Clarification edit: i am not the hero here, i am part of the nightmare, or rather was, ive left the table and had healthy relationships with almost everyone involved until the reccent event. I could have written myself the hero, but Im not interested in fake. This is a worts and all account.

So I consider this table "my table" because I ran it the longest and kept it together when the previous DM was kicked out because of ablism, drunkenness, and literally telling me the world would be better without me in it. For 8 years it was mostly my table and I had DMed before that.

This year my mother is dealing with cancer and we... dont expect to win this fight; with how busy I am, DMing just doesnt make sense so I let another player run a new game, a friend I have known for over 15 years, lets call her Claire. She billed the game as a high RP game so I wrote a very serious character.

Some more backstory: Claire's husband, Phil, and I do not get along; but she was my best friend so I kept trying to. Big mistake. When she asked if i would be cool with him being there I should have said "Fuck no."

The game was... not at all the heavy RP game it had been billed as. Which is fine, but I wrote a character that had a hard time fitting in, but I was figuring it out. One day was just... a bad day. I also work with at risk teens and... this was a very bad day and emotionally very taxing Then I get home and I have mom cancer stuff. So two good reasons to call the day an awful day.

Finally I am ready for DnD, this campaign is still young and we are supposed to be diving into another player's family drama... and instead it's a shopping episode for a level 3 party and hanging out at Phil's noble character's parent's house. I just end up shutting down. Really I should have said "Hey, I am not feeling this session; so I am going to call out.". Instead I end up stewing and eventually I snap at another player. I apologized in the Discord to that player directly and we talked about things the next day and I was just honest, I wasnt having a good time with that session and I just wanted the story to move foreward. And I did own that I should have just stepped away that day. In retrospect im a little glad I didnt. This even got me out of this bad environement and ive been much happier ever since.

Phil decides to chime in and pick a fight. This is in my own server so I mute him. Surprise surprise picking a fight with an admin of a server is a bad idea. Claire takes his side, which isnt all that surprising and I dont care but she decides that I need to be "Disciplined" and thats when i say "Yeah no. I'm not interested in continuing this campaign."

I pull out of it, nuke my server from orbit and that is that. She and I bury the hatchet and move on with our lives for 5 months as friends, except for Phil.

Putting extra space here because a few folks seem confused about the time line. All of this so far has been backstory. My history with the group, again warts and all, and my departure.

About 2 weeks ago another player from that table, lets call her Shawna, (Also a friend) asks to talk. There is a person in that friend group who they do NOT get along with. She's a weird cookie, I dont want to judge buuuut under my stewardship, she wasnt allowed in the group at all, a lot of toxic, weird, and downright gross behavior. Since I left, she was given access and even started lurking in voice during games. My friend was really upset by this and wanted to make a HUGE deal out of things. I talked Shawna down "Claire is a reasonable person, and Phil is... a human being. Bring your concern to them and try to work it out."

I mean this isnt even softball this is DM teeball. "A player has a major issue with someone being at the table who isnt even in the game." Claire and Phil fuck it completely up and Shawna says, in so many words "I have shared a table with you guys for over 5 years, I never ask for anything and I finally ask for something simple... and you ignore me. I am out of here."

I am at work, having a good day because one of the teens I work with is finally locking in and Claire blows my phone up with this insane "Evil mastermind" conspiracy about how I manipulated Shawna to get back at her and Phil for what went down in March. This is the only "making myself look better" edit, she was vicious and refused to talk reasonably it was... "extra".

Soooo yeah, I just said "We're done." and cut ties. Ive given her and Phil... a lot of hard cash over the years to keep them off the street, Ive financed christmas for their children. I invite both of them to my table where I was always welcoming and fair even after I figured out Phil is a piece of shit and what I got in return was back stabbed, I almost quit this hobby after the incident in March (So glad I didnt). Looking back a tape worm would have been a better friend. I am salty about that, ive been a very good friend to her and her family and i never asked for anything in return, never held it over tbeor heads.

I need some outside perspective on this because I'm honestly not sure whether I'm being overly sensitive.

I'm the DM for a group of four friends, running an Alien RPG campaign. I've been putting quite a lot of effort into it and was really looking forward to our next session. We play on Foundry, so there has been a financial investment in keeping the server running month to month from my end as well.

Our scheduling has been difficult for a while. Sessions can be 3–4 weeks apart, we've had people forget that we even had a session scheduled and the usual cancelations or blocked-out calendars. Because of the long gaps, I also end up spending a fair amount of time reminding everyone what happened previously. Sessions are roughly only 3 hours long.

For this particular session, I'd gone pretty far with preparation. I had several pages of material, maps, scenes, artwork, encounters, audio and narration prepared.

I wasn't doing this because I expect my players to appreciate every hour I spend preparing. I just genuinely enjoy GMing and was really excited about this particular session. I thought it was going to be a major change in the campaign and a really cool crew moment.

Only two of the players showed up at the scheduled time, but two of my players were 30 minutes late and arrived sounding tired.

One of the other pushed pretty hard for us to cancel. I actually understand that. If people are exhausted, I don't want to force them to play a horror RPG for several hours. It's no fun for me, and it's no fun for the players.

Anyway, we concluded to cancel the session and there were murmurs of another session in 3 weeks time or so.

Then things got weird. The group decided to play an online game together instead.

That game only supports four players. There were five of us. They went ahead and played without me. I don't quite understand that. Are tabletop RPGs more strenuous than online games requiring you to complete puzzles and avoid monsters?

I don't think my players are malicious people. But I can't shake the feeling that the whole thing was incredibly dismissive.

If everyone had said, "We're exhausted, let's just call it a night. I'd have been disappointed, but I would have completely understood. Instead, it was effectively: "We're too tired to play the session you prepared. Let's play something else." And apparently it was fine if I didn't join.

The kicker really was that they ended up playing until late. Probably passed when my session would have ended.

Maybe I'm taking this too personally, but it genuinely hurt.

With scheduling already being difficult, when I finally have a session that I'm really excited about, spend a huge amount of time preparing it, turn up ready to run it, and then the group cancels — only to spend the rest of the evening gaming without me — it leaves me wondering why I'm putting so much effort into this.

Is this just one of those situations where I'm assigning much more meaning to what happened than my players intended?

I'm particularly interested in hearing from other DMs: if this happened to you, how would you feel about it, and what would you do afterward?

TLDR: Started a game of 5e with my friends of nearly 10 years. Got kicked out of the group due to no proper communication and building up issues.

Apologies for the weird formatting, rantiness, and the length. This is my first post on Reddit in a long time.

To preface this story, I had a group of a couple friends who I had known since high school with 2 others who joined later afterwards. I had known 3 of them for nearly 10 years and the other 2 for around 5 and they were my main/only group of friends for the longest time. One more person joins later through Rainbow Six Siege and the other was dating and later married one of the other people in the group. Despite how some of them sound based on my descriptions, we are all in our mid-20's as well.

For clarities sake, let us label them as their character classes for the campaign;
GM (Myself)
Sorcerer (Online friend)
Ranger (HS friend)
Paladin (HS friend)
Druid (Ranger's wife)
Barbarian (HS friend)

Fast-forward a couple years and a little known game called Baldur's Gate 3 releases and we decided to try it out. Myself, Paladin, Ranger, and Druid create a campaign with myself and Sorc having our own campaign. We all loved it and while the first campaign was never finished, Sorc and I finished at least 2 playthroughs together.

We all loved it so much in fact, that we decided to try our hand at an actual D&D campaign, with myself offering to run as GM. (Barbarian would join later due to school at the time.)

We eventually start playing, but it becomes evident that with 1 exception (Paladin), we were all newbies. There are numerous occasions where either Ranger or Druid stop the session due to misunderstanding an ability/spell or arguing a ruling. I think, "Well it's fine for now, we are all still learning, I'm sure that things will settle down later when we get used to it."

It did not.

During the game, I quickly found out that they had very little clue what to do during most sessions. Each one of them had issues that they never really fixed or worked on between sessions. They almost never took the game seriously, rarely stayed in character, and constantly talked over one another.

- Sorcerer was usually fine ingame, (had a bit of a main character syndrome) but almost never responded to DM's when I asked them to help with upcoming events (They were essentially a CO-DM as I was new still). He also had a bad habit of leaving conversations mid-way, whether it be with an NPC or even a PC and would be the first one to stop responding to me.

- Ranger usually is the one arguing against rulings and was ultimately the one who kicked me from the friend group. He was typically the one who was the "leader" out of game and would get confrontive when I suggested we change scheduling, due to him and Druid constantly being late by 15 to 30 minutes.

- Paladin apparently had a bunch of issues, but at no point ever DM'd me and told me about them. She then would go on to tell the others that I had made her cry multiple times without me ever knowing why due to her never telling me her issues. She apparently made it a habit of telling the others this and using it against me.

- Druid was by far the worst person of the group who was constantly arguing, doing things during the game that I asked them not to (listening to music, playing a game, not paying attention) and would get downright hostile when I asked them if they were paying attention. She would also get huffy and loud if things didn't go her way ingame or out of it and derailed things nearly every session due to her and Sorcerer "stimming" and memeing constantly.

- Barbarian is the only semi-normal one and joined later in the campaign due to prioritizing his schooling. He was the only one to deliver the message that they kicked me and actually engaged with the world and NPC's and his only issue was that he put up with far too much of Druid's schenanigans.

I should have probably seen things coming when before one session, they had stopped me and began to tell me that they wanted certain changes to the campaign. They asked for more time to RP with each other, less homebrew, and less railroading, to which I agreed. Yet, when I began to fix the issues, nothing happened. They still ignored one another for the most part and still didn't know where to go without being told by an NPC. I honestly had no idea what to really do to appease them at that point and just sorta continued to play, until I realized I wasn't having fun anymore.

Fast-forward to roughly 3-4 weeks ago when I told them that I was no longer having fun with the campaign and I wanted to either restart a new campaign with new characters or end it entirely. They proceded to tell me that my decision was not something they agreed with and they basically told me, "Even though you're the GM, you don't have the final decision on anything." And after the next couple weeks of being ghosted by all of them, I was silently kicked from the server with only Barbarian even telling me about this news.

