u/Diablix

Now this isn't exactly a sequel to a prior campaign of mine, but for those curious it's this story where myself, the DM, and 2 other players were problem players many years ago. We've all grown significantly since then, don't worry.

The characters for this are Dalir (me), DM, and Gravin (the potential problem player, though with some opening for me to be sharing a bit in that blame too I guess? It's hard to say)

I'd told a friend about that campaign before and he asked if it'd be ok if he did a campaign with a resurrected version of my old character as the BBEG. Apart from it being my old character, there was no other connection to that other campaign/world (the DM's story for this was that when he was rezzed, he specifically got rezzed to a different plane of existence than the original campaign, and that the plane he got rezzed into is where the new campaign takes place).

For important context, the DM did have private messages with me asking for tips on how to play my character and stuff and I'd give him ideas and the types of things he would and would not do, even as a full on villain.

Now the other part of important context and where I personally think I may be at fault is that myself and the DM didn't tell the other party members that this was a former character of mine as the BBEG. It's not so much that it was a guarded secret, as much as it was it didn't seem an important enough detail to bring up since I wasn't going to be the one playing him, and whether the DM got the BBEG from a book, movie, show, or past character didn't really seem to make all that much difference since borrowed ideas is such a common thing.

Now the campaign was only 5 sessions long, and was primarily about my rezzed old character trying to raise an army to kill a powerful demon lord to undo past regrets. Thing is, his method of raising this army was pretty reckless as the age old addage that everyone loves so very much "it's what my character would do" but in this instance was less obnoxious since it was being done in the name of a character meant to be the villain. But jokes aside, the DM decided on him being reckless about it because in truth that old character was very reckless in a lot of his decisions and that's part of what caused the original campaign to go up in smoke.

He started by conquering a small town, and then gradually spread to the surrounding areas. Eventually he lead a rebellion against the kingdom and won. While his intentions of slaying a demon lord were noble, his methods of seemingly being unwilling to stop his conquering even after taking over a kingdom were....concerning. So, our party was a ragtag group of rebels against his authority looking to do their best to gunk up the works and overthrow who they perceived to be a tyrant.

So, everything was going extremely well for the first 4 sessions of this 5 session campaign. The party was getting along, we all had fun, issues came up but were really just small ones that we just hashed out by pausing the game to have a discussion when needed. Everyone got time in the spotlight, and every session was ending with everyone hyped for where things were going and how well our rebellion was going. One player had been in charge of recruitment during our downtime, and we had agents all over the kingdom thanks to him. One was in charge of intelligence gathering and had just recently gotten the layout of the BBEG's castle including how to reach his throne room. Gravin had been in charge of securing supply lines and had even gone and cut off several of the BBEG's most important routes for supplies. That is, until the last session.

You see, my old character was very unconventional and the DM knew that. He used his abilities in irregular ways. He'd do things like grappling an enemy and using heat metal on their armor or mage hand to grab their weapon or throat in the middle of combat to gain slight momentary advantages, so the DM played him like that during the final boss fight.

The battle opened with me lunging through the air at my former character, only to be caught out of the air by the throat with Mage Hand as he laughed and some of his minions took free shots at me while I struggled to free myself (this was before initiative was rolled and was essentially the opening scene to the fight beginning). The rest of the party charged in to join the battle alongside me, wary of what tricks might be up the BBEG's sleeve after witnessing that opening move.

After a long hard fought battle against my old character, I was the last one standing. The rest of the party were unconscious, not dead. While the DM targeted all of us pretty equally, I had the highest AC and so ended up tanking the most hits without taking any damage out of the group. I stared down my old character and landed the finishing blow, brining an end to his reign of tyranny.

After the fight, we all learned of the Demon Lord he was trying to stop. End session. In the post session, everyone was fired up by how intense and close the battle was and how they were excited to face this Demon Lord...that is, until the DM showed his hand here.

He credited the intensity of the fight to me and everyone was a bit confused, so he explained how this BBEG was a past character of mine trying to right past wrongs and how a lot of his unconventional use of abilities was ripped directly from how I played the character in the past. Most of the party was fine with this, except for Gravin. Gravin scoffed and said it felt unfair that I'd be getting this much spotlight and main character treatment: not only was the BBEG my past character, but I got the cinematic final blow on him? Clearly the DM and I were conspiring to make the campaign all about me.

The rest of the party seemed on the fence at first, but I asked Gravin "I was the only one left conscious at the end. What was I supposed to do? Give up and TPK?" to which Gravin said that obviously the DM set it up so I'd be the last man standing. I told him that I picked my armor, not the DM, and I only survived longer because I had better AC. The rest of the party seemed to lean more towards my side at this point and one of them even said in my defense "a person with higher AC having better survivability isn't main character syndrome, it's just how the mechanic works." At this point I think Gravin started noticing people weren't on his side because he started going back to nitpicks throughout the campaign where issues had been resolved in the moment, like one time where he said I was too annoying about it when I was playing out a nat 1 on a persuasion roll for a discount in a shop and so I replayed it less annoyingly but still fumbling because it was a nat 1.

At this point, people were full on disagreeing with Gravin, saying that bringing up random small things that had been resolved in the moment felt too much like grasping and he should just chill.

Ultimately, Gravin wouldn't stop causing a fuss even after the DM talked to him one on one the next day after he'd had a chance to cool down, the story died there because everyone just felt kinda soured on it.

The reason I'm sharing this is in part because I do feel guilty. While I know it was done innocently, I feel like full disclosure over the fact the BBEG was specifically a past character of mine would've probably gone a long way. I can see how a detail like that could change someone's perspective on things, especially after I personally got the cinematic finish on him. For what it's worth, I know there will be comments accusing me of intentionally being a spotlight hog or something, but all I can do is say I sincerely wasn't and just had no other choice once I was the last one standing. I wanted to make it feel cinematic so the rest of the party would still feel hyped after having gotten downed themselves, and definitely didn't want things ending in a TPK.

That all said, perception impacts reality to an extent. I completely understand how this looks and why it looks this way, and I don't even fully blame Gravin: I get that from how he saw things it probably did take the wind out of his sails. I don't consider myself a problem player anymore like I was a very long time ago, as I do try my best to make sure other players are having fun, but there's always something to be learned and here I felt like even though it didn't seem important to disclose at the time, some early on disclosure to the rest of the party would've probably done a lot of good here.