I really need advice about situation that arose this week. It's certainly not the worst thing that's ever happened while playing D&D, but I'm uncertain how to approach the problem. Around two months ago, I (eternal GM) signed up for a weekly $15/session Curse of Strahd game. A few people have come and gone, but we exited the introductory adventure with a core group of 5 regular members of the party.

We have a sixth slot open on the website we all found the game through, and in our session last week, the slot was filled by a new player, a relatively normal rogue/artificer who was caught pickpocketing someone in the Blue Water Inn. The session was spent with some hijinks trying to diffuse the situation and ended with the new character running off invisibly to escape prosecution. Honestly, this was all fine even for how he had derailed the session, and we didn't have a problem with the antics.

Just this last session, the player's second session with the group, he informs the GM that he wants to switch characters. Fine so far. He introduces this character coming into the taproom, and the token we're presented with is one of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. He has decided to play a tortle, introduces hims character as Donatello, and recounts the ending sequence of one of the movies (???) in which the four turtles teleport away from their adventure, explaining that for some reason, this one was flung into Barovia. Later the character reveals that his father is a rat and his three brothers are all turtles.

Normally, I would just bow out. The game is decent, but I'm not willing to spend 15 dollars a week playing alongside one of the TMNT. However, I really love the rest of the party, and I like our new player, I just wish he had stuck with his first idea or came up with something original or that fits within the Gothic dark fantasy setting.

Should I contact the GM and express my concerns? I don't want to threaten him with leaving, but I don't want to give the impression that I'll be paying for future sessions with this character. Should I just bow out and wish them the best, leaving with the good memories of these months of playing and find a new group to get my d&d fix?

So i am really torn about this right now. I just finished DMing a session for our weekly and the party was fighting a battle and one of my players that has a pet wasn't utlizing the pet at all so i pointed it. The player said "do you want me to be more reckless then?" and i said: do whatever is most fun for you. come end of combat and a giant powerful beast the party was seeking out helped them finish off the last enemy. Tensions were high because he wasn't a frined but not a foe either. After some convincing the beast asked them to follow.

They reach a crossroad where the beast and tribemen ordered them to put on handcuffs to proceed into the tribe. The part wasn't so happy to do but 3 of them put the cuffs on. The same player from before was being extra difficult and doubled down when the beast and the tribe ordered them over and over again. The party was given a choice to put the cuffs on or leave. I can't say this enough but they were ordered to put them on many many MANY times. The player continued doubling down and reach into her inventory and offered the beast some candy. The beast moved it's giant mouth to her hand and bit her arm all the way to her shoulder off.Even after that she kept insisting on not putting the cuffs on or leaving.

This turned into a fight. The party had some ritualistic items on them which ended up letting them summon a giant beast to fight the other one. I ended making the beast they summon do an AOE attack that killed the player that didn't back down. It also killed another player but i decided that i didn't want to make the party pay the price for the stupiidity of another player so i dues ex machinaed the other player. This should have been a TPK by all means but i didn't want to kill them for the actions of a single player. Now that all the party ran away with the exception of the dead player we discussed things and we aren't sure if we are retconning or continuing.

The reason i am typing this is that i am not sure if i wana boot the player that let all this happen. They said they don't care and that they may or may not do this again. They said they just wanted to test how far i would go if she pushed me after i told her about how she could have her pet attack more. So she took the reckless thing about combat into social stuff. I am torn on what to do with the player rn. It is easy to boot her since her PC is dead but at the same time i am not sure if this is the right choice. I know i could have handled it better by maybe saying they force her character to wait outside but that feel like the right action.

So yeah. Any insight will be helpful+ I don't mind sharing more details.

update: the player decided to leave and just annouced it. so ig there is that.

Hey everyone, I’m new to the community here although I’ve been listening to RPG horror stories all the time from different Youtubers! I have a cautionary tale here about what happens when a fledgling DM doesn’t take advice well, and when they try to railroad players. I hope you enjoy, let the pain commence!

The story begins when I introduced a good friend of mine (at the time) to DnD, a friend we will call Caster. It was Caster who introduced me to a few others interested in DnD like he was, and so we forged a group of 6-7 people together, all except me new to the game and eager to learn the thrills of the TTRPG! I had 6 years experience as a player and 3 as a DM, so i made an adventure that ended up lasting for years, all of which the party was eager to play in and grow their first characters. Caster had some occasional things he needed to work on (I can share more stories later if you want), but for the most part, he took to DnD well, and ended up surprising me with a revelation I would later look back on with some regret.

At some point, Caster revealed to me he wanted to make his own campaign, and turned to me for guidance. We would hang out many times outside of DnD in order to help him build his world. Sometimes I would listen for a few hours and give little ideas or tweaks, other times I would be a more active collaborator in his worldbuilding. As an avid DnD fan, I was beyond ECSTATIC to see a player of mine growing and starting a campaign of their own, and I couldn’t wait to play in it!

Before I go any further, I just want to say I knew Caster’s campaign would be a little rough around the edges. As someone with more experience as a DM and a player, I could tell Caster would need some guidance with the technical aspect of running his game, and he was actually agreeable with this, asking for guidance sometimes and wanting feedback at the end of a session. That being said, I was not prepared for what I am about to share with you!

The session 0 was really cool, with everyone rolling up some interesting characters; a rogue assassin in the run, a child bard with a broken home, a druidic adventurer with a broken home, and my character, a one-armed human fighter looking to avenge his dead wife. The first problem came up in the first session when the story started with a TPK via red dragon before our first dice roll. Before the journey started, we were all dead!

Caster used this to introduce us to a mechanic where TPKs would result in a time rewind, similar to some anime he was really fond of. I remember him talking about this before when we were hanging out, but I expressed to him that it may not be the best idea to use. In hindsight, I should have been more firm about this, but here we were, reviving an hour before and told by DM we needed to figure a way to not die again.

In some ways, it was an interesting way to run the plot, but more often than not, it would lead us to fighting overpowered enemies with encounters that weren’t balanced correctly. After the first 2-3 death battles (as I would call them), Caster was agreeable and balanced the encounters, but after this point, he would argue and say that since TPKs just meant a reset in time and not permadeath, he didn’t NEED to balance the game, and coming back each time MAY give us clues and new opportunities to beat these tougher opponents.

