Hello all, first time posting here but I thought it would be good to join somewhere for positive stories too as well as horror stories, since there's a lot of good in the tabletop games I'm in.

Today I wanted to sing the praises of one of my players, Malynn, an Aasimaar Paladin of Sune in my Baldur's Gate 3 sequel campaign inspired by and flavored after magical girl anime including Madoka Magica, Revolutionary Girl Utena, Sailor Moon, and many others.

You hear so often about paladins playing lawful stupid or turning out to be jerks, but that is not the case with Malynn. She joined the adventuring party fresh from her small home town having heard the stories of Dame Aylin and wanting to measure up to her and perhaps one day meet her. As luck would have it, our story centers around the players allying with the daughter of Wyll Ravengard(now the Archduke of Baldur's Gate after a stint in Avernus helping Karlach).

Mal is lawful good and has grown up in a small town with mostly other Sune worshippers and Selune worshippers her entire life, she hasn't been exposed to very many situations that challenged her worldview, but she immediately gelled with the party (a dragonborn Circle of Stars Druid on a pilgrimage from her home in Kara Tur, a goblin Swords Bard who grew up in Baldur's Gate, and at the time a former problem player who would eventually be kicked, replaced by a tiefling Pact of the Archfey Warlock apprenticing as a distiller from Waterdeep).

Now, firstly, I usually try to avoid any NPCs traveling with the party like the plague because I like to leave the party a lot of freedom and choice and don't want them to feel babysat or ever risk overshadowing them, but Mal immediately adopted one NPC, a tiefling Artillerist Artificer, as a sort of little sister figure and took her under her wing, it was so cute and well roleplayed that I kind of rolled with it (luckily, it's very easy to avoid overshadowing the party and stepping on toes when the NPC is naturally awkward, really going through it, and was inadvertently assigned cursed dice lol). Meanwhile, she not only got to meet Aylin but also another prominent paladin, a redeemed Dark Urge NPC who was a tiefling paladin of Ilmater, now a good friend of Dame Aylin's family and the Ravengard family as well in the aftermath (this is set 16 years after the event of the game). She did not realize what he was when she befriended him and began to look up to him a bit.

Well, during the main quest, the party was attacked by a ghostly Slayer of Bhaal and upon defeating it, discovered the paladin of Ilmater had been fighting it previously when he met up with them in the street. It was revealed that one of the player characters, this paladin, and the NPC Mal adopted were all Bhaalspawn. This led Mal to a crisis of faith. Everything she ever heard about Bhaal and his children was that they were evil and murderous, beings of chaos and destruction who wanted to see the entire world die. But she had bonded with these people and they didn't seem like the stories said. She messaged me privately outside the game to ask if she could have a moment for her character in the next session where she could go and talk to Dame Aylin about it to reconcile these things, after all, Aylin and the redeemed Durge were good friends so there must be a reason it would be okay to pal around with Bhaalspawn.

What ended up happening was as the rest of the party trickled in for the night and prepared to start, we were able to do a short couple of minutes where she visited Moonrise Towers (now revitalized as the home of Aylin, Isobel, and Shadowheart (currently waiting for Lae'zel to return to her)) and spoke to Aylin, who had a warm heart to heart with her fellow Aasimaar and gave her a flying lesson (since Mal was much younger and hadn't learned yet, a mechanics choice to avoid unchecked flight too early, also Mal's idea thank goodness since it had slipped my mind lol). Aylin explained to her what that redeemed Durge did for her and for Shadowheart and Isobel, she explained hearing Jaheira and Minsc speak about Gorion's Ward and also guide that Durge through his own crisis, and how people have a way of surprising you. Mal left that encounter satisfied and able to work with this new knowledge of her friends while still keeping her oath and her alignment.

When the Warlock joined the party, she and Mal immediately meshed really well, balancing out eachother's alignment traits really nicely and amusingly and eventually forming a really cute relationship that all the other players and myself love. Mal always communicates in combat and collaborates with her companions on moves and strategies, even though she is often in the spotlight, she's always very aware of the quieter players and making sure to give space for their moments too, and she always sends me messages with backstory hooks and other things I can weave into the campaign. I really just can't say enough good things about how she plays and what she contributes to this campaign.

