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[Sergius]

Well this seems like a good place as any to vent some frustration at last night D&D session.

We arrived at a village, each of the PCs with his own motivation, after our caravan fell down a cliff and we were hunted by vicious evil panthers. The village was apparently in a sorry state, the villagers were antisocial, except for one, which we tried to help. There was no food in the fields, water was bad to drink, etc etc.

For some reason our goals mixed with saving the town from some evil wizard (everyone wanted to get at the wizard for a different reason but ultimately everyone was "good" aligned). Every time players tried to do something or investigate, were told to leave, that the villagers were afraid of us and hated us. Or something. And then something happened like lightning started causing fires, which the players promptly tried to help with, either with rousing speeches or joining the water bucket brigades.

This of course resulted in the villagers seeing us as demons that breathed lightning from our mouths and threw gasoline with our buckets, and again were told to leave. Then a Paladin In Shining Armor(TM) and flying steed came from the skies, told everyone we were so evil and should leave, and turned everything off instantly (lightning, fires). At this point we were pretty sure everything including the knight was an illusion made for the villagers to hate us even more.

Oh yeah and demons were kidnapping random children for months from their own beds.

We decided to hole up in the only friendly house so we could leave and find some clue (so we could get out of the way of the angry/fearful/confused villagers before something BAD happened to them). Then a demon kidnapped the friendly villager's son, said demon was completely unbeatable with us (we had level 6 pregens with zero magical items, just regular weapon and armor and no money). Also did some nasty permanent stat damage and left us a bit damaged, and even burned one of our weapons (for good measure).

So the villager friend asks us to help him retrieve the kid, we tell him we were going to investigate Location X as the more likely one, he led the way outside so we could go and save the day.

Then the DM decided the entire able bodied male population of the town (about 40 people) had us surrounded in a lynching mob with pitchforks and spears. We told them to sod off before something BAD happened to them, but they used their super strength (or something) to keep us from leaving. At this point we were pretty much sold on the idea that talking or trying to be diplomatic to them in any way was just going to be turned against us again anyway (the whole party was pretty much warriors anyway).

Our good barbarian thought it would be a good idea to intimidate them, so he attacked the weapons of the ones that blocked and shoved him. He succeeded, and obviously this resulted in the mob going into a berserker rage and throwing spears at him, doing damage. We retaliated trying to do non-lethal damage, and because some rule or something it was a critical and two villagers died. The rest screamed "KILL THEM!" so there was no turning back, I suppose.

We managed to kill them all (they never retreated, surrendered or gave any signs of giving up), after suffering 3 casualties out of 4. But then the DM told us "OMG you're so evil, you just slaughtered a whole town!" All attempts to say "but they attacked US!" he was like "but they're civilians! You wouldn't shoot a 10 year old if he threw a rubber ball at you! and anyway they all did Subdued (?) damage so you're healing all your wounds anyway! They use weapons that do no damage to you! blah blah!".

I told him "you just said they threw spears at one of us. SPEARS. You could have said stones or sticks but it was a spear. A spear does damage. I'm pretty sure you can kill someone with a pitchfork too, just because they have Magic We're Level 1 Adventurer plot protection from villagers doesn't mean the adventurers aren't going to react in-character!"

"But you're stronger, they couldn't have never kill you! And... it wasn't really spears, I just said that to see your reaction! But you're evil now! Change your alignments!"

"So, you're saying that attacking innocents is evil and changes alignment? That means the villagers turned evil when they attacked us right? So we really killed a lot of evil people, eh?"

"No no... the villagers were confused and fearful of you! They attacked out of fear!"

"Okay... wait, so fear makes people brave and with unlimited morale? Like, the next time you cast Fear on me let me know so that I can kill my enemies with even more determination! Also, the actions of the villagers confused us and made us afraid of the craziness, so that means our actions were okay too."

We left the town, confronted the bad guy, died in the process and he kept chiding how we lost because we didn't help the villagers and yadda... also our corpses get reanimated and they become very happy undead because in life they were evulz and loved to slaughter innocent people! How you like them apples you evildoers! Also one of the PCs was a merchant so his punishment after defeat was to turn into some sort of Greed Demon Pig of Evil Capitalism (which the DM smugly stated as if some kind of punishing for acting so evil, except... the character was a pregen, and the merchant backstory had been written by him, and at no point did the character act greedy except when telling others parts of his backstory. In fact at no point in the game they saw even a copper coin to be greedy about).

Long story short, we complained later in our Facebook page, but he keeps posting "you guys just lack self control! you should learn better morality blah blah blah". At this point he isn't even pretending we were playing characters whose morality values might not be the same as our 21th century selves, he's just telling WE (the players) are lacking in restraint or something (we actually did all our actions calmly, and even said things like "uh, I'm a barbarian, I should react like this, otherwise I'm metagaming or trying to play optimally", "right, and they attack first, so we should at least defend, no?").

(note that this guy makes us do lethal blows because "we didn't announce non-lethal right before every blow!". "Dude, we've pretty much established that we're doing non-lethal damage, until we tell you otherwise" "Nuh-huh! you have to announce every time otherwise it's lethal by default!")

