So I have a group of people I play with, around 5-6 people depending on the weekend, we usually play once a week and we almost always play 3.x (3.0/3.5 rules combined)

To give full context of the last straw, allow me to set the scene of the first game they ran with me in it (they had run others with the same group before, but I was a young'in when I joined at around 11 and at about 13-14 we're running this one):

It's Dark Sun, and all I knew about Dark Sun came from the others, a la "It's gonna be a meat grinder, the halflings are cannibals, magic is iffy, and metal is hard to come by." I go, "Okay, sounds good, I'll just play a skill-monkey, should be easy enough." And that made sense to poor old naïve 14 year old me, because skills aren't magical, they're extraordinary abilities, I may be able to negotiate with some cannibals to not eat me, and I might be able to get myself out of a pinch if I can craft without metal, etc. Welp, I was not prepared for what was to come, the highlight reel of which was: DM using rules from 2e AD&D, when we're in a completely different edition, stealing items from players without rolls to either take them or allowing rolls to notice the thieves, unironic god-tier caster level curses placed on our items and characters with no save and because the caster level was so high we couldn't have it removed either, a sheer hatred for the way that skills just "worked" when I rolled very high on them (the single thing my character did), constant misinterpretations of the rules such as when I used my demoralizing intimidate on a character I thought we could deal with (who happened to be the ARCHDEVIL OF FEAR) he had it flee with the McGuffin we had JUST spent months of real time getting, and more. After the McGuffin was stolen, we collectively as a party turned to one another and said, "We can't stop that guy, can we? We're like level 7." Once we all agreed, we go to the nearest tavern and drink ourselves nearly to death as the apocalypse of Dark Sun transpires. Maybe the good ending?

Years pass, it's been a very long time (well over a year) since he's DM'd or even played with us due to a health issue he was getting over, and he approaches US to ask to DM again, saying he's got a cool new idea to run. We usually cycle through different DM's campaigns to avoid fatigue and I tell him my campaign is actually gonna end next weekend, and then we can run his. He gives us all the details for character creation so we can show up to the first session ready to go, character level 5, ~10k gp, and then he says "Core Rulebook classes only", which was cool, I don't mind building restrictions. I know he didn't like how with the vast list of books for 3.0/3.5 there's so many shenanigans to play with that it's hard to have control of the game sometimes, so I rolled with it. I had a weekend of time on my hands and I text him asking, "Hey, I got this idea for a character who's a party face type, I want to run some criminal operations in the city we're playing in. I even found these cool ass rules in the Stronghold Builder's Guide on creating buildings, and I want to build a front, like a tavern, with my criminal guild stuff in the basement." He approved, explicitly. Told me to go ahead with it, and I did. I spent almost every last penny I had in character creation on that guild house. I spared no expense buying gear for it, essentially flavoring the guild house as a drug ring, using the drug Agony from the Book of Vile Darkness as the drug of choice, with repeating eternal wands casting spells necessary to extract it from victims (Agony is an expensive drug/spellcasting component that basically requires a spell cast and torture to extract, also called Liquid Pain). The basement had numerous chambers for Agony extraction and purification, as well as barracks with beds and storage, and other basic amenities. It also had a series of measures that I set in place such that only guild members could pass without triggering:

- A false-backed pantry in the tavern's kitchen as the only entry to the basement

- An amazing lock on the door past the false pantry, which is a DC 40 open lock check in 3.5 (equivalent would be like sleight of hand in 5e maybe?) and cast Arcane Lock meaning they'd also need Dispel Magic or Knock to bypass it meaning regular rogues couldn't

- A series of magical traps which would do the following: Shivering Touch (3d6 dexterity damage), Attentive Alarm (Alarm, but you know the type and number of triggering creatures), Hold Person

- I also had every other square (Left, right, left right,) of the passage down into the basement as a pit trap, with a 30ft fall onto spikes with Black Lotus Extract slather on it (3d6 con damage primary and secondary effect, DC 20 Fortitude to resist)

- The first floor of the basement was lead-lined to block divination as well as the pantry door and the entry way

I explain my setup to the group, and they're all-in on this idea, asking to join my fictitious guild, so obviously I'm game. One wants to be the torturer, extracting the Agony, one wants to be my bodyguard/assassinator as a sneak-attack focused rogue, one is my "procurer" who could steal things/people for the guild, and lastly we had a big dumb barbarian as the muscle. It was honestly a perfect crew, even without NPCs. The plan was simple: we would kidnap drifters through town, so no one would miss them, we would extract agony and attempt to sell it to shady people to acquire income, with the tavern as the front in case the guards suspected us. Again, I ran everything through to the DM and received an okay, including everyone being a member of my guild. I triple checked everything by him, because tbh it's a lot to take on as a DM, having a hustle like a criminal organization is a big deal, especially if everyone is in on it.

Session 1: the game STARTS with an explanation as to why my guild house has been raided, and all of my equipment stolen from the barracks and cells. Again, I spent 95% of my starting gold on the guild house, so basically that left me with a dagger, clothes, and a scroll, which I immediately used. It was a scroll of Identify Transgressor, a spell which says "The caster is able to divine the answer to a single question, as long as the answer is a single person's name. Thus, the question must be a "who?" type question. For example, 'Who broke into the temple last night and stole the wand of inflict moderate wounds?' Questions that cannot be answered with a single name are not answered at all." I use the scroll and get nothing. The closest to an answer as to whom invaded my guild house, miraculously bypassed all precautions, triggered 0 traps, and evaded the divination is, "You get a vision of blurry rainbow-y figures." Cool. Whatever, that's only my whole guy, but it's fine I'm still a cleric, so I have that to lean on, right? Well, let's keep playing a little bit.

My bodyguard and I head into the city to try and investigate what the fuck happened, and we get evidence that one of the guards had something to do with it, so honestly, I'm pissed and so is the assassin, and we decide to hash out a plan with the crew to kill him for his crimes against the guild. Everything we plan works out decently well, our assassin has an INSANE hide check, so he gets through just fine, he uses some of the poison we procured and bam, guard's dead. Only to reveal it was some convoluted trap, where the guard had a dead-man-switch on the chair he was sitting in to LOCK DOWN THE WHOLE TOWER INSTANTLY. So the walls and windows are covered in steel, an alarm goes off, and the door is locked with assassin in the office of this guard. We all hatch another plan to break him out using alchemist acid, and he sneaks through the hole we make before anyone spots us. Except someone DOES somehow spot us, the rest of us manage to get away, but the rogue who is concealed with a >60 hide check is somehow still seen, even with anti-divination gear. The DM reveals they are using some alternative version of Faerie Fire that "just works" and he can be seen no matter what, even though it's not an invisibility spell being used, just a super high check. Then 20 guards from out of no where yadda yadda the whole party into a circle, so we're surrounded by a phalanx of warriors with seemingly endless power, as their AC is greater than 25 for a level 5 party and their to-hit bonus was at least +15.

Then, we're yadda yadda'd some more until we're forced into the castle of the kingdom, where it's revealed that some extra-planar force invaded the kingdom last night, and they stole the princess, whom we (apparently) had kidnapped to use for Agony, which WHY THE FUCK WOULD WE DO THAT, WE'D KNOW SHE'S THE PRINCESS, and since the extra-planar force knew where she was they just yadda yadda'd on in and took everything. The king then says, you work for me or die, which fair enough I guess, he tells us to mark our blood on a mirror and walk through it, cause it's a portal to the place where the princess was taken and we have to save her (but not the incredibly powerful knights that forced us here, btw). I'm hesitant, because I'm like, "But wait, the guild house is here, I spent all my money on it, I say fuck the king, let's try to leave." DM just says no, you have to go through, so I do, begrudgingly, and the party follows their guild leader, which I thought was sweet.

So, we plop into this random place and the DM says, "You notice something." immediately, I go, "Oh no. I cast light." I figured a cantrip would be the best way to test my theory. It fizzles. No magic. Half the party is playing mages and there's no magic. The DM also informs the barbarian that the feat combo he took which gives him the Fire and Cold subtypes when he rages (a legal combo which makes him immune to fire and ice, but take 50% damage from both funny enough) just doesn't work anymore. So we all sit there silently thinking for a bit. Then the assassin speaks up, he's a fully mundane character with some alchemy in his build, just a skill-monkey sneak attacker, "So half the party is just fucked. Just nothing they can do?" The DM just says, "Yep." and the assassin goes, "We can't do anything, there's no reason for us to be playing these characters. How is the magic being stopped anyway?" The DM's explanation is "Blood Magic", which doesn't really mean anything to us, especially in 3.x context. We ask for an example of what he's talking about and he pulls up a homebrewed page, and we tell him that and he goes, "Well it's still true in this world." So everyone else just agrees, "Yeah, we actually can't play our characters if the world we're in turns our characters off."

Instead of saying something like, "Ya know what? You're right, it's a bit much to just not be able to use your characters, it's just a temporary effect out of the portal." He just says "Okay" and starts packing up like we did something wrong. I look at everyone else incredulous and we start doing session 0 of the next campaign in his face, at his house.

He will never run another campaign again, at least not for me and my group.

I am currently in a campaign and it is definitly far from perfect but this just triggered me completly.

Long story short. We slew a wyvern while it flew away. We found the dead body and found a weapon inside his skull. Our mage knew it had divinition on it so we tried not to touch it because god knows what could be on the weapon.

When we came back the player who played a calm char suddendly wanted to know everything and basicaly asked us about everything Till he got the answer he wanted. (That we found a weapon)

We told him that it was magic so we wanted to wait till we could identify the spell. But he persited and after, what felt for an eternity, of him saying he wants to test the weapon I just asked:,,Is this a meta gaming thing."

Dm:,, yeah, I tolled him he would get a fancy new weapon."

I normaly don't mind people getting cool stuff, but please make sure to make it logical.

Am I in the wrong?

So many years ago I had a friend who wanted to run Shadowrun 4th/20th
That's great!
I love Shadowrun.
DM says he wants to do very intricate multi part runs. Lets call DM Dave
That's Great!
I love overly complex Shadowrun games (No, I really do)

I had by far the most experience playing the game so some of the players were asking me to help them with there characters,

I also love that, because I almost always play Mages, and I like to branch out.

So one of the players comes up to me and asks for help. Lets call them Jane

Jane has been a problem before, and typically gets his way because to many DMs aren't willing to say no to Players. One of them involved him starting an international incident, hijacking a plane, flying it into a hospital countries airspace, jumping out of the plane, having it crash in to buildings and doing a 3 point superhero jump from 10,000 feet.

The incident was never mentioned again in the ongoing game. But that's that game, not this one. I just still twitch from that game.

Jane comes up to me and says "Hey, so I want to play an uber rich upper class Loli Vampire who negotiate for the PCs and only interacts with the PCs during the Negation Roll"

"I mean, we can do that, its within the realm of the rules, but what are you going to do for the other 95% of that session, and possibly 100% of other sessions."

"Oh, I don't know, going to high society events, going to museum openings, going to operas."

"I mean, Ill help you do this, but I feel I should point out that its quite possible to spend several sessions where only a few mins will pass"

"I really want to do this."

"Ok here are some ideas I guess."

I end up talking to Dave "Hey, you know I can help this player make this character, but Im not sure that they may literally end up sitting at the table doing nothing for multiple sessions if he gets to play it the way he wants. it might be practical for you to go over how you want to run the game with him."

Dave reply's with "well that will teach him not to make characters that wont fit in to the game."

As predicted, Jane interacts with party for the first... half hour of the first multiple hour game, Then just kinda its there staring at the wall.

Second Session has no negotiation whatsoever. Time dilation happens while the rest of the party is breaking in to the building, having firefights, ect. About 20 min pass over several hours, Loli Vampire spends this session in her car on her way to the opera. I think she gets to the end of her driveway.

For session three Jane askes me to help them make another character. I give him the book, and tell him what chapter character creation is in, because Im not going to spend more time helping someone make a character than that character gets played.

This one is a mute who wears around a masked, featureless leather bodysuit/mask while in public, and communicates only by laying out playing cards in complex code... that I guess other people are supposed to magically know?

This time were meeting at a dive bar. Instead of going through the front door, Jane decides to zipline down from a nearby building, and botches the roll, resulting in them falling of the zipline directly infront of the bouncer.

Bouncer reacts by spraying down Janes character with a full body magic (actually magic) pepper spray gel, and calling the cops.

Jane proceeds to be grumpy that the party didn't abandon the run, to safe his character (that we didnt know existed) for a jail we didnt know he was in. Because why would we look in to the guy who got arrested after we got to the bar, and before we left the bar.

I'm the DM in a group of four players. I'm the only guy in a group of girls - I don't know that it's relevant but it just reinforces this feeling of being an outsider.

I feel like I get taken for granted a lot. I write out huge lore documents for them at their request, and while I enjoy writing them, I never get any thanks or recognition, just a sense that they're eager for the next one and the one after that. They have multiple group chats discussing the game but they refuse to have me in them for fear that I'll "snoop" and "plan around them." Sometimes, they'll plan something for a session that goes completely against what I have prepared, and I have to put in loads of work to refit the campaign so its going in the direction they want.

Even outside the game, I feel pretty ignored. I'll say something and get a blank stare or just get no answers. When I post in our server, I don't always get a response. Sometimes a few of them will hang out and I'll get no invites and just learn about it later.

The worst offence was a little while ago. I had mentioned to the whole group that I had some trauma surrounding depression and self-harm and that I didn't want it mentioned around the table. Then, during a little online party I put together to celebrate our 3rd-year anniversary, the Druid made a fairly crass joke about self-harm and got anxious at me when I asked her not to make jokes like that again.

I am close to these guys, and I've had good times with them, but the more we play D&D together, the more I feel like I'm "the DM" and not "one of their friends," if that makes sense.

Any DMs felt like this before?