Also her interactions with Halsin on dating a chaotic gremlin of a person while being a good natured, dutiful, diplomatic sort of person have been priceless as have her attempts to help the tiefling artificer NPC get a date with a girl she likes and also reunite with her birth parents she's only just met. Oh, and she and the goblin have this fastball special type move together which they've used hilariously effectively in at least three fights.

So for all the negative stories out there about paladins, let this be a reminder of how good they can be for a party, a story, and a campaign over all when they are done well.

My group had a member at one point who had this bad habit of trying to break every game he was in. This particular player, let's call him Snuffles, tended to come over to game and immediately pull out his iPad and start playing a game on it. He tended to not pay attention if it wasn't his turn, which many of my group are guilty of from time to time, but with Snuffles it was every game.

This could be forgiven, but he'd make characters trying to exploit every loophole in every game he was in. Snuffles apparently felt the need to ruin everyone's fun in order to aggrandize his own tiny ego. Some highlights included are:

• Killing a main NPC during the first session. This was in a 2E AD&D game. One of our important quest givers was a Gandalf type character who happened to be a Drow. Whilst the NPC was leading us down a long stone staircase, Snuffles started talking to the party about how we can't trust him, and how we should take him out immediately. Before we can come to a consensus on what to do, Snuffles made a stealth attack on the NPC, cutting his hamstring in the attack. The NPC fell down the stairs and our DM decided that the fall had knocked him down to one hit point and he was unconscious and prone, to which Snuffles walked up and finished him off. We then had no idea what we were supposed to do, and the DM had to rewrite the rest of the campaign.

• Created an OP character to get away with everything. This was in the DC Universe RPG, and Snuffles decided he wanted to play John Constantine with Dr. Fates helmet. It's been a while since I've played the game, but if my memory serves, there were two forms of magic in the game, wizardry and sorcery. They worked differently, and one could do what the other couldn't. Snuffles decided Constantine would be a sorcerer, but the helmet gave him wizard powers as well. He also decided to go horny bard on every member of the party, which made everyone uncomfortable.

• Using a power wrong, rage quiting when he didn't get his way. Another DC game, this time in the DC Adventures system. Snuffles had picked the variant power set, which allowed him to do multiple power effects, but only one at a time. When he tried to do multiple effects at once, the GM told him that wasn't how the power worked. This lead to a small argument, which ended in Snuffles rage quiting and leaving the group for a while.

• DM wanted a heroic campaign, argued during character creation. I wasn't present for this one, but our DM told me about it. He was running for a different group, and Snuffles was a part of it. The DM wanted heroic characters, and mandated that all the players had to make their alignment some variation of good. Snuffles sat silent for a minute and finally asked "can we just agree on not evil?". The DM said no, as he knew that Snuffles wanted to do the typical 'chaotic neutral means I can do whatever I want and nobody can call me a villain' move. When the DM told him no, he was pouty for the entirety of the campaign.

• Wanted to run an NPC creed as a game breaking PC. I was running a Hunter: the Reckoning game that he wasn't in but wanted to join. He made a basic character for his first session because he was unfamiliar with the system. This went fine, but before the next session Snuffles told me he wanted to create a wayward creed character. In Hunter, creed is basically your class, and the wayward creed is in the GM's guide. They have the ability to control other players characters, causing them to do things they wouldn't normally do. I decided to be tactful when I told him no, giving him the truthful excuse that since the books were out of print and I couldn't get the mechanics of the creed, he couldn't play one. He told me not to worry because he'd downloaded the pdf of the book and would tell me everything he could do. Still being tactful, but knowing where he'd go with the character, I told him I'd have to get a copy of the pdf for myself before I could sign off on it. I run these games episodically, and can go for long periods without running. Fortunately between sessions, Snuffles got fired and got a new job which meant our group didn't fit his work schedule.

These were just a few of the most prominent events that I can remember with Snuffles. He did more, but I can't remember all of them. I don't game with Snuffles anymore, mostly because of his schedule change, but when he was able to come back, our group put it to a vote as to whether or not to let him come back. Needless to say, it was a landslide victory for No.

Hello, fellow adventurers. I, once again, have a bit of a horror story that came up recently. It's pretty light compared to most others on this subreddit, but still not a very pleasant experience. I just left a game I had recently joined due to some out-of-game stuff I learned that really rubbed me the wrong way and now I'm left wondering if I was just being too sensitive. I do believe I was justified with my reasoning, but I still can't help but feel like I was too sensitive about what happened that led to me leaving. I guess this is more of a vent and hoping to get some kind of confirmation about my reasonings. Sorry, but this gets long... Will put a TLDR at the end.

