Hey fellow adventurers,

Gather 'round for a tale that'll make you gag and cringe in equal measure. Picture this: a gaming session filled with excitement, suspense, and the stench of unwashed ignorance. Strap in, because you're about to embark on a journey with a character straight out of a nightmare.

Our party welcomed a new member with open arms—or at least we tried to. Let's call him "Grimm," because his hygiene was as mythical as his intelligence. From the moment he entered the room, the air grew thick with a pungent odor that could only be described as a blend of rotten eggs and damp socks. We all exchanged wary glances, but being the polite adventurers we are, we soldiered on.

Grimm's character? A wizard, of course. Because nothing says "I'm compensating for something" like a smelly spellcaster. He strutted around the table like a peacock, boasting about his supposedly superior intellect while spewing nonsense that would make a kobold cringe. Every strategy we suggested was met with a condescending snort and a dismissive wave of his grubby hand.

But here's the kicker: despite his claims of genius, Grimm couldn't solve a riddle if it was written on the back of a beholder. He stumbled through puzzles like a goblin in a maze, all while reeking like a troll's armpit. And don't even get me started on his combat tactics—charging headfirst into battle without a plan, then blaming the rest of us when things inevitably went south.

Oh, and did I mention his charming personality? Grimm had a knack for alienating everyone at the table with his snide remarks and outdated views. He'd make a bard blush with his repertoire of offensive jokes and bigoted comments, all delivered with a smirk that made you want to introduce his face to a bag of holding.

In the end, we had to cast a prestidigitation spell just to get rid of the stench lingering in our gaming space. As for Grimm? Let's just say he found himself on the receiving end of a banishment spell courtesy of our DM.

So, fellow adventurers, heed my warning: beware the smelly know-it-all who pollutes both the air and the atmosphere of your gaming sessions. And if you ever encounter a Grimm in your travels, may your dice roll high and your patience never falter.

Stay fresh, my friends.

Note: This was not written by me, Im just posting it for my friend, cause we are in middle school and his parents wont let him get reddit

Ok so this story consists of me and my friend let’s call him Ranger. So I have been making a campaign for a couple of months, because I have gotten into Dming and because no one else really wants to or knows how. So I was talking to one of my players let’s call him Fighter about my new campaign and how great I think it was going to be, we where talking about setting, lore, and big bads. And I guess Ranger quote “overheard” our conversation because a couple weeks later he comes to our group and announces his campaign he said that his was going to be a “Epic Campaign” that he would basically allow anyone to do anything. Anyway he said his campaign was going to be about his players traveling to different islands fighting cultist and sailing the seven seas, where the BBEG was going to be all of the characters from his players backstory, which by the way CONSISTED OF VIDEO GAME CHARACTERS. And just for a little background my game is going to be about how the world flooded a long time ago and how the player characters have to travel to different islands to find out what happened, and along the way they find cultist preaching about how the world will be flooded again. See the similarities? And he came up to me a couple days later and said “Oh I am totally not copying you” TO MY FACE. I really don’t know what to do about it, but I just thought it would be good to vent my frustration.

Note: This is the op and this story will be continued soon as this is still ongoing

The first long term campaign I was ever in, was in 2014 when I was 19.

My boyfriend(21) at the time was our DM, but the games were hosted by a couple who owned their own home.

The other players varied a lot in age. They were two guys that were in their early twenties, our hosts were a married straight couple in their early thirties, and another guy who was almost forty. Everyone else at the table was aware of my age from day one.

Because everyone(except me obviously) was of age, drinking casual at the table was commonplace. For the most part people held it together, but there had been a couple times where people got a little too tipsy and we had to call a session early. We played with them for about 8 months, and met weekly, pretty consistently the entire time.

Every single session, the wife would offer me a drink. I felt weird about it, especially since she was so much older than me and I turned her down. Until the last time I played with them.

I had a long week, just gotten off work, and decided “fuck it”. I drank 2 beers throughout our almost 5 hour session.

I drank somewhat regularly at this point(definitely too regularly) and the two beers didn’t really have much of an effect on me. She made a joke about how impressive my tolerance was because I “don’t drink” and I clarified that I do drink, I just didn’t do it outside of my own home typically.

After that day, on short notice(both times the day of the game) and without any real explanation she cancelled the next two sessions.

The day the second canceled session should have taken place, her husband called my boyfriend and said that they didn’t feel comfortable having me in their home because I had been drinking there and I was underage. We were both super confused. My boyfriend asked for clarification.

The guy acknowledged that yes, his wife had offered me the drink(and then the second one when I went to toss the first bottle) knowing I was underage, but she didn’t expect me to accept and didn’t know how to backtrack at that point and tell me it actually made her uncomfortable.

The wildest part was that they expected my boyfriend to continuing DMing for them!

For the most part I have mostly good experiences with d&d, but this was the one time that really rubbed me the wrong way. For some context I had met the DM of this story online, we were in a group together about some of our similar interests and through talking we found out that we were both into playing d&d. He said he was running an online campaign centered around time travel, where all of the player characters were from different time periods and are pulled into the fantasy realm of d&d, trying to figure out how to get home. It was a really cool concept, so when he asked if I wanted to join I said I would love to and immediately started working on a character. I came up with a field medic cleric type of character who was pulled from the distant future, and I was planning on flavoring all of his magic as technology like nano bots and advanced medicine and stuff like that, which the DM said he was completely on board with. With everything good to go, in the first session I was going to play in it all seemed fine; he said he was planning on bringing my character into the story by having the party run into me at the nearest town. Problem was, the party was currently a days travel from said town, and spent the first three-four hours of a five hour session trying to get to the city, which meant that my character didn't even show up until like the last 20 minutes of the session. Ergo, I had to sit in a discord call for 4ish hours in silence listening to everyone else play while the DM made zero effort to bring my character into the action, include me as a player, or even talk to me at all. He introduced me as a player at the start and had everyone describe what their characters looked like so it's not like anyone didn't know I was there, but throughout the entire season practically everyone ignored my presence altogether even though I would ask questions now and again to try and at least get some more info about what was happening.

By the time they finally did get to the city, turns out it was under siege so everyone rolled initiative, and even then the DM refused to bring my character in because "I was helping the high wizard in a different part of the city" while all the other party members were fighting at the city gates. He called the session halfway through combat and I got maybe 5 minutes of screen time as he describes the wizard and I coming in to help them push back the enemies, so I think I had maybe two rounds of combat that I actually got to participate in throughout the entire 5 hour session.. 😮‍💨

All in all I didn't go back for a second session, and it was probably the biggest waste of a few hours in my entire experience of playing d&d. I hated how invisible the DM made me feel, and not including players has become one of my biggest pet peeves of playing because of it 😅

This isn't nearly as dramatic as most of these stories, but God does it still infuriate me.

So me and my friend, I'll call them M, were both interested in joining a DnD campaign together, as the last one we had has gone into a 'hiatus' with the DM ghosting us. So we decide to look on Roll20 together for any advertisements for any new group.

We find one that looks mildly interesting. There's a whole written world and story and everything, it sounds quite intriguing, so both me and my friend answer the questionnaire + send in our character concepts in hopes of getting approved.

Now quick context, my character is a werewolf. I asked the DM before I submitted them if it's okay to make them a werewolf, and that I'm willing to make a new one, or change anything to fit in with their campaign. They said it's alright, and so I send in the questionnaire and wait.

About a day later, I recieve an invitation to their Discord server, which I happily click. I write an introduction for myself, and I get a channel just for my character where I'm told to send my character concept and backstory and such. And so I send it. Before I do, I again double check with the DM if the werewolf concept is alright. They, again, say it's okay.

I send it in. I don't get any response to the backstory or nothing, which does infuriate me a bit, but it is a lengthy story so I figure maybe they don't have time to read it just yet, or they're just not very good at communication. I didn't throw a fuss about it, and instead just waited patiently for them to talk to me.

It's also worth of note that my friend has yet to come into the server.

Three days later, I wake up in the morning and check Discord, only to see that the server is gone from my server list. I'm confused, and upset so I write to the DM on Roll20, asking if I got deleted and saying that I would've liked to be talked to if so.

I also complain to my friend then, who in turn checks Roll20 and notices that they too have gotten an invite to the Discord server. They respond to the DM, saying that they're flattered but since their friend was removed without notice, they wouldn't want to join the server.

Several hours later, the DM writes back to both of us, apologizing and saying that the Mods put in some new auto-moderator that flagged all the new groupmembers and I was automatically deleted.

I assure them that it's okay, mistakes like that happen. They don't respond for about two days, before I send in a quick question of whether or not I'd still get an invite. They still haven't responded, either to me or my friend.

I genuinely don't know why I was removed, and frankly I'm offended that they couldn't at the very least have brought it up with me and told me why they didn't want me in the group. I would've been more than happy to change characters, if there was one that fit more within the world setting. And I have really started to doubt the whole Mod-excuse, as surely they would've invited me back as soon as I got removed, were that the case.

Hi there. I discovered this sub a few days ago, and after reading some of the stories shared here I was reminded of my own mild horror story. I hope you enjoy.

My first exposure to TTRPG games was in high school, when one of my new friends decided to introduce our small group to the concept. Let me introduce them to you (these are all fake names derived from our characters).

Harry, DM of the horror story. He enjoys creating characters that would be frowned upon here. A lot of Those Guys, furries or sexualized characters (though thankfully he doesn't force that onto our own characters.)

Shaun, the (mostly) forever DM. He is the most creative regarding lore and his characters, and likes to create characters with flaws that would put the party at risk. He is aware of the risk however, and always makes sure to minimize the problematic attitude of his character (we are all fine with this).

Miles, the rules lawyer. He is the one who introduced us to TTRPGs in the first place, and as stated just above makes sure we all follow the rules. This can be a bit annoying at times, but there are no real problems usually.

Blue, a mostly absent player. He is the one who lives the furthest away, and he doesn't often have the time to roleplay with us. He has a habit of creating edgy characters, though it's never to the point of absurdity and is often done right.

And me, your average guy. I enjoy the roleplaying aspect more than the combat aspect, so I tend to space out a bit sometimes.

When Miles first introduced us to TTRPGs, we followed Pathfinder's world and rules. However, we quickly adapted the first few sessions into a completely homebrew world, and after about a year or two of playing regularly, college happened and we couldn't make it to regular sessions. The game was moved to Discord, and to this day this is still the place where we mostly continue this story.

Over the years, we tried to branch out of this world, and tried our hands at different (but still homebrew) worlds, and now homebrew set of rules as well. This trend is what started the world in which this horror story takes place.

The setting:

The story takes place in a japanese-style medieval/fantasy world. Our characters were all orphans taken in by a powerful lord of the region, raised and trained as his children. The basic plot was that strangers from another land tried to invade our lands and attack us, and we basically had to run around and defeat groups of them as we found them. There were five of us. As the rules were homebrew, we didn't really have classes, and only defined our rôles through our stats, but I'll do my best to choose the classes closest to our characters for reading comprehension. Miles played a female Fighter, Shaun played a female Paladin, Blue had a male Druid, and I was a female Cleric (I know, we are a bunch of weebs). However, I said five characters: I present to you Harry's character and one of the problem DMPCs, the female Barbarian.

