This is going to be a long story—it’s one that slowly brewed over two years of D&D and came with a fair bit of real-life drama. Honestly, the number of red flags I missed might make you think I'm colorblind.

Just a heads-up, I’ve changed a lot of details to avoid making this traceable, but the key parts are all here.

I’d wanted to play D&D for years, but I always thought it would be too complicated or that I’d make a fool of myself. My best friend encouraged me to give it a shot when a spot opened up at their table. They thought my storytelling style would be a great fit, so I finally agreed.

To say I was excited but nervous is an understatement. To give me time to prepare, my friend reserved the spot for me. Since I wouldn’t have a Session 0, they let me observe a regular session first, and I had a one-on-one interview with the DM to see if I'd fit in.

The session was fun. As my friend had mentioned, the campaign dealt with serious topics, with a focus on RP and backstory.

Then came the day I met the DM. He seemed fine—didn’t notice anything weird at first, though he did mention not wanting anyone to bring “drama” to the table. He decided I was “sane” enough and asked what I’d prepared, so I introduced my character: a rogue assassin/spy, a fallen noble obsessed with regaining her status but secretly soft-hearted because she took care of her two younger siblings after they were orphaned.

The DM loved the idea, which gave me confidence, and I got really excited to play. But he warned me that the assassin’s guild in his homebrew was a lot more “realistic” and expected its members, especially the women, to use “all means necessary” to complete a mission. I was fine with that as long as it was handled gracefully. He asked if I had any major boundaries in RP, and I said that I drew the line at any exploitation involving minors. He assured me that wouldn’t be an issue.

The campaign premise was pretty straightforward: our party was hired by a powerful Sorcerer to complete quests, though we weren’t supposed to know his family’s true motives. Each of our characters had some connection to the Sorcerer or his family.

To integrate my character, the DM asked for three things: her goals and dreams, a picture, and a creative backstory tie to the Sorcerer. I uploaded a bunch of character art, including a cosplay that matched my vision for her—a femme fatale rogue. The DM’s immediate response was, “God, I’d totally break my fast for her,” followed by a “jk.” I checked in with my friend later, and they said the DM sometimes talked about his Sorcerer in the first person but that his character wasn’t interested in romance; they assured me it was just a joke.

The Telegram group for the campaign seemed nice. There were only two things to note: everyone else already knew each other, and the fact that I’m originally from a different country, with a bit of an accent, and I’m mixed-race (this becomes relevant in part 2).

But this is as good time as any to introduce the key players for part 1:

• Wizard – Sponsored by Sorcerer’s family as a child, now works for them (played by my best friend).
• Bard – College of Whispers bard, owes everything to Sorcerer’s family (played by DM’s sister).
• Druid – Moon druid who lost everything and is indebted to the family (played by DM’s best friend).
• Paladin – Sworn to serve the Sorcerer’s family (another childhood friend of the DM).

Then there was me, the Rogue, a newcomer nobody trusted. My character was secretly assigned to spy on the party and Sorcerer’s family but presented herself as a rogue trying to turn over a new leaf. It was really fun—she had little side missions that other players didn’t know about, and whenever someone questioned her, she’d flirt her way out of trouble. This included charming Sorcerer, who didn’t expect my character to be a flirt. She’d been trained to use charm as a tool but was slowly warming up to the group.

After a few sessions, things took a turn. The guild started doubting my Rogue’s loyalty, saying the intel she’d been providing was “useless.” Her siblings would “pay the price” if she didn’t retrieve specific information from Sorcerer “by any means necessary.” I didn’t love this, so I talked to the DM, who assured me that nothing would actually happen to her siblings and that it was just to motivate my character.

So, my Rogue began focusing her charm on Sorcerer, hoping to gain access to his chambers to find what she needed. Sorcerer didn’t resist much; he was smitten and started showering her with gifts. Meanwhile, Druid’s player started teasing me above table, calling my character a “gold digger” repeatedly. Wizard assured me it was all in good fun and only about the characters, not me. But something about it felt... off, especially since the “jokes” were mostly directed at Rogue and Wizard.

Then, five sessions later, the DM announced he wanted to step back from DMing to let others take the reins and give himself a chance to play a PC. He asked Wizard to DM the ongoing campaign, not just a one-shot. Wizard was excited but hadn’t expected to take over something this complex. Sorcerer wanted to continue interacting with everyone as a player character and explore all the relationships he had with the group. Wizard agreed, surprisingly chill with it.

The DM and I began chatting more in private messages about our characters. He asked if Rogue was just after the intel or if there was “something more.” I clarified that she didn’t want to marry Sorcerer or have his kids but was charmed by his kindness and was focused on her mission. He seemed to understand—or so I thought.

The next session, Sorcerer suddenly grew suspicious of Rogue and distanced himself, and the guild informed her (via private message) that they’d taken her siblings and she had three days to deliver the information. Panicked, Rogue tried to regain Sorcerer’s trust. Wizard was just trying to run a straightforward mission but kept getting pulled aside by Sorcerer, who was more focused on his character’s relationships than the plot. Eventually, Sorcerer confronted Rogue privately, revealing he knew about her siblings and was willing to help if she was honest with him. She confessed everything, begging for his help. In response, Sorcerer offered her everything she’d ever wanted—but only if she married him.

Sorcerer was dangling her dreams right in front of her, but marriage wasn’t what I’d envisioned for her arc. Still, my Rogue said yes, because otherwise, she risked losing her siblings. Druid’s player exclaimed, “What the f—!” and left the session. Later, I found out that Druid and Bard had a massive fallout with DM and left the campaign temporarily.

And that was just the beginning. Part two will have new characters, old tensions, and things are only going to get weirder. Stay tuned for the rest—it’s a wild ride.

I'm just going to preface this by saying this is a long one and overall isn't nearly as bad as a lot of other stories I've seen. I just decided to share it because I felt like it. I apologize if any of it is hard to read or poorly paced, I'm trying to remember stuff from a while ago.

It all started when I started looking for a game to play in on Discord. I joined a D&D server and started looking through the LFG chat, I eventually found a guy looking for players and messaged him about it. He told me he already had a few players that were going to be playing and we discussed what exactly the campaign was going to be. He wanted to run a modified version of the Waterdeep: Dungeon of the Mad Mage module. He explained that he was going for a darker setting and that's something I was completely fine with, by all accounts I didn't really come across any red flags during this time. I gave him a character I was going to play and we strapped in for a first session at a later date.

For context, in his setting the Mad Mage unleashed a scourge upon the rest of the world and that's why we were sent into the dungeon. We were teleported there from Waterdeep after a sort of prequel session that was a mini modified version of Waterdeep: Dragon Heist. This session was later into the game if I remember correctly, I think we played it when we got our memories back. You see, upon being teleported we for some reason had amnesia and have been playing with that understanding since the first session as we made our way through the dungeon. Again, we did eventually get our memories back as we went and remembered that the woman who gave us our mission told us that the madness the Mad Mage has will be transferred to another if we kill him instead of capture him. This is all important for later.

As we started playing there was really no problems with the DM nor with the players, we all got along and it was fairly enjoyable for a while, but as we continued into the game things started to get a little strange. It's been a couple years now so it's hard to remember all the details exactly, but I believe the first strange occurrence was when we reached a floor in the dungeon that had a baby dragon in it. None of the party wanted to kill it so we decided to restrain it, which we succeeded in doing. The DM proceeded to state that the baby dragon couldn't handle the stress of being restrained and had a heart attack and died which then cascaded into the mother being pissed about us "murdering" her child and going straight to combat where one of us was soon bitten in half. We, the players, were a little annoyed at this outcome, mostly because of the baby dragon just keeling over, and tried to talk to him about it but he just kept saying that's what happened so we chalked it up as a loss and the guy that died made a new character to keep playing and we dropped it.

There were some other small things that happened but I don't remember them exactly so we'll skip later into the game to the stuff I do remember. At this point we had our memories back and my character was a wild magic sorcerer that was looking for his wife. She was taken away during the scourge and he's been searching for her ever since. We were in a cave network deep in the dungeon and a fairly large group of weaker monsters started to come through the cave. Me being a spell caster of course proceeded to immediately fireball them, little did I know that there was an illusion placed on them and it was all actually captured civilians, including my wife. As she was set aflame and burning the illusion broke and upon seeing my mistake I immediately casted wish. My wish was for my wife to be completely healed as well as for her to be teleported somewhere safe and sound. She was teleported away and my character breathed a sigh of relief because for the first time in a long time he knew his wife was okay. He couldn't say the same for the rest of the civilians, but there wasn't anything he could do about that now. (And for more context I do think at this point he forgot about wish and was expecting to just kill my wife right here and upon me using it rolled for me to see if I could ever use wish again in which he says I failed the roll so I can't. I'm pretty sure he fudged this roll as he didn't show anyone the roll even after I asked. So that was also a little annoying.) After this occurred the DM made some jokes about how you have to be very specific with wish or it could turn into a monkeys paw and all that, of course I thought I was plenty specific so everything was fine and we moved on.

We were already coming close to the final confrontation with the Mad Mage at this point and so soon after that encounter we finally stepped into the boss room where low and behold he has my wife hostage. The Mad Mage then proceeded to monologue about how some minions of his randomly came across her and brought her back to his care. He then proceeded to immediately decapitate her, sending my character into a rage and beginning the battle. Everything was going relatively fine as the battle went on and before the battle began we agreed we had to make sure not kill him as we didn't want the madness to transfer. The lady that gave us the mission said that we had to bring him to low health so she could trigger a trap that would capture him for us, so that's what we were working on.

After a few turns of combat we dealt some decent damage and were holding our own. At no point did the DM say the Mad Mage was bloodied or looked hurt or anything so we were working under the assumption we had much more ahead of us, but then something a little suspicious occurred. Our ranger cast a spell that had the ability to kill something at really low health in addition to its other effects. (I don't remember what spell it was.) After which the DM immediately exclaims that we killed the Mad Mage and the madness proceeds to transfer to the ranger, causing him to go insane and powering him up, which caused us to have to fight him instead. Again, this was a little suspicious considering the fight hadn't been going on super long here and there was no indication of him being low health, but you know whatever, we kept playing.

So me and the others proceed to fight him but they were both on low health at this point so they go down. It was just me and the ranger now. We were locked in combat and for even more context, earlier in the game I came across a sword that held the soul of a vampire in it. Upon using the sword the vampire was transferred into my mind. Turns out that the Mad Mage trapped him and he wants revenge so he decided to empower me. I would be able to turn into his vampire form twice. I didn't use it at all leading up to this so I still had two charges. When I got really low, because I was a sorcerer trying to 1v1 the new big bad, I transformed. Apparently the DM forgot I had this ability and immediately tried to nerf his own creation that he gave me by lowering it to only one charge and changing the resistances it gave me. It was clear what he wanted to happen. Low and behold I lose the fight and we all die. The Mad Ranger was now the big bad and the winner. Game over.

Me and the other players were obviously not very happy with this outcome as it didn't really feel fair, but you know the rest of the campaign was enjoyable the majority of the time (Mostly because of my fellow players to be honest.) so we just chalked it up as another loss. The DM, running with this totally fair and unexpected loss offered us another campaign that would take place after the first one in which we play as new characters trying to take down the Mad Ranger. None of us were opposed to this idea and so we started discussing what characters we would play. This is where things came to a head.

One of the players, the same one who died from the dragon earlier, explained that most of the enjoyment he got was creating interesting multiclassed characters and roleplaying them. The DM in this second campaign immediately shut him down, saying that multiclassing was now banned. This was obviously an issue as why should he be expected to play something he doesn't find fun? This lead to an argument between the two in which he was trying to get the DM to understand why he wouldn't have fun if that were the case, but he wouldn't budge. One of the players, the fighter, was saying that he should just play anyways for everyone else instead of himself. I on the other hand said that was unfair as he can't be expected to give up his fun for other people. This ended when he said he wasn't going to play if that was the case and mid sentence the DM kicked him from the server. I had enough at this point. I was shocked he just did that and so I said that was an extremely disrespectful thing to do and would not be playing either after which I immediately left the server and messaged the player that was kicked about it, explaining that I would not being playing either after such a dick move.

Yeah, that's basically about it. The DM was a railroady man child that wanted things to go exactly the way he wanted and in the end essentially pushed out one of the players like a bully. Let this be a warning, don't be like that guy. Thanks for reading!

This is the story of my first true foray into DnD and the calamitous relationship that led me to it. 

I grew up in a conservative town in a hyper-religious family that fully bought into the satanic panic rhetoric around Dungeons and Dragons back in the 80s/90s and absolutely forbade any of the books from crossing our threshold. Naturally, this made me seek them out immediately. As soon as I cracked them open I was hooked. You mean I could play collaborative make-believe with other people? TTRPGs, where have you been all my life?!

In practice, it was a bit more complicated than that. The few friends I had were religious and if I took out a DnD book in their presence I would labelled as a "corrupting influence", we'd have to do a whole laying on of hands to pray the demons out etc. etc., and the kids who played at school were very much of the mindset that having mammary glands immediately disqualified you as a participant, so I was sort of stuck. Here I was knowing this cool thing existed but having no one to play it with. And I desperately wanted to play.

Fast forward to college! I've gone low-contact with my hyper-religious family, I'm in my own place, and I'm starting to work through some heavy emotional stuff. You know, the stuff you can only really start walking through once you get out of a bad situation. I'm not in the best place mentally, but I'm making positive changes. Enter Badgering Bard. 

I met Badgering Bard on campus and we shared a couple of classes. I'm not the most observant when people are romantically interested, but with BB it became obvious pretty quickly. I tried to reject him subtly at first, but clearly this guy was not getting the hint, so I met with him and said in no uncertain terms that I wasn't looking for anything romantic, I was happy being single and working on myself, and I would appreciate if he could respect that. His response: "Well, I'm a few years older than you and have my life figured out, and from where I'm standing it looks to me like you don't know what you want." In that moment what I wanted to do was kick him in the shins, but I left it at "I'm not interested, thanks. Bye." And left.

But oh no, it didn't stop there. Badgering Bard stuck around. He sat next to me in class, found where I was studying, and even came to my house because it turned out he was friends with my roommate. And I'm ashamed to say it, but after four months of BB constantly hanging around and testing the waters every month or so to see if I'd say yes this time... he wore me down. 

I know! I know! I wasn't in a great place mentally, remember? I genuinely thought he would get bored and move on and I could be free of his constant presence just buzzing around everywhere. I thought it was a weird conquest thing for him, like once he "got" me he would realize that I'm actually not that exciting and just flit to the next thing he would start obsessing over. And that's kind of what my roommate led me to believe as well, seeing as he was somewhat familiar with BB's dating history.

