This troper has frequently been accused of this, despite allowing one of the characters, while solo, to survive being knocked unconcious by a group of orcs three times. I do sometimes consider taking the name in stride, and unleashing Cthulhu in power armour on them.

This Troper has Sniper Kobolds, who lurk just about everywhere and take random potshots at the characters. Generally someone will die once per session because of them.

This troper is known for two things in the Post by Play site Jedi vs. Sith, as well as his various D&D groups:

Putting his own characters through hell and killing them off with next to no fanfare.

Taking the Killer Game Master ideas up to 11. Seriously. Players deciding to be stupid and do as they please (without any regard for potential ramifications) will be made to deal with the consequences. Harsh consequences.

This troper and his friends have so much experience with this when our one of our buddies puts us through anything (Literally, anything, All Flesh Must be Eaten, Shadowrun, D&D, Vampire: The Masquerade and Requiem, Dark Heresy, Star Wars, Final Fantasy... The list goes on, as I'm sure you can imagine) that we devised a very easy plan that immediately put him off of wanting to play DM anymore. When a character dies, erase the name, write a new one. Character... Re-rolled.

A friend of mine is a power gamer, minmaxer, and a killer GM. Ranger: "I stick a knife in the floor and listen for sound down the hall" KDM: "You take *rolls #d6* 14 damage fromt the electrical current running under the floor." Thief: "I hide in shadows" KDM: "There are no shadows the room is perfectly illuminated from an ambient glow in the air." Cleric(me): "I open the door to the next room" KDM: "Make a dex check."

Choo! Choo!

This troper's DM thought it would be a wonderful idea to make the very first encounter of our lvl 4 campaign a war against thirty-something goblins (with character levels, mind you) and then have our cleric ambushed by ''five greater Barghests'' in the middle of the battle without so much as a spot check. The only reason ''any'' of us survived was because our bard apparently stocked up on fifty scrolls of Cure Moderate Wounds before the game started.

Ouch! That's a level 12 encounter. But why fifty scrolls? A wand would be 40% cheaper, and there wouldn't be as many ways to stop you from using it.

True, but merely stealing/breaking the wand kills everyone.

Wrong

While there's no PhlebotinumMeltdown from breaking a wand, the shortage of healing will kill everyone soon afterwards.

I had an experience with a LetsPlay with a user on SpaceBattles where he names your characters and gives you a choice of arament to choose from. I also had the unfortunate experience to piss him off and thus, along with other users get placed in what we call "Expendable users" where no matter what we do, we will die on our 1st mission. He also creates the obligatory "Failboat" mission where a bunch of rookies are tossed out with meager equipment and sent to certain death in a SuicideRun. This troper had better luck with the other [=LPs=], getting more respect

This troper once had an epic game of Paranoia where the GM decided the players hadn't died enough and blasted away everyone in and near a supply closet with faulty grenades. The game ended when a grenade went into a rift in time and space and blew all existence into nothing.

This troper's DM had a love for deathtraps, but he wasn't a slouch with monsters, either. One memorable example is when the party got ambushed by a Tyrannosaurus Rex while crossing the plains. Eventually, he had to introduce absurdly powerful NPCs to avoid scrapping elaborate dungeons because the entire party was slain in the first room.

This Troper IS one of these. At this point, my gaming group's house rules consist of: One, ressurrection is automatic, up to ten deaths. Two, be ready to cry. Three, don't anger the Great Gamer Bitch.

Is there supposed to be a comma in that or are you actually the Great Gamer Bitch?

She's a girl so I'm assuming yes.

This Troper's former GM built an [=AvP=]-based gaming system specifically for this purpose. He informed the gamer group that the average turnover was one character/session, so we shouldn't get too attached to our characters. Granted, the marines from "Aliens" had a much worse turnover rate... And the game was a blast.

This troper once played in a Warhammer Fantasy campaign where I never managed to play more than one session with the same character. So, eventually, I rolled up a troll slayer, whose whole reason is to get killed gloriously... and survived to the end of the campaign.

This troper is one of these. Why? Everyone in the group, including himself, to a man, are either {{Munchkin}}s or {{Cloudcuckoolander}}s. Whenever welcoming a new player to their first game, I make a point to inform them it is likely their character will die, and that they should prepare accordingly.

