You Know Your GM's Evil When...

One of the most popular features on GameWyrd was the “You Know Your GM’s Evil When…” section. As usual Wyrdlings could submit their own suggestions and vote for how good other people’s suggestions are.

The following is the complete and full list. It’s listed in order with the top suggestions after nearly 4 years of voting have scores of about 200 and the bottom suggestions having no votes at all. Many spelling errors made their saving throws and were not fixed.

You Know Your GM’s Evil When…

…His dice have the souls of past players trapped inside them.
… the white dragon you have been attempting to kill is really an albino red dragon.
If he’s ever said: “What’s 20 feet tall, carries weapons with pluses higher than all of your levels combined, smells like a troglodyte (by the way, roll a Constitution check), And is laughing with one head while it eats (rolls dice) Oh, Look at that, Your Cleric, with the other! Anyone? No? Lets say we figure it out together.”
… he gets out an art book by H.R. Giger “for atmosphere”.
…He starts rolling dice just to make his players nervous that something is going to happen.
… He puts you in an easily escapable deathtrap and then explains all his plans to you.
…your dreams are haunted by the sound of his dice rolling.
… they look at you, look at their notes, repeat the process, then get a scary look on their face and burst out in hideous laughter just before your gaming session is to begin.
… your whole party is killed off in one session in the undead city. Your new party arrives and you are attacked by all your old characters…now undead!
… other GMs start naming their villains after her.
… your party is almost dead. So to save your self from the Beholder you use your last spell to WISH the beholder before you were dead! It does die horribly…by having a Tarrasque land on it.
… Your DM has a huge pile of blank character sheets & asks you to fill in 10 new characters.. Just to be on the safe side.
… After he kills off your PC’s he goes after your family next…
…Your codpiece suddenly animates and attacks its neighbors
Every shopkeep is a retired 20th level character that will attack at the smallest provocation.
… You find a deck of many things with 1(one) card left, and she’s smiling.
… atomic bombs detonating near by are the least of your worries
… saying his name out aloud is considered unlucky.
… you find voodoo dolls of the players in with his dice.
… he matter of factly states “between sessions, your characters have been off in a foreign land killing beggars and poor people for fun”.
… you’ve submitted MOST of the “famous last words”.
… if he hasn’t killed off any players, then at least the players have had multiple amputations on all the criticals the monsters keep on getting.
“Ok, that’s the THIRD time you’ve had your right hand cut off at the wrist!”
… the players develop nervous twitches.
… they start all their sentences with ‘Okay, if that’s what you want to do….’
… your get arthritis in your wrist from rolling up PCs
… anything you try and kill ends up being “unique”
… all the light bulbs in the room explode when she opens her notes.
… instead of a small green alien named Kazoo, he gets advice from a red demon known only as “Master.”
… he starts by saying, ‘This adventure will be safe and fun for all. Friend Computer says so’
… he spends too much time looking at this list.
…He friggin’ tells ya he’s evil
… They mockingly quote, “Its only a bunch of Kobalds.”
… he has a powerful guy help the party out with multiple favors and things seem great until… the powerful True neutral character informs them of balance… and asks for many favors back in return… going through death defying quests for small deeds…
… they keep all the good munchies for themselves.
… he simultaneously slips you and your character poisoned food “for roleplaying purposes”
… a pair of wizards, level 8 and level 9, working as a team, come across
a mithril sarcophagus and decide they’d rather not check for treasure.
… “Knock Knock”
“who’s there?”
“Cathul”
“Cathul wh…..oh no you don’t!”
… the monster manual makes him laugh
…He looks at the Monster Manual, and then smiles at you before saying; “Aah…life is good.”
… she spends hours refining her critical fumble tables.
… when, to get him away from the Monster Manual, you have to exorcise him
…She rounds up everyone’s d20’s just to make one damage roll.
… he buys 20 extra dice just for tonight’s adventure.
… he makes the players make a second (evil) party whose goal is to kill the primary (good) party.
…he clones the Tarasque in order to breed more of them.
… You come in after missing a session and ask: “Who died last week?”
… their notes are bound with the flesh of previous players
… he signs himself ‘The Evil GM’
… you get a soul sucking paper cut
… he refers to the Fiend Folio as the “Friend Folio”
… The dice rolls only determine the number of years it will be before your bodies are found.
… She always offers you her Player handbook, and it’s trapped.
… He tells you your character has to be a wizard in a realm with no magic
…She brings six different monster compendiums to the game and makes you roll a d6 to decide which book she will use on you FIRST.
