Subject:      Re: Worst Gaming experience
From:         James Wallis < James@hogshead.demon.co.uk>
Date:         1996/06/27
Message-Id:   <97tMXRAyIx0xEwJj@hogshead.demon.co.uk>
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Organization: Hogshead Publishing Ltd
Newsgroups:   rec.games.frp.misc

Okay, well, perhaps not the worst ever; but one of the most thoughtless.
About ten years ago, I was involved in a thing called DRAGONAID, which
was a sponsored attempt on the world record for non-stop AD&D playing,
to raise money for charity. Okay, that's pretty thoughtless, I'll grant you. But playing AD&D non-stop for eighty-odd hours isn't what I'm talking about.
We were, as I recall, about fifty hours in (remember that's fifty hours with no sleep at all, under Guinness tournament conditions, in a stuffy underground room which really wasn't suitable for the event). Sharon, the primary DM who had been doing an excellent job up to that 
point, decided she wanted to take a break and play for a while. 
So one of the other players, whose name I have completely and mercifully forgotten, shifts over into the hot-seat, and runs ... an adventure from an old issue of White Dwarf. Not that it was a particularly bad adventure per se; it's just that when you're DMing for a group 
that's going after a world record, you really ought to write or at least rewrite your adventures specifically for the event. There are certain types of adventure you shouldn't run, and certain things you don't do to PCs; particularly after fifty hours with no sleep, and another 
forty or so beckoning. Such as:
JW: "I open the door."
DM: "Okay; inside is a big room. Looks like an armory."
JW: "I go in, and-"
DM: "Make a saving throw."
(I fail the save.)
DM: "Uh, well, there was a covered pit just inside the door, and you've
fallen sixty feet onto poisoned spikes. (Roll.) You're dead."
If anyone's interested, we did get the record in the end (84 hours); and
we held it for all of a couple of months.
--
James Wallis, Director of Hogshead Publishing    
Publishers of WARHAMMER FANTASY ROLEPLAY