Joined a game on r/ lfg that was advertised as being a 5e game with some homebrew rules. A lot of games do that, so it didn't seem out of place. Figured we'd go over them in session 0. I had Warforged (Fighter) on my mind at the time, and told him that's what I wanted to play. He told me that the Eberron Warforged didn't work in his setting, and that I would be using a homebrew version that he made. The stat block he sent me was... incomplete. And the stuff that was there didn't really make sense in the context of 5e. Turns out he had copy/pasted the stuff from a variety of other sources that I don't remember the names of. He told me he would have a finished version of it by game day, so I would still be able to build my character before session 0.

1 week later, 1 hour before session 0 was scheduled to start: still no updates. I understand people get busy, but if you're going to insist I use a homebrew race, you should at least have a functional version of it ready first. I asked if he had a problem with Warforged and offered to switch to something that might fit better, instead he decided I could use the Eberron version since he hadn't gotten the chance to finish his. Didn't get mad about it or anything, just very confused. Didn't really see it as a red flag so much as I saw it as him being overly ambitious and inexperienced with making homebrew content. And, no, I did not badger/harass him about finishing it throughout the week either.

Only two players including myself out of the planned four show up, the other playing some kind of alien in a Power Armor mech suit. A bit odd for a 5e game, but I don't exactly have room to talk playing as what amounts to a magic robot. Introductions were short and sweet. The session starts, and the DM opens with a ten minute long summary of the history of the setting, its gods, its wars, and a bunch of other stuff that had very little to do with the actual session.

Our characters were then dropped into the game, which revolved around us and an NPC working for a 3-letter organization that dealt with paranormal activity, investigating a paranormal event that made an entire city lose power. A modern day city, mind you. The LFG post didn't specify any details of the setting, so I guess I should be ready for anything. He described a bunch of buildings and gave us a prompt to pick which one we wanted to investigate first, like a point and click adventure game, but didn't tell us what we were actually looking for. It was at this point he told us it was actually a survival horror game and we needed to look for supplies??? What happened to investigating the power outage?

After about an hour of investigating points of interest and fighting a few paranormal creatures, we suddenly get swarmed by zombies. Too many to realistically fight as level 1 characters. They were coming out of the ground, out of windows, flooding the street. The game then turned into reaching the pier where space crafts were evacuating civilians. (Space pier? idk)

We get there, and one of the two escape crafts is destroyed by a demigod that wasn't even mentioned in the opening cutscene. Another demigod shows up to fight it, keeping it busy while we escape in the remaining ship. We get to a massive satellite in space where we need to find a faster ship to escape to a different planet. We find one, and are unceremoniously killed by the BBEG before we even get close to it.

This is where he finally tells us that this was an introduction to his main setting for an original system he was making, and that he wanted session 1 to be using that system instead.
I was as constructive as possible, and made sure to point out the things he did right. The horror elements and descriptions of the creatures were really really good, he really knew how to build tension, so he'd be great at running rules-light horror games, but also made it clear I had no interest in learning a homemade system.

If you're looking to recruit players to test a homemade system, then advertise your game that way. Don't trick people into playing one session of a familiar system, and then pull the rug out from under them.
Also, just be honest and transparent about what kind of game you want to run, no matter what system it is.

This happened about 2 years ago. I had just graduated high school and I was fairly timid. But that’s no excuse for my behavior, I should have spoken up sooner.

I joined my college’s gaming club as soon as I started freshman year. There I met a group of people who would start up my first real game of Dnd (as opposed to one shots that I would play with casuals in High School). It was a campaign that involved invading Illithids turning people into their mind slaves. The campaign involved me (bugbear druid), two dudes (elf rogue and halfling cleric), a woman (half elf paladin), and DM.

DM was quite socially awkward and a bit of a snobby type of TTRPG player. He was older than the rest of us so I guess he felt like he was an expert on Dnd and we were the noobs for him to teach. After he established the setting and world in our first session, he stuck around to flirt a bit with half elf paladin’s player. She didn’t seem interested but just kind of responded in a friendly way.

The next session, DM injected his flirtation into the game by having NPCs tell her how beautiful her half elf was and that “the gods have her favor” and he would then give her flirty looks. By the second session he had escalated this to the point where he introduced a DMPC into the campaign to ask her out irl. The DMPC did this by channeling “the gods” and saying “I can see into your beautiful soul and I would like to take this soul out to dinner sometime” and then he looked at her irl and smiled. She politely refused and told him that she was in a complicated relationship with someone else and that she doesn’t want to date anyone until she figures all that out. DM got kinda pouty and said “That’s fine, I understand. I guess I look like a total idiot now” and then had a meteor kill his DMPC on the spot and moved on. The awkwardness was something to behold.

By the end of the session, DM had sent all of us guys a discord channel. We found out it was guys only once we joined and DM said “Finally a place where men can be men without some chick dragging us down”. The other guys laughed and started making jokes about how awkward the session went. DM then said “Yeah swing and a miss there.” Another one of the guys said “What the fuck was she talking about ‘complicated relationship’ either you’re dating him or not”

Then DM started getting nasty and said “That’s just 304 code for: ‘he’s one of the dozen or so fuckboys for lack of a better term running a train through her’” and then he started laughing with the other guys with little pushback except one guy who teased him for unironically using the term “fuckboy” but it was still in a very banterous kind of way.

As for me, I didn’t say anything. In fact, I just muted the server after he said that and pretended like everything was ok.

Which was definitely a mistake because next session, we met our first illithids. They were dimensional mages who paralyzed us after catching us attempting to spy on him. They used some kind of spell to telekinetically hold us in place. They walked up to elf paladin and said “This one is cute. So sexy. I bet she has a lot of suitors. And I bet she leads them on.”

My heart sank and I could see the nervousness on her face. The illithids then said “strip her down. We are gonna have some fun” as the DM smirked. The illithids then🍇 her with a bunch of “thick veiny tentacles” and lurid descriptions of her intimate parts and mocking her as a “slut” and then as she was crying he said “Oh come on, its not like you…sorry…It’s not like SHE wouldn’t be used to it by now. I bet she likes getting ran through.”

She ended up running out of that game crying as the other dudes chuckled. At that point I did tell the DM what a shitty thing that was to do (too little too late) and he said “What? Its all in good fun—”. I then went off after her but I couldn’t find her. I never saw her after that. There is no good ending to this story. Just a piece of shit DM, two idiot dudes, my cowardly ass, and a girl who didn’t deserve this.

I've been playing with a group online for 4 years now, and we mostly play roleplay-heavy, rules-light games. I began as the GM but we've been taking turns GM:ing and playing. I really like playing with this group, it feels like we're all on the same page when it comes to preferences in playstyle and genres, and we always have post-session discussions.

Now to the problem: I can't seem to focus on the game when I'm not being directly spoken to by GM or other PCs. My mind drifts and I begin to scroll social media and reading stuff online. I strongly suspect the other group members have begun to get annoyed with me, since I often miss my cue (for example, I too late notice that everyone is silent while waiting for me to answer a question or react to something that has been said). In our session yesterday, I tried fidgeting with a Rubik's cube which helped a bit, but I still felt restless and wanted to open a new browser tab.

Now I need your help! Do you have any advice on how to keep focus? Do you sometimes feel the same, or have you has a similar experience with another player? How did you solve this?

1 year long homebrew campaign that I loved more than anything, one of my players went through a breakup lately, didn’t think much of it. Then recently a mutual friend informs me she left him because he was physically abusive to the point where the police are already involved.

He’s a good friend from college but I can’t associate with the man anymore. He still doesn’t know that I found out… how would yall cut this one off?

You make a super basic fighter, throw your 18 in strength, grab power attack and a two hander and someone at the table calls you a "Min maxer"

You ask if player X is injured and needs healing after a fight and someone decides that they need to explain the abstraction of hitpoints not just representing physical injury.

There are a lot of very short RPG horror stories like these that don't get the playtime they deserve in this sub, I'm sure you all have plenty to add below.

I've been in a multi-year long Eberron campaign and one of the players (We'll call them J) keeps making reckless decisions that throw the party in to serious trouble with the authorities anywhere the party goes, several of which have resulted in near death experiances for their character. This time, they might have actually died, and screwed over the party in the process.

As a party, we were aware that we were being stalked by agents from the ultra-fascist Gnome state of Zilargo for months of in game time because we'd orchestrated a high-profile prison escape. We were pleasently surprised when they approached us before finally making their move with the offer of "Sign these contracts saying you'll capture the prisoner you broke out (an objectively Evil person we were already opposed to), and we'll call it quits. You'll have a week to do it, and we won't try to kill you or anyone you know to get to you for that week."

To no-one's surprise the entire party signed the contract, except for J's character, who has consistentely gone against what the rest of party is doing for ... reasons? The GM gave a very clear "Are you sure...?" and asked multiple times if that's the choice they wanted to make before the agent we were speaking to left the room.

The session continues, players are doing a group activity and J is lonewolf-ing, and is actually able to spot an assasin coming for them in a crowd before the assasin spots them and gets him to run off. A little later, while the rest of the party wraps up what they were doing, J's character stumbles across a note inscribed with a Glyph of Warding (Finger of Death) and lucks out on the damage roll, only dropping to 30hp. They choose not to mention this to the party as we all round the corner to see them stood outside a door.

The rest of the party is going to celebrate sucessfully doing The Thing^((TM)) so are heading to a pub, and the GM mentions that the agents are still around packing up if J would like to sign the contract after all. J specifies they're going to wait for everyone else to leave, then goes to speak to the agents, and immidiately tries to intimidate them by acting unphased by the previous attempts on their life by saying.
"If you're going to try and kill me, at least try and be more subtle about it."
"Ohhh, right, I thought you were just here to maybe, y'know, sign the contract with your friends. Say, where are they, anyway?" the agent asks.
"They're not here." J says, then panics as they here the door click closed behind them and the assassin they've spotted multiple times before drops down from the ceiling behind them and backstabs them for 60+dmg.

The last thing we hear from J's character is a strangled "I'm sorry" over our rocky-talkies and the party, which includes their character's brother and brother-in-law, is understandably pissed with the agents for killing them. Olive branch well and truly burned.

Hello, Reddit!

Obligatory longtime lurker, firsttime poster line here. I got the courage to finally post this from channels like CritCrab, Den of the Drake, and even DnD Doge!

I was recently in a 5e campaign with a homebrew setting, and backed out after about 6 or so sessions because I felt I was being targeted/undermined by the DM. This is kind of a rant/vent post, but I'd like to get some viewpoints from the outside looking in to make sure that my personal feelings aren't influencing my view of the story. Anyway, here's our cast of characters! I'll be using their character names to protect the innocent.

Me: Playing a High Elf, Oath of Vengeance Paladin (Yes, I know there are better oath choices, sue me)

DM: The DM of the campaign, played a few characters in the story (more on that later)

Warren: Playing a Tortle Way of the Long Death Monk

Francis: Playing a Bard (I can't remember the race off the top of my head), also a longtime friend of DM.

Xandak: Playing a Tiefling Monk

Rosé: Playing a High Elf Bard

(There was also a Warforged Ranger named T-1M and a Rouge named Lyle, but showed up for only like one session. I'll mention them if they pop up later on)

Now that we have our colorful cast introduced, let's get to the story.

A little context: I got into DnD during the age of the virus of unknown origins back in 2019, as I got bored of just playing online games and wanted something to do. I got the starter set, ran a short campaign for my family, and had a fun time! I tried to participate in a couple of campaigns throughout the next couple of years, but they fell apart for one reason or another. However, in September of 2024, a game store opened up about 10 minutes away from my house. The store owners were a kind, older couple who had lost their lease at a space in the local mall, and had relocated here. They began advertising their weekly DnD nights (which were about 5 bucks a session, or you could get a 10 dollar monthly membership and have free access to all sessions), and I was over the moon!

Finally, a campaign that wouldn't fall apart 2 sessions in because of scheduling errors!

Little did I know, it would fall apart for me in a completely different way.

I should stress that this was advertised as a BEGINNER DnD group. Anyway, onto the juicy parts!

The day of Session 1 first arrives. I arrive before anyone else, and meet the DM. He seems like an alright guy. He also show off his collection or TTRPG books. He has just about every DnD book known to man, and has a couple from other systems as well.

I ask him how much he's spent on all these. His response?

"eh, probably over $1000"

I'm well aware that this is a standard amount for some DMs, but to me, that's ludicrous.

DM tells me that everyone else will be arriving late, so he asks if I'd like to pick a character. DM had made a bunch of character sheets for people to pick from. Of course, most of them were all min-maxed and perfectly optimized. We're all starting at level 3.

I told the DM that I actually bought my own blank character sheet, and wanted to roll up one of my own characters. He shrugged and gave me a thumbs up, sliding me a copy of the 2024 Player's Handbook. I spent roughly the next hour rolling up a favorite character of mine: A High Elf Oath of Vengeance Paladin named Varis.

About one hour and 45 minutes into our allotted time (we agreed that sessions would be about 3 hours), the party consisted of me, Francis, and Warren. Dm decided to play as one of his pre-written characters to fill in a space: A Fairy Fighter? (could've also been a Barbarian) named Demena.

We all awaken in a cell, without any of our equipment. We get character introductions out of the way and try to work on finding a way out. The windows? Barred and warded. DM describes that outside the window looks incredibly foggy and barren.

The main cell bars? Also warded.

The walls? The bricks shift with a well-placed punch, but they piece themselves back together after being destroyed.

Finally, someone tries to remove a single brick so that we can look into the cell next door. Thankfully, it works, and we meet our first NPC: A half-orc wizard named Gretchen. Gretchen explains that the only way out is to compete in the arena and that "Death isn't the end". Well, how do we compete?

Gretchen: "Just say that you're ready, and the doors will open."