…Your GM has the habit of ordering a pizza and chowing down without giving you any, and then making reference to your character as a slab of pepperoni as your character is torn limb from limb and is eaten.
… political adventures are complicated by doppelganger assassins
…the random name generator on your computer begins to repeat itself.
… while you are sewing you prick your self with a soul sucking needle
… He has a NPC cleric cast resurrection on a player he just killed just to beat him to death with a 2×4
… your first level wizard always falls over and kills themselves.
… Half the time he says “are you sure?” and the other half he makes you regret it.
… he doesn’t tell you what the command word for your full grown bull elephant figurine of wondrous power in your pocket is, and keeps asking “Did you just say …..?”
… his kobolds know karate.
… she asks to look at your character sheet, then just laughs quietly for five minutes.
…you run out of ability score combinations….for the third time.
…you walk through the door a ogre cuts your head off with his club… a sharp club
… everyone else in the group apart from you turns out to be a werewolf.
…he sprouts horns and appears before you wielding a pitchfork.
… The red dragon your paladin just killed turns out to be lawful good.
… he starts the session with, “Okay, this may hurt a little, but it will all be over in a second.”
You have to roll 10 on 2d6 just for permission to use the bathroom.
… unless the players SPECIFICALLY ask every single thing about a room or area they are in… the GM plays them as if they are blind…”You never ASKED ‘What does the person we are talking to look like’, so therefore why should I say that he has two baboon heads and tentacles for arms?”
When the DM is playing 3rd edition D&D.
… he threatens to have a cloud of wandering damage suddenly hit your character or any character if they say single words or phrases like… “huzzah”, or “I’m a cucumber”.
… the NPC cleric of the party heals you by hitting you with her mace.
… he puts you through the Tomb of Horrors
…his notes occupy as much space as the entire Encyclopaedia Britannica, and that’s just the traps.
… the angry gold dragon has a friend.
… his NPCs sell Rings of Invulnerability to the PCs at inflated prices but fail to mention that they run out after a week
…fighting the Tarrasque seems like fun compared to the challenge he just set for you.
“So you open the chest? OK then everyone make a Reflex save and then a fortitude save. The DC is 50. Anyone make it? NO? Figures. You’re all dead now. HA HA HA”
… He comes up to you before the game session with a smirk on his face and says “Remember the ten dollars you owe me”
… as you put on the ‘helm of telepathy’ given to you in celebration of reaching your 20th level of paladin he begins to laugh…
It’s your first time in the game and everyone hands you a backup character from their stack…
… You can only use the wish spell at the end of a session and will never learn the result before the next session.
… he starts describing the people in the room with your party in nauseating detail… and then you realise that he’s just been describing the most powerful evil character you’ve ever played in any game ever, whilst looking at a stack of mismatched character sheets
… he makes you take on beloved characters such as Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny and instead turns them into a demonic “Red Master” and a quintuple powered “Vorpal Bunny” (Monty Python) because he just has a sick mind and likes corrupting things like this.
… a year spent fighting your way out of the 2759th layer of the Abyss is a good year.
… he puts the party into strange situations just to turn them into bizarre jokes. EG. “So you’re telling me that two fighters, a mage, a cleric a minotaur and a kendar walk into a bar…”
… what the players heard as “There’s a LEAK in the fountain” and they all try to shove things into it, they get destroyed… by the Liche (correctly pronounced “leak”) in the fountain.
… they have an odd obsession with gazebos …
… the ‘undead’ your cleric rushed up to turn happens to be a doppelganger
… an evil wizard clones you a number of times and one of them appears every session to kill you and steal the treasure
… they order a large pepperoni pizza, eat it all without sharing, then start comparing your adventuring party to the bits of pepperoni she picks from her teeth.
… your informant is deaf, blind, and dumb. Then the DM says it’s “coincidence”.
…when he tells you to buy that pegasus for your last money, just to kill it five minutes later.
… you fail a will save and he takes you into the “back room” to explain what happens.
… he tells you that Dragon Turtle’s shell is an island in the middle of the lake …
… he chants ’13 men on a dead man’s chest’ after you take all the treasure out of the chest …
…you manage to get to the right level for a wish spell, wish to meet only “pleasant” people on your journey home, and the fish you wanted to fish for and eat turn into “pleasant people” and die.
…whenever your character is in a tough situation, he offers seppeku and gets his scimitar…
… the players volunteer to spend several hours creating back-up characters.
… she insists on having all her rulebooks rebound in red, scaled leather with gold trims.
…he says, “your character doesn’t need to go right now” whenever you ask for a bathroom break.
