Remove ads

Scaling Up

Reader mode
Whitewings said:
And anything that drained levels. Mostly, that meant the undead, and that power was worse than anything but maybe attribute loss.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Both of which were permanent, barring things like Wish or Restoration. Sometimes you could get lucky and it would require a Remove Curse, but usually, you were screwed.

And then you get a DM who can't or won't deal with what player's come up with, and the plot of the adventure is on rails...

I stopped playing AD&D for a while after that. My Bard, on a night I couldn't make it because of work, the group had my character take the point in opening a crypt, which contained 3 wights. I lost 4 levels, going from 18 to 14. I was pissed. I was already unhappy, since despite the objections of 2/3rds the group, it was Ravenloft this, that and the other thing. After getting out of that, we got railroaded into opening a gate to the abyss, and we had to take the resulting discussion outside as several of us voiced our displeasure.

The group pretty much came apart after that.

So, to all future DMs:
1) Learn to be flexible and adaptable.
2) Take what your players wish to accomplish in the campaign into consideration.
3) Never completely rely on die rolls to convey information or clues to your players. That way lies madness and ruin.
 
Kryslin said:
Both of which were permanent, barring things like Wish or Restoration. Sometimes you could get lucky and it would require a Remove Curse, but usually, you were screwed.

And then you get a DM who can't or won't deal with what player's come up with, and the plot of the adventure is on rails...

I stopped playing AD&D for a while after that. My Bard, on a night I couldn't make it because of work, the group had my character take the point in opening a crypt, which contained 3 wights. I lost 4 levels, going from 18 to 14. I was pissed. I was already unhappy, since despite the objections of 2/3rds the group, it was Ravenloft this, that and the other thing. After getting out of that, we got railroaded into opening a gate to the abyss, and we had to take the resulting discussion outside as several of us voiced our displeasure.

The group pretty much came apart after that.

So, to all future DMs:
1) Learn to be flexible and adaptable.
2) Take what your players wish to accomplish in the campaign into consideration.
3) Never completely rely on die rolls to convey information or clues to your players. That way lies madness and ruin.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
4.) Beware of clowns (though that also counts for players).
 
FaerieKnight79 said:
And you absolutely did not get your full hit die worth of HP at level one. Or any other level. You had to roll for every level, including level 1. Which could lead to a fighter with 18 con having a grand total of FOUR hit points at level one, and potentially only getting 4 hit points each additional level. But said fighter probably doesn't have 18 con due to rolling 3d6 down the line for attributes.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

1e loosened it up in Unearthed Arcana. Characters didn't get the full die but they had a minimum. And UA had methods of rolling characters that included far more than 3 dice, especially for important attributes and humans.
 
Last edited:
The 2nd Edition DMG also included a few alternate rolling methods, but highly recommended 3d6 down the line, and to only allow rerolls if every attribute was below 9 thus not qualifying for any classes. And even then it was discouraged, and that instead you should have the player pick a basic class (fighter instead of ranger or paladin as an example) and raise that Class's main attribute to the minimum of 9.
 
Last edited:
Kryslin said:
And then you get a DM who can't or won't deal with what player's come up with, and the plot of the adventure is on rails...
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I feel your pain!

Years ago, I was creating a Thri-keen character for a Dark Sun campaign set up by the owner of a gaming supply store which provided space for groups to play. All was going swimmingly until I mentioned its Oldworld Legacy item... a steel polearm. The store owner/game master absolutely balked, dictating that Thri-keen didn't make those. I agreed but noted it was A. Legacy. Item. and not something made by them. I even said that a reasonable proficiency penalty would be fine.

He threw me out in a rage, I never went back, and the store was closed within two weeks.
 
Did you live on Long Island, and was the guy's name Scott Bizar? (Might have gotten that last name misspelled, but it was pronounced 'bizarre'.) Because that sounds like something he'd have done.
 
Well, Worm has plenty of Save or Die situations throughout canon, so it's very much in keeping with 'old school' D&D.

I wanted to add sarcasm emojii there, but the source material wouldn't let me, because Worm. :p

My 'bad D&D experience' was with Dragonlance -- I was one of 'those folks' who thought playing a Kender responsibly would be a fun time -- I could have dressed up in a problematic cosplay as a Drow and gotten a more positive response. Being the target of nearly every attack and spell from the GM because of playing Kender was the red flag I needed to stop playing in that campaign.

I've long since realized that they were just an expy for non-neurotypical Travelers and man, that didn't age well at all.


FaerieKnight79 said:
Mr Regional Coordinator brought in a character who was the exact same extremely broken build he always does, bullied the rest of the table into enabling his play style, and absolutely trivialized the majority of the adventure. It wasn't as broken as the build it eventually becomes, but that's only due to lacking the full set of required feats and highly specific magic items. His justification for running these OP builds that trivialize every encounter and destroy the fun of everyone else at the table? "I can't know in advance what people will bring to the table. So I have to ensure I can always carry any table I sit at."
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Realize it may be well past the point of reconciliation, but the Code of Conduct for Paizo Organized Play repeatedly calls out this sort of toxic behavior.