I had known them for so long, I considered them a second family. We had gone out to bowling, celebrated each others birthdays, and been close for so long that this was incredibly painful. Even after most of them moved out of state, we kept in contact and talked nearly daily.

Apparently, they had taken a vote and had been talking about it since I had told them I wanted to do a new campaign/end the old one. Between that time and when they kicked me a week ago, they had ghosted me, ignoring any and all replies or @'s in Discord. I was told that due to my behavior and my GM'ing had become an issue, even though I wasn't told any specific issues. What hurts the most as well is that they are currently continuing to play without me.

I will fully admit, that my hands were not clean in this entire story and I had my own fair share of issues. I was controlling at the start, used too much homebrew, and changed mechanics way too often. I am certain this aided in the game deteriorating, but any friendship issues were things I had no knowledge of. I was a still new GM at the time who had only read the Player's Handbook and watched a couple videos on how to GM. I had plenty of my own issues and I never really shared them with them, so I know that must have helped in their decision.

Looking back on it, at no point did any of them ever thank me for my time and efforts, nor did any of them ever comment on my GM'ing with any positivity. At some point, it felt like we were just gathering because we agreed to play, but no one was actually enjoying themselves.

Overall? I wish I had seen this decline in my "friendships" sooner. I just wanted to make a game for my friends and I to enjoy, only to have them stab me in the back and toss aside our nearly decade long friendship over the most petty things. I highly encourage players out there to tell their GM that they appreciate them and make sure they know their efforts are valued!

Stay safe and I wish you all a good day/night.

(Sidenote: GM looking for work now!)

So i was dm for my group of lifelong friends. We were playing 1st pathfinder with mythic rules and a bit of homebrew. Down the line i of course realised that was a big mistake, but my story will be focused on one of my players. For context - he was LE Thassilonian wizard who was reincarnated in intellect devourer( that was premise of campaing as i made custom races for everyone - doppelganger, mimic, centaur and etc ). All other players were Lawful as well, some were LN and some were LG, they made their own guild, and wizard wasnt in charge So from level 1 to 8 everything was somewhat normal.

We had agreement with him that at every timeskip i will allow him gather 3 corpses for him to use, but their CR musnt be higher than his level, and of course he cannot use undead, constructs and outsiders. The last one he didnt agree, so we made him custom magic item, so he can infiltrate bodies of outsiders, while they were unconcious. This was disaster. He soon found out about demon nabasu (CR 8) and asked me if he could use it. I knew about nabasu's growth mechanic in general, i didnt pay attention to it though, as it never occured to me how badly can it be abused if it was in players hand.

He didnt come up with this scheme at first but this what became his routine at some point - he bought planeshift scroll, lowers his saves via negative levels and started to use nabasus ability on random commoners. Growing in stats on par to CR 19 while being much much lower level. He became stronger than everobody else in group combined.

The culmination battle between players guild and their adversaries begins. It took me using four 15 level npc-bosses with extra mythic abilities to make the fight somewhat "fair". So with much effort his nabasu body was defeated, while these bosses were at their last breath. And then he explodes out of this body and symbol of pain that was written on his main body activates, making these bosses almost useless and easy prey for other PCS.

After that we have a talk, both in game( his party members in demon hunting guild didnt appreciate him using demon powers) and out of game, i tried to persuade not to use this body as it was too op. He agreed in game not to do it "while his boss can see him doing that", and out of game i really couldnt persuade him to stop doing this.

So on next session i said that in game many people were unhappy with wizards actions(as killing commoners with nabasus ability turned them into ghouls), paladins of Ioamadae, clierics of Pharasma, and many many diferent factions were demanding guild to stop wizard from using nabasu, and alas wizard said he will stop.

He said that only because he found another thing to abuse. He found Bloodmoney spell, and with the fact that he can drain money from bodies that he snatched, he started to use ogres, to make himeself army of his simulacrum as they were essentially free to make now. With that he had at least four of his clones with him at all time to heal him with wands, to fire additional fireballs etc. And at that point they reached level where he had access to Limited wish, which was essentially free for him as he had simulacrum cast Greater restoration on him to negate Bloodmoney penalty.

Then we started his arc, as he was wizard who came from the past, we started exploring his past home, and he and i came up with very cool dungeon for players to go. Then came the horror.

It was final room of dungeon. I made four custom monsters with unique styles of fighting and good teamwork. At that point he had 3 mythic abilities that we didnt understand how they supposed to work - thats my mistake i know. So one with this combo of abilities he could target up to 4 targets with spell that does work only on one target usually, while not using a spell slot but a mythic power which he can essentially infinitly use as his simulacrum can restore it to him. So he could infinetly spam 8th spells with 3 additional tagets. He used greater invisibility and mind blank on all party, so even true sight can not detect them , and then he used Polymorh any object on all four of enemys, half of them became useless mice, other two were useless against invisible PCs. So he almost instakilled encounter that i was making for several weeks.

I was destroyed deep down, but we kept going. Next battle was with one of Runelords - Sorshen, who was wizards superior back in the day, so i prepared whole dialogue between them before the fight, with options to become allies or skip the fight. Then i start narrating her part of dialoge, wizard said - were invisible she doesnt know were here, we ambush her.
This was my breaking point, i crashed out and start to violently kick my closet, as all my players were stunned. i fell on my chair and sit silent for 5 minutes, then i apologised and i were continued session, it wasnt long before we finished it anyway.

In the end i nerfed his Blood money exploit, reread his abilities and we sit down to talk how they intended to work, so he didnt have acces to infinite spells anymore. We made up and still play together, but i banned him to play spellcaster in serious campaing for a while.

Edit: Thank you everyone for your comments. I appreciate it i really do. After this incedent i talked a lot with my friends and close acquaintances about it. Yes i could have done a lot to prevent all of this, now i look back and see it. I shared this story here to see if i really learned my lesson with this - turns out i couldve learn more - as some comments put this situation in a new light for me, i hope i can improve and grow from these mistakes.

Disclaimer: possible mention of harassment.

(Head's up, I apologize for the terrible English and probably a long story.)

My boyfriend had a long campaign as a DM that consists of 4 players including me; a bard, a rogue, and 2 clerics. 3 girls, 2 guys and one of them is the DM. It was an online session and it was pretty much had a flexible schedule. We were doing quite well for the whole 3 months (schedule happened once a week), but I started to notice something about one of the players during these games. I noticed that the guy who's playing as the cleric has been silent for the majority of the sessions. Every time we had to take a group's decisions, he always answered with "I'm just following you guys" without stating any arguments or reasons - or at least help us out with the decisions. To the point I noticed that I ended up thinking that this guy had a grudge over our party.

We were known to be a chaotic group. All of us were chaotic, except the guy. And whenever he became chaotic, somehow it almost killed the whole group and it happened around 2-3 times. Other than that, he was always in the shadows. Even when the DM gave him the spotlight, he always answered with something like "give it to the other girls" or "there's nothing that I want to do" and ended up making things awkward (FYI, the DM usually gives every players their own spotlight so nobody feels left out). This was also the time where the bard player decided to leave the campaign due to IRL matters.

Because of this, my boyfriend felt suspicious about him. I also told him that he is awfully quiet in most of the sessions even though the rest of the players are trying to get him involved in the scene and always ended up getting the same response over and over again. I told my boyfriend to ask about the guy's behavior through his group server (since they have one), in case it only happened in our campaign. And even though it is, I feel like that's just messed up.

I was wrong, and I feel like asking to my boyfriend's group server was the worst thing that could possibly happen... and also the WTF thing(s) that I have ever heard.

During the whole conversation with the group, everyone has been saying at how terrible the guy's behavior as a player is. Every single part of the stories they mentioned sound exactly the same as what we had in our campaign; (1) him being awfully quiet during majority of the sessions and somehow hoarding the whoe spotlight for a long time when he was given the chance, (2) never give any opinions or answers when it comes with group decisions, and one more thing that gave us the biggest ick, is how he forced another player's character (where the player is a girl) to like him and kissed his character even though it was being stated at how uncomfortable it was One of the person even said that he forced himself to have a romantic relationships with any girls, even the NPCs. I also found out through my boyfriend that he had a "double table" online session and clashed with his session, yet he never said anything about it.

My boyfriend was upset, and I was taken aback from the stories from the group (since they're also DMs and players). Everyone gave him advice to cut off from the guy, since they also did the same from their experiences with him. And he did. My boyfriend told the guy that he won't be able to take him as a player anymore and told him to leave. Our campaign was axed immediately since it was only two players left, and our DM told us that he will redo everything while trying to find new players to play with.

Now, we're currently playing in another campaign that consists of 5 players. We're doing well since the campaign is already running for 2 months. Chaotic group, but everyone is having a lot of fun and being active during the whole sessions. Though, I do feel bad to see my boyfriend having to cut off his friendship and never talked to the guy anymore when they used to be quite close with each other. But at the same time, I feel like he deserved that too.

Hey guys,

I started playing dnd to connect more with friends who had moved out of town and unfortunately am not left with a lot of in person friendships irl.

Unfortunately in our dnd game, my character became a bit of an outcast and it’s causing some self doubt in myself and my friendships -I started dnd to feel good and have fun with friends, but it’s making me feel the opposite. Totally get that we should separate character actions from irl friendship actions but it’s getting really hard when it seems like my character doesn’t have one singular friend in the party.

Some backstory of how it went down. We were all on a mission and along the way, a man tried to stop us. He initiated battle and we all got into the fight sequence. I had not intended to kill him, merely push him away so we could run, however, my character ended up dealing a killing blow. I immediately asked the dm if I could check on them/heal them since my character has a medical background and they said no.

