I Joined a New D&D Campaign and Accidentally Triggered the Session Zero Horror Story
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I recently joined a new D&D campaign because the DM was looking for players. The group seemed great: everyone was roughly my age, pretty chill, and the DM had this really cool idea for a long-running homebrew setting where multiple parties would play in the same world over the years and leave permanent changes behind.
So far, so good.
Before the campaign really got going, we were talking in Discord and I posted some artwork of my character.
Important context: I can't draw.
I use AI to help visualize characters I create. I don't pretend it made the character for me—I come up with the character, personality, backstory, etc., and use AI as a way to turn what's in my head into something visual.
One of the players immediately responded with something along the lines of “boooo AI.”
Okay. Fine. I figured they didn't like AI. No big deal.
Then they wanted to argue about it.
I explained why I use it, that I'm a writer rather than an artist, and that for me it's basically a tool that lets me visualize characters I otherwise couldn't draw.
The conversation kept escalating.
It went from “I don't like AI art” into arguments about environmental damage, corporations, marginalized communities, critical thinking, and whether using AI showed a lack of compassion for other people.
At this point I was sitting there thinking:
“I could absolutely argue about this for the next three hours... but I literally just joined this campaign and I don't want to have to find another fucking D&D group.”
So I tried to keep the argument from getting worse.
Eventually other members of the group started chiming in. They didn't seem particularly interested in turning the character-art channel into an AI ethics tribunal.
I even apologized at one point just to try to defuse things.
One of the other players immediately responded with:
“No, not your bad.”
Eventually the other player decided to leave the campaign.
And here's where I felt like absolute shit.
I had joined because the DM needed players. Now someone had actually left, and my immediate thought was:
“Fuck. Now I have to find another game.”
Except...
Everyone else basically told me I was fine.
One person called the whole thing an unnecessary attack.
Another basically said we had dodged a bullet.
Then someone sent me a GIF of Neo from The Matrix.
So apparently I didn't get kicked out of the campaign.
I got handed the red pill.
The funniest part is that I actually think I would've disliked playing with this person anyway. I could tell almost immediately that we were probably going to clash, and I remember thinking that I'd rather just avoid the argument because I didn't want to lose the campaign.
Instead, the universe apparently solved the problem for me.
Now I'm still in the campaign, everyone seems cool with me, the DM is letting me stream the sessions, and we're eventually going to transition from Forgotten Realms into the DM's own homebrew setting.
So my first D&D horror story apparently has a happy ending.
I joined a campaign.
Posted my character.
Accidentally started the Great AI Ethics War of 2026.
Lost a player.
Got given a Neo GIF.
And somehow came out of it with the group telling me:
“You're good, bro.”
Honestly?
I'll take it.
I understand there's negatives to ai there's negatives toots of things and I just dont think it should have been such a huge deal also I was the first person to even upload a character image