r/rpghorrorstories

So a while ago, I found myself with some free time to start a DND campaign so I asked around to see who's willing. A friend of mine and his brother (who we will call Alex and also I don't know that well) told me they were down but I said we need more people. Alex then told me his friend said he was down alongside three of his other friends so we agreed to do a one shot before starting the campaign.

so I get in contact with Alex's friend (let's call him Sam) we discussing where we're gonna play. He says "we can do it at my friend's john apartment, imma give you his number" so I get in contact with him

I notice there's a difference John is a lot more talkative, he's asking me what the one shot is gonna be like and showing me what characters has already and asking me which one I like. as a forever DM i love players like him

Sam is pretty quiet and when i asked if he had a character in mind he's like "ehhh i'll just borrow one of John's" I brush it off cause i figure it's probably cause we haven't even met yet and he might be one of those guys who needs to warm up to someone

Eventually I ask Sam if he has discord because I realize we all live pretty far from one and the campaign will be much easier over discord. he replied "no I don't" "you should make one" "nah i'll just go to John's place when we play" This should have tipped me off to his personality as you'll see here.

The day arrives and we meet at John's apartment, Sam shows up with his dog and says "sorry, I don't have anyone to watch him" I don't have anything against animals so I dont mind it, but it becomes a problem later on. We chat normally as we're waiting on another friend to join us (he's not important to the story but it's why we didn't play immediately) so it's just my friend, Alex, sam and John. we talk for a bit, we discuss schedules and we agree we're gonna meet every two weeks on sunday for the campaign and we'll also do session zero after the one shot.

We're all pretty hungry so we walk to a pizza place and there while we're all eating, My friend, John and I are talking about dnd and such but Sam and Alex start talking about politics and I realize that Sam is a right wing nut Job and an insane conspiracy theorist

Within 30 minutes he states

1. Bill Gates is bioengineering ticks to make us all allergic to meat so we’re forced to live in 15 minute cities owned by the Jews and eat bugs

2. Epstein is still alive and well in Palm beach Florida because there’s this guy on Instagram who looks a lot like him and makes jokes about it (he told me they’re clearly the same guy because “they have the same teeth”

3. Muslims are "changing europe"

4. This wasn't even political, Just dumb. Bruno Mars has $50 million dollars worth of gambling debt to MGM so he’s not allowed to release new music and must preform only at MGM until it’s paid off.

I don't bother arguing with what he said but then Sam turns to me and goes like

"so Alex tells me ur muslim. so explain to me why u guys ban alcohol but coffee is ok? they both change ur mental state"

"they're not the same and you know that" i answer "no I know some people who are completely different after coffee" I start ignoring him and we head back to this meeting room in john's apartment complex that we reserved for our one shot

we finally start DND.

John's character is an amnesiac ranger and he's role-playing pretty well and normal, and My friend is playing a hardheaded barbarian. HOWEVER, Sam's character is an Elf warlock named Shekelstein who's the most laziest anti Semitic stereotype possible and every line of dialogue out of his mouth is just antisemitic shit and calling people goyim, while Alex's character is a generic horny bard and his sidekick. Throughout the session, Sam drops weird comments and dog whistles and every time I stonewall him by saying "The NPC has no idea what an israel or etc is and thinks you're mad. He then turns and talks to a different player" and I make sure every bar maid is married ( Alex rolled a nat 20 and so i said a barmaid simply chuckles and is flattered this time instead of dumping beer on your head)

Eventually, he's stops to say "hold on, I gotta feed my dog brb" He gets up with John and Alex and they go up to his apartment. 30 minutes pass and I text Sam what's taking so long. he says "sorry my dog is spoiled and refuses to eat canned slop. I'm cooking rice for him" eventually he comes back and continues.

At this point: I'm avoiding putting the spotlight on Sam and Alex, but thankfully they're too busy jerking each other off about how "funny" their characters are to notice every NPC is ignoring them and their comments. Soon combat starts and despite being a warlock, Sam didn't pick any spells. He's like "idk warlock had spells. John didn't finish this character and I only wrote the backstory" I just tell him to roll eldritch blast and then suddenly he says "oh my dog needs to shit" he goes outside with John. I'm not waiting so i just play for them and after an hour they come back with a new friend I haven't met. "sorry for taking so long, We took a smoke break and my boy Vinny got off work early so he's here. He also likes dnd and has a character ready so can he join? he brought chips" Sam says

I say sure and pray internally that he's normal like John; those hopes were immediately dashed when Vinny sat down and the first thing that comes out of his mouth was "yeah I got those new NKD doritos cause they dont got dyes and i wanted to try them. it's crazy that they were feeding us GOYSLOP our entire lives and they could just choose not to"

At this point I'm done with the group so I fake an emergency and head home. Afterwards I tell my friend that I do not fuck with his brother and Sam at all and I'm not doing a campaign with them. I then tell him that I'm going to lie to everyone my job changed my schedule and I work on weekends now. He understands. I then tell Alex and sam and they're like "that sucks but whatever". When I tell John he's sad and asks if we can do wenesday but I lie and I have class. I do feel bad for John but then I realize that if he's friends with guys like those who are willingly to be that bigoted with someone they just met, he's either bigoted himself but socially aware enough to hide it or he doesn't care at all.

So yeah that's why NO DND is better than racist dnd

Hi guys, first things first, i've never posted on reddit before, and english isn't my first lenguage, so i apologize if at any time my writting seems strange, I'll just use the classes everyone played as names.

With that being said, i am also quite new to the hobby of tabletop rpg's and so is most of my group, we have been playing for 3 years, some of them have a bit more experience with the hobby, but we are mostly all newbies just playing amongst ourselves.

We were all in our first year of college, and in that kind of akward first phase where nobody knows each other, we all met and quickly started hanging out more, the important thing is that i met our DM quite early, and in a random conversation i mentioned that d&d seemed fun, and that is where DM decided that we should try a one shot, since we actually has played before, he was eager to DM for someone new to the game.

I honestly was excited to try it, and we asked the rest of the group who would be up to try it, and we ended up with a party of 4, a chill barbarian player, a rougue player (problem player) a bard player (future problem player 2), and me playing as a monk

With that we tried our first d&d session, the only person who had some experience was our DM, so he helped us all with creating our first character, since it was 5th edition it wasnt that hard, but it took us a bit to understand the mechanics of the game.

The first weird thing happened when our rogue player came with his character ready and showed it to our DM, and first thing that happened is that inmediately he said that the character needed some tweaking, the rouge mentioned that a friend of his helped him make it.

Since I didn't know much of the game, I later asked DM what exactly needed to be changed about that character, and in his own words he said something along the lines of "this is basically like a boss character", and I thought that just like the rest of us he didn't know how the game worked, but they did end up tuning it down.