… he makes you roll up a backup character before the game begins.
… he informs you that tonight all XPs are “negative”.
… he uses a “special” — loaded — d20 for rolling critical threats.
… he bans munchies from the game.
… he nonchalantly states that in this session he’ll be multiplying his damage rolls by 4 in such a manner that it would seem that he might as well have said “Pass the munchies please”
…he publishes his own monster manual full of variant’s on the Tarrasque, and lists them as level 1 challenges.
… when your Holy Avenger +50 that shoots 100d6 fireballs has no effect on the chaotic evil enemy
… she starts wearing mirror shades just so you can get a glimpse of which page of the MM she’s looking at.
… he pretends on: “I didnt’t know that this monster was this strong.” Every time you die.
… you create a new evil alignment named after him.
… Their favorite ‘gift’ is a Deck of Many Things … … and they make ever PC roll a d4 to see how many draws they ‘get to take’
… when, by rolling new PCs, you use every possible combination of letters.
… an entire volcano is collapsing on 1st level players. while they fight of thousands of goblins
… she spends hours working on the conversions to bring Cthulhu in to your Supers game… in person!
… Before the game starts he asks everyone if they brought their back up characters.
… All the monsters ever slain by your characters show up in the Hells to kill you!
He pisses his pants laughing whenever you get treasure…
… the GM guide is now considered by him as the “good book”
… He comes to the table dressed in a black cloak, holding a scythe……
Your GM replaces Ao with Asmodeus as the steward of Cosmic balance.
… Your DM shows you his loaded dice and then actually uses them….
… When Alice is assigned the mission of killing Bob and blowing up a reactor, Bob is supposed to blow up the reactor and has been told that James is out to kill him and James’ job is to make sure that Bob survives and keep the reactor safe.
… They make use of the previous PC’s Wish from the Deck of Many Things, to turn the players _Other_ party into undead. Player Quote ‘But I meant well!’
… she interrupts you telling her about your latest character with “oh, it doesn’t matter, you’ll be dead in 10 minutes.”
… their favorite magic item ‘gift’, is a Deck of Many Things as a PC’s Wedding Present
… Their favorite ‘gift’ is the Deck of Many Things and they WANT you to draw the 1d4 Wishes (+ whatever they’re in the mood for)
… She’s mad at her husband(me)
…the GM makes you roll to see whether you fall in love with the troll you’re fighting…
… When he is going down this list and saying “Weak, weak, weak, that’s a good idea, weak…”
… Moogles are scarier than meeting the entire family tree of a dragon.
He unloads three dice bags, just to get enough d10 to roll a single dex+brawl roll. In glabro.
… He always makes poisons available for anyone to buy.
… He uses the Council of Worms background for Dragons in every Dragon encounter!
… You find me GMing
… you soon realize that you need to Coup De Grace everything you encounter or you WILL end up seeing it again.
… There is a sign on the bathroom door reading “confession-booth”. When you return you find that your character has lost a clone but has no treason-points anymore.
Every type of dragon is the same color, gray…
…She turns up to sessions with THAT smirk.
…your character is being tortured and he insists on acting it out ‘for characterisation’.
… your party’s mage works long and hard to get the wish spell and his first wish is “I wish the dm would DIE!!”
… only too late do you realise its not the princess you have to save.. but the very angry, and very large fire-breathing dragon…
… your paladin is in a rowboat reusing drowning villagers and a zombie plesiosaur rears up in front of you, and he asks, “So, you’d be wearing full platemail whilst boating on this very deep water, would you?”
… even the paladin wants a feat or some other means to raise his base speed to at least 50 ft.
When you whack the Skeletons down they get up stronger
…he said “MWA HAHA, I HAVE THE ULTIMATE POWER!” quite often.
… the GM uses props and real parchment whenever a soul selling opportunity turns up
…His next campaign takes place in the “Realm that even Balors fear”
The NPC is a rich merchant and wants to buy everyone new armour and demands someone wields the red-tinted mithral great-axe with skulls engraved on it.
…not only does he take special delight in employing trolls for your character’s cosmetic surgery, he moves in with you and relives the evisceration scene daily, beginning with, “You should’ve seen the look on your face when…”
“Ok, tonight we’re playing a sort of variation of strip poker…”
… He runs you on the Tomb of Horrors, The Return to the Tomb of Horrors, AND MAKES ACERACK (the Boss of both modules) A REOCCURING CHARACTER IN ALL HIS CAMPAIGNS
… he announces he’s going to make the campaign more realistic by blending the AD & D rules with the Call of Cthulhu insanity check tables.
