u/Dongle00

So a while ago, I found myself with some free time to start a DND campaign so I asked around to see who's willing. A friend of mine and his brother (who we will call Alex and also I don't know that well) told me they were down but I said we need more people. Alex then told me his friend said he was down alongside three of his other friends so we agreed to do a one shot before starting the campaign.

so I get in contact with Alex's friend (let's call him Sam) we discussing where we're gonna play. He says "we can do it at my friend's john apartment, imma give you his number" so I get in contact with him

I notice there's a difference John is a lot more talkative, he's asking me what the one shot is gonna be like and showing me what characters has already and asking me which one I like. as a forever DM i love players like him

Sam is pretty quiet and when i asked if he had a character in mind he's like "ehhh i'll just borrow one of John's" I brush it off cause i figure it's probably cause we haven't even met yet and he might be one of those guys who needs to warm up to someone

Eventually I ask Sam if he has discord because I realize we all live pretty far from one and the campaign will be much easier over discord. he replied "no I don't" "you should make one" "nah i'll just go to John's place when we play" This should have tipped me off to his personality as you'll see here.

The day arrives and we meet at John's apartment, Sam shows up with his dog and says "sorry, I don't have anyone to watch him" I don't have anything against animals so I dont mind it, but it becomes a problem later on. We chat normally as we're waiting on another friend to join us (he's not important to the story but it's why we didn't play immediately) so it's just my friend, Alex, sam and John. we talk for a bit, we discuss schedules and we agree we're gonna meet every two weeks on sunday for the campaign and we'll also do session zero after the one shot.

We're all pretty hungry so we walk to a pizza place and there while we're all eating, My friend, John and I are talking about dnd and such but Sam and Alex start talking about politics and I realize that Sam is a right wing nut Job and an insane conspiracy theorist

Within 30 minutes he states

1. Bill Gates is bioengineering ticks to make us all allergic to meat so we’re forced to live in 15 minute cities owned by the Jews and eat bugs

2. Epstein is still alive and well in Palm beach Florida because there’s this guy on Instagram who looks a lot like him and makes jokes about it (he told me they’re clearly the same guy because “they have the same teeth”

3. Muslims are "changing europe"

4. This wasn't even political, Just dumb. Bruno Mars has $50 million dollars worth of gambling debt to MGM so he’s not allowed to release new music and must preform only at MGM until it’s paid off.

I don't bother arguing with what he said but then Sam turns to me and goes like

"so Alex tells me ur muslim. so explain to me why u guys ban alcohol but coffee is ok? they both change ur mental state"

"they're not the same and you know that" i answer "no I know some people who are completely different after coffee" I start ignoring him and we head back to this meeting room in john's apartment complex that we reserved for our one shot

we finally start DND.

John's character is an amnesiac ranger and he's role-playing pretty well and normal, and My friend is playing a hardheaded barbarian. HOWEVER, Sam's character is an Elf warlock named Shekelstein who's the most laziest anti Semitic stereotype possible and every line of dialogue out of his mouth is just antisemitic shit and calling people goyim, while Alex's character is a generic horny bard and his sidekick. Throughout the session, Sam drops weird comments and dog whistles and every time I stonewall him by saying "The NPC has no idea what an israel or etc is and thinks you're mad. He then turns and talks to a different player" and I make sure every bar maid is married ( Alex rolled a nat 20 and so i said a barmaid simply chuckles and is flattered this time instead of dumping beer on your head)

Eventually, he's stops to say "hold on, I gotta feed my dog brb" He gets up with John and Alex and they go up to his apartment. 30 minutes pass and I text Sam what's taking so long. he says "sorry my dog is spoiled and refuses to eat canned slop. I'm cooking rice for him" eventually he comes back and continues.

At this point: I'm avoiding putting the spotlight on Sam and Alex, but thankfully they're too busy jerking each other off about how "funny" their characters are to notice every NPC is ignoring them and their comments. Soon combat starts and despite being a warlock, Sam didn't pick any spells. He's like "idk warlock had spells. John didn't finish this character and I only wrote the backstory" I just tell him to roll eldritch blast and then suddenly he says "oh my dog needs to shit" he goes outside with John. I'm not waiting so i just play for them and after an hour they come back with a new friend I haven't met. "sorry for taking so long, We took a smoke break and my boy Vinny got off work early so he's here. He also likes dnd and has a character ready so can he join? he brought chips" Sam says

I say sure and pray internally that he's normal like John; those hopes were immediately dashed when Vinny sat down and the first thing that comes out of his mouth was "yeah I got those new NKD doritos cause they dont got dyes and i wanted to try them. it's crazy that they were feeding us GOYSLOP our entire lives and they could just choose not to"

At this point I'm done with the group so I fake an emergency and head home. Afterwards I tell my friend that I do not fuck with his brother and Sam at all and I'm not doing a campaign with them. I then tell him that I'm going to lie to everyone my job changed my schedule and I work on weekends now. He understands. I then tell Alex and sam and they're like "that sucks but whatever". When I tell John he's sad and asks if we can do wenesday but I lie and I have class. I do feel bad for John but then I realize that if he's friends with guys like those who are willingly to be that bigoted with someone they just met, he's either bigoted himself but socially aware enough to hide it or he doesn't care at all.