Two months in, this dude is not letting up. But what he is doing is establishing a pattern of giving me the illusion of choice. For example, He'll ask me, "What do you want for dinner?" And I'll say, "Indian food" and he'd say, "We could get Indian food OR we could get *insert whatever choice he wants that we inevitably end up getting*". When I push back, it turns into an argument, and I point out that arguing this much early on doesn't bode well for a long-term relationship.

Immediately after I comment that I don't think we're a good match long-term, BB invites me to join his good buddies for a DnD campaign. Thwap! Right in the weak spot. I'm immediately skeptical. A) I haven't met these friends. What if they are all similar to BB? Then I will be increasing my suffering four-fold. B) A campaign is a long-term commitment in and of itself and I absolutely do not know if I want to be in the same space as BB consistently moving forward. But then again, C) It's Dungeons and motherfuckin' Dragons! I've been waiting years to find people to play with, and now I've been invited to the table.

I agreed to come meet everyone for a Session 0 and see if we clicked. BB's friends? They were incredible! Our DM had created a rich homebrew world and was excited to answer all of my questions, and everyone was extremely patient as I got up to speed with the newly released 4th edition, which was what they were planning to run. I rolled up a Fighter because everyone else had established their characters already and they desperately needed a meat shield, and as a new player I wanted something mechanically light. I made charisma my dump stat and established my fighter as more of a grunter than a talker, so if he were to disappear from the campaign suddenly it wouldn't be seen as a big loss RP-wise. I had it all planned out.

But I freaking loved playing with those guys. In their everyday lives, these were dudes who were shy and a little awkward, but at the gaming table they came alive. The imagination and creativity that poured out into every encounter was truly incredible. BB on the other hand had elected himself as the party face and was often just as grating in-game as he was in real life. 

At the three month mark, BB and I were out at dinner, and he began to flirt with our server in front of me. She had a book tucked in her apron with the title visible, and he tells her he loves that book and he should get her number so they can talk about it sometime. This is a particularly shitty move considering I had introduced him to said author. Without batting an eye, I told him I'm going to follow the advice I would give any friend if they had told me their significant other had flirted with a server in front of them at a restaurant, paid for the soda I ordered when I sat down and left. He chased after me with some sob story about how "he only did that because he thought I was getting bored in the relationship" and to please give him another chance. I kept walking.

I got home to a long, pleading voice-mail of him threatening self-harm if I left him. And, being a young person struggling with my own mental well-being, that really fucked me up. So I stayed. 

But at least I had DnD. 

Well, sort of. Every time we leveled up, BB would come up with a list of "suggested" feats that I take for my character, and that illusion of choice would creep back in. I would make my choice, and he would start again: "You could choose that, OR..."

Our campaign was a grand adventure, but my relationship was becoming more and more problematic. I became convinced that BB wasn't listening to a word I said most of the time. I came to find that he had planned out our entire future together, complete with a detailed 5-year plan, without once consulting me. Although I had been very clear on my stance of "no kids, no marriage" he started trying to find out my ring size. There was no way I was going to be so passive that I wound up trapped in a marriage just so I could keep playing DnD. That would be insane.

Thankfully, I had to move away to continue my education, and so I had a perfectly reasonable reason to extricate myself from this relationship. I waited until after we had our DnD session to give my fighter one last hurrah before I moved, then I took BB out to break the news. And I tried to break up with him. Whoo boy, did I try. But no matter how many ways I said it, BB just... chose not to hear it? It was the most bizarre thing. It's like he just selectively chose not to accept that particular reality and kept acting as though we would talk when I got to my destination safely and continue long-distance as though that was obviously the plan we discussed. But we didn't discuss it! I BROKE UP WITH HIM. 

I was at a loss as to what to do. I could understand being upset by news you don't want to hear, but just... pretending as though you don't hear it was not a tactic I was as yet familiar with. So I wrote him a Dear John letter, thinking that maybe seeing it in written form would help it sink in. He kept calling and sending regular emails that I did not respond to or open and cut off all contact.

During this time, I didn't reach out to any of my former DnD group. It didn't feel appropriate to do so seeing that they were all BB's friends, and it felt like it might be intrusive for me to make contact after the break-up. I figured I'd hear from them if I heard from them, but if I didn't I would understand why and would simply cherish the time we had playing together.

Fast forward to the better part of a year later. The first year of my post-degree is done and I'm back visiting some buds, and who do I run into? The DM from our campaign! He seems surprised but delighted that I'm back in town and immediately asks if I have enough time to drop in for an evening to play DnD while I'm in town. The following conversation ensues:

Me: "I obviously loved playing with all of you, but I don't know if that's such a good idea given the circumstances."

DM: "Circumstances?"Me: "Well, Badgering Bard and I haven't spoken since the break-up and I've been trying to give y'all space since then-

"DM: "Wait, back up, you and BB broke up? When?!"

Me: "Uhh... when I left town?"

DM: "Wait, as in a year ago? No no no no, wait, what?! He's been playing your character! He said you told him you wanted him leveled up for when you came back!"

Me: "*long-suffering sigh*... Okay, tell me what he told you."

Apparently Badgering Bard had bought himself a one-way ticket on the denial train and had no intention of getting off at a stop any time soon. He had told the DnD group we were still together, but that I was impossibly busy with school work so don't expect to hear from me. He also told them that I was relaying my choices for feats each level-up to him so he could keep my character up-to-date because I was "eager to rejoin the campaign the moment I returned" (note: I didn't know where I would end up after graduation, but had no plans to move back to my college town). Occasionally he would RP my character and his own if the story called for it, all in an effort to... I don't know, keep me around in spirit? Convince me to come back to him? I still don't really know what the end game was. Eventually he must have known the charade was going to fall apart. Ultimately it isn't my responsibility to figure out what was going on in his head, and truthfully I will probably never know.

I told DM the truth, let him know that he may have to handle BB with kid gloves when he confronts him about it because there had been threats of self-harm in the past, and passed on the contact info for two of my buds who had heard tale of our campaign hijinks and were interested in trying TTRPGs for themselves. I did not return to that table.

I don't know how that confrontation went, and I don't think it's my place to know. I do know that DM reached out to my two friends and they became regulars at his table for a different campaign. And regardless of the train-wreck of a relationship that brought me there, I'm forever grateful for my first DM and party for opening up a world that was just out of reach for so many years.

We often see the adage "No DnD is better than bad DnD" in this subreddit and those are very wise words. In my case the DnD was great, but the relationship that led me to it was not, so I offer up my own adage: great DnD is not worth staying in a shitty relationship for.

Last session we played it was right after a big tough boss fight. The party just gotten back to the hide out and chatted with some NPCs. Our fighter began an argument with our rogue who is a local of the area. The fighter has always been the kind of person to turn everything into a debate. Even the fighter's player said "He works with the motto of: you don't know a person until they are annoyed by super slow internet". We had many arguments and debates happen the game where it turned into a dnd podcast from how long it takes to finish. So i as the DM decided to shut it down right away due to the argument not being important. It was about what kind of creature can live in harmony in the forest and if beavers do that because they cut trees.

After saying to the player to move it along i can tell in his tone he was upset.He even said"so when i try to roleplay we need to get along" We continued along. The party went to rest while i had an NPC ask the fighter for a minute of his time. This NPC is a pirate friend from the fighter's past and he offered to give him a map for a treasure if he helped defeat the king. The fighter only responded with: yeah, aha, and okay. I tried to talk to him out of character but he just told me to get going so I dont waste time.

I did so and then the party were opening a chest with some magic items. They got the items but needed to cast identify. They got the pearl by buying it from the pirate NPC. As for the owl feather component i decided to have them actually get it since one of the party members has an owl pet. So i said "lets make some rp with you needing an actual owl feather to cast the spell". The fighter immediately responded with" OH so NOW you want to make RP". I tried to talk with him and so did the rest of the party but soon enough that turned into him disconnecting.

Later that session another party member was wasting resources and we made jokes about him saying" its what my character would do". we made a joke in the general chat by typing its "ItS wHaT mY cHaRaCtEr WoUlD dO".The next day the other player was gone from the server. When i texted to ask why he left as well as try to make amends he said he left because we were making fun of him. I tried to explain that wasnt the case though he said he still was suspicious of that.

I did my best to remain calm and explain why debates that don't benefit the party nor progress the story just waste time but he argued by deflecting and talking about other character flaws. He argued about why one of our rogue who hates humans is fine while his character is the one hated. I tried again to say it isn't about the character but about how he plays it and the constant debates. It soon turned ugly with some insults throw from both sides in private messages. I tried my best the whole time to not do that but i have reached my breaking point when he kept going in circles.

The rogue also tried to make amends and even explain his character's actions. Even though the fighter kept calling the rogue a racist zealot. Funny enough the rogue began changing that flaw at the end of the session. Though the fighter still complained and said why can't he just play his character the way he wants. Which he said is that he wants to poke holes into characters' logic with arguments. The rogue tried to continue but the fighter blocked him and that was the end of it. I won't lie and say that i am sad that he left. Most people in the group weren't fans of his but i still regret how badly it ended with him.

TLDR: fighter complains when he can't turn everything into a debate. leaves the group and things turn ugly in private messages.

This happened a few years ago, now. I had just moved to a small town, and so was making an effort to form social connections. My partner at the time and I were invited to dinner by a family that she worked with. We'll call them Bored Mom, Sad Dad, and Junior DM. Being trans, I felt like the parents wanted me to be some kind of mentor figure to their kid. Which I thought might be a really positive experience. So when they asked me to join Junior DM's DnD campaign, to be another trans presence, I said yes.

I had never played any tabletop roleplaying games. But it was something I thought might be fun. And I thought it would be good to support a member of my community.

When I arrived for the first session, I quickly found that I was the only one who had. All the other kids had dropped out. The only other person present was Sad Dad. Turns out, Bored Mom had split up with Sad Dad shortly before. I didn't understand at the time that this was a recurring theme in their relationship. Every few years, they would "break up" for her to date around, and then get back together when she got bored. So none of the neighbor families had let their kids join the game. Either that, or the kids just didn't want to join anymore. Either way, I didn't blame them.

Wanting to be supportive of Junior DM, however, I rolled up a healer character. She was a cranky halfling in the chaotic good alignment. The setting was a typical tavern job, destroy a rat's nest under the facility. Sad Dad joins as well and rolls a fighter of some sort.

I'm a little uncomfortable at this point, but do my best to really play the game and maybe provide a small bit of distraction for Junior DM from all the turmoil. I grew up with similar family dynamics and knew perfectly well how isolating they can be.

Issues arise from the very start. The encounters are balanced for a party of five. And this being Junior DM's first experience, they don't think of re-balancing the fight. Me being completely new to the game, I don't know that I should suggest to them otherwise. I decide that this is a learning experience for them, and so just do my best to play out the game as presented. This seems to encourage Junior DM, despite them reasonably fumbling through the story they have prepared.

What ends up making the encounters even more difficult, however, is Sad Dad. Don't get me wrong, he's trying to be there for his kid with none of the actual friends showing up for the shit-show. But there was this thick fog of depression hanging over him. As in, he isn't even able to pull off an attack because he can't process what's happening at the table.

I make do, just kind of keeping his character healed as best I can while doing all the combat with a non-combat build. I had only planned to provide support for the kids who showed up, so that they could carry the story and action themselves. But I managed, taking out one small group of rats at a time and then returning to the tavern overhead to spam "long-sleeps." I even tamed one of the rats, just to make the combat a little more manageable, and name her Princess. In character, I tell the tavern owner that a free stay is the least I deserve for how big the job is for "two" people. Particularly, an old lady who walks with a cane.

Well, I manage to get through the first campaign through sheer cheese and the creative use of my random cantrips. Sad Dad thanks me afterward, knowing full-well how checked out he was because of everything happening in his life. He asks me to show up again for the next session, really wanting someone to support his kid.

Feeling torn and still awkward, I show up to the next game. I figure that I'll be the only one there with Sad Dad again, just trying to pull us through whatever fights and story Junior DM has written.

I wasn't at all expecting what was waiting for me when I arrived. The entire situation between the parents had flipped on its head in the span of a week. Bored Mom is there, flirting back and forth with Sad Dad, like a newly dating couple.

Meanwhile, Junior DM is just focused on preparing for their game. What's more, Sad Dad has brought a friend from work to fill the same role that I was. We'll call him Coworker.

We start the game, and the vibe is now entirely different. Instead of trying to support Junior DM, Coworker seems to be desperately trying to cling onto some illusion of being "cool" and detached while playing a tabletop game DM'ed by a child. So while I'm trying to take the world and story seriously, Coworker is in-character making fun of the campaign, while Sad Dad is too busy flirting to take notice.

Eventually, Coworker becomes bored and decides to initiate pvp with my halfling character and Princess the rat, for the literal purpose of eating them both. Junior DM seems dismayed and confused, no doubt stuck between knowing what they should do as a DM as well as trying to figure out if they can tell an adult "no."

At this point, I honestly don't know if my elderly healer can even survive a match against a murderous barbarian. What's more, I can see Junior DM in visible distress. So, to diffuse the situation, I end up recalling to home with some spell or another that let me do that, leaving Coworker and Sad Dad in the middle of a magic fog, being attacked by enemies. Who swiftly ended a party of two with no healer.

The game ended after that, and I didn't return. I decided that, as much as I wanted to support Junior DM, the situation was just more toxic than I could handle. I cut contact with Sad Dad and Bored Mom as well. Last I heard, they were back together. But, knowing their cycle, who knows. I haven't had the chance to play a tabletop again since.

(TLDR - Toxic family ruins their kid's game, and then invites coworker to join in on the destruction.)

You've probably read a few horror stories where the GM completely ignores the players' backstories and just forces everyone into the story they made. Well, I had the opposite problem. I made a character who was just along for the ride because they wanted to tag along. Right place, right time, and now they're on an adventure with a ragtag group of misfits. I find it easier to play these types of characters because it's one less thing for the GM to worry about, and thus, one less thing for me to worry about. GM has enough going on, and I don't want to add to that pile. I don't need any special NPCs or towns or any 'main character' treatment. I just want to be included in the journey. This is more/less verbatim what I told the GM in session 0, and he seemed to understand my perspective.

The problem with this is actually a part of the system. One part of the character creation process requires my character having experienced something tragic to give them their sense of justice and desire to do good. So, I slapped together something about how my village's leader was killed by bandits when he was young, just to fill the requirement. Session two, the GM's self-insert NPC pulls me aside and tells me he knows where those bandits are hiding out. The implication very much being that there would be an arc dedicated to us taking them down.