Quoted from pertinent text, bolding (no, not kobolding) for emphasis mine:
Participants are expected to respect their fellow players and work together to create positive and memorable experiences.

Would provide a link but SV is pretty not-keen on link providing last I heard.
 
Fair Wage said:
Realize it may be well past the point of reconciliation, but the Code of Conduct for Paizo Organized Play repeatedly calls out this sort of toxic behavior.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

The problem comes when any complaints have to be routed through the one the complaints are regarding, because he's the regional coordinator for a large area. As in a third (at least) each of Iowa, Illinois, and Wisconsin. All your session reports and complaints go through him, even if you submit them online. Any gaming conventions in that area with an Paizo sponsored Organized Play presence, he's there. Any official lodge sessions, he's there because he's the one that sets up and organizes them all. I once looked into setting up a sanctioned Play By Post "table" on the website I already had the (lengthy) module I was going to run picked out, was re-reading the module, and getting maps/npcs/excreta ready before putting up the board on RPOL and advertising it both on RPOL and the Paizo forums. The next session for the local lodge, Mr Regional Coordinator basically ordered me to cancel the planned PFS Organized Play session because he refuses to touch RPOL. I'd already submitted and received approval from HIS superiors. Only for him to get the entire thing shut down even though I dotted all my I's, crossed all my T's, and Mr Regional Coordinator had nothing to do with coordinating online only events.

Hell, he had a snit over me and someone else from the local lodge participating in an officially sanctioned Organized Play play-by-post "table" ran by Paizo and on the Paizo forums. Afterwords he refused to acknowledge that the characters my friend and I had ran in that Play-By-Post event got the xp to level up, let alone acknowledge that the printouts of the filled out and signed by the Paizo online coordinator himself session chronicle sheets were legitimate.

Since moving here, I've not exactly looked into if there's a local Pathfinder 1e or Starfinder 1e lodge or not. Because if there is, I'd still have to deal with him, due to him running it.
 
jmcdavid said:
@FaerieKnight79 My advice?

Get everyone else to start a group without Mr. Regional Coordinator.

If he tries to get involved, pack up and leave.

He'll break down in no time, left all alone like that.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Get everyone in an area consisting of a third each of three different states, and all gaming conventions held in that same area, to form sanctioned Organized Play groups without the regional coordinator for that area? That would be an amazing trick. Oh, and you have to do this with both Paizo's organized play AND the D&D Organized Play groups in that large area (and all conventions) because he serves the same role for the officially sanctioned D&D Organized Play leagues in the area too. Really nice trick if you can manage it.
 
FaerieKnight79 said:
Get everyone in an area consisting of a third each of three different states, and all gaming conventions held in that same area, to form sanctioned Organized Play groups without the regional coordinator for that area? That would be an amazing trick. Oh, and you have to do this with both Paizo's organized play AND the D&D Organized Play groups in that large area (and all conventions) because he serves the same role for the officially sanctioned D&D Organized Play leagues in the area too. Really nice trick if you can manage it.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
There is a way to get rid of him; happened once way back in early D&D play.
We had a jackass that was ruining play. Since he was the local head honcho, when a complaint got around him... the head office sent an investigation request to... guess who?

So, we're stuck with the douche, and getting fed up. So, someone made a list of his outright violations, questionable behaviors and things that weren't technically against the rules, but were driving people away. We then collected a crapload of signatures; I don't recall how many off hand, but I was the 969th person to sign the thing.

It was mailed to the head office, with assurances that so long as that person was running the area, none of us would attend any event he was involved in.

The head office can ignore a lot, but the money loss from a bunch of people boycotting events makes them pay more attention.
 
As a GM, he's okay. Granted, he absolutely doesn't get roleplay. As such any actual RP devolves into just rolling dice, and any abilities which are primarily for use in RP encounters are trivialized, adjudicated badly due to not understanding how they are suppose to work, or ignored entirely. It's when he manages to sit in as a player (which in my lodge he tried to do as often as he could convince someone else to run a session) that he becomes problematic. And a majority of that problem is based entirely on the fact that his preferred character build is technically legal, while being against the spirit of the rules. While also being able to get around that pesky "if you've ran X adventure or module before with a different character, you can't sit at that table unless the table isn't full" due to the fact the local lodge had only 5 people after the 6th person got kicked out for actual cheating. Something I'd suspected of that player for a while from a private gaming group we'd both been in. Didn't have proof, but I suspected it.