This problem would then lead to Caster not wanting to engage us in combat at all some point, as I could tell he was having some trouble with balancing. I asked about this a few times and offered to help, but he kept insisting we would reach combat, even though if we ever tried to initiate combat, some NPCs or other outside circumstances would shut it down unless it was a highly-choreographed battle Caster planned. And then….then came the twins.

The DM had a pair of DMPCs in the form of young vampiric children, two vampire twins inspired by an anime he enjoyed. The twins were abused in a horrible variety of ways I will not mention, and because of their trauma, they were psychotic killing machines who could coat their weapons in blood and wield them in a heightened state of power that made them RIDICULOUSLY OP. I remember one time I asked him to see their character sheets, and he refused, only letting me know that they were level 20s, a pair of literal little monsters.

There was a questline I remember Caster was the most excited to have us play out, a criminal questline where we help this gnome criminal overlord help unite various bandit nations and small groups of civil unrest unite under his wing, a point which the gnome justified that there would ALWAYS be crime in this world, and as long as he could control it, the world would be a better place. The twins, of course, were a big part of it, as they were practically the pets of the gnome guy, and his most loyal followers, him acting as a sort of strange surrogate father to them.

These two elements combining together meant that we would often encounter these two twin NPCs, having them come in and sweep up the mess if a combat encounter had us TPK 2-3 times. They would just randomly show up, erase every threat, and contrive an excuse as to how they got there. The whole party talked to Caster about this at some point, saying we didn’t want to be babysat by his OP twins, but he ended up taking this in the opposite direction; he had us babysit THEM.

Perhaps out of kindness or maybe survival instinct (who would wanna fight a level 20 vampire child as a level 3 or 4?), the party would be nice to the children and show them kindness, which would offer nice little glimpses into their lost humanity. That being said, the gnome guy used this as an opportunity to reign us into his criminal syndicate, offering us whatever we sought and saying that the children liked us.

My character was a lawful neutral guy, understanding the point of law and order and trying to be the best to most decent folk, but not afraid to break rules and do dirty work if it was for the greater good. That being said, my character was NOT interested in joining the gnome’s syndicate, so my screentime was cut drastically in a lot of areas, other times having my guy sent on random missions that most of us could tell was busy work.

I asker Caster if there was some other angle I could work, and he did, but not in a way I hoped for; he ended up resurrecting my character’s dead wife and making her an evil(?) NPC that walked around like a grim reaper ripoff, complete with dark armor and a scythe. I wasn’t asked about that until later on, but by then I didn’t want to stifle his creativity and went along with it, though I should have told him my apprehensions. Now my character’s wife was some sort of dark evil spirit. Yay.

At this time, the child bard, controller by a player I will call Hyper, was beginning to hang around with the twins more outside of missions, which had me worried due to some outside events. See, Caster had an irl crush on Hyper, and was beginning to act strange around her, getting to the point where he would literally try to always be next to her and sometimes mimick her actions and try to copy her personality to get her to notice him.

We called him out on this, and he feigned innocence whilst simultaneously apologizing. This put aside Caster’s strange actions against Hyper irl (though he has more instances of doing this with other women at the table, I can share more later!), but Hyper’s bard was not the best pal of the vampire twins, and she got ALL the screen time for a while. There was a time the party split with some of us seeking for information in a new town about various guild merchants and looking for answers to rumours of a criminal presence in the new town.

This got 1/3 of the session’s screentime, with the other 2/3 dedicated to Hyper’s character, another female character and the twins going to a candy shop, inexplicably doted upon by the shop-owner and given tons of free candy samples to try. So here we were, with one half of the party put on hold to watch the other half eat candy. This wasn’t the worst of it, however.

When the twins would follow us around, they would no longer help us in combat. The DM took to heart we didn’t want to be babied in combat, yet anytime there was a chance for them to fight (which it was established they LOVED to kill), they would just leave combat and hang back, doing childish shenanigans and watching us die time after time, not even lifting a finger if we ASKED for help.

On top of that, there was a point where the party members who joined the syndicate (I remained firm in not joining despite feeling railroaded to help by the fact that the gnome was now our ONLY quest giver) had to go talk to the gnome and turn in a quest. There was a little flavor moment of the twins in their own room, playing with toys and hanging out, and of course, Hyper wanted to see what was going on. For 30 minutes to an hour, we all watched in confusion as the campaign was put on pause for Hyper, a random girl NPC and the twins to all play toy dragons and ships in their room.

I wish I could say this story has a good end, but it does not. I apologize for how scatterbrained it was, but as you can tell, things did get a bit derailed as time went on in order to force us to be around the DM’s preferred NPCs. At some point, there was a falling out in the group irl due to some things I will not talk about here, and the game just sort of fizzled out.

I hope you all enjoyed this story!

TL:DR I introduced a group of friends to DnD, with one of them starting up their own campaign. The new DM put everyone in a death mechanic where TPKs rewinded progress, forcing people to replay scenes and battles against their will. DM also introduced the party to his DMPCs, a pair of OP vampire twins that the whole world slowly began to revolve around. Session moments involving actual questwork and plot relevant details were put on hold to watch DMPCs eat at a candy store and play in their bedroom. Also, DM brought back my dead wife as an evil monster without consent.

So we were playing a campaign that was 3.5/PF1e with a total magic homebrew overhaul by the DM (basically it was a stress test of the system).  It’s important for context here that you had to spec into a build up trees of spells (just like a skill tree in many games).  In short, you had to learn certain low level spells to get higher level spells…even if you had no intention of using the low level spells.

This system is fine for wizards and storykeepers (INT-based bard homebrew class) because they could learn more spells from scrolls to make those prerequisites.  However, as a cleric, I could only learn 4 spells/level and couldn’t supplement that, and about 50% of my spell library was just prerequisites for the actual spells I wanted.  I’d specc’d heavily into summoning and healing/restoration magic to support the party.

So we get to this dungeon with me (Cleric), Storykeeper, Multiclass (CHA-monk/Paladin/Bard/Sorcerer), and Witch.  We’ll call it the Red Castle.  We encounter our first challenge, a mirror with a Bodak in it.  I look at it to investigate, fail a save, and immediately gain 4 negative levels.  We cover the mirror and I burn a slot and some diamond dust to cast Greater Restoration.  “It doesn’t seem to work,” the DM says, “But you do lose the diamonds and slot.”

