One of the worst GM railroading stories I've ever heard.

[roseembolism]

While doing a bit of research on Usenet, I stumbled across this old story. It's nowhere near the worst gaming story I've heard (the game with the police and prostitutes is definitely worse), but this one is pretty much the most amusingly bad example of railroading I've ever read. And so:

On May 7 1998, 12:00 am, m...@ottawa.com wrote:

> Story #2:
> Playing Space Opera, I had a referee whose opposition was *always*, without
> fail, able to trivially kick the PCs' butt. He also railroaded with a
> heavier hand than anyone I'veevereven heard rumours of. We latched on to
> the pattern early in the game and started to experiment to see just how far
> this referee power trip went. One of the experiments was to just attack a
> random passer-by with everything we had (and, trust me, we had *incredible*
> levels of power!--this would have been a Monty Hall campaign except for the
> fact that everything else had even more power). Sure enough, this completely
> random passer-by just happened to be an incredibly poweful psionic who
> trivially wiped the streets clean with us. Then this same NPC--the one we
> opened up relationships with by trying to kill, mind--decided that we were
> trustworthy folk who would be perfect for a military mission he had in mind.
> Here's where things got very surreal:
> 1) We refused to participate so he teleported us to the battlefield.
> 2) We just stood around and ignored everything going on around us so we got
> teleported inside a (tracked) tank.
> 3) We refused to drive the tank or fire its gun at anything so it drove
> itself and shot at the opposition (who were, of course, able to just swat
> aside the rounds).
> 4) We climbed out of the tank and jumped in front of it under its treads so
> it levitated over us with its hitherto unseen anti-gravity device.
> 5) My character tried to use a force knife to cut his own throat, but the
> force knife blade contracted to nothing whenever it got close to being able
> to injure my character.
>
> At this point we all just got up and left the game, never to return.

Seriously, can anyone come up with a worse example?

Comments

[seawasp]

This is pretty much standard "Lee & D" as we used to call it. I could tell a dozen similar tales.

[roseembolism.livejournal.com]

"Lee and D"?

Anyway, I know of similar stories, but this one is really excessive in the a
GM's determination to continue the game in the face of obvious player resistance.

[seawasp]

Lee Grimes was the GM. As a player he was a certified munchkin. As a GM, he was the entire Class One Railroad Industry. The above story is simply typical of him. He got WORSE than that.

[random-girl.livejournal.com]

The only one I ever heard of equally as bad ended up with the PC's attempting to kill themselves, only to be told that suicide was prevented. So they made a daisy chain and stabbed everyone to the left.

[roseembolism.livejournal.com]

See now I may be odd in this attitude, but it just seems to me the entire group committing suicide should be a sign that a) the group is unhappy with the scenario, and b) I really should alter what I'm doing. But as I said, I'm kind of odd in caring about what the players want.

[random-girl.livejournal.com]

David and I experienced a really bad LARP GM; kind of a control freak, his area of control as the GM was Nosferatu and Brujah (and David was playing a Nos and I was playing a Brujah--we were head of both groups). He came in as a Sherrif from a nearby city hundreds and hundreds of years older than us and kinda tortured us for two hours in game in an effort to get us to comply; apparently is plan for having fun in game was to make us NPCs without permission.

My solution involved the other GMs--they were hadnling all the other clans and the Prince of the Sherrif who came to bug us. The very next game when his Sheriff came, every clan in the city (save one, who got pissed they were not asked) was in the same place and I had permission from his Prince to put him down.

We didn't, because it turns out that all the Nos shooting the heaviest weapons we were allowed out of obfuscate while the Brujah beat on him and the Toreador used their perception and speed to prevent him escaping were just not enough for the task (did you know that 5 invisible vampires can miss 1 GM controlled NPC with no special perception abilities?). I am to understand the next GM meeting was somewhat less than cordial, and that GM stopped interacting with us entirely, still completely oblivious to why his behavior was received as it was by the entire game full of players.

Sometimes standing up to bullies can be both fun and profitable.