r/CritCrab

This happened maybe a few months ago and I never posted it becuase I thought maybe I was the one in the wrong here.

Basically I was attempting to run a campaign with a group of 5 to kinda just let my writers itch go wild.

I found a guy who said he had a whole group who wanted to play and usually got super in character.

The group seemed cool but there was one guy that was just super agressive, hyper and seemed to be the energy of the group.

They all said he’s always like that so it’s not an issue and he gets the most in character so it’s better if he joins.

Then he straight up F slurred.

I was stunned, it took me a second to respond.
(This is abbreviated I don’t have the original text so this may or may not be unkowingly twisted )

Me: “Uh, yeah let’s not say that.”

The party: “Oh no it’s all good he’s allowed to say that and says it all the time.”

Me: “Well I’m not particularly comfortable with slurring so could I ask we don’t slur in this campaign”

(I’m not lgbtq+ but I’m an ally and get slightly triggered when I hear it)

Party member: “honestly man if your not going to let us slur I think it’s kinda taking away our player agency and I want a dm who will give agency so i dont think it’ll work out.”

I was then kicked from the server.

Present day im playing that server with a group I enjoy very much

Was I overreacting and that wasn’t an actual issue?

​

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

I’ve been running a game of HoTDQ for a party called The Hovengers (I had to rename Greenest to Hovil) for about six years now, and we’re still in Castle Naerytar. Why? Partly because there are six players and scheduling is hard, partly because I keep thinking up side quests to add in! Here’s a story of one that didn’t go at all how I expected.

The party is in Waterdeep, and are looking for jails and dungeons. Bree, a halfling monk, knows that her father has been taken prisoner somewhere. Using the sending spell, they’ve learned that her father is in a stone cell, but he has no idea where, because he was essentially teleported into it. They learn that there is a large manor house in Waterdeep that apparently has dungeons underneath it, and go and try to investigate.

They find that the citizens of Waterdeep come to this manor with problems they want solving, and they exit holding a piece of paper which they appear to read in confusion, but then leave looking happy. The party takes a number from an attendant and sit in a little waiting room, waiting their turn to be seen. Now that they’re inside, they distract the attendants and manage to sneak off to investigate the dungeons. They find some interesting stuff there, maybe I’ll tell you about it sometime! But that’s not what I’m here for today. While they’re speaking to a prisoner, his eyes glaze over and he says “The Council of Waterdeep want to speak to you, now” and guards show up to take them upstairs.

The party enters a long hall with beautiful stained glass windows all along the left side, the early evening sun streaming through them, and enormous double doors at the far end, through which they are told is the “receiving room” where the Council of Waterdeep will speak to them. As they walk down the hallway they discuss their strategy. They want to know about what they found in the dungeons, they want to know where Bree’s father is, they think maybe they might be able to learn something about the Cult of the Dragon. They steel themselves, push open the double doors and-

There’s a sensation of a whirl of motion, and they find themselves stepping into a long hall with beautiful stained glass windows all along the RIGHT side, the LATE evening sun streaming through them, and enormous double doors close behind them. The players at the table all go “WHAT?!”, and I reach into my little folder of secrets and pull out six pieces of paper. I give each player a note that is written in their own handwriting. On the note is written:

“I, <character’s name>, declare that all former issues I reported have been addressed to my satisfaction. I further renounce any right to the memory of this audience, along with any desire to reclaim it once the memory has been lost. I write this in my own hand as a record of my agreement, with the other Hovengers as witnesses, and leave personal information as proof that it was I myself who wrote it:

<a secret that the character has never told anyone else in the whole world>”

As the players read their notes and compared them, I think it’s fair to say they all just about lost their minds. Not only did the characters have no memory of writing these notes, neither did the players. Because, technically, they didn’t write these notes.

Flashback to a few weeks before this session, I reached out to my players with a request. “You know how in the past I’ve given you so-called handwritten notes to give you guys information, but they have always been typed out? I think that ruins the vibe a bit, so I’d prefer they were actually handwritten, but I don’t want them all to be in my handwriting! So would you mind each writing a note for me? I promise there will be no obvious spoilers, but also don’t share what I ask you to write with each other, just to limit how much information is being given out ahead of time.” I claimed I’d be giving each of them different notes to handwrite, but instead I gave them all the same note. And when each of them had dutifully written out the note, I scanned them into the computer, opened an image editing software, and painstakingly rearranged the words they had written into the order that I needed. The note I’d asked them to write was irrelevant, but constructed to read like something that could feasibly be important at some point in the far future of the campaign.