My story actually begins before I met the DM. Some time before, I was part of a Pokémon themed tabletop game and really excited to play. Unfortunately, we only had one session which was cut midway through due to an unexpected emergency that came up on the DM's end and every planned session afterwards kept getting canceled at the last minute if not an hour past the start time. It was very frustrating and, while I can understand life getting in the way, there's defiantly a point where you just gotta admit you need more time to schedule things out and not keep hanging your players by a thread of hope that MAYBE the game will happen only to pull the rug right beneath us. Worst yet, as I and the other players were still holding on to hope that MAYBE our next session would finally happen but also open about our frustrations with the constant cancelations, the whole server got deleted. As someone who had been anxiously wanting to play a Pokémon tabletop game ever since I found out it was a thing, this was a massive bummer for me.

This is all set up for what would happen next.

Some time after the Pokémon game was suddenly canceled, I was looking through some artwork on the DnDBeyond discord server and saw someone post maps they made for a Pokémon game they were preparing. I was genuinely impressed by the maps they made and expressed my interests in their maps. The DM and I got to talking and I told him about how a Pokémon themed game I had joined recently got canceled but was still very interested in playing one. I wasn't trying to smuggle an invite into the DM's game by any means but the topic did become relevant when the DM expressed his frustration of having players apparently dropping out of his game constantly. At first I thought this was due to bad scheduling and life stuff getting in the way, but I would later come to have a different theory. After exchanging messages a bit, the DM sent me an invite to his game and I all too happily accepted it.

While we were preparing for the game, I decided to make artwork for my character. I gave her a very simple pastel punk look consisting of a purple dress, lots of bows, and black combat boots and long fingerless gloves. While it was defiantly more on the simple side since I had never made a character with the pastel punk look before, I was pretty pleased with it and thought she looked really cool and proudly showed her to the DM for approval.

Something to note here is that both the DM and I are artist who specialize in character design and he had shown me some of his art. He's defiantly a bit more on the extra side while I'm more on the simple side for character designs, but he's still pretty good at designing characters. If I had to make one constructive critique about his art, I would say he simply needs to work on refining his art. Keep in mind that my only critique of any kind about his work was constructive and meant to help him improve without discrediting his work as it was. As an artist, I always believed in giving advice to help other artist improve their art and give them any kind of inspiration I can give to encourage their artistic passions. If I can do that, then I believe that I have achieved the greatest achievement any artist can reach: Inspiring others with my work.

However, DM did not seem to share this same belief. When I showed him my character design, he instantly began nitpicking her design and making suggestions to make her design unnecessarily extra in every aspect from her hairstyle to her dress and even her bows. He kept suggesting things that were outside my comfort zone and even things that would go against the character. He even took issue with how clean my line art was and the weight I used for the line art. So weird. He also took issue with the colors of some character designs I showed him I had made for the other Pokémon I was in. From what I saw of his designs, the colors of my character designs weren't too far of from his own, which was really weird. I just couldn't make heads of tails of his constant contradictions and double standards about my character designs and his own. The biggest offense I felt about his critique of my character design skills was how he phrased how he believed everyone should go about designing simple designed characters.

DM: If someone makes a simple design, you damn well make it a good simple design. I feel like your character would benefit greatly with a more simple, more bolder shape design rather then trying to add detail but still lacking detail TsT.

Yes, those were his exact words. Not only is it a contradictory of two very opposing design choices, it's also rather insulting to the design I made as it was like he was stating that my design wasn't good enough according to his standards. As one might imagine, that was pretty insulting to say to another artist. Especially as I am one who does NOT like discouraging others and prefers to encourage artists even when I myself am not a fan of their art for my own personal preferences in art.

This alone kinda had me on edge about DM. I'm just not a fan of artist who give such harsh critique to other artist as it just feels belittling and discrediting of the artist's work. However, I still stuck it out and things got worse.

