The Joker is a Weasel-Man
Trigger warning: Brief themes of assault. No actual assault. No one was harmed during this story.
Reposted with mod permission after the previous version was brigaded.
This story isn't as dramatic as some of the tales on here, but I think it's pretty ridiculous, and an example of how one player can totally tank a campaign. It began when I joined a party on StartPlaying.Games, which might've been my first mistake, I don't know. Anyway, at first it was myself and three other players who were getting on pretty well with the DM. Especially one older gentleman who was a high school Spanish teacher, great guy. A few days before session zero, a fifth player was added. My alarm bells started going off right away, because his Discord screen name was “Jack Napier,” as in The Joker, and he started posting edgelord shit on main without context. Stuff like “my life is unknown suffering,” and “all ends are just beginnings.” Massive red flags right off the bat.
He missed session 0 (another red flag) and we all made our characters without him. A day before session 1 he revealed on Discord his character. I'm not kidding, this was his guy. He had made a chaotic evil rapist murderer drow, who's entire motivation for becoming an adventurer was so he could find both people and animals to rape and murder, but it was okay because bandits, wolves, and goblins are evil so it doesn't matter if he does that to them. Obviously, we players were all vehemently against this, even moreso when the DM confirmed it had been run by him first. I'm utterly, completely baffled the DM even entertained the possibility of allowing it. In an edgelord huff, he said he'd have a new character for session 1 tomorrow.
To his credit, he did come up with a character only a few hours after this debacle. Unfortunately, it was a meme character that he clearly made because he was mad we wouldn't allow him to be a literal sexual predator. His new character was a giant sentient weasel bard who wore a red trench coat and spoke in a voice that I can only describe as vaguely-Dutch Micky Mouse. This weasel wasn't, like, a beastfolk or anything, nor was it the monster from the MM. It was a man-sized weasel that walked on two feet and told bad jokes. I'm pretty sure he used a reskinned human. I genuinely don't remember his name, so we'll call him Weaselly.
Session 1 started and the party was tasked with solving a break-in at some rich dude's manor. For some reason, this rich guy also hired a rival adventuring party to solve this crime. It would be a race between the two parties to see who could figure it out first and get the reward. Before we've even left the manor, Weaselly went up to the leader of the rival adventurers, spat on his face, pushed him, and insulted his mother. The only reason we didn't fight right then and there was because the party druid cast Charm Person and my halfling paladin succeeded on a persuasion check to calm things down.
Later in the session, we'd tracked a potential lead to an old forest thicket, where we were attacked by a bunch of assorted beasts. Weaselly, going first in initiative, charged headlong into the largest group of beasts, didn't attack them, but instead let them knock him unconscious. Even after I'd healed him, he just laid there acting unconscious until the fight ended. We were all pretty frustrated, so the DM called the session early.
Session 2 the next week, we ended up in a large town. There, we collected a rumor that a magic store had been broken into. Seeing the connection between that and the manor, we went to speak with the shopkeeper. All of us but one, that is. Weaselly instead began a twenty minute shopping spree just buying random shit. A rug, a hat, a crowbar, a fishing net, nothing overly useful, just wasting time. It only ended when the DM forcibly cut to the plot, over at the magic store.
While the rest of us were now talking to the shopkeeper, Weaselly burst in, shouting at the top of his lungs, and started just messing around with stuff. He drank a random potion (which he did not pay for), tried to steal a wand, tossed about a bunch of paper, and spilled some ink on the floor. The shopkeeper cast Hold Person on him and that was that. It was agreed that the shopkeeper wouldn't report this to the guards if we got his stolen goods back. There would be no reward for this quest, Weaselly saw to that.
So, we tracked the bandits to an abandoned mill, where we got in a fight with them. Weaselly spent the entire fight just casting Vicious Mockery. He never used any spell slots, never gave out any bardic inspiration, just ran in circles around the map telling his bad jokes at the bandits. When that rival adventuring party eventually showed up, Weaselly tried to cast Hideous Laughter on the leader, which actually would've been a good move. It didn't work, however, so Weaselly ran away and hid behind a tree off the map. His antics wasted so much time that the session was cut in the middle of this fight, to be picked up in the next session.
I would not make it to session 3. Less than an hour after this clown show, I contacted the DM and told him I'd be leaving the campaign, and I was very particular in mentioning that Weaselly was the reason. I'd built up a decent rapport with the Spanish teacher, so I messaged him that I'd be leaving the campaign as well. That's when he revealed he'd also left, and the druid had as well, leaving just Weaselly and the other player I haven't mentioned yet, who was playing a high elf wizard. I don't know what happened with the campaign after that, but I can't imagine it recovered after losing three out of five players. This was a year ago, and has since been my one and only time using StartPlaying.Games.
It's obvious this problem player was just lashing out because we nixed his original extremely problematic character. I'm beyond amazed that the DM allowed any of this to happen. As far as I know, there were no conversations about his antics, and no attempts to remove him from the game, which ultimately led to the campaign likely falling apart.
TLDR: The Joker ruins everything.