Cut to our first combat, where I try to summon with a spell.  “It doesn’t seem to work,” the DM says, then moves onto the next person’s turn.

Storykeeper tries to use Inspire Courage to help us out.  “It doesn’t seem to work,” DM says.

Same for the Witch’s damage spells (built as a blaster caster) and the monsters seem immune to the Multiclass’s unarmed strikes (Multiclass built to be best at that).

We almost die, and barely scrape by thanks to me leaning in on my Channel Positive energy since my healing spells won’t work either.

When we confront the DM after, he said “Oh, I designed it so your main stuff wouldn’t work to force you do use other things." 

After having us play a homebrew that forced us to narrowly build for only a few things…

DMs…don’t turn off your PC’s skills.

So,im a first time dm playing on a homebrew medieval system i created (ik,its a terrible idea but i didnt think this trough at the time,also,obligatory im a non english speaker so srry for any mistakes)

so,the cast is:

Witch - Louis

Paladin - Persival

Edgy human - Akuma

Metamorph (Problem player) - i'll call him Anthony (not their real names)

The start of the storm
It all started on one of Anthony's first sessions,we were on a forest,walking from Azatoth to Krittu,they had a boss fight with a puppeteer that later became a party member,this puppeteer was controlling some trees (i wont explain the puppeteering system for brevity's sake),but he was sitting on one of the tree's branches and he was protecting a treasure the players wanted,so,the boss fight started and everything was going fine,until his turn started

Anthony (OOC): can i transform into a missile?

DM (me): ...are you sure?

Anthony: Yeah,why not?

DM: ....Okay...roll for it..

Yup,i let him do it,because i was THAT MUCH of a people pleaser,but,he rolled low and missed,and when i told him he missed,he tried to retcon it,and he kept doing it FOR.THE.WHOLE.FIGHT. it was so bad Louis called him out on it and helped me to tell him "hey man,you cant just add things on your action after low rolls just to escape their consequences" and that was that...right? WRONG,we didnt even get to the title.

The eye of the storm

Okay,so,they got to krittu,a city whose only habitants were talking rodents,okay,Anthony and Persival went to the magic college of the rats,Ratvard,Anthony was disguised on Persival's armor,and the rats were pretty chill and the party was going to take a grimoire to learn more about magic,sweet,but anthony made a HUGE mistake...he transformed back on himself...in front of EVERYONE,but he didnt know...that in that same college,another metamorph invaded some day,disguised themselves and killed a portion of the students and then was killed by the principal there,so,the rats started throwing notebooks at them and they teleported away to a ally npc's lake,but anthony was FUMING,so much so that persival had to try to calm him down but he couldnt,so,he started going back to krittu,so,persival,louis and akuma (that was on another session so they could come) followed him to try to stop him from causing a literal GENOCIDE,they had a fight,in wich anthony turned into a FUCKING METEOR and tried to kill everyone,so,PVP went off and akuma literally kamikazed himself (keep in mind,this was akuma's first session and he already had to do that shit) to kill anthony,who was pissy for the whole fight saying that everyone was against him,in the end,he went away because of personal things after i talked to him about his attitudes,at least this encounter helped me to grow a spine and to not let that shit slide

Hello, this isn’t actually my first time posting about this particular DM, as I made a few stories years ago, but I lost the account I originally made.

Some context: I had left this group of friends for around two years, and made up with them and came back to play D&D. I now completely regret it in hindsight.

I won’t give a whole spiel on what exactly happened story wise, so I’ll cut to the chase.

We were a group of seven including the DM, late stages of dnd (levels like 15-16, nearing the end of the campaign). The DM has a “pet character” they use in every campaign they run. They’re an all powerful god of luck and chaos (but they cheat), who loves making deals.

The only important party member is our Bard, who I’ll just call the Bard.

Our party needs to find out some information on a powerful creature that is hunting us, and we can get the information through a deal with this god.

Now to step back for a second: the table consists of the DM and Bard (who are married irl), myself and our friends. It has been stated many times and well known that the DM’s spouse thinks that the chaos luck god thing is “crazy hot” (the character is a horrific person, and a self insert for the DM, so it makes sense how they’d end up together).

Back to the game: we set out to make a deal, and the Bard initiates. The deal was simple: either god can take a party members soul, or god gets to hAVE THEIR WAY WITH OUR BARD.

In game, the Bard is a very attractive woman who doesn’t really care about sexual relations or anything. She sleeps around for money, no shame in it.

However, the offer of the deal knocks me and the other players right out of the game. We were all pretty clear on what we were and weren’t okay with, and this definitely fell in the not okay category.

Before we can do or say much, the Bard (remember, thinks this god is so hot), says yes.

BIG TRIGGER WARNING: IM GOING TO BE DESCRIBING WHAT WE WERE TOLD AND EXPERIENCED IN GAME. TURN BACK NOW OR SKIP AHEAD IF YOU NEED.

The DM explains that the god cuts her, beats her, BRANDS her, and doesn’t leave any orifice unfilled. The Bard irl seems unphased and just says “hot”, and moves on.

I spoke to some of the other players months later about this, and they can agree, but we were beyond disgusted. I don’t kinkshame anyone, they’re yours to enjoy consensually, but neither I nor the others at the table consented to having to hear and witness that.

To skip ahead a few years: I thankfully left that group again fully, never going to return. I have more stories to post, and know what went wrong and why. Just needed to get them off my chest.

TLDR: DM and spouse essentially roleplay a horrifically gruesome sex scene to a table of horrified players.

Before I start this story, I should probably introduce the players in this saga. NAMES CHANGED FOR PRIVACY. There’s me (currently 22m, I’ll go by Nolan for privacy’s sake), Ace (22m, my best friend), Arnold (22m, the DM in question for this saga), Evan (22m), Leonard (21m), Jerry (22m), and Joseph (22m).

This story starts about 4 years ago. Before this saga took place, I had met all these guys at my high school. We’d eventually do some small Tabletop Campaigns and one-shots, yet nothing too extravagant. The longest we’d ever had lasted about 2 to 3 months. Ace and I were the first two to DM these games. Ace was a far more experienced player and had been playing since middle school. I, on the other hand, was a newbie to DMing at the time.