Another thing that I found quite strange was how picky DM was about names. He did not care at all if names had any symbolic meanings even if they fit the character perfectly and strongly vetoed against more unusual names or if they were usually not used for a certain gender. Two names I had suggested for my character were Psyche and Persephone, two Greek names that I thought suited my character well. However, for whatever reason, DM decided that these names were bad names and did not like them. He didn't even like it when I suggested the nickname Percy for Persephone, claiming I couldn't use it because it was a more masculine name. Being a girl with a nickname that's more on the masculine side myself and knowing plenty of girls who do have guy names, this was pretty weird to me and I pointed this out to him. When I told him that girls are more than capable of having guy names, he said this...

DM: They're not an exception, though. That's like saying humans have 1 leg because a baby wasn't born with 1.

Me: Wha??? I'm sorry, but that makes no sense... I'm so confused...

DM: Just because some people are out of the norm doesn't make it fact.

Yes, this was his response to me pointing out that girls can have guy names. I am just as confused as the rest of you, if not more so. I can understand if he had a problem with a name being inappropriate like if it were a slur or some other inappropriate language, but I did not do such a thing and was instead being called out for giving a girl a masculine name. Just . . . what???

We got to talking about character designs and names we like to give our character and, apparently, he likes to give his characters names that suit them (while also not caring about their meaning or anything like that) and loved Japanese names. I have nothing against weeps, but some other arguments he made about the names I picked also applied to the names for some of his own characters. Double standards were in full effect about names here. It was all just so confusing and contradictory about what his standards were.

We finally got around to playing the actual game and the game itself and the players were fun. I really enjoyed it! However, the fun did not last.

After the session, DM and I got talking as I was helping him prep some stuff. I even began helping him design a character for his game. The info he gave me for how to design her was all over the place and hardly touched anything I would actually need to know to begin drawing out even a sketch of the character. I HAD to send him a form I send out to everyone when they want me to draw a character for them (typically D&D character art) to try and make heads or tails of what he wanted and get the info I needed. Here's how the form looks:

Name: (What is their name)
Race: (What race are they)
Class: (What class are they)
Eyes: (What color are their eyes and what is their eye shape)
Skin Tone: (What is their skin/fur/scale color)
Hair: (What is their hairstyle and color)
Build: (What kind of body do they have (buff, skinny, petite, etc.))
Age: (How old do they appear and how old are they actually)
Gender: (What gender are they)
Clothes: (What kind of clothes are they wearing and what colors are their clothes)
Personality: (I only ask so that I can better capture their character in the pose I give them)
Extra: (Do they have any freckles, tattoos, glasses, special items they always keep on them, scars, etc.)
References are appreciated but not necessary. They just help me better visualize what you want.

All very simple, straight to the point, and I provide an explanation of what it is I'm looking for. You don't have to spoil anything about the character but it's also enough basic information of your character at a first glance that I can perfectly capture their character and appearance in a single drawing. It's a sort of talent I have as a character designer that I'm very proud of and that keeps people coming for my art. Even the most basic descriptions are enough for me to bring their characters to life beyond anything they could hope for! This is not me trying to toot my own horn. This is something many people have actually told me and asked me advice for how I do what I do. I honestly don't know how to describe it myself how I do this as it's just something I've always been pretty good at

So, what did DM send me?

DM: bell, don't add any bell elements
ace trainer
white or asian
eyes doesn't matter
hair i told
petite, loli like
thier 18 but appear 12
female
clothes I explained
energetic, playful but just a slight bit of serious

Me: (Internally screaming at having received the most UNHELPFUL fill out of a form I've sent to countless others)

I LITERALLY had to fill out the form MYSELF from what little I could understand of what he sent me from both the form and the nonsense he sent me before that I could barely understand! I did eventually manage to figure out a design and sent him a sketch of the design to make sure it was to his standards. He gave me his critiques of how to improve the design, mostly wanting her design to be a lot more extra to the more simple sporty yet girly design he wanted with as little details of what he wanted. I was okay with him wanting more to the design as I do prefer to get more open critiques about designs I make for other's characters and find it more frustrating when they just go with what I made them the first time yet it's clear they're not fully happy. When I tried to get more detail of what kind of extra stuff he wanted, he narrowed it down to wanting me to make it look "more anime and less obeying realistic rules", as apparently clothes in fiction don't have to obey the rules of real life. A bit outside my usual style, but managed to find a way to make it work but looking at examples of little kids dressing themselves and then eventually remembering a certain outfit the character Misty from Pokémon wore when she got a makeover from Team Rocket in disguise. FINALLY got something going there and started the new design.