Now, this is all very cool, but I had a problem. I know my players, and this is a mystery being dangled in front of them. “What did the Council of Waterdeep tell us? How are the issues going to be addressed? For God’s sake, what issues did we even report? Why did we agree to lose the memory of this conversation? etc etc etc”. So I had a contingency plan: I actually asked them to write three notes. The first was rearranged into the shared part of the note above, the second was rearranged into the secret, private part, and the third note was in case the players went “fuck this”, turned right around and barged back into the room again. In that event, they would have the same experience of a whirl of motion, they’d have the same notes in their hand, but with a bit of extra text at the bottom:

“DO NOT TURN AROUND. DO NOT RE-ENTER THE RECEIVING ROOM. GO TO THE NORTH GATE, AND CONTINUE YOUR MISSION. BELIEVE ME, BECAUSE I AM YOU. THE MISSION IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN THE MEMORY.”

And hey, if they still weren’t satisfied and tried again, then I planned to narrate them entering the room and having some kind of conversation. This time, they managed to convince the council to allow them to keep their memories, and so the players would remember it too.

So what actually happened when I ran the session? I gave them all the first version of the note, and five out of the six players went “oh hell no, we got to get the fuck out of here right now”. If I had had to bet, I would have put it at a 95% chance that they would go back in at least once, but I completely underestimated how terrifying the players (and to be fair, the characters), would find this experience. They had just encountered something that had the ability to erase memories. They knew that they could do it many many times per day, because they’d watched people go through the same experience on the way into the manor, and the number they took in the waiting room was in the hundreds. As far as they knew, this council had the power to ERASE THEM FROM HISTORY, such that no one would ever avenge their deaths because no one would remember them. And so they got the fuck out, out of the Manor, out of Waterdeep, and have basically done their best since then not to think about the unknowable power that ate their memories and told them they were satisfied with the experience.

If you read all the way through, thank you! I’ve been running this campaign for six years, but it is still my first ever campaign! Does that make me a novice DM? Who’s to say. If you like this idea, feel free to use it in your own campaigns, on the condition that you come back here and tell me how it goes in your game! This encounter is probably top three for me in the list of “times I think I knocked it out of the park”, so I’d love to hear more player reactions to it.

Now this isn't exactly a sequel to a prior campaign of mine, but for those curious it's this story where myself, the DM, and 2 other players were problem players many years ago. We've all grown significantly since then, don't worry.

The characters for this are Dalir (me), DM, and Gravin (the potential problem player, though with some opening for me to be sharing a bit in that blame too I guess? It's hard to say)

I'd told a friend about that campaign before and he asked if it'd be ok if he did a campaign with a resurrected version of my old character as the BBEG. Apart from it being my old character, there was no other connection to that other campaign/world (the DM's story for this was that when he was rezzed, he specifically got rezzed to a different plane of existence than the original campaign, and that the plane he got rezzed into is where the new campaign takes place).

For important context, the DM did have private messages with me asking for tips on how to play my character and stuff and I'd give him ideas and the types of things he would and would not do, even as a full on villain.

Now the other part of important context and where I personally think I may be at fault is that myself and the DM didn't tell the other party members that this was a former character of mine as the BBEG. It's not so much that it was a guarded secret, as much as it was it didn't seem an important enough detail to bring up since I wasn't going to be the one playing him, and whether the DM got the BBEG from a book, movie, show, or past character didn't really seem to make all that much difference since borrowed ideas is such a common thing.

Now the campaign was only 5 sessions long, and was primarily about my rezzed old character trying to raise an army to kill a powerful demon lord to undo past regrets. Thing is, his method of raising this army was pretty reckless as the age old addage that everyone loves so very much "it's what my character would do" but in this instance was less obnoxious since it was being done in the name of a character meant to be the villain. But jokes aside, the DM decided on him being reckless about it because in truth that old character was very reckless in a lot of his decisions and that's part of what caused the original campaign to go up in smoke.

He started by conquering a small town, and then gradually spread to the surrounding areas. Eventually he lead a rebellion against the kingdom and won. While his intentions of slaying a demon lord were noble, his methods of seemingly being unwilling to stop his conquering even after taking over a kingdom were....concerning. So, our party was a ragtag group of rebels against his authority looking to do their best to gunk up the works and overthrow who they perceived to be a tyrant.

So, everything was going extremely well for the first 4 sessions of this 5 session campaign. The party was getting along, we all had fun, issues came up but were really just small ones that we just hashed out by pausing the game to have a discussion when needed. Everyone got time in the spotlight, and every session was ending with everyone hyped for where things were going and how well our rebellion was going. One player had been in charge of recruitment during our downtime, and we had agents all over the kingdom thanks to him. One was in charge of intelligence gathering and had just recently gotten the layout of the BBEG's castle including how to reach his throne room. Gravin had been in charge of securing supply lines and had even gone and cut off several of the BBEG's most important routes for supplies. That is, until the last session.