I will also say, that I am not friends with a few people in this story anymore, but I’ll try to keep it strictly related to the topic of TTRPGs as much as I can. Though, enough with the backstory, I’d say it’s about time to get the main story at hand.

Also, CW: Discussion of Disability, Violence, and SA (only all in game, luckily never IRL)

Part One: A Wet Western

After we had all gotten done with a campaign that I was DMing, we had a small break period in between campaigns. That’s when Arnold suggested a campaign idea that he wanted to run. And, to be honest, it’s still a great idea. His idea was a Campaign set in the American West (I believe around the year 1876) and would also be inspired by the anime JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure. This meant that we’d make our own stands and all have them named after songs we enjoyed, while also building our own ideas for JoJo-like characters.

Of course, at the time we did all of this over Discord since it was the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. Plus, we usually did Tabletop stuff over Discord anyway.

At first, Arnold was pretty good at communicating with us what would work and what wouldn’t. We’d suggest characters and he’d either give us a straight no, or yes, or try to help us tweak it to fit the setting. Eventually, we had our ragtag group of cowboys, bounty hunters, and other western tropes. 

Our group consisted of An Ex-Slave who was now a bounty hunter (my character), A Native American man who left his tribe to explore the outside world (Leonard’s character), a gun-toting criminal with a love for money (Joseph’s character), an old man who was a disgraced former sheriff (Jerry’s character), and a mysterious man who tried to keep his past hidden (Evan’s character). At the time, I didn’t know exactly why Ace wasn’t in the campaign. I’d later discover that Arnold never asked him if he wanted to join, but we’ll get to that later.

So, this was our party, and of course, we all had stands! Except for Evan’s character, who had a stand as well as an ability to control water pressure called “The Tide”. Truth be told, I didn’t know how much of a red flag this would’ve been for the future of our campaigns. But I let it slide because I thought they were going for something like The Ripple in JoJo’s. Man, I kinda wish I called out the BS sooner, but we’ll get to that.

The overall campaign was pretty solid, there were no issues I could see as a major red flag. However, I did notice that there were little moments here and there where Evan’s character got away with things nobody else could. Though, I chalked that up to Arnold rewarding Evan for his creativity at the time. 

To put a lot of what happened in the campaign into a quick summary, our party was eventually trying to collect these artifacts that were scattered across the Southern US, which was a fine enough goal on its own. It had a formula of, looking for macguffin, fighting bad guys, maybe continuing the overarching plot, getting artifacts (or not), then leaving. At the same time, we were slowly piecing together that these artifacts might’ve been from an ancient society that no longer lives in the Americas (and possibly the world at large). I should also note, that Jerry eventually had to leave the campaign due to life obligations, so his character quite literally got to escape what was to come.

After all that, we get to the first moment that really set off my BAD-DM-ALARM was in an incident we’ll call Win the fight, Die in the cutscene. 

We reached the climax of the campaign, we had collected all the artifacts and then eventually had them taken away by a gang named N.W.A (yes, like that N.W.A., but with liberties here and there). We followed them into the jungles of Mexico and found a massive Ziggurat hidden from the world. We explored inside, avoiding traps, and occasionally beating all the members of NWA excluding one. We were set in a situation where the rest of the party was trapped and couldn’t follow me into this fight. My character and this enemy were fighting on the staircase to the top of the Ziggurat, but before we fought, Arnold sent me “You feel like you might not leave this fight alive.” in Direct Messages. I just understood this to mean that the fight may be hard. It didn’t.

It was a brutal fight, to say the least, bullets were shot, bones were broken. Eventually, I hit the man so hard that he flew up the stairs and lay in a pool of his own blood. The party was freed and I stood victorious. That was until Arnold states “AND THEN OUT OF NOWHERE! THE ENEMY’S STAND APPEARS BEHIND YOU ONE MORE TIME AND SLASHES YOUR LOWER SPINAL COLUMN!”

This, to put it kindly, was complete bullshit. I had already won the fight, but instead now had to act out a scene where I was dying anyway. And on top of this, Arnold had crippled my character on top of this. Now, this has offended me not just on a game-playing level, but also a personal one. I didn’t mention this earlier, but I think it’s important now to mention. Irl, I am physically disabled. At the time, I played it off and said I was okay with it. I really should’ve said something about it. But, I didn’t at the time, which is on me to some extent. Instead, I decided to stay quiet. EDIT: Forgot to add this when I originally posted this, but apparently, it was also always planned for my character to eventually killed. No, I was never told that this would happen.

But that wasn’t the end of the campaign, no. Arnold said he planned for three more sessions and then the story is over. Thus, I just had to stay quiet and listen to everyone else play like it was a very experimental audiobook. He also asked if we, the players, wanted to do the three sessions back to back in the span of three days or do them weekly like we had been. It was Winter Break at the time (on top of being 2020), so we all chose to do the three sessions back to back.

When those sessions came, he didn’t let anyone improvise. After we had beaten NWA, suddenly a character from Evan’s character’s past (we’ll call this character Apollo) showed up at the Ziggurat to take the party to his family mansion home. They spoke about Evan’s character’s past and all sorts. 

The party sat down and ate dinner, except for Joseph’s character. They went to sleep when they realized they couldn’t get up! Turns out everyone who ate dinner was drugged! Including Joseph’s character, which at the time I thought was just a mistake on Arnold’s part, looking back it probably wasn’t. 

Turns out, Apollo killed Evan’s character’s father and stole all the artifacts! Turns out, if you throw all the artifacts into the ocean, it grants you one wish of anything you ask for. Now, none of this was foreshadowed beforehand so we just had to roll with this. But wait, there’s more! Apollo has a strong stand AND can also use “The Tide” to heat water! And now the party was stuck in a burning barn due to Apollo making the rain boiling hot!

You see, up to this point, Evan’s character was the only person who could use “The Tide”, which made it even more confusing when this dude could use it too. Mind you, Apollo had shown up only a session ago at this point, and it turned out he set up everything to go this way. Which, on paper, is a cool idea. The only issue is that… none of this was known to the players (except for Evan). 

Now, all the players lay dying in the burning barn. When, out of nowhere, Evan’s character’s stand unlocked a NEW FORM! And it brought everybody back to life! Now, they could all fight Apollo for the final battle. Which… is not how it happened. 