Problems this this: One, I didn't want a dedicated arc for my character at all, as I already told him in session 0.
Two, he did not consult me at all about implementing this. Everyone else had a personal arc that we discussed in session zero, and all of them started moving as planned.
Three, I don't actually care about the village leader beyond his death being a motivator for my character to be good, not that his death needs to be avenged, or that I need to be the one to carry it out. Now I have to pretend like I'm super invested in taking down these bandits, which is not the type of character I wanted to play.
I guess he decided my idea of 'fun' was too boring, and he needed to fix that.

"Oh, but you should be grateful your GM was willing to make you feel important." Maybe I would if he had actually talked to me about it instead of springing it on me mid-session. Especially after I specifically requested the exact opposite.

This was also in a system I hadn't played before, the mechanics of which I wound up not being a fan of, so I used that as my reason for leaving the table.

So tonight I ran the first session of curse of strahd IRL for my cousin (Art) my brother (Barb) Brother in law (Rogue) and significant other (Bard) and it was a doozy to say the least

So I give them all a personalized start. Bard got a fake message from her old troupe she's a dancer bard that was an aerialist to meet up for a final performance, Rogue got a modified version of the plea for help hook, Art was hired by a minor celestial to find it's lost kin, and barb who was playing an alien basically themed off a webtoon had minor amnesia and crashed to the material plane before strahd stole him.

Have them appear Madam Eva's for some loot, the Tarroka reading and some roleplaying / world building and stuff. Before having them taken away again by the mist for XP to level 3's alternate start or starting at Krezk all things are going well... The burgomaster is called tells them to bring some wine to be let in and all. The others attempt to persuade their way in to no avail... This is where the funny happens. Barb decides to climb the wall while his party unintentionally distracts the guard and burgomaster I try to say he couldn't really do it stealthily but he gets heated so I allow him to very cartoonishly climb the wall while hidden. He gets to the top and looks for how to open the gate. I tell him there is no mechanisms or ropes, and that it's barred from the inside he begins climbing down inside the town. "Right so. Though the distraction helped you evade the guards attention somehow it hinders you on this side. You have two people performing and playing music drawing a lot of attention. In other words there is no stealthing this side. Im sorry." I then describe how a child sees him and screams as it's a clear intruder. He is then surrounded almost immediately by townsfolk. He cast tensers floating disk using it as a stepping stool to leap over the townsfolk towards the door and then makes a very bad decision. Thunder. Clap. An AOE spell with a cluster of commoners surrounding him. -Welp you technically CAN do that- I describe how he does blow open the doors, however he also kills a decent amount of townsfolk and also wounds the burgomaster. Bard and Rogue reasonably attack Barb as he just murdered peeps and leave him at one HP before they heal the burgomaster and drop money to help out with the gate. Bard says they have a conversation to have later with Barb in character of course. They leave to still do the wizards of wine quest and make up for the bad blood or at least try to. Barb GOES THE OPPOSITE DIRECTION OF THEM!!! WITH NO MAP! Gets lost in the woods. Gets a random encounter. 4 dire wolves... Uh ohs-- they were gonna get to the winery and short rest and heal Barb... But whoopsies I guess. Barb immediately dies to the 4 wolves. I describe his soul not being able to leave barovia before he is forcibly reawakened in strahd's castle bound to a chair. Barb: "Woo I get to be a mini boss, or more evil than the big bad." Strahd turns him into a vampire spawn to later fuck with the party, he then has to roll a new character.

I'm in a Sci-Fi campaign. It started pretty simple: They'd sent a document explaining the lore to me that was very clearly an edited chatGPT response. I didn't really mind at first, I'm a long time DM so i know how hard it can be to come up with your lore in a coherent way, and the fact that they had editted it made it a little less of a red flag. I joked about it in session zero, and they brushed it off. Then in the first session they revealed that our space ship would have an AI that was just chatGPT and text to speech. I thought it was kind of cool at first, if a little lazy, but then, when we actually got into the session, I noticed they'd type as the players spoke, take a 20 second pause, and then read something from the screen. Every single response from them was ChatGPT. They would question what they were reading as they read it out loud, as if they hadn't even proof read it before beginning.

Should I leave? I know we've only done one session so far, but to me it's an unbelievable red flag. Why even become a DM of you're gonna let chatGPT do all the work?

Edit: Just for clarification, its not just the descriptions that are AI, It's NPC dialogue too. We'll say something to an NPC, and they take up 20 seconds to respond and ask us to "talk amongst ourselves" while we wait because they're typing our responses in.

Warning: Sexual and graphic content. Many people who are trying to get into D&D for the first time but don’t have a friendship group will sympathize somewhat with how this story starts. My original group was struggling to get together, especially during the pandemic. Desperate to play I went to our local RPG store here in the UK to get my D&D fix. This place had a d&d night on Mondays and I ended up being welcomed into a brand new group who were two sessions into a new campaign, so I had not missed much. I took one of my old characters, leveled them down and just jumped straight in.

Having not been there for the beginning I have no idea whether a session zero had being done. I just decided to keep it clean and not ruffle any feathers. This seemed to go well. The group had a good social aspect from what I could see. They had a discord and most members would chat frequently. The first sign that I noticed something might be off with this group was when one of the young guys, he can’t have been more than 18 was kicked from the group for inappropriate messages to one of the girls in the group. Didn’t witness or see anything personally but that happened after five weeks of playing with them so we moved on. I should add that the age range of this group of what would at its height be seven players and one GM (8) was between 18-45. I sat in the middle because I was 32 at the time.

Later I started to notice that some players characters were starting to pair off into relationship stuff, not a problem really, I don’t engage with that kind of stuff and don’t begrudge anyone making that kind of choice for their character. The problem we started to have was that the relationships in character started to boil over to tensions with the players. Two player characters had a fling in game, but when one of the characters broke that off in game the player of the other character took it incredibly personally and it led to an almost full out argument at the table. This player it transpired was also seeing the GM. So when the first player goes to the GM with concerns, they are quickly downplayed and gaslighted. In the end the GMs partner decided to leave and the game continued on. After a month or two the GM in an interesting decision invites their partner back into the game. They seemed very apologetic about their past behavior and like reasonable people we welcomed them back into the group. Now it really got weird.

The GMs partner, as much as any other thing they might have been was not an experienced player. They were playing a damphier warlock and would often complain about being useless in combat, owing to the fact that they burned through their very limited spell slots in the first two rounds and then just did eldritch blasts for the rest. I’d be bored too. They asked me and one of the other experienced players for help on how to better utilize their abilities. Upon looking at the character sheet we discovered that this player had been given +3 studded armor! We’re only level 8. Not only that but they’d been given a +2 wand of the warmage. When we questioned them on it, they said that their partner, the GM said that they could! We instantly went to the GM and said this was not the best way to better utilize a character. Again we were downplayed and gas lit. We also saw that this player hadn’t updated any of their abilities or spells. Something which we also found the bard player hadn’t done either. Who at level 8 was only using the spells they had from level 1. This kind of thing can happen when you have inexperienced players. What we weren’t expecting was for the GM to just give them any random magic item they wanted to buff them up.

The attitude of the DMs partner continued to degrade. During combat, even after we’d fixed the issues with their character sheet, they’d fail on a role and pout until it was their turn again. As mentioned before they tried to have a romance with another PC but started getting really possessive in character over their in game interest. When this made the player involved uncomfortable they broke it off in game. This resulted in another argument at the table. The GMs partner just couldn’t deal with the rejection and thought it was a reflection on them (in hindsight it probably was).

The GM starts openly changing the story to favor what their partner wants. One of the other PCs had an interesting story which we were exploring in game and the GM randomly decided to put her partners character as a long lost relative. Baring in mind that these two players had clashed when the game first began. The move made no narrative sense and you could tell all the players bar the GM and their partner were disappointed by this move.

This also coincided with a failed attempt to have a game away from the cafe and at the partners house who had moved away from the town we played in and was having to Skype in. Due to the DMs car breaking down the day of, we had to cancel. However, the partner decided to have a full on strop in the discord, claiming that we made it up just so we didn’t have to travel! Several players told me in confidence later that they were glad the car broke down.

With the group starting to grumble amongst ourselves we wondered where this game was going to.

• A dragon fight where the DM refused to use legendary actions or resistances, making it very easy to defeat. anti climactic and dull
• I the Druid, having wild shaped into a spider so I could avoid triggering the webs, ended up face to face with a giant spider anyway, the bard ran in, cast speak with animals, then the session broke down from what should have been a massive combat into, a giant spider giving the druid and the bard marriage counseling, our characters weren’t even together! Never been so uncomfortable.
• A quest for the soul of one of our characters that went into a convoluted exploration of what it means to be a hero and railroaded us into decisions that we as players or characters otherwise wouldn’t have made.

While this unsatisfactory game play is happening the GMs partner is getting more and more detached. They are still Skyping in at this time having moved away from where the cafe was. They are engaging less and less with the plot and just spending sessions doing their own thing. The straw that broke the camels back was when we returned to our home base and ended up hunting for the assassin who had just tried to kill us. The GMs partner had said earlier in the session that they had gone off. So when the chase goes down they aren’t involved. Once we’ve finished the chase, the assassin getting away, the GM turns to her partner and says “do you want to tell everyone what you’ve been doing in this time?” The partner then proceeds to describe, in vivid detail, how we turned into an alleyway and find their character being done from behind by a Minotaur . Safe to say that this was so completely inappropriate that five of us decide to leave this game.

We could see that the GM and their partner were only playing for themselves. Us five met up separately and completed the campaign with one of the players stepping into GM the “finale”. Two of us from that five still play together today. I guess the point of this essay is be very careful when you’re joining a group of strangers and make sure all your safety tools are in place. Our group definitely didn’t have any of those when it embarked on the train wreck that it ended up being. If there is going to be a large disparity in age then make sure that the personalities involved mesh well. The GMs partner in this story was early thirties and the players they kept clashing with were 18-21. Safe to say there may have been some immaturity issues there. Stay safe everyone and enjoy your TTRPGs.

Warning: Abuse, Sexual Harassment/Assault, Pedophilia

For a bit of pre-story context, I had been Forever DMing for a few years before this and I had known this person for a solid 6-7 years at this point. They are not a good person in hindsight but at the time I thought they were one of my best friends.

So I decide, well, I've been DMing for a while without a chance to see how the other side lives, so lets try it out, and of course the, we'll call him Cursed DM, is starting a new campaign. I had seen this persons campaigns garner positive affection over the years so I figured they had to be doing something right and it'd be neat to experience being a player with someone who I've seen (apparently) have good DM style, flare and structure.

I roll up a rogue, because at the time I was still a bit of an edgy young adult, but I wanted to subvert the whole "lone wolf" thing so I instead rolled them up as a lonely backstreet thief who only stole to provide and had a bit of kleptomania, but just really wanted to make sure the people they care for had food on the table and shelter. The party consisted of myself, 2 female friends of ours and Cursed DMs brother. It's worth noting that, somehow, Cursed DM was also a bit of a manipulative and toxic playboy, so his groups regularly had women cycling in and out of it due to his wiles.

I however knew that this was not going to be fun on the very first session halfway through. During that session the way our group gets together and meets up is that we were all recruited and/or summoned one way or another by a wizard that leads a magic guild. As we get there, the group finishes talking with said head wizard and the wizard allows us to reside in his tower as long as we're working for him (providing us with a home base essentially.)

My Rogue, being a kleptomaniac and not being comfortable in place's he's not sure are safe, decides to go exploring and eventually winds up in the basement. He does some searching around to make sure there's nothing down there that could cause any problems and eventually comes across a book that's apparently speaking into his head and my Rogue, because while he's very careful he's not exactly smart, picks it up and tries to hide it away since he figures a talking book about would sell for a decent amount of food money and if it's in the basement then obviously nobody cares about it.

Evidently not as when he touches it the entity inside said book possesses my character, but doesn't take control of them, instead my character just now has what's apparently the Greatest Evil Demon:TM: that ever existed and was sealed away by the Head Wizard now stuck in his head. I figure it's a neat bit of conflict to introduce and have my character go back upstairs to the ground floor in hopes of finding the wizard to solve this problem, which is where the issues arise.

As soon as my character reaches the ground floor Cursed DM starts telling me that, because he doesn't want to take player agency away but will if he feels it's needed, the Greatest Evil Demon:TM: is whispering into my characters ears about doing all these evil things and setting it free. My character successfully resists but then Cursed DM apparently immediately backs out on "not wanting to take player agency away" because he says that the Greatest Evil Demon:TM: is forcing my character to act on his deepest desires.

Now my thought is that this just means his kleptomania and want of safety is going to get so much worse, that is not what happened.

Instead what happens is that my apparently possessed character sneaks around, outside, to the back of the wizards tower where the showers are located and decides to start peeking on the showering female party members. This makes both me and the other 2 immensely uncomfortable and I tell Cursed DM that my character wouldn't do that, they're a thief and a kleptomaniac not a creep or a pervert!

He tells me that it's as a result of the demon enhancing my characters desires and I try to shut him down by flat out telling him no, even then my character doesn't care about that kind of stuff, just about safety and having food money. He tries to turn it around at that point, saying that my characters doing it to make sure the 2 girls of the party are safe, but I try to shut that down too by telling him it doesn't matter, that's an invasion of privacy and still doesn't make sense because he'd just wait until they're done and check the inside after or at most just wait outside watching for any threats rather then ogling them through a window.

Finally Cursed DM just tells me to shut up if I want to keep playing, that it's the Greatest Evil Demon:TM: doing this and so I have no choice in the matter, all the while the Brother is dead silent (though I later learned he was talking to Cursed DM in private messages showing his support for Cursed DM) while the 2 girls of the group are cowed to silence and not speaking up by him (I later learned this was because he was abusing and blackmailing both.)

In the end I just sat back, said sure do whatever then, and got on my phone no longer paying attention to the game. Which apparently satisfied Cursed DM cause he acted like everything was fine while I was barely paying half an ear of attention, thinking to myself that if this is what being a player is like I'd rather just stick to DMing and specifically not do this to other players.

Unfortunately it doesn't end there however. Eventually towards the end of the session we reach another tower, the party ready to go in and deal with a problem, I wasn't aware of what the problem was both because, as mentioned, I was barely paying attention at this point and also because Cursed DM was controlling my character he made it so that my characters subconscious wasn't aware (which doesn't make sense to me but sure).