As I was working on the new design, the DM brought up the topic of Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles show which led me to posting a gif of Leo being his fabulously gay self. It's kinda a meme at this point in the fandom that Leo in that adaption of the franchise is gay and I love it! DM, however, was very confused by it and I jokingly explain to him that queers can kinda detect other queers as a sort of second sense and that "Leo RADIATES gay energy". If you couldn't figure it out from my joke, I am queer (demi-panromantic/asexual).

DM: YEAH, I'm not into that leftiest stuff. I'm more on the down to earth conservative side, not trying to fit every single person onto a label.

When I saw that, I admitted to him about my orientation and hoped that he would be understanding. I even did my best to explain it to him as I'm well aware that my orientation can confuse a lot of people. The best I can explain it was that it's kinda like when you have a crush on celebrities or fictional characters. You can fully enjoy your feelings, but can fully accept that it'll never happen and are happy with that. I am more than capable of falling in love with someone regardless of their gender, but have no interests in sex nor am I in any rush or feel the need to be in love.

DM: Isn't that just being bi and having normal sexuality because you don't feel love at first site like most normal people do? oh right, labels. Gotta have them. You see, they would put the hyper sexual label on to me but I'm like "nah, bruh. I'm just curious about the female body and I like females so I'm just straight, bruh."

I had to explain to him that pan meant you like more than just guys and girls and that there are many identities beyond them. I even listed a few of them and he came back at me about biology only teaching us about boys and girls only. I told him that school lessons really needed to open up to such old beliefs that are clearly out of date since basically the beginning of humanity and even pointed out the existence of intersex. At this point, this really went downhill.

To wrap up the debate we had, DM did not believe in genders beyond male and female, thought different sexualities were just labels and not part of someone's actual identity of simply existing, and implying that he did not believe that the queer community could actually be a thing. This was a MASSIVE slap to the face to say to an actual queer person. What really hit me in the guts was when he claimed to have done "research" about the queer community and that research was clearly written by people who wish to discredit the queer community.

This really upset me because when I first discovered I'm asexual and came out about it, some jerk started harassing me over it and sent me very unwanted links of "research" that "disproved that asexuality could ever possibly exist". I was still adjusting to this realization about myself so having this thrown in my face was really discouraging and gave me severe doubts. Not about my sexuality, but about others being accepting of it. For most of my life, I felt broken and like there was something seriously wrong with me. After finally learning about asexuality, I finally felt whole and at peace with myself for the first time in my life. I was so happy that I just had to share this news with my followers on social media and everyone was really happy for me and praised me for finding myself and being brave enough to come out to them. Then this moron came in out of nowhere to try and discredit my sexuality! I was so messed up by their words that I began to worry that everyone else who had shown me so much love and support for coming out were all lying to me and now secretly hated me for being ace. I ended up making a second post asking everyone to be honest with me about how they felt about me being ace, explaining that someone had been harassing me about my sexuality and claiming it didn't exist. I never named who it was nor went into detail about what they said to me exactly, but everyone who saw this instantly came to my aid to comfort me and reassure me that I was loved and accepted for who I am. Some even went out of their way to track down who had been harassing me and gave them a massive earful for doing what they did to me. I later found out when I went to block this jerk that they dedicated their entire account to hating asexuals and trying to discredit us. It really freaked me out and confused me as to how anyone could hate us so much that they'd go so far. I was still pretty shaken up from that whole situation for a while, but I eventually moved on from it and became confident enough in my sexuality to not let words like that hurt me again.

However, as you can imagine from my past experience like that, DM telling the stuff he did about his research and how he felt about the queer community really disturbed me. I suddenly felt rather uncomfortable and even unsafe about playing with the DM, but did really enjoy the game and other players. What happened lingered on so much that I ended up venting to my mom about it and she gave me the encouragement I needed to drop the DM and leave his game. I had to follow the golden rule of "no D&D is better than bad D&D", even if it was over something personal about the DM that made me feel so uncomfortable about the game. Everything he said to me just made me feel like he was completely belittling and discrediting me both as an artist and person entirely, whether he meant to make me feel that way or not. I just couldn't handle it.