And once our one shot began it was basic slay the monster quest to get us used to the game, we were all level 3, so we had our subclasses, long story short, our session was basically hijinks and stupid bits, the absolute first thing our rouge did after getting the quest was: separating from the group to talk to a female npc, say "she actually is a childhood friend of my character", and kissed her, leaving right after, and no, it didnt have to do with anything, this was the first sign of the rouge player just inventing stuff without consulting the DM.

The important thing is that at one point our bard used the spell "command" against the rogue, he failed the save and our bard used the command word "kiss", so our rougue ended up kissing the merchant we were talking to since he was the nearest person around.

We all laughed because of the stupidity of it, but the rouge player wasn't as amused, and once we got to the village near were the monsters were, everyone went to do something different, mostly to get info on the monster.

Barbarian I think went to buy items or something of the like, bard went to seek somewhere to gamble to get some money and maybe ask around, I went to just ask around the npc's directly, and what did our rouge player do?, he decided to go to a brothel, when we asked him why, he answered with, and i am not joking: "what bard did traumatized my character, so I will go there to forget it"

At first I thought he was doing a bit, but no, he actually went to the brothel to "forget that", and our DM had to go along, because he is the kind of DM too nice to say no straight up.

Our DM was rotating the focus towards each character every so often since we were all so split doing different things, and every time we returned to rouge it got worse every time.

It is important to note that we were in a dessert village, inspired on something similar to a rural Egyptian village, and we were hunting a purple worm, when we returned to the POV of rouge, it went downhill fast, he straight up asked "is there a white woman with cat ears in this brothel?", the DM looked at him for a bit, rolled a dice determine it and sighed, there was in fact a woman with those characteristics.

The way our DM operates is that whenever we roll a d20 and see the result, we go more on vibes than actual thresholds, so a 16 and up ussually means a success, unless the threshold is determined beforehand, either because it's a save DC or stuff like that.

We decided to joke around with this situation, and said as a joke to rouge to do a check to "perform", the DM faded to black and continued rotating the focus until we had Intel and items to actually continue the quest.

And strangely, the rogue actually brought along the cat eared woman, like, actually bringing her to fight against a dangerous monster, the DM improvised and rol played with it, when the rouge gave the npc a dagger to fight, she was terrified and couldn't stop shaking (wich I actually think was the most realistic choice), so that way we wouldn't have an unfair advantage and an extra character out of nowhere to fight.

After our fight with the monster our barbarian was down and I was low on health, but we won, we took the body of the thing using the barbarians strenght and returned to the quest npc to recieve the reward, we were paid with a lot of platinum coins for each (yes, level 3 guys getting paid in platinum, it was a one shot after all).

Mind you, the rouge dragged along the npc all the way with him, and actually took her to his home, and said that she "lives with him now", nothing of this was consulted with the DM, he just made it up, but the DM didn't care because the one shot was basically over, by that point it started to become uncomfortable but we already finished, so our DM saw no point in confronting him.

After finishing our barbarian player had to go home because it was getting late, we were playing on bard's player house, and the rest of us decided to stay a while longer for roleplay since we liked a lot how the game was.

We all went shopping for our own things, even if it was a one shot we wanted to indulge in the "having too much money" Thing, since i was a monk that primarily attacked unarmed bacuse I thought it was cool, i actually couldnt buy anything side from items like potions because it wouldn't go along with how i wanted to play my character.

So i asked the DM what could i buy, he said that maybe i could buy books with battle techniques, and i liked the idea, basically meaning i could buy battle master maneuvers with a smaller die to try and balance it, at that time i didnt know that those mneuvers where a fighter subclass thing, this will be important for later.

Our bard went shopping for normal stuff, and rouge went to comission a special weapon from the npc that gave us the quest since he was an artificer, and an homunculus because he wanted a pet, that weapon will be important later too.

With that our first session ended, and we could already see how many of the components of the horror story would start

This is only the first part of everything, and maybe i will continue with the rest of the atory later, after all a lot happened since then, the rouge really starts getting freaking with time, and this was just our first session, i'm not used to writting for reddit, but i'll do my best to put everything i can remember.

Note: i asked the DM about what he thought about that time, and he revealed some interesting info, for starters, rouge came to him with an actual vampire boss stat block from a random book, not a character sheet, a stat block, and the DM also told me that initially he didnt day anything to rouge because he didnt want to stop the session, and hoped that if he indulged rouge he would just ease up and stop being so cringy, that will be important for later too.

This might not be a big horror story; hell, I might be the wrong one here, we'll see.

Also, obligatory: I'm not a native English speaker, so please, forgive me for any mistakes.

A couple years back a friend of mine had an idea for a discussion panel at a local fantasy convention, it was called "A coven of DMs" or something like that. The basic idea was to gather people who DM or have some interest in that and share tips, stories, etc. Since I've had my fair share of experience on that side of the table, I've been invited to co-host.

We've prepared a few discussion prompts: weaving in the characters' backstories into the plot, how to deal with trolling, etc. It was mostly a freeform thing, where we'd share our experiences first, invite the audience to do the same, we'd talk about it for a bit, once everyone was satisfied we'd move on. The whole thing was going really smoothly and honestly was a blast, until about midway through, when it was time for a prompt called "How do we manage to keep the PCs on the right track in the plot without railroading them?"

A few points that I honestly don't remember now were made, again, a nice back and forth between us and the audience, ideas flowing nicely, until one of us said that sometimes, if we felt like the players were about to miss something very important for the plot, we'd move the thing around the space to make sure that they will come across it. (If it's unclear what I'm talking about - let's say that the players are exploring a basement. There are a few corridors they can go down, but the whole place is creepy and they don't want to see the whole thing, so they'll only explore one of them. In that case, we'd move the Very Important Item so that it's down that corridor, not the other one. That way everyone's happy - the PCs aren't walking around aimlessly and we can move the story forward, that's the gist of it.)

One dude took a huge offense with this line of thinking. What ensued was a fairly amusing exchange, which I'll try to paraphrase here:

Dude: "Well, you can't do that! It makes the story linear. It's railroading. If I found out about it, I'd really dislike it."

Us: "But that's the whole point. You wouldn't find out about it unless you were looking in the GM's notes"

Dude: "Well I'd find out about it!"

Us: "How exactly?"

Dude: "I just know these things! I have my experience! I'd leave the table that did this. You can't force the characters in any way, it's railroading."

Us: "So if the characters wanted to ignore the plot altogether, you'd be fine with that?"

Dude: "Yes, we're there to provide the world for the PCs and anything beyond that is railroading. You shouldn't force the players to do anything."

We agreed to disagree and move on. Some time later, when we were talking about one of the last topics we wanted to touch upon, the dude got up, said "If you want to force characters to do something, WRITE A FUCKING BOOK." and left. It was completely disconnected from the topic at hand. What ensued was a few seconds of silence followed by "well, anyway". We wrapped the whole thing up without any further incidents.

From time to time I still wonder what this dude's deal was. We were reminiscing about it yesterday and thought it's funny and amusing enough to share. Dunno if we were in the wrong at the end of it, but honestly, I don't really care.