You see, my old character was very unconventional and the DM knew that. He used his abilities in irregular ways. He'd do things like grappling an enemy and using heat metal on their armor or mage hand to grab their weapon or throat in the middle of combat to gain slight momentary advantages, so the DM played him like that during the final boss fight.

The battle opened with me lunging through the air at my former character, only to be caught out of the air by the throat with Mage Hand as he laughed and some of his minions took free shots at me while I struggled to free myself (this was before initiative was rolled and was essentially the opening scene to the fight beginning). The rest of the party charged in to join the battle alongside me, wary of what tricks might be up the BBEG's sleeve after witnessing that opening move.

After a long hard fought battle against my old character, I was the last one standing. The rest of the party were unconscious, not dead. While the DM targeted all of us pretty equally, I had the highest AC and so ended up tanking the most hits without taking any damage out of the group. I stared down my old character and landed the finishing blow, brining an end to his reign of tyranny.

After the fight, we all learned of the Demon Lord he was trying to stop. End session. In the post session, everyone was fired up by how intense and close the battle was and how they were excited to face this Demon Lord...that is, until the DM showed his hand here.

He credited the intensity of the fight to me and everyone was a bit confused, so he explained how this BBEG was a past character of mine trying to right past wrongs and how a lot of his unconventional use of abilities was ripped directly from how I played the character in the past. Most of the party was fine with this, except for Gravin. Gravin scoffed and said it felt unfair that I'd be getting this much spotlight and main character treatment: not only was the BBEG my past character, but I got the cinematic final blow on him? Clearly the DM and I were conspiring to make the campaign all about me.

The rest of the party seemed on the fence at first, but I asked Gravin "I was the only one left conscious at the end. What was I supposed to do? Give up and TPK?" to which Gravin said that obviously the DM set it up so I'd be the last man standing. I told him that I picked my armor, not the DM, and I only survived longer because I had better AC. The rest of the party seemed to lean more towards my side at this point and one of them even said in my defense "a person with higher AC having better survivability isn't main character syndrome, it's just how the mechanic works." At this point I think Gravin started noticing people weren't on his side because he started going back to nitpicks throughout the campaign where issues had been resolved in the moment, like one time where he said I was too annoying about it when I was playing out a nat 1 on a persuasion roll for a discount in a shop and so I replayed it less annoyingly but still fumbling because it was a nat 1.

At this point, people were full on disagreeing with Gravin, saying that bringing up random small things that had been resolved in the moment felt too much like grasping and he should just chill.

Ultimately, Gravin wouldn't stop causing a fuss even after the DM talked to him one on one the next day after he'd had a chance to cool down, the story died there because everyone just felt kinda soured on it.

The reason I'm sharing this is in part because I do feel guilty. While I know it was done innocently, I feel like full disclosure over the fact the BBEG was specifically a past character of mine would've probably gone a long way. I can see how a detail like that could change someone's perspective on things, especially after I personally got the cinematic finish on him. For what it's worth, I know there will be comments accusing me of intentionally being a spotlight hog or something, but all I can do is say I sincerely wasn't and just had no other choice once I was the last one standing. I wanted to make it feel cinematic so the rest of the party would still feel hyped after having gotten downed themselves, and definitely didn't want things ending in a TPK.

That all said, perception impacts reality to an extent. I completely understand how this looks and why it looks this way, and I don't even fully blame Gravin: I get that from how he saw things it probably did take the wind out of his sails. I don't consider myself a problem player anymore like I was a very long time ago, as I do try my best to make sure other players are having fun, but there's always something to be learned and here I felt like even though it didn't seem important to disclose at the time, some early on disclosure to the rest of the party would've probably done a lot of good here.

A while back, my brother and I joined a DND club at my local library and it was really fun. I had made a bard tabaxi character because I like cats and I consider myself to be a musician. My brothers character was a stereotypical barbarian Goliath named Vimak Bear-Killer who was raised by grasshoppers. My character is also secretly evil, just thought I should mention that. Should also mention this is mine and my brothers first time playing DND.

The people who we started the campaign with were siblings Willet and Astrid (character names btw case I'm not about to be name dropping). Astrid was a sleepwalking druid who liked hotdogs and Willet was and still is our only cleric in this campaign. The DM, who we will call DM, was pretty cheerful, and her brother, Ernesto, also participated as a bard in the campaign.

We progressed through the sessions and gained quite a few more people, including but not limited to Garret the Murder Hobo, a goblin wizard, and my crush who was an elf wizard, also known as the Waffle Queen (another story). This was more a less serious campaign, as our bbeg was, and I quote, "a big fat giraffe". (Note to all the DMs, out there: NEVER make your fortune tellers magic eight balls).

We actually amassed a total of 15 players at the table at once, which was crazy, we have a VERY good DM. Other than overcrowding, everything was going pretty well. Then THEY showed up.