At first, there weren't a lot of problems. We did what we were asked to do, we won some battles, we fled others and everything went fine. One day however, we met one a few of these strangers in the forest, and they had daggers that could poison us. We fought as we could and Miles' Fighter ended up getting poisoned. As we finished the battle, we tried to loot the bodies, but we couldn't find the antidote (bad rolls, sadly). Harry expected us to have something to combat the poison, but we didn't after the battle. Suddenly, DMPC found the group (they weren't there before) and somehow had the antidote, and cured Fighter before it was too late.

At this point, I should mention that none of us enjoy killing others' characters. It usually happens during a meaningful roleplay moment narrated by the player themselves, or with their approval during combat. We were all fine with losing characters by the way, as long as it was reasonable. But keep in mind that Harry was the least comfortable with killing other characters, which was probably the reason why he pulled this antidote without trying to roll for it himself.

Anyways, we moved on. A few days later, we met another invader, and tried to fight it. The DM described him as "seeming a lot stronger than the ones you encountered before", so we were cautious about the battle. However, thanks to a streak of lucky rolls and several nat 20s, we were able to overwhelm the guy pretty easily. Harry was silent for a moment, and then another guy spawned out of nowhere and took the DMPC hostage, without rolls. We asked him why OOC, and he just responded with "I didn't think you would beat him, you were supposed to get captured". So basically, we were forced into submission else the DMPC would be killed (we were all raised as siblings, so our characters didn't want to take any risk).

Our characters were then taken to a prison-like camp and we couldn't do anything to get out. But suddenly, people from an ally faction launched an attack into the camp, and we were able to be freed. However, this is where Shaun's character flaw came in play. His character was too bold and confrontational, and instead of fleeing like the rest of us, challenged the leader of the camp to a one on one duel. This would have been a quick defeat. Instead, the rolls somehow ended up being a nat 20 and a nat 1...in the leader's favor. Shaun's character was completely disfigured and on the brink of death. But as I said, Harry hated to kill characters: so he had the ally faction take her to their base (and bringing the rest of the party along), and sent her to the shrine maiden to get cured. However, she was so badly injured that there was only one option: imbuing her with a kitsune spirit, which turned the character...into a furry. Without Shaun's consent. We all asked Harry, both in and out of character, if there was no other solution; the NPCs said there was nothing else they could have done, and Harry simply replied "I wanted to make her a furry".

Shaun barely played after that because it was the complete opposite of what he wanted his character's growth to be, and the party soon followed suit.

As a final note: we were a group of friends for 7 years now and still going strong. Despite this story, we still enjoy creating our stories together: we all have flaws in our roleplay abilities, and even though what I just said might paint Harry as a bad DM, he's overall pretty fine.

TLDR: DM makes his DMPCs and NPCs both plot devices to prevent players from doing too good, and Deus Ex Machina to prevent them from doing too bad. Also turns a character into a furry without the player's consent, leading to the campaign being abandoned

So I recently started a 5e campaign with some long time friends. Now to preface we all have some dark and often denigrating senses of humor. This is a spelljammer campaign that i had done a metric ton of research for in order to let my players jump between multiple campaign settings they had read about in the past. I planned the campaign as a treasure hunt in space where another crew of spelljammers would be racing them towards the treasure.

So here is where i messed up. One of our players is a conspiracy theory junkie. I made a one off joke about there being a bank at one of the astral sea locations they visited. When they asked the name of the bank i said it was rothschild and sons, mostly to get the conspiracy bro worked up. However they decided to rob it instead of just letting it go. Now nine sessions later they are caught in the middle of a three-way war between the Elven Imperial Navy, a resurgent goblinoid empire and… sigh… the rothschild bank that has been forced to make more and more insane efforts to make them pay for robbing the bank after they shenanigans their way out of everything.

I kind of want to let the bank disappear but they love them as a bad guy. I’ve described them as being a force that was originally started with the best intentions, (bringing law and order as well as jobs and trade to remote wild space locations) but has slowly gotten corrupted by their power and influence to the point where they are now a tyrannical and degenerate force in the multiverse.

I would have just swept them under the rug as a one off joke at the expense of my conspiracy bro player but the players love it. They constantly praise my “morally gray universe where there are no easily defined good guys” and how I “worked what we thought was a joke into a relatable villain.”

I feel ridiculous with it but don’t know how to detach them from the story at this point. Especially after a character decided he liked them so much as a villain he worked them into his backstory. What do i do? Should I keep this one off joke around as a villain?

In one I was a Nobel paladin and no memory means I don’t remember being a Nobel nor my oath, which ruins everything but my race since I have no memory.

One of the campaigns has ended, but the other one just started. The DMs are players in my campaign and real life friends so I can’t just cut off from them.

I tried talking to the DM and he just said it was for lore reasons, and did not site the lore that would make this required

This comes from r/DnD

Full story here: https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/s/qRjmFeNbie

"H*rny magic completely changed my character, I’m FUMING over it

This is just a vent, and I’m feeling pretty frustrated. In our last session, I was going to go off on a small mission with a couple other party members while the rest hung back and rested/crafted. Our artificer lent me his automaton, just in case we needed extra support. My character, a Druid with respect for allies and life in general, asked what the robot’s name was as to address her properly.

“01,” the artificer said.

I replied and said that it feels wrong, and that she deserves a name for all the help she’s been on our travels. He gave me the okay to name her. Once the cleric and I decided on Eve, I spoke her name to her and the automaton BIT ME.

What I wasn’t aware of was the fact that the automaton is a mamono creature (from the Monster Girl Encyclopedia, which I’m not really a fan of in the campaign but it’s ultimately up to the DM). I was then infected with said mamono magic, failed a CON save and I completely transformed. I was a Firbolg, but the mamono (which is essentially horny magic) completely altered my character. I am now a Dryad from said MGE. I’m basically a slim-thick tree lady, which I don’t mind.

The part I do mind, however, is the fact that my character cannot control herself around males she is even slightly attracted to, and quite literally pounces on them the moment she sees them. She now infects the males with this mamono, which pumps them full of pheromones and does the didly deed of procreating, and no one can do anything to stop her. Not even me!

So of course, an attractive (per the DM) vampire walks into the room shortly after I was bitten, and my character immediately mates with him and becomes pregnant. (My baby was wished away by our genie sorcerer, bless his heart)

I DO NOT WANT THIS AT ALL!!

I don’t wanna be a kill joy, but it was rather uncomfortable for me to sit there in front of my group while the DM is laying out the scene of me viciously going to town on this vampire.

Beforehand, my character was a virgin (for background reasons) and I had intended for her to stay that way so that she may dedicate her life to restore the balance of the world. I think I’m extra butthurt about it because I’m so attached to the character that I made, and how much I’ve built her up over the last year😭 She’s lvl 12 druid, and lvl 6 monk for reference.

Not to mention, the cleric was also infected, bc apparently I want to infect females with this magic and transform them too. And it’s out of my control, since the mamono apparently takes full control like raging pheromones.

I’m so upset, I’m ready to burn my character sheet and just make a new character that is a menace and an asshole just to spite the DM😵‍💫

I’m not really sure how to address this, bc the rest of the party, aside from me and the cleric, seem to be okay with it. I don’t wanna be a buzzkill, but I just really disagree with the fact that there was no consent on my part to make this transformation. And the physical part I don’t mind at all, I like the idea of being a cool tree creature. But the other part, I don’t like.

What do yall think?

EDIT: I knew that this magic existed in our world, and we’ve even come across a portal to this mamono dimension. But I did NOT know that I could be infected and transform this way. I didn’t really want to kill the fun, but now my fun has been killed😕

EDIT 2: we did not have a session 0. This is the first campaign for a lot of the players involved, myself included, and I didn’t even know what a session 0 was until I joined this sub. DM really isn’t a bad guy, otherwise we wouldn’t be associated. Just not great at communicating and feel like he didn’t think to talk about this stuff beforehand bc he grew up in a very sex-positive household and doesn’t realize that not everyone is comfortable with it the way he is. "

It involves both DM and Players, but more of a player"

I accidentally did a TPK on my First 3.5e Campaign

Well this is kind of a "AITA" post, not quite a horror story but lets Begin.

Yesterday I DMed D&D 3.5 for the first time, I've been really excited with the System and all my players were pretty new to 3.5 too (tho everyone had already player 5e).

As a DM I'm pretty found of homebrewing my enemies, making intresting gimmicky encounters to make my players remember Every Monster or enemy NPC they fight, and with this campaign It wasn't Very different, I did created myself a small group of unique enemies.

I know, I know It probably seens that I Just exagerated a bit on the Monsters with what I saw but I made them with a method I use to balance them to the party, I got the sheets of everyone and I did a small graph with their bonus to attack, their damage(by using the best reliable damage source they have in their sheets) their spell CD etc... (I use dice averages to cauculate the damage) Then I use those informations to balance encounters Specifically to the players... (Exemple: a balanced enemy has enough CA to make a player have a 50/50 chance of hitting an attack, and his Damage shouldn't be able to kill a player on one hit, but It should hurt)

I used the method to create a Earie Bard swordwoman that used Magic to transform her songs into etherial Melodies that terrified the soul of those that heard them, she could debuff with her songs, attack with her sword and do an AOE attack using her Voice (that needed a Saving throw to tank), Also she could use a complete Action to Sing a paralyzing song (that Also have a Saving throw and paralyzes for only the round she is singing) that she can use to hold the players while her minions attack... She was a cool enemy and actually would pose a Challenge without being straight up ridiculously strong (her bonus to hit, her Hp and her Saving throws was equal to the ones of the players, and she had 2 Minions that had only sword attacks and a Third of the bard's HP).

The fight with this Bard was... Intresting to say the least, in the begining everyone was missing attacks, then people started to get hits, Wizard tried to charm person the Bard swordwoman, failed (she rolled exactly the number she needed), she took offense on that and attacked him, Barbarian was surrounded by both Minions, rogue hit the Bard with a Sneak Attack, the Bard relaliated rogue, rogue went down after 1 AOE attack at the begining and this attack, Wizard casted fog cloud and hid, Barbarian killed both Minions, Bard used her AOE attack again, Everyone got to negative Health, I rolled a perception check in her soo I could see If she would think everyone is Dead instead of doing, she failed and left the place thinking she killed everyone, the players stabilized themselves but are still unconscious in the ground. This took around one and a half hours of Combat...

After the session, the wizard's player comments to me that he didn't like the Combat and thought It was unbalanced, even tho the "TPK" was not Quick like If the Monster was broken or anything and happened cuz the players didn't strategize and used their actions well (in the end they managed to get the Bard to almost half HP, but the Wizard decided to hide in the fog cloud, where he could totally hear the AOE song that deals psychic Damage, the Barbarian didn't rage until the last turn, and the rogue Just ignored that Sneak attacks existed after using them 1 time), anyways... Am I The Asshole for accidentally TPKing my party in my First D&D 3.5 Campaign?

Gonna keep it sweet and Simple

We are a school club campaign and had 5 sessions. They started at lvl 2 and gained one a level by killing a army captain. Start of this session they get to a sky city. This was a One Piece themed campaign and one player, "P" found the tremor tremor fruit. He saw a giant hospital in the distance holding 5 million people. He generated a earthquake that sent the building 100 of thousands of feet to their death. A Commoner is worth 4 XP sooo 20 million exp. Unfortunately for them, the building was keeping the bbeg down to the ocean. A giant sea serpent rose and ate one. The guy inside casted polymorph, I rolled a nat 1 on the save. He becomes an ant and since Archdruid he casted polymorph. He then casted Planeshify, sending the seagull with 1 total HP to the fucking 9 hells.