Eventually after I manage to do something neat while fighting an Animated Armor on a spiral staircase (jumped off the top to slam my daggers into it, missed, fell down the stair well center but managing to grab it as I go and use it as a metallic cushion (still really hurt) killing it) this resolves whatever was going on there because after that we apparently head back to the Wizard and report our findings.

What made me just up and out leave was towards the end where, as our characters are relaxing, Cursed DM says the Greatest Evil Demon:TM: once again takes over my body, with me rolling my eyes and thinking 'Oh here we go again' and preparing to zone out, until he says it takes over at night, sneaks into the female party members rooms and starts groping them.

This makes all of us immediately uncomfortable to a much higher degree, but as he started describing my character slowly pulling off his pants while doing so this finally makes me blow up (which is pretty hard to do, it's really difficult for me to get angry but this was pushing it.)

I shout at him that I'm not going to let him indulge in his weird Sexual Assault and potentially worse fantasies with 2 girls who look even more uncomfortable about this then I do! If he wants to do that shit do it on his own time in his own weird little fanfictions or whatever, but not in a game with other people who want to just have fun and are obviously uncomfortable.

I manage to convince the 2 girls (who look terrified of Cursed DM at this point) to leave with me as we go because no way in hell am I leaving them with him after shouting about that and everything going on. I'm an extreme pacifist so it wasn't like I was going to physically fight him either but I'm not gonna let that shit fly either way.

I left the dude entirely after that, tossed him from my life in it's entirety and later learned that he had a habit of finding, tricking and then abusing women (some physically, most mentally and emotionally) into doing whatever he wanted. But the worst part was learning that he was going to underage teenager Kik groups, finding them there and using TTRPG's to drag them into his wiles all while telling them to lie about their age while making them do weird gross sexual stuff (which really impacted them mentally, was devastating to see and find out, the 2 female PC's in our group were also underage, but I thought they just were young looking).

Last I heard, dudes parents found out (after me and others had tried to call cops on him but we all lived in different states so it wasn't possible). Apparently his dad tossed him through a window while his mom kicked him out entirely (which is saying something because his parents were the nicest people you'd ever meet.)

Unfortunately after all of that my want to do anything with TTRPG's was mostly gone, and nowadays when I try to DM I only get a few sessions in before my passion for it just dies. Really sucks but at least he got what was coming to him (and hopefully jail time).

TL;DR: DM takes control of my character to do increasingly weird and perverted acts to female PC's without their consent, I blow up and leave as a result only to later learn DM was both a pedophile and an abusive toxic person using DND as their medium.

So this is a pretty short story with a meta discussion, but I was curious about this category of “Horror Story” and was wondering if anyone had any of their own.

My story is very short and simple, I wanted to run Blades in the Dark for the group of friends I used to play D&D with (this was about two years ago). I believe my friends did not understand (or maybe didn’t like/didn’t read) the system or setting. Our short lived “campaign” went like this.

Right off the bat, in character creation, I already suspected we had issues when the players chose Vices and they were all…. very cozy? For lack of a better term. One player chose to say that trying to feed her family was her vice, another said that tavern crawling was her vice, my third said that his vice was “sightseeing” which I didn’t quite know how to address, but filed away as something I could work on. The players picked the Shadows crew playbook and decided to form a ragtag team of outlaws who stole from the corrupt rich and gave to the poor.

At this point, I reminded them of what I said when I pitched the game. This was dark fantasy, so I intended to portray a bit of a downward spiral if they wanted to start as moral, relatively good PCs. I was pretty upfront with my expectations of playing a game that was more morally ambiguous. They all nodded and agreed, so I shrugged and moved on with the game.

On their first score, they were presented with a twist after one player took a devils bargain. There had been another rival gang of thieves trying to steal the family heirloom from a family of prominent leviathan hunters, and they had just barely arrived in time. It was looking like they were going to have to fight. One of the PCs decided to call the Bluecoats (police) on the rival gang, reasoning that the rival gang had killed a lot more people. They weren’t entirely wrong, but my PCs got very unhappy with me when the Bluecoats detained them as well for breaking and entering.

After a mild out of character argument, the PCs were taken into custody and put in the back of a wagon (a kind of steampunk car) and one of the PCs decided to escape by using a wire to grab the steering lever of the vehicle and yank it to the side. They rolled a mixed success, and I narrated how they managed to flip the vehicle and escape their bindings, but did kill the two Bluecoats in the front of the vehicle, increasing the amount of heat they incurred on the mission and making it significantly louder. This triggered a much greater out of character argument, because the player didn’t intend to kill the Bluecoats and ‘would never kill anyone.’ I argued that it was the consequences of a partial success, and that those were parts of the consequences I could add as a GM. We agreed to table the discussion until after session, and the players moved into downtime.

The session ended after a player rolled to overindulge in their vice of drinking and tavern crawling, and they picked the option of attracting trouble, which triggered an additional entanglement roll from me. They rolled interrogation, and when told that I could decide how the PC got picked up, I said the PC got a little too drunk and got picked up for public intoxication, and the player interjected by saying their PC would never be drunk. I didn’t know how to respond to that, given that their vice was drinking and tavern crawling. I just said that they were identified by an eyewitness before I suggested playing a different game, and left the group shortly after. I wouldn’t be surprised if this was an issue of my miscommunication, but I’m fairly sure I specified that this was a dark game about playing scoundrels. I often wonder if they had read more than the character sheets.

Anyway, I was curious, what are everyone’s stories of groups/PCs that just completely miss the point?

*Edit, I have been informed the title is misleading, my problem is not Xp, my problem is with how this game was handled*

Hello everyone this is my first post and I kind of need to got this off my chest.

For about a 5 months i was playing a west march style campaign with about 50+ people with 5 DMs every Wednesday. I had joined at the tail end of the campaign and was told I could make a character of 5th level. I soon learned that the majority of other players where at 12th level, which was the "Technical" level cap. However many players who went above that level received hit points from those level and an custom epic boon for reaching level 13. Suffice it to say I felt underpowered without a means of catching up because (and I'm not aware if this is standard for west march) but XP was not granted by accomplishments or quest difficulty, but by days attended.

I was not daunted by this however since this was the first time in a while I got to experience DnD as a player after being stuck as a forever dm. I did, however realize that the paladin I had made would likely not be helpful to any party since I was built to be a front liner on battle field where most monsters could one shot me. I asked if i could change my character and was allowed to build a Life domain cleric so that I could at least be contributing. And was allowed to keep all of the Xp I had earned up along with magic item I had found.

Through out the next five months I had fun got to join epic battles against dragon dictators, cursed skeleton pirates, and a A Giant kitsune bbeg that could use every class ability under the sun! In most of these awesome encounters my character narrowly died but I had fun none the less. And was always happy when my cure wounds or healing word was just enough to keep an ally on their feet. By the end my character was level ten and for his ending, I decided he disappeared fallowing the call of his god.

This is the part the story where you might be asking how this is a horror story? Well it start two weeks after the campaign end and we begin a new campaign in a homebrew post apocalyptic setting conjured by the DMs. Know in the two weeks before the campaign began proper we were told that We would eventually be able to use homebrew after the DM's got used to the 5.5 rules and that more attention would be given to what the players wanted to do. I was absolutely excited for this campaign and quickly made a character with a backstory I was proud of. He was a scribe who was given a prophecy that he would become a monstrous force and would attack his beloved home town, he then traveled to the main town that the player would be building through the course of the campaign in hopes of finding a way to escape his fate. I built my character with the intent of him being a summoner wizard, but sense wizard don't get access to proper summoning spells until they reached 5th level, potentially months into the campaign, I was advised by a member of the games staff to start as an artificer and take homunculus servant when i reached 2nd level then take the rest in wizard. This would get me a bunch of good proficiencies and con saving throws as well. So I followed his advise, despite it not making sense for my character who was scribe.

Now with this being a new campaign I was determined to keep of with the other player and not fall behind into the under leveled position i was just freed from. I attended every session and within three weeks reached second level. I was egger to take Homunculus servant as one of my infusion's but soon after this happened me and many of the other player learned that their would be no down time, and so I could not get the 100 gp gem i needed for the infusion. I was deterred a little, now sitting with a dead infusion that was the whole motivation for taking artificer, but i walked it off and played for the next quest hoping that down time would open up by the end of it.

During this quest I soon realized that the Dm had little intention of interacting with our backstories and character motivations and backstories. "This game is about building up the town" and "there is to many of you to keep track of." This made me feel really, well, stupid for putting as much effort into my character backstory as I had, "but that was my fault" I had rationalized.

Any way the quest ended And I was optimistically awaited the news that down time would be open. I was met with silence. But where allowed to purchase thing in-between sessions this time and so asked if I could purchase a 100gp Gen for my infusion. I was met with a pretty firm, NO. Apparently it was unrealistic to purchase such a thing in post apocalyptic setting where a whole city of artificers lived a ways north of us. I was frankly confused since 100gp gem was the material component to 1st level spells like chromatic orb, but I just rolled with it. The next week was a Halloween party with nearby town we had just met. We had festive day with mini games and a costume party, followed enough XP that players who attended every session would reach Level 3!

The day ended and i was already planning what wizard spell I would take, trying to put artificer behind me. Downtime was still not open and I asked that, since we now had a relation with another town, that I could purchase a 100pg gem. I was again met with NO. Being told that both our time with the town was "A first contact situation" and that they wouldn't have them anyway. This almost broke me, but!, another player told me thta they had received a ruby during the last session. He told me he would ask for it to be appraised and would ask the Dm if it would be enough for me to get my homunculus! The next day the DMs told us NO on both fronts. The ruby, A 5,000gp treasure piece in the DMG, was only worth 10gp, and that it wouldn't be enough for the infusion to work. I asked if their was any substitute I could use just to be met with no response.

Now it felt intentional, It didn't make any sense why they would prevent me from doing it. It could have been as simple as me subtracting 100gp from my inventory, no gem, just the homunculus, but that wasn't an option. This, the pointless backstory, and no downtime in sight, i began to truly regret my character.

I messaged the event runner privately and asked her if I could change my characters class to a lore bard. Reasoning that it would make more sense for a scribe and that would be able to gain all of the Tasha summoning spells I was looking for through subclass feature and magical secrets. I didn't think it was unreasonable but about 4 hour latter I was told I would need to make a new character and that I would only have 360 xp to work with instead of the 900 my current charter had. I was also losing the two magic items I had earned and the major potion of healing granted to players who submitted the survey before the campaign even began. I gritted my teeth and made the character with a simple backstory i wouldn't regret, but I was met with a gut punch the next day.

"We heard how you all have been asking for downtime, well here it is!" A custom, rule set, for down time. In it was a way to receive spell components like gems of 100gp or more. On top of that the Xp yields for the next quests was only 250xp a weak. I would spend another month a level behind everyone still not feeling like a summoner. If i had just waited a day I could have gotten the gem I needed and kept going with wizard. But it was to late to change back, because my new backstory was already approved.

I felt cheated, and I couldn't bare to go to session that Wednesday. So I skipped, and I'm determined to never make a player feel they way I did. I never want a player to feel like I'm working against them, to feal like they would only be useful as support, and regret making a character because of decision I had made.

Should I have left, I don't know, but I'm defiantly has left a bad taste in my mouth for both XP and West marches.

Quick and dirty story for you all today,

I had a pretty standard DnD 5e game where I prefer that people roll stats Infront of me or the other players because it makes it a communal experience and I've had players cheat before. I roll 3d6 rather than 4d6, all players agreed to it, bam we have a campaign.

A guy in the group wanted us to be more morally ambiguous so cool, shifted them to be deserters from a military regiment easy.

They didn't like the initial start so they dragged everyone in a direction away from the content. No biggy I'll just work out what else is going on. They complained their ranger felt too weak (decent dex and probably was the highest consistent damage in the party) and wanted to switch characters. Cool no issue.

They made a warlock sorcerer wizard multi class (I really don't know what the idea was here) then grew bored and dropped the campaign. It's fine, whatever, I now have done alot of prep going a complete different direction but the players like it so it's fine.

2 months pass and they want to come back! H "Hey I rethought about my ranger character as I think I want to be a drake warden, can I come back?" ME "Sure, just adjust your character sheet and come back, I'll make some adjustments "

H "Yeah about that, I couldn't find my original stats so i rerolled. You won't believe it man I got 4 18's! (Other two stars were like 15 and 13)"

Wait what? You are correct , I don't believe you

ME "Er actually I have your old stats here, If you want to make a new character that's fine but I have to see the dice roll"

H "Comon man, I'll never have this luck again! Don't you want me backI'll even show you the screen shot of the results!" Proceeds to show a screen shot of a dice website. It looks legit yeah, it's the only one in their roll history. Aside from rolling 4d6 and having 6+ other tabs open of the same dice app

ME "Sorry I would prefer you to either use your own stats or roll a new character in front of me, this wasn't an issue last time, why is it a problem now?"

In follows a rant about how hard the game is and that they needed to have these stats to run this particular character

WHY PEOPLE? ITS JUST A FRIENDLY GAME WHY DO YOU NEED TO WIN SO BADLY

is there a subreddit for made up stories? something like how r/nosleep is all fake but still fun to read

English is not my native language, so I hope my post is understandable.

I wanted to share my horror story as a game master. I started a joint session with two other players from a different game. Originally, it was planned as a one-shot, but we had fun and decided to play more adventures together. So, they created new characters. Trusting they followed the rules, I didn't check them closely at first. Later, two more players joined – one is a longtime friend, and the other is his coworker. They were both complete newbies, and I had a lot of fun with them.

Now, regarding the first player: he created his character with opposing advantages and disadvantages, which I only discovered after I finally checked his character sheet. He wanted to give himself advantages without spending the corresponding points. He also didn’t calculate correctly and deducted only 5 gold instead of 20 – which happened more than once.

The second player often “forgot” how battles work and acted in ways to gain advantages by pretending not to know better. Then, he had a conflict with his NPC wife because she wouldn’t sneak away for “marital duties.” Eventually, he changed his character and even told another player that he only had one friend in the group, excluding the rest of us.

When I reached out to ask why he was changing characters, hoping to avoid similar issues in the future, he only replied that “such situations won’t happen with the new character,” evading my question. He ignored my offer to talk further.

He also acted very condescendingly toward me. When I explained something to him, he would contradict me. Only when another player agreed with me did he back down (I made sure to check my facts before responding). He also picked on a quieter player, and when I asked him to stop, he only made his actions more subtle, talking more to that player in ways that prevented any group cohesion.

At that point, I knew I couldn’t trust either of them. I expect respect and honesty and don’t want to feel responsible for situations like this. So, I disbanded the group, telling them I needed to focus on my work life. I couldn’t give the real reason, as that would likely lead to conflict in our original group, where we all also play together. (I’ll tell that story in another time).

