u/TransmascTiefling

Okay, so in my last post I talked about my ex blowing up Nevada in a Savage Worlds game run by an amazing GM mentor of mine. After that campaign, I had a World of Warcraft high-school AU a la Dimension 20 Fantasy High I really wanted to run and of course as my at the time husband, my ex would be a player. My friend who GMed Battle Mountain had been hankering to play for once since he's a forever GM and joined up as did a few other players, two of which are also important to the story. I will be dividing this into a couple anecdotes because it is long and there is a lot of cringe (some of which is on my part because hey, let he who is without cringe cast the first fireball).

Cast is as follows:

Conquest- my ex, Tauren Sunwalker(Minotaur Oath of Conquest Paladin), problem player 1

Fiend- a chaser, human warlock(pact of the fiend) pacted to a heavy metal demon called Mecha Jeraxxus

Gloom- mentor friend, Night Elf Sentinel (moon elf gloomstalker ranger)

Harvest- my best friend(also a trans man, our genders are unfortunately relevant), a human priest(harvest domain cleric)

Me- GM for the story, a trans man, which is unfortunately relevant.

There were also two others and two that weren't there long, but they aren't really relevant except that the first two got talked over and dismissed a lot by Fiend because both are fairly quiet and polite.

The story involved the characters going to Anduin Lothar High-school, a newly integrated Horde and Alliance education program following a big political incident at Mount Hyjal by some current seniors last year that made Principle Aegwynne ready to implement her plan to bring​ Azeroth together.

The characters met up on the first day of school and ended up grouping up during party selection because most of their prior friends were already in groups and most had chosen big name WoW characters to be connected to and I wasn't having the players quest with faction leaders who were all either grades above them or adults in the setting.

Fiend immediately feels the need to infodump. Constantly. And he cannot explain a single thing about his character without a League of Legends, Critical Role, or Stranger Things reference. Sir, I love Laura Bailey as much as the next nerd, she voices my favorite character in this exact setting, but Ukatoa is not a WoW monster. Please, just ask me and I will literally create a named Kraken or something for you to reference that fits the story.

On that note, his back story flip flops to fit all these references. Needs to reference Mighty Nein? He's secretly Kul Tiran now on his dad's side and Ukatoa is totally a real thing that's connected to Kul Tiras now because they're pirate themed. Just binged Stranger Things? Did he mention how his character dresses just like Eddie Munson? Isn't his character such a warm, excellent mentor just like Eddie?(he was not, as will become apparent). And so on.

Meanwhile, Conquest decides that only he is allowed to have main character syndrome, so Fiend is his arch enemy. IRL vow of enmity straight out the gate. To his credit, he DID play the thing he was referencing a bit better than Fiend did, in that his paladin DID have the accent and over all outward personality of Wayne from Letterkenny without him having to mention it every five seconds. Not that what he did instead was any better.

The students were supposed to go on quests to gain experience in their classes outside of school, which was most of the game proper because the in school classes would have been too divided. The first quests they went on went fine and aren't really of note, but they would butt heads at least subtly every single one and then both be in my DMs, my ex to complain about Fiend, and Fiend to tell me another plot point he wanted for his character, mind you he already HAD an arc we had discussed together, which he was getting and was being explored, he was just bored because other characters were being allowed to explore their arcs too. Also he wanted a love interest.

That's part one, the initial overview, because this is already getting long in the explaining, I will add the further parts in the comments because there are many. This is just the lead in, getting my thoughts out, explaining the overarching issues.

Hey all, so this was a Savage Worlds game run by my friend and GM mentor from when we were in high-school. The guy is an amazing GM who loves quirky settings and ongoing storyline with a colorful stable of well written big bads, epic NPCs who shine without stealing the spotlight, and a world where the player characters really feel like the main characters they are meant to be...some too much so.

The characters were Agatha, an elderly woman with a knit shawl and house dress who hid a shotgun in her push cart which she was lethal with, Irina, a Ukrainian girl paleontology student obsessed with dinosaurs due to a poorly translated Jurassic Park VHS, Arthur, ​a paranoid conspiracy theorist modern wizard who is a coward (that bit is very important later), and finally Cedric The Speaker, who can only speak using song lyrics and is possessed by the radio gods at least as far as he knows.

We had been through a long, exciting journey together by this part of the story, arrived in Nevada to look for a group of missing children and stop a grieving father from destroying the world in search of his son. Through fights with an army of Kung fu Elvis Impersonators, the undead, and crazed Walmart shoppers our relationships were fire forged and we had reached the middle point of our journey, a culmination of part one. There we stood, shotgun, makeshift raptor claws, and magic at the ready. Our destination? Battle Mountain.

We entered the bottom of a mine beneath the mountain where the grieving father of one of the missing kids who happened to be a powerful necromancer was trying to revive his son, however his son was not dead, he had been claimed with the other kids as a chosen one to the gods, so the spell was going wrong, there was too much necromantic energy and thousands of undead from mine collapses, wild west skirmishes, and random deaths from long ago were rising in an army around us.

Agatha was flagging and low on ammo, Irina was near her own extinction, and Arthur, the only one who understood the magic being used and could safely stop it, had a sudden burst of heroism for the first time in his life seeing the sweet old woman and friendly, excitable girl drop like that. He moved forward so their sacrifices wouldn't be in vain, he was analyzing the magic at work and preparing to combat it, and then, I can't remember which of the two downed party members he had turned to try and help, but he was stabbed by a skeleton.

Cedric was all that was left. Now, Cedric was convinced that his character was the most interesting and in depth. He had done a lot that involved magic throughout the story including learn the history of our sick ass air brushed tiger and heavy metal wizard van, he had communicated with Irina's spirit guardian, he had learned something about how Agatha may not be exactly what she seemed, he had exploded brains with psychic musical riffs....and none of that at all had anything to do with necromancy or wizardry. He knew this. His player knew this. The rest of us knew this. The GM warned him that Cedric would not know how to safely disable this spell. He was not capable of a magical solution and should probably look for a different one.

The GM suggested multiple rolls he could make to try and figure something out. We other players suggested maybe he should stabilize Arthur and help him with his solution. But no, Cedric was the main character. This was Speaker Cedric, the indie comic book/rock opera protagonist his player dreamed of writing. GM be damned. Teamwork be damned!

Granted, Cedric very often stole the spotlight to ensure he could use the oh so deep and insightful lyrics he pulled off of Genius that he thought fit the scene so perfectly. Shaky diplomatic talk? This moment could use a song fic! Intense shoot out? Jukebox musical time! Irina or Arthur getting too much focus? Can't have that! Agatha backstory? Cedric is uncomfortable when things are not about him. Anyway, snap back to reality (whoops, there goes gravity).

As Irina and Agatha weakly raised their heads and Arthur felt himself bleeding out, they looked on in horror as Cedric touched the magic runes, assuming his psychic musical powers would work despite every roll he had made telling him that no, that is not how any of this works. No, Cedric, skeletons are not an instrument.

And then everything went white. Nevada exploded. The grieving father was dead. All our allies were dead. Hey, at least some of our enemies were dead too though, so there's that!

We, the players, found ourselves blown into an alternate dimension with no way to get home and no idea what to do. The GM, to his credit, had another amazing direction to continue the story in despite Cedric literally blowing up the main setting and plot, but holy shit...man literally needed to be the main character so badly he blew up the entire story.

This was, unfortunately, a regular occurrence in his character choices with only two exceptions. In hindsight, the main character syndrome really should have been more of a red flag much earlier and saved me years of a toxic marriage. Plot twist: Cedric's player is my ex husband.