Soooo now we're doing a cowboy campaign. 🤠👍

Edit BC wanna clarify: This campaign was just to pass time because we all hated all the other clubs and 2 of our friends were new to dnd and wanted to get them hooked into it. It worked for one who is one of the best roleplayers but is unfortunately still in the Murder Hobo Stage. This campaign was a "Rule Of Cool" campaign so not all rules applied.

Firstly, I'd like to clarify that the dm and players were all first timers in this story and I bear no ill will to anyone involved, especially dm. I just need to vent because I'm seriously upset over this whole thing.

So, a few months back I overheard my friends talking about a dnd campaign they were planning to run and I immediately jumped on the opportunity to join. I have a relatively small social circle and there aren't any game stores the like in my town for public games, so this chance to play was basically a blessing from heaven. The game took place in a pretty cool homebrew setting loosely based on Warhammer l, but involved elements from many games, anime and other media. Our dm clearly put a lot of effort into it. Even though a first time dm running 100% homebrew setting sounded a bit off to me, I was still beyond stoked.

I made my character a chaotic neutral ghoul(Tokyo ghoul style, a homebrew race in the setting) spellcaster/healer. We had a Tau mechanic and a human rogue as well. I bought a set of dice and after reading the rules created a character sheet. When it came to stats, the dm said he'd just tell me my stats and modifiers (as he decided the two didn't have anything to do with each other in his campaign). Weird, but ok. I was still stoked. I even drew my character and made a 3d figurine for her.

Session one goes pretty well, we do a bit of roleplay, there's a combat encounter, things get a bit off track when my character accidentally kills a janitor for throwing a broom at her, Wich results in an epic police chase. In game we don't really follow any rules though, and basically just roll checks with the d20, even in combat. The real problems start about 5 sessions in, when the party is basically forced to swear allegiance to one of the 9 most powerful mortal creatures in the material plane. This results in a pretty forced railroad, as we're forced to do as our boss says, otherwise our soul gets destroyed. We also undergo severe training, which permanently alters the appearance of all our PCs. We had no knowledge this would happen. At the time I found it a bit frustrating, but I didn't object as technically we got much needed upgrades.

We needed said upgrades, because literally everything and everyone was so stupidly overpowered that we couldn't face off against any of them for even a single moment. Every npc was op to the point of being untouchable. For example, at some point we found an uncontious woman outside our ship, so we brought her inside and gave her medical attention, but since we didn't trust her we decided to tie her up in case she turns out to be dangerous. When she woke up, she immediately attacked and proceeded to beat the crap out of all 3 of us single handedly. Not even because we had crappy rolls, most checks were above 20 while our highest stat modifiers were +2 (our dm didn't do levels). Turns out she was an ally, but still, this sent the message that we, the players are so weak in the grand scheme that any moderately skilled npc can brush us aside effortlessly.

This was further reinforced when, after a several session mystery we finally tracked down a boss monster and we were prepared to fight it. My character, being the sort to solve problems with her fists, immediately goes to punch the thing with her power gauntlet. I roll an nat 20. The attack bounces off the monster's invisible force field. I kid you not. Then, a random op npc flies in and kills the thing as we stand and watch. At that point I was mildly pissed but I held my tounge for the most part.

Until the next session when we were exploring an ancient city and accidentally woke up dormant automatons. We were hiding when the leader of them found us. Given that the bots seemed openly hostile, my character goes for a surprise attack, hoping to dispose of the threat before the others can react. I roll an 18. You can guess what happens. The robot grabs both my fists, and shatters my gauntlets. At that point, I was legit mad and let it be known. I just felt like our characters were all completely powerless, seemingly by design. Turns out, I was correct as this fact was only reinforced from this point on. After my weapons were shattered we had no choice but to flee. Afterwards, we had to call for help for another op npc to save our arses.

One time our rogue had to infiltrate a party held by a rich asshole and get some important info out of him. My character wasn't present, as high class social events weren't her forte. But the rich guy refused to speak to rogue, said he would only talk to our demigod boss. My character had a one time use item to summon her, and as the rogue refused to argue (he likely didn't have good chances, as this was likely another 20+ check), my character was summoned to deliver the item. While this was going on we found out there were also a bunch of terrorists who wanted to blow the place up. That didn't matter much, though as the moment our boss was summoned she immediately magically got the terrorists via magic and got info out of the rich guy. My character, at this point hated the rich guy and as her backstory was that she's a serial killer who stalks and kills people she finds to be bullies (she was deeply flawed), She asked our Tau mechanic, who just got a new ability for hacking specifically, to hack into the palace's systems and get a blueprint so she can sneak back in and get the guy who disrespected her friends. I half-excpected to be called out in character, but our Tau went on with the check. They rolled a 16, which, wasn't only low enough to fail, no, they managed to trigger security, causing alarms to go off. Hearing this, our boss reads my character's mind via her op magic powers, gets pissed that she dared thinking about killing such an apparently powerful npc, then decided to curse both my character and the Tau, to have. -4 modifiers for ALL of our rolls for the next two sessions. You know, just normal dnd things.

After this, I was pretty much done, but still stuck around because all the others are my friends, plus I grew pretty attached to my character and I wanted to see how her story ends. That was a mistake.

I didn't mention untill now, a few friendly npcs around our level who worked alongside us as a separate group. In most rp scenarios they were around, and them and the party basically became my character's new family as she lost hers when her planet was destroyed. These were the only characters she trusted and she'd stand up to anyone for them, without hesitation, no matter how powerful.

This is important, because of the finale. Turns out these npcs made deals with the chaos gods to deliver my character to them in exchange for their list loved ones being revived. So that's what they did. The twist was that they were enemies all along. This completely broke my character, as she was trusting someone for the first time in her life, only to be betrayed, not only by npcs our rouge switched sides at the last moment and joined them for his lore reasons. The Tau didn't, but they couldn't do much so they basically just left. I hoped for a redemption arc, from chaotic neutral to neutral good as my character finds a new family. Instead, she was consumed by grief and rage, as at first she tried to run, but that clearly wasn't an option.

Everyone got temporary upgrades for the final battle, including the traitors to make the fight more epic. Dm told us we were around the same level as most of the more powerful npcs we faced. Except the Tau, who got a deal offer from a demon and quite sensibly refused. This made it so that they were immediately out of the fight. For a while, they provided air support from a space ship, but then the ship was ordered to leave by our boss to help out somewhere else, so I was on my own. For a while the npcs and rogue were ganging up on me as I was struggling to keep pace in a 4v1.

Then, two of the npcs started to open a portal for their god to reach trough, so I used my single-use spell I got for this fight, to summon a mini supernova in front of the portal. This being my most powerful spell, I hoped that it would at least hinder the god. Especially since I'm also op now, right? Wrong. A giant hand reaches trough the portal and vaporizes that star on contact. No rolls, no nothing. Afterwards,, another god-like npc, who we met once before shows up, drags the Tau back into the fight and literally yeets them onto the field, where they had to succeed a dc10 save with no modifiers not to fall into the star I summoned and immediately die. The dm found this funny apparently. This was literally all my "most powerful" ability was good for. Then, the god-like npc tries to stop the hand. He rolls, and fails. Everyone dies. I'm not even joking. THE MOMENT he fails, everyone, the players, the npcs, all die. We spend like a minute in the plane between planes. At this point we have a chance to make it out alive, although we don't know. Dm asks me to roll perception. I roll a 4. Dm: "You don't notice the demon wolf approaching. It grabs you and takes you away to the afterlife." Not even a save. That was the end if my character. Everyone but the rogue dies in a similar way, but he gets branded a traitor and spends the rest of his day in hiding. I was just so dejected and angry at this point, having the story end so anticlimactically, in a way none of us had any control over. Sorry this turned out so long, but I needed to write this out somewhere, as I can't get this bs campaign out of my brain.

Luckily, I found an online group to join, this time with an experienced dm who actually respects the rules. My first session with them is this Sunday and I'm really looking forward to actually playing dnd.

Edit: fixed paragraph separation. I was typing on a phone the first time, plus I was pretty heated over all this. Hope I made it more readable.

Also, thank you to everyone who read this thing, I didn't expect it, but your kind words do mean a lot <3

It's something I experienced 2days ago and I must talk about it, I already apologize for my bad English cause English isn't my first language. Anyway it starts at character creation as we were playing pathfinder and I always wanted to try pathfinder, as I asked wich Edition of pathfinders the DM said that it doesn't matter and that we will create the character with Google docs, I was visibly confused and didn't give it any mind and desidet to make a goblin alchemist called goop and asked about my starting equipment and my spells if I can write them down, the DM said no because I don't have any and also no starting equipment then he asked me about my back story, I told him that if I chose my back story then it would be connected to a way that I already have at least my alchemy extract stuff and to make it cause I am not stupid and I know how to get by, he said no and that I don't have any thing. So that I won't die I gave my self knowledge of nature and survival skill when I choose them and desidet not to get a backstorie and was handing it to the dm cause I was not allowed to have anything or do anything. Session 1 starts and that where the horror begins for me, when the party met me and we did some bonding I tryed to get some alchemist engriedience with my nature check from the local woods dm said "you don't know any of the plants" i tryed to investigate the wild live and get told "you don't know what fish this is" which makes the skills I picked useless, the reason why I don't know any of it is because in the dms words "you don't picked a backstorie" I left the session early and am now considering to leave the group

This was like 7-8 years ago roughly, but I realized I hadn’t ever posted it here.

At this point I had played DnD for 2-3 years, most of that experience as a DM. My fiancé and I had just moved to a new neighborhood, and I thought it would be fun to join a local DnD group. I found a LFGS not too far, called in and found out the owner / manager and some others have a weekly DnD party with a spot open. They were already a few levels into Out of the Abyss, but the DM was cool with me joining in.

The party was myself (early 20s), two similar in age to me, and then the DM (60s) and his friend (40-50s). I’m not trying to be ageist, but every single problem came from the older 2.

1. The session I was being introduced, it was framed to me as a classic “rescue-the-new-member” situation, with my character tied up in a sack. But the party spent 3 hours of gameplay talking, planning, exploring, and doing an unrelated combat. Finally the 2nd combat came around, and finally my character was freed (with like, 30min of gameplay). I still don’t understand why the DM didn’t plan for me to arrive earlier in the session.
2. We had 1 woman in the group, though I (a man) was also playing as a woman so we had 2 female characters. Both of the older guys would make minor sexist and sexual comments about our characters. Things like emphasizing how they look in their outfits, trying to hook up with them, etc. I chalked it up to boomers who don’t know much beyond this kind of talk.
3. My characters hair fell out entirely because of the wild magic in the underdark. This was fun and would have been a neat emotional obstacle for my character to overcome. Instead, they (you know who by now) made jokes about how my character wasn’t a woman anymore, or would need to find a fantasy wig, and kept making Sinead O’Connor jokes (which not only am I too young to get the reference, but googling later told me it was a shitty thing to meme about).

This doesn’t include how the DM was constantly underprepared, which I mean he’s running a store, I get it, but why DM then? He always had to look stuff up, sometimes taking (no exaggeration) up to 30 minutes.

I was already feeling like quitting because of the above behavior, and the session I was doing a “one last chance”, the final straw broke.

