Try as we may to keep it civil, game nights can get out of hand. Between petty jealousies and cheating players, it’s not hard to lose our heard during a friendly game of Boggle. Though things are kept generally tame, these people share what happened when someone really lost their temper.
#1 Shutting it Down
D&D: The dungeon master’s girlfriend couldn't burn a town to the ground when a commoner slammed a door in her character's face. The rest of the party countered all of her attempts to burn it down. She was used to getting what she wanted and being the center of attention, but when she whined to her boyfriend that we weren't letting her have her way, he just shrugged.
Burning the town down for petty spite would've derailed the campaign and we stopped the fire by using the rules appropriately. She then moved on to covertly attempting to assassinate players who had worked against her, which also didn't work. That group didn't last long, but we did have a bit of fun constantly trying to shut the DM's girlfriend down.
#2 Stockpiled Houses
I once had someone knock all the pieces off the table and toss the Monopoly board off the table because someone took all the small houses and just stockpiled them without upgrading to hotels. So, we would run out and no one could upgrade their own property. It was honestly pretty infuriating and I wasn’t shocked by the outcome.
#3 The Cards You’re Dealt
Texas hold ‘em at a casino. I got dealt a KA and the dealer was to my left, so I bet last. King Ace came out on the flop. All but one guy fold. The next card was a jack. Another guy raised and I called. An ace came on the river (giving me four). He raised and I reraised the max bet. He called and slapped two kings on the table exclaiming, "Kings full!"
He was grinning ear-to-ear with his little move. Well, I showed my cards and his grin melted away. He then got super angry. He got up, paced back and forth a few times and then kicked his chair yelling the F-word. Then security escorted him out while I counted my winnings. It was a 2/4 max table. I think he lost like $30.
#4 Way Too Seriously
My two older brothers (around 13 and 16 then) and I were playing a Mario Party. My oldest brother got so mad that my other brother was winning that he screamed, threw the controller, then ran downstairs. He then booted up the PC and our shared WoW account and threatened to delete my brother's max level 60 main.
When the younger brother came to stop him, he pulled up scissors and threatened to stab him. No stabbings occurred and no characters ended up being deleted after some calming down, thankfully. That was the last time we played Mario Party with my oldest brother. The worst of it? He wasn't even in last place. I was, behind the AI.
#5 Harder Than Most Things
My friends and I have absolutely freaked out playing Mario Baseball on GameCube. That game is harder than most things we’ve played as a group. The non-playable characters know when you start winning and beat the snot out of you when it happens. So, we’ve all definitely had some fiery rounds of baseball before.
#6 Umpteen Billion Points
I had a friend in high school stop talking to me over video games. It was one of the old Burnout games, I don't remember what one anymore. There was a mode specifically for making the largest crash and earning points. I did this wicked awesome off a truck, into a gas truck, into a second gas truck for something like umpteen billion points.
I was (justifiably) excited because I crushed the round. It didn't matter what the rest did, for however many maps. It was a race for second place. I launched off the couch and cheered. He got angry and rebooted the console, and I told him he was a baby. Cue the infantile behavior and never speaking again. After a week I thought, "Man he's committed to this bit," but now it's been 13 years so…
#7 Over the Top
I used to play Pokemon TCG competitively. When I first started playing and I was at my first regional tournament this player (he was 14, I must’ve been about 10) was shouting in tears over the fact he thought (in his opinion) that his opponent had cheated. He was going crazy, screaming and crying and saying this player should be disqualified, etc.
Turns out, at a clutch point in the game, his opponent was shuffling his own hand around. (Flicking the cards between themselves, it’s a great way to funnel your nerves and a nice repetitive motion the channel energy into). The player felt that he was doing that deliberately to distract him (I can assure you he wasn’t, players do this as a habit). As a result of being distracted, the player made a game costing misplay. I’ve seen people get more angry and crazy at the game before but not to anything as trivial as this. This one always stands out to me as just over-the-top completely.
#8 Table Flip
I remember one time when I was playing Magic. We had two big shops in the area, one was more competitive, the other had free entry every Friday. I was in the latter with my wife. I have a friend whose brother plays and has some serious anger issues. The anger issues aren't exclusive to Magic, but can be prominent when playing. He was playing against my wife, who is very small, meek, and nice.