No, instead, Joseph’s character died, Leonard’s character landed one hit, and Evan’s character stand rushed Apollo to death. Which… felt pretty anti-climatic. 

We talked about it afterwards, shooting ideas back and forth for new campaigns, but also discussing the campaign. That’s when Arnold said that he planned for Evan’s character to be THE MAIN CHARACTER of the story. And on top of that, if anyone wanted to make more campaigns in this world or setting, NOBODY ELSE COULD USE “THE TIDE”. Which was a dampener for sure. I remember being pretty damn pissed about the whole main character fiasco and even told Arnold to not do that again. But, I think my words were lost to him.

After this, Evan DMed a spin off to Arnold’s campaign, but instead set in modern day Japan with the Yakuza, and then I DMed a fantasy campaign which I could describe as Chrono Trigger, Secret of Mana, and Norse Mythology blended together with some Legacy of Kain of drugs sprinkled on top.

After my campaign, Arnold said he wanted to run a campaign in my campaign’s setting. I said sure, since I wanted to give him a second chance. That was a BIG MISTAKE.

Part 2: Dragons can’t be Turn-Based

In discussions for setting up Arnold’s next campaign, he said he wanted it to be all set in one realm. (My campaign before this was about traveling a world that is made of infinite realms). He also said he wanted it to be a shorter campaign (about 10 to 15 sessions) and wanted to pull influence from turn-based JRPGs like Final Fantasy. Which, I said I was cool with since my campaign was inspired by JPRGs already. However, he also said he wanted to make his own system from the ground up. Now, my campaign before this was all in DnD 5e. He said he wanted to emulate something closer to how the older FF games played. I told him that would be a risky idea, and that maybe having something so turn-based wouldn’t work. At the time, I thought he listened. But, he didn’t.

He gave us the general layout of the world. There were 2 main continents, the human and the dragon continent. The humans and dragons fought in a war many millennia ago over a discovered third continent and both sides came to a draw, while also destroying the third continent. Thus, most dragons and humans had animosity towards each other and tried to stay on each other's continents. He also said the setting would be more like traditional fantasy with very light steampunk elements (think Final Fantasy 9 as the closest example). That’s all we had to work on.

In the character crafting period, I learned that Evan, Leonard, Joseph, and Ace were invited to the game! In character creation, I said I wanted to play a character based on the Dragoon class in the FF series. I also remembered the whole Dragon-Human conflict and asked if I could play a first of a kind of creature in this world, a Human-Dragon hybrid. I thought it’d be fun to play, someone who was a mix of both and also a goofy himboish hero-type. Think Zack Fair from FF7:Crisis Core with some sprinkles of Monkey D. Luffy on top of that. He was okay with it and came up with abilities to do since we were playing in his new system. 

I tried to come up with more of my character’s backstory and asked if he was okay with me suggesting ideas for the Dragons’ culture and history since my character would be directly linked to them. However, whenever I did… he directly said no to most of my ideas. The only suggestion he even approved was when I mentioned naming every Dragon directly on Arthurian legend characters might be on the nose (as in the king was named Arthur, and the court wizard (who was also my character’s adoptive father) was named Merlin.) I suggested trying to make something that sounded like Welsh or pulling from other historical figures from the area. (I suggested naming my character’s father Flamel like Nicholas Flamel, but that was immediately denied). 

So, I barely got to make my backstory or really suggest anything that could enrich my character. But, whatever, I just decided to roll with it. Mind you, I know the DM has the right to outright deny ideas, but after getting denied ideas so many times, I just decided I wouldn’t suggest much anymore. 

After that, I learned about our party. Evan’s character was a Monk-like character trained in his family's strict, martial-arts-driven lifestyle but actually wanted to be a Botanist, Ace’s character was an old Ice Giant who was a mechanic and wizard, Leonard’s character was a literal monkey with a sniper rifle, and Joseph's character was a mad alchemist with could mix chemicals and transform in a Kamen Rider way into new forms.

Thus, this was our party and now we started the story. The story was fine at first, we made our way to the Dragon Continent and found my character’s father frozen in a block of ice (which I didn’t get to interact with after this point) and we found out there was an eldritch god-like being coming to destroy our world. After that, we weren’t given a direct goal other than to stop this god, so we just traveled across trying to get all the species trying to work together. We got the Ice Giants on our side, the humans, the dragons, but the issue came with the Monkeys. Now, they joined our side, the issue was it sort of… broke the world? Do you remember how I said this world had light steampunk elements before? When we went to the home island of the Monkeys, we found that they live in a GIANT SPACE NEEDLE. They also had HOVER TECHNOLOGY and their leader WAS AN ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE. On top of other things, it was a complete shock to my system. Did Arnold ever explain why they had this stuff? No. None whatsoever. Eventually, they even gave us a new airship which he described as looking exactly like A PELICAN FROM HALO.

But, this was only the first issue. Eventually, we went to Evan’s character’s homeland which was very Japan-inspired. Honestly, it was a fun setting (to note here as well, The Ice Giant home was also cool, but we’ll get to that at the end). Yet, due to the plot, Evan’s character had to leave the party due to his duty to his family. After this, Evan got to play a replacement character which was a cat knight. 

Since I’m here, let’s explain the combat system of this game. There was no movement, it was PURELY TURN-BASED. You could only have 4 players fighting in a fight at a time. And when you attacked, you didn’t roll for accuracy, you rolled for damage. It was LITERALLY a turn-based JRPG. Because of this, different characters were VERY UNBALANCED. Which, funnily enough, my character was the weakest (which is IRONIC, but that’s for later). Evan’s characters (both of them) were easily the strongest. Both his characters casually averaged about 300 damage per attack. Everyone else, for comparison, averaged around 150 damage. 

To further the story, there was also this hunter figure that was hunting dragons, and my character was his new target. It was odd because he had techniques similar to mine. I knew there was a mystery behind this but… the answer wasn’t worth it. After some time, it turns out that this dragon hunter was the ORIGINAL HUMAN-DRAGON HYBRID. So, there goes the whole point of my character being the only one of his kind. And after beating him, turns out my character was a sort of prophesied figure. He was THE STRONGEST WARRIOR and was the only one who could beat the eldritch god coming to destroy our world. (See the irony?)