We were in a big battle, the most deadly we had faced. A Medusa with a small army of stone soldiers. Most of the party had already fallen, and the party fighter had already dipped out to run. It felt like we were on the edge of TPK. My wizard was at the edge of the room, the choice of going in to try one last move, or GTFO and survive. I decided to go back in, and ended up getting turned to stone.

We won the battle though. After some looting came the moment for the surviving members to decide what to do about one that died and myself, turned to stone. Instead of a sad discussion, the older guy said his character felt mine up while she was turned to stone.

I was pissed. This was my first character death, in a moment that should have been heroic & sad, and this guy was being an absolute creep. I told them I’m done, no longer going to sit through this kind of shit. I got my stuff and left. I heard the DM calling for the end of session while I left.

So this was my first campaign in dnd and we were playing Curse of Straud. Everything is standard and our party which has a Dwarven Barbarian,Half Elf Ranger,Goblin Bard,and a Tabaxi Druid. Are preparing to make camp so we can take a long rest. As we do this the Tabaxi Druid says nah imma do my own thing and keeps walking away from the group.DM roles a random encounter and a pack of wolves shows up. It's also a full moon. Druid fights the pack alone due to the rest of us not being remotely close to them. And decides to cast wall of fire. The wolves are hit take some damage and keep attacking. It was at this moment that the Druid says that's bs the fire should have killed the wolf. Dm rightfully says that's not how Wall of Fire works and explains how it would affect the wolves in this encounter the Druid decides f it im leaving packs up and we never speak with them again. Also side note we ended up stopping playing said due to outside activities making it impossible to meet. To finish off I honestly can't believe that someone would get so angry over nothing that they would stop playing entirely and just leave.

This happened a few weeks ago, after the first combat in a homebrew campaign I'm currently running, and honestly just left me completely bewildered.

For reference, the cast was:

- Human Fighter

- Tabaxi Druid

- Tiefling Bard

TL;DR: Fighter gets upset and leaves the session right after the first combat because it "should" have been a TPK, despite the fact he refused to RP and proceeded to start the fight. Even then, it was clear I wasn't going to TPK them. He then proceeded to try and poach one of my remaining players. Since then, I made an NPC based on his character; the players hate him.

Sessions played over Discord and using the Roll20 VTT. We were also meant to have another player as Rogue, but they were a no show, and haven't given me any reason as to why they didn't show; just completely ghosted. I guess they... went rogue. I'm sorry for making you read that.

Regardless, everyone else showed and I still wanted to run a session.

To start things, I had the characters meet up, working with them so that we could do a creative introduction for the characters. The Fighter and the Bard worked out through an RP channel that Bard got arrested by Fighter (they were a soldier and I worked with them to have them as a guard for the town they were starting at) after making trouble at the tavern the night before.

Druid hadn't been as active in the discord however, so I basically just asked what he wanted his character to be doing. Druid told me he was walking down the road looking weary and hungry. After telling me this, I was about to get him introduced to the party when the first problem came up.

The Fighter rudely interrupted me as I was trying to do this, saying, "Can I talk?" Sure, doesn't seem that rude, but it was more the tone he said it; like very aggressively. He then continued to make his suggestions as to what Druid could do, but I felt he wasn't really vibing with it and he kinda just... didn't say much. So, I moved things forward.

Fighter and Bard were walking out of the guardhouse after Fighter had released Bard, so that I could quickly get Druid introduced and able to start interacting.

We had a fun lil time where Bard thought Druid was an oversized cat, and was like "Here kitty kitty" while offering food. Queue Bard being surprised when Druid starts talking.

I continued on and properly started the session off with the first encounter, narrating that they were walking towards the town center when they ran into this guy dressed in an orange tunic. He introduces himself as the town's tour guide, and after some RP, mentions they should see the local wizard who usually always needs help with something.

The guide offers to lead them there and they follow, and out comes a girl with dragon scales, and I explain that they recognize she's actually a sorcerer, not a wizard. Queue some more RP before a massive rock suddenly bursts out of the doorway, sending the little "wizard" flying 100ft into the air. Then the rocks start moving. Roll initiative!

The combat is brief however, as the massive rock creature just books it into the nearby forest. Fighter did attempt to fight however, getting knocked over in the process and taking 1d4 damage, but heavy armor mastery completely mitigated it. Nice!

They then notice the "wizard" still up in the sky. "She's still up there?" was asked, then I narrated that she was falling slowly, swaying like a feather before landing gently on the ground. Queue some more RP, and the wizard gives them a quest to go east to a place called the mistfields (aptly named bc it's always covered in mist), to bring back some monsters –preferably alive– for research purposes, of course.

It's made pretty clear that the mistfields are to the east, and the guide offers to take them there. He starts walking off by himself, and they choose to just let him go, but that's fine.

While working their way through the mist, they run into the body of the guide, dead. Degenerates that they are, they choose to loot him. I'm laughing and having a great time.

While not completely going away, the mist does start to clear up, eventually increasing their visibility to 60ft, and they came across an area sheltered by low, sloping cliffs. After spotting some people standing over a body on the ground, they choose to investigate. Druid decides to be sneaky, and climbs up the cliff to spy. It seems like they're investigating the body on the ground and are unsure what happened.

Druid continues sneaking, but fails one of the stealth checks. Bard quickly comes up with the idea to cast thaumaturgy and create a sound somewhere else to help, which I thought was a great idea! I allow Druid to make another check; success!

The sound does catch attention though, and the NPC's dog runs after it.

Then, out of nowhere, Fighter decides to approach the NPC's, telling both the others to basically shut up and hold position. After some questioning, he asks the NPC's to drop their weapons, but they refuse; I don't call for a persuasion check, as there's very good reason they wouldn't want to drop they're weapons. Of course, the only logical thing for the Fighter to do is draw their weapon.

The NPC's didn't want to fight however, and I make this clear (tbh I was actually expecting at least an insight check to see if the truth could be determined), but Fighter is committed to... doing what they do best I guess. So now I'm scrambling while everyone is rolling initiative, bc this was not meant to be the intended combat encounter. I had to quickly adapt.

During combat, Fighter basically starts complaining about how the leader was too strong and that there were too many for just the three of them, as there had been another two NPC they hadn't ran into yet. I couldn't really say anything though, as I had to keep combat moving along and didn't wanna get into an argument.

Anyway, everything turns out fine. Druid is downed, but I told him the NPC's were attacking non-lethally so he didn't have to make death saves, and I have a homebrew ruling that players can still do stuff while downed, as I find it's lame that players have to wait 5min just to roll a death save (or in this case, just skip their turn). So, Druid chooses to take on some exhaustion so he can make a last ditch attack, which is enough to take the leader out.

At this point, Fighter just starts looting, so I state what stuff the NPC's had on them - and then we take like a 15-20min break.

After I get back, Fighter is gone from the VC and I find a single message from him in the main channel, saying he wanted to try and wait until the end of the session, but instead just left. Beyond that... nothing else. No reason as to actually why he left – but naturally, I could guess. Ngl, I was actually relieved; I felt like there were instances where he would make a big deal out of something that honestly just didn't matter, and the constant remarks during the combat had really just soured my opinion of him. Had he not left, I don't think I would have kept him around, because... holy shit.

I decided to put a pin in the session in any case, but we still talked a bit afterwards. I asked the remaining two what they had thought of everything so far, and they told me they'd both been having fun and can't wait for the next session. Probably especially so, since I had to cut this session short.

Afterwards, I decided to send Fighter a polite message enquiring as to what he didn't like about the session, as I always appreciate feedback - we can always improve as DM's of course.

I got a little bit out of it at least, but he pretty much just accused me of having too many red flags, he didn't like the way I ran things (which is fine, some styles don't fit some players) but he said it in a way that basically boiled down to "You're doing it wrong." I felt like I was giving the players plenty of opportunity to do they're own thing, and did in fact ask what they would like to do multiple times; there were some parts I genuinely had to improv as, naturally, players will always do the unexpected – but I feel that should be reason enough to believe I'm giving them agency.

Nevertheless he proceeds to tell me I didn't ask them what they wanted to do (actually funny now in hindsight, considering he took away other players agency multiple times), that I was making stuff up turn to turn during combat just to punish them, that everything just felt made up on the spot, that I obviously wasn't interested in cooperative storytelling, and that railroading seemed like my entire style.

I thought maybe he'd be nice, but the whole message was rude and instantly antagonistic. I did want more info though (again for DM improvement), so in another polite message, I first acknowledged my genuine faults and apologized for it, then asked "what about the combat seemed punishing?"

I may as well not have asked though. He just told me the combat was absurd. There were too many enemies. They all should have died, and they would have if he hadn't picked the feat he did. Pointed out the damage he would have took without the feat (actually calculated it), and that it was exactly equal to his hp. Then he tells me attacking the druid was also a red flag bc he had lower hp and ac, so it would have only been Druid and Bard and bc of that, it definitely would have been a TPK.

I've never had a player leave or get upset over the potential for a TPK, and what's even more baffling is that he was upset because he made a good character build? I thought about it too and... even without the feat, it wouldn't have been a TPK, and even if they were all downed, I stated clearly that the NPC's had been attacking non-lethally. At worst it might have been a TPKO (lol), but I sincerely doubt it.

I soon found out that he also told one of the other players afterwards that he felt sorry that their first experience with DND was with me DM'ing, and even tried to invite them to his own game. The worse thing about this was that he'd told me prior that he felt sorry for some players having really bad experiences with their first game and dropped D&D... yet this player has really enjoyed playing with me lmao.

Like I said in the beginning, however, it's been two weeks since I played with this absolute clown. Since then, I've found another three amazing players who have just been an absolute delight to play with, with both Druid and Bard being bonafide babes.

And to make something positive out of the experience, I made an NPC based on Fighters character, doing the exact same things to the players that he did to the NPC's. They absolutely hate the guy, so I guess I inadvertedly made a really good antagonist.

Rogue still gone rogue though ;-;

Had to leave a fun campaign because a furry was being really weird

I’m a dm, and I wanted to step up my skills so I browsed discord and dragons (the official dnd discord server) to find a campaign to join. Prior to this i had only been a player once. I started playing dnd as a dm and have since i started ages ago.

I was technically the third person to join, but the first two left before it started, then the problem player joined, we’ll call him James, i don’t know his name as we played online through discord. Then he invited his girlfriend

The full party + dm was as follows

1. The DM, i just want to say, he was an incredible dm, he took every opportunity to let us roleplay and figure out what to do, most of the session was spent with us talking more than him

2. James. Bisexual furry who was the boyfriend another furry in the group. Also the problem player

3. Lampshade, the girlfriend of James, very lovely person who I loved getting to know, also a furry

4. Gaia, transfem furry who likes anime, honestly my first impression was kind of off-putting but she was one of the nicest people i’ve ever met

5 Yoko, honestly the odd one out, sort of alpha-male energy and obsessed with jschlatt, i expected us to have problems with him, as the rest of us are all some shade of lgbt and he sort of gave off “i’m 14 and furries are gross” vibes. But me and him ended up bonding over stupid memes, great times

I played an elf ice-focused sorcerer named Blynn Elkmead

James played a tabaxi (of course) shadow **monk** named (i kid you not, legal dnd name) The Silent Hand

Lampshade played an aasimar life domain cleric, don’t remember her name

Gaia played a dwarf fighter (based on Dana from delicious in dungeon if you’ve seen that show), named Dana

Yoko played an life domain cleric too, i don’t remember his name

Prior to the first session we’re introducing ourselves, and i make a joke about gaia’s pronouns, they had them in their about me, name, and pronoun section on discord, once they said they were trans i made a light joke about that and we all laughed, this started a conservation about gender and sexuality and all the things, I asked gaia how she picked her name (it was something a little less feminine than gaia, but gave that same vibe) after she told me she also said some people said it was a very masculine name, and so i gave her the etymology, which was very feminine which made her quite happy, this is just one of countless interactions similar to this one, we all bonded very well!