He was getting either mana "screwed" or "flooded", don't remember which, in what was already a bad matchup for him. He started yelling and slamming on the table. He almost flipped the table, which usually has three games going on it at once. She continued beating his face in undeterred (in-game), and he was disqualified and banned from the store.
#9 Tapped Him Out
My friend broke my controller when I tapped him out on the UFC game. At the time, I knew that it would make him mad too. Looking back on it, I should’ve known he’d be mean about it. We had a similar experience with the game and he said that submissions were “cheating.” He then refused to give me the $60 for a new one.
#10 Into the Fire
I used to play Monopoly with my two brothers (both younger than me) semi-regularly. The older of the two and myself would always cheat and the youngest never won. Not once. One year, the youngest figured out that we were cheating and he threw the entire game, box and all, into the crackling fireplace. That was about 10 years ago and we haven’t played since.
#11 Doing it Right
I had a player's girlfriend, who had quit the game, get really upset that the other players weren't “doing it right.” We were having fun, the dungeon master hadn't said anything, we weren't having difficulty requiring a bailout. Nothing was wrong with our game. We just were roleplaying in ways she didn't approve of.
#12 Stock Fantasy Garbage
My local game store was running an open game of MERP, Middle Earth Role Play. We're all running through some pretty traditional scenarios, it being Tolkein and all. At low levels especially, these things can be dangerous, and the GM did a great job of setting the scene for us. Well, one guy was just snarking the entire time about how boring and generic the game was.
He was getting on everyone’s nerves. Well, a decent way into the game, he decided to just start attacking the other players in the middle of a fight. We all reasonably called him on it. He just kept attacking until we had no choice but to counter and destroy his character. He just got up, thanked us for letting him out, told us to enjoy our stock fantasy garbage, and left the store. What a loser.
#13 Hilariously Ironic
Probably when I got hate messages on Xbox Live after winning a few online races in Forza. Nothing unusual so far, there are plenty of idiots like that in online games... except that this guy messaged me from multiple different accounts to call me "so sad xD" several times, which I just found hilariously ironic.
#14 Pack Up and Go
My ex was an avid player of Warhammer 40,000, the tabletop one, and some other miniature-based strategies as well. In his community, there was this dude who, upon rolling the dice poorly, losing many units or simply being overpowered, would get really angry. He’d shout profanities at the top of his lungs, throw stuff, or simply pack his minis and leave.
#15 Trust Issues
It was me, I was the one that lost it. In retrospect, it was a bit over the top. It was in a game of Risk. I was sweeping through Asia, leaving behind one or two in each country as I made my way to Africa. I got all of Asia and had the majority of my forces in the Middle East. My plan was to move into Egypt, but I wanted to wait one turn to gather a bigger force.
I was about to end my turn when the guy in Egypt proposed a one-turn truce. He said that if I didn't attack him for one turn, he would return the favor, and that would allow me to cover my borders with a more even spread. I agreed, we shook hands and I spread my forces out. It was then his turn, to my utter shock he gathered everyone he had into Egypt and proceeded to wreck all of my forces in Asia and took me out.
That jerk broke his word. I will never trust him again. He said that he regularly did that kind of thing, knowing that he can only do it once, per group of people he plays with. I lost my cool, and man's word is his bond! You know what?! That wasn't crazy to be upset. He broke a sacred pact, the handshake, the verbal contract with witnesses. Never again! That’s why I have trust issues.
#16 Two Sides to Every Coin
I gamed with a real jerk for years. Anytime things didn't go his way in a tabletop RPG, he'd throw a tantrum. Picture a middle-aged man who would scream and throw dice. He’d sometimes stomp away for random things he did wrong. He’d roll poorly or forget his character had an ability that would’ve been useful in previous rounds of combat.
Here's the thing, though. Two weeks ago, I encountered this guy for only the second time in a year. During the course of our meeting, a hit-and-run driver crashed into his parked car, doing a fair amount of damage to it. The jerk was totally chill about it. He didn't even want to call the police, despite a witness saying they thought the driver was inebriated.
