Kicked from two campaigns run by the same DM same week as my Grandfather Died
Ok, so I’m fairly new to the DND scene. I’m freshly 21 years old, only played homebrew, combat heavy, or a low rp family campaign prior to this. While I have played BG3 and overall knew the mechanics of DND, I had some learning to do, which I was completely willing to do. I had experience in roleplay in non-DND settings, but roleplaying within a group setting is new to me, as all of mine have been individualistic. I am posting this as I’m kinda heartbroken on how it all turned out and want to gain some perspective if there is any.
So when looking for online games, I looked for ones specifically that were new player friendly. I would look for them on either r/lfg, group finder, or roll20. Still in two groups that I found on r/lfg and group finder currently, but in total through this process I found four groups. One completely fell apart because of issues with the DM, the other is the topic of this story.
To make things easy as there’s a lot of characters to follow, here are their nicknames (from most relevant to least):
- Marshmallow (me | Drow Fighter | Neutral Good)
- Sam (DM) (male | mid 30s)
- Craig (Goblin Cleric of Life) (male | don’t remember)
- Edward (Human Paladin) (male | late 20s I think)
- Thomas (Satyr Ranger) (male | late 20s)
- Kendra (Half Elf Rogue) (female | late 20s)
- Talia (1st character: gnome sorcerer | 2nd character: tiefling cleric of war) (female | mid 20s)
- Andrew (Human Wizard) (male | mid 30s | DMs long time irl friend)
Note to add that not everyone was in the game at the same time, there were not many players. Spoilers, a total of three were kicked if you include myself, and new people kept being brought in when the second got kicked. This was over the course of over a month, since late March. I don’t know if that’s a lot of time, but it felt like it.
So we’ll start from the beginning with how I got into the game. This game I found on Roll20, sent an application, and got through the interview process with Sam in discord. I was going to be the youngest there, but he thought I had a lot of spunk and would work well with the rest of the group. He said my chances were good for me to get in and I was ecstatic.
Now I want you to put a pin in a little detail I’m about to tell you. In this interview process, I told Sam that I had a bit of an issue I have to work on. Since I haven’t had much experience roleplaying with a group, coupled with my autism, it’s hard for me to tell if someone is done talking or not. Especially over discord when I can’t even see their face (voice only). So I told Sam if this became an issue, don’t just subtly try to tell me, go ahead and just call me out on that right there and then. I’d rather him yell and insult me, then to have an issue fester and get worse. I want to improve, and I cannot improve if people don’t tell me what’s wrong. He reassured me that I would be fine and that that tends to happen in discord anyhow, so I wouldn’t be the only one. I thought it was fine, and it was..for a while.
Now before we get to my kick, we first start with the two other kicks within this group.
First was our cleric:
He was there for one session. Honestly, imo, seemed pretty chill. We talked about Joan of Arc and music tastes prior to the session with Edward since we three arrived early. The session went great. Honestly all the sessions did, Sam was a really good DM from an immersion perspective and it was so much fun. Me and Edward’s characters had a cute moment of her insisting to give his character a ration because of a little inventory mistake where he didn’t even have any. The two characters actually seemed like they were going to form a friendship over time with how similar they were.
Meanwhile, Craig got downed immediately in a—funnily enough—goblin ambush. He was our CLERIC. It made for a funny moment where he was literally shot in the head and Edward had to heal him.
After that session, suddenly in the week, Craig got kicked. Sam announced the reason why was because he was “acting weird in DMs with him”. Now I found this very weird at the time cause Craig didn’t seem like that kind of person, but my thought process was this: if Sam was a female, I wouldn’t be questioning this. This would’ve been an understandable silent kick, and I shouldn’t be interrogating him on this just cause he’s a guy. All of this I later told him about. Red flag #1
Second was our Paladin:
It took quite a few sessions before this happened. I would say it was around session 4-6 when this happened and it was when I started to have worries. Edward was a very chill guy, had great roleplay, and was good in combat. Now here’s the thing, he had work prior to the session and had to DM a game afterwards (at least according to DM). Our session was 3 hrs long and we couldn’t go longer than that because of that reason, which by the way was the time on the listing. That was part of the reason why, but not everything.
You see, Sam wanted our help in giving him reviews for his page on this paid DND site where he could advertise his paid games. He needed 5 reviews in other to list there. Now all of us BUT Edward gave 5 stars cause we genuinely felt his DMing was amazing. Now Edward did find his games fun, but he felt weird about what happened to Craig. So he gave a more slightly balanced review of a 4 stars, which in my opinion was good, but he had a feeling Sam wasn’t going to like it.
So out of everyone in the group, he friended me preemptively just in case Sam kicked him and so that way I had his side of the story. At the time, I reassured him that that’s not going to happen…oh how wrong I was.
It didn’t happen immediately, a little over a week after that review, that was when he kicked him. He didn’t elaborate in the announcement, but he decided to “spill the tea” with me in DMs. Mainly cause I reacted with an emoji or something at it, and he asked me if I wanted to know more.
He explains his reasonings like the review, the time thing, and on top of that: the text rp. So in between sessions for down time, we would hold text rp sessions to help build the characters relationships up a bit more. Edward had said he would do text rp, but I think he was thinking of within the session, not out of session. So he said he wouldn’t be able to do it. Thus lit the powder keg of immediately booting without a warning.
Edward in retaliation in a way changed his four star review to like a one star, which I personally don’t condone but after knowing the full scale of what Sam is like, I don’t blame him anymore. At the time, I personally thought they just didn’t mesh well in terms of expectations and didn’t communicate, thus it imploded like this. I checked with Edward when this was all going down and he and I stayed friends cause he wanted to know if anything else happened. Call him Cassandra, cause he told me more people were going to get kicked and I didn’t listen..