Then the session came. I warned everyone i might have to go partway through, sadly the dm had to get groceries for his mom and so we waited about 2 hours, during this time James enlightened us with the info that he had been kicked out of 4 previous campaigns for, *talking over people*, *being a furry*, and *being and doing things unrelated to the campaign*. The entire time james talked really really fast and panicked, like he was doing something wrong and was about to be caught.

It started out fine, Gaia really was the centre of the conversation which made sense for her character’s personality, everyone was fine with this. Then came “tHe sIlEnt HaNd” Dana was drinking a bit and the silent hand mumbles, “d-damn dwarves always drinking” which begins an altercation about fantasy racism. This allows my Elf Sorcerer to enter, as Dana said some fantasy racist comment about elves, Blynn steps in and says it is “hypocritical of one afflicted by bigotry to turn one’s cheek and do such to another”. Everything was going well, weeelll until the silent hand talks. His character knew (and may have been dating?) the aasimar. Here on out I’ll probably refer to James as just “The Silent Hand” as James changed his discord username and profile to match the silent hand fursona. The Silent Hand begins describing in detail how he grabs catnio from his bag and eats it, then the aasimar (very, very begrudgingly, as if she was begged to do this) says,

“oh, oh, yeah.. uhhh ‘i thought you said you stopped the ‘nip’”, only for the silent hand to say,

“come on can’t a cat have a bit of funn every now and again it’s so hard to quit!” *catnip eating noises*
The entire interaction felt like furry foreplay. Seriously.

We went through the rest of the tavern with minor speed bumps. Only problems were that the silent hand kept talking over me and others. Including the dm. It felt like every sentence was interrupted. Usually it would be what his character was doing, including,

“Right then we can probably do that, should he a basic job, would you all like to- While the conversation is happening, I sneak some catnip from my bag and eat it very stealthily.”

*insert weird awkard silence ended by Dana continueing

When The Silent Hand introduced himself

he said, “I lurk in the shadows, they all fear my might, but they know not where or who The Silent Hand is” and so Dana said, “Ah so a rogue, a perfect fit for the party!”

silence

“n-no. I am a shadow monk, a monk of the shadows my fists are a deadly and hidden. Rogues are far too… messy”

this will be mildly important later

After leaving the tavern and starting the quest, we encounter a bridge over a chasm, on the other side is some aggresssive goblins. There is water at the bottom of the chasm

“I leap over the Chasm, hiding in the shadows, and careful not to touch water. *growl* i hate water”

Me: “Uh- uhh dude there’s a bridge right here.”

“The silent hand takes the road untravelled. To best stay… undetected”

Dm: “alright roll acrobatics”

“12”

Dm: “you fall into the chasm”

“I- in the water? *hiss* i hate water. (Insert aasimar name) i demand you get me out of this wet puddle at once!”

Aasimar: “ok i reveal my wings and fly down to get him”

The dm made this weird... whatever the hell into a cool interaction the bridge, which wasn't supposed to be broken, was. And so after The Silent Hand walked over the bridge, it collapsed,
"HA! I knew the bridge was broken because of my feline senses."

So I used shape water to make an ice bridge (yes yes, cue the let it go music) and then The Silent Hand jumped (successfully) over the chasm. Because why not

About here is where I had to leave the session, and about where I decided I was going to leave the campaign, not where I did leave the campaign. We fought the goblins and The Silent Hand used sneak attack. I- I thought he was a monk? do shadow monks get sneak attack? Surely not right?

The Silent Hand posted art of The Silent Hand.

​

https://preview.redd.it/2qnwbz2dcyuc1.png?width=500&format=png&auto=webp&s=356db0af5ff04e7a2877f1c197fd77d421a1b4e0

https://preview.redd.it/qhmyck05cyuc1.png?width=1080&format=png&auto=webp&s=9e07d3628e2b2c65213f499bd2d3d841da3a6645

So. Yeah, we had a discussion on how I imagine tabaxis with 6 small nipples, and he... imagines them differently. Actually got VERY defensive about how it makes sense that The Silent Hand had massive mommy milkers.

I left the campaign soon after, and Gaia did too. there were a few other things, like how Yoko didn't get to introduce his character because The Silent Hand talked over everyone. He was very annoying in general. I really want to express how bad his talking over everyone habit was. So so bad, it was just awful.

I left the campaign after just under half a session, because the problem player was just THAT bad

​

About 7 years ago I discovered roll20, after my irl group couldn't meet up anymore. I joined two games. One was super cool, and I made friends I still play with today. But the other one, I never ended up playing a game with.

Before the DM would offer anyone a space, he insisted on interviewing prospective players over discord. The interview was about half an hour long and was pretty average stuff. How's your setup/internet, can you make the time each week, etc. He also shared a lot of the plot and homebrew setting and races he'd found. It was this very futuristic space DnD game. You could play one of only four races: an androgynous species of space ant, warp-addled humans, some alien elf analogue, and a species of genderless amoebas. I thought the last sounded pretty cool, I felt drawn to it, so was considering playing one of those.

The call ends, he's been coming across as pretty fine. Then, a few minutes later I get this essay of a private message from him. He talks about how he likes to meet people first to give them a chance to like him because he also wanted to let me know that "While I'm not transphobic, I just don't want to deal with any pronouns or anything. I just believe that your gender is what you're born as and what's in your pants and don't want to deal with any like liberals trying to confuse me while I'm running a very high concept professional game" (btw, that is transphobia). He insisted that every player only play characters with a binary gender that matches the player's sex. I asked about how that works with the 2/4 races not having a gender binary, or any concept of gender as a whole. After a while, he responded that that was only lore from whomever produced the handout, and functionally they were still going to adhere to his ideals.

As a fun fact about me, I am trans. Though at the time of this game, I hadn't figured that out yet. But I did have several trans friends and just would not play with someone who 1) was trying to control something as inconsequential as that, 2) was clearly not someone who would listen to other viewpoints or consider other courses of action. The red flags are there, so I rejected his offer of a space. Sometimes I still think about how that game did go, and the poor people who ended up playing with him.

This is my second experience playing DnD, which ended very quickly and very sadly. My first experience was trying to run a campaign as a DM among my friends, which also ended very quickly and very sadly due to family drama, but that's a separate story. So, one of the players from that failed campaign wanted to run the campaign himself, but in a smaller circle of friends, and what happened, I will tell you now.

My friend and DM - DM. His girlfriend - Wizard. Another friend - Cleric. Me - Me (warrior)

First of all, I'll give you a little backstory of my character, as it's important to the plot. I decided not to be very original and created a warrior character, but he was a tiefling and came from a family that was famous for their paladins who were fanatically devoted to the local good deity, but my character was not accepted as a paladin because he was born a tiefling. Anyway, my character's goal, as I conceived it, would be to follow the teachings of this goddess to prove himself worthy of becoming a paladin.

The beginning of the company was supposed to be standard, all of us meeting at a tavern, etc. My character was sitting quietly in the tavern drinking a beer when cleric entered the tavern.

Cleric: Have the warrior roll the dice (laughter).

DM: Roll the dice for constitution.

Me: Passing the check.

DM: Nothing happens, but you notice an obscure hunched figure in a hoodie approaching a bar near you.

Me: Can I get a good look at him?

Cleric: Have him roll the dice.

DM: Roll dice for intelligence and constitution.

Me: I rolled the dice.

DM: You don't know what this creature is, but it remotely reminds you of a mushroom.

The wizard joins us, and we have a few words with her, which are once again interrupted by the cleric's request to roll the constitution check. It should be noted that the wizard was not an easy one, she was one of those whose favorite spell was "fist", and she walked everywhere with a staff on the weight, more like a barbell. So, after finishing her dialog with me, the wizard stuck her staff/barbell into the floor, to which the cleric reacted.

Cleric: Repent!!!

Wizard: What?

Cleric: Repent!!!

Wizard: Nah, I'm leaving this asylum.

After that, the Cleric decided to attack the wizard with his whip (before that, there was a small argument between the DM and the Cleric about whether the super unusual whip should do stabbing or crushing damage).

I, who sensed that the company was going the wrong way, intercepted his arm and prevented him from striking, then also blocked the wizard's attack on the cleric to prevent a fight. In the end, she left the madhouse, the cleric shouted "How dare you raise your hand against a holy man?" and announced that he was releasing a cloud of spores. The DM again asked me to take a constitution check, which I passed, but a couple of visitors to the place who had fallen under his control did not.

I should say that by this point the wizard had already left the room where we were playing. I had to admit that I did my part too, since my character's name was funny and contrasted with his serious nature, so she just assumed that we had decided to turn the standard DnD company into a circus.

When I see what's going on in the tavern, namely that an unidentified creature first attacks one customer without warning and then takes control of a couple more, I decide to get as far away from the creature as possible and fire a crossbow bolt at it. The villagers under the cleric's control begin to approach him and give him money.

Next was the cleric's move, he started telling the DM that I shouldn't have attacked him at all because in these lands the core belief is centered around people worshipping him, and that I shouldn't have attacked him at all knowing that. And no, I didn't know these facts before the game started, my character wasn't from these lands, and I don't think he had heard of it. The DM asked me to make a history check, which I didn't pass (although I think if I'm claiming my character didn't know it, I shouldn't have made a check, but I might be wrong), so the fight continued. The cleric again wanted me to roll dice for a constitution check, to which I countered that I had moved a considerable distance away from his spore cloud and shouldn't have made the check. But the DM told me to roll the dice anyway, just with an advantage. And that's when I realized that every time I rolled the constitution check, the cleric was trying to bend my character to his will. To say that I didn't like the prospect of having my character subjugated by another player is putting it mildly.

I voiced my displeasure outside of the character to the DM, to which the cleric replied that it wasn't really mind control, because people under the influence of his spores themselves want to honor him, and the fact that they started carrying their money to him is of their own free will because of their faith in him. To this I countered that if my character suddenly lost faith in his deity and started honoring the cleric's character, it would completely kill my whole idea of wanting him to become a paladin. The cleric suggested that I become a paladin who would worship him......

I'll omit unnecessary details, but the DM tried to keep our company by splitting us up for a while. The wizard and I went shopping, while the cleric went to the temple, where he used spores to "not subdue" a small crowd. So we had to guard the trade caravan as a quest. Small detail - the cleric wanted to take a couple of his minions with him, but the DM didn't allow it, apparently because the wizard started looking at the exit again.

It ended when I tried to talk to the cleric while traveling and convince him not to brainwash my character with his spores. He refused and said he would keep trying to convert my character, and that I didn't realize we'd get a lot of bonuses if he did. Kind of by design, if we were brainwashed with spores, we would have some bonuses in the game, but the argument that it was more important to me, my character's story than increasing a couple numbers on my character sheet didn't convince him. During this argument, the wizard left us again, which was the end of our DnD campaign.

The next day I talked to the wizard about the game, and by all accounts the whole thing with the spores that were supposed to brainwash our characters and make them worship the cleric's character was fully approved by the DM. It was only her assumption, but it seems to be true, because first of all, the DM did not prevent the cleric from using spores on our characters, and secondly, the cleric could not give our characters in-game bonuses without the DM's consent.