Turns out the dude that died was actually a long lost family member of one of our players. None of us realized this until the next session. Anyways, now everyone has kind of turned their back on my character for killing our partner’s father despite the fact that everyone was in the fight… whenever I go up to the party member to try to make things right, and walk away, the other party members check on them and say “oh I saw [my character] tried to talk to you again… I’m so sorry about that” and other comments that make it very clear it’s a them against my character situation. I thought it would just last for a session while we sort things out and I at least had a companion in one person but now even that one person has made comments about my character which indicates they are not a fan. I even set up a very thoughtful gesture to honor the dead man and pay respect but it didn’t make any difference.

Honestly, it’s the type of situation where I think my character legitimately would leave the party because they feel so unwelcome. Like they would just part ways or something which obviously leaves me without anyone to play.

Any suggestions? I’m thinking about chatting with the other players away from the table to say ‘hey this actually doesn’t feel good, can we maybe reel back on hating [my character] in game? Or at least have one person who doesn’t seem to hate her?’
I think normally it wouldn’t be such a big deal but these sessions are pretty much the only times I get to see/chat with my friends :/ so when it feels like I am unwelcome as a character, it’s hard not to let that seep beyond the game.

Any recs? TIA!

Edit to add:
Update -I talked to my DM and took some of your suggestions. I told them I was struggling with how the roleplay was affecting me emotionally, and asked if we could fast track my redemption arc. They basically said they didn’t see a problem with how things were going down… they also said ‘well the comments made about your character were made behind their back, so they wouldn’t even know the other players don’t like them.’ Which is hurtful, bc it completely negates the feelings I brought up. Sure maybe my character doesn’t know what exactly was said about them, but they would have to be blind to not understand they are being left out/talked about. Also, the main point was that *I* as a person (not as the character) am struggling with this roleplay.
They also said they can’t control what the other players do… but as the dm they totally can influence things. Also they, as the dm, stand in for people who have to miss a session, and whenever they are subbing in for someone, they are one of the main perpetuators of comments made against my character…
I really don’t want to leave this group but I’m not sure what to do…

I was in my high school dnd club, in a short campaign in a magic filled wild west setting. i played a changeling necromancer with the front of a snake oil salesman, we had a player play a billy the kid style gun slinger, a bard rogue (alternate universe micheal jackson) multiclass and a hill billy artificer. we started the campaign in a small town all of us in a tavern (super original I know) we were all strapped for cash for various reasons and teamed up to try and claim a major bounty on a gang leader in the next county over.

after some perception tests after taking the gang leaders wanted poster of the wall my character notice's a group of 3 suspicious looking outlaws eyeing up the group. my character suggests quickly moving out of the area, and the billy the kid character attempts to fight the gang members. bare in mind my dm (A TEACHER) made it very clear we are in a tavern full of dangerous people with several outlaws in the room. so needless to say we barely make it out and we hop on the back of a train as it begins to leave the station. were battered were bruised but were alive. so now were wanted as my crew walked into a tavern together and one of us start shooting without prejudice. the reason his player gave was that he's a morally righteous character and frequently hunts bounties and him being in the tavern was like "him being in a room full of money" so whatever, we let it go and we move on.

but yeah turns out when you've upset both a gang, and law enforcement you don't get much rest we had a short period of roleplay as the bard rogue pickpocketed and stole the luggage of people on bord the train. billy the kid immediately breaks character saying he'll turn a blind eye if he gets a cut. also another thing i let go, mid train ride a group of 8+ gang members board the train and begin trying to rob it whilst searching for the party. billy the kid immediately started shooting and the artificer reveals something the Dm apparently agreed to but apparently no one else knew, a make shift pipe bomb, they throw it immediately with ALL OF US in the same train carriage. we tuck and roll falling off the train even I as a necromancer was concerned with the lack of both self preservation and killing civillians. the other players said it wasnt a big deal and i should just let it go. so i did.

we went into a large abandoned house and we finally got a long rest i asked during my down time if i could search for any dead creatures or if their were any rats i could kill and revive. he said yes, i got 8 revived rats and a small bird. i was fine with this but the bard rogue seemed to take issue, saying it felt out of place for me to be so casually raising the dead. me and the dm brought it to attention that is was literally what necromancers do. if he had an issue with necromancy he should've said something during session 0. so we move on, we leave the house and everything's fine. we go home in real life and that entire session left a bad taste in my mouth.

we came back the following day for what i found out was my last session. apparently the other 3 players had agreed my character was "too out of place" and decided if i wasnt gonna change character and the dm wasn't gonna make me. theyd make me instead. we sat around a camp fire during the night and the rogue bard said that they think my actions are an affront to god. and my actions cant go unpunished, when i attempted to leave the party. the billy the kid player tried to shoot me. he missed and pvp combat started. i had more dnd experience than the others at the table so my character was built better so combat was pretty tough for both sides, i downed one player before getting another bloody before the DM describes how billy the kid shoves his gun in my mouth and blows my brains out. i left the table after that and didnt look back.

Hey Drake and Draklings!

Been a long time listener, first time poster here. I'll start by saying two things. One, this story is a wee bit long as its a 3 parter. And two, the reason we didn't ask this guy to leave was because he was a great friend before shit hit fan in part 3.

So with that out of the way, the title is the TLDR - The worst DM, turned worst player, turned worst guest.

I give you, the Echo Saga.

Part 1 - DMs DMPC is a God....we're just the side characters for 9 months

I want to start off this story by saying this was my first ever experience with D&D. I had no prior exposure to D&D so thought everything the DM done was normal at a table. Oh boy, how wrong I was.

So this happened back in 2021, we were fresh out of lockdown and starving for some friend time. One of my friends, we'll call him Big Tat, owns a tattoo shop and tells us his apprentice was wanting to run a D&D campaign. So myself and 4 of my friends decided to join. They are as follows

Paladin, a long time player and previous group DM. Kinda the dad figure to us newer players.

Monk, long time D&D fan especially Critical Roll.

Warlock, the wise cracking and Monks boyfriend (now husband)

Bard, Big Tat, this was his first time playing D&D too.

And finally me playing an reborn sorceress who had been sacrificed to the Raven Queen but brought back for reasons you'll find out later. I had just wrote it that she had unfinished business but the DM had other plans.

So we got together and began our story. Our DM proudly proclaimed that we would be playing through Princes of the Apocalypse and that not to worry as he knew the story was pretty bare bones but he had a way to flesh it out. The way he decided to flesh it out you might ask? Was with his DMPC Echo. And let me tell you, Echo was about to become our worst nightmare. For you see Echo wasn't just a DMPC, he was a character our DM had been sitting on for quite some time. He was actually writing a whole book series around him unbeknownst to us. And he would go on long tangents mid game to tell us about all the awesome and cool things Echo could do. I remember once just straight up asking him "so what exactly is Echos class?" And I kid you not the DM said something to the effect of "Oh, Echo doesn't have a class, hes faaaar beyond that in terms of power".

Anyway, our party all meet and deside to travel together. It gets to night and we decide to stop and make camp. We set up a watch rota and the first person to take watch was me. As im making my rounds a mysterious dark hooded figure approaches from the shadows. I naturally ask them who they are and what they are doing here. The figure then lunges forwarded and attacks my level 1 sorcerer. The commotion wakes up the rest of the party and we roll for initiative.

Our Monk rolls high and gets to go first landing a good blow, then our Paladin steps up to the mark and strikes the enemy, our Warlock goes next and sends Eldritch Blast towards the foe. It was then the DMs turn. With a grin he describes how like a shadow of death this man slices through our Monk, Paladin and Warlock effortlessly leaving them unconscious in one swoop. He then points his sword at Bard and me. It's my turn next and I do what I think is the logical thing to do and put my hands up to surrender asking him what it is he wants? He simply replies "this is a test my dear and you have all failed". Bard goes next he goes to attack but is stabbed and left unconscious along with the rest. BUT!!! Surprise everyone!!! It was only a shared dream.

We all wake the next morning to find the hooded man in camp making us all breakfast with a wide grin on his face. I could tell that Monk and Warlock in particular we're unimpressed with the shenanigans that had just happened but we proceeded anyway.

The mysterious man then introduces himself as Echo. And Echo is a (hold on to your hats for this) time traveling, multiverse hoping, wormhole riding, reality bending, all knowing, super dooper edgy and cool GOD!!! and he needs our level 1 parties help to save the world or something.

Me being new to D&D though this was cool. I immediately became infatuated with Echo and would ask him lots of questions with DM just absolutely lapped up. The rest of the party, we're less than impressed. There were concerns raised but DM assured us that Echo would just be a bystander as we were the real hero's.

And in a flash 6 months IRL passed and we had done zero of the actual objectives of PotA and just been Echos servants. Fetching him items, finding his lost relatives and just meaningless tasks. And everything we done had zero impact on anything as it was like we were playing character from one of DMs books and it was the Echo show. Eventually the bubble burst and it all came to a head one night during a level 20 one shot.

We had been combat starved for weeks so I suggested we do a level 20 one shot and done a full blown boss rush relay. Everyone was excited and on board as it was just meant to be us 4 facing off again progressively harder and harder enemies. It was meant to be Echo free, but of course the DM couldn't help himself and Echo poped into the pocket dimension we had been sucked into and scolded us saying we were "wasting time" and that the "real fight" was happening in our world. Apparently the moment we stepped into this level 20 one shot pocket dimension was the exact moment that the actual story of the campaign started and the Princes of the Apocalypse were released and wrecking havoc in our world.

Basically the DM was trying to press fast forwarded on our level 20 one shot so we could go back outside and play with Echo again. But we were having none of it, we told Echo to shove off and we'd be back once we were done here. So, what did the DM do in order to force us back? He Power Word Killed our Paladin, had an enemy one shot my sorceress and dispatch the rest off the party in various ways.

Echo then reappeared, brought us all back to life, killed the remaining enemies and with a snap of his fingers brought us back to our world. That was the final straw. The campaign very unceremoniously came to an end after that with everyone basically saying they were bored AF of the campaign and of Echo.

Oh and remember how earlier I mentioned that my character was brought back to life by the Raven Queen because she had unfinished business. Well the DM decided that wasn't enough. Not only was I his OTHER DMPCs love interest (boak I know) but I was also Echos long lost great great great granddaughter and I to WAS A SECRET GOD! I was mortified.