O...kay? We do just that, and the cell doors open. As we walk out, our equipment is magically given back to us. Some floating arrows point us towards the main door, where the other competitors are gathered. DM used all the other pre-wriiten character sheets as different competitors. We all pour out into this arena, and us players make a "stick-together" sort of pact, only to find out this isn't a trial by combat type fight. It's a cooking competition.

Everyone rolls Perception to see what kind of ingredients we get. Someone gets fish from the plane of water, I get a bunch of birds and poultry from the elemental plane of air, and someone gets glowing food and ambrosia from fucking Valhalla. DM had us roll Survival to see if we could even figure out how to cook with our food. I end up rolling a Natural 20 and impressing the three gluttonous demons that were the judges.

However, I was not the only one to roll a 20. One of the NPC competitors, a Forge Cleric also got the same result, which led to a 1v1 fight. Everyone else in the party is frozen in place, No saves. I figured it'd be no problem. A Paladin vs a Cleric? Might be a fair struggle, but Con was my highest stat. Initiative was rolled, Cleric goes first.

They cast Heat Metal on my chain armor. 2d8 fire damage per turn. My health was 39. You can do the math.

I end up going out in a literal blaze of glory. Every time I tried to get closer to the Cleric, they would just dash backwards. One of the players DID roll to break the hold on them and succeeded, only to heal me a small amount and get paralyzed again.

That's how Session 1 ended. Other than the botched fight, I had fun.

Session 2 is kinda a blur. We get respawned back in the cell to compete again, this time having to reach the end of a forest. We stay in a group, encounter a trap hallway (yes, in the middle of a damn forest). It was essentially a checkerboard pattern on the floor, with every tile either being a trap, a harmful spell, etc. There were also two walls on either side, which we didn't even know were there until the DM called us stupid for not rolling Perception beforehand to see them. At this point, we're barely into the tiles and heavily damaged. We try climbing across the walls for a bit, only to get teleported into another group. Combat ensues and we get our shit kicked in. We get regenerated and that's where we ended that session.

Session 3, we decided to take a different approach (This is also the session where Xandak and Rosé first show up). We learn from Gretchen that every time we die, it takes whoever or whatever is running this place a year to reconstruct our bodies and memories. We end up teaming up with Gretchen (as the DMPC fairy Demena has checked out) and go the opposite way of the arrow. We find a hole in the wall and Warren sticks his hand in there. It's fleshy.

We soon learn that we're inside of a creature in the Astral Plane. The name of this creature? No.

I'm not kidding. The creature's name was literally 'No.'

We shrug it off and head out, finding ourselves in a grassy plain with a small village down the road. It's unclear if we ended up escaing the creature, or are still inside. We head down the road and come across a village of goblins. Through some careful Persuasion rolls, we manage to convince them that we're just passing through. As we go to leave, two Goblin clerics ask if one of us can spare some blood for a harvest ritual. Apparently, their crops haven't been doing good. Now, my Paladin's backstory involved him being a big helper for small villages, so I jumped at the opportunity to do a good deed. I end up losing about 10 hp to fill our their goblet with enough blood, but that's nothing in the grand scheme of things. We stand there for a bit as we watch the clerics start the ritual, when about halfway through, Gretchen starts pushing us towards the village exit, saying the we need to dip asap. We start booking it down the main path to the next village a good couple miles away.

Me: "What's the problem?"

Gretchen: "Can anyone here understand Draconic?"

Franics: "Wait, I thought they were chanting in Goblin."

Gretchen: "They WERE. They switched to Draconic about halfway through."

Me: "And why would that be a problem?"

My question was answered as halfway to the village, a shadow passed over us. Warren's player asked what type of dragon it was. DM responded by pulling a book out of his backpack titled 'Legendary Dragons' and asked Warren to pick a page number. He ended up picking an Ancient Void Dragon.

For those unaware, an Ancient Void Dragon is basically a BBEG level creature. We start booking it to the village as we watch the dragon fly towards the goblin village, incinerate it, and start heading back our way. As we continue sprinting for our lives Gretchen lets us know that the goblins were actually doing a fertility ritual, but switched to Draconic halfway through and ended up cussing out the dragon.

I kind of argue out of character about why that would be OUR concern if it was the GOBLINS that fucked up the ritual. DM just kinda pulls an "I don't know, it just be like that."

We run into the next town and straight to the town hall, where we meet Xandak and Rosé. We all meet with the mayor and convince him to offer the small army he has to be ready to defend the village if things got ugly. Then, our party goes outside the village walls to be ready. I let them know in character that they don't have to be there. Everyone knows, but they say they aren't gonna let me suffer through this alone.

The dragon eventually lands in front of me, and starts talking about how since my blood was used in the goblins ritual, I'm just as guilty for cursing him out and I'm on the chopping block. DM then makes me roll a bunch of high DC Persuasion rolls (over 20) to convince the dragon to spare my character. With the other party members casting guidance and the Help action, I just barely manage to beat the DC. I think I'm home free, but I'm not, because that would just be too easy. The dragon decides that he'll spare me, but he wants something out of me. So he puts a Geas on my character, and tells me I have one in game year to get him 3 things:

One: 100,000 gold pieces

Two: A Wind dragon egg.

Three: A set of enchanted adamantium plate armor for when he wants to polymorph into a human.

The dragon then leaves. We all go back into the town hall to form a plan. We decide to go to the next nearest town called Soup, and see what we can do. The mayor advises us that the roads are ripe with bandits, but if we take them down and turn in their heads, we could probably collect their bounties to make some money. We manage to get a cart and an Undead Ox from the stables, and start making our way there. We had a small scuffle with some bandits that first night on the road, but it was nothing we couldn't handle. We decide to collect the head's for the bounties, and that's where Session 3 ends.

Session 4 begins the next day, and we come across two NPC's on the road, an older Paladin and his young apprentice, Bran (Remember that name, he'll be important later). Turns out, they were heading for another village, but forgot some stuff in Soup and needed to head back. So we decide to give them a ride. Bran is silent the entire time, and we soon discover that's mostly because he's an undead Orc.

As we continue on the road, we come across some previously killed bandits, which were taken care of by the 2 NPC's earlier. While one of the other players starts looking for a way to behead the bandits, I ask the Dm if I can roll Perception to see if one of the bandits has an axe that would get the job done. DM tells me that the larger bandit, presumably that leader, has a two-handed axe that would be perfect. I pick up the axe, and Dm laughs, telling me that the axe is now fused to my hands.

Me: "Wait, what?"

DM: "Yeah, the axe was cursed. You really shouldn't have picked it up."

Me: "Well, how the fuck am I supposed to know that?! And why would a bandit be carrying a cursed item like this anyways?!"

DM just shrugs, and the party starts thinking of a way to try and get the axe off my hands (literally and figuratively). Turns out the older Paladin knows the 'Remove Curse' spell, so I ask him if he can remove it. He does, and I let the party know to watch out for any other bandits that might be carrying cursed items. I end up finding a thankfully non-cursed handaxe and we start hacking heads.

We soon make our way into Soup, which the DM describes as a town brimming with technological magic, get signed up with the Adventurer's Guild, and reap our rewards. We get a decent amount of money, about 30 gold. 30 down, only 99,970 more to go. We part ways with the other 2 Paladins and move on. As we leave the town hall, Rosé's player asks if he can know the town, as he would probably have a vacation house here. DM allows it, and he leads us to a bank where we can all set up accounts. Now, I took the Noble background and got some gold. When I give my gold to the bank teller, they tell me that my gold is actually worth far more than normal gold because it's an ancient currency. Huh?

Turns out, we had been inside that 'No' creature for a thousand years, and four Great Wars have happened. In total, my old gold converted had come out to a whopping 150,000 gold pieces and around 50 platinum pieces. Seems like the gold for the dragon was now our last problem.

We end up trying to enter a blacksmith shop run by a couple of dwarves, who were not big fans of me or Rosé due to our elven appearance. We lightly teased them a bit from outside, which resulted in them not only throwing a worn dagger that almost hit Rosé, but also throwing an ENTIRE ANVIL at me. thankfully, they missed, so we just went to the nearby tavern to get a drink and chat. The other party members asked the dwarves if they could forge the armor, to which they said they couldn't. Apparently, the only place to get adamantium was in the Dwarven capital, a good 5 weeks travel away. We also stop at a magic shop with three floors, each floor offering more powerful magic items (1st floor is 1st-3rd level spells, 2nd is 4th-6th, and so on). Rosé's player, of course is already a member, and has spent enough money in the past to get access to the second floor. We purchased a couple of magic items, with myself getting a longsword that also deals 1d8 fire damage.

We then get to Rosé's vacation home, which is filled with magical appliances, invisible servants, and all the bells and whistles (like a library filled with books that can read themselves). We get settled in, and Rosé asks the servants to prepare a meal for us. To our surprise, we get served a meal of Half-orc meat. We all stare at Gretchen in shock, to which he casually says that he's not offended, and had engaged in cannibalism before. The rest of the party has a semi-awkward dinner, and we go to sleep. End of Session 4.

Session 5 begins, and suddenly, all of our magical equipment is gone. We end up searching the house and find our equipment, now cursed, in the basement. We're pretty sure it was the dwarves from the blacksmith shop. We manage to get to the guard barracks and report the crime. The guard captain is confused, stating that the blacksmith shop burned down about 2 weeks ago. After bringing our items up to the magic shop to get the curses removed, they tell us the same thing.

Sure enough, when we get to the site where the blacksmith was, it's a smoldering mess of rubble. During our investigation, we split the party for a bit, when Lyle's player tries to convince the guard captain that he's his superior, which promptly gets him thrown in jail. I get the gold from the bank to free him, on the promise he won't pull any bullshit like that again. We keep investigating the rubble and end up finding a trapdoor leading to an underground passage. We quietly sneak through it and end up coming to a larger room. Rosé manages to roll high enough on stealth to get closer into the room see with his darkvision, spotting 20 Undead. We all realize if we try to fight, we'd be fucked.

This next part was honestly on me. I end up botching my Stealth roll with a nat 1, and alert the horde. We rush out and get ready for combat, when DM tells us that there's about 50 Undead pouring out of the trapdoor. What happened to the original 20?

"Mmmm, there were only 20 that you could see."

We're of course panicking, as we're only level 4 at this point, and don't have the manpower or firepower to take out 50 Undead. Then, DM starts telling me to just use my Channel Divinity. The conversation goes something like this:

Me: "What do you mean?"

DM: "Just use your channel to spook them off!"

Me: "I can't do that! I just get advantage!"

DM: "What are you talking about?"

We look up the rules and come to a realization. In the 2024 Handbook, they changed the Channel Divinity for Oath of Vengeance from scaring off Undead, to getting advantage on all creatures for one minute. DM kinda laughs and goes:

DM: "Wow, you really DID pick the worst oath!"

I sort of just half-smile, now a bit more bummed about playing my character. This would not be the last time I hear this phrase from DM. He lets me use the old ability as a one-time courtesy, and I manage to spook off about 36 of the Undead. With Gretchen, the DMPC Scribe Wizard's help, he changes a fireball spell to deal radiant damage, and we end up surviving the first encounter. This is where Session 5 ends.

Session 6 was the last session I played in. We realize we aren't gonna be able to take 36 Undead with just the 6 of us. The party for this session consisted of me, Gretchen (The DMPC Scribe Wizard), Warren, Francis, Rosé, and Lyle. We had Gretchen, who was the largest and heaviest of all of us, sit on the trapdoor to keep the undead at bay while we hatch our plan. One of us (me) would go to the church to see if they could offer a Paladin to assist us. The others would go alert the guard captain to bring reinforcements. We'd then meet at the magic shop, get radiant damage weapons, and meet Gretchen back at the rubble.

We split up, with my character bursting into the church just before a sermon was to begin. I apologize for the interruption, explain the situation, and ask if they can spare a Paladin. They give me the go-ahead and offer Bran. I bring him along and meet with the party at the shop. We strategize and talk through our plan, and every party member (save for Bran) swaps out their magic for the radiant damage equivalent. We also buy some pendants that will help resist necrotic damage. I also buy a holy staff for Gretchen, just in case.

By the time we get back to the rubble, Gretchen is bashing his staff against one of the Undead's heads. He had apparently killed 12 of the Undead alone while we were gone. I give him the holy staff, and he whacks another Undead 3 times before it just snaps in half. I then hand him one of the pendants, which breaks in his hands. Great. I then tell Gretchen to keep his arms at his side while I put the pendant I was wearing around his neck.

The pendant f*cking disintegrates. For seemingly no damn reason.

I made a comment along the lines of "I swear to god, this guy must be cursed"

DM: "Is Varis swearing to HIS god?"

Me: "Uh...off-handedly, I guess?"

DM: " Roll Religion."

I end up rolling like a 7 or 8. Not a great roll, but not the worst, I think.

DM: "You hear a voice from above say "Nope, Nuh-uh, No more spells for you today!""

What.

The.

Fuck?!?

I'm basically a neuteured Fighter now thanks to a half-IC and half-OOC comment. Thanks a lot, dick.

The battle starts and DM tells us that reinforcements will arrive in a round or two. We start fighting with the Undead being in groups of 8. None of us can do much apart from trying to hack and slash away with our weapons. On Bran's turn, I figured he'd miss too, but he hits. DM describes how Bran's sword glows four colors as he slashes at the Undead. He deals Fire, Radinat, Lighting, and Cold damage in one swing. Not only that, but he triggers a Wild Magic Effect.

I OOC ask how the fuck he gets a sword like that.

DM: "Oh, you have to have a Sorcerer trigger Wild Magic near you while you get hit with a bunch of spells."

It turns out that Bran was not only a DMPC, but one of the characters DM used to play in a previous campaign. I also hear the Dm say that I really picked the worst oath, yet again. Soon enough, reinforcements arrive and we think the tide is finally turning. Among the reinforcements is yet another Paladin, whose sword is described to be glowing brightly with radiant energy. The DM describes that as the battle rages on, a Drow walks into town. We don't think anything of it until the DM rolls a d20 and says that a firestorm starts occurring.