Well now the big question is, maybe I am the a_hole and it really is my fault that the company fell apart and I should have just accepted the fact that I had to henceforth play a character honoring another player character and enjoy the cool perks, what would that have gotten me?

We played in a short 10 session mini campaign that followed a group of townsfolk trying to solve a murder of their best friend. There were 5 players in all. The Rogue, the Bard, the Fighter, the Cleric, and the monk.

We played the first 4 and got very little in clues, but we had narrowed down the suspect list and possible motives. The rogue was a police detective who was “leading the case”. He was also the DM’s best friend. It was pretty clear that this story had been tailored to fit this player as everything about it fit into that persons backstory so well. The villain even started to hunt the rogue exclusively. We get to the entrance of a possible hideout and end the session there. Everybody walks away happy and a few of us hang out afterwards.

The DM asks the cleric what her plan is for the next session. She tells him that she is going to use the stuff she learned while searching the library against him, and use the spell scroll she bought earlier to stop the incantation if he tries it. The DM said “awesome! That’ll be so cool” and moved to the fighter. Asking what he thought. The fighter said that he had planned to sneak in and track the villain if he could.

Then the DM asks the bard (me) what my thoughts were on the session and what I think will happen. I tell him that I was excited to finally meet this person face to face and potentially avenge my college band mate (the best friend we all had in common). I said that I thought it possible that the killer was the best friend himself and that he had gotten away with murdering someone else and making it seem like him.

The DM’s smile faded for a second before saying “awww. That would have been awesome”. The PC playing the rogue walked into the kitchen and the DM suddenly got up and followed.

The next week we sat down for the session. The fighter goes off to hide and spy and the rest of us head in the front door. The fighter gets the table to himself for about 10 minutes as the DM asks us all to leave so they can do whatever the fighter is doing in private. After we come back, we begin searching around. Finding nothing, until finally we see the fighters body drop from the rafters.

I looked over to the fighter and saw an angry look on his face. I hadn’t been paying attention to it before, but he was clearly pissed.

The villain appeared in a plague doctor mask and began a speech about temptation and risk and finally talking about inevitability. The rogue asked some questions and we started to try to see what happened and what his plan was. We looked around and saw that the incantation spell was almost ready. When we realized this, the villain said “you brought me a final piece. The victims blood”. The floor began to glow and he began to start a spell.

The cleric pulled out the spell scroll she had bought and used it. The spell didn’t fade. But we heard the whir of something. Then the spell scroll exploded and knocked out the cleric. The monk and I (bard) as well as the rogue were all that was left. We started to fight and it seemed like he was just not going down. He barely took damage, he had weapons and traps everywhere. It would have been fine if not for we went into spaces where the villain had been and it clearly didn’t affect him.

The rogue gets stabbed and a whisper in his ear and he leaves us to heal ourselves. The rogue and the DM were extremely friendly up until this point and it was here where I saw the shift. He was clearly frustrated as well.

The session ends and we walk away. The fighter was not allowed to come back, the DM explained that because it was in the later half of the story and it was meant to be short it wouldn’t work to bring in a new character.

Skip to the ending and we get the reveal. The killer is non other than, some random guy from the rogues backstory. Didn’t connect to anything that we had learned about before, we had no clues pointing to him. We didn’t even know who he was. The session ends with only the final battle left. We walk away, and as I am walking down the street. I get a text from the rogue. We don’t really know each other outside of the game, but I had his number from the group chat. I text back and he says he wants to talk with everybody about the DM. We get on a call and talk.

It was clear we all had the same thoughts, we knew that he had used what we said against us. Making our characters lose by having our plans fail because of the “story”. That was when the Rogue tells us that the DM asked him a bunch of questions about who he thought it could be. The DM had mentioned my “crazy” idea and the rogue compiled the clues to meet the same conclusion.

Apparently the “whisper” that the Dm had made to the player during the combat was a comment about how it was funny that he could think the killer was his dead best friend “guess you’re just as dumb as the rest of them”.

The rogue pulled the DM aside after that and commented on the impossibility of him knowing what he was thinking. The DM said “I know. Scary right. He’s inside your head, he knows your next step”.

We ended the combat and killed him, but like a bad 80s horror movie it was clear there was a chance for a return. I haven’t played with that DM since

This is my first time posting here and English is not my first language, so apologies for the grammar or formatting mistakes.

IF by any chance your DM is named something like 麵包, I'm happy to see you in this sub, but you might want to stop here to not be spoilered.

For reference, after finishing DMing my second campaign, I’ve decided to give myself a break and plan what to play next. One of the players, Fontaine(fake name of course) contacted me and told me he wanted to DM his original one-shot, using my world setting and recruiting players from my TRPG server. Other players have done this before, running some side stories when the main campaign is on a break.

I ask Fontaine about the story of his one-shot, I was concerned it may involve some characters in the main campaign that I have plans for. And the horror starts. The adventure hook is the PCs hired by Fontaine’s old PC(a criminal soul knife who is wanted for self defending killing) to protect her when she return to her hometown, and find the place corrupted by some mafia, which the party will fight against.

The adventure hook already shows some huge red flags- main character syndrome, using DMPC(the CE soul knife is at least same level as the party), and I can only rolled my eyes when Fontaine texted me the developments.

The soul knife isn’t revisiting the town to overturn her verdict, but to find her missing parents who somehow is in the mafia, and to “protect” herself she will not tell the party about the murder she committed, which will put them all in danger(imagine the guards, some corrupted some not trying to arrest the soul knife while the clueless party are forced to fight). And in the end of the one-shot, the soul knife will not only reunite with her mother, and be rewarded for defeating the mafia by having her verdict reversed.

I was just shocked and couldn’t think of a reply, and Fontaine continued. He asked exactly, “This is my first time writing an adventure, what level should the BBEG and the minions be?” It was late at night and I was sick IRL, so I told him good night and we can work the one-shot out together next day. Fontaine’s job makes him only free some days which means I have some time to form my advice for him.

I don’t want the one-shot to be a disaster and leave a bad taste, but there are just holes everywhere in the one-shot to start with. I don’t hate Fontaine, he just isn’t familiar with how an adventure module works. The horror story hasn’t come to its end, but I hope it will get better.

Edit1: I’ve gathered some materials and information(like the DMG “creating an encounter” section) for Fontaine. I’m not a horrible person that does no help than whinning.

Edit2: I was informed that enemy NPCs with PC statsblocks are not DMPC, I'm sorry for the misuse of words but the post title can't be edited. On the other hand, how Fontaine described the one-shot makes it sound like an adventure of Ms soul knife and her sidekicks.

Hi reddit, a bit new to this community but listen to people like Sir knox, DenOfTheDrake, Crit Crab, Crispys tavern and others.

so, to set the background, I, (lvl5 cleric) DM (DM) other player (lvl5 paladin) another other player (lvl5 monk) and the subject of today's lesson, Bundey the level 5 sorcerer. (not real name) So me and my party are doing random encounters for traveling and we come across some scary monsters. now my character is a kobold and it's a running joke now that when we roll initiative and I roll really low, she trips and falls. we are a couple combats in, and I've fallen over a few times by now (not the luckiest fr). but every time the DM sates that I fell over, Bundey makes a comment.

now we are immature people, but we did specify that SA was off the table, and he was told to quit being weird but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I guess he's just quirky like that. now this is like random encounter #4 and I roll a NAT 1 on initiative, so the Dm makes me fall prone from tripping (not how that works but oh well) but Bundey decides to meander his way over to my prone female kobold and...... you know. Now the DM doesn't stop this, and he makes me roll a strength save to not get SA'd. I, of course fail and the deed is done, but when my turn comes, I'm grappled so I would have to roll strength with disadvantage to escape. (DM's ruing not mine)

But I read through one of my spells, inflict wounds. its only requirement was touch, and he was grappling me, so DM said it counts. Now at 3rd level inflict wounds does 5D10 necrotic damage and I roll a NAT20 (comedically perfect timing I know) and the way DM rules 20's is the extra damage is maxed. so 5D10 plus 50. I roll 27 damage to make 77 damage total. DM says he is knocked but not dead. (I have to do double his max which was 53 at the time) so I continue to beat on him and in three turns did 116 damage completely disregarding the orc that we were supposed to be fighting at the time.

Now when he was rolling his death saves, he managed to roll two NAT 20's in a row (this was over discord so we couldn't verify but I think it's obvious he cheated) and he "recovered" consciousness right as I let off my last inflict wounds, killing him. he threw a fit and everyone shut him down immediately and said he was in the wrong and shouldn't have done that and so he left right after that.

While I'm writing this, DM is trying to get Bundey back and retcon what happened, but I won't forgive him. I know this isn't AITA, but did I go too far by killing him?

TLDR: PC sticks to their characters ideals and makes ONE decision that topples the domino creating a band wagon for this PC to be hated throughout the campaign despite their continued attempts to repent. When that PC faces their last battle, nobody helps them. Now the Player feels personally attacked, and everyone regrets it.

I’m going to go through this situation through the major points, because it literally spans the entire campaign which has been ongoing for nearly two years real time and is incredibly nuanced, between players not communicating, and the GM really not stopping anything, all the way to one player changing their backstory retroactively to better explain their decisions, but still not communicating this to the party. Also there is one more PC but I am not including them due to them always siding with the Monk and contributing nothing else to the campaign. 

Every player makes their characters within a bubble, and as such one player effectively makes a lone wolf Ranger, that more or less has a quick and efficient mindset of eliminating problems before they arise, they say they’re Chaotic Neutral. Everyone else has a straightforward code of ethics, barebones but at least Neutral Good to Lawful Good in alignment.

There’s a random encounter where one person goes ahead of the group and gets into a small nonlethal scrap with Macho Man Randy Savage as a Ysoki NPC. The combat ends with two of the four PC’s stopping the fight and calming everyone down to talk and explain the situation, and nobody is in any serious condition and everyone at least pacified, and the Ysoki explains that he was taking a piss in the grass previous PC scared the daylights out of him, and he had a fight or flight response.

“I shoot him”.

Everyone whips their head around to the Ranger that has stayed silent and watched for the perfect opportunity to strike. The table is in UPROAR. The GM calls for an attack roll, while another player (We’ll call them “Monk”) rolls a RFLX save to see if they can at least protect the NPC. Ranger rolls a Success, Monk rolls a Failure. As the bolt claims the life of this Rat Man, the Monk claims this moment to be the moment where they started to not like this character, not the player, but the character.

As the session continues it’s revealed that the Rat Man was a single Rat Dad to two young children and the party takes them to a nearby town without anyone revealing the truth to the children.

This is ALSO when the party as a whole begins to hate the Ranger, as through the next sessions the party takes after ONE of the two Rat Kids, showing favoritism and putting nearly all of their attention and effort into the chosen child, while the Ranger attempts to do the same with the other neglected child, as an ACT of repentance, still not clearly communicating the intent of said actions. The party refuses to let him do that, citing the “murder” of their father.

The Ranger does try to make amends as they heal people in need, offer the party items and provisions, basically extending an olive branch as the party refuses all of those advances and smack them away, condemning the Ranger as irredeemable. I’m the only one who accepts the gifts, being the neutral person in the party.