I feel like my DM just punished me/my character because she (my character) didn't align with how the DM wanted to end the campaign.

So, we've been playing this campaign for a literal year and it just ended today ! Long story short, we were supposed to help an angel kill some vampires for the angel's redemption or something. The angel said "fuck off" after the death of the first vampire and was forced to kill the second one. The last one was let alive and the angel flew away.

My character developed an extreme hatred for vampires and forced the killing of the second one. At that time I felt like it was more of the DM's will to save the vampires than the angel and it was confirmed after the last one.

The thing is, all the party members wanted to let the vampires alive except mine to the point where I was forced to choose between fighting the entire party + the angel + the last vampire (the literal final boss) ALONE or agreeing with the party. For my character it was absolutely impossible to let the vampire live but I know how bad PvP is for everyone. Thankfully, I came up with a plan to leave the room and theoreticly take revenge after the end of the campaign.

It was just a plan, nothing to be sure of, everyone could say "well if you do that I'll do that" (which happened) but it was all theoretical as it was after the end of the campaign. I even said multiple times "it's better not to have answers on how this plan goes" to avoid PvP and insatifaction at all costs.

Then, at the epilog, the DM showed the tomb of the first dead vampire with all the players (except me) and the last vampire gathered around to say goodbye one last time, very emotional moment. After that, she (DM) displayed my character alone in a cell.

(I skipped a lot, tldr; we were in an angelic trial for letting the angel fly away. I accepted an unfair deal just to leave the trial with the intent to not do anything about it but the angel judge or something found out)

Back to the cell, it was a magical cell where those inside can't die (even from aging) and can't be killed. I was kind of a little frustrated that my character ends up in a cell but ok. "Lmao what if I punch the wall for like 10,000 years, it'll eventually collapse". The DM immediately said that the walls repair themselves every day. "Hum ok, knowing my character she will piss off the guard so bad lol" DM says there's no guard, only someone that comes sometimes to tell some bad news to my character. "What ?"

At this point I laughed it off but man, my character isn't just imprisoned, she's litterally tortured for eternity. Worst thing is, I specifically said 3 DAYS BEFORE THAT, that it would be better not to know how it ends for my character.

Damn man, I know it's just a DnD character but I really feel bad for what's happening to her and all that because she disagrees with the DM ?

Anyway... This is my first time here, I think I just needed to complain but thanks for reading this

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.

Recently put out a couple ads for a co-st for a VtM game. Not having much luck. But one guy did contact me and almost immediately started asking questions related to GNS theory from back in the early 2000's.

Is this shit making a comeback? I thought we'd largely moved on as a hobby from this sort of thing? Are people digging it back up from the ashes of the Forge, or did i find a not-so wonderful unicorn in the wild?

Sorry for the long story.

For context, I am DM for a long term campaign of D&D 5e. I also earn a little money on the side running games for the local Library. I also run intro sessions for my friends bookshop events he runs a few times a year. I am no Matt Mercer but I like to think I am a fairly experienced DM.

At the last event my friend ran, a guy approached him and asked if he could DM for one of the events. My friend said "well I don't know you so how about you DM for my regular group one day and we can see how you do there". He agreed and we started looking for a day he could run a oneshot for us.

So given we have had a few members of the team leave recently and I am taking a long trip out of the country for a few weeks. We decided to let him run a session the other day.

Firstly, I want to say, the world building this guy did was awesome, lots of lore and history.... but things got a bit rough when for a three hour one shot... he gave us a pretty open ended prompt. The prompt suggests we will be exploring Islands from a ship and with him allowing early firearms. I built a Level 4 fighter with a musket, going for a real pirate vibe.

The session begins with us arriving on an Island and thus... the railroading began. I'm pretty sure we could have gone anywhere and the 8 Plot critical NPCs would still have found us. We'd still have ended up at the local village in the trees. With the friendly local girl welcoming us and then saying she had to run an errand that night so we should go to bed and she would see us in the morning.

I literally narrated my character going to sleep. The DM tells me a few hours later I am nervously waiting by the window to see this person return (Even though... I am asleep), Just as she gets home, we spot something going towards her home. The party rushes to help, arrives takes 18 Psychic damage and is frozen in fear as the murderer flees.

When I can move I set off in pursuit.
DM "It's fleeing through the trees"
Me "Ok I want to try and dash through the trees and swing from the branches after them"
DM "Make acrobatics"
Me "that's 19 + 6, 25"
DM "You are chasing after them but they are gaining distance and you notice they are heading towards the ground"
Me "I follow them"
DM "you need to take the vine lift"
Me "I'm climbing through the trees..."
DM"yes but they went down"
Me "I want to climb down"
DM "take the lift"
Me "I want to follow them down through the trees"
DM "Roll perception"
Me "uhhh ok 2"
DM "you don't see how they got down"
Me "I don't want to follow the exact route, I want to climb down a tree"
DM "take the lift"

So, I realized later, The DM needed the killer to escape so they were apparently flying... why them flying stopped me climbing a tree I'm still unsure.

We are then encouraged to take a short rest... right after a murder and when the victims father is promising to go to war in retaliation.

After a rest we didn't want to take, Our party sets out to solve the murder, and we are told, we should investigate the 8 important NPCs we met before (I barely remember any of them because we met them all rapidly one after the other). So we visit a priest he seems nice enough but suddenly a guard captain starts to shout at us to get away from the priest or she will have her men kill us and then gives us 5 minutes to leave. None of us get to roll anything to try and calm her down... because we aren't supposed to be speaking to the priest yet so the DM needs the angry captain to scare us away.

Then we chase down someone who might have witnessed something important over some moving cliffs (because of course we have moving cliffs). These cliffs require us to make two perception checks (felt like a DC 14) and two athletics / acrobatics checks (DC seems to depend on how well the perception went). Fail one acrobatics check and you fall from the cliffs taking 4d6 damage. (Potentially 40% of my health pool and I'm already down 3 hit dice from the random psychic damage earlier). I try using my rope to to tie myself off. (As a DM I love it when players do this, if you do something like that in my game, I might give advantage on the checks or reduce the DC / Damage you get for a fail) What does it get me? You can climb up from the rocks when you fall rather than being washed out to sea... so either this was a lethal trap or nothing I do can make any difference here.

The Druid solves the puzzle by wild shaping into a giant spider and I can see the DM hates this, he wants the EXACT wording of Spider climb to work out if he can force him to do the same challenge but he can't, when the druid tries to leave behind a trail of web to help us climb... it gets washed away by the rain on a random nature check.

After this I was pretty checked out, we spoke to a whole bunch of NPCs and get sent across the island. One of the NPCs is a horrible Incel character, which personally I wouldn't put in a fantasy setting but ehh whatever.