With that, there were literally one or two sessions left. Which meant Evan’s first character came back. Does that mean his second character left the party? Nope. He was now playing TWO CHARACTERS AT ONCE. Which meant, if he was able, he could play TWO SEPARATE FULL TURNS. But, whatever, the bias is obvious here. 

After we beat the eldritch god, and we spoke about the campaign, I learned from other players they were able to come up with tons of lore and backstory for their characters. In fact, Ace came up with the Ice Giant’s ENTIRE CULTURE AND BACKSTORY. So, why did I not get to do my own lore? Because, and maybe this is a crackpot theory, but I think since I made it clear I didn’t like the main character idea that I’d warm up to it by being the chosen one of this story. It had the opposite effect, it made me dislike the campaign even more. But, that’s all for the campaign. 

After that, Leonard ran some smaller campaigns, and they were great! I even ran a small Mass Effect-inspired 3-session campaign in the meantime. But, here we reach the time to the end of our saga.

Part 3: STOP MAKING SCORSESE CRY!

After some time, Arnold wanted to do another spin-off of his initial JoJo Western campaign. Yet, now it was a Mafia story set in the 1930s. At this point, I really wanted to give this guy a shot. Thus, I joined. The biggest mistake is made here by the way, write that down. 

The people who joined were me, Evan, and Leonard. And, for some reason, Jerry joined what was called a “side character”. Eventually, Ace asked if he could join since he wasn’t asked to join the last JoJo campaign Arnold ran. He let him join, only to play random NPCs Arnold wanted him to play.

So here’s the main idea of the campaign: the party were people who were hired by a mysterious man to infiltrate a mafia and destroy them from the inside out. While there still would be combat, he also said there’d be more elements of intrigue and mystery in this campaign. Not a bad idea.

The characters were: My character, a jerk who was raised in wealth and didn’t care about everyone else and acted out due to an inferiority complex, Evan’s character, a 14-year-old boy with asthma who just joined the job for the money and didn’t have any stand, and Leonard’s character, who was a Native American man with a case of deafness.

The first eight to nine sessions of the campaign were great! I had a lot of fun, it was more RP-heavy, but the fights were more gritty. A bullet in the stomach would cause us to run from a fight, just an example. I was enjoying the grittier, nastier tone. The characters were very gray, nobody was a completely GOOD person, and everyone had their issues. 

That was until we reached around session 10. Which I called the start of The Cuck Arc. The centerpiece of this campaign was that the leader of a rival gang started to blackmail Evan’s character into giving him info on the gang we were in. Which, on paper, is a cool idea. The issue? Nobody else got any character growth or focus for the next 10 or so sessions. Most sessions had this formula: Mafia boss shows up, intimidates Evan’s character, threatens to kill him, or r-word/kill his Mom. (There was also a scenario involving this mafia boss paying a woman to force herself onto Evan’s character, who is FOURTEEN).

It was awful, I would message Arnold a lot asking when are we gonna move on or focus on something else. I’d usually say that it’s getting frustrating that the only person getting focus would be Evan’s character and not much on anyone else. Mind you, at this point, we started doing sessions every other week now instead of every week. So, there’d be a two-week wait just for this to happen all over again. 

Around session 17, yes I literally was counting sessions at this point, finally, something happened. Someone got killed, someone got kidnapped, and now we had to fight the rival boss. The boss lived at the top of a large tower, which was partially under construction. When we planned for it, we mentioned we could climb the scaffolding, but the NPCs said that was a stupid idea (note this for later). Thus, we planned to let Evan’s character in, since he had been getting blackmailed already and wasn’t seen as a threat, and then he’d let us in. 

What happened when we got there was, Evan’s character walked in and was immediately stopped by the guards. Leonard’s character and I climbed the fire escape, got inside, and were swarmed with guards. We eventually got them off of us, we tried the elevator but that didn’t work. Eventually, Arnold told us about A WINDOW THAT LEAD TO THE SCAFFOLDING OUTSIDE. So, basically, he made us suffer all sorts of crap, just for us to do the thing he told us was a bad idea. Alright, kinda pissed about that. Why did he do this? Because he had an entire stand fight planned and couldn't improvise it happening inside the building. 

When we eventually got to the boss, it was more of a firefight than a stand fight. But, we eventually BLEW HIM UP and shot him POINT BLANK IN THE FACE WITH A SHOTGUN. After this, he was a bloody mess and missing an arm. But, was he dead? No. Mind you, every other character we’ve beaten with more minor injuries. Such as a bullet to the knee. Instead, the boss decided to run off and who else but EVAN’S CHARACTER was still functional enough to chase him to the roof. And while there, Evan’s character AWAKENS A STAND AND KILLS THE BOSS. Not the shotgun to the face, not the literal explosive. Nope EVAN gets to kill him, after all, the arc was about him anyway.

After this, I was on the edge of my willingness to stay. Thus, I thought I’d do a cool idea. My character was going to rat us out to the boss of our gang. After all, his character arc was making him get worse, and more loyal to the mafia. It only made sense. Now, when we set up this plot hook, how long do you think you’d wait to do this? Maybe 2 sessions? 3, maybe 5? How does OVER 20 SESSIONS sound? Yes, I set up something just so it could be sat on for over 20 SESSIONS. Remember, this campaign was only happening every other week. When I’d ask Arnold when we’d actually do the reveal, he just kept saying to wait. And who got more character time in this period? Evan’s character, of course!

Eventually, we ended up in a situation where a member of the mafia family was blackmailing us, saying he knew we were moles (no, I did not tell this character we were moles). Thus, our employer and us discussed where to hide. I mentioned buying a hotel room in the city and hiding for a few days. The employer replies “The Mafia owns the only hotel in the whole city.” So, where does the employer decide for us to hide out for a bit? Why, EVAN’S CHARACTER’S HOUSE, of course! Even though the mafia had BEEN THERE BEFORE! So, we do what he says and guess what WE GET ATTACKED!

Now, Evan’s character is the only one with a traditional combat stand. However, it only works when he’s unconscious or near unconscious. Thus, we tried to knock him out. We tried knocking the air out of him since he has asthma. Nope, none of that. Instead, Arnold decided to hint for us to create an explosion. When we finally asked why we’d ever do that. He said “Well, if you make an explosion at the right distance from him, you’ll knock him out from heat stroke.” One, that’s not how heat stroke works. Two, IT WAS THE WINTER at the time in the story. 

