r/dndhorrorstories

About a year ago, I joined an ongoing online D&D campaign that had already been running for six years, playing through the Rise of Tiamat campaign. The session was hosted by a husband-and-wife duo named Jack and Jill, with Jack serving as the DM and Jill as a player.

Jill and I go back about 10 years, when we worked retail together and were even part of the same friend group. We've been in and out of contact over the years, but we reconnected when Jill asked if I'd join her husband's campaign. I'm the forever DM of my own friend group, and we'd just wrapped up Curse of Strahd, so I thought it'd be a nice change of pace to be a player for once.

Our first session went smoothly, and we introduced my character to the group. Besides Jill and me, there were seven players total, all of whom were friends of Jack's. The most prominent were Ben and Bob. Ben was a random player they had met through Reddit, while Bob was Jack's best friend and someone Jill considered a brother.

As we played, I noticed that Jack, Ben, and Bob had a very sweaty way of playing the game. Every word they said and every action they took seemed designed to maximize the effectiveness of each turn. Initially, I was impressed.

However, whenever it was Jill's turn, Jack's attitude would change. Jill would ask questions, and Jack would either give an exasperated answer or not answer at all. When Jill would take an action, Jack would suggest a "better one" instead. This would understandably frustrate Jill, and the two would bicker constantly. Even worse, Bob would also jump into their arguments, often taking Jack's side. This would leave Jill almost in tears, at which point I'd step in and mediate. Jill would often reach out to me through DMs afterward and thank me for stepping in.

This happened repeatedly throughout our sessions, which would often drag on as a result. Jack said sessions would usually last three to four hours, but they would sometimes stretch to six or even 12 hours because of the amount of back-and-forth between the three of them.

With a group of seven players, scheduling conflicts were inevitable. When that happened, Jack, Jill, and Bob would play a multiplayer game on Steam, with R.E.P.O. being the most popular. I would play too, and to my surprise, Jack and Bob brought the same sweaty attitude to R.E.P.O., often berating Jill for her lack of in-game awareness. Again, I'd speak up for Jill, especially since R.E.P.O. is a game designed to mess around with your friends.

Jack would also get upset when other players, like Ben, who expected to play D&D instead of R.E.P.O., would sometimes drop out and do their own thing. Jack would often talk about these players behind their backs, saying things like, "They already had free time to play D&D! They don't have free time to play R.E.P.O.?" and, "They're only in it for D&D!"

I'd often respond, "Yes? Their time isn't obligated to you just because the D&D session was canceled for the day."

This would upset him further, and he'd often log off early, followed shortly afterward by Bob.

This left Jill and me alone in the voice call, which allowed us to actually be ourselves. We'd talk about our old jobs and our old friend group, many of whom I was still in contact with. I asked if she'd talked to any of them recently, and she said she hadn't because they had distanced themselves from her after she married Jack.

Several months later, we still hadn't started the final fight against Tiamat because Jack was dragging out the campaign much longer than expected. He would cancel sessions due to "preparations for the final fight" or "not feeling well" and offer R.E.P.O. as an alternative instead. Ben and the other players started asking questions, which frustrated Jack, and Jill would berate us in his defense.

More and more players started calling out whenever D&D was canceled in favor of R.E.P.O. This eventually resulted in Jack regularly stalking everyone's Steam profiles to see when we were online and sending us game invites for R.E.P.O. Ben, who had had enough, eventually asked to leave the campaign.

In retaliation, Jack canceled the campaign entirely. Within an hour, everyone left, leaving only Jack, Jill, Bob, and me. I was also preparing to leave, but Jill asked me to stay for old times' sake. Although I agreed to stick around, I made it clear that I wouldn't be playing R.E.P.O. anymore.

Sometime later, both Jack and Bob were fired from their jobs. Surprisingly, we worked in similar industries, and because I felt bad for Jill, I decided I'd connect Jack, and possibly Bob, with people I knew who might be able to help them.

Instead, I ended up listening to Jack, Jill, and Bob complain about Black people in Louisiana protesting against gerrymandering, as well as Helen of Troy in the then-upcoming Odyssey movie being played by "some ugly Black chick."

This shocked me, so I called them out immediately. The three of them became upset and responded with, "Not all Black women are ugly. I think Zendaya and Rihanna are hot!"

It surprised me to hear Jill, who had such a diverse friend group, agree with something so vile.

After that, I finally left the group and blocked all three of them across social media.

This was from a session that happened not too long ago, it was long since ‘resolved’ but I can’t help but think about it, I still every now and then play a session with the DM who did this, but like the title states, I got True Polymorphed at Level 8…

For some background, I had spoken with and worked with this DM wayyy before the session even started, to prepare for his session, I proposed an idea that I really wanted to see come to life, which was basically to be a Black Cat that imposes ‘Bad Luck’ on others. And that was it. The race only had skill proficiencies and with it, the ability to reaction impose disadvantage on anyone I see a few times a long rest, the DM and I were good friends and loved the idea.

Well, few sessions in, and it started to seem like the DM was regretting this decision, for whatever reason. I took Lore Bard and eventually Battlesmith Artificer just to REALLY lean into ‘Unluck’. All the small things that happened along the line weren’t as bad(my Steel Defender was basically useless and couldn’t be summoned in the plane we were in, and my one reaction to impose disadvantage or roll reduction was basically useless if I got surrounded or slammed by a +13 to hit modifier).