Anyway, not sure there is a solution other than keep arguing, but this is just a rant. I hope it was entertaining

[Sergarr]

See, that's why you should've picked up a full magician party. With a judicious application of "Dispel Magic" and "Detect Evil" (and "Color Spray" because your DM is a dick), you would've surely solved this conundrum!

[GiglameshDespair]

Well, if he's that shitty a DM, sounds like you need to find a new one.

[NullForceOmega]

Alright, so let's see if I understand just how poorly handled that session was.

1: a group of under-equipped pre-genned 6th level characters of 'good' alignment enter a good-sized hamlet where they are not known and are immediately viewed with suspicion by the ENTIRE populous save one man.

2: during an emergency situation said characters actively tried to assist the populous of said hamlet and were placed under even greater suspicion without cause.

3: an unknown 'hero' tells the inhabitants of said hamlet that the characters are evil beings who are here to destroy them, and he is not met with skepticism or suspicion.

4: the DM then turns the whole scenario into a peasant mob situation with no right answer, there is no attempt to parley on the part of the peasants, nor an attempt to take the characters into custody.  So when the party follows the logic of the situation (mishandled by party, but still fixable by good DM) and defends themselves the DM declares the players' actions 'evil' and procedes to be a douchbag and kill everyone off.

Get a new DM.

[Sergius]

All of that except the killing everyone off. We survived more or less intact (since we magically healed all the nonlethal damage done to us by 40 angry peasants, just to make a bigger point on how we overreacted evilly with major villainy of evil), proceeded to the "dungeon" (which was found thanks to the Ranger tracking starting from the clue we had). Then practically after the first room there were two doors, one lead to the bad (killable) guy and his Uber-Demon unkillable demon buddy, who was ready to sacrifice or something two child NPCs, one being the brother of one of the PCs. The other, door, who knows. Apparently riches and magic weapons to help kill these guys. The ranger found the trail lead to the evil guys, we peeked inside, and decided to jump in despite being pretty much suicide (but completely in character at least for one of us, who at least first tried a ranged sneak attack).

The right answer was to either: randomly choosing the other door and do some dungeon delving (meaning, the ranger should have not tracked our "prey"), or after peeking thru the door and seeing the situation (apparently, urgent?) ignore it and go on our merry way to explore and collect trinkets. Trinkets that we needed to win, I guess?

Had I been the DM, I would have put the bad guys at the end of the dungeon romp, not at the beginning and forcing the players to do some stupid metagaming mental gymnastics to "take the passage to the right" first and then coming back.

[NullForceOmega]

Definitely get a new DM.  That may be the most poorly thought out thing I have ever heard of, aside form power-tripping twelve year olds.

[Sergius]

Yeah mostly my problem is that this group existed before I joined. The other players keep making excuses for him or just going all "mea culpa". But also, this group already is agreeing to play with me when I GM Fate Core, including the DM. (it seems like the DM has problems with the whole "Fate is supposed to be cinematic fiction rather than mechanical roll-and-see-who-lives", but at least he's trying... grudgingly. He grumbles when one of my players did a somersault, followed by wall running to get across a trap, even tho it was just the same as the others "roll Athletics, you made it" with no extra mechanic benefit).

[GiglameshDespair]

Following...?

[Sergius]

Following...?

Accidentally hit submit.

[Pencil_Art]

Well this seems like a good place as any to vent some frustration at last night D&D session.

We arrived at a village, each of the PCs with his own motivation, after our caravan fell down a cliff and we were hunted by vicious evil panthers. The village was apparently in a sorry state, the villagers were antisocial, except for one, which we tried to help. There was no food in the fields, water was bad to drink, etc etc.

For some reason our goals mixed with saving the town from some evil wizard (everyone wanted to get at the wizard for a different reason but ultimately everyone was "good" aligned). Every time players tried to do something or investigate, were told to leave, that the villagers were afraid of us and hated us. Or something. And then something happened like lightning started causing fires, which the players promptly tried to help with, either with rousing speeches or joining the water bucket brigades.

This of course resulted in the villagers seeing us as demons that breathed lightning from our mouths and threw gasoline with our buckets, and again were told to leave. Then a Paladin In Shining Armor(TM) and flying steed came from the skies, told everyone we were so evil and should leave, and turned everything off instantly (lightning, fires). At this point we were pretty sure everything including the knight was an illusion made for the villagers to hate us even more.

Oh yeah and demons were kidnapping random children for months from their own beds.

We decided to hole up in the only friendly house so we could leave and find some clue (so we could get out of the way of the angry/fearful/confused villagers before something BAD happened to them). Then a demon kidnapped the friendly villager's son, said demon was completely unbeatable with us (we had level 6 pregens with zero magical items, just regular weapon and armor and no money). Also did some nasty permanent stat damage and left us a bit damaged, and even burned one of our weapons (for good measure).