That was the straw that broke my back. The next day, I told him I’m not having fun anymore and I wanted to leave the campaign. Which is when he started to beg me to stay and that it would “Ruin his story”. I told him I understood, but I wasn’t having fun. He asked me to stay, I then asked how many sessions he planned were left. He said about 10. I said no. He kept begging and begging me, until I caved and said I’ll do One and a Half. No more, no less. Which I did.

After the sessions, I spoke to him in the VC afterwards about the campaign. (Funnily enough, Evan was already there, they tended to be sewn at the hip, metaphorically). I tried to speak with him about it, he started to argue with me and even said “I stayed through all of your campaign.”

Which I replied “Oh? You didn’t like my campaign.”

He replied, “I liked it overall.”

I then asked him if we could just let this go and get over it since it’s just a game. He said, “I don’t think I will.” Which I then left.

So, that’s the saga. It’s a lot. I might’ve forgotten some details, but I had to get this out since it’s a hell of a story of what not to do.

TL:DR: DM has inherent bias towards one character and railroads the story into bad plotlines for THREE CAMPAIGNS STRAIGHT.

EDIT: Feel free to ask questions below, since I did cut A LOT of details for time. This was more or less a four year long story, and there's a lot that I didn't mention or forgot to.

This was maybe two years ago, I’m still playing with this group minus the DM and they’re all fantastic :^)

A while back I was on LFG, and a DM wanted players for a game about “uncovering the mysteries of Eberron”, which I excitedly applied for. The first time this campaign launched, it ended up cancelled due to unforeseen circumstances with the DM. However, they later messaged me about a year later saying they were going to try again and asked if I wanted in. Of course I did! So I joined, and invited my ex (at the time my gf) and a few other people joined. These people are now my fire forged besties, so they are not the source of the future problem; the DM is.

DM tells us they live in a third world country and as a result may have spotty connection. We understood and agreed to this. We start, and the game is going well at first. And then our DM includes an NPC who is… quite literally a VTuber turned into an idol in-universe. (I don’t actually find out she’s a VTuber until I discover it on accident later) Okay, that’s fine, it’s not the weirdest thing ever. I do run a MotW game with magical girls, after all. My character gets an in with the idol VTuber by giving her their business card and she requests my character to make a dress for her. You may be asking, “is this relevant to the campaign plot?” And the answer is… Barely. Like about how relevant your high school detention count is to your life after graduation.

Our party is hired to locate a missing person, a halfling called Pico. We start investigating, work on talking to his employers, friends, etc… We break in to a building believed to be related and steal a brick of kublicane. And then we come across the aftermath of a gang fight. Bodies and guns everywhere. My character steals a gun from this crime scene because of course they do.

I’m gonna be honest: a lot of our actual gameplay isn’t even important, which is why I’ve skipped most of it. We find out Pico is in debt to a drug lord, the VTuber idol is the drug lord’s niece. It’s a whole lot of nothing but gangs and drugs and drug lords and I’m disappointed by the time we kill the big bad, because there was nothing mysterious or related to the Eberron setting whatsoever. Maybe that’ll be resolved in the next arc!

Except we don’t get that next arc. DM tells us shortly after that fight that an emergency has come up with their sister. We don’t hear from them for months. At least 6 months, I think. We’re all worried sick. At this point our DM has been a no-show for multiple games before, and we got a roulette going of “one shot” campaigns that turned into longer form campaigns the more they were run to fill the absence of our DM. Out of curiosity one day, I look through my reddit messages to find the one the DM sent me way back at the start. I click their profile to view it, and… The DM has been active on reddit in the months that we’ve been worrying about them. Their Twitter is also active, even mentioning wanting to start another dnd game. Not my best moment, but I did sent them a message about how shitty it was to leave us with “my sister has an emergency” as your last message to us, acting like everything is fine while you ghost your group who put aside their time to play YOUR game just to have you talk about doing it all over again with another group. Boy I was mad.

Since then, we’ve adopted our roulette as a way of life, and the group has become some of my closest friends. We even attended a wedding together! Sorry this isn’t written very well, my phone is starting to lag so hard I finish typing my sentences long before the letters actually catch up lmao

TLDR; Pretty much in the title.

So this group at my local library started a Dungeons and Dragons club, and me, as somebody who had always wanted to play but could never find a group, immediately wanted to join. I got signed up and ready to go, and came to the first day (sessions were hosted every other week). I came all ready with a character I had made myself, at first level, and a backup at third (same character, different level) for if we weren’t starting in the very beginning. When I sat down at the table, the DM says something along the lines of “What’s that?” So I told him it was a first level and third level character. He gives me a weird look and hands me a character sheet. “No, we’re using premade ones, here.” Now, usually, this isn’t bad, but nowhere did it say that we were just going to be given characters and be unable to customize anything but name, not even choose from available premade ones. I ended up with a Human Tempest Cleric who I named Nulara Stormbright, she ran away from her town and started a gang of pirates, who built a small ship and sailed out to sea, but was destroyed by a terrible storm. She woke up on an island with a figure saying that if she pledged her loyalty, her life would be spared. She agreed and devoted herself to the Storm God (this was a while ago so I forgot the exact name). Her main goals were to find out if the rest of her crew was alive and meet them. Character aside, when everybody was at the table, about five or six of us, we start the adventure. Immediately, it feels a bit off. We are dropped into a town, supposedly we already know each other (never explained why) and are told that we are here for the market. No further description, just ‘you’re here and you want to do this’. We walk around a bit and do very minimal Roleplay, before we see somebody stealing from a nearby shop owner, who calls for help getting them. I, as the righteous Cleric, jump to action and urge the players to follow me, and we all chase the criminal down an alleyway. A fight ensues and…turns out this theif is like a super god? What I mean by that is he is somehow so strong that he wipes out an entire party of about five people? One criminal, and just a common theif at that? All our characters literally died. “Alright” the DM said. “Nice session 0, next time we’ll get into the real story.”

O-o-o-ok.

A bit weird, but uh, everybody has their own DMing style?

