I think I have the crowing one - Due to a complete lack of any research of any kind, my Fighter/Kensai (Archer) destroyed a gem being guarded by the Tarresque.

The result? Complete destruction of anything categorized as 'Earth' until the Tarrasque re-assembled the gem.

Yes, folks, not doing your homework can result in Very Bad Things. Like an apocalypse.

Allowing a demon lord to ascend to vampiric godhood is Not My Fault, though - My new character didn't know what was going on. The rest of the party, though? Totally their fault.

It's not that we didn't know how to plan things, it's that none of us cared enough to try...

(I was the GM) The group wanted to destroy a cult stronghold-they located a tacical nuetron device (think tac nuke w/o fallout) fought their way in, planted the device where they wanted it (due to occult powers, a certain part of the facility had to be at absolute ground zero).

They set the timer for one hour, secured the various anti-handling barriers. And start back out.

It was only then that a PC said, "BTW, what's the blast radius on this thing?"

My answer: "In this deployment? Three miles."

They were on foot.

(they made it, but just barely)

I was running an Aftermath game back in the old days and my buddy was alone in a bar and got into a firefight with some guys.  He ended up pinned behind the bar and ran out of ammo for his pistol.  He started throwing bottles and eventually got shot dead.  Later I was looking at his sheet and it turned out he had a machine gun with a bunch of ammo that he overlooked.

I had a player who was very big on naming his characters with names like "Giant Man", and "Colossal Guy", and insisted on having a wide assortment of explosives on his character sheet. In one game they, the group, had decided to go and investigate some gangsters. During the resulting trip the get into a running gun battle. During the gun fight "Tall Guy" decides to go to his trunk and get "several hundred pounds" of C4-to which I reply why would you have that in your vehicles trunk? After some arguing on his part I finally said the hell with it, and had the bad guys engage him. He decides to hide behind the trunk, because it provided cover. A grenade later and he was generating yet another "Massive Man".

He provided us with endless hours of self destructive entertainment.

I had a player who was very big on naming his characters with names like "Giant Man", and "Colossal Guy", and insisted on having a wide assortment of explosives on his character sheet. In one game they, the group, had decided to go and investigate some gangsters. During the resulting trip the get into a running gun battle. During the gun fight "Tall Guy" decides to go to his trunk and get "several hundred pounds" of C4-to which I reply why would you have that in your vehicles trunk? After some arguing on his part I finally said the hell with it, and had the bad guys engage him. He decides to hide behind the trunk, because it provided cover. A grenade later and he was generating yet another "Massive Man".

He provided us with endless hours of self destructive entertainment.

It was in the Desert of Desolation module.  It was the part where you're trapped in the pyramid, and the only way to leave the trap was to use the staff in a certain way.

We beat ourselves senseless trying to figure out how to escape the trap, and the DM was not being helpful.  He was stoic just sitting there behind his DM screen fortress.

After about 30-60 minutes of real time trying to figure this trap out, our frustration levels were high and the blood pressure was in the red.  In a fit of ultimate frustration, I told the DM that I break the staff.  A puzzled look crossed the DM's face, and then he reveals that the staff was the only way to leave the trap.  So, he fudged a bit and let us 'repair' the staff and not have a TPK due to player frustration.  However, I still believe to this day that DM failed in this case on several levels:  he should have recognized that we, the players, just weren't getting the scripted clues, and he should have intervened way before frustration turned into destructive anger by the players.

Mine was partially due to GM-Player misunderstanding - We wanted to kill and loot and he wanted to introduce plot. Thing is, neither of us were all that good at RPG theory - Including things like 'Talk about what you want out of the game'. I dunno about the other guys, but it was one of my first games.

Literally, none of us knew anything was going wrong.

Old D&D game, we were running from a master vampire and his horde of undead minions.  We found an old temple and the GM ruled it was holy ground, the undead couldn't enter unless it was desecreated or the undead were invited in.  The vampire lord is furious and begins hurling impotent threats.

Player: "Oh yeah!  Well if you're so tough, why don't you just come in here and get us!"
Vampire: "Umm...okay."

Quote from: Maddman;276635Old D&D game, we were running from a master vampire and his horde of undead minions.  We found an old temple and the GM ruled it was holy ground, the undead couldn't enter unless it was desecreated or the undead were invited in.  The vampire lord is furious and begins hurling impotent threats.

Player: "Oh yeah!  Well if you're so tough, why don't you just come in here and get us!"
Vampire: "Umm...okay."

OMG!  That is fucking classic!

Let's see....

Me as a Magic-User in AD&D2 casting Lightning Boltdown a 10' wide stone corridor that almost resulted in a TPK when it bounced back at us. The rest of the players just gave me dirty looks when I told them, "At least I killed all the bad guys!"

Our entire party was faced with an angry mob of commoners in a town. We decided to attack and just mow them down since we were all between 4th and 5th level and they were all commoners. We hadn't realised that the DM had decided to make things easier on himself by applying the swarm subtype to the commoners since they were a mob. It was a TPK.

The last GURPS: Traveller game I ran. The players had just jumped insystem and were approached by an Imperial Patrol Cruiser which had broadcast, "Pleae stand down and prepare for docking to initiate a standard customs inspection." This was my way of introducing a patron in the form of a Knight Captain in command of the Patrol Cruiser - there was going to be no trouble with the routine customs check, I just wanted them to meet each other. The player whose character was the captain of the Free Trader responded to the Patrol Cruiser with, "We do not recognize your authority and your request has been denied. You may board our vessel once our guns are silenced and our maneuver drive no longer works." When I couldn't talk them out of it, a TPK resulted after a brief space battle.

See, the thing is, once you start playing/making a character, there's a chance your brain will go on crack, to the frustration of your GM.

Quote from: Narf the Mouse;276679See, the thing is, once you start playing/making a character, there's a chance your brain will go on crack, to the frustration of your GM.

I call this phenomenon "Ate Up With Stupid" and I wish I could say that I've seen less of it than I have.

Eh. As long as the game is fun...

In an IHW game. The ship is empty except for the ship's doctor and a young junior officer who are guarding a prisoner. The prisoner escapes and is found rummaging in a room below deck.

The junior officer - who is only a kid - wants to go in and get the prisoner but the doctor tells him to go get help and then proceeds to engage the prisoner in THE most vicious knife fight I have ever run.

When the captain returns she finds the lad tending to the doctor's wounds. Pointing to the badly slahed body, she says :

"You know, you could have just locked him in the room"

Regards,
David R

Quote from: jeff37923;276643Let's see....

Me as a Magic-User in AD&D2 casting Lightning Boltdown a 10' wide stone corridor that almost resulted in a TPK when it bounced back at us. The rest of the players just gave me dirty looks when I told them, "At least I killed all the bad guys!"

I did the same, except with a fireball in a crowded corridor. Killed a party henchman and nearly killed another, as well as a PC. Well, the corridor was filled with 4 Flesh Golems, so i thought it was a good plan at the time. There were a few open doors along the corridor, so most of us dived through them to get a save for 1/2 or 1/4 damage. It was a stupid thing to do though, certainly.

My other crowning moment was when i was playing an evil assassin character. I had coated my weapons with a sleeping poison and lay in wait for my mark to wander by. I jumped him, injured him, and got injured myself (he was a fighter). Then for some inexplicable reason, i forgot all about the poison, which would take effect shortly, and proceeded to go toe to toe with him. I died. My companions came across my dead body lying a few feet away from the deeply snoring fighter. At least i was avenged....