FREQUENCY: Too often!
NUMBER APPEARING: Always one too
many!
ARMOR CLASS: Class of 1974, Dwarf Hall
MOVEMENT; Slooooow
HIT DICE: A good-sized box full.
% IN LAIR 100%
TREASURE TYPE: HOARDS (After all,
somebody must have it, and the players
sure don’t. )
NUMBER OF ATTACKS: Your guess is as
good as mine. . . .
DAMAGE/ATTACK: By weapon type (pencil
1-3, ruler 1-2)
SPECIAL ATTACKS: Create fear 10’ radius
(sound of dice rolling).
S P E C I A L D E F E N S E S : “ I Q U I T ” o r
“YOU’RE DEAD”
MAGICAL RESISTANCE: 100%
INTELLIGENCE: Low to non-existent
ALIGNMENT: Anything but neutral!!!
SIZE: Variable
PSIONIC ABILITY: Call it what you want, but
he sure can make the dice perform (in his
favor).

This, the most hated and feared of all
monsters, can only be found lurking in a
secluded shadowy room at the bottom of the
deepest of dungeons. He is rarely if ever encountered, and when he is the encounter is
always brief but deadly. His powers seem
akin to those of a god, and for all intents and
purposes he can do anything he wants (and
usually does).

Picture yourself breaking down a heavy
(seemingly never used) door at the end of a
long, dark corridor. The door opens on your
first try and what you see inside brings, in the
same moment, both joy and fear to your
heart. At last you meet your dreaded enemy
face to face, on your ground. A shout goes up
from the entire group, “AT LAST. . .
R E V E N G E ! ! ! ”

Sitting at a table in the center of the room
is a tired young man, his face a visage of
panic. He can barely be heard to whisper, “I
never thought they’d get this far. . . .” He
quickly begins to sift through the mountains
of maps and books on the desk until his
bloodshot eyes come across the sheet he was
looking for. With a sigh he tears the sheet in
two and tosses the crumpled-up pieces into
his always-handy wastebasket. The last thing
you hear before the walls come tumbling
down around you is a somehwat depressed
Dungeon Master’s voice, “Damn, I hate to
lose a perfectly good dungeon. . . . .”

Description: The Dungeon Master almost
always appears to be a worn out, somewhat
unkempt man. He’s likely to have a worn-out
pencil stub and a piece of cold pizza in one
hand and a pair of rather dilapidated twenty-sided dice in the other. A search of his pockets
will reveal several more dice of assorted
shapes, erasers, pencils, pens, rulers, bits of
scrap paper, and the occasional well-worn
lead figurine. The DM is best remembered for
his ability to misplace maps, charts, etc. (He is
especially adept at losing character record
sheets, strangely enough always the ones belonging to the most powerful characters in the
party). Please note that AD&D is an equal opportunity employer: The Dungeon Master
wandering monster is not necessarily male
and is usually not even human.

 
 

Killer DM	-	The DM	-	Sleep-inducing DM
Dragon	-	Monsters	-	Dragon #36.5

 
 

Killer DM	-	-	-	Sleep-inducing DM
Dragon	-	-	-	Dragon 96

Dungeon Masters come in many colors, sizes, shapes, and align-
ments. Two sorts of DMs, the Killer Dungeon Master
and the Sleep-Inducing Dungeon Master, are particularly nasty and
are covered here. General information and common characteristics
of these creatures are dealt with in this section.

These two breeds of renegade Dungeon Masters will always ap-
pear to be human beings, and continually seek new players for their
campaign worlds because no sane person will play with them more
than once.

Sleeping Dungeon Masters: The best time to come upon a Killer
Dungeon Master is when he is asleep. Unfortunately, Sleeping-
Inducing Dungeon Masters never sleep. However, the victims of a
Killer Dungeon Master will find this an excellent time to avenge all
of their dead characters.

Attacking a Dungeon Master: You will probably be charged with
assault, though self-defense may be claimed. Check the laws in your
state.

Subduing a Dungeon Master: An attack on a Dungeon Master
may be made to subdue rather than to hospitalize. This usually
occurs when the entire gang of players becomes enraged simultane-
ously and rushes the offending Dungeon Master, but no one has
access to automatic weapons. Players Handbooks are often used for
pummeling attacks, as well as soft-drink cans, chairs, and good old-
fashioned fists. A maximum of six human-sized attackers per
Dungeon Master is possible. When the Dungeon Master is no
longer moving except to breathe, he has been subdued.