#17 Heated Argument
I had a friend who, back in middle school, got into a heated Minecraft argument with his friend. Due to this, his friend burned up his statue of Spongebob Squarepants in retaliation. As a result of that, my friend completely severed ties with this dude. My friend unfriended him on Xbox and as retaliation, his friend came over to his house and unfriended everyone on his account. The friendship was pretty much done. He didn’t talk to him until the day we invited him to our discord years later after we were all out of high school. At that point, my friend forgot why he stopped talking to him.
#18 Poker Tournament
My wife and I had a poker tournament at our place with about 15 people. After four hours, only my wife and I were left standing. I had a lot more chips than her. All the guests left for the night. I started to clean up, but she began demanding that we finish. I tried to explain it was our money, so it didn’t matter, but she wouldn’t have it. I immediately went all-in on the next two bad hands and basically handed her the money so I could go to bed. We divorced a few years later.
#19 Sorry, Honey
Spoons. My grandma is the sweetest thing in this world. She’s Mormon, will never hurt anybody, and always sees the good in anyone. But she is the most savage person alive when she plays Spoons. We were each grabbing for a spoon and we both grabbed the spoon at the same time and she just dug her nails into my hand until I let go. She then looked at me with an innocent smile and said, “Sorry, honey.” I’ll never forget that
#20 No Response
This guy doxed me after a Rocket League game and I said I would post our conversation on r/FunnyandSad. He then started looking through my social media and said I only go to Reddit parties. One time, I asked him if he wanted to come to a concert I was attending with my friends that night. No response.
#21 It’s a Game
I was at a Pokemon Go Raid and this dude, grown man with a wife and kids, said, "I am done with team instinct! Seriously! Do you see what they did earlier today? Unacceptable!" I don't know what our team did to him, but to be done with roughly one-third of the players in this game because of something a few people did is pretty absurd. Also, it's a game.
#22 Going Online
When you go to a comic book store while the employees are playing, they get really mad when they have to deal with a customer. I've had this happen a few times at a local place where the owner would show out to his buddies because he had a patron wanting to pay money for goods. I now shop online for my comics.
#23 Lose-Lose Situation
I used to play Risk with a bunch of my friends back in the day. I was the only female player there. One guy hated it when I won a few times, to the point where he declared that no woman should take over the world. He then spent every game going forward taking me out, even when it meant a loss for him as well.
#24 Brawl Babies
This guy in an online chat whined about another guy in a discord conversation. He was losing game after game in Smash Bro's Brawl and he claimed that he was ganged up on by the other players (not true). In reality, he was just a terrible player. What really got me the most was the whiner was also the admin of that page and abused his admin privileges to change the other players’ user name to the N-word.
#25 Battle Cry
DM for Pathfinder here. I made up my own world and story. A guy got upset because he kept running into battle, yelling. I said that the enemies were no longer flat-footed (I know how the rules are read, but I'm saying if someone comes at you yelling, you’re prepared for battle). He got so mad that he left in the middle of a session.
#26 Ganging Up
In Perfect Dark when we used to play split-screen multiplayer, one person would get the Farsight XR-20 (an alien shooter that can see and shoot through walls). It was pretty much an unwritten rule that everybody had to team up and end them before they could start reaming everybody with it. Naturally, this meant that every time a person got the Farsight, they’d get excited to cream everybody, then get triple-teamed and rage about it. The crazy part is that this would happen literally every single time to everybody even though we all realized how stupid it was.
#27 Making Things Up
I once had a player get mad enough at me to leave a game because I was "making things up.” I was the dungeon master… literally my only job is to make things up. Mind you, this wasn't me making up rules or being tricky. Legit, the dude raged out because I said a wall had been constructed of magical brick that could reconstruct itself when damaged.
#28 Online Card Game
Playing UNO (yes, the card game) online on Xbox 360, I had custom rules set up for the (non-ranked) game. They allowed you to counter a draw four with another draw four, forcing the next player to either draw eight or play a draw four if they had one. This resulted in some kid being forced to draw 12 cards. He screamed into his mic, called us all a slur, and quit the game. His voice sounded like he was maybe ten years old. Again, we were playing a card game online.
#29 Rage Quit
I was on Madden 15, playing my first ever online game. Some weird British dude was my opponent and was talking over Xbox Live, despite me not having a headset. It was only the first drive, but I hit Greg Jennings for a 50-yard touchdown. He paused the game, swore at me for two minutes with his British accent, and rage quit one minute into the game.