I didn’t care too much because I was tanking, but then THIS combat happened, and I basically got to do nothing. As soon as combat starts, the DM just straight up looked at me and goes ‘you get polymorphed’ and I then threw up ‘Counterspell’ in which he said ‘true Polymorph’. And I was all just ‘oh- ok. Wait what?’.

I didn’t get a saving throw. Even though the spell states I do. We were level 8, so a level 9 spell absolutely blew our minds(me and the other players). The wizard who casted it on me had ‘multiple reactions’ or some sort of circlet that allowed for multiple reactions or something that prevented the need to make Con Saves for getting hit.

By the end of it, an hour of combat went by where I just…sat, as a boot. Because the DM just wanted to?

What would you have done in this situation as a DM, I KNOW there were better ways to handle this, was he wrong at any point to help make the homebrew or just straight up remove me from combat?

TL;DR - First time D&D 2e "narrative" campaign turns out to be a dungeon crawl where my poor second level mage goes 3 sessions before each long rest.

New, experienced DM asks my group to play a 6-session narrative campaign of D&D 2e. We usually play narrative heavy campaigns with recent systems but I once tried a fencer in 3.5; I politely accept to try something new;

During session 0, having absolutely no knowledge of this particular system, I propose an Elf Mage that wants to collect many spells and magic, especially quircky ones; DM decides 5 level 1 spells for my character to have and adagger from the very limited options of the mage, plus proficiencies on common actions like singing and dancing. At this point I do not know anything about my class still.

Session 1 I discover that my spells must be decided ahead of time each day. I don't like this but play along without problem.

Session 2 DM tells me the mechanic of declaration of intents before initiative, and that if I ever will get hit before casting the spell during combat I will have completely wasted the slot. DM says "cantrip" can't even startle a horse, so creative use of magic seems to not work either. Our sixth player's roleplay smashes against a table of NPCs attitudes. He vanishes and as today never got back.

At home I read the manual by myself: Wizards have a huge amount of limitations on everything, including where, how and why they cast spells basically. I start to feel like the rules are trying to balance a power (spells) that at this level is almost non existant. I'm also picking up a trend where my melee companions are quite considerably more effective in all situations of the campaign.

Session 3 I declare to prepare sleep for an eventual assault from the backdoor. An enemy charges and I put him to sleep and feel good for about 2 seconds until a second guy materializes after the first from the same door. By any chance it was in the area of effect? Of course not. Next round DM is surprised I didn't prepare 2 sleeps as my spells (I needed one to understand what magical items we found the session before). I go on with the dagger without hitting anyone.

Session 4 I've got the spellbook from a dead mage, but DM says I have to study it over time in order to read what spells are written down. Also, I need to cast my Read Magic spell in order to read each page. I point out that this mechanic would not fit well with his fast paced campaign that spans days, since we were about to infiltrate a fort. I get nothing out of it. I'm not happy, but I do not question it further, expecting downtime every now and then to learn my new spells. This would never happen.

...

Next 5 sessions (now 9 out of 6 planned) got spent crawling into a dungeon, fight after fight, room after room. we slept only on session 7, so I've got a grand total of 4 spells to cast during 5 whole sessions, and it's always been Sleep, since nothing else ever come up. I feel that my class isn't built for this, feeling powerless and starting to get frustrated. We ended session 9 saying we will sleep on the next. Finally.

...

Last session (10) we decided to sleep. DM rolls 3 times to see if something disturbs our sleep and of course it comes up. I get "lucky" with the guard duty and get the 4 hours that as Elf are enough to take my spells back.

DM manages to have the whole lot of guards come up on us from both sides of the corridor. I focus Sleep 1 on one side. Then the others get melee with us. I explicitly use my second sleep on the remaining part of that group to prevent them from waking each other; "very smart" says DM. Then on his initiative basically he conjures 2 new unseen enemies on that side that wake their peers up. I have to remind him that waking one takes a full action from someone so he couldn't wake them all up in one go.

I ask if I can throw flaming oil flask at enemy. No, just oil. I also fail due to thaco. At this point I'm frustrated as hell.

Our strategy was to hold on until one of us convinced a captive monster to fight with us for his freedom. One player spent the whole fight getting to the cellar, talking to the monster and running back. Once the monster arrives, enemies just close a door. We want to finally charge after the monster so... no, he is hungry, so ignores everything and start eating from corpses. I have to risk one of my magic rings at 50% in order to persuade him so he finally charges with us.

The moment the door opens 3/5 characters me included fail the save against spell from an instantaneous 5th level Cleric Hold Person and will spend the next 6 rounds waiting for the monster and 2 free players to simply hit the other guys over and over until we eventually won.

Then we agree on leveling up for the next session, finally.

...

So I ask him in chat if he wanted me to roll randomly to see which spells there were in the other spellbook, so that I can (at least try to) learn them, since I spent hours reading it. He laughed and said that "you can't learn new spells since learning a spell takes time like taking an exam at university". I reminded him that his campaign was spanning only days in game, so what he expected my level up to be. He said "well you get one more casting of your spells".

At that point I revolted and said to him I would not accept not even being able to level up correctly just because his own campaign timeline doesn't work with his ideal learning times for spells.