Example of Subduing a Dungeon Master: Two 8th-level fighters,
a 7th-level dwarven fighter, an elven 4th-level fighter/6th-level
magic-user, and a halfling thief of 9th level stumble upon an un-
armed, wounded orc with no armor. Thinking the orc will be an
easy hit, the group approaches. Suddenly the orc pulls out a ray gun
and disintegrates the entire adventuring party.

“I’ve been playing that thief for three years!” yells Ken, slam-
ming his fists on the table. Greg, not the type to be outdone, flips
the table over and all the dice go with it. Sensing the group’s possi-
ble displeasure, the Killer Dungeon Master attempts to flee while
Mike hurls his copies of the Players Handbook and Monster Man-
ual; the Players Handbook hits. Pat starts throwing empty drink
cans, and Nick tackles the Killer Dungeon Master as he reaches the
door. Down on the ground, the Killer Dungeon Master is bom-
barded with dice, books, chairs, and old copies of DRAGON® Magazine.
(These guys are really mad!) When the Killer Dungeon
Master is no longer visible under the debris, Greg announces, “I
think he’s unconscious.” Now it’s Miller Time.
The Killer Dungeon Master is officially subdued.

Value of a Subdued Dungeon Master: Zilch.

Encountering Multiple Dungeon Masters: Don’t stop to ask stupid questions, just run.

KILLER DUNGEON MASTER
(Dungeus Masterus Horribilis Maximus)

FREQUENCY: Not rare enough
NO. APPEARING: 1
ARMOR CLASS: 10 (8 if unwashed)
MOVE: 12” (15” if pursued)
HIT DICE: Constantly
% IN LAIR: 100% (detailed below)
TREASURE TYPE: Special, see below
NO. OF ATTACKS ON CHARACTERS: Unlimited
DAMAGE/ATTACK ON CHARACTERS: See below
SPECIAL ATTACKS ON PLAYERS: Mental stress and frustration
SPECIAL DEFENSES FROM PLAYERS: Immune to pleas of mercy
MAGIC RESISTANCE: None except to mind-affecting spells, which have nothing to affect (see INTELLIGENCE)
INTELLIGENCE: As if you couldn’t guess
ALIGNMENT: Chaotic destructive
SIZE: M
PSIONIC ABILITY: Can a vacuum be psionic?

This mutant strain of Dungeon Master is found in poorly lit
rooms, seated at some sort of card table (75%) or desk (25%) behind
a flimsy cardboard screen covered with archaic lettering that he
never reads. The table and adjacent areas are usually littered with
books, notepads, empty soda cans, and miniature lead figures. The
Killer Dungeon Master uses this lair to lure unsuspecting role-
playing gamers into the world of his warped imagination. Once
seated at the table, the players are destined to lose at least one dearly
beloved character apiece. It is a cruel fate, but unavoidable at this
point.

The Killer Dungeon Master thrives on eliminating PCs as fast as one can create replacements,
even by computer printout. With the Killer Dungeon Master in charge, monsters will
automatically become at least six hit dice more powerful than the
scenario suggests is appropriate. If a module places two monsters
guarding a treasure, you can count on at least fifteen being there.
When a regular Dungeon Master would say, “The three orcs are
dead; now you see a small chest,” the Killer Dungeon Master says,
“So you killed three orcs, huh? Let’s see what you can do against
twelve mind flayers!”

Killer Dungeon Masters are known to use wandering monsters,
deadly traps, and the disease table in the DMG to destroy charac-
ters, but what really sets them apart from other Dungeon Masters is
their access to the revolutionary new Wandering Damage System.
The following information was stolen from the notebook of a sleep-
ing Killer Dungeon Master, and is presented in its entirety for the
benefit of all gaming humanity (Killer Dungeon Masters have no
other treasure but this):

How To Use The Wandering Damage System
First there was the wandering monster. They serve well when
applied in hordes, but why not cut out the middleman and just deal
out damage to the characters directly? It makes for a smoother,
faster-paced game, and if you want to kill off characters quickly, it
can only be beaten by divine intervention by Cthulhoid godlings.

Instructions: Whenever a player annoys you in any way, by wear-
ing tasteless clothes or eating the last corn chip, ask him to roll a
d20. He may become worried that he’s rolling a saving throw.

Ha, ha!!! Little does he know that he just rolled on the Wandering
Damage System matrix!!! Repeat the roll as often as desired.