By the three hour mark we have just solved a puzzle, a wrong move on the puzzle causes 3D6 Psychic damage which causes my character to go down... I haven't been in combat, I haven't really done anything but get slapped by a murderers psychic BS, fall off some cliffs, and get zapped by a puzzle where no checks we make offer any help. So at this point given it's been 3 hours, me and another player have work in the morning and most of our sessions last 3 ish hours a couple of us call it and say "we have to go because of work" The game kind of ended there. I got some feedback from my players though, none of them felt like it was a particularly good session. We were just along for the ride in a story this guy wanted to tell. Unsurprisingly he isn't being invited to DM at the bookshop events.

tl:dr Guy asks to DM for my friends bookshop events. Does a trial run with our regular group and railroads us all through his murder mystery, where none of the choices we make do or change anything in the story.

I'm in a dungeons and dragons campaign with a few people I just recently met, one of these new friends just so happens to be in a romantic relationship and we got to talking about our respective partners. He sounded like a swell guy, lots of experience under his belt, has dmed for people before, played even more than I have, so I ask her if he would be interested, to which he says yes. He joins after I ask our dungeon master and he agrees to have him join, wonderful news!

We talk and he says he plans to play a pirate, morally grey, looks out for herself, that kind of thing. I don't know much about her since I'm only a player, but she doesn't seem too terrible so I don't raise any questions. The first thing she does upon coming into port at Sharn is pillage several establishments, even dismembering and kidnapping a woman running a shop because the dungeon master, not the character, accidentally said sir instead of ma'am. He phrases it as if he's doing the right thing by taking her after cutting her arm off, saying "(Character name) wouldn't just leave her to die, she's going to be a part of the crew." We also have not made a single roll yet, not to determine how much she can rob, or if the guards notice her, or if any of the many experienced sailors stand up to stop her and her crew from robbing their alehouses of choice.

On top of this, any rolls he does make are pristine, in one session, he landed 4 crits and did not roll below 12 a single time, and once "misread" the dc for another player to escape his grapple, saying it was an 18 instead of a 14. Keep in mind he is more experienced than both me and our dungeon master. By the end of the session he has robbed our favorite barkeep twice, attacked my player character who was only trying to stop her from stealing (knocking me out with a crit) and attempted to take my unconscious character back to her ship, made practically every player character hate her, with the exclusion of his girlfriend's who only likes her because she is "interesting", and somehow robbed and attacked several people with absolutely no consequences.

Am I the asshole for already regretting extending my invitation?

TL:DR; New player steals, assaults, and kidnaps on several occasions, including a player character, makes suspicious dice rolls, and manages to draw the ire of basically the entire party in one session. Not mentioned in the main text but he also makes almost the entire session about his character.

Pretty short and mild horror story, all things considered, but I'll be damned if it didn't make me confused to high hell.

Around a year ago, I (a minor) had a pal (also a minor) who played TTRPGs and did systemless 1x1 text RP, while I only did text RP. They wanted to get me into TTRPGs, so they invited me to a PBP game of around 4 people (excluding the GM) to ease me into roleplaying games. I was immediately down, especially because of the system, which was CAIN (A grimdarkish system based on Chainsaw Man, Jujutsu Kaisen, and other things)

I join and introduce myself, mentioning the fact that I'm a minor. Everyone says hi and I go scour the Discord server to read everyone else's intros, where I notice everyone else is an adult (18-25). I don't think too much about this, thinking my friend knows who to trust and who not to, so I talk to everyone they all seem chill and nice. The GM explains the setting and rules (nothing mentioning NSFW, iirc) and then we get to character creation.

I made a nerdy and awkward 15YO Binder (exorcists who can control the cursed spirits of the setting) with an intense passion for horror and the military. Everyone else's characters don't really matter except for our main problem player, the oldest of the group, who played a 30 something year old "femme fatale" she said was heavily inspired by Makima from CSM.

In the RP we did like two mini missions before the incident that I enjoyed a lot, but now looking back on it there were a ton of weird shit I ignored some being
- MPP always describing how tight her clothes were
- MPP would describe how her hips swayed every once and a while
- Another player would constantly talk about how cute my Binder was
Then the incident happened. We were investigating a Sin who was destroying and haunting a small town, which caused MPP and me to investigate where the Sin had recently run off from. The next post I see after mine is, in short her PC
- Taking her shirt off in front of my PC
- Pushing mine to the ground
- Straddling my PC
I immediately asked if this was a joke or something to which all I get in response from her is a "?" and when the GM goes online I tell him about this and they say "It's RP just resist in character if you're feeling uncomfortable." To this, I immediately tell my pal who keeps on making shitty excuses for them and while I'm dming my "pal" MPP responds again with, "Did I get too naughty too fast for you?" After that I blocked everyone involved and just left the server.

To this day, I am just confused on what the thought process behind everyone here was, and glad everyone didn't ruin RP or RPGs for me

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.

Hi guys,

Just want to rant from one of my latest league-like DnD community session.

As mentioned, it's one-shot for league discord, which I cannot choose players, or none of them are my friends. I just have a feeling to run a game and then I posted.

5 of them joined.

The quest is above investigate the missing scout army beyond the walls in the Dwarven town. Turned out, the scout has been wiped out by the Wight (Just like White Walker from GoT)

The mission went as expected, they fought the WW and then returned to the town, reporting news to the authority and gathered at the Tavern before session ends.

Thing is, at the Tavern there was an old grammy dwarf npc, owner of the tavern.

She is kind, funny, serve cold stew in a snowy town.

I described she scratches her butt while mixing stew. Which most of the players enjoyed, laughed, and found this character so vivid and real.

End of the session, one player (F) has told me it was disgusting ... the butt scratching thing while cooking...

I asked is it her character feeling that or the player ?

She said she does, not the character.

I try to said that it's just this NPC's quirk, she is an old grammy in a snowy dwarven town. And in this medieval setting, they are townfolks.

She said that if this restaurant is in real life, she wouldn't eat in. Which I said 'okay, I will get that as a feedback and sorry for that'

Girl, do you expect this townfolk to use alcohol spray, wearing mask while cooking ?

Then she still insist that it's disgusting, she wanna puke. I said sorry again.

I didn't care much because they are none of my friends, and also we would not likely to play together again. Other players said my session was good and they are having fun, nothing to complain about.

I understand that people has sensitive topics, but man, you guys were fighting walking corpses, blood splattering on your faces and body, and now you are not okay with a grandma scratching butt while mixing stew ???

I always avoid sensititve topics in my session, like Sexual Harrassment, Child Abuse and ask about phobias everytime.

But man, do I supposed to ask if someone is not okay with a grammy scracthing her own butts ?

Turned out, I quitted running for community and league from now.

I didnt'get offended though, just tired of dealing with non-sesnse shits.

Thanks for reading.

A few years ago I have applied to join an online 5e campaign through discord.

Now I should explain that at that point I did not want to play with any homebrew, as while I knew the rules quite well, I was still figuring out how they all interacted and did not want my learning process messed with by unbalanced homebrew features. I know by now 5e is broken as hell, but oh well, you live and you learn.