I did finish the design of the character and sent it to him, but also excused myself from the game. I was honest with him about how I felt and why I was leaving. Here was my goodbye message:

"Also, sorry to say this, but I'm dropping out of the game. Some stuff suddenly came up and, honestly, after some of our chats, I can kinda see why you were losing players before. Word of advice, don't belittle people's work or be so unreasonable over minor things or narrow minded about a person's identity. I don't ask much of my DMs, but I at least hope for a bit of respect from my DMs and I honestly just don't feel that comfortable after getting to know you a bit more. From how you nitpicked my art to how you view the queer community, I just don't think you're the right DM for me. Sometimes players and DMs just don't click on a personal level which can cause issues out of the game and I'm just worried that we're headed that way and I really don't need that extra drama right now. I've had a pretty rough month and was really hoping this Pokemon game could help me finally relax a bit only for it to add more to my stress. Your game and players are great and I wish I could continue, but I just don't feel like you're the best DM for me. I do hope the best for you and the rest of the players. Please just be a bit more considerate of your players in the future and don't be so picky about their characters over minor stuff that mean a lot to their characters but aren't offensive or anything like that. It can really drive players away when you do stuff like that. Just some friendly advice for the future. I will bid my farewell on the Discord server and simply excuse myself from the game for personal life reasons to save face for us both. I hope you won't hold it against me for deciding to value my personal wellbeing being over a game."

I did my best to word myself without being insulting and trying to help DM understand where he went wrong. He luckily seemed to take my departure as well as I could hope, merely whimpering about how he liked my character. I apologized again for my sudden departure but stayed firm about my decision to leave, explaining that our last conversation had left me feeling rather unsafe with him as my DM and even pointing out that his words kinda gave me war flashbacks to what happened to me when I first came out as asexual. I hadn't heard a word from him since, but it was only yesterday that I left.

​

TLDR; I was invited to a Pokémon themed game after telling a DM that my last game was suddenly canceled after seeing their maps, DM belittled my art skills and character designs, nitpicked about names, gave me the WORST description I've ever had to work with to design a character, outed himself as not having the best views of the queer community to me who is a queer person, and gave me war flashbacks of a very bad experience I had when I first came out as ace. I leave the game with a message to the DM to not be such a jerk to his players.

This isn't the normal post if I'm honest. Everyone of the other players and the DM were amazing. I've tried reaching out to each of them with no results to show for it. The only horror in this Ship's Log is that it wasn't able to be finished. I hope my friends see this somewhere, if it doesn't belong feel free to move this to a better thread, I'm not very familiar with reddit honestly. My friends if you're out there and you see this post I'm still waiting to finish our story when we can.

Adventure: Frozen Sick, Explorer’s Guide to Wildemount

The Dungeon Master: Cody

Party: Ulwar Tusin, Scourge Aasimar Barbarian, 5’9 (Me)

Nother, Wood Elf, Cleric Life domain

Newt Gotgoods, Goblin Warlock The Fiend, 3’10

Jasvin Fir, Fire Genasi Cleric, Light Domain 6’0

Entry 31 Day 41

The expedition took a month to make to Palebank Village from Kar Vul. There were many storms we had to go through. I saw a dolphin and threw my axe at it, I lost my axe. Oh well, I wanted to try cooking it for better food. We made landfall and docked slowly during the night. I found my way to the Inn and gave the bartender gold for my night’s stay. I’m running out of money and I need to find work soon.

Entry 32 Day 42

An Adventurer was found dead. His funeral is tomorrow in the Graveyard for Palebank. I’m going to attend and see what it was that killed him. I don’t like this, I've got a bad feeling.

Entry 33 Day 43

The funeral was today. I put my hand and gave the grave marker and gave it the glow that comes from my hands when I want. It helps people sometimes. I alongside some others that came to the town were approached by the leader of Palebank Elro. He wants the four of us to find out the cause and keep it on the down low for 100 gold. There’s a Human with pointy ears, she’s nice, her name’s Nother, then there’s a Tiny Orc. Her name’s Newt? I wonder why she is so small compared to Gruula. Then there is Jasvin. He’s strange and quiet, I’ve never seen someone like him before. I do not know what he is. We were given permission to go to the dead man’s cabin. We met Milo a Glassblade? Grassblade? I gave him encouraging words. Nother did something, things stuck to my face and glowed yellow. It was strange, she said it meant something. I forget the word she said. It bothers me, she didn’t say human. If i’m not human… What am I? The others then wanted to go to a shop, it has something to do with this I guess. I gave Milo a gold and decided to go drink. We got back to the inn and I had a drinking contest with the bartender. I won then he ran outside for a few before coming back. I drank some more and got a room then sle…