Part 2 - The worst DM is also the worst player

Ok so after that awful campaign came to an end we stopped playing D&D all together for about a year. That was until my friend moved close to us and asked if we would be interested in starting a new D&D campaign with him as the DM. We'd heard from other friends that he was a great DM so we we're all excited to get started.

The cast are as follows with some previous players not returning.

Me playing Eileen, a elf Blood Hunter/Ranger

Big Tat playing Yhoona a big blue sexy Goliath Barbarian

Paladin from previous game now playing Akkan a Fighter Yuan Ti

And finally Echo.......playing Sparky, a Twilight Cleric. His choice of class will become important later

So we start off the adventure and for the first few weeks everything goes well. Until it doesn't. Sparky for some reason despite being a good aligned character insists on picking fights with guards when he doesn't get his way, freeing trapped angry polar bears and being surprised when they attack and just generally being very antagonistic towards things he doesn't like. All these actions have a roll on effect as we are a group. We try to have a chat with him about it and his behaviour improves but not for long.

His character for some context was just all over the place in general. He kept on asking the DM to make "sanity checks" even though that wasn't a mechanic we we're using and then using his results as an excuse for whatever nonsense he was up to.

Then there was his class. Now spoilers for Rime of the Frostmaiden here so skip to the next part if you want to avoid any spoilers. We were infiltrating a Duergar strong hold in the mountains and Sparky kept on insisting we went a certain route even though once again as a party we had decided to go another. He was huffy but relented. When we got ambushed by the Duergar, Sparky made a comment like "should have listened to me". We went into initiative and started fighting. But when it came to the Duergar's turn they went invisible and got the upper hand. That's when Sparky with a massive grin on his face case fairy fire. But the DM had other plans. He then describes the Duergar running away leaving us to chase after them, right onto a massive trap. We ended the session there and Sparky made a comment about "thats not what was meant to happen there".

After he left me and the DM sat and discussed his behaviour and why he was so tilted by some encounters we've had. It was then that the DM dropped the bombshell, Sparky had read the module and was trying to bet the game. It all suddenly made sense. His class choice directly countered a lot of the enemy types in the module, his constant forcing us in certain directions to avoid traps and ambushes and the way he would insist on interacting with NPCs only to be disappointed with the outcome he got. I was annoyed. What's the point if your just going to "cheat" and try to "win" the game while making it miserable for the rest of us. The DM assured me he had a plan and that Sparky was not going to get the module as written because he had tailored it to our way of playing and our characters back stories. And sure enough as the weeks went on Sparky frustrations became more and more apparent as things he expected to happen didn't.

Personally I was loving it. Our DM had obviously put in a lot of time and effort to make the story connected to our characters rather than just as written. But it all came to a head during an encounter that once again the party wanted to deal with one way and Sparkey decided to deal with his way.

So picture this. You've just rocked up to a suspected Hags cave in an isolated icey mountain. Outside you see the remains of the previous adventuring party who dared try and enter smeared all over the ice. You deside to send the stealthiest character in to have a snoop around before charging in. While inside you find more humanoid remains, a butcher room and the most disturbing thing, a 30 ft undead frost giant intombed in ice. You report back to the rest of your group and deside that stealth is very much the correct decision.

Now, does your Cleric

A - follow the plan and help your characters stealth their way in?

B - Ask their God for guidance before blessing your fellow party members?

Or

C - ignore all the other party members, run up to the entrance of the cave and shout at the top of their lungs "Hello, you in the cave".....

If you guessed C, you are correct. We all asked the DM if there was any way to stop this but unfortunately Sparkey had made it clear that he had ran ahead. So, out comes the 30ft undead frost giant and initiative starts. I rolled super high and went first. I turn to the DM and say "I use the Dash action and use my full moment to get away from Sparky because let's be honest here, theres no way my character would put her life on the line for him after repeatedly not working with the team and putting our lifes in danger. As she runs away you hear her cursing your name Sparkey and she gives you the finger".

He was stunned and I was done.

The other two players love a fight though so we did end up fighting the UFG and ai got the killing blow from a distance using my bow. Sparky spent the whole combat unconscious as right after I went it was the frost giants turn and he used all 3 of his attacks to turn Sparky into Twilight Paste. (Very satisfying).

After the session we all had a chat with Sparky telling him its maybe best he retire the character as clearly he wasn't working. But in the case with most of these D&D horror stories the trash took itself out. He permanently stepped away from the group. After a few weeks we brought in a new player and she has been the best addition to the team ever! So happy ending.

Third and final part - The worst guest and his dad

So by now we've all established just how bad it was to havd this guy at the table, but the straw that really broke the camels back was his birthday game.

So I have the luxury of having a spare room that is completely devoted to hobby stuff. D&D, tinkering and miniature painting and its always available for any of my friends to use as well. It was coming up to Echos birthday and he asked if it would be ok if we used my spare room to host his birthday party. He wanted to give our DM a break and have everyone over at mines for pizza and games because his flat didn't have room for everyone. Fair enough I thought, we'd get to hang out together and celebrate his birthday with everyone.

He asked if it would be ok if his dad came. Now ive never met his dad before and neither had the rest of the friend group apart from big tat on a very rare occasion. I asked why he wanted his dad there to which he said "because he's going to run a game for us".

Ok, I thought its his birthday and if he wants to do a one shot with his dad as the DM to let our DM join in then why not......foolish me.

So the night rolls round and everyone piles in and Echo introduces his dad who it turns out was also called Echo (not real name but they had the same name.

Now Echo Junior is a wee bit odd, but we're all a bit odd in our friends group. But Echo Senior is veeeeeery fucking odd.

He's never met any of us before but to break the ice makes an inappropriate joke about one of our players wife's having an empty and saying to her husband "Oh well, you knoooow what she'll be doing tonight! Im a right?"

To which the player replied "eh, how about we keep the 'your wife's a slag' jokes to a minimum".

I was out the room at the time and missed the interaction but the atmosphere was definitely a bit frosty after that and we hadn't even went upstairs to the games room yet.

We get our pizza, go upstairs and set up. Now here's the thing, we were all expecting to play a D&D 5e one shot. But Echo Senior pulls out a 12 page document, cards and character sheets for us all and tells us we will be playing Pandemonium. I've no doubt that Pandemonium is a fantastic game when people are prepared to play it but what follows is an absolute cluster fuck of us having to try and learn a new system, understand what we've to do as players and read through rules, characters, secret objectives and so on.

After scrambling through all the paperwork to try and understand even just the basics, we began. And Echo Senior does not have an indoor voice. Im sitting two seats away from this man in his 50s and hes screaming at the top of his lungs pretending he's our jailer. So I said to him "I have neighbours, their bedroom is right through the wall can me keep it down please", it lasted about 5 minutes before the shouting started again. Thankfully my husband came upstairs and commented on the volume and he finally quietened down.

Im also not sure how long a game of Pandemonium should last but we were about 4+ hours into the game and getting nowhere. Anytime we tried to do anything like complete an objective or try to do one of our secret objects there was always something in the way that Echo Senior put in our way. I have NEVER been so frustrated in a game. It was completely pointless because no matter what we done nothing made a difference.

And finally, the kicker. So for those of you reading this you should know im very dyslexic. Maths in particular is difficult for me. So I ask Echo Senior if I can make a roll, I roll and very softy start counting out the results out loud as it helps.

This fully grown man shouts at the top of his lungs "AGH I HAAAAATE IT WHEN PEOPLE COUNT OUT LOUD INSTED OF IN THEIR HEADS! ITS SO ANNOYING "

stunned silence fell upon the table. Apart from Echo Junior who was laughing his head off.

So I turn round, look this man dead in the eyes and say "well, im dyslexic, so it helps if you really must know"

To which he replies "well my daughter is dyslexic and SHE doesn't have any trouble counting in her head"

The actual brass neck of this man! Not only did he insult me once but twice in my own home! For his kids birthday! As a guest!?

I dont think ive felt anger like it before. It was like a slap in the face, and all the horrible comments teachers used to make to me in school came flooding back.

So I said to him as calmly as I could, "well, good for your daughter. But do me a favour. Fuck off"

I mean fuck off out my house. Pack your shit and leave. But as it turns out social ques are lost on Echo Senior and Junior who started laughing again.

I wish I could have seen my face because my friend told me afterwards "I thought you were about to fly over the table and deck him"

Echo Junior wanted to continue the game but myself and the others had well and truly checked out. I said "my character pulls the pin on her grenade, holds it close, and blows herself up"

"What! You cant do that!" Shouts Echo Senior, "you'll be out the game"

"Good because I think the games over fir tonight. Time to pack up" I said

As he's packing up and leaving he decides to tell us all how shit we were at playing the game and how "we were only half way through" and that "none of his other parties had this much trouble playing the game"

The man was like an insult generator but totally oblivious to the reactions of the people they were aimed at.

Needless to say Echo Senior was never welcome in my house again and about 2 weeks after his birthday Echo Junior removed himself from the group.

I head through the grapevine that both Echos had tried a few times to set up games in a few gaming stores but were told no. I wonder why?

So that is the conclusion of the Echo saga! I hope you enjoyed this torture as much as I did! Wishing you all  happy gaming 🖤

I just ran my second session of dragon of icespire peak last night. Some mild spoilers for that session too follow, beware.

I ran the first session for a group of 2 because everyone else canceled and it was one of the best sessions I've ever played. We only play once a month and it takes me about that long to get the miniatures printed and painted. Plus, I'm married with 3 kids, so it takes a lot of my little free time to prep these things.

Well last night we had our second session and another friend came over for it. He ended up going with a dragonborn draconic sorcerer and kept insisting cryovain was his dad. He didn't have a character sheet made, so we ended up starting late. The party went to a gold mine occupied by a gang of wererats and he used alter self to look like a wererat and tried to just walk past the guards. He just kept saying he was there to work his shift at the mine. When they wouldn't let him pass he immediately started trying to intimidate them into letting him in. I had the wererats tell him they would take him to see their leader. Again he insisted to the gang boss that he was part of the gang and just wanted to start his shift. I told him again, this is a small gang and they know everyone in it. THEY DONT BELIEVE YOU! After some in game arguing between him and the wererats they attack.