And now, an anecdote. This Troper's (same as above) last BESM game featured a new player who went so far in pissing off everyone else with his antics (including stalking a {{Meganekko}} NPC and acting like Nappa) that the other players found it entirely justified and hilarious when he was forced to beat two levels of ''KaizoMarioWorld'' in which he was ''unable to (permanently) die''. His character was then immediately killed by Rare Akuma.

Did he get Savestates? And which levels? (I might have to steal that, but I wouldn't use Kaizo, that's a bit too hard, I'm stuck on the lava level).

It was really clear when my brother stopped wanting to be our DM. #QUOTE#'''DM:''' *rolls d20* Oh, bad news, the dragon ate your cleric. #QUOTE#'''Me:''' What?!?!?!! #QUOTE#'''DM:''' *rolls again* Oooo, and now his zombified son went crazy and killed all of the party members. Tough luck, looks like we can't play anymore.

This Troper isn't going to let his NoIndoorVoice friend run games of Shadowrun anymore. Rail drones with two 13P laser rifles each? Too much dakka.

"Too much dakka?" YOU LIE!!!!!

This troper is one of these as well, when running any game (but especially {{Rifts}}). However, he doesn't like to create multiple character deaths, rather, he simply toys with players until they deliberately or accidentally get their characters killed. His regular players have become quite accustomed to this, and frequently make characters who handle craziness better to try and work this. That's part of the fun.

Despite running a {{Call Of Cthulhu}} game, this troper tries to avoid this. Frequently, characters will just get themselves killed. And then they will wonder why sitting on Nyarlathotep's throne, or telling a god to do something "Because I summoned you!" was a bad idea.

This troper's second D&D game had this kind of GM. He tricked my party, whom most of us were just starting at level 1, into visiting an area we weren't supposed to go to until at least level 8. After getting our asses handed to us, we tried to retreat...only to be dropped into an ''entire field of red dragons.'' By some amazing stroke of luck, we managed to escape unharmed. Sadly, after that the group wasn't able to get together anymore, so the campaign was forced to end. Would have been fun to see where that game would have gone...

This troper had an interesting second game of D&D 4e. With all characters at level 3, an entire village was hit by ThePlague and everything except for our party (thank you PlotCoupon) was zombified. So about six characters against forty or so zombies. Then a baby dragon (still dangerous at that point) was dropped on us. If it wasn't for our Elf Rogue who hit two criticals for massive damage on that dragon in a row, we would have been killed. Then we stopped by a city populated by thousands. It was hit by the plague, new characters were rolled later.

The game store this troper frequented had a regular who, along with her husband, would write beautifully in-depth worlds and storylines...but while running them, she woule be rather strict. For example, in one battle, a wizard's familiar owl ran face-first into a wall. When the group started laughing, the GM assumed it meant the '''characters''' were laughing too, and started the next attack with that in mind. There was also a fun moment where a player failed to resist the willpower of a powerful magical weapon, eliciting the legendary quote: "So who wants to join Joe on his quest to rid the world of evil?"

On the MSFHigh forum RP, Malhavoc. This GM grew up playing and running such wondrous titles as Dark Heresy, The World Of Darkness, and Call Of Cthulhu. Shoving him into a happy and merry game like this usually ends in tears abound, and large amounts of viscera splattered all over the walls... he's getting better though. (Check out the Forum RPG here: http://www.msfhigh.com/forum/index.php )

How did you manage to ''grow up'' playing Dark Heresy, a game that was first released last year? Are you actually a time traveler? Can you tell us the future?

I like to pretend I am a MontyHaul but you can tell who has and hasn't played with me before by watching who looks nervous when I say something like, "The kingdom's entire treasury is at your disposal".

This Troper is planning a Mekton Zeta series and already has one mecha specifically designed to either destroy the Player Characters' Mechas or kill the Player Characters. He estimates it would take two turns, tops, to do it if he really wanted it done fast. Oh, and at the very end of the series, the players will have to fight it.