Anyway, during the interviews I've asked the GM about their stance on homebrew. He admitted that he was a new player himself, this being the first full campaign he's running, so he won't include any homebrew features or statblocks. I was quite glad for that, and I have mentioned that I knew the rules enough to quote them, or at least find them quickly, so I could help with any ambiguity. GM said he'd take me up on that, but it might not be necessary since his friend, who's been playing for years, is gonna be a player. We'll call this friend Sal.

The party convinced the GM that session 0 was a good idea, despite Sal claiming it wasn't necessary. We went over the basic rules, discussed character concepts, and went over veils and lines. So far so good.

My character ended up being an Artificer, who secretly worked with the rival dwarven kingdom as a spy (all discussed with GM, some genuinely cool plans in the works). Two other players went with a Paladin and Warlock. Sal went with a Trickster Rogue.

Session 1 rolls around. Our level 3 characters are called by the king himself. Character introduction time - everything goes smoothly until Sal's character shows up. It's a child slime girl. This was before Plasmoids were introduced. I'm kinda miffed about the homebrew, but decide to pursue it after session. Didn't even clock the red flag at that point.

We were given a task of destroying a bandit camp, as they might be a problem and there's not enough troops since the kingdom is at war.

We go to a desert region, and indeed there's a bunch of tents and some bandits hanging about. Sal gets an Idea™ - He could have Rogue cast Floating Disk, scoop up 500 pounds of sand, then drop it on the leaders tent from a large height, killing them instantly.

I countered that this wasn't remotely how the spell works and the sand would spill out anyway (I later calculated they would in fact be able to fit most of the 500 pounds (I think I still have the math somewhere, lol), but everyting else stands). We could pile the sand on the disk manually (though the duration of the spell might put it under time pressure), but dropping it on someone would be an issue. GM agreed, and, to their credit, even suggested we could make it an party thing where everyone pitches in to dig the sand and put it in some sort of container on the disk. Then, I suggest I can craft a box and that we can make a makeshift sandstorm by dropping it from a cliff nearby with a Gust of Wind. We were all excited to actually try this... well, except Sal. He decided that this wasn't "cool" enough and just went ahead alone to sneak into the camp. Funnily enough, Warlock had Floating Disk prepared as well, through Book of Ancient Secrets, so the rest of us went ahead with the plan anyway and managed to cause a good distraction. Rogue then steals some evidence and assassinates a couple bandits in their sleep, while the rest of the party cleans up the other enemies.

Eventually session ends, and the GM asks for reviews and opinions on what to improve. Sal says everything except knowing the rules was great, and that knowing the rules will come with experience. The rest of the party agrees. I have some words about allowing the homebrew race, but GM assured me that they've checked and it's fine.

Session 2 goes pretty well until the last 15 minutes, even if Sal finagled Prestidigitation to create grenades and was generally a nuisance. But that 15 minutes, hoo boy.

We come back to the king, handing in the second quest. Court wizard is there as well. Rogue demands we get a bigger reward, fails spectacularly, accidentally insults the king. The king orders the wizard to get rid of her - the wizard grabs her with telekinesis, hangs her upside down, then yeets her through the door. Rest of the party has a bit of a laugh and apologizes for her, managing to have her keep her cut.

Night rolls around. My character, being a spy, sets up an Alarm spell in the hallway, just in case someone would enter and overhear the report they're making. Since we're hiding this from the party, I say I'm tinkering with my door before we go to sleep and pm the GM what I'm doing.

Sal, stewing with indignation from earlier, decides to have some revenge. He says Rogue "splits off 1 hp" and goes to sneak in to the court wizard's chambers. I'm confused as to what this means, but don't interrupt. As she goes, she passes through the area of my Alarm, which GM reveals I cast earlier. Not knowing what's happening in character, I try to listen in on what's in the corridor. I hear Rogue grumbling about killing the wizard. I let her pass, then spam Message to the Wizard that the Rogue is coming. Sal is, of course, pissed, but can't really do anything about it.

As Rogue opens the door the wizard isn't surprised, as my Message finally goes through - but then the nastiest bit of homebrew I've seen comes up.

Sal wins initiative and then has Rogue "split".

Apparently the race has a homebrew ability, where the character can split into multiple copies with a portion of the max hp, but otherwise full class abilities.

The Rogue splits into 30 1 hp copies and 29 sneak attacks kill the shit out of the wizard. Despite being high level, the wizard (without Mage Armor) dies before he can take an action. Sal tries to smugly describe how his Rogue goes back unnoticed - but of course if you easily killed a wizard, you haven't killed the wizard. A Clone appears and angrily fireballs the tiny copies who don't have Evasion yet. The wizard, knowing the slime race's ability, casts Find Creature to make sure the Rogue is dealt with, and finds the one copy hiding in the room. Dimension Doors in, then Feebleminds the Rogue.

Session ends there. Sal is pissed about it, and GM is on the edge of reverting what happened, but stands firm and says there's consequences. Everyone (except Sal) notes the racial ability is way too overpowered. GM agrees, and says that they're gonna work on it. Paladin suggests the changes could be due to the lasting effects of the Feeblemind, which GM likes.

Session 3 starts with another quest. Rogue is lobotomized, but deemed to be an effective enough fighter that she can come with regardless. The party would get permission to sic her on people and the responsibility to take care of her. My Artificer and the Warlock don't want to deal with it, but the Paladin, being the mom friend, offers to keep the child in check.

"Surprisingly" enough, with the Rogue unable to engage in most shenanigans, the session went by quite well. After the first couple unsuccessful ideas, Sal barely did any roleplay and only really engaged in combat. After the session, Sal says he (understandably) don't want to play with that character anymore and would like to switch. GM agrees and says they shouldn't have kept the character in play as it was. I chime in that perhaps he shouldn't play a homebrew race this time, to which everyone (except Sal) wholeheartedly agrees.

With high hopes, we start Session 4. The court wizard expresses interest in experimenting on the rare slime race, and the king agrees, since they were left alive at the whim of the wizard anyway - thus getting rid of the Rogue.

Then, the new character gets introduced. (Spoiler for mild NSFW)
>!I would describe how it went, but suffice it to say I don't want to write and post descriptions of kinky bdsm Moon Druid + king petplay. GM describes it with a straight face and Sal gets really into it. Druid has a horny voice the entire time. The rest of the party is heavily weirded out, and eventually Paladin and Warlock bring up session 0 and manage to convince the GM to skip forward to us going on the quest for today. Session happens, but Sal keeps inserting how 'submissive' the character is, and how she 'listens and obeys' the more experienced party, still maintaining that voice.!<

There's no after-session talk, as me, Paladin and Warlock make excuses and dip out.

In pms I explain to the GM in no uncertain terms that I'm not gonna be playing if Sal keeps being like this. GM agrees to talk to them. I drive up the courage to message Sal directly, though all my concerns are dismissed with the classic mix of "That's what my character would do" and "It's just how I play, deal with it"

A couple days before session I try to follow up with the GM, though there's no reply.

