, so ticks that grim dark box.
Lastly, this might not be appearance to the players, but you can retire characters that get injured and just make a new character. That might of just been the straw that broke the camel's back, but no dm is going to make you keep playing a character you do not want to. Maybe next game you escort Ted the barbarian home and fetch his brother Ned?
You're a poet and didn't even realize it, Doge! 😉
Story 1
The fact the GM LAUGHED at the parties’ struggle is jusg… terrible GM’ing.
It’s ok to give your folks a difficult puzzle or challenge. It’s another to throw them a challenge and then be DICK when people struggle.
Also, losing your eyes?! What the actual fuck?! Did they agree to gore? I am not cool with eye damage, and this shit would make me puke—and then throw hands if it turned out this shit was entirely pointless.
Gritty Realism Story
• Critical Fail Table
• Unrewarding Natural 20
• Asshole NPC’s
• Litteral crippling of characters
Gee, why would folks want to play this game? I have heard of meat grinders, but this is too much.
The lengths DMs will go to to not improve and banning/changing rules instead improving their play never ceases to amaze me….. “giants, magic fine. But healing magic is just not realistic” JFC
Last Story
Leave. Just leave.
The DM wanted this to fail.
For the second story I would've just cheated on every die roll claiming them to be 18s or above. Gritty realism shouldn't be that boring or negative all the time. All things considered I'd probably drop the campaign too.
Cat told me that I need to comment and I need the cute before I get into the creepy
I'm sure the only reason the players didn't think slicing out their own eyeballs was the solution was because… Why the heck would their characters agree to do that just for a job?
Had a DM who had a door with a hand imprint held under two guillotines, which had like "offer your hand to the fiends, and you may continue on", we tricked it by pressing it down with a magehand, but the guillotines stopped part-way, as it was just a test of loyalty for the cultists. Now that's a good puzzle.
Ive seen two videos on the same story about the Gritty Realism world in Story #2. By the 2nd time I agree with the GM.
If youre character is crippled, then retire them and make a new character. If its an online game it doesnt even require paper for new character sheets.
Same thing with magic. While taking much longer to regain spells is boring mechanically its also down-to-earth.
The biggest point of contention is that from what is said the players were destined to fail no matter what. High rolls necessary to succeed at everything, and low rolls are crippling. Where was the Acting part? Sounds like it was just about describing how the characters would fail by bad luck. 'THY GRIM DARKNESS IS LUDICROUS"
I never understood how people do "long rests" over a week. Because that means you and your party just gotta hole up and and do nothing for a week.
I think too many DM's make the mistake of thinking "Gritty Realism" means that existence is pain, life sucks and everything is going to hurt you all the time. Cause, here's the thing. That's not realistic EITHER. How many times have you tried to do something that you failed so hard you lost a limb? how many times have you done something you were well experienced with but failed to the point even a rookie would laugh at you? you think something like a fighter who has trained in the use of countless weapons to develop proficiency in them, is EVER going to fail so hard he stabs into his own foot? or decapitates a companion? No, it's not realistic to expect such things. How often do you go into a town, stop at the local convenience store to buy something and the guy behind the counter goes "the heck you want punk? i'mma charge you $30 for that soda cause i hate your face". I've had things like all of this happen in "Gritty Realism" campaigns, and NONE of it is realistic. These campaigns should be better described as "Everyone hates you and F the players" games. Realism means that there is no plot armor, you can die, you can lose things like pieces of gear, stuff can break, and there will be consequences for your actions. It doesn't mean the world is out to get the players and the DM should be making life as hard as possible on them.
With the rules stated your mistake was being adventurers, you all should have just been wood cutters and refused to leave the village due to danger.
Nipsy and Simba, a cute combo – loves me some cringe kitties.
The puzzle guy was a tool, the Gritty Realism guy – again your goal as DM is not to play against your players – idiot. Third DM – you know – leave – all tools.
Off to pet my kitties.
I can only imagine what other 'puzzles' the DM of the first story had, especially considering this ass was laughing at the party for either not getting it or their reactions at the revelation on top of it having been for nothing.
Long rests taking a week is an optional variant from wotc, that’s not home-brew. It’s also very much viable. Adventures don’t need to be back to back. There SHOULD be downtime.
Sadists get off on causing other people emotional, mental, or physical distress; that guy's a downright psychopath.
Yeah puzzles always vex people especially when the DM gets very one answer focused and even if something someone else does make sense they're like no that's not the answer therefore it won't work. But I seem to recall in a D&D comic I once read the Sphinx ask the question and one of the characters came up with an answer that was absolutely not what she was thinking of but it moved to her so much she said that's not the answer I was thinking of but it fits too perfectly I will accept it
I've been in a Curse of Strahd campaign for about two years now using the "gritty realism" rest rules (which are in the DMG, btw.) It helps to keep things tense – serious injuries take a realistically long time to recover from, every time a spell gets cast is an event because it takes a vacation rather than just a nap to recover the spell slot, we're rarely at full hp and when we are we're almost certainly out of hit dice, so our characters feel like they're in danger, we're constantly aware the clock is ticking, and since we can't just take a long rest whenever we want, short rests actually have value.