The Wandering Damage System Matrix

Roll	Result
1	Your character has fallen down a flight of stairs; roll his dexterity or less on percentile dice, or else consult Limb Loss Subtable.
2	The monster your character just killed gets up and attacks him, doing 8-80 points of damage.
3	Your character smells smoke; his right arm is on fire. Take 14 points of damage and save vs. gangrene.
4	Your character cuts himself while shaving; consult Limb Loss Subtable.
5	Your character’s nose hairs catch fire and he dies of smoke inhalation.
6	Your character stumbles backward into a yawning chasm and disappears from view.
7	The next time your character says something, he eats his words, chokes on them, and dies.
8	Something cuts your character’s nose off, doing 2-12 points damage and really messing up his charisma.
9	Your character steps on a piece of glass; consult Limb Loss Subtable.
10	Your character suddenly catches a severe case of brain death.
11	Something invisible chews on your character, doing 6-36 points damage.
12	Your character develops an incredibly severe case of arthritis and can grasp nothing with his hands; he drops anything he’s holding —  and if that happened to be a sword or an axe, consult the Limb Loss Subtable.
13-20	Consult the Random Damage Subtable for no reason whatsoever.

Limb Loss Subtable (roll d6)
1 — Left leg gone
2 — Right leg gone
3 — Left arm gone
4 — Right arm gone
5 — Head gone
6 — Torso cut in half

Random Damage Subtable

Dice roll	Result
01-05	Take 10 hit points damage.
06-10	Take 15 hit points damage.
11-20	Take 30 hit points damage.
21-25	Take 10 hit points damage and consult Limb Loss Sub-table, modifying die roll by +5.
26-30	Take 10 hit points damage and roll again on Wandering Damage System Matrix.
31-35	Take 15 hit points damage and then take 30 more.
36-40	Roll every die you own for damage.
41-45	Take 17 hit points damage.
46-50	Take 42 hit points damage.
51-55	Multiply your character’s age by 5. Take three times that much damage.
56-60	Take 24 hit points damage and then take 31 more.
61-65	Take 1,000 hit points damage and roll again.
66-70	Roll every die within 30 feet for damage.
71-73	Add up the total hit points of everyone in the party. Take that much damage.
74-75	Take 3 hit points damage and consider yourself very lucky — for the time being.
76-00	What? You didn’t get hurt? That’s impossible — this system is foolproof. Roll again.

SLEEP-INDUCING DUNGEON MASTER
( D u n g e u s   M a s t e r u s   A e r h e a d i u m   M o n o t o n u s  )

FREQUENCY:  Here and there
NO. APPEARING:  1
ARMOR CLASS:  Not applicable, cannot be attacked
MOVE:  Immobile
HIT DICE:  Just enough to be considered alive
% IN LAIR:  100% (detailed below)
TREASURE TYPE:  Players? dice
NO. OF ATTACKS ON CHARACTERS:  Nil
DAMAGE/ATTACK ON CHARACTERS:  Nil
SPECIAL ATTACKS ON PLAYERS:  Boredom
SPECIAL DEFENSES FROM PLAYERS:  Boredom
MAGIC RESISTANCE:  Immune to  sleep  spells and powers
of all kinds
INTELLIGENCE:  High (for a rodent)
ALIGNMENT:  Neutral tedious
SIZE:  M
PSIONIC ABILITY:  ?Psionics? Well, I worked out a system, only
340 pages long, based on the 13th-century German philosopher
Noodleheinz, who said form does not precede reality but rather is
derived from the innateness of the mental image. Here, I?ll get it
and show it to you. . . .?
The Sleep-Inducing Dungeon Master is always found seated at a
table (75% likely to be laden with food), behind a homemade screen
devoid of writing. The table is well-organized though extremely
crowded, and the adjacent areas are meticulously clean. Soft Barbra
Streisand music can be heard from a concealed sound source, and
the room temperature will be ten degrees over the comfortable limit.
The Sleep-Inducing Dungeon Master lives only to steal the dice of
unsuspecting role-playing gamers, by luring them into his lair and
then boring them to sleep (or, in some cases, to death). Standard
techniques used by these Dungeon Masters include excruciatingly
dull dungeons, pointless mazes, no monsters or treasure to be found,
and constant searches through the rulebooks for scraps of information (?The combat tables are in here somewhere, I saw them yesterday.?) In some cases, a low-level Sleep-Inducing Dungeon Master
will have an accomplice, who will be disguised as one of the players.
This person will ask questions like, ?What does a glaive-guisarme
look like?? and will not be able to decide on a name for his mule.
The Sleep-Inducing Dungeon Master gains power by accumulating dice, at the rate of one Dungeon Master level per 1000 dice
stolen from players. As the following table shows, the SleepInducing Dungeon Master is also proficient at making players lose
interest in gaming if he can?t make them fall asleep.