My brother made out lucky. He had quit the game not two sessions before THEY joined due to both the game moving to slow and having sports. The two sisters, the older which I will call Dragon Warrior due to the fact that is her nickname at school and she hates it, and the younger will be known to you as Octopi Snatcher, because I have heard multiple accounts of her stealing octopus plushies. Octopi was in grade 7, Warrior was with me in grade 8. Let me tell you they had the faces only a mother could love. I'm not one to judge the way people look, hell im not the prettiest potato myself, but i might as well describe them so that you can paint a picture in your mind.

Octopi got it easy, she only had buck teeth. As for her sister Dragon Warrior, I could make a whole rap song about all her ugly features, buck teeth, greasy hair, and almost-unibrow, you name it. Worst part is, I think Dragon Warrior had a crush on me. I don't mean to be that guy, but she pretty much shouted my name from across the school whenever she saw me. During my time at school, another DND club started that me, two other dudes, and they joined up wiht as well, but that's another story.

After Dragon Warrior and Octopi Snatcher joined, people just started quitting. Eventually it was down to the most dedicated members of the group, me, my crush, Garret, Ernesto, Astrid, Willet and the DM. And The two sisters of course.

Another thing I should mention that was really annoying about them is that they have this pointless "sibling rivalry" going on, for example if Octopi had a Chromebook out and had passed some music or something and told people not to unpause it, as soon as she left Warrior would give everyone the most evil smile and chuckle and say she was going to unpause the music. Now thinking about it, the "rivalry" was pretty one sided, it was mostly Dragon Warrior initiating toxic behaviour with her sister.

anyway, at this point in our story, everyone I think (except the DM bless her soul) was fed up with the sisters behaviour. Warrior would laugh WAY too loud at the smallest joke and would yell at us whenever we did something she didn't want us to do. One time she even screamed "YOU BASTARD!" at Ernesto right as. A mother and her kid was entering the library. She would also kind of hog up the time by keeping things centered around her character.

But at least SHE knew when to shut up. Octopi Snatcher pretty much never did and thought everybody liked her. She would also spend most of her time "playing DND" playing roblox on the library computers. She also wouldn't allow anyone to use her stuff, even if she had something vital to the story, so we kinda just had to sit there trying to figure out a different solution to the puzzle or until she relented.

I think the final straw for me that made me post this post was that they eventually got so annoying, i think my crush left because of them. She hasn't shown up for the past couple sessions, it's not like her to do that. So now it's just me and Garret the Murder Hobo, and at this point our DM got a job working in the library, and laws say that she can't volunteer at a place she works at, so her brother Ernesto takes over dming. From now on I'll call them GM and Surfer Dude because our former DM is playing in our campaign now as a surfer dude tiefling character. It's us four and two idiots who I REALLY hope will quit soon.

Oh, and I almost forgot to tell you the worst part. Today's session, Dragon Warrior said that she made a group of characters to put in our campaign. I wouldn't be complaining about this because GM let's us make our own interesting NPCs to put in the game. But Dragon Warrior said that she made nine NPCs with op powers that would essentially break the game and kill my good bud Garret the Murder Hobo because he wants to kill everyone who he either doesnt like or has cool stuff. Mostly the latter.

Dragon Warrior also said that she wants the nine to join our party on our quest to kill the big fat giraffe (BFG for short), so essentially they would serve as nine op DMPCs that will blast their way through every fight and me more paperwork for the GM to handle. At most we'll get them in a quest or something hopefully nothing more

Anyway, that's the end for now but I'll try to keep this updated. Bye for now!

My girlfriend is the DM. She invited a mutual friend of ours to join her DND game she runs. We used to hang out with him and his wife at theirs and play boardgames until life got in the way for us all.

So having missed playing games together, she invited him to join her DND game with 6 players making us 7 now, 8 in total including DM.

We would play at a local gaming club where all we had to do was purchase a drink or something ( no table or booking fees)

Things are great there, lots of table space, loads of terrain free to use. The only issue is occasionally the other tables sometimes being a bit loud with their own game. No big deal. We all get loud and enthusiastic.

This friend suggested we play round his, let's call him Kurt. Kurt said he's got the space for it since he got a new dining table, we wouldn't have to worry about noise so why don't we all go to his for it?

DM and everyone agreed we'll give it a try. Parking isn't ideal, in fact it's very limited space in the area as it's a cul-de-sac. Secondly, we were gaming in the town centre, which is more accessible for some so we all agreed to share rides for those that needed it.

We play a week or two at Kurt's house and it becomes abundantly clear that it's too small. There are 8 of us including the DM crammed around a 6 seater table. With DM screen, character sheets, snacks, drinks, stationary, maps and minis, there just isn't enough room.

We have a couple of large personalities on the table and Kurt joins that to make it a trio. Which is great, but in the confines of that room, it becomes overbearing with the noise.