How do you make a game gritty and realistic? By making healing spells that can reset bones and stitch flesh back together hurt a LOT as a mechanism for encouraging roleplay? "Ah yes. You hear a crack as your bone snaps back into place and your skin unceremoniously zips shut with a squelch" a~la roleplaying the intense pain at first, but then getting better at gritting your teeth and getting it over with as the levels come and go.
No. Fuck that. Just nerf the spells into bandaids.
This is the dumbest mistake I see GMs making.
A natural 1 should only be played as a horrific failure if you plan to reward natural 20s as epic successes.
To that end. A nat1 should only be an instant failure in combat. Similarly, a nat20 should only be an instant success in combat.
If you have a large number of monsters to deal with, presumably an entrance to bottleneck them through, and a GM who is punishing you with unreasonable odds. Then stick it to them by buying spears and bracing at the entrance. They'll kill themselves for you as every attack you land on a charging creature while bracing is a crit.
WTF on the first story. So the DM expected his players to carelessly blind themselves, risking losing their vision PERMANENTLY, for a puzzle that doesn’t even lead them in the right direction?
Why does this puzzle require SELF-MUTILATION as a solution? It makes for me no sense since it means every member of this cult must be blinder than a mole (I know it‘s a fantasy setting but how DO you see the path with your eyes GOUGED OUT?!?)
Also, just because someone is a priest doesn’t mean they would do EVERYTHING first in the group; recklessness is VERY bad. The priest is essentially the healer; having the healer BLINDED is akin to a death sentence for the entire group. Plus, self-mutilation is considered in IRL a heinous act in various believes, so another good reason that the priest can’t just take their eyes out.
I‘m sorry for the long rant but… If I would design puzzles and riddles, mutilation would ONLY come into play when;
1. When there’s a clear warning that the puzzle is a dangerously lethal one, so that the players need to be more cautious in their decision
2. Only when the players are taking literally the dumbest decision ever (deliberately of course) to approach it (even that is kinda a grey area to use)
And another thing; why wasting the players time with a puzzle that doesn’t even leave them to the culprit nor the next clue?!? You could pander time better. I wonder if there are more of these ‚puzzles‘ that nutjob of a DM prepared… I feel so sorry for them.
Nipsy continues to be adorable.
Okay…. i am hetting addicted to this channel.
Tho part of me wish i had a chance to get into DnD, while the other part makes me glad i didnt.
Second story is case in point for why gritty realism is usually only fun for the DM.
As a DM I never have a singke answer to a riddle, imerely decide if i like the parties answer more than the orignal
No offense to anyone who enjoys gritty realism games, but the only gritty realism I need to play is real life. I play games to get away from that!
Honestly, as I was hearinf the first story's puzzle I said out loud "gouge your eyes out". The puzzle itself isn't the nightmare. The railroadyness around it is (I would have definitely let them dig a hole to the hideout). It seems like a good puzzle for a horror themed setting, and it makes sense: it is a cult who removes their eyes as part of the ritual, so of course it makes sense that only those initiated (I.e., without eyes) would see the entrance. And I understand how a simple Blind spell shouldn't work. It is too easy of a workaround, so it would make sense for the cultists to have prevented that.
Could the GM make the solution more obvious? I don't think, so, actually. I got it just from the clues in OP, so I don't think he needed to do that. And, frankly, the solution might seem unachievable, but
1.- The cult shouldn't care about making it solvable but about making it secure that only their people could enter. Anything else would have been pretty immersion breaking.
2.- Even then, it is still solvable, and a WoD, CoC, Kult or any other RPG player would have found the solution easily: who says it's the PCs who have to blind themselves? Maybe one of the mercenaries, or a captured cultist, or even a dominated eyeless creature (like a worm or a blind dog) would have done the trick as well…
Also, another of GMs mistake was to make it a red herring without giving hints about it being a red herring. Misdirection only works when the party had opportunity to figure it out, but didn't
I fucking hate this bullshit Reddit method of telling stories, where they wanna build suspense for Reddit karma before telling the actual story. I mean Christ on a bike just fkn tell the actual stories instead of going uhawooha that’s a story for another time…….
Yep… all the time "Realistic" means "Eveyrone's an asshole, everything that could benefit you gets taken away at first chance – anything that negatively effects you? sticks you like GLUE. It builds character and leads to so many play opportunities!"
In actuality, it ends up mostly leading to people deciding "No good deed will I do" because every good deed gets punished, sitting around bitching about how much their life sucks and things never go theier way, they never bother to try and make plans for improvement since they always fail, and they fail at everything."