At this point, I'm starting to get sick of the random ass-pulls and ask why a firestorm would occur from something like a Drow walking into town.

DM: "Well, I've been developing the lore of this world for about six years now, and whenever a Drow walks into Soup, a natural disaster occurs."

Francis: "Yeah, he's been developing the lore of this world for quite some time."

Of course, we realize we're toast if we keep fighting in this, so we guide the townsfolk into Rosé's house for shelter and watch the Undead burn. The Drow then snaps his fingers and the firestorm is immediately gone. As we process this, the Drow looks at all of us and says "You don't even know what's really going on here, do you?" an snaps his fingers again.

Suddenly, we wake up back in the kitchen where we were eating the Half-Orc meal in, the same meal on our plates, feeling groggy. Apparently, everything that happened in the last session and a half was a dream sequence, and Gretchen is also just gone.

At this point, I just mentally check out. We basically did all that prep, all that planning, and it just gets retconned? I let the guys know that I was getting tired and leave the game store.

The next day, I talk about it with a couple of my online friends, and they agree that what the DM did was really shitty. I decide to take the word of many DnD players to heart. No DnD is better than bad Dnd.

Not only did I consistantly get insulted about my oath choice, but I basically get punished in the game for an offhanded comment, then get shown up by two NPCs.

I'm glossing over some details, like the other time the DM mocked my oath choice, and a couple other red flags I should've noticed, but I covered the major ones.

Anyways, that my horror story. Thanks for reading, and I'll see you around, Reddit.

Edit: Thank you to those who read this post. I apologize for making this an incredibly long read, as I'm the type of person who likes to have all the facts laid out beforehand to paint a clearer picture of the story.

To clarify, I don't believe the DM was being paid. He's been a long-time friend/DM of the store owners since they opened their space in the mall back in 2020. The sessions were paid primarily due to the fact the store recently opened back in September of this year and needed some funds rolling in, although they didn't quite enforce the payment until around Session 5.

And yes, he bought that entire collection everywhere he went. I once helped him bring it into the store from the trunk of his car. He even had Collector's dice like from the Rime of Frost Maiden and TOA.

TL:DR Problem player makes a character not suited for charisma checks but tries to become the face of the party and fails miserably. Player gets jealous of irl brother and their character who excels at this, nearly TPKs party after they rush in to save brother’s character, and they play dumb. Player makes bad decision that lead to rough combat, gets another player so heated they yell at a loud volume and make the neighbors come over to complain. Problem player then complains to DM that he is being bullied by the party, making everyone feel awkward after taking him back.

Hey everyone! I have another new RPG horror story about a problem player who would get upset at the prospect of having to face failure and consequences. This particular cast of characters should be somewhat familiar if you read my last story, but allow me to introduce you to the rest of the cast, particularly the relevant ones:

.Myself, the DM of the group .Caster, the problem player (Necromancer human wizard) .Hyper, a gnome druid with an appetite for chaos . Tiny, an elvish druid with a troubled past .Killer, an evocation human wizard with an affinity for lightning magic .Wildcard, Caster’s brother, a human rogue

The campaign I am focusing on in this story was a campaign I ran that lasted for years. It started with the players in a tavern that they soon discovered was a safehouse for illegal slavery activity, where they decided to chase the ringleader of the operation. The campaign was off to a good start for the most part, with some occasional problems from Caster.

Caster was my friend at the time, but not the most sociable irl, and had a hard time talking to people. This made me rather excited when he gathered a group of others together who also wanted to play DnD, all of which I was happy to host a game for. It was gathering us all together that emboldened him, which would lead into the first of the problems in this story today.

Caster started to become a screentime hog, wanting the majority of the attention to himself, which I had no problem redirecting at first, but it soon spilled over into his decision-making as a character. His wizard had an incredible intelligence of 18 at lv. 1, but he opted to make his main flaw be his charisma stat. Rolling low with a 9 but volunteering to make it a 7, he was adamant on wanting to really challenge himself, being seen as the socially awkward genius. I was intrigued by the prospect of him making a challenge for himself, but it seemed as though he forgot how his character worked.

Feeling more confident in himself, Caster talked a lot more at the table, a LOT more. That being said, making himself the face of the group and attempting to manage the charisma checks was not the brightest of ideas. A combination of inexplicable bad rolls (he would consistently get under 10) mixed with an active penalty meant that his supposedly honeyed words tasted more like malt vinegar mixed with expired mayonnaise. This would cause him great frustration, and when others would suggest doing the talking, he would always get this sour look of passive-aggressiveness that would serve as a pre-emptive warning to how he would act later on.

There was also the case of Wildcard being involved at the table. Wildcard was Caster’s irl brother, a player who didn’t always make every session, but livened up the table with his shenanigans. We all worked in similar fields, but Wildcard had taken his personal career further than all of us, focusing on his personal life and not taking DnD as seriously as we did, but genuinely enjoying when he DID show up. Overall, he wasn’t the best player, but he definitely brought a certain energy that the party enjoyed.

The thing with Wildcard is that he had insanely high rolls. He would opt for crazed strategies and questionable decisions, but he had a luck that backed it up, and playing as a dashing rogue type, sneaking around and talking with others worked well with his character. As the DM, I could always see a twinge of jealousy in Caster’s eyes, as his questionable decisions didn’t seem to play well with his strengths, nor were his rolls lucky, even with bonuses.

Following with this, there was a time when Wildcard’s rolls did NOT serve him well, initiating in a combat that would quickly lead to him dying if no one helped, since he was outnumbered. The party (when alerted) opted to help in rush into the fray, but Caster opted to stay back, saying it wasn’t his prerogative to fight unnecessary battles head on when they could talk things out. His persuasion didn’t work with the party, and in a bit of frustration, he activated an environmental hazard that badly damaged a majority of the party along with the enemies.

The party gave him some questionable looks, not able to fully believe he had just dropped a flaming chandelier in an oil-filled antechamber, lighting everyone up and almost roasting them alive. He tried to play it off as a tactical decision, but the players then recited his previous statement about trying to solve things peacefully, and questioned why he would then choose to engage in combat. He gave a flimsy sounding excuse of wanting to “surprise the enemy with smarter tactics” like the “intellectual genius he happened to be”, but no one was buying it. Thankfully, no one died in the party, so it was awkwardly brushed aside.

The ultimate example of his questionable decision making came a few sessions later when the party had uncovered a plot of the kingdom’s advisor working with ne’er-do-wells and slavers to capture a young elf girl who was a foreign emissary with spectacular powers. The party decided to smuggle her out of the country by taking an underground smuggler’s pass to cross the border and return her to her family. While traversing the caverns, they found a mob of 6-7 Slaad towards the beginning of the dungeon.

At this point, Tiny and Hyper agreed to cast Pass Without Trace, helping everyone try to sneak past most of the enemies with their new malnourished friend. It was during some sneaking segments that Caster had an horrible idea. The conversation went like this:

Caster: “Hey DM, you described the Slaad beasts as hungry, right?”

Me: “Yeah, the creatures appear to be gnawing on remains of the dead with some making croaking noises and gathering near pools of moisture. Why, what’s up?”

Caster: “Ok, so bear with me. I’m going to take my dagger, cut open a small ration bag, spill my food onto the cave floor, and use this as a distraction to sneak around them as they eat. Brilliant!”

Hyper: “Caster, we’re already stealthing. Tiny cast Pass Without Trace, and we’re all hidden. What’s the point?”

Caster: “DM said they were hungry. If we feed them, they won’t attack us. It’s the smart thing to do!”

Killer: “Bro, they don’t even know we are here. If you do this, you will break stealth and won’t be in the spell. Think of it like stepping out from under an umbrella. Like, why?”

Caster presses forward and I raise an eyebrow, letting him roll despite his party’s protests. He gets a nat 1. I can see everyone sneaking away as his stealth breaks and the food lands right at his feet. What ensues next is a combat where the squishy wizard is rushed and quickly dispatched, forcing another player to come back and save him while grumbling rather upset at Caster’s actions. He seems oblivious to their reactions, and is only upset that he nearly died and that the creatures attacked him. Also, he hated rolling a nat 1.

It was toward the end of the session when the party gets a clear shot to the exit, as long as they can sneak past a modified version of a hydra (lowered CR to 5). Caster sees a treasure chest and decides to break stealth (again) and attacks the hydra, ensuing in a dangerous battle that downs the players a total of 5 times collectively, with Caster himself hiding in a small alcove to take potshots and let the others face it head-on.

At the end, Caster helps the others up and repeatedly asks them if they’re ok, trying to be so polite and kind, acting as if they are all buddy-buddy and as if this wasn’t his fault. In particular, he focused on Hyper the most, which didn’t surprise me given his recent IRL behavior toward her that was kinda creepy (another story on that later). That awkward persistence on pressing her IRL, his questionable actions and her going down for the first time in the campaign must have been a veritable stockpile of dynamite, and the constant “Are you OK?” Was the lit fuse.

“LEAVE ME ALOOONE!!!” Hyper screamed, it was a blood-chilling scream so loud it made the neighbors (Caster’s apartment btw) come over and ask what was wrong, one holding an umbrella like a weapon as we explained that it was for an “acting game” while Caster sheepishly sat down at the table, not even getting up as he started to realize he may have gone too far. We took a 10 minute break to relax before continuing things like normal.

The next day, Caster said he wanted to leave my campaign. I asked him why, and he said he felt like I made him my personal punching bag, and that the party did this too. He said no one seemed to get along with him, and no one seemed to like him or his ideas. I was still friends with him at the time and convinced him to come back, but the damage had been done, and things were just a little more soft around him, as people tried to baby him and not get him too upset. I did this as well, but I shouldn’t have.

As you know, my story with this group doesn’t have a happy ending, as there was a falling out. Caster’s inappropriate attitude toward women plays a big part of this, so I will share more later.

So honestly, this is my first time posting here. I don't really know if this is a horror story post, as this campaign is still ongoing. I can't really tell if I'm the one who's in the wrong here or not, but this sub seemed like a good enough place to talk about it.

So currently, I'm in a Pathfinder 2E Remastered Campaign with a fairly large group, DMd by a pretty good friend of mine. The campaign has been going on for a year now, tho tbf I did kinda join halfway through it. It's a homebrewed campaign based off of the return of the runelords.

Ive always found myself struggling to fit in, mainly cause of things like my ADHD and minor case of autism. Its not enough to make me hard to play with i imagine, but it just leads to me getting distracted easily sometimes or just needing something explained just a bit more of i missed something. Its something ive always been sensitive about, but the group in general is pretty supportive about it. It's led to some miscommunication and sometimes anxiety, but i dont think its been too bad... at least i hope lol.

I play the witch of the group, and one of her main plot points that we recently reached involves her changing patrons from Mahathallah, a manipulative patron who wants to use them for their own personal benefit, to Desna, who frees my character from said manipulative patron.

During that session where the change officially happened, however, it came to light that her familiar would likely change due to the patron/class shift. So in turn, we called the session there so that I could figure it out. My DM immediately reached out to me and told me she wanted my new familiar to be just a... regular butterfly, which WOULD fit Desna. But I didn't really want something like that, and asked if I could take the week to research a new familiar for my character, to which the DM agreed to.

I worked with a friend of mine, a co-author for lots of PF books, to help me figure out the familiar. We did lots of research and came up with tons of ideas, from a Faerie Dragon to her current familiar, a small kitsune fox, evolving to a more astral, dream like design. That last idea resonated with me immensely, and researching all the ideas was super fun. I figured that even if the DM didnt like the ideas, we could work together to make one of the ideas work.

However, at the end of the week hit and i presented all the ideas to my DM, instead of discussing how the ideas could work or if there was a better optipn... all they would ever respond with was:

"No I don't like that idea, stick with the butterfly" or "no that makes no sense, stick with the butterfly"

No matter what idea i sent, it felt as if those ideas were brushed off without a second thought, despite all the research I did on all of them. Honestly, I kind of felt hurt by it, or like my tine was wasted going through all the research I did. But at the same time, I fely kind of selfish thinking thay in the first place. When I let my DM know that their reluctance to my ideas was disheartening, or if we could come to a compromise with at least one idea of mine, they essentially responded with:

"Well this was your idea to look for a new familiar on your own. Its not my fault none of your ideas work."

That's where the conversation ended, amd in the end, my character ended up getting a small butterfly for their new familiar.

I don't know why but, ever since it happened, my motivation for sessions has become extremely low. I kinda feel as if I don't really have any control in the campaign, or that it might be better without me. I love playing with all the players in the campaign, and the DM is still a good friend of mine, but it just Doesnt feel as fun. Idk if I'm just being selfish or uh... not. I both wanna leave the campaign because I'm obviously not doin alright lol, but at the same time the same DM used their own money for a comm of my character, and the group is genuinely really fun to play with. I both wanna leave but I also dont, and I camt tell if im overreacting at all or not.

Thats uh, about it honestly. If ive left out anything or if clarification is needed at all I'll provide, and if i need to move this to another sub i will.

I'm fairly new to posting on reddit so I hope this is readable.

Trigger Warning for sexual assault.

TL;DR: Couldn't become a vampire hunter because I'm a woman so I either had to become a nun or stay at home.

For obvious reasons I won't use any real name in this post.

First things first, to set the scene. I'm a trans woman, this has nothing to do with the story but I wanted to give context on how I felt. Long time friends group playing Not The End, DM is my best friend (who is a cis woman) and my brother is in the group as well, so we are all really close as a group.

Anyway, let's get to the story:

We are playing our usual "Spooky-night" session for Halloween, A.K.A. low effort one-shots where we just want to have some silly fun in a spooky setting. This particular one was set in the Middle Ages but with vampires and magic.