Conclusion: I’m happy I disbanded the group. I want to be able to trust my players.

TL;DR: A fellow player created a character that didn’t match his sheet and regularly cheated with money. Another player acted dismissively towards newcomers, dodged questions, and showed other problematic behavior.

A few months ago this year, I was GMing a low-fantasy RPG for a friend's acquaintance, at her request. An important detail about this game is that it featured a completely open world map and there was no railroading for anything; as a result, player characters were free to wander about and explore the various locations of the game, on top of being able to revisit certain places to see if anything had changed in their absence. Of course, this also applied to the NPCs, so a LOT of things happened that the players wouldn't have had any idea about if they never went to the right places.

So, wandering NPCs that progress in the background alongside the players, and influence the world as much as they do. Cool? Cool.

The game starts. Our cowardly hero decides to play, as the name suggests, a Neutral Good heroic character. His whole shtick was being an outlaw that chose to turn to vigilantism instead of petty crime.
Thus he goes on his adventures, from rags to riches, from zero to hero, going from being the loser orphan to being a revered god slayer. At the start of his adventure, he had fought off a necromancer that managed to escape by the skin of his teeth after his undead army was defeated.

About two real life months later, and we're nearing the end of the game. He's feeling pretty good about himself, but then the threat of undead somehow starts to rear its head again, and he quickly remembers that his first ever major foe, the necromancer, does, in fact, still exist.
Worse yet, seeing as the necromancer's shenanigans were allowed to function unimpeded for the ENTIRE DURATION of the game, he had gotten much stronger in that time. VERY strong, to the point of being what some might call a demigod.
I'm talking tens of millions of minions, resurrected fallen heroes and great villains from bygone ages to act as commanders for the mighty army of undeath, and the worst of all, resurrecting the carcass of a great and colossal sea monster spanning the size of a continent, now under his command.

Once the hero was made aware of this information, he told me out-of-character that he just... gives up. On the spot. Literally did not even want to try. I asked him if he's sure, and reminded him that I have plans for the story. He said yes, and that everything is probably fucked anyway, so he might as well just not bother.

And, well, to say I was disappointed is a dire understatement. I had no choice but to can the campaign. I had an entire climax planned out for the final plotline of the game, where the entire planet would be in a time of war, uniting to fight off the necromancer's forces out of severe necessity. Of course, the forces aligning with the protagonist would have come out victorious in the end.

But... nah. He's too strong. We're just fucked, let's just give up and go home. Weeks of pre-planning and effort down the drain...

So after taking a little break from 5e around 2017(finished university, moved away from friends etc), couple years ago I wanted back in. I didn't have any mates who played, but there was a game held nearby. 10 bucks entry to cover the venue. Two tables. Pretty standard.

They played two games per night. One from 6-9, the other 9-12. I came once to both games and found the earlier dm was a guy barely 18 years old, lets call him J. The later DM was phenomenal, lets call him T. J would finish DMing and play at Ts table after.

Now I pretty quickly realised I didn't wanna be playing at Js table. He was young and inexperienced sure, but he was also just weird. Many of his NPC descriptions centred around their relative attractiveness, especially the big ol milkers which all women and certain men in his game had. At one point he thought I wasn't quite engaging enough with his descriptions of mommys milkers so he pulled out his phone and very quickly, like as if it was ready to go and he didn't have to search for it, showed me some barely not porn image of a cartoon woman in pink leather.

This came to a head when my third game with J he used power word kill on another guys PC, from a lich with huge tatas, just to ressurrect him and say he killed him for being a perv and now he would serve her forever. The guy playing the zombie pc loved it. Then they roleplayed this Dommy slave relationship that made me need to vomit. I vowed to never again come for the 6-9pm game, which sucked because I am not a night owl and Ts games take it out of me.

T on the other hand was amazing. His world was interactive. His NPCs were believable and had normal sized bewbs. His descriptions evocative and I still rate him as top 5 blokes I've ever seen DM. He juggled PC's of multiple different levels seamlessly and no encounters felt wasted.

Now the next session when I turned up at 8:30 instead of 6, I could see J was pissed. His table now had 2 people, Ts later table already had the 6 of us lined up.

My level 3 character was the lowest levelled in the game. Js was of a level unknown, presumably 15+. I think they were a wizard of some variety, but at the time didn't have enough knowledge of the game to tell you. Now during a roleplay encounter T had clearly made JUST for me, J started acting up. He counterspelled all of my minor illusions I was trying to use to trick this guy, so I lost all my money. And made sure his character was goading mine the whole time. I found it strange but laughed it off.

Then, while everyone was sleeping, I wanted to steal the money back. Apparently however, Js character doesn't sleep and rolled a perception check T didn't ask for that was higher than my stealth and exposed me as a theif. I laughed this time too, completely unsure of how to proceed. I noticed T, who had a killer poker face as a DM, was a little pissed.

Later the next gameday there was an ambush. It was somehow connected to Js backstory, but pretty quickly J realised it was just T coming for him in game. T made up some shit, killed Js character with a disintegrate spell, and quite politely told him to make a replacement character that works well in a group. My PC snorted his ashes.

T, if you're out there, thanks mate. Sorry I moved city but you're still on my best DM ever list.

(TL;DR - played in a game with my brother's ex-girlfriend and she had an unhealthy fixation on blood)

I found my brother's character sheet for this game a while ago, it was reasonably defaced, I think he left it in the backseat of my car after the events of the story.

When D&D had evolved from 3.0 to 3.5, I had one of the shakiest groups for which I had ever DM'd. It initially consisted of me in the DM seat, one of my friends, one of my brothers friends, and my brother's girlfriend at the time. For the better part of a year this group was pretty much its own horror story, but nothing heavy enough to be worthy of posting here. It was finally when that party had suffered a TPK at level 15 due to some collectively bad decision-making, that my brother and his girlfriend ended up breaking up. It was akward enough that we all took a break for a little bit, and then out of the blue, my brother's ex calls us up and says she wants to try running a game. I guess we were all kind of starved for a game, and probably a little masochistic, so we took her up on it.

To be totally honest, for the sake of this story, it doesn't matter what we played for characters; it didn't last long enough for us to even get out of the intro.

The only thing that happened in session 0 was we made our characters. My brother's ex refused to divulge any information of the game until the first session started.

The story opened up that we were all being held as prisoners in an infernal dungeon populated by demons and being governed by a succubus queen. Our characters were basically brought out into an arena, naked with no equipment, and told that we had to battle monsters as a team.

Now even if you've been playing TTRPG's for a long time, being thrown into this situation right off the bat is a bit anxiety inducing, especially if you've been on the DM side of the table for a long time and you know what the monsters you are being thrown against are capable of. Back to the wall, doing our best not to metagame, we talked amongst ourselves and came up with tactics to try to see if we could get out of this alive.

Immediately something became clear; every time one of us got hit, my brother's ex-girlfriend would describe the injuries in horrifying detail, paying special attention to the amount of blood falling and describing the bleed angle, range and it's viscosity with an almost sexualized detail. Even then, each time we took damage, we healed about half of it almost immediately.

So I finally ask after the second time this happens if there is a special kind of sponsor or whatever that is giving us magical health replenishment to get through this. She replies in character as the succubus queen-

"I see your will to live... and the blood you spill... your sweet blood... you deserve to live for as long as I am willing to have you."

...okay...

About the sixth or seventh round of combat we luck out and manage to kill all of the monsters that had initially entered the arena. The demonic crowd begins to cheer and begins to chant that they want more. The succubus queen personally enters the ring to congratulate us up close.

She said the succubus queen saunters on up to my character, takes one of her fingers, and traces in my blood across my characters chest a demonic sigil, explaining the texture to me in detail, and then seductively bringing her blood soaked finger to her mouth, and licking it off-

So I kind of gag and tell her that she's got to stop doing that. My brother chimes in and says that he agrees, and described the entire situation as "bullshit". My brother's ex then lectures him in character about how our collective will and the blood we spill are exciting to her... and I've already made my decision at this point in time to leave the game.

As I'm getting up and grabbing my stuff, my brother comes unglued.

"Alright you creepy bitch! You want my blood?! You wanna feed your blood obsession?! I dip my fingers into one of my wounds, turn back to her and start flicking at her face!"

"Okay, you take two damage doing that, how long do you do it for?"

My brother is visibly angry as the other two players very calmly start to back out of their seats.

"I'm gonna keep doing it for as long as it takes for me to get some of that shit in her eye!"

My brother's ex then begins a creepy monologue about how the succubus is becoming viciously aroused by this experience, and begins to narrate her begining to fondle my brother's character's wounds. As the other two players and I are heading toward the door we hear my brother lose his shit and say that he quits. She was so involved talking to my brother that she just notices us leave the room as my brother starts gathering his stuff.

I was down in the car waiting to drive him back to his apartment for about 10 minutes before he storms back out, throws his stuff in the backseat, gets in the front seat, slams the door and glares off into space. We begin to drive the 6 miles back to his apartment, about halfway I asked him if he wanted to talk to me about what just happened. He shook his head, never making eye contact with me.

"It's not the reason we broke up, but she always used to write fanfiction and make me read it, and it always ended up like that... she kept telling me she didn't have a blood play kink, but after reading her writing and playing in that game I think I'm pretty sure she does."

So, prior to that game, I didn't really know that blood play was even a thing, but her creepy fascination with it when we were all playing together was incredibly offputting. And she never mentioned any of this to us before we started.

While this story isn't as horrific as many on this sub, I still found it to be funny and thought that I'd share it.

I am an old school GM (34 years of DMing) running an old school game (D&D 2e, aka AD&D). I recently lost a player due to health issues, so I ran an ad on some local facebook groups for a replacement player.

One of the guys who applied claims to have played a lot of 2e D&D, so he was confident that he'd be a perfect fit. While I don't mind teaching the system to those who have never played 2e (or even D&D of any version), it never hurts to have someone who is comfortable with things. When I told him that the rest of the party were fourth level characters, so he could bring in a character of the same level, he immediately offered me his 1st level fighter/3rd level cleric of Thor; I explained that we play in my homebrew world and he'd need to make a character that fit in it.

We did a little chatting where I went over the basics - that my world is a low magic world, the idea being a "realistic fantasy" world - magic is special, clerics are using actual divine miracles, etc. That I would send him a spreadsheet with my pantheon and a summary of their powers and such, that I had a website with details for each deity and loads of info on the setting. And I would email him a basic primer on how I DM, information on the world, a quick list of what I needed from him - but please reach out with any questions at all. He agreed, so I sent the content and told him to let me know when he had a character concept.

Usually, players are excited in this stage. They ask questions, even though the emails I send are pretty thorough... and I don't mind. That's great, actually!

He asked if I had stat increases. 2e doesn't do that feature, so I replied no, only racial modifiers (things like +1 DEX and -1 CON for elves). He asked me about how different religions get different powers and spell lists. I told him to check the website for the granted powers per deity, and that yes, spell lists varied slightly depending on the given deity's sphere of influence - the healing and health goddess doesn't grant much in the way of combat spells, only the nature-related gods grant the full range of "woodsy" spells, the war gods tend to grant fewer utility spells, that sort of thing.

He then demanded full spell lists for each deity. I let him know that I don't keep every single spell list for every deity; if another player has run a cleric of that deity, I can easily share the list, but if not, I go through and assign based off of the tenets of the religion. That wasn't good enough for him, he insisted that he needed the complete spell list to pick a deity.

By now, I was growing frustrated and began to think that we were not going to be a match, and I basically told him as much, that if he couldn't come up with a concept without an exact spell list, that my table might not be what he was looking for. He backed off and said he would send me a character concept.

In the meantime, I decided to check his facebook profile. His email address says that he's a lawyer, his facebook shows that he likes to post photos of his so-called "mansion" (nice-ish house, hardly a mansion) and car. Every pic of him is a selfie with him mean mugging the camera, usually with his special forces trucker hat on - apparently, he's ex-army and very proud of that. He had pic after pic after pic of him in the same hat, looking like he was ready to eat a baby.

Except for two identical posts a couple days apart - featuring an attractive woman in cutoff tee shirt, holding a nerf gun in each hand, and his caption about how this was the last woman to break his heart and he was posting this as a warning to all women. Double you tee eff, my dude?

That evening, he sent me his character concept. For my low magic, "realistic fantasy" world, if you forgot.

Behold: "Nomadic Baron Elric Savage".

His special skill is that he is a "Mattoo artist" (aka magical tattoos).

He nominally worships one of the gods from my world. But this character is from another world, and in his culture, their warriors travel through magical portals to other worlds for adventure, plunder, etc - then return home after every level up to revel in their glory. Naturally, having these "mattoos" replaces all need for material or somatic components, as the magic is permanently inscribed on his skin (how convenient).

At this point, I informed him that we were definitely not the table he was looking for. I explained that he had taken a concept from another world, using another magic system, and ignored everything about my world. I applauded his creativity, but pointed out that he clearly wasn't interested in what we were looking for, and wished him luck.

He argued that he had given me something that I could plug into my world, since he knows nothing about my world. Mind you, one of the emails gives a high level intro to the world, to how I do religion, to the various races and nations, etc - and he had access to probably three hundred pages of reasonably well-organized content about the setting on the website itself.

I told him that he could have read the blurb on the religion he picked, picked a nation off the map and given me a generic enough backstory to work in any fantasy medieval setting, but instead, he had instead chosen a dimension traveling wizard/warrior/priest with magical tattoos.

I again told him that his idea was cool (I actually think that it's stupid as fuck, but I tried to be nice) and that it might fly well in, say, Greyhawk or Forgotten Realms - but not in a low magic world where again his spells are granted miracles from his god. I didn't even bother addressing the ability to plane shift pretty much anytime he wants (plane shift is not available to priests until 9th level, and would have to be homebrewed to work like he wanted).

I told him that I was looking to tell a collaborative story, that if he wasn't interested in doing twenty minutes of skimming to come up with a concept that fit in the world, that we weren't going to be what he was looking for.

I told him that in my experience, players who last and have a good time make an effort to be part of the world, they want to flesh it out through their play. I told him that some of them go on to become recurring or powerful NPCs that they and other players get to interact with.

I explained that in my experience, players who bring radical things from other games pretty clearly want to play that game instead. That's fine, but that's not the game we are playing. That doesn't make the player bad, it just makes them a bad fit. I once again stated that he just wasn't looking for what we were offering, but I wished him well.

So of course, he clapped back telling me that this obviously an ego game, just about me and my ego. That he hadn't picked any countries from the setting because I "scream of ego" and would have been offended. That he was no longer interested in playing with me, didn't want to serve my ego, and this was not fun.