We DID have a few people who tried joining the lodge, only to never return for a 2nd session either because Mr Regional Coordinator was the GM and thus the adventure was just combat with any roleplaying or puzzle solving (two things he was bad at) devolving into just rolling a d20 against a skill check DC. Or he'd manage to be playing at that session due to someone else not being able to show, and they'd never return because it's just not fun to sit there while one player defeats 99.7% of the combat encounters in the surprise round and thinks he can tell everyone else how to build their character.

Hell, one of his things he'll bully people into doing if they're part of a lodge where he knows he can finagle a seat as a player is... trying to force everyone to invest skill points heavily into the Stealth and Disguise skills, because his build NEEDS enemies to be unaware of the party in the surprise round or it falls apart. Are you playing a fighter with 8 Int and only 12 dex who wears heavy armor and uses a tower shield? Doesn't matter, he'll bully you into investing all your skill points every level into Stealth and Disguise anyway. You'll always suck at the skill, and there are probably other things you'd rather spend the skill points on. But he'll bully you into doing so because his character breaks if enemies can reliably hear the party approaching.

(EDIT:
He'll also try to bully gunslingers into investing in stealth heavily, even though the class's main feature is that they make, modify, and use GUNS. Which break stealth quite badly, and the noise would echo in a dungeon, thus alerting any enemies in the area to your presence. Same with alchemists and their rather noisy bombs.)

In fact, he did exactly that to someone playing a fighter. He even tried to do that with me and my kineticist. I had planned to invest some of my skill points into Stealth anyway but he tried bullying me into building around his character. Then got rather angry at me when in one encounter I managed to get a better initiative roll then him (he actually rolled a nat 1 and I rolled decently), and my kineticist's basic attack pretty much blew the idea of stealth out of the water due to them being very very loud. Which the GM for that table was aware of because he too plays that class. So even though I managed to take out the group of enemies in the surprise round (at the cost of suffering unhealable non-lethal damage), the alarm was sounded by guards a room or two away that also heard the attack.
 
Last edited:
Wonder if you could simply take video of the sessions and post it online to cause enough embarrassment that they remove him from his position. Heck, sounds like the sort of thing that he would be all for, until he starts being ripped apart.
 
Harry Leferts said:
Wonder if you could simply take video of the sessions and post it online to cause enough embarrassment that they remove him from his position. Heck, sounds like the sort of thing that he would be all for, until he starts being ripped apart.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
This.

This sort of behavior should be enough to get him banned from playing ever again, if you can provide proof of it.

Or, if you become GM, you can try the "Ring of Damage Reduction" prank I mentioned before. See how he likes it when you ensure one of his overpowered characters gets killed, with no chance of rolling to save.
 
A large part of his issues is that he's a Power Gamer, and thinks that anything that isn't built to absolutely trivialize the game is under powered (at best). I'd tried explaining to him that I can power game with the worst of them, but that I chose not to because it's not fun for me or the rest of the group. He didn't believe me, so for a one shot "make a level 10 character" event he was GMing I came with something as broken, if not worse, then his usual dart spamming monstrosity. If enemies survived the surprise round, it was because I rolled a 1 for one of my bajillion or so surprise round attacks. Or because Mr Regional Coordinator actually managed to make a nutzoid "save or die" save with an enemy. Or because I rolled a nat 1 on my perception check, so didn't actually notice the enemy group till they attacked.

About a third of the way through the session, the rest of the players (not part of my usual lodge, since this was a convention) got up and left in the table in disgust. And Mr Regional Coordinator tried finding the person in charge of the event to complain, only to realize HE was the one in charge of it. At which point he tried getting the character disqualified from play. Only like his standard OP build my build was 100% legal, using only allowed material and things from books I had as a watermarked PDF or physical book. It just abused as many edge case rules in my favor as I possibly could, without using any edge case rule that is ambiguous in it's wording. Thus not providing wiggle room for table variance.

Funny thing is, he didn't take that session and figure out why everyone in the lodge doesn't like it when he joins the table as a player. Hell, I didn't even need to try forcing anyone else to support my OP character's play style, it didn't need anyone doing anything special.

I did track down those other players who's session I ruined and apologize, as well as explain why I brought such a character. Even showed them who I would normally have brought to the table. They'd played with Mr Regional Coordinator at their table as a player before too, so understood. They just hadn't experienced him during a persistent situation of him playing.

Oops, posted this initially in the wrong thread.

jmcdavid said:
This.

This sort of behavior should be enough to get him banned from playing ever again, if you can provide proof of it.

Or, if you become GM, you can try the "Ring of Damage Reduction" prank I mentioned before. See how he likes it when you ensure one of his overpowered characters gets killed, with no chance of rolling to save.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Since he only does Organized Play, this prank would be a non-option. You know, due to no custom magic items being allowed to be handed out. Only the treasures that are listed in the adventure or module are available. Outside of "Campaign mode" (which is used for running adventure paths or modules like Emerald Spire), the player then doesn't get to actually keep any of the treasures from the adventure. Instead, said treasures are listed on the chronicle and can be bought at the listed price between sessions. The justification for this is that the treasures you found were handed over to the Pathfinder Society, of which all players are part of.