I'm playing a 20 year old woman brawler who, together with the party, lived in a small village were nothing really happens. One day out of nowhere people start going missing, and one of them is my character's sister. So, me and the party start to dig around town for clues, we soon find out that the church is trying to hide something, and here is were things start to go downhill for me.

We knew that the church was hiding stuff, so my character being the "muscles" of the group tried to intimidate one of the priests, who didn't take me seriously because I was a woman and said I should just go back home since I was clearly distressed because of my sister's disappearance, so another member of the party had to step up and persuade the priest into giving some information.

Needless to say that I felt like crap, I felt like my choice was completely invalidated, but I moved on.

After talking with the priest we learn that a vampire lurked in the city at night kidnapping people and the church contacted some Vampire Hunters to deal with it in secret not to spread panic through the town.

Long story short, we soon after find my sister and another missing person, who are now vampires. My character tries to snap her sister out of it but it's useless, she's too far gone, so a fight breaks out and even tho I build my character around being able to fight I'm pretty much useless in the fight as these two vampires are way too strong, didn't feel all too great but I wasn't the only one struggling so I was okay with it.

The fight gets interrupted by the Vampire Hunters who came to our rescue, who finish off the vampires and the vampire lord who came out of the woods naked for some reason, I think it was implied that the vampire abused them as I did ask out of game why the heck it was naked, but honestly I don't want to think about it as it disgusts me greatly and I think it was completely unnecessary.

After all of that, the Vampire Hunters warn us that a great danger is approaching and since they liked our moxie they were willing to let us join them to fight for the sake of humankind.

My character ofc being thrilled to become stronger and fight for her friends agrees, but the head of the Vampire Hunters specifies that only men can become hunters and that the women had to become nuns/healers to which my character then refused out of stubbornness, after trying to ask to join multiple times. So the one-shot ended with my character being left behind in the village meanwhile everyone else in the party become Vampire Hunters...

So when the session came to a close I felt like crying honestly, during the whole session a lot of NPCs treated me like crap because "I shouldn't speak up" since I'm a woman, I know my friend, and I know she's obsessed with "realism" but it felt like crap and I felt like I couldn't do anything. I wish that she at the very least warned me about it.

This happened a year ago and I still have to talk to her about it, but I feel like too much time has passed were it would be weird to talk about it now.

AITA for kicking my friend out of our D&D group over a "cheese conflict"?

So, I (25M) am part of a Dungeons & Dragons campaign that’s been going on for about 8 months now. The group is pretty tight-knit, and we all get along well… until recently.

One of the players, "Theo" (26M), plays a dwarf named Brogar Ironcheese. Now, Brogar is a very unique character. He’s obsessed with collecting rare cheeses, and his backstory is all about hunting down legendary cheeses across Faerûn. It started as a quirky little joke in our campaign, but Theo took it WAY more seriously than I expected.

Long story short, Brogar’s cheese obsession has turned into the core of Theo’s character. It’s become his thing—he’ll spend hours searching for the rarest cheeses, attempting to trade for them, and getting into all kinds of trouble to acquire them. It’s hilarious at first, but it’s reached the point where it’s derailing a lot of the campaign.

Now, here’s where things get tricky: Last session, our party was in this underground temple, deep within the Underdark, dealing with some eldritch horrors. We’ve been working together for weeks to get to the heart of this temple because there’s some ancient artifact we need to stop a great evil. During the exploration, we find this hidden chamber—dark, creepy, unsettling, and definitely not something to linger in.

But, lo and behold, there’s a cheese. Not just any cheese, though. The Legendary Mold of Xal’kaar, a rare, almost mythical cheese that can only be found in the most cursed places of Faerûn. It’s said to have strange properties, even allowing those who consume it to glimpse into forbidden realms. To Theo, this is the holy grail. We’re talking peak-level cheese collecting.

We’re in this tense moment, about to face off with this eldritch being guarding the cheese. Theo, though? He starts salivating and basically ignores the quest at hand to go after the cheese.

This is where I kind of lost it. I, and some of the other players, kept urging him to focus—we’re literally fighting for the fate of the world here, and you want to cheese hunt? It’s a literal life or death situation. But Theo gets defensive and starts arguing that Brogar deserves his cheese—this rare, powerful cheese that’s literally tied to the campaign’s ultimate threat.

It escalates fast. Theo insists on taking the cheese, even though we’re in the middle of fighting this horrifying creature. There’s a huge argument at the table. He starts getting really loud, and it honestly felt like he was more invested in his cheese collection than our collective goal as a party. It felt weird, and a lot of the tension in the room was palpable.

The weirdest part? Theo’s a bit of a loner, and honestly, a bit of a creepy guy outside the game. He’s always talking about how he’s got “connections to deeper things,” and the way he acts IRL is, let’s just say, unsettling. He’s always sending us weird, occult links about “forbidden knowledge” and “hidden realms.” A few months ago, he started talking about “opening doors to other planes of existence,” but we just thought it was him being eccentric.

Anyway, back to the game. I told him he needed to either prioritize the quest or we were going to just move on without him. At this point, I was getting frustrated. Theo stood up, slammed his fist on the table, and yelled something like, “You don’t understand! This cheese is the key! It’s all connected!” And then he left the game mid-session.

The group tried to calm him down, but he was already too worked up. Since then, he’s refused to join us again. I messaged him afterward, but he’s been super distant. Apparently, he’s been posting weird things online, like articles about “dimensional cheese” and other odd stuff that doesn’t seem normal. I don’t know what’s going on with him, but I feel like I might have crossed a line.

Was I too harsh by telling him to focus on the campaign and not his cheese obsession? AITA for potentially ending our friendship over a game?

TL;DR: A player got super upset in our D&D game because his character, obsessed with collecting rare cheeses, couldn’t get a legendary cheese because it was tied to the main quest. The situation escalated and he left the game, and now he’s been acting super strange IRL. AITA for asking him to prioritize the campaign?

This is sorta a AITA post too, id like to know your thoughts. So I was the DM for a group for about 2 years (1 year at this point). During the holidays, work had me stressed so I told the players I was postponing the session for a week or two. One of my players decided to step up and host a small one shot, and I was invited as a PC, pretty cool! WE had 4 people, We made our characters and I made a talkative Ranger. When I say talkative, I never talked over anyone and I always tried to rope anyone and everyone into the conversation so no one was left out. I wanted an easy character for the Newb DM to work with. This, I guess, was a sin. So long story short we got into a goblin village who told us a nearby stone golem was evil and we should dispatch it, we go to the golem and he told us the goblins were actually the evil ones. We believed the golem and went back to the goblins to collect our stuff (we had a room with them) and that's when things went down.

The paladin and me got into a verbal argument about having believed the goblins in the first place (I had a hunch they weren't good from the getgo) So I kept saying "I knew it". The argument went on for maybe 5-10 minutes. The paladin decided he had enough of me and attacked me, punching me. He hit me, did 3 damage, then rolled again, and again, and again. The DM asked what he was doing and he said "I beat him unconscious." At this point i had enough and drew my dagger and attacked him once, which missed and the paladin laughed and rolled again. At this point the other 2 players also turned on me and I ran away from the group in game at the point and left the game. I was invited back for session 2 where I did literally nothing because my character wasn't there.

Now this group had a number of toxic things about them, they really had it in for me, this just being one example of them, but I have PTSD about being a player because of this group. Was I in the wrong here, is being too talkative an RPG sin, or was this actually just a horrible situation?

(Also I never got to confront the paladin about this because before I could he doxed a female player's address and was promptly banned from the group)

My epic Vampire game, my best work in my opinion withered due to interpersonal conflicts and schedule conflicts.

I started this Vampire the Masquerade game early in the year. My previous game which was Stars Without Number struggled to keep players but once I announced that I was going to be running Vampire, all my friends were pounding on the door. I had more players than I could handle, the first session had 9 players show up when I previously struggled to get three. But now, I am down to two and it wasn’t any one singular event that caused it.

This was a sequel to my previous VTM chronicle that broke up because of COVID and Mars and Jupiter not having computers to play online and they had cheap phones that couldn’t run the rules pdf, character sheet pdf, dice app, and virtual tabletop at the same time without constantly disconnecting.

Here is our session log. https://gravewalkerroleplaying.blogspot.com/

The core premise of the chronicle was an Advent calendar, initially each session would be one night, though the sessions were too short to cover all of the events. It began with a group of 13 sabbat being revived by a villain in a previous game I ran with Mars, Jupiter, and Uranus, playing the same characters. That villain, who came from a module was unaccounted for for several hours before he was captured and during that time, opened up an entombed group of Sabbat who were meant to be a living bomb, left behind when the Sabbat fled Chicago. These were the craziest Sabbat who couldn’t get along with others and were serial troublemakers, by Sabbat standards.

Each night in the 13 days leading is a different Sabbat terrorist doing a terrorism they have spent months planning. It’s a big supernatural, violent, and masquerade breaking horror show. But there was more to this than meets the eye as a bad actor is orchestrating them behind the scenes, and seems to have his fingers in numerous places. The game was set in an alternate 2020 where COVID never happened (because that was a trigger for Mars) but instead, the city has been gripped by terrorism by mortals. Early in 2020, a mortal cult did a chemical terrorist attack on the L that had the city on edge which similarly resulted in lots of missing people and people being afraid to leave their houses.

The story was a mystery but as the mystery unfolded, it was going to be the story of the PCs rallying the cooler heads among the Kindred, Mages, and Werewolves to combat the mastermind, a Nephandus Technomage and modern day take on a lich named Malcom Morris who work his way into the prince’s inner circle as a “ghoul” while subtly mind controlling the Prince into being incompetent, steering the Sabbat into more effective terrorism, and having plants among the Anarchs and Camarilla, leading them to war. His ultimate ghoul is to cause the terror level in the city to rise, creating a reality zone so that he could allow an avatar of a dark god to invade the city and utterly destroy everyone. He’s kind of like Mr. Morden from Babylon 5, he’s a man who asks people what they want. He offers people easy answers but is ultimately an arsonist trying to talk his way into your house so that he can burn it down with the matches you eagerly give him.

He previously devastated and devoured the awakened avatars of the local NWO cabal and hijacked their existing infrastructure and projects to inspire the cult earlier in the year. The NWO had previously been selling medical implants to help people with disturbing thoughts and impulses as a test run for moderating the sleepers in the city, “for their own good” and to stop “reality deviants” from awakening.

It was leading to a climax where he would unleash his plan on Christmas using the Sabbat as pawns, empowering hot heads pushing hunters, the Cam and the anarchs to a war in the street, and shattering the masquerade. It would have been great.

I wouldn’t bring this up but it is important to understand the causes,all of the players in this game, including me are trans or gender non-conforming and most of us are polyamorous.

Our cast: Earth: Me, the storyteller. I am an accountant with a regular 9-5 government job. Mars: My live in partner, she works food retail with a random work schedule and has a learning disability and ADHD. We have an open relationship. She is a Toreador but also a muscle mommy. Her character part owns a nightclub with Jupiter Jupiter: My other partner, though she doesn’t live with us. She also has a learning disability and ADHD. She started the game unemployed but she got a demanding job at a nursing home where she could only get alternating weeks off. Her character is a Tremere occultist who owns an art gallery.

Because of the above, I had to make my sessions a whole lot shorter because they couldn’t handle the stress so we didn’t get through as much content in each session as I wanted. They are my primary partners so I need to accommodate them. They just don’t have the attention span for longer sessions and struggle with reading. This caused single nights in game time to take months.

Saturn: Currently engaged to the moon but has been absent a lot because she has been recovering from surgery. She, the moon got into a relationship conflict with Mercury related to them getting engaged and Mercury left the group again. Saturn lives way outside of town in the middle of nowhere and it is a 3 hour drive to get to here so she has to spend the night somewhere. The logistics proved difficult when the Sun didn’t want her coming over anymore and it caused problems between me and Jupiter when Saturn would stay at my and Mars’ place because Jupiter can only see me on alternating Saturday nights because of her demanding job. She is recovering from surgery and can’t play but could rejoin. Her character is a thin-blood who specializes in blood alchemy. Because of the short time frame of the story, I am bending the rules and letting her previously have brewed things retroactively.

The other players, who are now gone and are no longer playing:

The Moon: Mars other partner and occasionally mine who is also partnered with Saturn and in the beginning of the year The Sun, who is not a player. She was unemployed at the beginning of the year and going through a divorce over her transition. She’s also a UK citizen and is a resident alien here in the US. She has struggled with housing and employment because of her divorce, gender indentity and immigration status. She was staying with The Sun, a house that is very close by but The Sun wants her to move out. Recently she has gotten a retail job and they only tell her when her next shift is the same day which caused her to drop out. She plays a brujah named Faye.

Mercury: on again off again partner of The Moon and Mars. Mars is her character’s sire. She has left and rejoined the group because of interpersonal conflicts along with political arguments, the most recent being related to the US presidential election. She plays a toreador DJ and is the childer of Mars.

Venus: got kicked out just after session one for some troubling borderline personality behaviors, suicide threats, other other problems that had been building up for months. Mercury left the group because of her but then rejoined after she left.

Uranus and Neptune. Uranus was in my previous VTM chronicle. In the meantime he got a boyfriend. Mars and Uranus had a politics related argument about a boycott in the group chat after Mars mentioned buying a stuffed animal. I wasn’t on at the time but it spiraled out of control before I even knew it was going on, the argument escalated into being about race. Uranus cut off the group and took Neptune with him. He was a nosferatu with a specialty in Animalism.

The Sun was never a player but her going through a divorce and having to dump the Moon meant Jupiter didn’t have a place to stay while in town and the Moon was borderline homeless. They frequently canceled plans after agreeing to let people come over.

Pluto was someone we met through Saturn. They joined the game briefly. I had them take on the role of a Mage npc with a list of things they know and can do.