This Troper was briefly an ''accidental'' KGM. He had never even '''played''' D&D before, let alone DMed anything. So in the second session the party fought its first "boss fight" against a level 8 Ranger wielding dual pistols (the setting is based off of Fable II). The party consisted only of a Halfling Rogue, a Dragonborn Bard, and a Warlock. The ranger sent the rogue into negative hitpoints his first attack, and the only reason the party won was because the Warlock destroyed all the ranger's equipment. To compensate and apologize, this troper gave the party a Monty Haul.

There are nice [=GMs=], like This Troper. There are mean [=GMs=] who want your character dead. Then there are[=GMs=] just like those WHO HAVE PSYCHOLOGY DEGREES.

This Troper has a rep as a KillerGameMaster, and is trying to shed it- but it's not entirely undeserved, as I do enjoy adding a large hskew to my games. I have, however, put the fear of God (that is, me) into my players. If I gave them a perfectly normal, untrapped treasure chest- in a level 5 adventure- in the middle of an empty room at the end of a dungeon, they would not dive right in. Oh no. The minmaxer rogue will search it for traps, then search the pedestal for traps, then search the room for unexpected traps, and then and only then would they attempt to unlock and open it using ten-foot poles. I don't often throw them Monty Hauls, either- and when I do, they have to *earn*them. There was one campaign arc during which I sent them to a dead world (also a DeathWorld), wherein the sun had died and the Plane of Shadow had merged with the Prime Material. Volcanism still super-heated the polluted water, however, and as a result there were *continent-sized boiling acid hurricanes* ravaging the landscape. Everything still surviving was incredibly hostile, the planet was knee-deep in undead, and to top it all off? At the end of the trail was a dungeon that is to this day referred to only as "The Temple of Burned Character Sheets." Think the TombOfHorrors, taken BeyondTheImpossible. If you can imagine the boulder from Indiana Jones as a giant sphere of annihilation instead, you might begin to get the picture- and it only got worse from there.

This troper loves being a KDM. To this day, nobody has managed to get to level 10 or higher on my watch, but it's always so ''hilarious'' they don't care. "''As you round the corner, you see a kobold holding a dart. It throws the dart and ''*roll*'' deals 3 damage.''*roll*'' You're also poisoned and take 3,141,592 damage per turn with a FORT check for half damage. Last words?"

This troper had a friend who made a good DM in most situations, but used to liked to implement a house rule about {{Boss Battle}}s that drove everyone absolutely ''insane''. Normally in [=DnD=], TalkingIsAFreeAction. Oh, but not anymore, now the giant dragon threatening to rip your party into LudicrousGibs runs on an ''Active Time Battle system'' a la FinalFantasy. Now every second that passes in real life also passes in-game. So said dragon would ''not'' attack based on its actual speed or initiative, but after so much time had elapsed. Worst. House rule. ''EVER''.

This Troper is likely classified in this category. We were doing a steampunk-psionics {{GURPS}} game, and the three [=PCs=] were jumping from a zeppelin on top of another one. Right before they jumped out, one of them remembered to look for parachutes first. Afterwards, one of them decided it would be more fun to dive headfirst onto the cushy blimp... until they broke through the fabric, causing it to sink towards the ocean as the hydrogen gas gradually suffocated them. This is a somewhat justified action in that only one member of my gaming group is really "sane"...

My first DM once stated "I'm here to kill players, not save them!" He even had a hand gesture to signify that some random JerkAssGod was preparing a random instant death bolt for one of us. Generally because he disliked something said, be it in or out of character.

This troper got his first and last experience in Roleplaying with one of these. As a psychic, I was asked to investigate some ruins in the middle of the desert, along with a huge dude in foot-thick armour, a Black Mage, and the local Monkhkin. Shortly after I lost a leg in an ambush of winged dinosaurs, me and the mage were propmtly killed by the Monk as he got his mind overwritten by red demons. The armored giant soon followed as the demons used psychic powers to make him explode from the inside. Those weren't the first nor the last characters killed in that session; the most memorable of the deaths happened to our Munchkin's second character after the EldritchAbomination impaled his finger from behind through his spine. Said finger released some sort of mysterious chemical that reacted with the white matter on it detonating a biological bomb, complete with a detailed description of blood splattering and vertebrae fragments raining.