Finally Me:
This happened yesterday for me and out of the blue. I was in this campaign for nearly two months and was even invited to Sam’s curse of strahd campaign for Sundays a couple of weeks ago. I was having fun, getting along with everyone (at least I believe so), designing everyone’s art for free to get to know them, and was even finally completing my backstories for both campaigns. Everything seemed good, I was becoming closer with the main group and getting along with the other, so all of this seemed so out of left field.
Now let’s unpin that detail from earlier. My character flaw of not knowing when people are done and interrupting. I kept trying to fix that actively in both games, letting everyone else have a chance to participate, but it was quite hard when everyone else is more quiet and I’m a very talkative person. In fact, in the curse of strahd game I was playing a more reversed, no-social-skills type of character so I was actively working on it.
Whenever I interrupted someone, I would say sorry and let them speak. Semi frequently when session ended I would ask “hey, am I doing alright?”, even asked if I’m doing any main character stuff by accident. Sam said that I was doing fine, so did the other players. One of things he said, and I’ll never forget this, was that he was going to make a fantastic player out of me, and that got my confidence up. I was making token art, animations, and even discussed with the other players relationship development between my character and theirs that we could do.
Now for the sad part, for the past month my grandfather, who’s like a second father, was put on hospice. It was very out of left field as he was always extremely healthy, so for him to die before my grandmother was a shock. He and I were very close, and it hurt so much seeing him like that. He died 5 days ago.
I let Sam know what was happening and that I’m going to check with a therapist tomorrow if it would be ok to still go to the games that weekend. He said that’s alright and to just let him know. I went to therapy the next day and she said that going to games might actually be good for me cause it’ll give me routine in the madness. I let Sam know the exact reason why, why I would need these games mentally and emotionally. At that point, I thought we were friends.
We had the session on Friday and I played like normal. Everyone was playing as normal. I even talked with Kendra and Andrew prior to the games start time, everyone in this group got along. Then when the game was done, a lot of us stayed back to chat more including Sam, everything seemed fine. I even started writing my character’s completed backstory (I had a simple one before that Sam had) and had the help of Thomas when making it. Stayed up all night to complete it and Sam knew this.
The next morning I received this text.
“Hey Marshmallow... After giving it a lot of thought over the last few weeks, I’ve decided I’m going to remove you from both campaigns.
I want to be honest that this comes down to overall group fit and table dynamics. Over time, I’ve noticed a recurring pattern of interruptions, difficulty sharing spotlight time, and social friction that has been affecting the experience for me and some of the other players. I don’t think this group is the right fit for you or for the rest of the table.
I do want to say that I don’t think you’re a bad person, and this isn’t meant as a personal attack. I know you care a lot about the game and your characters, and I appreciate the enthusiasm you brought. I know this probably isn’t easy to hear, and I’m sorry because I never wanted to hurt your feelings. But as the DM, I have to make decisions based on what I think is healthiest for the group overall, and this is the decision I’ve come to.
I’m not looking to debate the decision, but I did want to be respectful and tell you directly instead of disappearing or being vague about it. I genuinely wish you the best and hope you find a group that’s a better match for your playstyle.”
I woke up to this, and I tried to reply, but I was already kicked from both discords and he unfriended me. I was so confused. I was still friends with the other players and so I sent them the screenshot, let them know what was going on, and left it at that. I was close friends with one of the other new players Talia, so I talked with her more in depth.
She told me that Thomas actually left as well. Thomas was the player who replaced Edward and was a more experienced player than me. He was also a DM himself, so keep this in mind. I was really worried he got kicked as well cause he had no plans of leaving soon, I heard from him he was going to write his character's backstory also that night. I contacted Thomas by getting his username through Talia, and we talked.
Apparently he confronted Sam about the announcement within the server itself, saying it’s not a play style issue, but a new player flaw that needs to be ironed out with time. He did not talk with the other players about the kick, like what he did with Edward and Craig, and overall was very dismissive. Thomas, partially out of solidarity, mostly because he saw the red flags in this, left. He was not going to deal with that. Me contacting him made him get more context that he was right that Sam never spoke to me genuinely about the situation.
The whole thing caused me to have a breakdown honestly. I was constantly cautious about this problem I had and I thought I did everything right by constantly checking with everyone if I was going alright. When issues were brought up to me, I fixed them immediately, and this was meta gaming issues like telling someone the most optimal way to do something (something like reminding the player how flanking works). So it’s not like I was against criticism or anything. Nothing was ever told to me and it just felt like highschool all over again. Haaa PTSD war flashbacks.
Everyone else in the group is either staying out of this or not answering just yet. I don’t know if anyone then talked privately to Steve about my behavior, but I constantly checked with feedback from them as well so I don’t know what happened. Me and Thomas are trying to join as a duo in another group to replace that one, and I don’t know I just feel so depressed about the situation.
He was a fantastic DM and I was having so much fun building a story with everyone in the group. In the first game, Kendra and I were having a sisterhood between our characters, which was so sweet. Thomas was like our babysitter keeping us out of trouble. Me and Talia were thinking of having a romance between our characters in the strahd campaign if we lived long enough. Then finally another player (not named) in curse of strahd and I were thinking of a big brother, little brother dynamic as well. It’s not like I wasn’t getting along with everyone, I was.
It just came out of such a left field and he didn’t even say anything to me. I thought maybe this is normal, but I have no idea anymore. That combined with everything that happened with my grandfather, it’s just..awful and I’m still reeling from it.
Not the most dramatic horror story, but it feels like it to me. Thank you for reading.