Session 5.. doesn't happen. Both Paladin and Warlock say they can't make it and it gets postponed. GM dodges questions about Sal. Sal is verbally annoyed there's no session.

Next week the GM officially announces in a dry message that he's cancelling the campaign.

Looking back, I kind of regret not following up with Paladin and Warlock, since they were genuinely nice people.
I wish GM the best. It really did seem he had great potential. I hope he ended up running another campaign, just without Sal this time.

Ich spiele jetzt seit etwa 3 Jahren VTM mit einer Gruppe, die aus meinem DM (einem wirklich engen Freund), Jenna (seiner Frau) und Vincent (meinem besten Freund) besteht. Im Laufe der Zeit kamen ein paar Spieler dazu, einer konnte wegen Arbeit keine Zeit mehr finden, zwei waren Leute, die noch nie ein TTRPG gespielt hatten und es ausprobieren wollten, aber Vampir war nicht wirklich etwas für sie, und der letzte passte nicht wirklich in die Gruppe, war aber sehr nett.

Vor einem Monat fragte uns der DM, ob wir damit einverstanden wären, zwei neue Spieler aufzunehmen. Wir waren alle einverstanden, aber nachdem vier Leute kamen und gingen, schien es ein wenig albern. Also beschlossen wir, dass unsere Gruppe für einen Auftrag in eine andere Stadt fährt und wir uns dort treffen würden. Die Spieler waren Toby (ein Freund des DM) und Susan (Tobys neue Freundin).

In der ersten Sitzung schien alles in Ordnung zu sein. Wir haben viel herumgealbert und nicht viel Fortschritt gemacht, aber das war in Ordnung.

Während der zweiten Sitzung wurde es ein wenig seltsam. Wir trafen eine weibliche Toreadorin, die ein wenig mit Jennas Charakter flirtete, und Susan wurde plötzlich viel gemeiner zur Toreadorin (davor war sie wirklich nett zu ihr). Ich dachte mir nichts dabei, nur ihre Witze darüber, dass Jennas Charakter das "ertragen" müsse, wurden ein wenig viel, weil das im Grunde alles war, worüber sie für den Rest der Sitzung sprach.

In der nächsten Sitzung eskalierte die Situation.

Mein Charakter ist bi. Das war kein großes Ding in der Story, er hatte einfach kein Problem damit, welches Geschlecht seine Partner hatten.

Also beginnen wir die Sitzung und alles war wieder normal, nur ein Witz hier und da von Susan über die Begegnung mit der Toreadorin. Wir spielen normal und mein Charakter war ein wenig flirtend mit dem Charakter meines besten Freundes. Das haben wir schon oft gemacht und es ist kein Problem für ihn. Er flirtet sogar zurück.

Ich bekam komische Blicke von Susan. Ich dachte, das war's, aber Gott, ich lag falsch. Sie interagierte nicht mehr mit meinem Charakter, außer ein paar Sticheleien gegen ihn. Nach der Sitzung setzen wir uns normalerweise hin und reden ein paar Minuten. Das haben wir auch getan, aber als ich mit ihr sprach, bekam ich nur Ein-Wort-Antworten (wenn ich Glück hatte, dass sie überhaupt antwortete).

Die letzte Sitzung begannen wir eher normal. Wir fanden den Typen, für den wir da waren, und begannen, ihn zu bekämpfen. Als es vorbei war, war die Sonne fast aufgegangen, also eilten wir zu unserem Versteck. Alle waren drinnen, außer mir und Susan. Sie rannte zur Tür und schlug sie vor mir zu. Wir waren alle ein wenig perplex. Wir fragten OOC, worum es ging, und sie sagte nur, und ich zitiere: "Was? Er ist nur einer von diesen widerlichen Schwuchteln".

Das war für mich der Tropfen, der das Fass zum Überlaufen brachte. Ich bin kein Mitglied der LGBTQ-Community, aber unser DM ist bi und er hatte in der Vergangenheit viele Probleme mit Bigotterie.

Nach einem langen Gespräch, das darin gipfelte, dass sie mich anschrie, dass sie meine schwule Propaganda nicht will, dass ich meinen besten Freund unbehaglich mache, wenn mein Charakter mit ihm flirtet, und andere dumme Sachen, warf sie unsere Sachen herum und ging.

Also sitzen wir (einschließlich ihres Freundes) fassungslos da. Er entschuldigt sich mehrmals, aber wir sagten ihm, dass es nicht seine Schuld sei.

Schnitt zu heute. Er ist jetzt ein fester Bestandteil unserer Gruppe und hat sich von Susan getrennt.

Ich glaube, das war die schlimmste Erfahrung, die ich in einem TTRPG gemacht habe, und ich hätte nie gedacht, dass ich als heterosexueller Typ Ziel von Homophobie werde. Ich glaube, ich habe einen kleinen Einblick bekommen, was Mitglieder der LGBTQ-Community jeden einzelnen Tag ertragen müssen, und ich bin überhaupt nicht neidisch.

-Update- We just found out that she rants on her Facebook (why is it always Facebook) about how the queers stole her boyfriend, that I made him gay and that's the reason he left her... to be with me... a straight guy...

I was speechless. About the fact that all of a sudden not just my character is gay but I am too? And how many people were on her side (well they don't know the real story but still), all the homophobic stuff they wrote.

Man life was easier when I was straight. I thought I still am but apparently she knows more.

P.s. I don't care that she tells people that I'm gay I couldn't care less if some bigots on the Internet think that and it's nothing bad to be gay. I'm. Just. Not

If the post shows up in German you have to translate it. I wrote it in English but now all of a sudden it's in German for a lot of people including myself.

This was around a year ago, but I've been getting back into dnd so I've been thinking about it a lot and want to vent. Basically, I was in a group with my husband, BIL, my friend and her boyfriend. Her boyfriend was the dm. I had the most dnd experience with a few years of playing, the next was the boyfriend with a few sessions, the other three had never played. I'm pregnant for most of the following.

It was a fun game for the most part, but some small stuff sucked. Like my friend had a storyline involving an evil patron/god thing, but my character (a paladin who grew up in a temple in Waterdeep, in a world that had train travel) asked her about her god during one session. She said my character wouldn't know who it was, and when I pressed I got accused of metagaming bc my character was normally naive. But I wasn't accusing her of lying, just saying I thought I probably would know it since I was from a major metropolis. Even being naive, I think it'd be fair for my character to be suspicious of her dodging the question, but that wasn't how I played it which made it even more upsetting to be shut down. My character had low wisdom but was the only one educated and from a major metropolis, but anytime she acted educated and from a major metropolis I was accused of being ooc since I shouldn't be smarter than the other characters. I didn't even have low intelligence T_T.