No one would gouge out their own eyes unless it was the only way to save their child. Or maybe the world. And it was pretty sure that it was the only way. That DM is not someone I would want to be around because there is something really wrong with the way he thinks.
Moral of the story if you hear a campaign is gonna be “gritty realism” only play classes that have class features that allows you to treat low rolls as middle of the ground rolls like the Rogue’s Reliable Talent if there are any other classes with them and only play as halflings so you can negate all Nat 1’s.
gritty realism=/=shitty realism
The 2nd story is a bad example for how gritty realism is supposed to be played. The core idea is to make resource management and adventuring more important to the overall flow of the game. I've played in a campaign that used gritty realism, and we would really only level up once we took a long rest, and we would also only take a long rest when we had enough exp to level up. It made each level it's own little game of character building, and to me and everyone else, it was pretty fun.
We did not use critical fumbles, and permanent injuries were used in place of character death. We also never lost all of our gear for more than a session or two, with an obvious way to get it all back.
It was pretty dang fun. I played a druid that had to gather all components to use for spellcasting. Is it the kind of game for everyone? Nah, but I enjoyed it.
Nipsy and Simba are SO precious cuddling together :D. These were interesting stories today, and I really appreciated your views on each of them.
These dms sucked.
Just a quick comment about the second story: "long rests take a week" is a pretty common rule for Gritty Realism campaigns. Basically means that the party needs to be somewhere safe and take some time off to recover. Everything else in that story is awful though.
I was in a game that was not called gritty realism, but the DM really enjoyed making us players suffer.
It started in an inn, where the innkeeper was introduced as my character's friend and a nice fellow. Next moment, some rude mercenaries attack another PC whom my character hadn't met yet. I take it as a sign to gather the party, others players join too, we take the mercenaries to a hidden back alley and kill in a couple rounds, none escapes. And the corpses will be soon eaten by some strange nighttime vermins, as my character knows.
We go back to the inn, and the innkeeper and his wife are packing in panic and mourning their business and life, because somehow now the mercenaries' boss will know it was us who killed them and will come and burn the inn and basically ruin the whole town. The boss and the rest of them were not even in the town themselves, just that little group of 4 bastards that we had killed. OK, I am sorry for my friend, I give him most of my starting gold to help moving, and we promise to try and do something about the mercenaries. That are able to crush the town, and we are lvl2. So we think, maybe we investigate and find some allies –
In comes the townsguard and takes us to the mayor. Who is in the same panic as the innkeeper. Difference is that he's not our friend (most NPCs were very much NOT our friends by default) and he will not take our 10gp as an apologie. He wants us go and deal with the mercenaries NOW or be executed. So the logic is: we are much weaker than his guards, but the guards can do nothing to resist the mercs, so we are supposed to deal with the mercs. OK, we are sorry we have endangered the whole town, we agree to bring him the boss's head by tomorrow. Not like there's much choice, because if we run, we'll be chased down by some magical search, and the whole region will be raised to catch us. Why cannot the whole region raise to deal with 50 mercs who threaten the town? Because they are scary.
We meet the second and the last friendly NPC of the campaign, he tells us that the goblin king is his friend and owns im a favor, so we can get that favor as help to deal with the mercs. Great! We go there, meet some goblings attacked by wolves, kill the wolves save the goblins, take the wolves' meat and skins as gifts for the king… You'd think all that is enough to make the king our ally against the mercs that are bad for him too? Nope, it's enough to "not kill you before you try to convince me you can be useful". OK… we somehow convince him to tell us where the merc's camp is. But he for some reason betrays us by not telling that the camp is charmed. Now we are trapped inside a magical barrier surrounding the camp of between 50 and 100 mercenaries, including mages and several Death Knights. We're level 3 thanks to the wolves.
How do we survive that mess? Four almighty letters: DMPC. And so it goes on. If we kill some enemies, the victory will only put us in more trouble. If we befriend a nice NPC, next moment they will loose their home and job and be maimed all by our fault. A young elf wizard several lvls higher than us got terribly maimed by unmagical fire in 2 rounds, because he could not jump from a burning cart without our help, and he didn't cry for help, we just looked back and saw him sitting on the cart burning. We shouldn't run away and abandon him, said the DM.
The pain ended when one of us was downed by a mimic, and while another player was attacking mimic, our healer tried to reach the wounded guy to Cure Wounds. She lacked 5 feet of movement, so I ran up and tried to drag him towards her, but somehow we still lacked those 5 feet. We dedicated our 2 whole turns to raise one guy, and we could do nothing. The mimic was practically done by that point, we just were afraid that the fallen guy will fail all his death saves by the next healer's round, and we surely had NO resourses for resurrection, due to how the game was going. So we asked the DM for the rule of cool and were told no, there's nothing cool in cooperating to save someone's life, the DM will die here and now for those 5 feet of movement.
So the healer quit on the spot, and after 4 hours of yelling at each other the campaign was over. For good.
Stories like the 2nd are why I won’t play homebrew bullshit.