Similarly, for a non-standard race (aka not in the core book), you need a Boon that lets you play that race, which gets attached to the character of that race you make. For example, want to play an Aasmimar bard? You can, but only if you were at a table at an event which granted that boon. Often meaning you had to GM a table at that event to get the boon.
 
While I can power game with the worst of them, I don't like to do so. It's not fun for me, it's not fun for the other players, and it's very not fun for the GM. It's why I'm not a fan of the "you must allow any character that's legally built" rule in Paizo's organized play. There's a lot of ways to absolutely break the game that don't require cheating. It just naturally happens when you get so many splat books core books, and handbooks (many with conflicting rules or rules that didn't take anything outside that book into account) added onto the base game.
 
I've been playing Society since 2016, in one of the locations mentioned (Illinois, and near the Wisconsin border, even), and this doesn't sound familiar at all.

Also... while Iowa and Wisconsin are in the same region (Midwest), Illinois is NOT (it's Great Lakes region), so it seems unlikely that he could be covering all three. Also, I believe the Regional Venture-Coordinators for those regions are both female and you keep using the male pronoun. A lot of these things sound like they also violate Paizo's Code of Conduct, particularly the section on 'physical or verbal aggression/intimidation' (you did mention his bullying people).

I'm not saying this didn't happen. I'm saying that if it did, and pardon the use of the word in a Worm fandom area, escalate. This kind of behavior gives the rest of us bad names. The second link I provide above includes an E-mail address for the Organized Play Coordinator, Alex Speidel. (He's also listed in the RVC list, but only because there's no RVC covering Asia-Pacific right now.) If you're worried about it getting back to the one you're complaining about, you can contact Alex on Discord too. Alex is a great person, and, while this is clearly not something especially enjoyable to deal with, I'm sure they'd definitely look into it.
 
Last edited:
According to him, he covered much of Iowa, Wisconsin, and large parts of Illinois, including Chicago.

Based on that list though, it looks like he might have gotten the boot in the last couple of years. Or maybe demoted during a restructuring. Ether way, good. The man is a nightmare to GM or play alongside. And it's frustrating trying to actually role play when he's the GM for the table your sitting at. With him having forced himself into every single lodge he could finagle. Guy (not going to give his last name, and yes Guy is is first name) is... not a great GM and a disruptive as hell player. Other then his passion for roleplaying, I never understood just why he actually had the position in PFS he did. He did use to have a listing as a regional coordinator, not the HEAD coordinator for an area, but basically what he does is he roams a wide area, organizing and running Organized Play sessions all over the place.

I'd heard from someone at Cod Con a few years back that he'd basically forced himself into a local PFS lodge that set up and met every 2 weeks. The group's regular GM had applied to be a PFS GM. That group ran adventure paths, primarily. And listed each planned session of his gaming group (the local lodge) with PFS to make it all official.
 
Maybe so. The name doesn't sound familiar to me, but I may have just been lucky. I dropped a note to one of my friends who has been in the area longer, maybe they know. (I mentioned 2016. They ran the game in question. Which, amusingly enough considering previous comments, was level 1 of Emerald Spire.)

See, the big problem I'm having is the whole 'all the reporting goes through him' thing. Paizo's website (where the reporting is done) is still the same. There's no real application to be a PFS GM. You just create an event, run the game under the relevant rules (either PFS Core, PFS Standard, or campaign-based like for APs) and report it. Granted, it's been a long time since I created an event.

In any case, Society has a thriving active online community and has, at the very least, since COVID lockdown started in 2020. (Before that, I was playing face-to-face, so hadn't looked into it.) Right now, Pathfinder Society 1st Edition isn't very active, but since the campaign was 'retired' five years ago, that's not a surprise. If you're interested, Organized Play Online is the online communities' central discord server. You can find regional discord servers too -- Great Lakes and Midwest. And wow, I haven't done CodCon since the D&D 3.5e days. I wonder if COWSGamers are still around.

And just to make this not a complete derail... uh, how about dem Red/Gold hybrid dragons! Fascinating, ain't they? (Yeah, I can't even...)
 
My god, that sounds like a 'writer' I knew decades ago, who was the final arbiter for the world on what was good fiction and bad fiction. Just ask him; he'd tell you. Only the 'Guy' was in his last name - Gregg G. Guydish. (He had no issue with putting his real name out there and WANTED it out there to draw people to his magnificence. (He never used those words, but the attitude was clearly there.))
 
Reader mode
You must login or register to reply here.
Remove ads
Back
Top