Except that time his wife (who's in the other room doing her own thing, DND isn't her thing) gets an "important" phone call. So he shushes us, we try to continue playing quietly but he keeps shushing us, so it kills the vibe. So we end up sitting there in silence rather than continue subdued . After about 20 minutes, we discover she's off the phone and we are allowed to continue playing.

Then as the volume ramps up, a few of the less rambunctious players get talked over, even the DM is struggling to be heard from one end of the table to the head where Kurt sits, bellowing his jokes and what he's doing next, without giving anyone else a chance to speak their ideas.

We quickly learn that Kurt has main character syndrome. He wants to check every trap, loot every body, rush through every door etc.

I learned some news that would help the party with the bbg of that session, I try to tell the group 3 times, each time he tells and talks over me. I give up. The session finishes, we go home and I telly.gd how deflated I feel. Turns out, I wasn't the only one. Several other players messaged the DM to say they felt the same way and wanted to go back to the gaming club.

The DM messages Kurt to let him know how people feel and that we'll be returning to the gaming club. She then puts in the group chat that we shall be going back to the gaming club as the room just wasn't big enough with acoustics and table size for us there, thank you Kurt for inviting us into your home, but now we'll be going back to the gaming club.

Kurt then messages everyone in the group individually asking "what's wrong with my house?!" He becomes arsey and the DM said she was handling it as they came to her, as the DM. He gets in a tizz that it's his house, they should've gone to him, that it's not fair!

DM said we'd continue at the club as before, the next time we meet up, we get a message in the group chat saying he's dropping out, that he just doesn't have the time for it anymore.

Did the group do right by addressing issues with the DM not the host?

Did the host overreact messaging everyone directly and in the group?

Did he overreact by leaving the game?

TLDR: guy quit our game and friendship because his place was too small to host the game.

So, I've been DMing since around 2011 (Back with 4E) and I've ran some incredible campaigns and have had some failures. What DM doesn't? Well, about 4 years back I started running a campaign for 3 work friends, one of their partners and another ones friend. 5 players total. Well, I could already see the warning signs when one of my work friends handed me their character sheet and I have enough experience to see a future murder hobo a mile away. like I'm putting my ear to the train tracks and hearing "I stab the shop keeper!". Another player chose to be a Rogue which, in my experience, can easily devolve into a klepto hobo.

Well, I've had to deal with murder hobos in the past and usually I'd just have a private conversation with them about their behavior, how its impacting the other players, I've implemented hightened consequences and bounties, etc... but I had a stroke of mad genius. What if I turned this bug into a feature. So, I devised my system and when we got together for Session Zero and I laid out the rules, the usual. Everyone playing has at least played once before so I didn't have to go too crazy with the rules; with the exception of one added rule. I called it "Pre-conflict". So, here's how it works:

To prevent a single player from endangering the party with brash action, before engaging in acts that endanger the party as a whole (such as unwarranted violence, thieving or brawling) the party members present will vote on whether or not they wish to engage in the action or abstain. Then, each player will roll a D12. Whichever side has the highest cumulative number will win.

So, lets say its 4 against vs 1 for doing an act of violence upon an NPC. If the 4 other players roll enough to stop the murder hobo, they will, and the prospective murder hobo will be forced to not engage. If, by chance, the murder hobo rolls a 12 and everyone else rolls 2s, the murder hobo will get to carry out their act. If, though it is extremely unlikely, a tie is rolled, the player closest to the character who wants to engage who opposes engagement and the player who wants to engage will roll once more and whomever has the highest number will win.

This rule has sincr become a mainstay in every subsequent campaign I've run. It does several important things: 1) it allows the party to directly intervene in another players actions, giving them more agency over how they interact with eachother. 2) it discourages animosity between players, because it gives fair recourse 3) it discourages murder hobos and klepto hobos from ruining the flow and solidifying unpopular tendencies and 4) still leaves the possibility of rolling a high enough number that a murder hobo/klepto hobo can still get to act out, consequences be damned. The ability to disinsentivise antisocial character behavior while also leaving it as an option if you're willing to roll for it, I found, gives a level of player agency not previously present AND reduces real life drama. Fewer people feel slighted when, in the end, its all luck of the draw.

When i play dnd im almost every time the player who talks and roleplays the most and i try to pull the other players into this too, like when someone is a bit quiet i try to talk to them in character so they can also enjoy the game. Im basicaly taking the lead a bit, and i sometimes feel bad that i dont let the others talk. but ive tried a few times to be a bit more quiet in the sesions and after those everyone agrees it wasnt a fun sesion and not a lot happend. i have talked to my dm about this and he sais its fine as i help him drag the other players along and keep them engaged. I stil feel a bit bad that i say the most, should i?