This Troper was in a StarWars game with a killer GM, who didn't mean to be but always veered in that direction. He regularly ignored the rules for balanced encounters or reasonable battles, meaning that everything went from "challenging" to "the party is about to die" in just about every fight. He only avoided the worst of this trope by delving into other horrible things like his MarySue [=NPCs=] coming to rescue us. Throw in a healthy helping of RailRoading and the entire campaign ended up feeling that our choices and actions were meaningless. Eventually I, along with another player, petitioned the GM to arrange a HeroicSacrifice for our characters because we were tired of the campaign.

This little troper played a game of Dark Heresy where the GM sent the five of us to a world that was so chaos corrupted that the whole population were hostile mutants and the sky rained blood. He didn't want to give us NPC allies on the ground, saying that he didn't think he could roleplay them very well while he was also trying to kill us.

Let me guess...he had the Inquisitor who sent you there give an Exterminatus order on the planet once it was all over?

Judging by the sheer malignancy of the game, that doesn't seem "trying to kill them" enough. I'm guessing anywhere from "upon landfall" to "he sent the order first, then sent them down."

Not so much a killer game master, but a close relative, this troper (Enigma32 - I don't have a account with the forum, but I'm sure that, given how frequently I appear everywhere else, someone will recognize me) frequently classifies himself as a "sadist GM." I don't derive enjoyment from killing [=PCs=] so much as I do from torturing them. And torturing them. [=NPCs=] that they loved will die or turn out to be traitors. Loved ones will be killed. The bad guys will be horribly genre savvy and intelligent, and there is no SlidingScaleOfVillainThreat. The monsters will be monsters, and the Big Bad Evil Guy will be even worse. Due to this nature, I've earned the title "King of the CrapsackWorld" from a few of my players, and for all this, I have a shockingly low mortality rate (I can't torture the [=PCs=] if they're ''dead''). By the time my campaigns are done, the characters (from a psychological standpoint) probably would be better off if they just died early on. It's especially fun to pick on the goodnatured and well-adjusted characters, and make them suffer horribly. I only keep good-aligned and well-intentioned characters in my games, though. I have a tendency to kill evil-aligned [=PCs=] quickly.

This troper has done this several times. One case involves a fellow party member in a mechsuit-based pen and paper getting himself trapped in a warehouse. He tried to escape repeatedly, of which no attempts were successful, leading to much mean-spirited laughter from party members. He then tried to use his boosters to shoot himself straight into the wall, blowing out the other side. He instead broke all of his bones on impact. Due to his damage, he couldn't turn off his boosters, which soon slowly and painfully melted him alive inside his own suit. All of which I described to him in great detail, in excess of ten minutes. The rest of the party, far later in the campaign, found his melted mechsuit and what was left of him inside [which was now a health item called "Human Goo" ]. Later on, we were able to make a clone out of the human goo, which was quickly victim to a literal Bridge Drop. Mwahahahaha.

Twice I have made the mistake of trying to play a game with one of Gary Gygax's old friends. I now cringe at the term "Ravenloft".

I recently took on the mantle of dungeon master for an RP on the forums, which basically consists of inventing ever more diabolical traps. For example, a narrow hallway that ends in a BottomlessPit, with the giant stone ball fast approaching.

This troper has played in groups with all kinds of DM:s, including a {{Monty Haul}}, a couple of "strictly by the book", a few that actually treated the characters relatively benevolently but fairly, at least one who insisted on acting as the {{CloudCuckooLander}} ''while being the fragging GM'', and a {{KillerGameMaster}}.

Good death: (my D&D character had just climbed onto a platform in a tree and wielded his longbow) -> GM: You hear a rustling sound from amidst the branches. -> Me: I shoot an arrow at it! *rolls a 20* Yay, direct hit! -> GM: *rolls dice* Okay, you take 14 damage from the hanging log trap, 5 damage from the arrow stuck to the dead center of the log, and 20 damage from the fall. -> Me: Buh... wuh... bah...

Bad death: Our group of lvl 4-ish D&D characters 1) have all their stuff stolen by a lvl 20 Rogue and 2) run into an absurdly powerful vampire lord. After roughly half of the group had been killed, the rest decided to set the dungeon on fire and run away. That particular gaming group pretty much ended right then and there. (To add insult to injury, my character's already-dead body that had been stashed away in a potato trough for a later raise dead at a temple got burnt to crisp in the ensuing fire.)