There wasn’t any one singular thing that ended the chronicle early but people in the group just had these interpersonal problems, relationship changes, and inconsistent work schedules where this epic story I had been telling just couldn’t continue. There was too much turnover in the player base and it wasn’t any one person’s fault. Writing them into and out of the story got to be a disruptive hassle because of the short sessions that ended within the same night, it caused things within the fiction to not make any sense.

Nobody was the asshole. It was just inevitable. I planned the wrong game for the wrong group, planned a complex mystery and political intrigue for a group that needed simplicity, short sessions, and for the story to be over with sooner and the short sessions caused the game to take months and months and months so that when people's work schedules and relationship statuses inevitably changed, the game could not continue.

TLDR: we're all poly and queer and the various break-ups and politics arguments that happened over the course of the year caused the group to break up. Also the short sessions required by two disabled players and people with unpredictable work schedules meant the original plan for the game got stretched longer than 13 sessions and the story didn't work. A mystery doesn't work if people don't remember details brought up 6 months ago that in game time happened 2 days ago.

Posting mostly to vent.

I joined this ongoing 5e campaign in a custom setting. The setting seemed interesting, not too in-depth but still promising. Dm tells me they have been playing for more than 2 years, which gives me hope that this could be the stable weekly game that I was looking for. I create a character and we had a session zero, only me and the DM. I was surprised by the quality and the dedication of the DM, It was really good, very much related to my backstory, very immersive, very personal. Which prompted me to be very hyped for session 1.

The first session starts and I already have to wait 1 hour to play, waiting for the other characters to be in the correct spot to join in. I wait, a bit annoyed but still hyped to play. Then when I'm able to act I am told my character was mind controlled by this DMPC for 1 day or more (homebrew ability, dc 24 wisdom) and the same DMPC had stolen my soul (another homebrew ability , no saving throw or anything) because I told him my name. After that I was already considering quitting, but I decided to give the DM the benefit of the doubt. When I can move again, I am in a tavern, his DMPC approaches my character, stopping all magic items in the area with a gesture and mind controlling all the npcs around us. When he reaches me he basically tells me: I will give you your soul back if you entertain me. At that point I was already pretty annoyed and almost checked out so I told him: not interested, fuck you. The dm tells me look I have given you a chance but if you don't obey my NPC he will kill you on the spot, and he indeed killed my character because I wasn't willing to play to his tune and I didn't retract my answer. I tried to be polite and told the DM: look, I don't think this is the game for me, and for some reason the other players were angry at me, and wanted the dm to kick me on the spot. I peaced out and left the server.

More than anything, It was very confusing, It was like I experienced two completely different DMs and games. I did watch a couple games before joining in and despite I saw some weird behaviours, I never expected anything like this. Only silver lining is that I didn't invest much in the campaign.

So, I was the DM for a group of 6 players, playing D&D 3.5 ed (5e is also nice, I just like both versions in their own ways). I've been playing RPGs for over 20 years, and have been a DM for almost as long, so I have plenty of experience. It started with me putting up an ad for the kind of game I wanted to host, and then vetted players in that I felt were likely good matches. Some I had played with before, some were new.

We all sit down for a session zero to start, where we come up with character concepts, alignments and a framework for what kind of group we want to have and what motivations to drive us. All seems well and both old players and new seem to get along well, but this is also where it starts:
Tiefling Rogue (hereafter just called Rogue) had his family home taken away by a nobleman as his family couldn't afford to pay taxes.
Human Sorcerer and Human Fighter were fallen nobles, a princess and a knight (hereafter Princess and Knight) from a royal family that had been mostly eradicated by a usurper.
I immediately caught wind of this but all 3 players thought that this could be a good opportunity for character development and they were all excited for it and talked through how they would warm up to each others differences and become a band of warriors together. All good so far.

The first sessions go by without a hitch and the group is hitting it off real well and everyone is having fun. But after about a month, Rogue starts getting annoyed with the actions of Princess, that she's hiding more than fighting (which played into her backstory and personality, so I loved it as a DM) and started berating her in-character for not being able to even handle simple weapons (she had bad rolls with a crossbow) and that Nobles are worthless. At this point I ask both players to stay after session to talk about it, but both assure me that they like this intrigue and that everything is fine. It doesn't sit quite right with me, but I feel like its better to trust my players than force something upon them. I also assure Rogue that he doesn't need to worry about Princess in combat, we talked it over during Session Zero and its up to me as a DM to balance the encounters.

Another month progresses, and both players are starting to fling more and more crap at each other, Knight is now also getting involved to protect his sister. I ask all 3 players to stay after session again, letting them know that this isn't good for the group dynamic and I want this to stop. They all still assure me that its fine and that they all like it, so I give them some time to wrap up their little squabble in a way that's satisfying to the story and it feels like we've reached a good middle ground.

Two sessions later, during a battle, Princess throws a Fireball that partially hits Rogue, and tells him it was his fault for not dodging out of the way. Rogue gets his bow ready to fire back and I step in and call it off. No more banter, no more bickering. This has gone way too far and was exactly what I was afraid of from the start, so it ends here. The players get upset and the tension at the table was so thick you could cut it with a knife.

The following sessions however, they all start sneakily hurting each other; such as getting in each others way, "forgetting" to fetch something the other needed, accidentally setting off traps or weapons that would hurt the other and whenever this happens, the players would give each other smug faces across the table. I talk to both parts in the conflict and the players are now fully blaming each other for everything, both sides demanding that I kick the other from the group and any resolution or reconciliation seem impossible. 2 other players end up texting me and telling me they're leaving because they can't stand the situation and environment, and I understand them even if it saddens me. So I text the rest of the group to tell them that I'm cancelling all further sessions and that the campaign is over, because I refuse to continue hosting this shitshow.

For some incredible and mind-blowing reason, all 3 fighting players are upset that I drop the campaign and want to continue?! They just want me to kick the other part and invite new players instead. I refuse, and we have not spoken since.

EDIT: Just to make some clarifications since I realized I didn't explain properly:
- I favor a cinematic game with acting and stuff, and tend to go more by rule of cool unless the requests are outrageous, and I encourage to play into your character traits on both good and bad. I make this very clear already when I'm looking for players, and this is also why I have a vetting process for players. This is just how I like my games, its a flavor thing.
- Already during session zero Princess and Knight explained their plan and that when they're under pressure, they'd like to make Will saves to see if they can combat as usual, or if they will panic/hide, something the other players found to be a cool trait to spice up the game, and everyone approved. Thus, the gripes that Rogue would start having with her had been greenlit by him beforehand, and everyone else around the table thought it was fun.
- While Princess were not the greatest in combat, she played a much more supportive role with buffs and heals. And yes, I homebrewed that she as a sorcerer were allowed to pick heal and restoration spells from the cleric spell list, because she didn't feel like being a cleric or druid fit with her character idea.
- The reason I didn't just kick these players and find new ones, were that Rogue was also best friends with Barbarian, so I'd lose 4 out of my 6 players if I did, so I deemed it better to drop it.

Me and my friends are in 8th grade. One came up to me and said she wanted to start a dnd campaign and i agreed to dm. We got together all of our friends and decided to play at lunch every friday (lunch is literally the only time we have). Nobody really knew how to play except me and the girl who asked me to dm, which i was fine with. After like 10 session zeroes, character sheets were made. Everything was going fine until recently. Out of 6 people, only 2 are actually good engaging participants. The girl who asked me to dm had a full fleshed out character she had been waiting to use for years and generally tried her best to roleplay with the others. The other good player now has lunch detention (to no fault of his) and hasn't been able to play for 2-3 weeks now. Two people however DID NOT try to make an effort AT ALL. Neither of them talk the whole session. I have literally forgotten they existed several times. One of them literally doesnt know her character because she just couldnt choose a race or class until someone else picked for her. She doesnt even want to be here, she only came because everybody else did. She sits there on webtoon the whole session. One of the other players does the same thing. Sits there and roleplays on C.ai. WITH THE CHANCE TO ROLEPLAY RIGHT IN FRONT OF THEM. They just keep saying that they're following the people that actually do stuff and watching. They expect me to know what they want to do by them staring at me. Guys, its a roleplay based game. You have to use your words. Its not that hard to say "I go here" or "I do this". Lets put on our big boy pants. Im going to crash out chat. He doesnt let us start until like 10 minutes into lunch because he always has to vent or rant. A few times he looked up from his phone, said that this was dumb and he expected aliens or something (after everyone saying they wanted a certain plot and i made it) and said he expected me to be more creative. The last girl, wow, dont get me started. Shes playing a chaotic neutral (chaotic evil but refusing that shes edgy) rouge. Every two seconds she steals something. I get it, youre a theif, but stop trying to pickpocket everybody. In the first session she literally wasted a health potion (highest level, i forget what its called) because "her character doesnt know what it is". Chat what? Doesn't help that her character has amnesia for some reason and just forgets the important hint so they have to wander around for another session. She thinks she has to roll for literally everything. She also thinks that if she gets a bad roll she can just re-roll. No inspiration or anything. Got a 1 on a persuasion to have them hand over their wallet? Just re-roll until you get a 20. Theres this grandma healer npc from the like 1880s and her rouge is from 1910s (its a time based adventure where they travel through time) and she keeps asking if he character would know grandma. Like... no? Grandma is like 89 already. No way that works, but she keeps saying that the timelines match up. Im just gnashing my teeth the whole time because im new to dm-ing and if i tryed to say anything my social anxiety would flare up and id start having a literal panic attack. The rouge and one that got her character picked for her are currently driving a stolen soccer mom van through new york city, exiting the city. What the fuck are you guys doing? Im just going to like, kill them off or something, idk. Im not doing a whole split-party campaign. As for the people not talking, Im thinking of making turns out of combat. I didnt want to at the beginning, i dont find it fun, but oh well. This campaign is just a throwaway at this point.

Great players and Dm's of reddit, any advice?

P.S. Ill keep going once more stuff happens

So I'm playing a homebrewed RPG with very simple rules, which doesn't really matter for the purposes of this story. The monsters are stereotypical D&D monsters for the most part. Only one player because no one else is available.

Character has travelled to a coastal city to consult the Church about destroying a cursed candlestick which she found in a dungeon under a swamp near her home village. The Nun and Monk are organising a ship to sail out to a nearby volcanic island and throw it in, and that's going to take a few days probably. They suggest Character goes and has a look around the city - gardens, statues, shops etc. Character has no cash left, so shops are of very little interest, but gardens are nice.

While wandering around on the second day, her exploration of the city is interrupted by screams and fleeing townsfolk. She investigates, and fights some Ratmen. During the fight she gets bitten. Once the Ratmen are killed, some city guards show up.

"Thanks," one says "bloody Ratmen... by the way, did you get bitten?"

"Yes"

"Oh dear..." the guard says "you're going to turn into a Rat... woman. First fine hairs will grow on your face and hands, you'll start to grow a tail, you'll feel a strong compulsion to devour cheese, and your nose will get all pointy."

The Player (i.e. not the character) screams at me. Stomps out of the room, into the lounge, puts a blanket over her head and just screams, no words. I try to talk to her, but she's not listening. I manage to get some words in edgewise eventually.

"Listen!" I say grumpily "Two things... first, even if they were telling the truth you know I wouldn't do that to you, the Priests would use healing magic or something... secondly, the first guard starts laughing and the second one can't keep a straight face either, and they admit that they were trolling you."

Still angry, she grabs a lap-tray and tries to attack me with it, until I tell her to stop or I'll never play with her again.

Fuckin' 7 year olds, man...

I return with a new story. and i have the WORST luck when it comes with in person games. I posted my first time ever playing DND in highschool and said how i likely wouldnt be playing again. But with a lot of support from people here i decided to do an in person game at my local game store. Be Me clearly cursed playing Playing a bog standard rogue.

Be not me DM, Grandma Card lady. The Owner of the card store and probally the only reason the game lasted more than one session. shes awesome Hosts alot of cool games for TCG and tabletop stuff.

our cast of characters, typical teenage edgelord but rather then playing something cringe he was playing a rather bright and sunny elf cleric. Decent guy just had that emo vibe to him
Grognuk Gym bro. Brother to edgelord and JACKED. Played the stupid barbarian with a glee that was infectious. Great guy bought everyone drinks from the shop after i ordered Pizza.

And finally Smelly Sam. related to Grandma card lady. Played a warlock that was contracted with a succubus. They smelled like sour eggs and blue cheese mixed with gym socks.
The game started off pretty standard.3/4 of our party was captured by Kobolds and had to fight our way out. but here is where the annoying crap starts. Our warlock Sam decided that he wanted all the gold that the kobolds had and while we were fighting started using aoe spells to "accidently" hit us he got warned twice before DM just started having his spells miss any time they would clearly intentionally target another player. (go grandma)

His jackassary didnt end there. he was loud rude and just lit into every one of us any time we would do something he didnt want. Such as the cleric healing a kobold trying to figure out why we were in jail. Yeah Warlock just used a Eblast to kill it. Insulted me by saying guys my age (30s) shouldnt be playing games like this and it made me look like a p3d0. And acted like Barbarian bro he was special needs. Worst was how he treated the DM. He constantly second guessed her loudly saying she ruled things wrong and was doing a horrid job and no one was having fun. this behavior didnt stop out of game it went in game as well. His warlock was rude to Everyone. and when people would call him on it he threatened to have his patron suck out there souls. this included the Gate guard, Tavern keeper, Magic shop owner, Guard captain, and finally the Leader of the Adventure guild that is a retired adventure with a "overwhelming aura of power". Session one ended with us getting a Job to go check out a local Gold dragon that use to control the kobolds of the area and figure out why the kobolds were attacking and capturing people.