As the campaign continues rolling, the party ostracizes the Ranger, shutting down all attempts to roleplay and the Ranger welcomes it, taking it as a personal challenge to be better than everyone else in combat and statistical matters. When the rolls count, the Ranger is the only one to pull ahead, either through homebrew items approved by the GM or ludicrous stacking and rule bending also approved by the GM. Every player hates this, but I’m the only one to ever say anything against it.

Alongside this, every decision is immediately met with two opposing options, one offered by the Ranger and the other from the Monk. I decided to roleplay an oath of Neutrality, I wouldn’t pick one or the other, a happy medium. As we continue to play I continue the path of the neutral good character I play, until the Zinogre incident.

The GM has this situation where I’m separated from the party as I’m effectively holding back a wave of NPC enemies while the rest of the group goes into the lair and attempts to stop the ritual from summoning a creature, and due to me staying behind and telling the party to go ahead and stop it before it begins, they do in fact arrive in time to stop the ritual. The ritual requires a blood sacrifice of innocent people, and the more people the more powerful the exchange.

There are roughly a hundred people in this room cloaked much alike to the enemies that the entire campaign has been centered on, which actually end up being innocent civilians (this was found out after inspecting the bodies), alongside a wounded monster, so the party assumed the ritual is taking place and needed to stop it.

“I shoot my Explosive Bolt into the Crowd”

The table is in uproar, and the GM rolls with the consequences of this action. Cue a Zinogre fight that nearly wipes the party, as the Ranger has balanced dealing damage and healing the party, even reviving the Monk multiple times to keep the combat going, I’m able to finally join on the tail end to finish the combat scene.

As soon as the dust settles, the Monk swears that the Ranger is his absolute mortal enemy and starts a duel. The Ranger agrees, beginning the duel to the death, and ultimately ends up sparing the Monk.

Through the next sessions, its calm seas. Everyone refuses to acknowledge what has transpired, but every session is a directly worded “I hate your character” both in character and out of character. I simply state to everyone during a camp rest, that I will no longer be neutral. I will choose the decision that is the easiest and will ultimately benefit the party and/or story.

Following the trail of the central antagonists of the campaign, the party finds a general of said faction who happens to be the Son of one of the major NPCs of this group. Battle ensues and everyone is gung-ho for the murder of said Son, until the Ranger spares their life and speaks on his behalf to recruit the Son, emphasizing the importance of his information/worth. The Son becomes a trusted ally to the party as he willingly joins to help kill his father.

Despite the outcome of the Rangers continued attempts to make amends, nothing is good enough to sway the party’s views of the Ranger, who is still viewed by the party as irredeemable, citing the “murder” of Rat Dad, and him being the trigger for the Zinogre incident.

This comes to a head last night, when the Ranger decides he is strong enough to 1v1 a CR 13 Barrioth being a lvl 9 PC. I get ready to start combat, when I say jokingly say to the Monk: “This is your moment”.

And the Monk does not join in combat. They stand there watching as slowly but surely both the Barrioth and the Ranger wear each other down to near death, saying to the whole table ”This is Karmic Justice”.

The Barrioth critically hits the Ranger for far more than what is necessary, devours the Ranger’s corpse and limps away. I have instant remorse, so I roll to see if my character would do anything, and I roll enough in my mind to at least kill the creature in revenge.

Out of character, the Ranger is still smug, thinking everything is fine, stating that he has insurance of a scroll or something to revive him.

I ignore it, he’s dead.

I kill the Barrioth, and begin to extract the Ranger from the monster. I finally get to the digested body and go to grab his bag, to revive the Ranger.

I don’t.

I sling the bag over my shoulder and walk away, as the Ranger is quiet, the GM is in Awe, and the Monk breathes a sigh of relief.

Thats where the session ended. A PC that nobody liked, finally meets their end from the party watching them die. And naturally, everyone says “Please make a different character, we love playing with you, but we fucking hate the Ranger”. But that damage is done.

I plan on making this a huge step for my character to break the Oath of Neutrality and finally start being more proactive, to never let this happen again, maybe even take the reins as an official leader of the party.

The Ranger is taking this as a personal attack, but ultimately does want to continue playing. Everyone feels like shit for it ending this way, but the party feels it’s best that the character is canned.

The Monk feels like an asshole, but regardless is excited to finally not have the weight that is to be constantly aware of the Ranger at all times.

I can’t wait for next session, if there is one.

EDIT: Mobile Reformatting/Spell Checking.

The anticipation for our new TTRPG campaign was palpable as we gathered around the table, character sheets in hand, ready to delve into a world of adventure and imagination. Our DM, known for their intricate storytelling and attention to detail, had promised us an epic journey filled with twists, turns, and unforgettable moments. Little did we know, however, that our expectations would soon be shattered by a series of unfortunate events that would leave us questioning whether the game was even worth continuing.

From the outset, it was clear that something was amiss. The DM, usually a paragon of organization and preparedness, seemed flustered and disoriented. Notes were hastily scribbled on scraps of paper, and the rulebooks lay open, their pages dog-eared and worn. Despite our initial optimism, it quickly became apparent that our DM had not adequately prepared for the session, and we were in for a rocky ride.

As the game began, it became painfully evident that the DM's lack of preparation had far-reaching consequences. Plot points were muddled and inconsistent, with events unfolding in a haphazard manner that left us scratching our heads in confusion. Attempts to clarify only seemed to exacerbate the situation, as the DM struggled to keep track of their own narrative and make sense of the chaos unfolding around them.

Character development, a cornerstone of any successful TTRPG campaign, was virtually non-existent. Despite our painstaking efforts to craft detailed backstories and intricate motivations for our characters, the DM showed little interest in incorporating them into the overarching plot. Instead, we found ourselves adrift in a sea of generic NPCs and uninspired questlines, with our own personal stories relegated to the sidelines.

To make matters worse, one player in our group seemed determined to single-handedly derail the game at every turn. Constantly interrupting, talking over others, and monopolizing the spotlight, they effectively hijacked the narrative, leaving the rest of us feeling marginalized and frustrated. Despite our best efforts to reign them in, their disruptive behavior continued unabated, further exacerbating the already tense atmosphere at the table.

By the end of the session, it was clear that our hopes for an epic TTRPG adventure had been dashed. Instead of the immersive and engaging experience we had envisioned, we were left feeling disillusioned and disheartened. It was a stark reminder of the importance of preparation, communication, and collaboration in creating a successful TTRPG campaign, and a sobering lesson in the perils of unbridled chaos at the gaming table.

Amidst the chaos of our ill-fated TTRPG session, there was one player whose character stood out for all the wrong reasons. Their character, a tiefling with exaggerated features and a penchant for revealing attire, seemed more like a caricature than a fully fleshed-out persona. From the moment they entered the scene, all eyes were drawn to them, not because of their intriguing backstory or compelling personality, but because of their oversized, gravity-defying... assets.

Despite our best efforts to focus on the game at hand, it was impossible to ignore the spectacle unfolding before us. Every action, every line of dialogue seemed to revolve around the tiefling's ample bosom, much to the chagrin of the rest of the party. Attempts to steer the conversation back to more pressing matters were met with thinly veiled innuendos and suggestive remarks, further derailing the already fragile narrative.

As the session wore on, it became increasingly clear that the tiefling's player had little interest in contributing to the story in any meaningful way. Instead, they seemed content to bask in the attention showered upon them, reveling in their status as the center of attention. Any attempts to engage with the world or interact with NPCs were quickly abandoned in favor of shameless self-promotion, leaving the rest of us feeling frustrated and alienated.

In the end, the tiefling's presence served only to exacerbate the already strained atmosphere at the table, further eroding what little cohesion remained in our rapidly unraveling campaign. It was a stark reminder of the importance of creating characters that contribute to the story rather than detract from it, and a cautionary tale about the dangers of allowing superficiality to overshadow substance in the world of TTRPGs.

In the midst of our TTRPG session, there was a player who seemed perpetually lost in a sea of rules and mechanics. Despite our patient explanations and attempts to guide them through the intricacies of character creation and gameplay, they remained stubbornly oblivious to even the most fundamental aspects of the game.

Their lack of understanding became painfully apparent as the session progressed. Every decision, every action was met with hesitation and uncertainty, as they fumbled through the rulebook in a desperate attempt to make sense of the chaos unfolding around them. Simple tasks that should have been routine, such as rolling dice or calculating modifiers, became drawn-out affairs that ground the game to a halt.

Despite our best efforts to assist them, it soon became evident that their ignorance was not due to a lack of effort, but rather a lack of interest. Rather than taking the time to familiarize themselves with the rules and mechanics of the game, they seemed content to rely on others to guide them through every step of the process, leaving the rest of us feeling frustrated and exasperated.

As the session wore on, it became increasingly clear that the player's lack of understanding was having a detrimental effect on the overall experience. Combat encounters dragged on interminably as we waited for them to figure out what dice to roll or how to calculate their attack bonus. Roleplaying opportunities were squandered as they struggled to grasp the basic principles of improvisation and character interaction.

In the end, their ignorance served only to hinder our progress and diminish our enjoyment of the game. It was a stark reminder of the importance of familiarizing oneself with the rules and mechanics of a TTRPG before diving into a campaign, and a cautionary tale about the dangers of relying too heavily on others to carry the weight of one's own ignorance.

So I have been contemplating on whether doing this, but decided might as well, since it does leave a slight uneasy feeling on me.

TLDR: A group of new DnD players try DnD for the first time, only for an experienced member to berate the a majority of the new players, which causes trust issue, which in the end devolves into the DM maybe thinking of nuking tha campaign.

So to start, I am a new player to DnD, but I have knowledge of the genre and hobby. I was invited to join a campaign several months back, and joined. Of course we had out DM, myself, inviter, and 4 other players. We all hopped on to a Discord call, in which we began to discuss our experience with DnD, which all of us were first timers, except for the DM who had been running campaigns for quite some time, and my inviter who also played in DM’s campaigns. In the end we all had agreed that maybe doing some one-shot would be a good idea, so that we could get the gist of how the game plays, and so that for me personally, I can see the ropes to an extent for Dm’ing, since I was/am interested in trying it.

Session day rolled around, and we were introduced to what is now out Session 0, we all began to chose our players, one being a Paladin, another a Rogue, a Cleric, a Barbarian, a Ranger, and Fighter (myself). We were told to discuss amongst ourselves, about if our characters would have any prior established relationships or knowledge of each other, to which me and cleric would have met during one of his routes while boosting morale and defenses for the men of his kingdom who he is a noble in. The DM liked the idea, and said that it would work, and after a few minutes, eventually everyone in the party knew at least on member of the party and we began to have the prologue. As the prologue began, eventually a majority of all our prior knowledge was seemingly thrown out the window, with only the Rogue and Ranger knowing each other, while the rest of us met in an open field, with no knowledge of each other. This made me and Cleric feel slightly off, to which Cleric asked about it, and was simply told, “You are a noble answering the Princess’ call to arms, and besides you do see someone you know, Paladin.” We simply held our peace and proceeded onward, with Cleric pivoting well, and RP’ing in being surprised in finding Paladin in the middle of nowhere, to which Paladin responded in kind.

The party all then began to get along with each other to some degree, except for my character, since he was “refugee,” with the fact that he had his entire hometown and Kingdom destroyed, so I played him with caution and hesitant. (I know some will see this as a problematic thing, but I was playing him with slowly opening up to the others, but I will admit, I could have gone this via a different angle.) After a few minutes of interaction between the players, the DM called me out and said, “I don’t mind you being quiet, but silent type characters, typically don’t work well with me.”