… they recommend you take ‘pot-shots- into an orb of darkness your drow buddy just threw around ten giants with your thundering webbing strength bow-then laugh when you almost hit the drow. (true story)
… You miss out on two sessions and upon return all other characters have lost three levels.
Every time a die lands on the floor during a roll he considers it a one.
… rather than giving the villain the information he wants you let him kill every member of the party.
… he is growing a forked tail
… he puts the symbols from the evil deities in his campaigns on chains and puts them on his back view mirror.
… as above, but you don’t know whether she meant YOU or your character.
… when you wake up all wet cause you dreamed about his dices rolling.
… he has metal dice to chuck at you when you mess up their adventures.
… she laughs every time you make a dice roll and then starts franticaly flipping pages
… he sends three second-level characters into the inner sanctum of an ancient white dragon to fix a (trapped) machine. And “forgets” to mention that the dragon can teleport, too…
… After surviving a high speed car chase involving high explosions and machine guns (your character, by the way, was armed with a hammer), after escaping a dark dimension where all six billion or so people on the planet were super powerful evil soldiers of doom, and after killing off the only NPC that was on YOUR side, one muttered comment on “fairness” leaves your character fried to a crisp by a stray lightning bolt. (True Story. It sucked horribly)
… The dwarf in the party starts inquiring at the armour about heavier head protection because the flying Paladin keeps getting stoned and falling on him. {True Story!}
… he puts you through the Tomb of Horrors, then acts it out for real to see what it would have been like (submitted by lifeinthefastlane14 and ATWA01)
…he lets you face TWO black dragons in a row!
… After you set up a camp for the night, you find out you are on the goblin equivalent of a highway.
… he announces he’s going to make the campaign more realistic by blending the AD & D rules with the Paranoia combat results tables.
…he rolls number of monsters encountered with a d100
… when you get licked through your boot by a zombie and its lethal.
It rains Gelatinous Cubes in the game world quite frequently and no one has ever tried to figure out why.
…When your GM rolls in combat you just hear a “splosh” of a hundred dice being rolled just behind the screen. 8|
…the GM’s cat is a character–the leader of your party.
… while your party is presenting him with copies of their character sheets, he leans back, takes a deep breath, and says “Aahhh, fresh souls.”
… You ask how much damage you take from the seemingly harmless looking wolf creature, only to watch in horror as he scoops up everyone’s dice. “That much.”
…you’re afraid to fall asleep anywhere because every time you do he starts rolling die.
He gets a smirk on his face every time he asks “High-Low?”
…he threatens you with a letter opener whenever he feels like it and says, “Don’t make me use my DAGGER OF DOOM!!!”
… He uses contrived plot devices such as a mysterious box that everyone is trying to kill the PCs to get and for some reason they can’t just get rid of it. The PCs must eventually deliver this box to some mysterious entity who in turn tries to kill when he/she/it receives it…Then the box opens…
… he rolls ALL the dice for a damage roll
… Repeats “Hey hey hey, look who brought the Mountain Dew!” over 8 times in an hour.
He sends you a link that says this: http://www.themostannoyingwebsite.com/
…he introduces a new monster called a Varde (see Dryad in the library)
… he reads Stephen King novels for ideas.
When your PCs aren’t meant to reach level seven.
… you see a nice, shiny, beautiful gold ring with elvish script on his finger.
… whenever he rolls for a random encounter, half the party runs to the bathroom.
… Hellen Keller is the NPC in charge of guiding your party…
… No matter what you are doing, no matter what game you are playing, or even if you have taken every precaution, he starts laughing evilly when dice are mentioned.
He starts a role-playing session with, “Okay, I’d like you all to role two characters. You know, just in case something should (Heaven forbid) happen to your first. Actually, you know what? Better make that three. No four. No…”
… You find an unid’d potion, and after doing a poison check, succeeding, and finding no poison in it, you discover Love Potions are not considered poison and you just looked at the female orcish barbarian in your party after drinking it.
… he pulls out the “Temple of Elemental Evil” and says :oh, i think well try this one out for a bit of fun.
he says your mama is so fat that when she jumps in to the ocean the whales start singing “WE ARE FAMILY” beyotch
… he laughs evilly when not only is your character blind and has black blood from a paradox flaw, but you piss off your two werewolf friends by calling them puppies, (it was four am and i have dogs…)… they then rage on you, and then get mad at themselves cause you are a kinfolk mage…
… When you want to use a confession-booth, (it happens sometimes) you have to actually get into a cramped closet that smells funny, and you can’t find the door-knob and what the hell is that smell, why is the GM yelling at you? Walls closing in… can’t breath…
… They get upset and throw pretzels at your head when you invest that 10k gold into property (and brothels) and neglect to buy that shiny sword he wanted you to.