Session two a new player joined us Barbarian bro's girlfriend wanted to play so Dm wanted to have her sit in a session to see if she really wanted to play. Now most of you are probably thinking what happened next. So yeah Smelly wont disappoint you with his behavior. Not only did he keep up being a snid little prick he started being really creepy things came to a crashing end when Smelly decided to grab her leg and almost got smacked in the face for it i am NOT as strong as i use to be and i can tell you for afact if Barbarian bro's girlfriend hadnt been trying to calm him down while i was trying to hold him back. Smelly Sam would be 6 feet under right about now. but the most cathartic bit was watching Grandma Card lady scream at sam for about 20 mins in the middle of the store of people.

So we might be starting a new game in the new year with the same DM So lets hope we have a better game next year.

TLDR: A rude DM called my friend "slow," killed his character in session 1 for not knowing the system, and excluded me for multiple sessions. Eventually, he kicked us both, blaming us for "ruining" the campaign.

My friend and I joined a Dragonbane campaign with a DM who was rude even during interviews (red flag #1). We all agreed on starting the campaign in the first week of December, but the DM moved session 1 a week earlier without consulting us. When we confronted him, he got mad (red flag #2). I couldn’t attend this earlier date due to travel, and the DM planned the story around my absence but became even angrier at me.

After technical issues pushed session 1 back to December, I was available, but the DM told me I wasn’t needed. During session 1, he insulted my friend, calling him “stupid” and questioning his age, then killed his character in the first encounter while the rest of the party did nothing to help (red flag #3).

For session 2, the DM refused to let me join, claiming I hadn’t “earned the right” by missing session 1. I offered creative ways to catch up, but he rejected them all. He eventually allowed me to join, only to kick both me and my friend the day before the session, blaming us for “ruining” the campaign because the party lacked frontline characters.

So I am the bad DM in this story, and let me start by saying that I have learned from these mistakes. I look back and cringe at my stupidity and fully admit that I was the problem in this story. I had been playing D&D for about 3 years and had DM'd for about 1 year. I had run a campaign with several players and it had gone really well. It had been most of the player's first campaign and they were excited to start up another one. I soaked in the praise and thought I was God's gift to D&D, so I felt pretty invincible going into this campaign. I would soon be humbled in a fiery blaze.

The players. I had about 7 or 8 players in this campaign, double what I was used to at this point (Mistake number 1). Most of them don't weigh into the story much, so I will keep the players list to those involved in the incident.

Goblin: A guy who had played 1st and 2nd edition, but hadn't played since. Nice guy, but had a very specific vision for his character that I was unaware of. Playing a Goblin Rogue.

Birdie: A player from my first campaign who wanted to play a young Aarakocra Ranger. I say 'young' because he wanted his character to be foolish and naive.

Cat: A Tabaxi Swashbuckler Rogue named Captain Cat Sparrow. My brother who, I admit, I held to a different standard than everyone else (at the time.)

So the campaign was Hoard of the Dragon Queen. It had just come out and I am a big Zelda fan and liked the idea of all the different masks. We assembled at a friend's house and jumped into the campaign, no session zero (Mistake number 2). I told them that they were hired by a man for a mission in a town north of Greenest, but that as they traveled, they saw Greenest being attacked from a difference. I hoped that seeing the town in danger would be a sufficient call to adventure. That's when I realized that every character's alignment was either Evil or Neutral. So, they saw the town and said as a group "Well, sucks for them. Let's go get paid." (Not putting their employer in Greenest was Mistake number 3 and I still kick myself to this day for that stupid oversight!) So they were off and I realized that I had to go off the book. In a panic, I started narrating them going to this other city. They arrived and to be fair, they did have some fun roleplay along the way. Goblin was playing as an edge lord, so his roleplay was mostly, "I brood intimidatingly and don't have to talk for everyone to know not to cross me." Cat was quickly becoming the party face, his high charisma endearing himself to most of the group, but especially Birdie.

They reached this other town and I had a plan to get them to return and help Greenest. They found the gates shut and the guards yelled down to them "The city is closed while the dragon is about. If it goes home, we will open the city again." The group seemed frustrated, and Birdie tried to fly over the walls, only to be used as an arrow holder for the city guard. Cat wanted to roll a Persuasion, and landed a Nat 20. I groaned internally, but they were let in. The group travels through town and comes to a large house, the house of their employer. They enter and the employer tells them that a contact from the thieves' guild in Greenest has gone quiet and that he thinks that an important package has been stolen. The group tells him that Greenest is under siege by a dragon and its cult and the employer tells them that the package MUST be recovered. I hoped that this would get them back on track. As they were leaving, Cat asks if there was "anything valuable within stealing distance" and I said that as they left the house, there were vases, trinkets and a gem on display. He rolled Sleight of Hand to steal it and rolled high. But Goblin noticed as well. And that is what led to the Incident...

As the party left the house, Goblin told me that he didn't like Cat stealing from their employer and that he thought Cat had to pay in some way. I agreed and planned on the employer taking some money out of Cat's payday for the theft, but also playing it off as "no honor among thieves". But Goblin had other ideas. He was irate that his employer was disrespected and that he planned to KILL CAT! He said it was to "send a message to the rest of the group" and that "He was a professional and wouldn't stand for this insult". I tried to talk him out of it, but his mind was made up. So, I described them walking back through the city to leave. Goblin rolled Stealth to try and sneak up behind Cat and Sneak Attack him. He rolled okay, but several party members saw, including Birdie. Now Birdie's player was a min/maxer to the extreme and had built this Ranger to be able to one-shot enemies at level 1. So when he "in a naive fury seeing his friend about to be attacked" fired a shot at Goblin, he downed him in one hit. Goblin rolled Death Saves, but couldn't get above a 9. He died. In that moment, a cold fury filled the room. Goblin was pissed that just "doing what his character would do" had resulted in his death. Birdie seemed to regret killing Goblin and several players were telling him that he shouldn't have done that. I was just frozen. I had scrambled to ad-lib a whole adventure to try and get everyone back on track, but it had all fallen apart.

Birdie left quickly, enraged that the group had turned on him. Goblin angrily packed up, but to his credit, he thanked me for DMing and didn't have a rude thing to say to anyone. Cat felt bad that his little kleptomania had derailed the whole thing. And I felt rotten for everyone leaving with a bad taste in their mouths. We didn't play as a group again and I have spent a lot of time ruminating on what went wrong. If you are reading this, please learn from my mistakes! Have a session zero. Set expectations for PVP and interparty conflict. READ YOUR PLAYERS CHARACTER SHEETS AHEAD OF TIME! Basically, don't be like I was back then. You aren't a perfect DM, there will be problems in your campaign and communication is EVERYTHING!

TLDR: DM (me) thinks he can do no wrong. Sets up campaign with way too big of a party, Lets conflict go too far, ends up with a dead character session and everyone is pissed.

Just a quick rant honestly.

A few friends wanted to play D&D, and I had wanted to run a one-shot for the first time. I sunk days into preparing and hyping myself up because I have an anxiety disorder and this would've been a huge step for me. Only for one of them to stop and play fucking Fortnite in the middle of roleplay. I was honestly so flabbergasted I didn't say anything, even when they started to stream. Thank God my other players told them off, but Jesus. I almost never want to DM again, it was mortifying.

Hello everyone. First time I posted a story like this. I just want to preface this by saying I want this story to be a sort of lesson for DMs who want to do prequels, specifically things not to do. If this comes off as rambly, I apologize, it's been a couple years since we finished it.

This campaign followed our first campaign which was an absolute masterpiece. Our characters had satisfied conclusions, the story had us hooked from start to finish, and the enemy was compelling! I had expected this same level of DMing for our second campaign. Instead, what was meant to be a sequel, became a prequel.

Now the reason I gave the rambling warning is because some things kind of go back to other parts of the story. It's more for my sake to clarify the things that went wrong. So let's start this off!

We start at session 0. I wanted to play a Yuan-Ti rogue with a charlatan background. I put my main stat as charisma, because I love to RP. I enjoy a fair share of combat, but RP really gets me into the world. My character was originally hatched in the desert, with no idea where she came from, and ended up travelling with caravans as she grew up, being able to be a good guide through the harsh land.

Instead, my character was restatted to put dex as my priority. Next, my backstory was rewritten from a carefree traveller and guide to being raised in my hidden village to be an assassin for one of the elders to kill two important people. I get my DM wanted to put dex as my main stat, but my character slowly became someone that was not my creation. From the get-go, it seemed odd compared to the first campaign, but I had faith in the DM.

So we finally start the game and we meet in a tavern as all good stories do. there was one other player besides me and the DM. It was pretty obvious the other's player was something special, always covering themselves while in the sun with pale skin, and no appetite for food. the DMPC was a Dragonborn who came to this town looking for someone, while the "human" was recently shipwrecked. We'll call the DMPC Pseudo and the "human" Al.

Pseudo was looking for someone (a missing lover), and Al, hearing his story, wanted to help, and he wanted to travel as far as he can from his past, as he sprinkles in his talking. I happen to be nearby and hear them talking about needing to go through the desert. I happily join in their conversation, both wanting to make friends and help guide them through the desert.

While we stay in the town, we get some rooms to be ready for the journey the next day. Pseudo get's robbed and nearly killed in his room, and we find him bleeding out. We manage to heal him, and go after the thief, who happens to have a bounty on them. It's through this mission, if I remember(there's gonna be a few of these), I find out in character Al is a vampire because he used his powers to fight the thieves.

Afterword, we head back and check on Pseudo back in town. He healed well, and to relax from such a mess, we go to a hot spring where, I think, we find it's heated, or hiding, a small dragon. Now Pseudo can speak draconic, so he starts a conversation with it. I think Al can also understand it, and I realized I can speak draconic too! Wait, scratch that. Instead, I don't know draconic. I bring up Yuan-Ti know draconic, but was shut down. So instead of getting to chat with them, I was kinda on the side, out of the loop.

Turns out the dragon knew about Pseudo's missing lover, and Pseudo reveals his real name to us: the name of the main villain from our first campaign. Then it hit me who they were playing. Al was the main antagonist we dealt with in our first campaign, and Pseudo was the lover he lost years later and took the name of! The whole time I thought we were doing a sequel with new characters, I ended up being some rando with 2 prominent figures! I was honestly crushed feeling like I just had a huge unfunny prank pulled on me. The DM looked pleased with himself having "surprised" me, but I just felt lost in this.

Not only was my character not what I wanted, and the first language was stripped, now I feel completely clueless. I know who they were, but I just felt insignificant in this.

But that's still just the beginning.

Later on, I get a hidden job: assassinating a political figure in the town, distant royalty. Here's some other weird stuff. While I do my assassination, Pseudo and Al go off and have a VERY steamy time at the hot spring... while he's looking for his lover! My assassination gets discovered quickly and the town revolts, a civil war breaks out between the natives, causing us to flee the town. we manage to escape with a pirate, who enslaves us and sells us to some underwater folks.

While in their custody, they put explosive collars on us and make us look like their enemies as spies to infiltrate them. DM and I were ready for a lot of espionage, but as we meet the rival people, Al just drops that were are forced to learn what they're up to. This obviously floors both DM and I, and DM just lost a couple days worth of Spying, changing it to the rivals helping us, and revealing the slaver people are more evil than we already knew. So we help them summon a water god who goes and kills all the slaver people.

We make it back to the surface after the rival sea people get the collars off us, and we manage to get to land. Here, DM hits me hard. DM tells me we are in a spot where I can jump out of the campaign if I wanted. Looking back, the only time I had an issue openly was finding out this was a prequel. I was even quiet after my draconic was taken away after my initial protest. I was confused, wondering if I did anything besides those showing I didn't want to be in the game. Of course I wanted to stay! I was invested enough, despite the issues so far, to see this through! this is a prequel of the villain! I was hurt when he brought this up.

I should have taken the offer.

So we manage to get to a dwarven city that was completely erased in campaign one to recover from the circumstances under water. Here, we find traces of this hidden greater evil from our first campaign, and find out some follower tries to obtain power. We decide he shouldn't because it would cost a lot of lives. We find out where to go and try to stop him. But we blunder a couple times, and are corrected by this super op time wizard who wants to make sure we succeed. So now It's confirmed we are railroaded as well. Should have been obvious, I suppose. It is a prequel. (Side note, I hate prequels done after a main story because everyone already knows how it ends)

The city ends up disappearing anyway, since it was gone in the original story. So we moved on. At some point, we find the hidden village in the desert where Pseudo's lover was last seen. we find him here! But we are locked in a tower that has powerful magic seals on it, keeping us in place. I decide since I can't read this, I copy it down and remember it to look for later on. The next day, we are escorted to the village square to be executed, starting with Pseudo's significant other, who gets decapitated.

Al, distraught by the situation, calls out to the vampire that turned him to help us, who shows up and slaughters everyone. even decides to resurrect the dead dragonborn, only to corrupt him and having to execute him again.

Afterword, we make our way to a large city when we find out the ruler there is aligning himself with the villain of this story. we go there, and get supplies as well as come up with a plan. I also get a large payment for my previous assassination, and decide to have us live the good life while were were here. I was paid 13,000 gold! So no wonder I decide to get everyone some good gear. The next day, we decide to split up for gear and knowledge.

One thing I really wanted to do was look up the magic that sealed us in the tower, and the name that was uttered when the magic was used. But wait! I can't! Because DM decides to retroactively take my memory of the magic and am forced on a shopping trip with Pseudo. In character, my character hated Pseudo. He never trusted my character and even drew his weapon when he saw Al run away from me after he found out I caused the city to revolt earlier. due to this, our characters always had some friction.

I end up getting him some legendary armor and weapon, as well as getting myself a two-arrow firing bow and was given a poison dagger from the blacksmith who knew my mentor way back when. Feeling like we have everything we need, we decide to have a night of complete relaxation. we get the penthouse and get trashed. I take this drug so Al can get drunk/high from my blood. Now this is where I lose most faith in all this. This was done before Monsters of the Multiverse came out, so Yuan-Ti were completely immune to poison. I brought this up and showed both DM and Al that this includes drugs and alcohol.(I know this was kinda disputed, but saw a lot of people rule that drugs and alcohol are considered poison.)