Getting annoyed. I ran a campaign for a couple of years for some new people, me and 5/6 players. That ended and one of them wanted to run the next one. But he invited someone else to the table. I told him session 0 i think 7 players is a lot, especially for a first time DM. Combat slows down, side chatter increases, scheduling becomes a nightmare. He said he was trying the airline method, where you oversell seats and hope people don't show up. Like, he wanted 7 players assuming 1 or 2 wouldn't make each session, and then running for those 5 or 6 who do make it would hit the sweet spot for group number, plus ensure sessions don't ever get canceled because of too few players. I thought, ok, worth a try, makes sense on paper. We'll, we're about 7 months in and have​ had 5 sessions because he keeps canceling because 1 or 2 people can't show. Like, today, he sent a message saying "hey, G***** is out of town. I figured we could play some other games this weekend and continue when he gets back." I'm sorry, why? That's literally opposite his own rule. A lot of us have tried adding in our messages "play without me" just so the game can continue. And he does it with start times too. Always, always, we are starting 1-2.5 hours late because 1 person isn't there yet. So of the 5 sessions we've had, it's been very little actual game time. I don't know, it's just frustrating thinking this campaign that was supposed to be short will probably go another 4years and all the while those players (aside from me and 1) will turn down other campaigns because they don't want to be in too many when this one is hardly playing at all.

So this is not neccesarily a bad story but just wanted to talk about it. Because I can't lie. It has made me insanely skeptical of playing ever again.

My first dnd game was curse of strahd. The dm was a friend of one of my friends. And he allowed me to play. I think I was the only girl in the group.. or no.. I think there was another.

The game was going super great and I played as an elf wizard. I really like elves. I did my best to play being a new player and I think I did an okay job. I fought.. trued to interact and all that. The only thing I struggled with was role playing. I was 20 or so and embarrassed about it because I thought i wouldnt sound as good as the dm.

So I never tried. Although I wanted to.

So im not planning to end up in a video or anything so Ill get right to it. I don't remember what happened leading up to this. But there was a quest. This is where it all went downhill for me. I had played a lot of sessions by that point and I had missed a few too.

In this quest .. we were to save a group of kids who were orphans. Some of thw party members wanted to off the kids.. leave them there and all that jazz but overall.. we agreed to do our best to save them. We dropped them off at an orphanage and stayed there for a bit. Then I met her. One of the orphans.. a sweet little girl. I cant quite recall what race she was. But I knew she was purple and quite young.. but tall.. i think orc.. her name was sunny. I took to her immediately. She took to me too. She was described as quiet and hardly talked to people but she talked to me. I fell in love with her. Asked the dm to adopt her. Take her on the journey with us. Ofc he warned me i would have to keep her safe...

Now im sure you know where this is going. I said okay. She went with us when we finally left. My little sunny. She is like 7. She promjsed she would learn to fight so she could pull her weight. I told her I would protect her. Keep her safe. Then came the day. First fight with her in the party...

We are up against aome group of goblins or the other. I put her in the very back.. hide her in bushes ... and the first thing they do..... is shoot her... they find a way to shoot her... dm does saving throw rolls... fails all three. She dies.

I was so distraught irl.. i actively shut down. I started crying. This was on roll20 .. so i muted on discord and cried silently. When the session ended.. dm privately gave me the belongings sunny had on her.. a picture of a crayon drawing of sunny holding my hand.. saying that she "luvs" me.

I sobbed. For. Days. In real life. I felt like I lost my actual kid. For about 3 sessions after that.. i never felt like playing.. i went.. and watched them play.. interacted a little but was overall so low emotionally that I could not play. Eventually.. dm gave up on me. Kicked me from the party. Fair. I thought.. but then told me that due to that.. I would never be allowed to play in one of his games again. And even years later.. he has since never allowed me to again. Sadly when I was ready to try again.. i had no other friends who play and he was the only one... so yeah.. now i just watch others play and live vicariously through them.

I am going to school now tho.. and I have a group who play. Im excited to try again. And not be as sensitive this time.

This also turned out longer than expected so I'm sorry but I hope you read it because my players had an incredible time and couldn't stop telling me how cool this whole event and encounter was. My players rock! Thanks in advance!

I'm DMing a new game set in a weird forest that has pockets on feywild randomly throughout it. My players are currently traversing it to make an important delivery to a nobleman at the capital....they get lost and nuttiness ensues..green hags with seeds infused with enlarge/reduce spell that she feeds to her pet racoon army to make them huge..a treant who is stuck under a bunch of boulders that fell from the mountain above and requires assistance...a group of walking mushrooms just minding their own business crossing the path...some weird stuff.

But my absolute favorite thing I've had them encounter was a seemingly harmless man on the road with a broken wagon wheel who desperately needs to return to his village to bring needed supplies. They help him and as a thank you he offers to bring them to his village for a nice meal, drink and a nice place to sleep. They accept and ride with him to his village.