… When he gives all of the PCs the same Secret-Society code phrase.
… He carries a stop watch and times you during combat rounds
… you meet a CR 7 random encounter that has fire resistance, Damage reduction and a acid coating so that even magic +3 weapons must make a save.
Oh, yes don’t forget, due to a cursed item the Paladins effective level is seven, the roque and cleric are effective level six by means of a level drain. The shaman is level nine and the wizard is only level six….
So basically the monster is CR 11 for this group and their level is 7…..
You’re afraid of dice.
… you have to make up your own quests and when you have played it for some time he smiles evilly and says: “And suddenly… You wake up! You don’t get experience for dreams…”
Mwahahahahahahaahahahahahahahahahahaha
… he uses a highlighter and takes notes whilst reading “Knights of the Dinner Table”
… your characters are constantly being killed by kobalds
… You start regularly taking safety measures in preparation for encountering yet another beholder who has explosive flatulence. {True Story – Lost the whole party because we were using a flaming torch!}
… He asks you your Name, Security Clearance, and Sector of Origin.
… it’s not abnormal for him to say multiple times in a row, “Ok as the ancient wyrm falls to the ground and dies from Crystal Flamesphere’s flying spear charge, while the rest of you extricate yourselves, she notices there’s another one lying in wait just around the corner.” and the other party members are so used to ‘becoming one with the huge metal slag on the floor’ they routinely buy easily accessible items of teleportation so that they can escape. {True story! }
… When your team-mates have to prove you are dead before a new clone will be activated. “I’m sorry, but that skull could have come from anywhere…”
The swamp/forest/cave/dungeon/secret military installation you’re just passing through is infested. Don’t ask what with. Suffice to say it has lots of teeth.
… you have a nervous breakdown at the mention of moogles, poodles, or Furbies.
He has a race that has all stats above 22, can move at more then 80 mph without even trying, and they exist only to kill anyone who annoys him. And then they ally with the most powerful person on the planet, who control people who are further up the chain of command then the great gods. And he happens to hate every adventurer on the planet . . .
… Player says “Badger”
DM says “Meteor Swarm”!!! ( www.badgerbadgerbadger.com for explanation)
… ” The dragon slain? I thought you wanted a saw chain… backwards. Attacking you.
He makes you fight a horde of Red Dragons with a wizard who doesn’t believe in magic…
…The forces of all the planes of demons, devils, and other fiends unite to invade the world, breach right in front of the GM, and upon seeing him sitting there, the forefront – one of the most powerful of all the archfiends in existence – screams like a little girl and sounds a retreat, screaming something about the world already being conquered by a greater evil than any of them.
… the gm’s dice tend to roll 6 all the time
… your parents lay themselves prostrate before him when he enters your house
… he makes you sign your name on a piece of old, blank paper, and after signing it, you realize you have agreed to roll nothing more than a 12, or your soul will be consumed
… she decrees that all healing spells cost 300 gp, a rare and valued artifact, and the caster must kiss a complete stranger
… The bravest player starts screaming when he even looks at her.
… They convince the group to cut off your arm and through it into a strange hole “for the fun of it”. and then replaces the arm with a zombie arm(!)
… There’s fire coming from both directions and you’re locked in…
… He convinces everyone that the magic mirror is perfectly safe, right up until the moment you touch it.
… He turns your character into a dragon that all the other members of the party have to kill
…Your character develops a fear of brooms, and when the DM is called upon to choose a craft and misc. modifier, you are given brooms with a -12. (actually happened, my brother’s character had -1 INT and got 13 ranks of broom making as a result >.~)
You hear him singing to himself, “Make new fiends, but keep the ooooold, one is silver and the other gold.”
…the “Book Of Vile Darkness” is only a short summary of his diary.
… someone asks “Well how much damage can that little critter do?”, and your DM scoops a generous handful of dice into his bag… hefts it like a jeweller carefully considering a sale… adds two more dice, then carefully hands it to you and says, “Oh, I’d say about THAT much.”
… You read a tampax on the net, and they all seem like a walk in the park compared to last session.
… When your rogue lvl1 an fighter lvl1 use darkness to try to fight the third!! satyr in the cave he say: Not a problem Satyr has Blind-Sight, we say: no they don’t, he answer : Now they do!

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You Know Your GM’s Evil When…

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