As much as it might have been fun to stoop to his level, I stayed high road. I told him that I went to great length to support my players and to help them develop their stories. I pointed out that I had been nothing but respectful (again, keeping it silent that I had never ridiculed his stupid munchkin character), but that since he was now throwing insults, he had proven that my intuition about him was correct. I wished him luck.

And that was that.

Mattoos. Lol.

This is messed up.

Really, it’s so messed up. I’ve been a DM for as long as I can remember, and I love playing TTRPGs. I’ve been friends with this group for… gods, who even knows how long. Decades, at least. We usually play D&D together, it's my go-to group.

It’s a bigger group than recommended (7 players total), but since we’ve been playing together so long, it actually runs pretty smoothly.

When we first started, we didn’t have nearly as much content as we do now. So, back then, I created a homebrew world. It’s been growing and evolving over at least two decades now. It’s my project, and I take a lot of pride in it.

I’m not saying it’s the best, but it’s the best I could do. I’ve kept tons of notebooks over the years to keep everything consistent, but in the last year or two, the sheer number of them got… well, pretty cluttered. So, I finally decided to organize everything digitally.

I started using Notion (sorry if I’m not supposed to name it). It’s a bit clunky at first, but once it’s all set up? It’s amazing. I can’t believe I didn’t switch to it sooner. Anyway, that’s not the main point of the story.

I use Notion for everything: worldbuilding, session notes, campaign plots, archives, it does wonders. It makes my life easier, and I can access it from pretty much anywhere. Now, onto the real story.

About three months ago, our group hit some major scheduling issues, and we couldn’t play for a while. We went nearly two months without a session. Thing is, the break happened after I’d already written up the notes for our next session. Nothing new there, right? Scheduling issues are the bane of TTRPGs.

But about a month ago, we finally managed to set up a session, so I went back to my notes to refresh my memory. And that’s when things felt… off.

Some things weren’t exactly how I remembered them. Bullet points, loot lists, NPC interactions, etc. Even the way it was written, it all seemed a little different.

It wasn’t that different from what I remembered, but just different enough to feel… off. I figured it was just my mind playing tricks on me and ignored it. I made a few tweaks I thought needed more attention, and that was that.

Two weeks later, we had our session coming up, so I went back to my notes to check everything, get the minis ready, the maps, etc. And… once again, things were different. Stuff I knew I’d changed had reverted back.

Let me paint a picture: the changes all leaned toward certain outcomes. I don’t usually set things up like that, so… it felt wrong. I made all my changes again.

When we finally met for the session at a friend’s place, things went smoothly for the most part, but a few things caught my attention. One player, who’s normally the most outgoing, was acting a bit strange. You know when someone seems anxious or expectant, like they’re waiting for something specific to happen? It was like that.

He didn’t say anything, but I got the feeling he was expecting something particular to happen. And when it didn’t (or didn’t happen the way he wanted) he looked frustrated.

I thought it was strange, but honestly, everyone’s under different kinds of stress, so I didn’t dwell on it. I went home that day and got on Notion to write up what happened in the session for my archives.

The next day, at work, I pulled out my phone to check a few things (my mind wanders sometimes). I opened the archive for that session and… it was altered again. That’s when I was sure something was up.

I asked a friend who works in programming if there was any way things could change on Notion by themselves, maybe their servers were acting up or something. He took my laptop, and the first thing he checked was the list of devices with access to my account.

There were four. My laptop, my phone, my tablet, and another laptop I didn’t recognize, which had logged in that day. As you can imagine, that was absolutely terrifying. I don’t want anything on my Notion exposed. It’s my work, and I don’t want anyone else looking at it.

So, we did a full reset. Changed my passwords and everything. My friend even went the extra mile and reformatted my laptop and reset all my devices (which SUCKS!), but hey, security first.

Well, there wasn’t much more we could do after that. My next D&D session was coming up, so I went to work on it. That’s when, out of nowhere, I remembered that player’s odd behavior. It bugged me, so I decided to check my archives, my world notes, everything.

And holy hell, it was everywhere. Everywhere I looked, things were changed to make his characters (yes, plural) look better. He’d even edited full-on epilogues, calling his characters the “Party’s Brain and Leader,” and so on.

I was furious. Still am. Our next session was supposed to be this Saturday, but I just couldn’t go through with it. I called him and laid it all out, told him I knew what he’d been doing.

And you know what this sociopath said? “Why does it matter? It’s not like it’s hurting anyone. I just wanted a better light.”

Are you kidding me?

I’ve known him for over twenty years. Twenty years! And this guy pulls something like that? I’m sorry, but I’m just so damn angry. I hung up the call the moment he said that and made sure to kick him out of every TTRPG group we have. I told every player what he’d been up to, and they’re all just as pissed as I am. Maybe even more, honestly.

Now, I’m trying to put things back together, fix everything. Thank god I have my notebooks so I can fact-check it all. But seriously… who does that kind of crap?

TL;DR: A player I’ve known for twenty years was hacking into my notes, changing past campaign details and current session notes to make his characters look "better"—and didn’t even care when he got caught.

CW: Sexual themes, SA, bodily harm, infant mortality, general jerkishness, misogyny, religious trauma, strong language.

Hey reddit, long time lurker. First time poster. I've been a fan of live play D&D shows and the hobby as an outsider looking for a couple years now but have only been really playing for about a year, and even then it was just a few one shots, one shorter campaign, and running a game of my own roughly once a month and fumbling it most of the time. I love the hobby but I know I have a long way to go before I'm like "good" at it.

Despite my love for the game I almost didn't stick to it though because of the story I got for you guys.
If this gets too long I might break it up into a two parter.

==People Of Interest==
Names are changed for the sake of privacy.

• Me, first time player made to play a Cleric of the Life domain.
• DM, the DM of my first ever campaign
• Lockheed, a military guy and wannabe alpha male. He played a Paladin of Conquest.
• Martin, Lockheed's best friend. He was playing a Barbarian, I forget what kind.
• Boeing, A player who had a big fixation on "historical accuracy". He was playing a Fighter, Samurai I think?
• Browning, the party's resident furry pothead. Played a Beastmaster Ranger.

For some context, I am a woman, and a minority. I was raised in a very religious household that didn't even let us read Tolkien because of how strict things were. When I got out of the house following a very dark period of my life I got deep into everything I wasn't allowed to get into drinking, smoking, partying, and added to the list of my newfound rebellious spirit was nerd shit. So much nerd shit. Anime, mobile games, fantasy novels, miniatures, figurine collecting, cosplay, everything under the sun and then some and among it all was discovering D&D. I was in love with the roleplay, the action, the possibilities of creating something of my own. One day after a really good episode of Dimension 20 (from their crown of candy series) I decided to go to my local game shop and sign up for my first ever campaign.

The local game shop wasn't as bad as it could be, it didn't smell and it wasn't run by mean neckbeards or anything but it was still very clearly a "guy zone" most days I'd go there I'd be the only woman unless someone's mom was coming to pick them up. Most people were chill and not too creepy but I could tell that a lot of them weren't used to hanging out with women.

I got into a game ran by one of the cooler dudes there where it was some homebrew world that was all about honorable knights and big epic level wars between kingdoms, very Arthurian in nature. I was a bit overwhelmed by the homebrew and the uncertainty of making my first ever character but I stuck to it I was hoping to have a good time. The DM and other players saw I was having issues and with a bit of help we eventually talked about how the party needed a real healer, and that a cleric would be excellent for that.

Now, part of me dealing with the memories of my hyper strict religious parents and the traumas within was apprehensive about playing the religious class but they needed a healer and I didn't want to make a big fuss, it was my first game and clearly they knew better because they've been playing longer. They guide me through making my character and while picking spells I noticed some more offensive spells that sounded more fun to use like Spirit Guardians, but when I asked if they'd be good the party told me I'd not need those as they had it all handled and I should just worry about being a "Heal-Bot". I just kept my head down and went for it after all they really seemed to know what they were doing.

I get into my first session and everything is okay, get introduced to the party as an envoy of the church in a new nation they were visiting seeking allies in the war against the evil legions of some other kingdom and we hit it off well enough. Soon though our party gets ambushed by some very heavily armed bandits apparently deserters from some big army who'd been lording it over nearby farmers. The fight is rough and my rolls weren't too great, especially since it was my first ever fight. I think about swinging my mace down on a tripped bandit to finish him off but the party all snaps at me to instead cast some healing spells because they weren't at full HP, it was my job to keep them all topped off as a cleric. My job was not to kill enemies, or tank, or anything it was to exclusively heal.

The fight ends and everything is fine in the end. We had a bit of RP where the party, lead by Lockheed, were scalping and looting the dead and comparing how much they'd sell things for. As we are about to leave we find one bandit had survived but was heavily injured and trying to hide from us so we couldn't get some information out of them. This bandit was a woman, which is unfortunately relevant. I offer to heal her in exchange for information for where the rest of the deserters were at but the party rages against that idea saying I shouldn't spare resources on NPCs. I felt a bit off due to that and lurked for a bit while they took over the interrogation and it got very creepy very fast.

Lockheed and Martin stripped the woman to "check her for weapons" and were making some suggestive hand motions while doing so, with Martin going so far as to take an umbrella and use it as a "prop". But they don't push that much further though many jokes are made against the poor woman. I am not even allowed to talk to her, the party saying my weak little heart couldn't take getting information out of criminal scum like a deserter bandit. They threaten the woman with violence if she doesn't speak, threatening her with weapons, a hammer, hot irons, and Browning even made a single joke under his breath about maybe locking her in a room with his direwolf until she was ready to talk. I felt sick to my stomach but at the time I still was very averse to conflict and didn't want to make a scene at my very first game. Thankfully nothing happens as the woman simply gives us information and I was able to convince the party to not do anything to her and that we should just take her to the proper authorities in town, offering that maybe there was a bounty out on these bandits and that they'd be worth more alive than dead.

We eventually hand off the woman and all was said and done, session ended not much later and I left with a few words thanking the DM for running but feeling a bit weird about the whole thing. The next week I arrive hoping that things had just been a little off and before session I engage in some banter with the party. Browning tells me he's happy to see me back because "D&D is really a sausage fest some days" and I just sort of awkwardly chuckled it off. What I couldn't move past was that he had apparently drawn art of the party, it was in a very Vizie-pop/Furry style but the quality of the linework wasn't awful. He had included my Cleric in it too, but instead of putting her in her actual half plate with all her flowing capes he had instead drawn her in an almost Slave-Leia style armored bikini with lot of extra dancer's ribbons and a collar. I was creeped out and said she'd never wear that only to be met with the words "Its just fan art, don't like it cool but don't shit on it".

Session starts after that and we're tracking down more bandits, and all the while Lockheed and Martin are making jokes about possibly conquering the bandits and then ruling them, seeing as Lockheed was a real alpha and it was suiting for him to be in charge of some good fighters, but none as good as him of course. No one was ever as good a warrior as Lockheed, EVER.

We find another camp of bandits but these ones aren't as well armed and seem to be sitting down to have dinner, and to my surprise there were some women and children among the bandits. Apparently their wives/sisters/kids ect. I fear that is in fact relevant. I suggest we maybe wait for the civilians to go elsewhere before attacking the camp but got told to just focus on healing. It wasn't really even a fight, it was over quick but the violence didn't stop when initiative did. More torture for info, the kids and women were put in manacles and walked off to a nearby abandoned hut to "wait their turn" and when I objected Boeing smiled this big creepy smile and said "What you want to go in there with them? I shut up and just tuned out for a bit while various horrors were done. It got dark very quickly.

I had been expecting a campaign with noble knights upholding truth and peace and instead I had a pack of thugs keeping me around as a healing battery while they assaulted people and put them to the screws. When I raised a concern Boeing just said they were doing what any good soldiers would do and that actions like this were to break the morale of the enemy going on and on about things until I again just tuned out. Well after they'd practically tortured and subjected the women to various horrors I asked what would be happening to the kids, I was disgusted but I just wanted to know if anything good would come out of this. In response Beoing went "Oh you got to pull scum like this up at the root" and threw a flask of alchemist fire on the lodge where the children were. Lockheed and Martin laughed saying they'd give the women replacements when they had their own kingdom. I broke down on the spot and had an anxiety attack.

For more context, I was only out of the church because I had a lapse in faith after I suffered a horrible car accident and lost my unborn child. Ever since the subject, mentioning, or displays of child mortality just hurt me in ways I really cannot put into words. I knew they were just fictional npc bandit kids but I still had a flare up of both instincts and memories that took me out of it.

I was crying and dry heaving, and Lockheed/Martin the classic duo were telling to "stop being a bitch its just a game". That was my last straw, still in a daze I got up, grabbed all my stuff, and left the table. If this was D&D I'd stick to my live play shows. I was messed up for a couple weeks and didn't touch anything with TTRPGS, but eventually went back to the game shop to apologize to DM at the very least. I didn't find DM there, instead I found Browning. I asked how things were he said stuff was fine but the table was again a sausage fest. I asked how it went after I left just to be polite.

He told me that they just moved on without me as a player but didn't want to lose their "heal slut" and kept me around as an NPC they all controlled as a party. I was a bit uncomfortable and didn't press, but he went on saying he had more "art" of the scenes if I ever wanted to see it. I didn't, especially not when he got a little pervy glint in his eyes. He showed me a couple anyway even as I was starting to get up to leave again, it was full on hentai. My cleric basically being passed around and while his first picture of my cleric had accurate skin tones and proportions the one he showed me looked a lot closer to... me. I got up and left and to this day I've never been back at that game shop.

I only ever got back into playing when a friend of mine invited me to an ongoing campaign set in an ancient chinese setting, and I loved that game. I loved players that weren't bad mouthing women or SA'ing people, and I loved playing something other than a glorified healing battery.

But for a while before starting that game all I could think of was that table, and while I love the game I can never really shake that this was my first entry point into it.

Sorry the story was a bit of a downer, I have nicer stories I can share another time but that's what I have right now.

TL:DR. I join my first D&D campaign expecting knights and valor but get creepy rapists that set off my personal traumas and IRL lewd fanart of myself/my character.

Once upon a time I met A DM through a listing on roll20.net. Let’s call him Mr. G. Mr. G impressed me immediately with his grasp of 5e mechanics and his people skills. I joined a campaign that he was starting up. It was fun. Mr. G has a dramatic delivery that has to be heard to be believed; even if he mispronounces one of those weird, archaic words that you find in prepared campaigns, the kind of words that never come up in real life, he sounds so authoritative that you find yourself using his mispronunciation yourself, because his way of saying things is just more awesome.