#30 Left Speechless
My three friends and I were playing Monopoly while having some drinks. My friend's girlfriend was winning and rubbing it in his face. At one point, he screamed at her, flipped the Monopoly board, (all the pieces went flying) and straight-up just left the apartment. We were left speechless until we burst out laughing.
#31 Holding Grudges
My dad and I both love video games, but we haven’t played a game together in 29 years. We were playing a game on the NES called Super Dodgeball against each other. He played as the U.S., I chose Kenya. The team captain had this ridiculous super throw that would bounce the ball back to him if it hit a player.
My dad had been mercilessly beating me because I was playing without using supers since he couldn’t do them. After the fifth win of his, he said, “It’s time you learn that life sucks if you don’t fight.” But during match six, he never touched the ball. Match seven, eight, and nine, rinse and repeat. Match ten, I beat him without his players even standing past match opening. I let him know I could have done that all morning, but wanted to give him a chance. He threw the controller, breaking it, and called me a “self-righteous jerk.” I was nine. That was 29 years ago and he still won’t play a game with me.
#32 Showing Off
D&D. One of our characters had a +7 in charisma and she wanted to show off. So, she took 80% of a gold drop by rolling opposed charisma checks against us. The only reason our more volatile members didn’t kill her immediately is that she said we could be mad but our characters wouldn’t care enough to attack her.
#33 Hack the System
I was playing Battlefield Bad Company 2 on Xbox. My friends and I played that game religiously and knew every nook and cranny of every map. We could also play any class effectively. I was playing on a large group match by myself and I killed this kid a couple of times, including sneaking up on him twice and stabbing him.
Stabbing someone in the game added their custom dog tags to your collection. Apparently, this kid completely lost his mind. He sent me at least a dozen messages threatening to "hack" my Xbox 360 and my Xbox live account and "mess up" my system, so I would have to buy a new one. Dude, you can't hack an Xbox like that.
#34 That’s What You Get
I was playing Dungeons and Dragons and had a friend who played a super-sexualized, chaotic character. After his second time trying to attack a non-playable character, I told him (in-game), "If you do that one more time, I'm going to shoot you with a crossbow.” He did it again, I shot him, and the dungeon master allowed it.
#35 Last Game Ever
I absolutely love Monopoly, but for some reason, I always found myself being forced to play it with people. Boy, could you imagine how excited I was to find out about hogging the houses. The next time I played, I bought the lowest priced properties and loaded up on houses. Everyone was bewildered. Then, it happened. Someone went to buy a house and realized there were none.
"Oh, let me go get some pieces of paper that we can use for houses," they said. That's when I dropped the hammer. I was sure to be a real jerk about it too. People were livid. "You can't do that, that's not how we play." I told them those were the rules and we were going to play by them. Everyone quit. I haven’t played Monopoly since!
#36 Entitled Child
My ex threw a massive tantrum when I didn’t let her win at Mario Party. She gave me the silent treatment for a couple of days afterwards. Then, we had a “serious talk about our relationship.” The best decision of my life was eventually noping out of that relationship. 10ish years on and I’m happily engaged to someone who I can play games with, without them acting like an entitled child.
#37 Señor Oso
Oh God, I’ll never forget this one round of Dungeons and Dragons. The dungeon master got angry that I wanted my bear, Señor Oso, (I was a ranger) to speak a mystical, fake language (which was Spanish). But, nobody could understand him. He said no and the group protested. It devolved into a huge fight and he broke up the party.
#38 Taking the Bait
One D&D player hated my best friend. Every time my pal would make a suggestion, the power gamer from the underworld would shoot it down and just be loud and obnoxious. After this happened many times, my friend just began to mess with him. He took the bait every single time. This dude got belligerent one night and threatened to beat my friend up in the parking lot. My friend said he would have just taken the beating and explain to the cops why he got hurt.
#39 Maniac Deck
I played in a Magic the Gathering tournament once. My deck was built around a card called “Laboratory Maniac.” In Magic, like most other card games, if you run out of cards in your deck you lose. Laboratory Maniac reversed that. If you run out, you win. In the first match of the tournament, I ran out and won the game. The guy across from me laughed, declared his victory and reached for my hand. I looked him in the eyes and just handed him the Maniac card. He then screamed and threw his deck at me. It felt good, to be honest.