To which I responded, “I understand, but he will slowly open up, just made sense that he would be on edge, but I’ll work on it.”

The DM then narrated that our group was heading to palace in which the princess resided in at the behest of the Noble party members in our group, and once we arrived at the outside of the wall kf the city, we were asked what we would like to do, with the Nobles (Cleric and Paladin) going in and receiving a place to rest in the palace, while Rogue and myself went to rest in a tavern, lastly leaving Barbarian and Ranger to choose to sleep out in the woods and sharing drinks amongst themselves. This would mark the end of Session 0.

So to kinda jump along the next three sessions were more RP focused in which I was enjoying but also getting slightly annoyed as the Ranger and Rogue where starting to play their characters as a determine to the group, with Ranger flirting and trying to flash the barkeeper at the tavern me and Rogue stayed at, while Rogue tried and succeeded in stealing something from the barkeeper, causing my character to excuse their actions and promptly leaving, which would entail set a series of actions that would become common place between the two. We proceeded as normal at the behest of DM’s direction with the Ranger occasionally belittling all of us except DM and Rogue. She would occassionally just say, “Maybe if you listen to me, the. you would know what it happening.”, “You have to listen to me and just trust me.” or “These men are just dumb, Rogue they should listen to us since we know what’s going on.” Which would cause me and Cleric to ignore her for most of the time, and only seek her advice in certain instances.

Eventually we would lose one player, as he didn’t like how long the sessions were, and the fact that we were playing multiple sessions a week. We tried to reschedule to accommodate for him but he still chose to leave, which most of us were sad to see him drop out, but we respected his decision.

As we continued our journey, the DM did things in a character focus arc, so they would focus on telling the story while focus on one character, meaning everyone would have a chance to be the main character. Cool idea and I did like where it was going, but the focus character ended up being our Rogue, who was basically clueless the whole time, and would force Cleric to become party leader until I decided to co-op my story arc into Rogue’s story which would also have me do several lore drops about my character. Though during all this confusion, there would be two scenerios that would cause a huge rift to be formed between me against Ranger and Rogue.

Scenerio 1: We had recieved a flying ship, and while traveling we had encountered a giant wind elemental, in which we all were working relatively well with each other until Paladin was swung off the airship, in which I had my character leap out and rescue him, but as I had succeeded on my strength check to save him, shortly after I was downed which then caused us both to go into free fall, while the giant wind elemetal was defeated, and knocked down Cleric in the process, while Rogue and Ranger just did nothing and left us to figure out how to save ourselves, with Paladin healing me and giving me a boon to my strength checks, and bringing us both back up to the airship, while after some nagging one of the other two getting Cleric back up.

Scenerio 2: Once again on the airship, we were greeted by a Mage who had boots that allowed him to walk in the air. We as a group approached him and asked him what he was doing, with my character succeeding his Arcana check and being able to identify his boots. We then had him sit on one of the steps, so thag he can rest while me and Cleric spoke to him, to gain actual useful information, but Ranger and Rogue had other plans. They both began to work together to take his boots with Ranger blindfolding him and having him wine taste, while Rogue lied about giving him a foot massage, and hiding and stowing away his boots. Eventually, the mage began to talk about sensitive topics revovling around Ranger to which they chose to flash the mage, much like they did with the barkeeper at the beginning of the campaign. The Mage did not react and simply continued on relaying the information, until Ranger suddenly decided to push the man off the airship, to which I chose to leap off and save him, but before I did, Ranger chose to threaten me, and I simply did nkt care and proceed to leap and save the Mage. As I was in free fall to save the mage, Rogue at the behest of who I assume was Ranger, began to shoot an arrow and hitting me, as a warning that if I save this man, I am going to die. I stated, “I give a death stare to Rogue, and proceed to rescue the Mage.” In which I succeeded my strength check rescued him and with the aid of Cleric we de escalated the situation and dropped him of at a city we were stopping at. With me no longer being able to trust Ranger and being very weary of Rogue.

We continued our journey with Ranger now basically not saying a single thing aside from their condescending remarks, having us murder anyone who she would claim is not a good person. This would lead up to a series of events in which my character is now getting ridiculed by everything and eventually getting cursed by who knows what. At the end of Rogue’s arc we succeeded in finishing getting back the item they seeked, and were now going to start my character’s arc.

Also I assume the DM began to notice the tension in the air because every now and then the DM would say, “I don’t tolerate players starting to threat or trying to kill the other players, so if you do, you will be smited instantly and the problem will be dealt.”

All of which they did nothing about given to the scenerio that played out in scenerio 2. Though now that I think back and look at it, DM seemed to be referring that to me and Cleric as we began to make our grievences known to Ranger, who simply would say, “Ranger doesn’t seem to care, and says ‘All you have to do is listen to me.’” To which me and Cleric just sigh, and give our version of, “We can’t trust you if you haven’t done anything to gain our trust.”

Now we come to out latest session, which then sort of caused all of us to just contemplate what is going to happen. In this latest session, we started my character’s arc with me being pranked by my deity about my objective, and enemy who is hunting me and me hunting them. After the prank, my diety tells me that he has something important to tell me and the party, and once we where all gathered, he told us, that one of the people that killed per Ranger’s hunch, was a champion to another diety, and that now my diety is to be reprimanded unless we find a way to revive them, which broke out into an argument with Ranger and Rogue, wanting to sacrifice a maid that Cleric had hired to help keep the airship in prestine condition, which we all disagreed to.

With Cleric and my deity talking for a bit between each other, with my character thinking and listening, and then here is where it happened, Ranger out of character said, “Just so you guys know, I am basically a co-DM, so you all should listen to me, since I know what is going on but not how it would play out.”

After hearing those words, me and Cleric once again said, “How are we going to listen to if you keep doing things in your interests and don’t even help when we ask for the slightest of assistance.”

Ranger then said, “Fine do what you want, just don’t be upset if the revived guy starts chasing us and is trying to kill us.”

In which Cleric responded, “Kill you, I didn’t do anything, I was just hanging out with the barkeeper.”

With Ranger saying, “What are you talking about your in our party!? He will kill you t—“

“Cleric’s right.” Stated our DM, “The Champion will only hunt those that attacked him.”

We then proceed to continue the session in which we met a young dragon, that was being chased by 3 weird creatures, we tried to get the creatures to leave but they immediately became hostile and a fight ensued. We ended the session in the middle of combat, and then a day or two later, our “co-dm” says that our DM is getting burnt out and is planning on nuking the campaign, and that he isn’t happy since we weren’t following his trail of how he wanted the story to go.

Now the “co-dm” is going to take the mantle of DM, but I am honestly feeling like I should probably drop out, which sucks cause, I was still enjoying it, though getting annoyed at the same time. These events does make me want to look into DM’ing even more though.

Sorry for the long post, but hey I just needed to get this off my chest. Also am more than happy to talk more about it, and if there are any groups that are happy in accepting two newbie players, me and Cleric are more than open to see how other DMs’ handle their campaigns.

Ok, so I just had to share this somewhere and i figured here would be the best spot. I joined a new group a few months back and we've had a few problems here and there but besides one incident nothing so bad that you'd just immediately leave.

That was until today, see we have 6 people in our group and only the DM and his wife could make it to today's session. So you'd think they'd do the normal thing and just reschedule, but instead they took over everyone else's characters and just played without the rest of us. That's already insane but don't worry they also killed our mounts, got rid of half of our inventorys, and also murdered a town full of innocent people because and I quote "We felt like that's what our group would do". No, it is in fact not even close to what we would've done... If you want proof that that isn't what we would've done then you just have to think back to that one incident that almost made me leave.

See what happened back then was that we ran into a town with only about 100 people in it and the DM was heavily trying to railroad us into killing them. Me and 3 others didn't want to do that, which sparked and big argument where me and the 3 others ended up having to switch to new characters. All because we weren't willing to kill innocent people, and because the few who didn't swap were hinting that they were going to try and kill us for not wiping out that town like they wanted.

Maybe it doesn't seem so bad to you, and maybe I just suck at explaining things... But I've ran and played a lot of games, and this just feels like it's something you should never do. I don't know, what do y'all think?

So trying to make this as succinct as possible:

Join a sandbox campaign at level 7 that started at level 1, made it to level 14. Rough time I played in the campaign, 2 years. 8 players with alternating DMs

1st ever campaign, playing a half-orc battlemaster(10)/assassin(4)/barbarian(1). Not really have any idea how to RP, so just try to be funny. IE. Jumping out of windows when I'm caught sneaking and just tank the fall damage like a looney tool.

Get mind controlled by an abolith and I have to come up with a deep personal dream for the abolith to tempt me. Around level 10 at the time

Deep dive orc lore between game sessions. Come up with a goal of building a homeland for orcs.

Way later at level 13 we get a year of downtime. I build a village/fort and gather half-orcs and orcs to live there. Even got one of the parties wizards to put their new tower in my village. Things are going great.

After the downtime we hit level 14 and go deal with a Rakshasa that had infiltrated a royal court. The whole time the king is calling my new town a shithole and just generally being an ass to me specifically.

After saving his kingdom and son from the devil, I ask for a formal apology instead of payment. The king then gives me a gold bar with what he said was apology inscribed on it in elvish.

Get back to base and ask the elf pirate queen (swashbuckler/eldritch knight/sorcerer) in the party to translate the inscription. It tells me to fuck myself. I return to the king by myself and kill the king and all his male relatives, talking his kingdom for my people.

Party freaks out and campaign ends because they say I'm now the villain.

No one in the party was good aligned, we were all some kind of neutral. Except the paladin/warlock who was lawful evil at the time due to backstory issues.

We had burned cities together, slayed lesser gods hand in hand. We were the Bain to yuan ti and guthyanki alike. Demons feared us. And yet, what broke us apart? One king with problem with orcs.

I still play at the same table with the same people. But I think about this at least once a month, this was the closest we got to level 20 and I ruined it

I play a level 11 aura of devotion paladin, so my aura prevents myself and others from the frightened/charmed conditions. I'm also using the new UA version of resistance that grants a failed party member a d4 towards a failed saving throw.

So our 4 person party walks into obvious boss chamber, I declare before anything happens that we are all huddled together so everyone is in my aura. They all get +3 to saving throws as well.

Dm tells everyone to make dc 18 wisdom saves. I say, "ok, just keep in mind if this has to do with frightened/charmed that we are unaffected." He says yea of course. 2 other party members fail, one fails by way too much for any help,, the other gets 12 for a total of 15 with my +3 to his save. So I say, I'll give hime resistance to give him a 50/50 shot for success. He just says .."no, I don't want it". I proceed to tell him he has a decent shot of success, still says no. Fails save against what we find out to be the 9th level spell, Weird. Proceeds to take 31 psychic damage and become frightened.

I'll admit, I metagamed after the fact and found that weird is worded (correct me if I'm wrong) so that the player has to be successfully frightened by the spell in order to take any damage from the spells effect.

I reminded my dm after the fact that none of us should be affected by that spell at all because of my aura. And instead of just being like, " well shit, you got me) decided to just brush off a majorly relevant ability of my character.

And the secondary annoyance but one nonetheless, my fellow player outwardly refusing help I could offer. Why would anyone want to fail a save on purpose? There was no effect, no spell, no class feature he possessed that would benefit him from choosing to fail the save and be trapped.

Mostly venting, but God damn I'm salty.