But then people dropped out for the usual reasons.

That left us with three people, two of whom didn’t show up some times, often without telling us that they couldn’t make it. Games were constantly being cancelled at the last minute. Attempts were made to recruit more people to the campaign. There were three or four others, most of whom deserve their very own horror stories. Finally Mr. G declared the campaign dead.

This story is about the next campaign.

Mr. G chatted me on Discord and said that he had a brand new group. He used words like “excited” and “committed.” I’m a cynic, so I wanted to ask him how he knew that these people were excited and committed given that, from the sound of it, he’d only just met them. Lots of people are excited and committed until they discover that the game has attendance requirements and even homework, if you want to know how to play your character.

One of these committed, excited players I will call Loc.

You may have met a player exactly like Loc. Heck, you may have been Loc. Maybe you still are Loc and are trying to get better. I wish you luck.

Let me tell you about Loc. He was youngish and immediately pinged my autism spectrum detector. Loc fundamentally did not grasp how to play a TTRPG. Instead of having a character with abilities that gave him a set of tools to use on his turn, he had a character with a backstory that he repeated on every turn, in combat. Between his turns he did not plan what to do next. We’re not sure what he was doing. He certainly wasn’t paying attention to the actions of other players or enemies. Other player’s turns were, for him, just a necessary wait until he got to talk and star in his own personal action movie.

After the first few sessions, Loc rolled up a new character, one I suspect used a build he got from the internet because it looked cool. He had no idea how it worked. But that wasn’t important. Loc understood TTRPG’s to be all about characters—especially his character—making dramatic speeches to a captive audience; mechanics were for people who couldn’t come up with lots of things to say.

On top of that, English was not Loc’s first language, and he looked at D&D as an opportunity to practice. And on top of that, like sprinkles, were the extra Discord delays that you get with an overseas connection. But that wouldn’t have mattered if Loc had ever listened to anyone but the voices in his head.

Mr. G had the patience of a six-pack of saints and repeatedly walked Loc through mechanics, soft skills, and how to be a good player. Every. Turn. Loc did not internalize any of this, because he was the hero of the story and heroes are not constrained by the action economy.

As it turned out, most of this set of players were teens or young adults who did not have control of their schedules. They missed games because they had to study (“revise,” as most of them were UK/EU), or their parents required them to attend family events. They all quit the campaign, except for Loc. Thinking back, I wonder if Loc was really a part of that friend group and if one reason for them bailing was that they found playing with him embarrassing.

Mr. G had many connections with other players. He brought in a third player, who we will call Mr. W. Maybe I had low standards, but Mr. W immediately impressed me with his game. He understood the build he picked, he was adult, relaxed and friendly, never talked over anyone, and he knew all the online tools we were using. A bit later I played in some games he DM’d, and my initial impressions strengthened. Everyone should have a chance to play with people like Mr. W. Notably, Mr. W had mad skills at explaining things. I’ve watched him coach new players a couple of times, and I have never been less than thoroughly impressed.

The next week an entire crew of Mr. W’s friends showed up, and they were all more or less like he was. Experienced, mature gamers who wanted to focus on the game for three hours once a week. They made the game awesome. From being nearly dead, the entire campaign rallied, and I looked forward to every session.

Except that Loc was still there. And he was still, well, Loc.

Mr. W took over some of the load of trying to redirect Loc’s energy, and it didn’t work. Every time someone explained that he had to stop monologuing on his turn and *play the game*, he would agree strenuously and not change at all. Mr. W was dogged and determined, but he couldn’t make a dent in the mirror-polished ball that was Loc’s consciousness. It’s as if Loc had internalized what he was supposed to say when people took the time to give him feedback, but he hadn’t internalized what feedback was or what he was supposed to do with it (internalize it, natch). I’d certainly spent some time early on trying to keep Loc on track, but I will admit that I have the finesse of a backhoe and was happy to yield that task to other people more suited.

There were stressful discussions in Discord and long pauses in game where everyone tried to sort out Loc’s issues, whether mechanical or social. Loc kept trying to engage people in between-session RP on Discord, and didn’t seem to get that nobody had any interest in reading his monologues or validating his feelings. His invitations to RP chat started making me uncomfortable in a way that usually only comes up when someone tries to initiate ERP, which this wasn’t, but it had a similar flavor of being an unwanted intimacy, of having a small child who is not yours clinging to your legs. He kept telling us all about the redemption arcs he foresaw for his character, redemption arcs that looked like they were really for the player. Between-session RP that could have happened didn’t just because nobody wanted to attract Loc’s attention. Loc disappeared (I breathed a sigh of relief), but then he came back.

At that point, I was certain that Loc was not having any fun and was only playing with us because nobody else would talk to him. And it was a shame, because Loc was not a bad person. He was just insufferable.

Finally Loc posted in Discord that he was leaving the game. He said a few things, but the key one here is that he tried to initiate companionship with Mr. W in private chat and had been rebuffed, and he was hurt by that. Loc said multiple times, in multiple different ways, that he didn’t blame Mr. W, but it was nevertheless all Mr. W’s fault that he was leaving, and that Mr. W’s taking the time to explain to Loc how to improve the flow of the game so that we got more than five rounds of combat in each week had hurt his feelings. Mr. W was being *unfair*.

I think that Mr. W showing up and saving the campaign by being a good player while failing to appreciate that Loc was the main character utterly derailed whatever redemption arc Loc had planned for himself, and that Loc could not forgive.

Today is not a good day for a lot of people, but on top of that, I have this itching urge to throw things across the ocean at someone who flounced so hard, pausing on the way out to blame the person who put so much good-faith effort into helping him, who deserved better.

Edit: I want to assure everyone that I've put some effort into telling Mr. W that he's not at fault and that he's a pleasure to play with. I even showed him this write-up, and he said he enjoyed it. He's going to be OK. Besides, he's Canadian, so he's not as depressed as some of us are.

Long post, so sorry in advance.

I don't usually post on reddit, but this was...rough. And it's sad to admit, but I don't really have many friends or family members I feel comfortable sharing this with.

I (21M) met a small group of 3 friends on Reddit after posting a DnD game application years ago. I DMed for them for a few months, and they liked it, but I ultimately ghosted for a while after some real life stuff ended up with me being homeless.

Long story short, I recently reconnected with them a few years later, and it was almost like nothing changed. I apologized for ghosting and explained my situation, and they were all super gracious and actually had stayed in contact after my game ended since they enjoyed each others' company.

They invited me to another game with a few new people they met, and I got to play in the same setting I DMed in, but as a player this time. It was super awesome.

One of these friends was a girl I'll call Ashley, 23F. Ashley, both back when I initially knew her and still today, is a very emotional person. She was hit hard by my ghosting, and took a while to forgive me, which I completely understood and didn't force anything.

She's always been super open, to an almost uncomfortable degree. Within a month of knowing her, I was informed that her boyfriend liked to be cucked and she was poly (I never prompted her for these details), and I was often the new go-to for any problems she was having sexually, due to me being awful at setting boundaries without being nervous of making her feel bad.

Recently, she's started to fall back into these habits. She's come to me for advice about her boyfriend, who she says she isn't happy being with anymore. I've dated two people, and never for longer than a month, so I couldn't do much but just listen. She went in-depth about their sexual and romantic history, like before, which I still was unnerved by, but tried to push through to offer anything helpful I could manage. I was there while she talked herself into breaking up with him and tried to be supporting of her through the whole process, which, through both VC and DMs, seemed really difficult, since it was a 3 year relationship.

Slight pivot back to DnD, because I promise this is a DnD story. Now that the veil is lifted on my game and it's officially over, I'm completely candid with my old plotlines in the game and what I had planned for NPCs. One of these NPCs was in a romance with Ashley's character, and she asked a lot of questions about him and his feelings for her. I didn't mind, but in hindsight this was the first warning.

Near the end of my time DMing for her and the group in general, I opened up the opportunity for RPing in DMs. Ashley asked for a few, a lot of them super neat and narratively focused, but one of the last ones was...different. Doing away with unnecessary details, her character and her character's partner met up with a bunch of IC friends to celebrate a victory her PC had recently won.

Her PC and the NPC had yet to "fade to black", primarily as an excuse because I'm nowhere near comfortable rping that type of intimacy in DnD games, even the lead up. After the party, she rped her character leaving with her NPC boyfriend, then pulling him into an alley once out of sight and, to put it lightly, having an intense moment of intimacy.

I was wildly caught off guard and more than a little nervous, but just froze up and decided to roll with it (stupid decision, I know). Nothing overtly sexual actually happened, but the undertones were there, and her character promised to "finish the job" with her NPC boyfriend later.

After the RP, she checked on me. I was honest and told her I was kind of uncomfortable, but it was okay, and just not to venture near that place again or warn me before getting so intense.

Fast forward to the present day, she confessed to me, after breaking up with her boyfriend, that she both had romantic and sexual feelings for me after seeing my face on webcam, and that she thought about me and her when having that intimate moment during that DMed rp.

Her words, verbatim, were: "I hope you enjoyed yourself as much as I did, if you catch my drift"

I was completely shell-shocked. I tried to play it off and say I appreciated her bravery and honesty when telling that to me, but I didn't really know what to say in response. This completely took the wind out of her sails. For the past few days, she's been completely silent on Discord and her status is a little worrying. I know she's going through a rough time irl, but I might have just made it worse.

I'm not interested in her romantically, but I don't want her to suffer. So I've been trying to figure out something to say to make it better these past few days.

No real solution in mind, just wanted to vent here.

TL;DR: A girl online confesses to thinking about me and "enjoying herself" when having a passionate moment with an NPC.

EDIT: USER MADE A NEW POST TO HIDE HIS TRACKS, THIS IS INSANE.
Brother you are not HIM, stop being a fool PLEASE, let us just talk like adults instead of posting on reddit like TOXIC TWEENS.
New name: I was a "that guy" in a game, got kicked and honestly it was deserved

MY OG POST, WILL POST ARCHIVED VERSION OF HIS OG POST IF NECESSARY:
Sister of the DM aka "Wren's" player. I could post the same thing I sent you, but you did not want to be an adult, so let's fight publicly like children. I could post every single fucking screenshot(from the DM, wizard's player, and I), screen records of the og post you attempted to delete upon being called out, and archives we have of the chats -- including you changing your name so we don't know it's you 'Timur Loch'.

This is the reply from the DM (she does not have a reddit account so she wrote this up and I am posting it from my lurker acc):

" Hey, this is the DM here. I wanted to clarify some things that have been severely misconstrued. Honestly, there are too many inaccuracies for me to address them all in-depth, so I’ll focus on the major ones and list some more at the end. (A quick side note before we begin, I never said I adored Loca, and I drew everyone’s character, so try not to get too high off your own farts.)

Firstly, the other players have been incredibly engaged throughout the entire game, they are just soft-spoken. You/Loca tend to speak over them and not afford them long enough pauses to respond to events. “Loca”, who is not actually the character you played but for the sake of it we’ll use her, is brash and hardheaded. The others are playing characters who are squishier and like to strategize rather than barge in. Thinking of what their characters would say and do takes more time than it does for a character who rushes in guns blazing.

This brings me to my second point. The temple scene you’re describing played out so differently than how you portrayed it that you’re essentially lying. For one, it was not Loca’s family member on the chopping block (as you never sent me a document with her backstory so how could it be, but that’s a separate problem), it was a RANDOM THEIF. In the middle of a public execution, with all the town’s guards and priests and paladins in attendance, Loca began stringing her bow which is only something an insane person would do. But I was trying to be gracious and not railroad you. However, I did warn you that withdrawing a weapon in this setting would get Loca arrested at best, killed at worst. Your party tried to convince you to stop, and they failed their dice rolls to do so. You also outright threatened Wren’s player with retaliation as she cast this, so it makes sense for her character to avoid you after that.

Anyways, Loca continued to pursue this course of action without you informing me or the party of her intent to use the bow as a means of crowd control and push her way to the front, which is fine, and she succeeded. But then Loca approached the temple to give the RANDOM THEIF her last rites, which was a big no-no obviously as the high priestess is there and Loca’s wielding a bow, so she was consequently tackled by a guard. In this scenario you were without question main-charactering. You put your companions’ safety at risk to be the hero, sending them scattering for safety and forcing me to deal with a split party and write around something that would be very unlikely to happen were this a real-life scenario which is frustrating. I will admit, I’m not blameless here. I should have followed through on my warnings and had Loca arrested. As a DM I have a gentle hand, and I see moving forward I will need to be more direct.

Here are some other gripes I had with your behavior.

When the party was offered two camels to ride across the desert, each able to carry two people, Loca said she would just walk beside the animals. Again, insane behavior to travel across a desert wasteland on foot and expend precious energy when at the time you had a war-forged in your party who would not be limited by biological functions. This was obviously meant to let them shine and reward them for their choice in character creation. And just as an FYI, this player did not leave an open a spot for you to fill because they were already in the game with you. In fact, just so you know, they quit partly because they were annoyed by your behavior.

Next point, last session you posted screenshots from your own personal chat with friends calling another player’s character useless, yapping, and a gaslighter. Not only does the yapping comment counter what you claim about the other players not being engaged, but who the hell thinks it’s okay to post those screenshots in a chat where the character’s player can see it???? I can’t even force myself to be civil, like holy shit man, that’s your fellow player! Have some respect and compassion maybe!?!?!?!

Also, last session, after making a comment as Loca, you complained about being out of spoons to role-play anymore and that you didn’t want to be the party face. DUDE, NO ONE WAS ADDRESSING YOU WHEN YOU MADE THAT COMMENT!!! YOU HAVE A BARD IN YOUR PARTY!!!!!!! But you always had something to say even in conversations that did not include you.

Why did you believe you had to facilitate RP? THAT’S MY JOB! AND I DID A DAMN GOOD JOB AT IT!!!! Not to toot my own horn here, but in our last session, Bismarck and Juniper had a half-hour long conversation that brought Juniper’s player to LITERAL TEARS. It was RIVETING! And it was unbroken by me or anyone else in the party! It was all them, and it was all engaging. They did a fantastic job using the pieces I set in motion by playing on their backstories. The fact you chose to ignore this in your post lets me know you gave zero shits about anyone else in the party. By the way, Bismarck is a Drow and Wren is just an Aasimar.