Sleep-Inducing Dungeon Master Table

S-I DM level	Distract	Sleep	Comatose	Dead
1	50%	10%	-	-
2	55	20	-	-
3	60	30	05%	-
4	65	40	08	-
5	70	50	10	05%
6	75	60	15	10
7	80	70	18	15
8	85	80	20	18
9	90	90	25	20

Distract:  Power causes player to wander away from game, either
to a nearby checkers set or to the refrigerator.

Sleep:  Player falls asleep, either at table or on any nearby sofa.
Duration 10-60 minutes.

Comatose:  Player will regain consciousness and come to his senses
in 4-6 weeks.

Dead:  The unfortunate player has been bored to death, with no
saving throw.

You found just the right question, one that I am interested in answering too!
If nobody has asked, who cares what I think about something not sufficiently interesting to others to have inquired about?  <find emoticon>

Oh all right: Do I enjoy killing PCs when I GM?
A The answer is definately not in the least, especially if they belong to regular players.
there I do all I can to prevent such loss without directly intervening in players' actions for their characters.
However, rather like playing "giveaway checkers," such a session can be fun and challenging as a convention game where arbitrary means of having characters meet their demise are out of the question.
The last session I played like that was at GenCon 2002, and darned if one of the nine PCS didn't manage to save her PC from death, so the team beat me as the GM.

Heh,
Gary
 

Quote:
Originally Posted by Orius
Anyway Gary, there's been something I've been meaning to ask you for a while. What's you're opinion on killer DMs? These are the types of DMs that go out of their way to set up scenarios for the sole purpose of killing off as many PCs as possible, and get thier fun out gaming this way. People have accused you of killer-DMing in the past for stuff like no saving throws but you seem to actually want your players to have fun in the game, so i'm not going to accuse you it.

Some pinheads seem to believe they are made more important by attacking me.

Very few of the regulars in my campaigns have lost their characters ater the initial stages of building them. Those that did have them slain had either vary bad luck or else played foolishly. I am very generous in regards to mitigating a run of bad luck when play has been solid. I must point out that I have lost several of my better PCs, used wishes and spells to have them restored to life, and I have not boo-hooed about the DM that was managing the adventures in which that occurred.

Surely those that whine about my killer dungeons--other that Tomb of Horrors which is supposed to be just that--are inept players that failed to use caution and forethought when playing and this looked foolish as they lost their PCs.

Adventures lacking the sense of danger brought on by actual risk of character loss are not worthy of playing. Those that enjoy them are true munchkins regardless of time spent RPGing. Rather than bawl about my DMing they should be playing a children's boardgame...and cheating so as to assure a win. 

Gary
 

Quote:
Originally Posted by Orius
...

Though my original question still stands; what's your thought on DMs who go out of their way to kill off PCs because they enjoy doing so; not because the players are playing carelessly.

That sort of person is not worthy of being a Game Master of any sort. The GM is there to entertain and bring enjoyment to the player group, thus being entertained and enjoying himself likewise. Soneone that finds pleasure in making others unhappy is a sad case indeed. That kind of GM should be keft alone to lurk in online MMP games to ambust newbis' characters as they enter the setting 

Cheers,
Gary

serleran wrote:
Have you ever devised an encounter, or situation, solely for the purpose of killing off an entire party, or, even, a single adventurer? If done to destroy a party, was it so you could "restart" as it were, with a new band of characters? If the latter, was it because the player was being a twit?

I'm interested because I note a trend amongst some gamer types who take pride in the ability to decimate characters, which I find to be funny. Of course the DM can destroy the characters... that's easy.

Oh, and, about a Gaxmoor C&C conversion... I could do it, though, I don't think I could write additional material, as module writing is a thing I tend to avoid.

The short answer is no.

For gaming conventions I have created scenarios where elimination of the PCs is most probable, and players know that, get a siogned character sheet stating that their PC was slain ot survived the trials.

I have indeed also devised very difficult challenges, singular or modular, for expert players, but never with the purpose of "killing" PCs. Bad and careless players manage that pretty well on their own without special attention.

As a matter of fact I find execrable those GMs that find it amusing to destroy their players' characters on a regular basis.

Cheers,
Gary