My online horror story- a creepy player, a creepy homebrew
This occured about two or three years ago in an online game. It's the only time I got so uncomfortable (not annoyed or bored, but straight-up wierded-out) in a game because of another player that I had to leave.
I've actually had pretty good luck with random online games in roll20 and other mediums- I've made some good friends from both DM/GMing randos and playing in random games. That said, I've had a few situations where I didn't click with a person and gracefully bowed out of the game under the guise of "my work and-or social life getting really busy." However, one instance has haunted me for a while where one player made me feel so uncomfortable that my skin crawls to this day at the thought of his voice.
I had joined a random game for D&D 5e Waterdeep Dragon Heist. I haven't been big into D&D 5e for a long time, but I had actually run this game before as a DM years before, and enjoyed it enough that I wanted to try it as a player. I told the DM this prior to creating a character, and said I would avoid any spoilers or insider knowledge by defering to my other party members at pivotal moments. My character, a human fighter leaning towards being an Eldritch Knight, had a backstory with Waterdeep nobility, so there was plenty of room for a side-quests that tied in with the main plot, and the DM was excited to create content around.
Anyway, first session I met the other players and their characters; we had an tiefling druid played by a lady who worked as an accountant who was new to RPGs, a dwarf thief played by an absolutely hilarious dude who worked at a restaurant, another long-time-gamer and office worker like myself playing a elf wizard, and then... this odd-ball with his homebrew class/race.
The guy had a wierd, high-pitched way of speaking that was immediatly jarring, but I try not to judge people based off aesthetics, no biggie. He introduced himself and said he worked in education for pre-school to kindergarten-aged kids. Then he introduced his character- his class was loosely built around a warlock apparently, and race was essentially a muppet. He was a pink, furry extra-dimensional creature with pom-poms for hair that walked around on all fours like an ape, and he said essentially that he was a "living toy for children, and that he wanted to be manipulated and played with by other people."
Yikes!
I wasn't sure how to feel about this right away, his character felt like either a fetish realized or just extremely off-putting and weird, but I tried to give the benefit of the doubt. The DM seemed like a stand-up guy, the rest of the party seemed fun, maybe I could ride this out...
Without revealing too much, the beginning of WDH starts in a famous tavern called the Yawning Portal, and leads to an initial encounter/combat. Well, we spent the entire session roleplaying around this dude's homebrew being isekai'd into the Forgotten Realms, "What's Waterdeep? What's a tavern? What's ale? What's an adventurer? What's magic?" and the dude would just giggle wierdly with each of our reactions to him. He told us his character was completely child-like, innocent, and ignorant to the Forgotten Realms or being an adventurer. The other players were doing way better than I was at this point in interacting with him, I was already kinda wanting nothing to do with this guy, but I was still hoping he would kinda get into the game.
Then the combat started. His first action- Burning Hands directly into the party, stating that his character didn't understand magic. The blast took my character out of action right away, had to be revived by the druid, yadda yadda. The entire first session involved that first combat encounter because of dude wanting to play the "I don't know what this is" card for every-fucking-thing and then proceeded to nearly teamkill the whole party. Needless to say, I dropped out ASAP and told the DM specifically that this player made me SUPER uncomfortable. The DM replied politely and wished me well, but didn't address my statement about the problem player. I kinda wonder if he was a friend of the DM or something.
To this day, I absolutely cringe when I think about playing with that dude. While he may have been harmless, I was getting VERY bad vibes from his infintile behavior and wierd attitude about children...
EDIT- he maybe in this sub, just got a downvote for some reason?