Finally, when I tried to address the main-charactering to you in DMs, you immediately got defensive. I tried, lord forgive me, I tried to be kind. I know I can be a bit blunt in writing, but I genuinely wanted to solve this problem. I suggested Loca be used in a game where deaths are actively expected because she always chose dangerous choices that would have dire consequences. She would fit better in a more grueling story. And I gave you the option of changing characters earlier on, but you turned me down! Then you have the gall to tell me you are tired of Loca?! What the fuck man? Not to mention you were extremely passive aggressive to me and sent a message to Wren’s player essentially calling me a bad DM.

Just to give you some closure, I decided to drop you from the game because I am a busy person. I work, I go to graduate school, and with what little time I have for fun I like to play DnD. Arguing with you was not fun. DMing you was not fun. And I made the executive decision to break communications because I’d like to save my energy for other things.

Thank you for proving you were the massive red flag I always suspected you were.

Other Inaccuracies:

- The setting is loosely based off Egyptian and Sumerian cultures, not Turkish and Indian

- There’s a pantheon of gods, not just one.

- The “God Emperor” was not an emperor; she was a high priestess of one town.

- They were never starving. I do not use the ration mechanic of 5e.

- All of Loca’s backstory; I never received a proper document with her story in it.

- It wasn’t a boxing ring; Loca wrestled a crocodile without taking any damage.

- Our group routinely plays lethal company, content warning, etc; Loca’s player never joined us despite having ample opportunity to do so. They also never got the contact info for two of the players. This is because none of us were close friends with him.

- The war-forged character got the party the job with the scholar, not Loca.

- You were barely ever in Bismarck’s house.

- There was no fight with a dog-headed idol made of metal; you guys were level 3, you fought two giant lizards. Nice job glazing your idea in the comments though.

- You changed every single character minorly in your story (name and race wise).

- Sincerly, why did you change the NPC genders and invent an unreal romance..? Just curious.

- Oh, also, you DID NOT EVEN PLAY LOCH, you played an entire different character named Tamraz."

Also, you gave us all a good laugh in server for this fanfic, thanks! <3
I hope you have a good life and that WE hear nothing about it.

So I'm only making this post due to another story that got posted on here recently, and some fresh (within the hour) drama that occurred from it. I don't think the rules will allow me to link to the post but it was put up here not too long ago where a player got kicked from a game for some alleged main character syndrome. I recently was removed from a campaign for some pretty blatant main character-itis, and if anything just want to post this story as a sort of warning or self check out for people so that maybe it can avoid some other people going down the same road.

So for some context I've been playing D&D for about fifteen years, picking the game up when I was about twelve when I went into a game store on a hunch and instantly fell in love with the TTRPG hobby. I've played just about every system, game, edition, or homebrewed clusterbomb one can imagine but my big love has been and continues to be dungeons and dragons. But for a vast majority of my career in it I've been a dungeon master, game keeper, or otherwise have been put into positions where I had to manage things and well its given me some bad habits when I do manage to escape the forever DM chair and get a chance to play

A little bit ago I joined a game with a vaguely babylonian/bronze city state vibe, my favorite aesthetic of all time, and seeing as I was hitting a wall working on my own bronze age styled game I decided to apply and got into a game meeting some pretty excellent people. While one party member did drop due to a lack of personal enjoyment the rest of the party was amazing people in and out of game, we hung out after sessions for long calls about random topics and a lot of the party plays games together on a frequent basis.

I'll admit I did have some gripes with the game but it only came from the fact my forever DM brain was going on about things our DM was doing differently but honestly I was coming around on things having to remind myself that every DM is different and that everyone does things in their own way. Not everyone hard focuses the nitty and gritty of world building, some people prefer to have more linear stories, some people allow players way more leeway on things. Its all okay.

Well my PC, the big issue that lead to me being removed from the game, was a frankly pretty janky/power built Rogue/Barbarian named Tamraz, a giant foundling and mercenary who was raised by wild dogs and mercenaries and had a bit of a wildman vibe to him. I wanted to play him as a sort of Conan mixed with Tarzan sort of vibe, not understanding and critiquing corruption in cities and digging nature but I really feel I laid it on way too thick in hindsight. He was the party's main martial, and in our few fights mostly acted as a meat shield with a few stackable damage amps for single big hits (that seldom landed, I really should have focused cohesion over theoretical big numbers)

The DM allowed homebrew as long as it was reviewed and didn't bar any sort of base books things, she was pretty good about allowing people to do whatever they found fun. The party had some good aesthetics, and the DM was a talented artist who doodled a few NPCs and PCs with pretty good skill. Honestly aside from starting at an ungodly hour and having the differences in DMing style it was a dream game for me.

Well, as the sessions went by often I found myself in more scenes than expected often taking my crazed wildman schitck a bit far though outside of game no one told me anything was annoying or too much until t was far too late. He'd go on on these wild stories, describe horrors, critique things beyond his rights to do so, and in hindsight I can see where the issues were but no one was telling me anything so I assumed everything was okay, esp since the party was pretty good about talking about things above board like saying if we consented to possible pvp encounters or if we were okay after in game arguments. Usually everyone was on the same page. Hell Tamraz got into a brutal confrontation with our Drow wizard and me and that player were cracking jokes about it, we were fine as far as I knew.

Well after an incident with a human sacrifice and me failing a wisdom save to not be a dumbass there was a scuffle at a temple which threatened to split the party apart, though one other party member was still in support of my character, one was just worried about revenge, and another was in character hating him while out of game assuring me that all things were fine. We had some strong RP that session and I was even starting to realize how much Tamraz was getting irksome for me to play let alone deal with so I planned on pulling him back a bit and getting more meditative/contemplative, apologizing for things, and it would be the start of something way calmer. But, it was too late.

First the DM came to me asking if I worried about Tamraz gelling with the party, I went over how as far as I knew all us players were on the same page and no one had been talking to me about any possible issues. DM sited how in game someone tried to stop me but... that was in game and above board the tone didn't suggest anyone was actually feeling bad about it.

A few days later I get a message instead saying that it'd be wiser if I changed characters or bowed out of the campaign saying our styles didn't mesh the best. I agreed I'd be fine doing either, as while in the moment things had been happening I didn't think Tamraz would be an issue but now I was getting fairly tired of him and his antics, I'd be find changing a PC. But things just got to the point where I was instead just told to leave and that communication between me and the DM would cease.

It felt bad but I said good bye to some of the PCs, and just moved on. Until I was linked another story which has got me posting this one. I do not like being accused of falsehoods, when I do something bad I'll confess to it and honor whatever has to be done as a result. Life is too short for lies and bullshit.

I was a "that guy" player, I see that in hindsight but I am no liar and I hope if anyone from the old group sees it they know I am sorry for being a pain in the ass, but I hope they can communicate that point better if it ever happens with someone in the future.

Hope their game lasts a thousand years and everything goes well, and I hope that I and any other "that guy" style players out there can break our bad habits.

Long time DM and player, I had the worst session in my experience yesterday.

I joined local club to play some games and find potential place for my future campaign. One game that picked my interest was ongoing low fantasy criminal urban adventure in 5E. I had great joy playing Blades in the Dark with different master before, so I joined.

Master told be that in her world magic is prohibited and party lacks tank. I decided to roll with 3rd level human Fighter Battle Master with Heavy Armor Master feat. Apparently, party is stealthy and you can't wear heavy armor in public, so I switched to medium armor and shield.

After presentation of my character stats and backstory, I was bombarded with strange questions - why do I need Skill Expert feat on Fighter? Why I have only 12 in Constitution, but 14 in Charisma? She said, that my character is not tanky enough despite Second Wind, 17 AC and Parry maneuver that I've got.

Again, she tried to dissuade me from playing my character, because "you are trying to do everything and not specialized enough". I responded, that I enjoy social encounters and don't want to take other feats, that she proposed me (Crusher and one with additional superiority die).

Should've bailed already, huh?

Well, forward to the game. I was a little anxious, because it was my first game in this new club. I wasn't introduced to the story and party's goals, players, Master just started game with recounting past session with players, leaving me sitting there and listening. After some time, she introduced my character as sitting on the street, talking with one NPC that party know. We started very awkward dialog about me and Master insisted, that I need to tell all my backstory to these random strangers, that my character met 5 minutes ago. I tried to roleplay some common sense and initial suspicion (what if they work for band from my backstory?), not telling everything about myself and then was texted by DM with following message: "Don't act like mysterious guy - nobody like this"

After some play, we went to break and she again said that my roleplay is bad and players are not enjoying it, but I sensed agression only from here, guys at the table were very chill and encouraging.

Next scene we started with heist and I went alone to scout guards from the different entry of the building. I roleplayed as a passersby, apparently failed my Stealth check (no difficulty was assigned by DM) and got a pursuer. I asked to lead him into dark alley and ambush there, but again, failed Stealth and we started with initiative. I won and attacked with Menacing attack, trying to scare him not to call for help. Master just ignored my attack (it was 19 damage and I said, that I'm trying to hit his neck) and said that he whistles for help. End of round 1, round 2, I am going first and killing this guy, moving from guards that will soon arrive.

Guards arrived immediately, at the end of round, after 6 seconds from whistle sound. It was so strange, that other players were shocked too: "how can they come so fast?". Master just answered that they were nearby and started shooting my character with crossbows. I used my Action Surge to double my movement speed and break the distance, but guards were shooting crossbows every round on the run. I went through some fences (guards still fired) and managed to roll my Stealth check. DM then asked me to roll D4 and on 4 I was free from guards (some homebrew that I don't recognize?).

I don't know, what was her motivation to kill my PC in this scene. Whole chase was chaotic, with no measurement of ranges and positions, just attacks (in the dark?) every round disregarding my use of environment and skills to break free.

After this chase I tried to reunite with group, but she said, that I'm too slow and will be late, excluding me from the next scene entirely.

It was shocking experience. For me TTRPG is a place for friends, who enjoy playing together, not trying to dominate or sideline someone. I still don't understand why she was so aggressive towards my character and me personally.

That's my horror story for you.

Apologies if this isn’t the right place, I couldn’t find the perfect sub. Gotta give a tiny bit of background info first. Had fun hanging out with friends but had a…less than stellar DM. Some examples of problems were:

• Had a feedback channel, but just disregarded the feedback (completely ignored or nothing changed)

• Impossible DCs or rolls (when allowed, as examples 28s couldn’t intimidate simple guards and a roll of 30+ couldn’t lift a large creature for a short amount of time or break down a wall)

• Endless major homebrew rules mid session (something we discussed session 0 shouldn’t happen) with no discussion, often unfairly effected certain characters

• Big focus on making sure martials confirm to realism and real world physics. Intimidation also never worked - followed randomly enemy fight or flight.

• Made me remake my build 3+ times (even after prior approval) due to it being too ‘op or annoying’

Eventually, they wanted less feedback in the feedback channel, as players always had something to post or talk with each other about, so I instead made a post here to make sure I wasn’t overreacting by being upset at some of the behavior in game.

Couple months later, he found the post and instantly left my game that he was also a player in. Originally I didn’t know this was the reason because he just said he didn’t like my game anymore super abruptly, but once I asked a bit more he said the post made him feel uncomfortable. I apologized for inadvertently hurting his feelings and deleted the post. Said he wouldn’t treat me differently in his game though.

But point is, at the 3rd/4th character remake I had a bit of pushback, said I felt like I was being unfairly targeted. Bit of back and forth. Was directly told to make a case for not rebuilding and how I’m not OP. Showed statistics to back up my dpr compared to others (this was the concern at the time). Was then kicked out of the game and kicked from the discord….i know it sounds like there should be an in between but that’s what happened - I think the dude just didn’t like me. Or maybe I had given too much feedback to them before on their game? However they did ask for it in the past. But I digress.

Now here’s the crux of the issue. I talked to 2 of the other players about the situation. They both thought it was really messed up and unfair - one decided to leave the game over it. One ultimately stayed. The other players never heard what happened, or at least from my side of the story.

The people that I haven’t told are also still good friends of mine, and some of them are even players in my game. However, I don’t know if I’d be an asshole, since this is 3 months later to tell them what actually happened?

It could disrupt their old game. As well I’m still quite upset at one of the players since they acknowledged what happened was fucked up and wrong, but ultimately didn’t do anything about it. Idk if it’s really valid for me to be upset for people for not doing anything about the situation (ie voicing their opinion at the very least or leaving the game), but I’d appreciate thoughts.

On one of the weekends my usual Sunday DM was gone, I decided to try running a one-shot to both practice my skills with Foundry and try out a concept that I found interesting and hoped others would too.

The idea was that the party were members of the Bureau of Fae Affairs, a Men in Black-style organization set in a modern-fantasy take on Faerun. I really wanted to do this for a specific player to get him introduced to one of my favorite 5e supplements, but they got sick and I was down to only one other player after asking around about people willing to join. I didn't learn this til the hour before and really should've just called it off, but I managed to get three more people for a total of four people. Three of the players made concept-suitable characters: members of the BoFA organization.

The other player made a Murloc barbarian that didn't speak Common and only revealed to as the session was underway that this Murloc was not in BoFA and just hitched a ride on the party company car.

We open with the party meeting at a Waffle House and having some midnight breakfast before being deployed to a mansion that had been bordered by the Feywild and served as an incursion point for supernatural nasties. They drive off and get to the front door and fight the first batch of goblins in there, making short work of them. This is where the problems started.

The chaos of the Murloc was initially welcome at the Waffle House, as they fit right in with how allegedly chaotic those places are, but when the Murloc goes sprinting past everyone and running down hallways and opening up doors and checking rooms before I even finished setting up the scene, while also mistaking me pausing the session for lag, and doing his best to split from the party. I initially let him do this, triggering battles that the party wasn't supposed to, but after one particular fight in a nice bedroom he saw a window ans jumped out if it, right to a Kelpie encounter. While one of the other players got up for a drink, this is when the player admitted that this Murloc wasn't even appropriate to the one-shot premise since he was just some Murloc whom everyone assumed was with the Bureau but wasn't actually just because he was sitting there nearby. I feel rather betrayed at this point, take a deep breath, grit my teeth and continue with the Kelpie in the fountain he just jumped towards.

Since a Murloc is a fish person and doesn't need to breathe, the kelpie didn't do much when trying to drown him, but instead smashed his face against the fountain's bottom and threw him back into the bedroom with a stern above-table note of 'please stick with the party' said through a strained smile. After a bit more investigating I decided to cut it off at the party finding the one human who was still stuck in the house fighting for his life in the bathroom to end it on a 'i'm 12 and this is funny' note.

The other game I play on Foundry has the DM say when we can move around and investigate so I'm probably going to adopt that for next time, but sheesh. Moving your token back and forth and barging into rooms to trigger encounters while split from the party certainly wouldn't fly on a real table! If I had known the character was so unfitting for the concept of the one-shot too I would've said no too.