Now he is annoyed with me because I didn't let him steamroll the quest. After he is knocked unconscious, the other party members parlay with the rats and decide to further the quest.

After they decide they aren't ready for the next part of that quest, they decide to investigate a ranch that was attacked by orcs. Even though the quest is to rescue the ranch owner, he is insisting the party just burns down the farmhouse to avoid fighting the orcs. It got to the point where I just said, you guys kill the rest of the orcs without any more combat. And I gave them the reward and just ended it there.

This was the least fun I've ever had playing D&D. Am I overreacting? I feel like I've worked really hard on prep just to have him come in and blow up every storyline.

Before we start, just wanted to say that there will be mild spoilers for the Module "Odyssey of Dragonlords."

You can probably still play the game after reading this but just wanted to put that out there, anyway onto the story. So the majority of you should know about the module and what it's like to make a character with, if not then it's fine. Only one part of it is important.

When making characters, you have to choose a "Epic Path." These are what will determine your character's journey. They are like backstories, but with a more mystical vibe to it.

Now time to introduce the important characters.

• The DM - guy who had made the Roll20 game and was the problem
• The Bard - Demigod of Kyrah epic path
• The Paladin (Alex) - Doomed One Epic Path
• The Fighter (Me) - Demigod of Pythor Epic Path
• The Warlock - Female Vampire
• There were 2 others (a Rouge and another Fighter) that sadly aren't important enough to the story, though that's also a problem.

A while ago I was looking on Roll20 trying to find a DnD group to join. I was sending out many applications and not really receiving any invites. So I was getting a bit desperate. That was until I found one for a module called "Odyssey of Dragonlords". The premise seemed fun and it fit well into my schedule. There wasn't any rules about character design, at least none I saw at first, so I sent in my character Idea for a Half-Orc fighter named Knight Demathin.

The main premise of the character was that he is a creature made by magic and given false memories. Think of the Knight card that gets summoned from the Deck of Many things, like that.

The DM responded immediately saying he loved the idea and told me to get into contact with him over discord. I did, and we got to talking about the campaign and it's settings. This is where the first major red flag popped up for me. As we were talk, it became increasingly obvious that this guy was using AI in his messages. I only noticed because of the fact that it had all the tell tale signs, the weird formatting, the bulletin lists, and the random image Emojis (✅ like this one).I didn't want to be rude, so I didn't ask him about it, and just kept on talking with him.

Then it came to my character. He said he loved the idea and was exited to DM for a character like that. He did want to change a few things though, just to make my character fit more naturally into his world. I said ok and that I just wanted my core idea for the character (being magically created and questioning his motivations) to remain the same.

By the time we were done talking, my character had gone from a Half Orc Fighter created by magic and with fake memories, to a Human Fighter who was a war veteran. Yeah, a lot changed and I was only agreeing with him cause I didn't want to try and find a new group. It was already hard enough to find this one. I was also fine with changing my character for a bit since I could still play him as the loveable himbo I wanted.

We were reaching the end of character building when it finally came to picking the Epic Path. Originally, when I was looking through them, I wanted to pick the Masterpiece since that seemed to fit my original character idea. A humanoid created my magical means, whose whole journey is about discovering if he has a soul. I liked it, and it seemed to fit my character well. The DM agreed that it was a good choice, there was just one Problem. My character couldn't be called Knight Demathin if I chose this. Apparently in the history he wrote of his world, the Masterpiece was a Robot named Argos. If I wanted to play as the masterpiece I'd have to give up the last bit of my original character.

I decided to switch paths then, and ended up picking the Demigod of Pythor path based on the DM's insistence. He kept saying that it would offer a rich backstory and have Heavy RP moments. That my character would really feel like a champion and legend if I chose this path. So I chose it, mainly cause I just wanted to play the game at this point. I was upset that my character was basically rewrote from the group up, but I was hopeful since I was excited to play my goofball of a character.

Cut to Session 0 and I finally get to meet the rest of the party. Everyone else seemed great so far and they had some interesting characters. But as we were introducing ourselves there came another red flag.

The Bard had said their name and the DM seemed a bit taken aback by this. Apparently the DM had accidently written down the player's name in his notes instead of the character's. He then said that he would have to cancel the session and that we'll try to pick it up again next week. We laughed, thinking it was a joke. It wasn't. We asked why he couldn't just change the name in his notes later and he said that he had a lot of he had to change and rewrite all because of this name change. The player then just said that they would just change the character's name to their name instead. To which the DM thanked them.

After that, the rest of the session went alright. We as the players were having fun together cause we were able to do some light banter and make jokes. There was even a moment when me and the rouge of the group went to do some arm wrestling with some NPCs. Again, it was fun and light hearted. That was until the DM deemed it time for us to go and do our first quest which was fighting a giant Boar.

I'm gonna say it right now, there were a lot of red flags during this fight and it would take to long to describe them in a lot of detail, so I'm just going to list them with a bit of a description for each. If you want more details for one of them then ask me in the comments and I will describe it there.

• Describing the scene
  • There were many moments where it was clear that the DM was reading from a book or something when describing something. If we moved our token while he was describing he would get mad and yell at us to not move.
• The Boar's attacks
  • This was without a doubt one of the hardest boss fights I have ever been a part of. Not only was this thing dealing about 20 damage per attack, it had 3 attacks per turn as well as legendary actions. reminder we were level 1.
• The Custom Armor System
  • The DM had a homebrew armor system where things like your shield and armor had hit points as well. The only problem was that the Boar had one as well and nobody could do damage to it cause it had a high ac, and only magical attacks really dealt damage to it's health. Most magic attacks we could do were only dealing about 6-7 damage.
• The Death Aura
  • Every Monster in this campaign seemed to have a death Aura. For the Boar, the Aura made it so that anyone who got within a 30 foot radius of it would have to roll a Con save at the beginning of their turn, if failed they were then dealt around 13 necrotic damage. Btw magic damage bypasses the armor and goes straight to our hp.
• Him dropping "Hints"
  • He tried to drop hints for us during the battle to help us. Those hints were having my character's God Dad come in and say "Drop your sword, use your fists." Basically telling my fighter to act like a barbarian instead.
  • The other things he did weren't really helpful and he even left out some stuff like a magical spear laying in the battle ground that could have helped.
• The Favorite Character
  • He clearly had a favorite character and a not so favorite character. Since whenever I attacked boar, my punches would deal damage to it's health and his DMPC would only heal me. Yet almost every round, he would attack and kill the Paladin of the group. It wasn't that bad cause the Paladin had a quirk where he came back to life. After 3 turns.
  • This also brings up the fact that during the fight, we would have many moments where many characters were sped through their turns because all they can do it either shoot a crossbow, or throw a spear. I felt so bad that I kept trying to push the spotlight off of me and onto them.
• Finally, the Killing Blow
  • Towards the end of session 1 we finally managed to bring the Boar's health down low enough to gain some hope. Our Warlock was the one who delt the killing blow and we were excited and happy for it to be over. The DM then said that the Boar was entering Phase 2. We were shocked by this and when asked why, the DM said that the Boar had to killed in a specific way.
  • The Specific way we later learned was that we had to either rip it's heart out, or have a woman deal the killing blow. Our Warlock is female. When we brought this up he said it had to be Melee damage from a woman.

We were all rightfully angry and I'm not gonna lie it kept getting worse from there, But this is already getting a bit too long.

I'll just say that we tried to stay for a couple more sessions but the problems were getting worse and we all eventually decided to leave the campaign.

Though funny enough, we still talk to each other over discord and have even thought about doing a new campaign together with one of us as the DM. I think it's gonna be fun.

Anyway that's my story, I hope you enjoyed it. Like I said earlier, I was able to explain everything bad that had happened, and if you want to know more about a certain part then go ahead and ask and I'll try to expound upon it in the comments.

TLDR; Entered a DnD game with a very controlling DM but left with some new friends.

Not quite a horror story but I started a campaign with a some people a few months ago. 5 players and myself dming. I knew 3 of the players beforehand. We will name them S,D,R,T and N. Before the campaign started I let everyone know it would be 2014 5e rules with be open to homebrew rules. Everyone got to making characters. R told me he wanted to be a class from pathfinder but would spec it to dnd 5e, while I wasn't sure what that would really looked like I said "sure, if it works" and that's what this post is about. It doesn't work. The pcs are currently level 4 and R's character is dealing 40 plus damage on attacks, can reach a melee attack up to 65 ft. Last session was a bit of an experiment to see how unbalanced R's character really was. I made 2 creatures that were 240 hp each. Long combat short, 2 characters died, 2 characters were revived and barely survived. R's character was barely touched and was able to take on both creatures on his own. I feel like it's a level 4 character with level 12 abilities and feels like he is playing with cheat codes on. I could tell S,D,N and T were not too thrilled. So this where I ask others with experience of players. I asked R if he was willing to retool his character to a class in the dnd players handbook. It's not working, I feel like I should have said no in the first place. I'm even willing to take some abilities from the pathfinder class but it needs to be balanced. Everyone thinks I was out of line to ask him to do that. Was I? What are other alternatives. As of right now I feel like I lost my group of players.

edits for grammar spelling because I should not type at 4am

So, I'm mostly posting this for other peoples perspectives, because I just don't understand. This was a pbp game.

I, along with another person, was brought into a preexisting group of players. Important info of note:

• The game was pitched as role play heavy where the players would be at odds with a colonizing empire.
• The existing PC's were combat avoidant/actual pacifists.
• The two new players were never told anything about the nature of goblins in this setting, and had no personal experiences with goblins outside of what is detailed below.

So both new players were given a little bit of role play to intro them to the town. And one of them involved goblins.