Welcome to Angel's Grove (anyone else a MMPR fan? the 's was an unnecessary decision for sure but I liked it)

When they get to the village they help unpack the wagon and head to the small village tavern and have a few drinks before being told of a festival to celebrate the supplies getting in safely and for a bountiful harvest. They choose to join in on the festivities and drink and dance around the bonfire all night.

Later that night the rogue notices something, the man who brought them into town slips away from the rest of the villagers at the bonfire.... suspicious she follows him. Turns out he was heading to a pond behind the tavern to take a nice dip in the water. They rogue watches his sillhouette in the moon light get undressed.....then turns into a giant rat and get in the water. WERERAT!

The rogue confronts him by tossing a rock into the water and hitting him with it. He gets out of the water, hisses and runs off. One of the other party members, a monk, is there with her and tries to grab the giant rat as it slips out of her hand and continues running. The rat then turns back into a man and buck naked runs back towards all the other villagers pleading for help.

When he gets to them he is wrapped in a blanket and tells the other villagers that he was attacked...them all the others glare at the rogue and monk (the ranger is passed out drunk and the sorcerer had no idea what happened and was just vibing at the bonfire) and as they glare their eyes turn bright red.

The rogue and monk IMMEDIATELY throw their hands up and are like "my bad" little do they expect their eyes go back to normal and take a sigh of relief. The man they chased explains to them that 200 years ago their ancestors settled here in fear of persecution. They built Angel's Grove for Wererats who need a place to stay and want to start over. They mean no harm....but he also adds that their meeting was no accident.

Not only did he go to the nearest city to resupply but he also went looking for champions.

For the past few weeks, every other night or so a child from the village goes missing. On those same nights and eerily haunting song is heard through the village, but it also causes all the adults to be frozen in place, paralyzed until the music stops but by then it's too late, the child and whoever took them has vanished. They ask the party to find the missing children and stop the music.

That night they set up a plan. The 3 remaining children in this small village are all taken to the stock room and watched carefully by the monk and one of the villages strongest citizens (that's specifically who they asked for to help them) they also give everyone in town some pieces of candle wax to put in their ears and then they wait.....for hours....nothing....then suddenly it happens. The music starts but what's weird is they can hear it even with plugged ears.

The villagers are frozen again but the players are not effected. One of the wererat children manage to slip out of a small crack in the back of the storeroom walls and starts mindlessly following the music.

The ranger watches from a distance and follows the child as the others try to tie down the other two children and snap everyone else out of their trance. The ranger discovers the child walk into a black void in the thick forest and uses detect magic and the black void becomes as bright as a sun......so of course he decides to follow the child inside...but inside there's nothing, blackness, a void. (Darkness spell)

He hears a creepy laugh echoing from everywhere around him and then shot out of the void and right into the monk who has made their way to the ranger...the ranger CRASHES into the monk and tells her what happened. They get the party together and head in..the monk has the spell firebolt and wanted to know if she used it to light a torch would that count as magical fire and work inside this darkness spell....the answer is no but the idea was good I allowed it because I am a firm believer of "The Rule of Cool" fight me.

As their making their way through they see a tall and slender sillhouette of a man from the torchlight. He has a wide scarecrow hat with a patchwork outfit on while he creepily plays his flute with his long salad fingers (old internet reference) as the get closer they can see his face looks like it's a stretched out face put on as a mask and just keeps repeating "Rodents" in a disgusted grainy tone.

The battle is long and brutal and when the piper was at half health I had them summon a swarm of rats to help him....my players scrambled. This guy was refusing to go down and he's hit them with magic that absorbs their life force and replenishes his....then when he gets down to 20 health he has an ability that allows him to essentially skip his turn while taking the dodge action has he starts playing his flute faster and faster to the build up of his next turn.....which I'm surprised he made it to and then released a giant BOOM from his flute and theonl took 3d6+6 psychic damage and was knocked prone. The rogue then (and I'm quoting them here) Naruto runs towards The Piper and goes to slice at their neck with their rapier. Nat 20. The Piper goes down. The rogue said she wanted to decapitate him and raise his head up like a trophy so she does and then the body and head of The Piper poof away into smoke and then another bigger puff of smoke happens in front of them and all the kids have magically returned and reunite with their parents.

The village gifts them a small hut in the village to stay in whenever they need and a wagon to continue their journey. They tell them no one will forget this story.

They take a long rest, supply up and head out the next morning off to the next adventure. Farewell Angel's Grove.

TLDR: Party runs into a village of wererats who in a twist need their help to find their missing children. Turns out the culprit was a fey piper. The party defeats The Piper and are hailed as heroes.

Point blank: I am a top 10 DM in the world. I know that is tacky to say (and it took me a long time to accept), but it’s important to know for the story. You’ll have to take my word when I say every player I have ever DM’d has said as much.