Then the DM got bored with the module we were playing and hardcore railroaded us into a homebrew campaign. A character gave us an offer to take a ship to another continent to join a war against non-humanish (humans, elves, dwarves etc) species. In exchange we'd be paid very handsomely. I was playing a harengon who's main motivation was spreading charity and light to nearby villages. Like I was literally constantly broke bc all I did was give my money away to anyone who asked. And the DM was genuinely surprised my character didn't want to take that task.

Me: You're hiring me to fight a war against my own people?

DM: For lots of money!

Me: Idrc about money though.

DM: Well no one says you *have to* fight on the side of the humanoids.

Me: Isn't that what you're saying, person hiring me to fight on the side of the humanoids?

DM: Well... I guess....

So anyway my character splits from the group, and I make a new character. The DM has me be a leader in this militia on the side of the non-humans who for some reason are in charge of the ship the party is on. We were supposed to be spies, which doesn't really make sense since we were all the wrong species, but whatever. I asked him multiple times for backstory and details on this war and the militia, but he never really sent any. So anytime details came up in roleplay I'd look at him and he'd shrug and kind of fudge an answer. Looking back I get the sense he wanted me to build that stuff out, but that wasn't communicated.

We run into scheduling conflicts with my BIL, so I DM a one shot that turns into a two shot with a friend of my friend subbing in. The story itself was fun but a lot of DMing with that party sucked. It sucks because the players get so competitive against me, like arguing every ruling and they acted so entitled whenever they rolled high, not even nat 20s they treated 18s like the key to the universe, and it's a simple dungeon dive but they didn't trust anything that happens and really overthink the puzzles. Like they find a potion on a skeleton, and they assume that since it hasn't been taken already it must be bad and the wizard fails her arcana check which was only a dc10. They used the potion (I believe it was haste) on an enemy and got upset with ME that it backfired bc they felt like the wizard should have just known what it was without rolling for it. They then argued that she didn't roll *that* bad and should have passed the check. (My husband wanted to defend me but didn't feel comfortable enough with his dnd knowledge to do so). But afterwards everyone said they had fun and my friends friend said it was the best game she'd played.

We go back to the main campaign as normal, then my BIL tells me they were planning a new group without my husband and I with the reasoning that we'd be out once the baby was born. I'd already felt my friend pulling away a bit and had messaged her asking if everything was okay and telling her if she didn't want to be friends anymore I'd prefer she just tell me (a lot gentler than that, it was a couple paragraphs). She said she valued my friendship and was just dealing with some personal stuff. I ask them about the new group in person and they said they assumed we'd be out for a while after the baby was born, and I told them we'd only planned to be out a couple weeks because my sister lived in the same apartment complex and could babysit for a couple hours. They don't really respond to this.

As somewhat expected at this point, they dropped us after I gave birth. I wished my friend a happy birthday when it passed, she responded saying we should hang out, I responded, then she left me on read. This really hurt because I don't have a lot of friends in the area and my birth was super traumatic. To this day idk why they decided we shouldn't be friends. I haven't heard from them since, and the more I think about it the more I just wish them the absolute worst. I wish I could say I'm not bitter, but I am. I was her friend for about two years at that point and I think I deserved an explanation, let alone freshly postpartum.

Há alguns meses, eu joguei uma oneshot de Ordem Paranormal bem padrão: NEX 25%, patente Operador.

Quando cheguei no servidor para jogar, conversei um pouco com o mestre para saber como seria a mesa — se teria muito combate ou se seria mais focada em investigação. O mestre disse que seria mais investigativa. Com isso em mente, criei um Especialista focado em investigar, um pouco inspirado nos estereótipos de investigadores de histórias de terror.

Eu não conhecia ninguém na mesa. Havia três jogadores que já eram conhecidos do mestre (um Combatente, um Especialista e um Ocultista que era o dono do servidor) e um único jogador novato como eu (outro Ocultista). A mesa demorou para começar porque o dono do servidor chamou o mestre para conversar a sós em outra call. Nesse meio tempo, conversei um pouco com o outro Ocultista, já que nós dois éramos novos ali. Achei que seria legal nos conhecermos, até porque os outros pareciam mais fechados entre si.

Quando a sessão começou, o mestre vivia se esquecendo de mim e do outro Ocultista. Não me importei muito no início, já que a introdução era o básico das mesas de Ordem: "Vocês começam na Ordem, vão até a sala do Veríssimo e partem para a missão depois de pegar os documentos."

Já no veículo, meu personagem começou a criar teorias sobre a criatura. Porém, o Especialista do grupo começou a dizer que era meta meu personagem saber tanto sobre criaturas, já que eu só tinha treinamento em Ocultismo e não era Veterano ou Expert. Achei meio estranho, mas respeitei para não discutir, até porque o mestre não parecia se importar. Mudei minhas teorias para algo mais simples: apenas alguns cultistas que provavelmente estavam aterrorizando o local.

Quando chegamos ao local da missão — uma floresta densa e escura —, a equipe se separou. Eu, o Combatente e o Ocultista novato fomos à frente, seguindo uma trilha que eu havia encontrado. Enquanto isso, o dono do servidor e o outro Especialista foram investigar um papel que acharam no meio da floresta.

No meio da nossa investigação, o mestre deu dano em todo mundo do nada, dizendo que fomos atacados por trás (não teve nenhum tipo de teste de percepção ou algo do tipo). Achei bizarro, porque meu personagem tinha o poder Sentidos Aguçados, mas nem reclamei, já que o Ocultista novato entrou em estado de Morrendo com o dano e eu precisei salvá-lo.

Logo depois, o mestre trocou a cena. O outro Especialista também tomou dano do mesmo jeito, quase morrendo como eu, mas o dono do servidor ficou completamente intacto. Eles correram até nós e, quando se juntaram ao grupo, um combate se iniciou contra uma criatura homebrew de VD 280 (o Slenderman).

Ninguém conseguia vencer aquilo, então começamos a fugir. Na fuga, três jogadores morreram, sobra do apenas eu e o dono do servidor. Se ele falhasse em mais um teste, seria pego pela criatura, enquanto eu só precisava de um sucesso para escapar. No turno dele, em vez de tentar fugir, ele deu um tiro no meu personagem — algo que o mestre disse que eu não podia reagir. Com um tiro na perna, meu personagem entrou em Morrendo e a criatura me matou. Enquanto isso, o dono do servidor se aliou ao elemento paranormal e nos traiu completamente.

Fiquei chateado com a situação, claro. Ao final da mesa, pediram a opinião dos jogadores. Fui o primeiro a falar e disse que a sessão poderia ter tido mais investigação, já que a única coisa que investigamos foram pegadas que não deram em nada e uma folha que provavelmente era o enigma de medo. Também comentei que não era muito fã de mesas estilo slasher como aquela, mas ressaltei que era apenas minha opinião pessoal e que não precisavam levar tão a sério.

Isso incomodou profundamente o mestre e o dono do servidor. Eles disseram que eu não entendia o que era uma mesa de RPG e que só estava falando mal porque meu personagem "não tinha sido importante". Apenas respondi que eles próprios haviam pedido feedback e que, embora a mesa não tivesse sido das melhores, o mestre ainda tinha potencial.