That interaction consisted of:

Witnessing goblins make a deal with some orcs for stone. (No clue what the stone was for exactly.)
Seeing that the goblins have stripped an ancient quarry steps for the stone.
And hearing that they are terrible miners, because they were using tools to weak to break stone to be able to actually mine it.

That's it. The other new player had nothing on goblins at all.

So the very first thing, once everyone was in town, is a meeting is called with all the combat-able folk by the mayor and local noble. (Local noble is the GM DPC) (local noble is not the mayor)

Players are told the goblins have stolen the nobles quarry, and have refused to return it to the rightful owner. (Theft is considered a like actual divine sin in this setting.)

The proof that they refuse to negotiate? A stack of letters where the goblins say "pretty words don't mean anything to us, get sone guts and maybe the chief will talk to you."

Old PCs in game imply they are not for killing the goblins based on available information, and want to try other means. New players join in on this sentiment as again they have no prior bad experiences with goblins and nowhere has the GM informed any of the players that goblins are unilaterally evil. DPC disbands the war party to go sulk.

It should be noted the quarry was abandoned and the noble is an elf. PCs and players have no idea for how long the place has been empty given elf lifespans and perspective on time relative to goblins.

PCs stay in the tavern to talk over ideas, and the mayor is talking the goblins pretty dirty. When questioned about what the goblins have done to deserve elimination the party learns the following:

The goblins are not openly hostile towards the town folk.

They have never made any action to harm or stand against the town folk.

Their crime is occupying the abandoned quarry to try and mine stone.

They warned the town about kobolds-

Kobolds who were stealing and EATING THE TOWNS CHILDREN.

Again the goblins. Warned the town. About kobold. Who were taking. The town children. And EATING them.

The new players also learned oog that the mayor is an imperialist racist. Which they inferred could explain the dogmatic hate of the goblins, who at worst helped the village a little by warning them about children eating kobold.

The players genuinly at this point all thought the GM was bread crumbing that the goblins might not be what the PCS are being told they are (ie evil)

So the pcs move locations to discus how they might talk to the goblins themselves, to learn what they're really like. Where one of the new players npc (run by the gm but reportedly crafted by the player at the gms request) also talks bad about the goblins, telling the pcs all goblins are evil.

Oog the new players express their confusion as to how to proceed, because what they're being told does not match what the goblins have done in game. But the gm kept doubling down on they are nothing but pure evil, and pushing back against killing them is insane for anyone in this world to do.

The gm even triples down and tells everyone that they (the gm) have done everything in their power to show the players the goblins are evil. (they have done no such thing until after the players repeatedly have to ask oog if goblins in this world are just evil because if so in game the pcs should already have that innate knowledge. Like how irl you would give a teddy bear to a kid but innately know, without being told, you should never give your kid an actual bear.)

The players work together oog to try and figure out how to proceed without breaking their pcs moral codes. Because at this point the fear was the gm would make it come down to slaughter, a horrible horrible consequence for not trying to slaughter, or retaliating against the pcs in other ways.

Again this was advertised as a role-play heavy game where the players would be working at odds with a colonizing empire. (This town is founded by said empire).

They come up with a plan to try and scare the goblins away and get back to role playing.

The pc, whose dm controlled npc was speaking to the party, thanked the npc for the info and told the npc that the booze order wasn't needed anymore, but that the npc could keep the coin for the order. (Original plan had been to get the goblins drunk and at ease while the pcs tried to talk them up or have a good fun challenge at arms to "show their guts".)

The npc proceeds to tell the pc that their personality is a "2 out of 5" quits on the spot and walks out. (This pc has never been rude to the npc ever and appeared to be on good terms until that very moment.)

At this point its very late and the group largely goes to bed. One of the new players very reasonably and calmly expresses their confusion at the situation. Going point by point to express how in game the pcs and players themselves had not at all been shown the goblins were evil. And that the gm blaming the players for not rolling insights on the goblins motives wasn't fair at all. Because who rolls insight on a group not present, that you have zero in game interactions with?

The other new player does a 100% emote on this well worded expression of confusion and frustration over how things are being handled by the gm. As it completely breaks the established morals of the entire party, new and old players alike, and at no point was anyone shown the goblins were bad.

The next morning the two new players are kicked without any further discussion or warning.

Theres a lot of extra details but this took place over 24 irl hours so ive condensed it down to the most important parts

So thats the story were the pcs bad for not immediately agreeing to destroy the goblins in this scenario and trying to discuss their concerns oog with the gm?

*content warning for pet loss and some very fictional animal violence*

We lost our Mai today. She was the last of our 3 girls we got as babies, and I was heartbroken. We just lost her sister less than a month ago, and I think poor Mai just wasted away. She died snuggled up with my husband on the couch.

I'm the DM for a tight group of close friends and my husband, and we were supposed to have a session tonight. I dithered a lot on going at all, and finally decided that I didn't have it in me to DM tonight, but that it still might be nice to spend some time with good company. My 11-year-old daughter came too, because she likes to play her switch and half listen.

My friend Chrissy volunteered to run a one shot. She pulled me aside to warn me she had planned something with a rat in it, and she hoped it would be healing for me. I felt apprehensive about that idea, but decided to roll with it, knowing I could always pump the brakes if I needed to.

Our intro to this rat was walking into a pet shop that had been broken into and finding a dead, mutilated rat in a pool of blood on the floor. I sort of just went still from shock. Immediately another friend asked, "Could we go with a different animal?" Chrissy said to just wait and see. She went on to describe the ghost of the rat coming up to my character, and I guess the intention was for this ghost rat to be cute, lead us to the killers, and end with some kind of moral about how even if you lose a furry friend they're always with you.

We didn't get that far though, because I excused myself to "go to the bathroom" and sat there in the dark alone feeling like walls were closing in on me. I think my intention was to come back and suggest we do something else, but my husband and daughter came to check on me and all three of us just broke down.

Chrissy apologized up, down, left, and right. I know her heart was in the right place, and I told her as much before we left, but also...

WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK?! WHAT IN THE NAME OF ALL THINGS HOLY MADE HER THINK THAT WAS A GOOD IDEA????? AND SHE DID IT IN FRONT OF MY KID TOO!! CHRIST

The worst part is, I was very down but handling my grief okay. Mai's passing wasn't unexpected or violent. She lived a good long life. But I feel AWFUL now. Like somebody tore my heart out and stepped on it.

Chrissy keeps messaging me and I don't have it in me to respond right now.

DM killed us off at level 4 because he was getting bored he said we were doing to much shenanigans and he got bored so he put us up against a cr 10 and cr 12 boss at the same time and he said we didnt follow the story when the story he was refering to was a random dude who after game we found out was a lich said hey no robbing that guy made us give the money back and when we tried interacting with him he said nothing then the dm said we ignored him and didnt talk to him when we literally tried to we do a dming rotating schedule and he vouldentered for it right after our last campaign then killed us off because he got bored

So, as the title says, this is how my first-ever D&D campaign got destroyed and took two (maybe three) friendships with it.

For some context, this happened about a year ago, it was my first time playing D&D, as well as the first time for a friend of mine, who I'll call Bard. Our DM and friend was also a first-time DM, and the other player, who I'll call Druid, was a friend of the DM. We decided to play a published module together, which seemed like a pretty easy way for all of us to get into D&D.

It was not.

The Beginning

Things were already a little shaky from Session 0. Bard decided that their character hated mine, and to a lesser extent Druid's, because we were nobles. The funny thing is that neither of our characters actually acted like nobles.

My character had spent years away from his home as part of his backstory and was wearing extremely ragged clothes (think Caleb Widogast, which I didn't know at the time lol). Druid's character had a very similar situation. We had actually, accidentally, ended up creating fairly similar backstories. But Bard's character knew we were nobles because, well... the player knew we were nobles from our character creation session and sheets on Beyond. They proceeded to use that information to antagonise us and even tried to steal from us because their character hated nobles due to an extremely edgelordy backstory (which somehow isn't the issue). And believe me, I could absolutely see this being a fun character-character interaction, IF our characters actually behaved like wealthy nobles. But they. did. not.

So we already had some unchecked metagaming from Session 0.

Still, I figured I'd play it out and see where things went.

The Campaign
As the story went on, Bard's character continued antagonising ours and there was also a recurring issue where Bard would try to use our characters to avoid bad rolls on their own important moments. For example, there was one occasion where Bard rolled a natural 1 on something important and after they realised it wouldn’t be a "funny ah ah" failure, but could actually endanger their character and their shady dealings, they started begging the DM to have Druid roll instead, or to use Druid's roll in place of theirs and this was obviously granted by the DM (scoring us yet another point for metagaming). I don't actually remember every detail, but I do rememeber thinking "wth of a ruling is that" and almost pointing it out, glad i didn't. (Foreshadowing).

Meanwhile, the actual story increasingly started revolving around Bard's character. Now, to be fair, I can understand why some of this happened: my character was from outside the city where the campaign took place, while Druid's character was returning to the city after a long absence. Bard's character, meanwhile, had lived there for some time and had connections to numerous NPCs. The DM had also told us beforehand that our backstories would be incorporated into the narrative, so I wasn't expecting everything to be instantaneous.

What I wasn't expecting was for Bard's character to basically become the protagonist: their NPC connections became major NPCs, their backstory became deeply integrated into the main plot, their personal history became crucial to solving the mystery we were investigating, most of the information we received came either from Bard's sources or from one official NPC that I had managed to get my character connected to early in the campaign (hoping to help the DM tie me in, which never happened btw).

Meanwhile, I had exactly one (1) NPC from my backstory present in the campaign. Fortunately, this NPC was actually pretty important. Unfortunately, she also happened to start hating my character, and disappeared after about three or four scenes and told my character she wanted nothing to do with him, which was completely contrary to how she was in my backstory. Still I tried to engage with the storyline and even left her a clue that could have allowed her to come back into my character's life.

You can probably guess how that went.

Druid had a similar problem. She also had essentially only one NPC she was connected to from her backstory actually appear, and had to repeatedly force opportunities to interact with that NPC in the campaign. In the long run, those interactions became repetitive and pointless and honestly, I don't blame her for that as those were basically the only moments where she could actually talk to her NPC, without the DM intervening and actually putting some thought into her backstory.