This Troper and a few friends get together on Ventrillo (an online voice-chat program) every Saturday night for D&D... Which almost ended before it began when the guy who organized it very quickly exposed the fact that he'd never played D&D before, let alone DM'd. He wasn't a KGM by design, but rather by lack of experience. Nearly every single fight was a giant monster boss battle that (depending on how he made EVERY SINGLE custom baddie) were either a CurbStompBattle or a case of FailureIsTheOnlyOption that we needed an NPC to save us from. We were also subject to a railroad storyline of epic proportions: when we agreed to a "game of D&D with some steampunk areas" we soon found our group was a batch of "chosen ones" that, in order to meet our destinies, were suddenly frozen in stasis for 5000 years. When we woke up we found out that the EvilOverlord (yes, that was his ACTUAL IN-UNIVERSE NAME AND TITLE) had, basically, destroyed the world as we knew it. We had to go around to various temples in various lands to achieve our "destined powers" (flavor-text upgrades to our class abilities) to finally fight and beat him. Then we found out that to do this, we had to defeat the prior ChosenOne in each temple. And then we found out that when we finally fought and beat the overlord, he wouldn't DIE, just be repressed, and we would then live an ageless life TRAPPED INSIDE OUR RESPECTIVE TEMPLES, awake the entire time, until the next round of destined warriors came to kill us so THEY could continue the cycle. All of us, including the save-the-world, LawfulGood characters, called grand high bullshit and refused to fight any more, both to our nearly-omnipotent wizard boss, as well as to HIS boss... Bahamut, head god of all dragons. Who was physically in the room when we told him "Piss off, let the world burn and start over." Needless to say that was our last game with him, and after we took up the process of cycling GM's for different campaigns (or storylines in the longer ones) we've had MUCH more fun.

Sounds an... awful lot like FFX, except that nobody got to become a summon or a part of the bad guy and you all got sacrificed.

While This Troper is generally a fairly reasonable DM, I will not, under any circumstances tolerate a {{Munchkin}}. While they'll get past character rolling, and maybe one or two sessions, munchkins in my settings tend to die in horrific, yet satisfying and completely reasonable ways. (plus since there's no resurrection in my custom setting, player death= KilledOffForReal) One memorable instance of this was also an example of HoistByHisOwnPetard. The party was hired by a local noble to retrieve an ancient artifact from the catacombs of a ruined city. Simple enough, and when they reached the hall holding the treasure, they found, to their delight, that there were no traps and no apparent final boss to challenge them. Cue the Munchkin running up and, predictably grabbing the thing, and getting possessed by the demonic entities dwelling within, and being turned into the dungeon's final boss...God, it was satisfying

I must admit that my plan for the final fight of a D&D based RP game was to drop Alabaster AKA the Amidah, the ultimate one, paragon of paragons, A 177th level vampire fighter with max ranks in every skill and unlimited wish at will on the party. Then kill him off. The killer and true end boss was to be a ressurrected legacy character elevated to godhood by an experiment that sealed his soul in a liquid metal body and forced the planes to merge only within his form, essentially combining the power of several copies of himself on the multitude of different dimensions. He was, however intended to be a puzzle boss using his own gadgetry against him or by bringing in his morality pet ex-lover.

Subverted: One of this troper's DMs is known for threatening that TonightSomeoneDies, but in reality the only deaths have been PlotlineDeaths caused by new characters joining and replacing old ones. After three sessions, none of the encounters he promised have come to their deadly fruition and he secretly admitted to a few people that he mostly just hypes it up and we all have a relatively high chance of survival.

This Troper and his friends just got started with 4E. Turns out his best friend is one. And REFUSES TO ADMIT IT! 12 Goblins, four of them leaders, as a first encounter at level one. And he flipped out if they dared to even try to call him on it. Dude's too competitive.

I am not a KGM, my players just never come to the right conclusions. It's not my fault if they forget to search for traps, or neglect trying to Turn Undead on a swarm in a tomb, or chase the kobold into a cave that happens to be the entrance to an entire clan's 'city...'