Como resposta, só recebi xingamentos e fui expulso do servidor.

I was playing my DM's homebrew game when one of our friends showed up and joined the game as an NPC.

He was a burlesque dancer named "Atomic journey".

He described in graphic detail how he wooed and seduced the entire tavern with his exotic dancing.

He described how he interacted with each of our characters: he would tease and stroke them, removing articles of clothing, etc...

I found the whole thing slightly disturbing, and I did my best to indicate I wanted to move on from the scene: I told the DM my halfing wanted to leave the bar, but apparently I was charmed and couldn't look away.

I even tried to hide under a table, wanted to roll stealth, but it was too late. Atomic Journey grabbed me from underneath the table, smothered me in her breasts, and started sliding a silk glove between my legs.

My "friend" contacted recently to "unpack" what happenend.

I told him that -yes, I was uncomfortable with the scene because he performed sexual acts on my character when he was LITERALLY HIDING AWAY UNDER A TABLE.

He responded that I should explain the boundary to our DM so that this doesn't happen in the future. He has yet to apologize though, which I find very sad.

I feel like I shouldn't have to specify that I don't want to be sexually assaulted in our D&D game... Doesn't that go without saying????

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So I was on an rpg Discord server asking if someone was going to bring a short D&D adventure to test my new barbarian character idea.

A guy replies saying "I'm not bringing D&D, I'm bringing Troika, but your barbarian will work well".

I had never heard of Troika before. He explains me the game and apparently it's kind of a Planescape meets Hitchicker's Guide To The Galaxy thing with classic surreal British humour. I tell him my fantasy barbarian will not fit in a game where, he explained, we will roleplay as post office employees.

He insists that "you can play literally anything you want in Troika" and that he "invites players to use their old characters to explore them more".

I still feel the barbarian would be very out of place in a modern-ish setting, so I propose "you said I can play anything? REALLY anything? Can I play a non-humanoid character? I never get to do that so I'd love to take the chance. But tell me if it's awkward."

Well apparently it wasn't awkward as long as my character wasn't too big, so we brainstorm it and I eventually make a monstruous cosmic eldritch abomination. Now I strive to make characters fit the setting, so the British humour thing was that this Lovecraftian horror was...... working as an underpaid post office new hire. The DM is very excited about it and keeps saying how awesome this character is. The only negative (sexist) comment he makes is "if that creature look like that, does it have to be female? it should be an it". But I say part of the joke is that and it'll be more amusing if that monster is female. But yeah he seemed very excited about her.

-----

That was the premise. Now on the game session with two other players.

The DM tells our characters to introduce ourselves and says "everyone here is using a premade character, except for [calls my name] who made her very custom idea". That made me feel immediately awkward, because it felt as if I had been a jerk who didn't want to play premade characters, while the truth was that the DM pitched it to me as "play what you want! bring your old characters!" and I had no idea the other players would play with quick premade sheets.

The session begins well tho. Everyone is good, it moves smoothly, we're all having fun. The other two players were a steampunk robot and a man made of jelly. Both humanoid, tho, and I realize I'm the only non-humanoid shaped sentient being. No big deal however and my character seems to fit in really well.

Not even a hour into the session, we reach a gate that seems to have a defense system if you go through it. I propose to fly over the gate since my character can fly. Another player ignores it and steps past the gate: nothing happens except an automated welcome message. My character, then, decides to fly over the gate: it immediately gets electrocuted by a defense system, I fail the roll, and I take 3/4 OF MY HEALTH as damage.

As my character falls to the ground wounded, the robot player offers me lantern oil to heal myself. Now my character being an alien, she is clueless about this world just like the robot is clueless about organic creatures (which is why he offered me the oil to heal). But I pause the situation by loudly making my character ask "Are you sure I should try it?". Giving a last chance to avoid the damage. But the robot insists. My character takes damage (not even a dice roll required) and I end up at 1 single health point. I try to attack the player but I use a non-damaging attack (mind control). The idea was to mind control him into telling me why he hurt me, then the robot would explain why, I realize he meant no harm, and that's it. But of course once the DM sees I made a great roll, he says that "mind control is an ability not an attack so acshually the result must be lower not higher". Ok then, so I fail the attack.

The players apparently felt bad about the whole situation so they decided the idea was to find something to heal me. I don't want the story to derail from the main quest because my character is dying, so my character insists she'll be ok.

As we proceed, we enter a dark room. The two other players, both full health, decide to search in the messy room. Me, having only one health point, tell the DM that I will stand still and be on the lookout for any danger.

The DM makes the two players roll to see if they hit a trap. One of them avoids it. The other gets hit by it.

And that's when the DM says to me....

"Actually. I think you should roll to avoid the trap, too".

Why? I was specifically not doing anything to avoid traps.

But sure, why not, I understood the DM's game now, so I roll. Oh, turns out it's not the other player who took the damage, it's me, the one who was away making sure not to get killed.

My character dies.

The DM immediately rolls to give me a random premade sheet. Oh wow, finally I'm a premade character just like everyone else.

I stay silent. I'm pretty pissed. He pitched me the game as "play any character you want, you can even bring your old characters from other campaigns" and NEVER, NEVER, NEVER, NEVER told me Troika is actually one of those old-school rpg where the player characters are cannon fodder. I spent time and effort to make a character I played for one single hour total, because I was NOT told this was a cannon fodder type rpg adventure.

As I stay there silent pondering if to just thank for the game and call it quits, the DM tells me I can join with my new character if I want.

I do just that.

"So your character, he is standing in the hall...."

I interrupt him.

"Yeah no, SHE is standing in the hall."

I do my entrance. I take that dumb premade shit and turn her into a memorable, quirky monkey tamer, or should I say monkey abuser.

However, after my grand entrance, I do not intervene much in the story. I pretty much act only when either the DM or another player calls me, but when I do, I'm always roleplaying well.

I do not disrupt the adventure. I don't leave. I play well.

But everyone clearly saw I was not invested anymore.

----------

Aaaaaand that's the long story of when the DM promised me a "play anything you desire" adventure while he actually did not want that. Even if my character was tailored for the game setting itself.

edit: as someone pointed out i should have labeled this a problem kid in a group, rather than the issue being the fact it's a kid

We had someone join our group, guys in their 30s and 40s, with their teenager. We try to be inclusive, so we welcomed them. But it's getting tough.

Some in v the group think the kid is on the autism spectrum so we're trying to be sensitive. But things are getting frustrating.

We kind of take turns focusing on characters, each gets a spotlight. But the kid doesn't like that and always wants to be the focus. They'll challenge rules, even when they're wrong. And I'm 90% sure they are cheating on dice rolls.

I'm not really sure what to do. I'd hope the dad would address some of this but he isn't. We're all getting frustrated but no one really wants to raise it with them.

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.