And then came the session that finally broke everything.

The Incident

The DM decided to spend more than an hour roleplaying exclusively between Bard and Bard's NPC. Not an hour of the party interacting with the NPC, not an hour where the rest of us had things to do elsewhere, just Bard and their NPC role playing while my character and Druid's character were effectively just sitting at home drinking tea.

For the first few minutes, sure. Fine. Then it became unbearable. This was an online session which made everything worse, and eventually Druid and I started drifting off. We were doodling, checking our phones, getting distracted, etc. I know D&D isn't supposed to be about every character all the time. I completely understand that. But if you've spent 60+ minutes doing absolutely nothing while your character is literally sitting at home, you're going to get bored.

Eventually, the DM ended the session and so after more than an hour of watching someone else play D&D, we just stopped. I (and later found out also druid) came away feeling like I'd effectively stopped playing an hour before the actual session ended and hadn't really accomplished anything that day.

What’s funny is that Bard actually brought it up in the group chat afterward. They said they'd noticed that Druid and I had gotten distracted and hoped the long roleplaying moment hadn't been too much. I apologised for getting detached from the narrative, but explained that keeping us out of the game for an entire hour wasn't fun for us. I said that, from our perspective, it had started feeling more like an infodump about Bard and NPC's backstory (which, you guessed it, was also yet again crucial for the main story), which we were forced to spectate. I also politely suggested that future sessions could break up extremely long scenes so that nobody felt completely left out.

As you can imagine, that went over wonderfully.

The DM became hostile and said that this was simply their DMing style. They said they'd do the same thing for our characters when it came to it (which, for the record, I would have hated, as I would have felt awful keeping the others sitting around while I played) and that it was their choice in the moment because, apparently: "Your characters had nothing to do but stay home". Bard also jumped in and argued that it was their moment (the umpteenth) with their NPC and that it wasn't fair to them to cut it short or break it up because they were connecting with the character (for context, this was a weird sort of self-insert-romance between Bard's character and the NPC).

And then, to make things even more ironic, the one NPC I had managed to establish a meaningful connection with during the campaign, eventually joined the scene as well, as he had another weird romantic past with Bard’s NPC. So he too ended up being pulled into Bard's character's storyline. Fantastic.

After the incident, we played one more session and after that, we decided to have a check-in about the campaign. At the time, I (and Druid as I later learned) was actually happy about this as I thought we could talk about what had happened, clear the air, apologise for whatever we'd done wrong, and figure out how to make the campaign more enjoyable for everyone.

That was not what happened.

The Beginning of the End

The meeting basically turned into a crossfire. The DM and Bard mainly focused on everything I had done wrong during the campaign, and Druid also received some of it. We apologised for the things we had genuinely done wrong. Some of our mistakes had been honest and unintentional, and we were perfectly willing to acknowledge them. The problem was that the same standard wasn't applied in the other direction: whenever we brought up issues with things the DM or Bard had done, responsibility was deflected or justified.

To add insult to injury during this conversation, something else came to light. Apparently, from the very beginning, the DM and Bard had been constantly talking privately about the campaign and how to make things better for Bard's character, a treatment which wasn’t really reserved for me and druid, save for the bare minimum. Tbf Bard can get very enthusiastic about their characters, which in itself is a good thing. However, I do think that enthusiasm sometimes needs to be reined in a little. We had been planning a one-shot with me as DM, so I had already seen firsthand how eager Bard could get with their character and ideas. The problem was that our DM didn't really seem to keep that in chack and, from the looks of it, he just kept adding whatever Bard came up with directly into the story. Bard had also accidentally (it was an old module, and TikTok can be cruel) come across important information about the campaign, commented on it with the DM in private and referenced it in the group, which once again excluded us in a way. Apparently while talking with the DM they planned to act on that information in-game once it happened. So as far as metagaming goes, they weren’t exactly isolated incidents. It can happen to receive a spoiler, but the less you talk about it the better it is for everyone's enjoyment.

The Aftermath

After that, the campaign came to a screeching halt. The group slowly fizzled out over the following months and, eventually, both the DM and Bard ended their friendships with Druid and me respectively, bringing up a number of other grievances and grudges that weren't really related to the campaign itself. A while later, Bard apparently also stopped talking to Druid.

So, yeah. That's how my first D&D campaign ended and somehow, took several friendships down with it: a metagaming player whose character increasingly became the main character, a first-time DM playing favourites and enabling it, an hour-long RP scene with 2/3 of the party sitting around doing nothing, and a campaign check-in that turned into a list of everything everyone else had supposedly done wrong.

 

Thankfully, there is a happy ending. Druid and I actually became very close friends after all of this and I've since taken up DMing myself for her and other friends. At least my first disastrous D&D campaign taught me something in what not to do as a DM and player.

So i am i a campaign and we were having a great time. After the session i told the dm that i want my character to die at the end and if he can make something for it, she gets pouty and says that she doesn't want any character to die and wants a happy ending, i say u can still make a happy ending, even with a dead character and i want my character's arc to end in death and explained why it would complete his story. My dm was not having it and ignored me. Am i the asshole? did i do something wrong? What should i do instead?

the usual disclaimers: throwaway for privacy reasons, english not my first language, long time reddit lurker first time poster. 

background: first-time players, party of three plus GM, we play a homebrew of episodic nature for a little over a year now.

two sessions ago GM introduced a character who was supposed to keep the party safe, mostly by being way too overlevelled (we are lvl 2, character is lvl 15), let’s call him The Guy. The Guy is quite stand-offish, prefers to keep to himself, doesn’t seem too keen on joining the party but tags along for whatever his own reasons are. my character grew quite suspicious of him and took to either directly antagonizing him or verbally provoking The Guy in hopes of eliciting a reaction, but nothing really came out of it.

at the end of the last session, one of the players asked if The Guy can join our party. GM announced that The Guy will be tagging along on the next leg of the adventure. i’ve been mulling it over and in the end decided i wasn't entirely comfortable with the arrangement. The Guy is a wizard with the same subclass as my character, and i'm already somewhat insecure about my own abilities as the party's wizard. having a character who is ten plus levels above us and occupies essentially the same mechanical niche was making me feel overshadowed before we'd even started.

went to GM in private, explained my reasoning, asked if GM would be comfortable playing out a proper scene between us wherein my character airs out their grievances, then see where we can go from there. GM disagrees with the premise, says The Guy is too stoic to react and will only engage if approached with kindness. i argue The Guy is highkey suspicious within story reasons and has yet to prove himself worthy of grace; argue that (from my perspective) a character joining an established group should show some initiative in trying to fit in; argue the group should not be expected to accommodate him by default just because we are a somewhat polite bunch. things get a bit heated, i let my frustrations as a player be known, explain i feel overshadowed by The Guy just by the power imbalance alone. GM thanks me for the feedback, says he’s now uncomfortable with running The Guy and promises to write The Guy out next session, effective immediately.

now here’s why i’m struggling: i wasn’t trying to get rid of The Guy. i’ve seen GM prep some story hooks for him, he most definitely had some part in the story ahead, the party seemed to have taken to him well. i hoped for a character-to-character conflict and didn’t expect GM to just nuke The Guy out of the narrative. i now feel immensely guilty for even bringing my frustrations up; i feel like i ruined the fun for the party and altered the intended narrative.

i’m at a loss as to how to even process all of this. should i have kept my mouth shut and just let the story unfold as intended by GM? do i come clean to the party about why The Guy is now out of the picture or should this be kept between GM and i? should i apologize to GM for being too forceful? i’m honestly very lost and worried i broke some unspoken rules of dnd etiquette. any advice would be greatly appreciated. 

This is my first time on here, and even though I have had plenty "bad" sessions, this one was the only one I felt deserved to be on here. For context, I (M) have been DMing for just under a year, so I'm still pretty fresh at this, but I've been playing weekly this whole time. My players consist of one DND-nerd: Warlock (M), a second-time player: Warlock (F), a chaotic, but creative player: Ranger (M), and an earlier "problem player" in other campaigns and one-shots: Sorcerer (M), who created his character 10 minutes before session start btw.

Anyways.

I thought I had a cool concept for a one-shot. 4-5 players. Level 8 characters. (voted on by the players themselves) Everyone makes a completely new character, and nobody tells me or the other players anything about their character beforehand.

The setting was the Nine Hells, specifically Dis. The basic premise was that the players had been sent to Dis by a mysterious woman with many names. Iggwilv, Tasha, etc. Their mission was to free Graz'zt, who had been imprisoned deep beneath the city.

The not so sudden twist was that the players had all lost most of their memories of why they arrived there, which I thought would make sense, so everyone could describe and get to know eachothers characters, since they didn't know anything about eachother.

When we started, we took turns introducing each character. I rolled a d4, determining where each player would start. The first player, who was a Ranger Lizardfolk (M) happened to be hanging over a pool of lava, held by chains. The second player, a Tiefling Warlock (F) was trapped in a cage with a bearded devil as a guard. The third (Human Sorcerer (M)) and fourth player (Homebrewed Jester, Warlock (M)) were chained together and were being transported away from the others.

Each player recieved one piece of information. One remembered what Tasha looked like. One remembered the name Tasha. One remembered their mission. And one remembered stealing a black key that would open his prison. The players rolled for who would get the last piece of information, and the Warlock (F) remembered that they had all been given powerful magic items and had traveled as a group. I explicitly told them that each player had been given a piece of the truth through their memories. I thought this would encourage them to talk to each other and slowly reconstruct what they were doing. It did not. Nobody told anyone else what they remembered...

The first hour was extremely slow. Ranger was hanging over lava and spent ages trying to escape by himself since the others didn't help. Sorcerer flew away from the group, chained to Warlock (M), which had no choice but to go along. They fought four bearded devils, but killed only one after the hour, which lead to me having the others run away for "backup".