I was told by both that the poison immunity should only matter to my own venom, not poison, and that this drug was a severe drug, so I had to make a con save, which I failed miserably. I got trashed, and Al got sick from my blood. The next day, I have a level of exhaustion for the big job. We sneak into this big party, sneak off to find the villain here, and kill him, causing a hit to be put out on us as we free these orc slaves here. We manage to flea using these portals and we go north to the orc's homeland. I offer to give them my gold to help them rebuild, but is instead taken as a sort of insult, stating gold is evil. I keep feeling like I can't really do much to help. I don't know my languages, I'm vulnerable to any kind of poison possible besides my own, and was even offered to jump out the game earlier in the campaign. I'll be honest, my mood was kind of depressing after this because I was just sort of along for the ride.

We go to Pseudo's home city and his home/shop becomes our new hub. I think DM had some pity for me because then I manage to have some rp with this one potion shopkeep, who I asked if they were hiring, since I had this poisoner's kit, and learned a bit of alchemy myself. nothing else really came from this. there was talks of maybe an epilogue, but nothing came from that.

While here, we find another vampire, a peaceful dark elf, who offers this sort of liqueur made of diluted nightshade. I kinda wanted to see if my character would like it, so I had a sip. I was made to roll a con save with disadvantage. This time I argued a little more, why this has to be at disadvantage, while Al, a vampire who can't drink anything that isn't blood, didn't have to roll anything. I was only told that Al would eat a nightshade berry in his youth so he had a tolerance built up, and I never came across them.

After this, I had no more spirit in the game. I even stopped taking notes, so after this, it's just a rough recap of how the campaign ended.

we find the main villain going to this southern point in the desert, and we decide to recruit my village to help. But first, I had to turn in my mentor to the other elders for having a hand in all this. I'm given a way to record himself confessing by feigning that I botched the job. After I get it, I get into a 1 on 1 with him. I was honestly nervous the poison immunity would be an issue with a Yuan-Ti elder, but thankfully I was actually able to poison him! Honestly thought I wasn't going to be able to.

With him out of the way, I am able to recruit my people to help us fight the main villain, only for DM to tease that there were no Yuan-Ti in campaign one. I now get to sentence my entire race to death. Hooray.

The last bits are a bit fuzzy, but the main points are: we won, I'm the only living Yuan-Ti, Pseudo gave his life to save us, and Al goes straight to his master vampire, adopting Pseudo's name. Now Al's ending is the worst because of this. We found his origins in campaign one, saying he became evil because of how people would war over dumb things. the main one being a massive war igniting over a religious statue built in the wrong spot. Now it's been retconned that this prequel was the reason.

So there we have it. A prequel that had favoritism, didn't involve this being a prequel to all players, stripped and rewrote a character, and retconned the main villain's purpose for becoming evil. If you ever think about doing a prequel, please think hard on that.

Unfortunately for me, this took a lot of fun out of playing. I know it sounds dumb, but I just never had a connection with my characters after all this. I was even in the middle of DMing my own campaign for them, but just couldn't keep at it after this, though this isn't the reason that one fell through. Whole different story for that one. Anyway, I hope this helps people avoid making some huge issues, and if you're in the middle of this sort of thing, fix it.

Tl;dr my character gets rewritten and traits removed, set aside for half the campaign and undid the original inspirations for our first campaign bbeg

Welcome to the world of Vampire the Masquerade. My friends asked me to run so I went ahead and said ok. I crafted them a world in California, where the main fictional city the Anarchs lived in had been gutted by the Sabbat. The Baron, "his family" and several other refugees managed to make it to L.A. "alive".

Enter the players:

Malkavian: A quirky girl who out of game had read the book I wrote with this setting. So she used it for reference for story quirks. Nothing serious just little fun things she got through the "network" Had a magic eye puzzle she "read"

Toreador: Chillest guy I've ever met. Love him to this day.

Tzimisce: A girl running on candy and high anxiety.

Gangrel: Refused to come out of cat form for anything.

Jester: He earns this name later. Our problem player. Starts as a Giovanni who left the clan, big no no, and moved on to a Nosferatu in a jester's costume.

Story:

So I crafted them this world. They all wake up missing memories and being interrogated by the Camarilla sheriff. Suddenly the building rocks as explosives go off, and their main Anarch contact comes to the rescue hauling them all back to the Baron, who's frustrated that they don't even remember the job they've been given.

The plot was essentially find the mcguffin. I pulled from Call of Cthulu for some extra horror. Everyone was on board and trying to find out where this thing was. Trying to figure out who to follow, and who to trust. They were all from different factions, and had to learn to work together and weigh loyalties.

Not Jester! He kept leaving the party to go around and collect dead bodies from morgues, with plans he admitted to to derail the campaign with a zombie army, and take them back to his house. Shock and horror that the Giovanni know where he lives and they're not happy about his departure. He ended up chained to a rock and tossed into a shallow part of the ocean to wait for sunrise.

Jester had taken a flaw that equated to: You will die. You will not survive this campaign. You're a walking corpse.

So I think this is it. Not the end I had planned but it'll work. If it weren't for Toreador it would've been. But Jester gets saved at the last second. And then mouths off to the elder that saved him.

Later the party finds where the mcguffin is supposed to be. They go deep under the city, find a reliquary of the occult that fell into a sinkhole and go exploring. Jester doesn't survives this. Not only did they find that the mcguffin was gone already, but Jester triggers a trap and gets dragged into R'lyeh but creepy, distorted "humans".

Jester is upset. He tells off everyone for not saving him and walking away. I reminded him of his flaw and he calmed down. This was the end I'd planned anyway for him.

I wasn't going to allow him to keep playing. But Malkavian was dating him, and begged me to let him stay. I finally gave in and he rolled up his Nosferatu, that wore a jester's outfit. I warned him that was a bad idea. There was an NPC who already had that schtick and didn't like sharing and would make his life miserable. He knew this. He'd met them. He said he didn't care.

Being framed for destroying an Arclight home base, and several of the Baron's family members later...he was pissed at me. He was yelling, angry, and I was about to boot him, but again Malkavian to his rescue. He gave up the jester schtick and suddenly, the NPC stopped fucking with him. He complained that it wasn't fair and I simply reminded him that he was warned.

They finished the campaign, and Malkavian got to work on her next campaign, a monster of the week sort of thing. Jester started talking about characters but even her patience had it's limits. She booted him, politely. And he broke up with her. So that was that.

Honestly, this is hardly a horror story, more advice to avoid it becoming one(with either side being the horror). So I'm a DM for a group of 5, and the issue player is the cleric. A bit of preface, Cleric often looks things up while playing games. Shes not afraid of spoilers, simply not caring about them. This is fine for games, I myself look things up pretty frequently while gaming, as I'm pretty similar to her in that regard. However: I was running an encounter with large flying rats, and I noticed she was looking them up. This was fine, as I had created these creatures just for fun, and didn't say anything at the time. However, I dont want her to get into the habit of looking things up, especially in the late game where I'm trying to build mystery. Im planning to mention this next session, but I'm wondering if there are any tips to broach the topic without her getting defensive.

So, I work for a company that owns several brands. In the mall in which I work, the company has three stores, two of which are close to each other, but the third (the estranged child), is located on the opposite side of the mall. I started working did the company by working for the most popular of the three. I hit it off well with several workers, where many of us bonded over our passion for D&D. This led to a few of them asking me to run Curse of Strahd for three of them. I must have made a good impression, because as that was winding down, more people began asking me to run another campaign, this one a Homebrew. One of the players from Curse of Strahd stayed on for this campaign, though the other two backed out for personal reasons. However, a good number of coworkers joined up as well. In time, the party consisted of:

Saint, the Warforged Paladin, and the return player.

Cal, a Tiefling Rogue, and one of our managers.

Aimon, the Half-Elf Fighter, and also a manager.

Morgana, the Human Druid.

Big Mac, the Frog Warlock, and the only coworker to join the campaign from the estranged third store. Due to his working there, he had never met the others.

Suleima, the Dragonborn Wizard, and Big Mac’s IRL friend. Suleima was the last to join, doing so only after a few sessions.

Session Zero came around, but the day of, Cal and Saint forgot, so couldn’t make it. They said to play anyway, and they would join in Session One. So, the party for this consisted of Aimon, Morgana, and Big Mac. They had fun, and prepared to meet the others later.

Cal and Saint do make it to the sessions from now on. However, a new pattern emerges: Big Mac keeps on having complications, rendering him unable to attend. After a couple sessions, Saint and Cal begin to joke that Big Mac doesn’t exist, and that I made up his role to have inclusion from the third store. Adding to this is we have a meeting which everyone from all three stores is supposed to attend. Big Mac, naturally, couldn’t make it. Even when I arranged mini-sessions focused on half the party, in which Big Mac got partnered with Cal and Saint, Big Mac couldn’t make it.

After repeated occurrences, I leaned into the joke, granting whoever played Big Mac that session a special “Big Mac” role in our Discord where we arranged sessions. That very session, I actually had to call Big Mac to clarify an important detail for his character. It was the first time Saint and Cal heard his voice…which the promptly dismissed as AI.

Finally, Cal began picking up shifts at the third store, and conveniently kept missing Big Mac. It took a couple more weeks before they finally met at work, and Cal got super excited, pointing him out to me. Saint still has not crossed paths with Big Mac.

TL;DR: two players miss Session Zero, another misses every other session and work events. The first two convince each other the third doesn’t exist, even after I call him.

When I originally made my first post on this situation, I did not intend to post an update, much less this final recounting of what went down after I left the game, but if you're on this subreddit, this is pobably the sort of conclusion you're here for.

To summarize the posts linked above, I played in a paid Curse of Strahd game ($15/ session, once a week) for about 2 months that was overall pretty bland and railroad-y, but I stuck around because the other players were really incredible and I was having fun going along with them, despite the faults of the GM and his game. When our open slot was filled in by a new player that introduced his character as the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Donatello (the one from the 1990s movies, not any adaptation, just an isekai sort of story), my immersion and enjoyment of the game plummeted. When I brought it up to the GM, we ended up going back and forth for a bit before he told me in no uncertain terms that my concerns did not matter, and he'd be running the game how he liked, so I left without another word to him and messaged the other players, encouraging them to continue having fun with the campaign.

After I posted my last update, the other players started reaching out to me. Our Wizard said they'd likely be following me out, implying they were waiting for the final straw in the same way I was. We discussed what we liked from the game we played together and what we wanted to avoid, and ended up joining a new game together in the same time slot that had 3 open spots. I was very happy to continue playing with them.

The next message I received was from our Bard, and this is where it gets into a real horror story. She asked if she could discuss something with me, and then told me about her experience with our GM at the beginning of the campaign, shortly before I joined. She presented screenshots of her DMs with our GM, in which he suggested a 1 on 1 session over video call, which she had politely declined. The rest of the screenshots showed that following that, he repeatedly asked for the 1 on 1 very insistently, coming up with reasons why they should do it, which she declined each time.

Reading through these conversations made my skin crawl. I'm not going to share them here becuase they are not my messages, but it was chock-full of excuses for why they had to be alone, and a really insistent attitude that went well beyond the scope of what might be reasonable, even if you were just trying to have a small RP session. This, of course, is not the worst thing I've ever heard of a GM doing, but paired with the fact that twice during sessions in front of the rest of us he'd asked her if she wanted to hop on a private call to discuss something or other, I felt incredibly guilty for not having reached out to her about it seeming strange to me.

At this point, my attitude was less 'I have nothing against this guy, we just don't mesh well' and more 'this really needs to end, immediately.' I reassured her this is NOT normal behavior, she was NOT overreacting by thinking it was creepy, and she should definitely flee ASAP. I told her that our Wizard and I had switched over to a new game, and encouraged her to take the last spot with us. She signed up, and messaged our former GM to let him know she'd be leaving as well, and he proceeded to try to convince her to stay- something he certainly did not do for the rest of us, and which just weirded me out even more. She left anyway, and shortly thereafter, the three of us were welcomed into the new game, which now had enough players to hold a session 0 and begin Descent into Avernus.

After we were safe and sound (well, as safe and sound as planning to delve into Hell can be), our Fighter messaged me next, saying he'd probably be dropping the original game as well, and learned from our Bard that we had all three joined a new campaign. He said it was regrettable that he could not join us, as the game was full- however, by a stroke of luck, when our new GM had announced the game was ready to begin, one of the players that had been signed up ended up dropping out, so there was an open spot for our final refugee from Barovia.

Our previous GM ended up canceling the campaign, since only the Ninja Turtle and our Cleric remained, saying that he had no idea why we had left. Our Cleric took that opportunity to suggest that, in the future, our Turtle player shouldn't introduce his character by immediately pickpocketing an NPC, and that was that.

The happy ending here is that the four of us got to give our characters a good conclusion and continue their legacy with our new characters; the Fighter and I are now playing surrogate brothers, the sons of our previous characters (yay marriage, my femme fatale got a happy ending!), our Lawful, rule-following Wizard is now playing her rebellious daughter (with an at-will Nondetection to keep her mom from Scrying on her) and our Bard is now playing her adopted younger sister as a Cleric on a journey of self-discovery. Because we left before things really went off the rails in Barovia, we got to have a satisfying ending to their stories, and can continue their legacy as good influences on our current college-aged adventurers.

The moral of this story is... just leave! Sometimes the best decision is to walk away. I'm so grateful that I got to meet my fellow players and that we're continuing our adventures together, and our session 0 with our new GM was very promising, with no red flags so far. I'm proud of us for having this chance, and I'm glad things worked out the way they did, even if I had to say 'what the fuck' 20 times to get here.