So the villager friend asks us to help him retrieve the kid, we tell him we were going to investigate Location X as the more likely one, he led the way outside so we could go and save the day.

Then the DM decided the entire able bodied male population of the town (about 40 people) had us surrounded in a lynching mob with pitchforks and spears. We told them to sod off before something BAD happened to them, but they used their super strength (or something) to keep us from leaving. At this point we were pretty much sold on the idea that talking or trying to be diplomatic to them in any way was just going to be turned against us again anyway (the whole party was pretty much warriors anyway).

Our good barbarian thought it would be a good idea to intimidate them, so he attacked the weapons of the ones that blocked and shoved him. He succeeded, and obviously this resulted in the mob going into a berserker rage and throwing spears at him, doing damage. We retaliated trying to do non-lethal damage, and because some rule or something it was a critical and two villagers died. The rest screamed "KILL THEM!" so there was no turning back, I suppose.

We managed to kill them all (they never retreated, surrendered or gave any signs of giving up), after suffering 3 casualties out of 4. But then the DM told us "OMG you're so evil, you just slaughtered a whole town!" All attempts to say "but they attacked US!" he was like "but they're civilians! You wouldn't shoot a 10 year old if he threw a rubber ball at you! and anyway they all did Subdued (?) damage so you're healing all your wounds anyway! They use weapons that do no damage to you! blah blah!".

I told him "you just said they threw spears at one of us. SPEARS. You could have said stones or sticks but it was a spear. A spear does damage. I'm pretty sure you can kill someone with a pitchfork too, just because they have Magic We're Level 1 Adventurer plot protection from villagers doesn't mean the adventurers aren't going to react in-character!"

"But you're stronger, they couldn't have never kill you! And... it wasn't really spears, I just said that to see your reaction! But you're evil now! Change your alignments!"

"So, you're saying that attacking innocents is evil and changes alignment? That means the villagers turned evil when they attacked us right? So we really killed a lot of evil people, eh?"

"No no... the villagers were confused and fearful of you! They attacked out of fear!"

"Okay... wait, so fear makes people brave and with unlimited morale? Like, the next time you cast Fear on me let me know so that I can kill my enemies with even more determination! Also, the actions of the villagers confused us and made us afraid of the craziness, so that means our actions were okay too."

We left the town, confronted the bad guy, died in the process and he kept chiding how we lost because we didn't help the villagers and yadda... also our corpses get reanimated and they become very happy undead because in life they were evulz and loved to slaughter innocent people! How you like them apples you evildoers! Also one of the PCs was a merchant so his punishment after defeat was to turn into some sort of Greed Demon Pig of Evil Capitalism (which the DM smugly stated as if some kind of punishing for acting so evil, except... the character was a pregen, and the merchant backstory had been written by him, and at no point did the character act greedy except when telling others parts of his backstory. In fact at no point in the game they saw even a copper coin to be greedy about).

Long story short, we complained later in our Facebook page, but he keeps posting "you guys just lack self control! you should learn better morality blah blah blah". At this point he isn't even pretending we were playing characters whose morality values might not be the same as our 21th century selves, he's just telling WE (the players) are lacking in restraint or something (we actually did all our actions calmly, and even said things like "uh, I'm a barbarian, I should react like this, otherwise I'm metagaming or trying to play optimally", "right, and they attack first, so we should at least defend, no?").

(note that this guy makes us do lethal blows because "we didn't announce non-lethal right before every blow!". "Dude, we've pretty much established that we're doing non-lethal damage, until we tell you otherwise" "Nuh-huh! you have to announce every time otherwise it's lethal by default!")

Anyway, not sure there is a solution other than keep arguing, but this is just a rant. I hope it was entertaining

This. Hilarious. Your DM is not a very reasonable or experienced DM.

[Tack]

- Averted in my last game, 'cos I'm playing Chaotic Evil.

He literally put me and my party alone in a room with the king.
I mean... C'mon. Who didn't see that coming?

[Bohandas]

- Averted in my last game, 'cos I'm playing Chaotic Evil.

He literally put me and my party alone in a room with the king.
I mean... C'mon. Who didn't see that coming?

Speaking of chaotic evil characters, a while back I was running a D&D demon themed forum comic over on MSPA's messageboard. Take a look at it:

Ekolid: A Demonic Adventure

EDIT:
Unfortunately my image hosting site ate some of the later images; I'll have to fix that at some point

[scriver]

- Averted in my last game, 'cos I'm playing Chaotic Evil.

He literally put me and my party alone in a room with the king.
I mean... C'mon. Who didn't see that coming?

...Anyone hoping you wouldn't commit suicide?

[XXXXYYYY]

Well[...]Entertaining

Wow. Just wow.

[Mephisto]

Speaking of chaotic evil characters, a while back I was running a D&D demon themed forum comic over on MSPA's messageboard. Take a look at it:

Not necessarily chaotic evil, but monstrous parties can be fun.

My players' party. The first session is tomorrow, wherein they will be charged with various Bad Things whilst in human-dominated lands - I mean, just look at them. It's obvious that they did it.