The Sorcerer was convinced that his "task" was to collect stamps. So when the Warlock (M) blinked away, he went on his own mission while the rest of them got together again. The three of them looked through a chest outside the prison where Warlock (F) had been placed, where they found their original magic items. I managed to forget that I had planned to see how they were playing and give them a magic item based on that, so they got WAY TOO MANY. The list went as follows:

- Oathbow

- Carpet of Flying

- Belt of Fire Giant Strength

- Helm of Teleportation

- Demon Armor

and last but not least.. Deck of Many Things. I'm sorry.

Eventually they all flew towards the Iron Tower because they didn't really know where else to go (information that only the Sorcerer had). They were told by an imp guide, who said he worked for Tasha that there was an archive at the base of the tower where more information about Graz'zt imprisonment was. The imp was named Bislet by one of the players, and so that was his name.

Sorcerer decided to go check in the attic of the archive if there was any stamps there. I told him that there was a boy scouts devil that had some. He stole it, and never mentioned stamps again, didn't even look at them.

Then they encountered a Narzugon. In the information about Graz'zt that one of the players had, this was mentioned, so they had time to prepare. Since nobody shares anything, that makes it a tiny bit harder when an already overpowered boss goes up against them.

They were level 8, had 1 very rare magic item each, as well as 1 rare magic item, and up to 5 uncommon magic items, and had no idea what their characters could do because most of them had been made immediately before the session.

Turns were taking about 10 minutes. I eventually had to introduce a timer. The party also decided to just back up after each turn, leading to them eventually being about 60 feet away from Narzugon at all times. Ranger was frightened by Narzugon his first round, and could never make the save, which meant he never hit for most of the fight.

Eventually they killed it, largely because Warlock (M) figured out a clever interaction with a magic item that dealt about 20 damage after each turn if Narzugon failed a wisdom save. Which happened all the time, as I would have to roll a 16 or higher to succeed. The other Warlock (F) also had a fun improvised attack which I thought was fun where she cast Light on one of the books and threw it under the Narzugon when he was standing over Warlock (M's) body, which after a DEX roll to throw it where she wanted, we ruled that it would count as disadvantage for Narzugon after he failed a save, which he did.

After combat I think I was too optimistic. As mentioned I had told the PC's to stack up on magic items, largely because I wanted them to feel ridiculously powerful before Hell reminded them that they were in Hell.

Their items started vibrating. No one reacted. They vibrated again but stronger. Still no comment. Eventually Bislet, the imp guide returned, and told them something was seriously wrong. They first made DEX saves to try and throw the items away. Then the items exploded.

Warlock (M) had the Deck of Many Things, and since he was at 5 HP before the explosions, he decided to draw a card.

Donjon.

Unfortunate.

After the explosion, the party once again didn't communicate. Eventually I had to have Bislet essentially tell them exactly what their own memories had already told them. They eventually made it to Graz'zt's prison. One player handed the key to another player, who opened the door. Graz'zt woke up, and the players freed him.

I had planned for Graz'zt to betray them, escape using a clone and leave the party trapped inside his prison. Instead, the final sequence became completely chaotic.

Ranger threw ball bearings and caltrops into the prison and jumped down an escape hatch to the material plane with Bislet. Sorcerer followed along. Warlock (F) was by herself, for quite a while. Until Warlock (M) showed up after nowhere after making a deal with a devil and got a Wish in exchange for their soul. (I just wanted the most engaged player to get back tbh)

They tried talking to Graz'zt. Who one had been warned would betray them. The same someone who "escaped hell" without telling the rest of the party anything. Graz'zt killed Warlock (F), and to make an example of Warlock (M) he told him that he would be able to return home, but that he had to show Tasha the Warlock (F's) body and tell Tasha: "Go to hell!". Graz'zt teleported somewhere. Warlock (M) picked up Warlock (F) and they jumped into the Material Plane as well.

They all met up again. No talk about the dead body in their hand, or the explained two other members they had earlier that also died. No chatting at all. I had Tasha appear through a portal, look at them. And thats when I ended the session.

While an unfortunate session, I have learned something from it. Please talk to your players, and explain what the one-shot is going to be about, and please players, talk to your DM's and tell them what you want from the session. Looking back, making the entire scenario around the players discovering information from each other, while also making it so that they couldn't communicate about their characters before the game, might have made things a bit harder. I could also not design encounters around their abilities, and they didn't know their characters well enough to make quick enough decisions in combat, which lead to the session being 90% combat and 10% confusion.

So, fellow DMs:

Do you think the no-communication premise is fundamentally flawed?

Was level 8 simply too high for unknown characters?

And how would you guys structure something like this so that the players still have freedom, but aren't completely directionless either?

So ive seen Fallout campaigns. I was asked to join so I did, because I haven't got the opportunity to be a player for a while. So eventually we roll up our characters. Instead of using a standard Array, 3d6 or 4d6, or even point buy the DM uses a d20. Not unheard of for me. But then he goes out and says we will only be using d20s. Whatever, I can work with it. Doesnt sound so bad? Well. The pacing sucks, we get a vertibird for our own use in the first session, everyone has power armor halfway through the first session, and to top it all off its just Fallout New Vegas, but with the names changed. A primary quest giver is Mr. City. In New Vegas a. Primary quest giver is Mr. House. But anyway, we get tasked with finding a "Chip made of Platinum". Instead of finding it maybe 2 or 3 sessions from now we find it immediately. I feel bad for the other players because its their first time playing D&D, and they think its this jumbling mess that our DM has set up, but its not.

The DM is also quite experienced, so Ijust feel like the whole thing isnt right, there hasn't been any struggle in the campaign whatsoever, we almost killed one of the most powerful guys in the campaign on session 1. It wasn't designed to be a 1 shot either, this was clearly designed for a long running campaign, and we already took care of the one major questline for the whole campaign. Its just sucky this is my first time playing not as a DM in like 2 years.

Disclaimer: This happened about seven years ago, so please take this story with a grain of salt. My memory isn't perfect, and I've definitely forgotten some details over the years. I also wasn't a perfect player by any means, I was pretty immature at the time.

All names have been changed.

The people involved are:

• Andrew - the DM
• Carl - Human Cleric
• Leon - Human Fighter
• Me - Human Sorcerer

Session Zero

Before the campaign began, Andrew explained the setting. It was meant to be a very dark fantasy world with a realistic take on medieval society. Necromancy didn't exist, combat was extremely lethal thanks to his brutal homebrew critical hit rules, and he emphasized that the world was harsh, grounded, and unforgiving.

Everyone agreed to that premise.

Looking back, I probably should have asked more questions about what he meant by "realistic," but at the time I was just excited to play D&D with my friends.

My Character

I decided to play a female sorcerer from a noble family.

The idea was that she was the firstborn child, but because women weren't allowed to inherit positions of power, she had to prove herself worthy if she ever wanted to become the head of her noble house. That struggle was supposed to be the core of her character.

I had discussed most of these ideas with Carl while we were creating our characters.

Without telling me or asking for my permission, Carl spoke to Andrew and they changed my backstory. Carl's character was now a member of the same noble family, and our characters were siblings.

I wasn't happy about it, but I convinced myself it wasn't a big enough issue to argue over.

Looking back, I had no idea that this small change would completely derail my character's story.

The First Session

The campaign opened with our party returning home after a successful military campaign.

Before we could make it back, enemy soldiers who had slipped behind our front lines ambushed us. We were captured and taken prisoner.

While the rest of the party was thrown into cells together, my character was separated because she was the only woman in the group.

She was then sexually assaulted by the guards.

This had never been discussed during Session Zero. I had never consented to anything like it, and it wasn't handled with a fade-to-black. Instead, Andrew spent roughly thirty minutes graphically narrating what each guard did to my character.

The session ended not long afterward.

I was already thinking about leaving the campaign.

Talking to the DM

Instead of quitting immediately, I decided to talk to Andrew privately.

I explained that I wasn't comfortable with the scene and that I hadn't agreed to sexual assault being part of the campaign.

His response was that I had agreed to it by choosing to play a woman in a realistic dark fantasy setting.

Eventually, we reached a compromise. The assault would be retconned, and my character would simply become a man so "it wouldn't happen again."

Looking back, I honestly have no idea why I stayed after that conversation.

My Character Stopped Feeling Like My Character

The next session was fairly uneventful. We escaped from captivity after digging our way out of the mines.

A session later, we finally made it back home.

That's when I was informed, not asked that Carl's character and mine were brothers who had grown up together since childhood.

This was the first time I had heard about it.

Again, my character's backstory had been changed without my input.

Several sessions passed that I honestly don't remember very well.

Eventually, we discovered that Carl's character was a direct descendant of the previous king, making him a prince and potentially the rightful heir to the throne.

Naturally, that also meant he was destined to become the head of our noble house.

At that point, my character's entire motivation had disappeared.

The whole reason I had created the character was to overcome the prejudice against women and eventually earn the right to lead her family. After being changed into a man, then turned into Carl's brother, and finally learning that Carl was destined to inherit everything anyway, there was nothing left of the story I had wanted to tell.

So I decided to kill off my character and leave the campaign.

What Happened After I Left

A friend of a friend let's call him Astarion, joined the campaign after I had left.

Later, Astarion told me that the sexual content in the campaign had only gotten worse.

One example Astarion shared was that the party was affected by a Geas, this version couldn't be resisted or avoided.

Leon's character had been replaced with a female fighter, and Astarion's character was male. The spell forced the two characters into a sexual relationship, requiring them to have intercourse at least once every day for thirty days.

There was no saving throw.

There was no way to avoid it.

By the end of those thirty days, Leon's character became pregnant and had to retire from adventuring.

Hearing that made me realize leaving the campaign was one of the best decisions I could have made.

Final Thoughts

Looking back now, I realize there were warning signs almost immediately.

Changing a player's backstory without asking them was frustrating enough.

Using graphic, non-consensual sexual assault in the very first session should have been the point where I walked away.

Instead, I convinced myself things would improve.

They didn't.

From what I've heard, the campaign only became more sexually explicit after I left.

There are plenty more horror stories from this campaign, but those are stories for another time.

If people are interested, I might post a Part 2.