This Troper used to alternate between KGM and Monty Haul DM in the same damn game. At the age of oh, 11 or 12 or so, I used to play Hero Quest, and I was always Zargon (the DM) because I was the only one who actually knew the rules. So my players would do something that annoyed me, and I'd say the fimir actually had triple the normal hitpoints, and then I'd feel bad about it so I'd let them find an Elixir of Life for no reason, then they'd annoy me again so I'd... well I already said how I was the only one who knew the rules and they made me DM in lieu of reading them, figure out what I could do.

Also when I was in boyscouts, we would sometimes play pen and paper made up RPGs. A friend of mine was usually DM for these, and although he wasn't the traditional KGM, he would... ''forget to have random encounters''. So then we'd get to the boss and by the rules system be so underleveled we literally couldn't even hit it.

I accidentally did this in my first few games of D&D because I didn't fully understand how combat worked. With a Dragonborn Cleric, a Human Fighter, and a Tiefling Rogue, my players got their asses handed to them by three goblins.

This trope was played with like a rollercoaster (not DnD though) when this troper's camp played an economics game called "Koi-Traders." Kois fluctuate in price (in plastic coins, no less) every four minutes or so in an hour-long game, so the basic rule of "buy low to sell high" goes. First, the GMs, which were the C.I.T.'s and staff in the room would lampshade the trope. "We're going to have crazy times, or so they say." GMs of that game can implement crazy rules. IIRC, one rule they (eventually I helped, later on) would temporarily implement was, if you were over four foot seven, you couldn't posess kois (I was tall at the time, so I would've freaked out). It gets worse; another time, the rules changed to the point that if you had any kois, they'd strip away all of your kois and coins. Invoked with campers hiding kois and screaming at GMs. Eventually subverted when GMs repealed those rules.

This Troper usually tries to stay away from this when GMing, being of the mindset that the GM is there to help rather than hinder the players, but when a player starts to annoy me enough, either by never ShuttingUpNow, trying to play their character in GodMode one too many times, or simply being TooDumbToLive, a certain switch gets flipped and, well... "Welcome to Hell, bitch." Once put a group of chronic offenders through a self-crafted TombOfHorrors type dungeon for shear amusement.

This troper became a KGM him first time out. We were doing round-robin DMing and it was my first time. The seasoned DM was up next week in case I botched things. Well, I rolled on the random encounter table (in D&D 3.5ed) and they were going to face one Spitter. A creature that spits digestive acid and slurps up the goop to eat. The blub said they use hit and run tactics so, when everyone failed Spot checks, it picked a person at random (I actually mentally assigned everyone a number and rolled) and hit the dwarf Barbarian, for over half his HP. Then fled. The dwarf chased it, ALONE, and it turned and spat again, turning him to goop. Yeah, my first time out, I became a killer GM. Thankfully, another player prayed to the gods to bring him back..and the better GM made us find a diamond worth just enough to rez the stupid Barb inside his skull.

Never, ever, EVER sing the Oscar-Meyer Weiner song when you have a wish spell. Didn't happen to me, but I know the guy it did happen to.

This troper's friends know to never let her be the DM, just from seeing how she plays normally. In any case, their fears are justified.

This troper's group has found a simple and elegant solution to our at-times Killer GM (he recently made a new party's first encounter be against Frodo Feakin' Baggins (with the one ring)), rule 0.5: The GM's crotch must alway be within kicking distance of at least one PC.

This Troper has had to ''become'' one; not because of cruelty, or bad playstyles, but because everyone in the party is so overpowered they only use daily abilities to let fights finish faster. ''Essentials'' has turned our group into what I term "Team Buzzsaw," given the fact that 90% of the attacks thrown out are basic ones instead of worrying about encounter powers recharging, and we're routinely fighting encounters specifically designed for parties 3 levels our senior ''with'' extra things thrown in. One encounter was two Solo monsters and an elite - by "calculations" that SHOULD have been enough of an encounter for a party of ''nine'' [=PCs=] that were 2 levels higher than we are. The only time in the past six levels (which have seen us kick the collective ass of the capital city of the entire Drow race, and are now sailing merrily through the Astral Sea) that we had any real problems was when we were forced into a running battle that took course over three in-game days without rest and had to take endurance checks to make sure we could keep going.