So yeah that's why NO DND is better than racist dnd

one of my players is incredibly new to DND and TTRPGS as a whole. before this campaign, we Ran a very basic oneshot with him (alongside other experienced players to teach him the game) I gave him a cheatsheet along with a basic explanation of the rules. he enjoyed it and understood the basics. so then we decided to do a campaign over DND Beyond. I sent him the new players handbook and told him “hey man you don’t gotta read the whole book but just read the introduction chapter and whatever class sounds cool to you” he responded with “no I hate reading. I’ll watch a YouTube video” I say fine. I understand it’s take a special type of nerd to read Big Ass rule book.

We start the campaign, he picks ranger and he’s playing fine. occasionally slipping Up but whatever, he’s new. we play like two sessions and I notice he’s not using his spells. I ask why and he’s like “oh I didn’t know I had spells” I check his character sheet and I notice outside of hunter’s mark, he didn't pick any spells. i then ask him to pick spells. He does and after using them he’s like “why I can’t I roll them again”

i told him that he’s out of spell slots and needs to long rest. “But why can I use firebolt again?” I explain its a cantrip. “Whats the difference?” I get mildly annoyed because he told me he watched a video, but I let it slide. I told him to please watch it again.

also, before my other players told me what sub class they were gonna be so I incorporated it into the story. the new player didn’t which is fine because we’re basically going to step by step with him.

now we’re taking a 3 week break because I’m going on vacation. the next session we get back, it’s gonna be extra long and they’re gonna hit level 3. I told everyone about my plan and I told new player “hey bro can you read up on what subclass you wanna be for ranger? You don’t have to read each in its entirety, just the stuff you immediately get?”

he responded with “uhhhh I really don’t like reading. Can I ask AI to summarize it for me?” I put my foot down and tell him find an actual video that explains it or read the book.

how do I make sure he actually does?

EDIT: for everyone assuming, the player is not dsylexic or has a learning disability. He just doesnt like reading.

please I need this milksteak boiled medium with your finesy jellybeans pls. I have a date to impress

so my friends and I are new to darktide ( im like lvl 14 and they’re around 7-10). we were having a good time on uprising and we just unlocked malice difficulty but it’s beating our asses. a good chunk of missions we get jumped by bosses back to back or run out of ammo quickly and get overrun. is there something we’re missing? also i just unlocked the ability to reroll gear stats. should I worry about that now or wait for the end game and solely on gear score?

so I tried running a one shot using the starter set for my group (we only played DnD 5e) and while I admit, they weren’t taking it seriously (they kept making jokes about seducing zuko and finding a whorehouse) the biggest issue was the combat system. it seems super clunky and weird and it killed everyone’s interest in the game and we gave up like an hour into it. I understand it’s more roleplay focused but how do I make the combat work better? I do wanna try again with a different group that will take it more seriously and ive seen online that I shouldn’t have combat encounters in the middle of a session like dnd

This is a problem i've faced a few times where a player simply says "No" to the call of adventure Recently I was running a session and one of the player's is incredibly new to DND (his second time playing) and session 1 starts with everyone boarding a cruise ship where the princess of the kingdom is hosting an party (i.e an excuse for the players to meet each other) the players all go except the new guy who simply says "My character hates people and parties so she decides to go to sleep in her room" I then say "wow that's crazy you won a lottery where 10 random lucky guests get a vip ticket" "give it to someone else" "on the ticket is a secret magical message for your eyes only that says someone needs to see you there" ( i completely made it up on the spot and no one was there so now there's an ongoing mystery of who wanted to see him) he ends up going to the party and he still participates, just reluctantly. I didn't give him shit for it cause he's new but I wanna ask how would you guys deal with this?

Long ass dnd session rant

Did a dnd session this Sunday with some friends.  it went mostly well outside of some growing pains since this is my and the other players first time using dnd beyond but one issue I had was with another player who I’ve known for like 10 years and he plays dnd a lot so it was surprising. (we also had a player whos new to dnd and even he didn’t do this)

for context: We had our session 0 a couple of weeks ago and I told him that it’s gonna be a fun game focused more on role playing than combat and we’re gonna meet every other Sunday on dnd beyond and it’s gonna be an all day thing.  leading up to the session, I remind everyone to make their character and account

First thing he does on the day of the session: 

” I didn’t make my character or set up my account” so we sit there for an hour waiting for him to set up. Then he goes like. “Oh they don’t have artificer here but they have something called blood hunter. Do you know if it’s good?” We’re all like “we never played it or didn’t even know they made it official but you can do ahead.” He starts making his character via point buy then he says “why can’t I make my starting wisdom 20 and my charisma shit? I wanna min max” I told him it’s not that kinda campaign and you can’t start your character off with 20 anyways. He responded with “my other group lets me.” then he starts asking which are the best curses for blood hunter and we’re like “bro we don’t know!” Eventually he finishes his character and we start playing. 

Nothing else really happens during the session outside of him asking questions about blood hunter which none of us can answer because once again, we didn’t know much about it. At the end of the session , while we’re fighting the boss, he’s like “btw can we wrap this up? I got some things I need to take care of“ I said “good thing we’re gonna finish after this fight but you could have told me ahead of time you got stuff to do later” we finish the boss and he immediately logs off while the rest of party continue rping for a bit and wraps up.

he‘s not a bad dude it’s just mildly annoying that he wasted some time for everyone and doesn’t mention that he didn’t have limited time. I’m trying to figure out how to tell him in a nice way that annoyed us and to either, make sure he is free on sunday or just tell us ahead of time

in this scenari: they both finished visiting their boyfriends (vegeta and Geto respectively) and they have it right to death. who would win