I have some pretty horrific player stories, most of them stemming from someone I'll call S. Now, S, at the time, was a heavy user of alcohol - so much so, that we basically considered him drunk at all times. His gaming was, understandably, crazy-batshit-stupid.
One key example is the d20 Modern game we were playing. One of the characters (an infiltrator/sneaky type) needed to get into a club building without alerting anyone. His words to S, and I quote, were "create a distraction". So off that character went, thinking everything would be OK.
He could not have been more wrong if he tried.
Basically, what you had to know about S's character is that he always carried around an H&K assault rifle. He somehow managed to keep it concealed (nobody wanted to know where or how), and he liked to carry around a stash of grenades as well. Since the game was set largely in New York City, only his insane Sleight of Hand modifier and my own ineptness rules-wise (this was a good six-seven years ago) kept them from ever being found. As per the usual, he was armed to the teeth that night.
First thing he does is stroll up to the bouncer and ask, nay, demand he be allowed inside. The bouncer informed him that today, it was booked for a private function. S insisted on trying to get in, upon which time the bouncer indicated that he was armed by opening up his jacket and showing the holstered revolver. S's reaction was basically to unbutton his trench coat and show his concealed H&K.
And then start a firefight. With grenades.
Suffice it to say, the private function featured a lot of dead bodies, a shootout with the club owner, a lot of explosion damage and S's character losing a hand (he held out a grenade while hiding and yelling out that he had a grenade, at which point everyone shot at his arm).
The sneaky guy's player (call him A) was somewhere between laughing and crying throughout this whole event, as were all the other players. And that wasn't even the worst thing S had done...
While this is somewhat unrelated, this brings back a dumb GMing story which I have to share. This GM (let's call him M) was also a heavy alcohol user (I'm seeing a distinctive trend here...) who also happened to have some serious delusions of grandeur. And I'm not talking 'I'm smarter than you' delusions, I'm talking 'the FSB (Russian Security Service) is after me because my genius is beyond all measurable capability' delusions (and yes, he was totally serious about that one). Essentially, this was the first time I was gonna get to actually play rather than GM, a game, and I was understandably looking forward to it. The game even used Tome rules, which made me extra-happy. I decided to build Asher (one of my favourite characters, who currently exists in like, four systems or so), and at level 12! I was over the moon with the possibilities, and after seeing what everyone else was playing (a succubus, a Tome samurai and some other thing I don't recall that was cool), I thought it would be a great game.
I could not have been more wrong if I had tried.
One of the first major alarm bells that I heard ringing was when I discovered that we would be accompanied by not one, but two DMNPCs. One of them was our level (a true fiend, IIRC) and the other was... well, not. She was some CR 20-odd demon lord who was supposedly 'accompanying' the other DMNPC because she was 'interested' in him. And yes, in case you're wondering, M always had stuff like that with his characters. Every damn time.
I decided to let that one slide, and play anyway. The setting was a bar in Hell. No literally, a bar in Hell. While I was a bit suspicious over how much planning and sanity went into this game, I decided to run with it. All of us ended up on the same table, chatting about stuff... you know, usual PC introduction stuff. The samurai turned out to be as no-nonsense as Asher was, so we got along just fine.
Then, out of nowhere, some devil police (I'm not making this up, I swear) entered the place, and started making enquiries as to whether anyone had seen DMNPC 1 (the one at our level). Said DMNPC immediately starts panicking and yelling, and telling our succubus (disguised as a wizard) to teleport us out of there. We told him to keep it down, stay calm and not to do anything stupid, and that teleporting out of here basically makes us look guilty no matter what. He, in his infinite wisdom, decided to disagree, and kept yelling and pushing a scroll of greater teleport to our party 'wizard'. Again, we told him to keep calm and not attract any attention, and that we wouldn't teleport him anywhere until that happened. He then (via his patron, or something - that guy had as much rules knowledge as a hobo knows about urban planning) sent some kind of flesh to stone spell in scroll form to one of the devil cops, which caused him to promptly turn to stone.
At this point, Asher (who had telepathy) mentally spoke to the samurai, and said something along the lines of:
"This guy is a liability; let's kill him, claim the bounty and do something not-dumb."
His character, the wizard and the other guy all agreed. When M heard this conversation, he told us that the demon lord patron would be angry at us and likely kill us. We decided to do it anyway.
This is where the crazy-batshit-weirdness began.
Remember how I mentioned said demon lord was level 20-something? Yeah... she was never intended to be played, since M had no clue in hell as to how to run her. So what does he do? He summons more demons of CR 16 or so, which he also has no clue how to run, and keeps putting down spells which he also doesn't know how to use, all in the defence of DMNPC 1. We couldn't honestly tell if he was following or breaking the rules, because I get the thought that even he didn't know. His turns took close to half an hour each, real time, while ours cycled past relatively quickly.
Cutting a very, very long combat short, the entire party ended up being killed, with the DMNPCs surviving (just). At that point, we had been playing for four hours, and decided that continuing was not worthwhile. So essentially, there had been a TPK before the game actually began. I'm not joking in the least when I say that - it was the only time when I have been subject to such a thing, and I hope never to have to experience that again.
Ironically enough, S was sitting not too far from us (this was at uni, and we both go there), and after this all finished, I simply had to turn to him and say:
"You know, S, how I told you that all your ideas were half-baked, all your lack of rules knowledge, all your general stupidity, all the times when you made absolutely retarded decisions as a player and a GM, or, in fact, anything I have ever said about your gaming? I take it all back."