Because of circumstances beyond my control, I had to find a completely new group to DM for over the past year or so. You might as well say that my old group died in a house fire, because they basically are rotting in the fiery pits of Bad DM Hades. My old friend Vetroiika, ever the minx, messaged me, begging me to DM again, but I responded with the gif of Isildur saying “no” and walking away, all epic. She said, “What the eff”? And I left her on red. But I knew that I won the interaction and that my old group would always rue the day that they decided to let a young, inexperienced goblin replace my DMing majesty.

Flash back to now, I started a new group by picking up people from my local Magic store plus my hot girlfriend. When I found them, they had never played DnD in their miserable, wasted lives (minus Adam, an old friend whom I reconnected with). Nowadays, they’re worse at playing DnD than Julius Randle is at ball handling. Hence the purpose of this post. 

Allow me to cast our characters. There’s Adam the Warlock (heh); fun fact: he was almost an Olympic swimmer. Grundle the Artificer, and Harry Balzack the Bard (my problem player). Then there’s my amazing girlfriend Loretta the Wizard, who gives my life meaning and head. Loretta met me at one of the darkest periods of my life, after I lost my old group, and despite our differences in political opinions, we are soulmates, and she will one day bear my seed.

One last thing before starting the story: before the campaign, I demanded the following from my players: a written backstory in novella form, character alignment, favorite food, at least one backstory character, a song to be used as they’re theme, a list of secrets they are to keep from the group, and a fictional comparison (like Sasuke or Neville Longbottom) for me to use as a reference. 

A quick side note about the table that will be important to know going forward. We usually do what I will refer to as a snack potluck wherein everyone brings at least one item. The usual suspects will be a family-size bag of Cool Ranch Doritos, an assortment of donuts, something my girlfriend cooked, and the prize jewel of the bunch: kolaches.

In our most recent session, which was the very beginning of our “Pirate’s Last Treasure” arc, the players were landlocked on an island in the middle of the ocean and told to search for “that which only shines in the moon’s glow”. Harry Balzack somehow immediately found the treasure in exactly the spot it was in, which ruined 5 ENTIRE sessions that I had planned. I told him “how the frick did you guess that?” and he had the nerve to say “I’ve seen the Pirates of the Caribbean movies”. Sadly, he was right. I watched those movies the week before and wrote down exactly the plot of the movies to use in my game. I had figured the films were too old and niche for my players to pick up references to. 

One more side note. We had started playing at Adam’s house because my place was filled with termites. He has a really annoying dog named Napier that tends to demand to be the center of attention and (wouldn’t you know) bark like he is trying to win Mr. Dog competitions only WHEN I SPEAK. Napier is a terrier mix who is about 6 years old and has white fur that Adam cuts every two months. He is also afraid of water as a lot of terriers are.

Anyway, jumping back to the present. The players all said “wait, what? He’s right. The pirate ship with skeletons in the moonlight is from the first movie. You stole that idea” to which I used the great Brennan Lee Mulligan quote “if you aren’t stealing as a DM, then you aren’t DMing.” and they said that they don’t mind taking inspiration from media, but would rather not do a clone of the exact same adventure that these fictional characters went on. Can you believe they’d actually say that to me??? I spend HOURS watching movies and tv shows every day finding the right story for these people to go on, and they have the nerve to get mad that I sift through the best of the best to find what’s right for them? This takes me MONTHS if not YEARS. They were about to go on an entire adventure searching for one-eyed willy’s treasure and moving through different booby trapped caves (that’s from a movie you might not have heard of before called “The Goonies”. Really great film starring a young Thanos. Can’t recommend it enough.) But they want an ORIGINAL story??? Who am I, Brett Ratner????

I decided the only way to “up the stakes” and be original would be to kill Loretta’s character's sister, who was a beloved NPC. I did so by mind-controlling the party (DC 30 baby) and making them rip out her eyes and eat her face. This was, for whatever reason, seen as “in bad taste” (joker voice: very poor choice of words), so I said, “You wanna see bad taste?” And then I stole all of the kolaches and stormed off. Loretta followed after me and on the car ride home she told me that she actually thought it was interesting what happened and was looking forward to resolution next week. I told her there wouldn’t be a resolution and that we’d have to find a new group because I refuse to DM for those chuds until they apologized and agreed to stop bringing attention to the media that I improve upon to make my game so great.

It made me really miss my old group; they all basically lived under a rock and had never seen anything ever besides, like Indigo Prophecy. They worshipped the ground I DM’d on and knew they were in the presence of something special.  

How do I make this new group realize that I am a top 5 DM internationally and make them feel my power? No game advice is needed, but I don’t people so well. If you help, I might even give you some advice on improving your campaign. Sic semper tyrannis!