Entry 34 Day 44

We went to the shop. I went first with my blade drawn. I found elves? They were going through the shop, they then drew my blood. So I ended them with the others by my side. We left one alive and questioned her, Nother healed my wounds, she is nice. I can not tell if the Elf? Is lying, so I asked Nother if Elves are trustworthy? She says that the Elf? Was telling the truth. The elf? Took us to her boss. She is affected by what is harming people? I think? Once she took us to her boss we found frogs, which we then killed and I carved. We met some more people then met a giant frog which we killed. It almost ate me. I carved a leg from it. We talked to the boss and got a vial of the stuff killing people. A family in town that sold books had a vial as well, we went to them and got it. They may be infected but I think we helped. We then went back to Elro and got paid. We have been asked to find the cure in Eiselcross we accepted, Elro said he would secure passage for us. I fucking hate frogs. We then went to go get some warmer clothes, it’s cold here and in Eiselcross. I also got another hand axe after losing my old ones by throwing them at a dolphin on the expedition to Palebank. We went to the docks to find drinking buddies. I made the captain mad. I should apologize. Why am I so easily angered? Jasvin and I went to the tavern afterwards, I paid 10 gold for drinks for the tavern and partied with everyone. Jasvin was worried, but I’m okay, Jasvin is nice, he looks after us and is kind. He should speak up more. I wonder if we can help with that. What Nother did is still bothering me. I miss my mother and her lullabies. Grulla I hope you’re okay, don’t leave me too.

Entry 35 Day 45

Woke up early, Elro tried to talk, I instead ignored him and cooked up some of the frog meat. Jasvin and him talked while I did, Newt and Nother came to the tavern after a bit and Elro then took us to the docks to where I tried to find drinking buddies. I hid behind Nother not wanting to really be seen by the captain. I was a little embarrassed. I apologized. She didn’t seem to accept it. We went on board and began sailing soon afterwards. The skies are clear for now. I’ve missed how being on the sea feels. It’s better than being on land. My companions are not accustomed to the sea as well as I am. But I believe they will fare well on our trip to Eiselcross.

Entry 36 Day 46

The skies seemed to have been brewing up a storm north directly where we are going. Captain Jari says that we need to go through the weird sea. She doesn’t like it and doesn’t think that the ship will withstand the storms that brew in this part of the sea. I did some more mopping on the deck before I came down to sleep. The smell of the sea is soothing. It reminds me of home, warm with rain and storms.

Entry 37 Day 47

The ship’s appointed Navigator finally spotted the storm and alerted the captain. She decided to make an adjustment for the travel through the weird sea. I told her before her Navigator even noticed. Then again I did make her mad when we first met. I didn’t realize grabbing someone’s arm was such a bad thing.

Entry 38 Day 48

We’re in the weird Sea now, there was a giant water thingy that attacked the ship. I had myself tied to the mast of the ship as we fought it. Jasvin was really hurt during the fight. Light came from his emblem and destroyed the water thingy. Afterwards I took some time to cool down. I was still angry after it died. I used the warm glow from my hand to patch myself up a little. The others helped Jasvin better than I’d be able to. He’s doing better, he’s hurt but with some rest he’ll be okay. The water thingy didn’t leave a body, I wonder what kept it together.

Entry 39 Day 51

I was bored and was getting tired of nothing happening so I decided to ask the crew who’s up for an arm wrestling contest. At first a large fat man with a red beard came to the barrel. But he was stopped by Captain Jari who decided to take me up on my offer as well. The man moved and she took his place. At first I wasn’t too sure she could match me. Elves are generally frail and my strength hurts some of them easily. But Jari was different. I was close to winning then she started to push me back to the center of the barrel. The crew was chanting her name. I had clenched the side of the barrel and used everything I had to finally push her hand flat. The crew stopped chanting and awed in a disappointing manor. Captain Jari actually smiled at me and accepted my handshake this time. I think I’m doing good again, I’m glad she has a better opinion of me.