#40 Pretty Inexperienced
When the fifth edition of D&D came out, I was still pretty inexperienced, but whatever. We had a gathering to play a one-off tutorial campaign with pre-made characters. I decided to be the healer, who also had some damage spells. In the first encounter, I used a 3x3 cube attack on an area to butcher the four remaining monsters, forgetting that the spell would also hit my allies in the area (two of them). One saved, the other didn't, but both were livid.
#41 Lagging Games
My brother used to yell at us for his lagging in games all the time. He would punch holes in walls, etc. Eventually, my dad bought two different Wi-Fi signals and we all used one while he had his own. He still yelled at us about lagging all the time because "we used up the signal". No bro, you just suck at whatever you’re playing.
#42 Never Again
My wife and I were reminiscing about Yu-Gi-Oh! when we were younger. So, I got her some of the old cards to build a deck with. I got mine out of storage and we played. I fondly call my deck a troll deck because it frustrates the other person in a myriad of ways. The result of that game was the only time she ever locked the bedroom door on me, and we are both fairly competitive people when it comes to board games. Never again Yu-Gi-Oh!, never again…
#43 Pretty Seriously
We had a D&D player get very upset at the DM once because he said that the painfully forced French accent he kept using for the character wasn’t really working. Not exactly the DM’s job, but the player got so upset that he just stayed out of all combat. He was acting moody for the rest of the session. I mean, he was one of those players who took the game pretty seriously, so I guess he didn’t like being told his idea wasn’t good.
#44 The Angry One
I was playing Overwatch and someone started getting salty, insulting the rest of the team. Okay, that was nothing new, so I muted him and continued playing. Midway through the second round, I made a comment to one of the other players that I had muted the angry one. Based on the comments from my other teammates, this really set him off. I obviously don't know exactly what he said but he felt that me muting him was the worst thing ever. I still get a chuckle thinking about it.
#45 First Game
I was at a summer camp and playing one of my first Magic the Gathering games. There was nothing I could do to win at one point, so I attempted to forfeit. The other player's friend said he would just keep playing for me so that my side would still lose. I totally flipped out and swiped a bunch of the cards off the table.
A councilor saw and told me that I had to clean it up. Looking back, I see why I overreacted, but why couldn't they just let me forfeit and end the game? I will say I did have some emotional instability then, but I'm on meds now. I pretty much never have had an outburst like that in a few years for something super small.
#46 In the Corner
My friends and I were playing Infection in Halo 5. One of them was already pretty white boy wasted and was frustrated with the game. He ended up just hitting boxes with his energy sword or just sat in the corner not moving and literally cried the whole time. We told him he could leave, but he was too far gone and cried in the corner.
#47 Going to Court
My ex got so mad at me because when I was cleaning his apartment, I accidentally unhooked his Playstation. He lost his place in the game. He was so enraged that he took his game controller and knocked out my tooth. We broke up after that but I ended up suing him in court to help pay for my dental implant. My dental insurance only covered $1500 and year and the implant and tooth was almost $10K. My current partner doesn’t play video games, thank God.
#48 House Rules
I was playing Monopoly and my dad didn’t exactly understand how the go-to-jail mechanic worked. He told me he always played where you had to roll the dice and if you got two sixes, you could go free. I said it wasn’t true. So, when he rolled the dice and got two sixes, I said it didn’t work that way. He got really upset and attacked me.
#49 Last Pie Piece
I was playing Trivial Pursuit with my wife and two friends. I was close to getting the last pie piece. My card had something like: "This son of Jor-El came to Earth and grew up in the town of Smallville." I debated out loud that the answer could either be Superman or Kal El. Based on the wording on the card, I went with Kal El. Of course, the answer was Superman, and all three of the other players, including one huge comic book fan, voted that my answer was wrong. I definitely still hold a grudge.
#50 Banned Game
Scattegories became a banned game among a group of friends when I called someone out on the rules. Like three turns after, they called me on the same ones. So, because I wasn't willing to be made to play by rules that others ignore, the game was no longer viable. I wasn't even being rude about it either, so whatever.