Entry 40 Day 54

We finally made land at Eiselcross, I don’t remember the name of the camping sight. But on the docks we met a female dwarf that has relations with Captain Jari and winked at her telling her to stop by if she had time for some fun. Newt is drunk, but the dwarf thinks it’s sea sickness. She showed us around the camp and tried saying that she saw a giant dragon while in Eiselcross. I don’t believe her. We found the dead guy's friend and gave him the bad news. Nother healed his scars, and he gave us a map of the trail they took to where they found the vials in the first place. Afterwards we went and stopped by the dwarfs tent. I kinda forced Nother to go in first, I found it funny, the dwarf was expecting Jari, Nother and the dwarf were talking and not really bickered but conversing at the least. Captain Jari was actually making her way there.

I stopped her and told her what was happening. We both had a laugh at the situation and went our separate ways. I consoled Nother, she’s stressed and worried that we won’t be able to help the people affected by the curse in time. I told her that we’ll be able to, or at least I hope we will. I also have doubts but I will try. We then went to the shop and found a weird wizard lady person. She has dark skin. Like the fur of a bear. We got camping supplies and Newt got a scale from a lizard thing that the lady had. When we returned to our tent she then told Nother to lick it. Nother did end up licking it almost immediately. I do not know what happened but Nother’s eyes grew like a bulging frog and she passed out afterwords... What did she see? I hope she is okay.

The rest of the log is damaged and unreadable.

Not sure if this is the best place for it, but as it's the polar opposite to an RPG horror story, this seems like the best place.

Last year, I officially became a DM for 2 separate campaigns in the madness of the homebrew world I created and went on a brief hiatus over the Christmas period and the start of the new year

When I tried to return, I was met with some obstacles, from personal fears and imposter syndrome to players struggling to make sessions, so today I sent out a group message to all my players asking who was still on board and who wanted to drop out. I even offered to combine or change group comps if people thought it would help. Honestly, I was expecting loads of people to say they wanted to drop out and be left without about half of my former player base.

Within a couple hours, I'd received responses from almost every single player, stating how they all wanted to continue, with two players citing new work commitments as reasons for temporary absences from the game. Everyone was incredibly understanding and reasonable, and even went out of their way to tell me they were looking forward to things starting up again.

Amidst this, I also offered my players a chance to reset campaigns, change characters or do anything else to fix that which they were unhappy with. A couple players wanted to change their characters, but everyone seemed happy with the campaigns I'd been running. Some of these people were complete and total strangers to me before the pandemic, so I'm feeling pretty accomplished as a DM knowing that, after 6 weeks without their regularly scheduled shenanigans from me and their companions, they still want to be joining in with what I do, even though some of them barely know me.

I feel like I've lifted the DM equivalent of Mjolnir right now. I'm still worthy. They still like what I've done, and I still have a pair of parties I can be proud of as DM. My players are often chaotic, unpredictable, challenging and creative to a point that leaves me facepalming mid session, but they make every single session worth DMing, and I'm so happy that they appreciate what I do. I just hope I can continue to give them some sessions worthy of their time.

Tl;dr - Long hiatus between sessions in 2 campaigns. I ask my players who wants to continue, and they all respond positively. Impostor syndrome can eat a d!ck

Hey guys and Gals! I’d love to hear more amazing stories from everyone about DM’s, GM’s, and Players in their life that have brightened there gaming experience! Please feel free to share to the page as often as you’d like with wonderful stories!

During a campain I was in I was playing a witch with two other players and the DM. We had been playing various campaigns together for years but I have never been the best at thinking outside the box. Well, we came face to face with a boss fight we were not prepared for. I was almost out of spells and the rest of the party was not doing so well. Nothing we had seemed to be working. So one of the spells I had was Secure Shelter and I asked if I could cast it slightly above his head. Well, I could, and since it was not at the BBEG I did not need to roll for it and there was no save. So i created a 20ft square stone house above his head.

And thats how the witch turned around and yellow brick roaded a boss.

“Happy DM day, you're easily a pro at managing to create well enjoyed sessions with beginners and experienced players. I miss being at the table with you every week”

My friend sent me this about two weeks ago and it put a massive smile on my face. I try very hard to be a great DM and although I know I’m not that great, it always feels great to be appreciated by my players.