More and more sessions go by, and honestly it’s just chaos. It’s all fighting. No Roleplay, no nothing, we are plopped into random places, like an arena, and when I ask why we are here (because apparently I was the only person who really cared) he would just say that that’s where we wanted to go. That campaign went up till like 15th level I think, but did so way too quickly because we were fighting SOOO much every session for no reason.

(Quick note: if this is how you play a dnd game, cool. Maybe you should talk about the style of your campaign with your players to make sure it’s the right thing for them, because I, personally, am the kind of person who loves lore, rp, and puzzles in a game, and it got pretty boring real quick to just go: BOOM! HIT THINGS! But dnd is dnd, right? I had never played before, and I wasn’t dumb, I knew that there was some weird stuff going on, but I so desperately wanted a group to play with that I just dismissed it.)

Anyways, back to the story.

Since that campaign ended too quickly, we started a new one, and this time, at session 0, instead of killing us all, the DM let us make our own characters, but you weren’t allowed to actually fill in the character sheet, you had to tell him your preferred species and class, and then let him choose everything else while he worked on it from home. I decided I wanted to play a Changeling Rogue, yeah, a bit basic, but I liked the concept I had of an undercover agent from a thieves guild sent to spy on adventurers and report back to there, also a thief (I never planned to steal from the party or harm them, just hoped to create some unique Roleplay moments when the secret is out), so I tell the DM what I want to play. He just sits there and shakes his head. “No, you shouldn’t be a theif, assassins are so much better! They deal way more damage and are more useful overall.” The rest of the party agrees, and without my consent, they all agree to change my character‘s subclass. So I’m s tuck with another character I don’t really want to play, but that’s fine, because there’s no Roleplay, never a place nor time where our backstories are brought up, no personal motive for characters, its just do what the DM tells you.

Over the course of more time then the last one, we became…SPACE PIRATES…because who doesn’t like a very sudden change of setting when the DM discovers Spelljammer? At one point we visit a small planet in space, and I was absent on the previous session, so when recapping what happened they say, “So we got to this planet where your character used to live and you were sent a letter by your rich family that your uncle was dying and you needed to visit him, so now we are staying at your family’s house. This is fine…or at least it would be if my character:

a) had a rich family

b) had ever lived in outer space

c) had an uncle

Which my character did not.

SO PLUS ONE POINT TO THE RED FLAGS TABLE FOR ADDING THINGS TO MY BACKSTORY!!!

The homophobia part came up throughout both campaigns, where people would just keep saying “Ew that’s so gay”, and making fun of other people for being gay, and, even worse I feel, they would find random female characters and try to seduce them (no rp required, just roll a high charisma check) and immediately just have a girlfriend, and at one point, one of the characters was an orc, and…uh…the DM talked about an “Orc mating ritual” which included some very uncomfortable topics relating to assaul.

As the only girl at the table and a member of the LGBTQ+ community, I walked out there and never went back to that club.

I was invited for my first time playing D&D to a game with all new players. This includes the DM. Despite us all being new to the game we all we're really into D&D having watch YouTube videos and other such things long before ever geting a chance to play. We were all aware as new players we were going to make mistakes and not realize it as no one in the group has experience.

Our DM was really into planning everything out going so far as to make Maps Dungeons and sets out of paper mache. He had 7 different 3D models of Dungeons and buildings that we would encounter in our game (this is an estimate we never actually got to see them all). Each one took up the entire length of the table (like 8ft by 4ft I'm guessing). These sets could be up two 3ft high. Everyone was really excited after seeing not only the starting map but also all the others stacked on top of each other and set off to the side with a blanket covering them. Well we couldn't see the sets we knew what they were by looking at the bottom.

After our first session one of our players wanted to do more and get a little more creative. She was a sorcerer and decided to bring objects that could act as efects for each of the spells she cast. It was a fun addition for our session. At least it was a fun addition right up until she decided to cast color spray. She did this with a can of spray paint. First off color spray is light not paint so this didn't make sense to anyone which we explained to her secondly by using the spray paint she ruined part of the set that the DM had worked so hard to make.

At this point we made a rule that spell effects that could cause damage to the set we're no longer allowed. She followed the rules and for several sessions after this it all was worked out fine. We were taking our time understanding the mechanics as such a gameplay was slow but eventually we got to the point where our sorcerer leveled enough to cast Fireball. I am sure you can all guess where this is going. Are sorcerer took a plate out of her bag placed it on the table so that the maps that we were working with wouldn't be damaged. She then took the mini that she was targeting and put it on the plate. Finally casting Fireball she crumpled up a piece of paper lit it on fire and threw it at the mini.

The piece of paper then bounced off the mini rolled over the edge of the plate and lit the paper mache playmap on fire. As it turns out paper mache is extremely flammable and the entire set goes up almost instantly. Stat sheets and other papers we were working with quickly followed suit. In the chaos the fire somehow jumped from the table to the other paper mache maps and sets on the side. At this point it should be noted this was the DM's house we were playing at. The dm freaked. Soon as he saw the fire he ran out of the house unused his cell phone to call the 911.

One of our players left to look for a fire extinguisher that he never found. Ill admit i was kind of Frozen after the initial jump up and move away from the table. The girl crying and apologizing frantically. It was the last two players who finly did somthing.

One of the two, the only other girl at the table goes over to the snack area grabs the 2 liter bottle of Pop and says i cast Shape Water repeatedly as she then pores all three bottles over the fire on the table and actually manages to put it out. (the fact that she not only put out the fire but she actually turned it into a joke was just awesome. FYI she was not playing with magic character however she did have a feet that gave her access to shape water which somehow made the whole thing funny)

The final guy saw what the girl was doing and finally jumped into action and started using a blanket to smother the fire on the other paper mache playsets. (I have no idea what you would call those. Maps playsets dungeons whatever) something that I decided to help with once I saw that it was actually working. We some how managed to put the fire out with only surface level damage to the house.

The guy who put the fire out had a minor burn but that was the only injury that occurred as a result of the incident. After speaking to police and fire people we were allowed to go home. A little while later after things cooled down we were deciding whether we would continue playing. We eventually decided that we would continue playing however what we could not decide on is whether the girl started the fire should be removed from the game.

Normally this would be a no-brainer except that she didn't do it on purpose. Well her plate idea was not the smartest if it worked she would have been following the rules we had set. And how sorry she is afterward and the fact that she's completely okay with us playing without her because of what she did makes me feel guilty for kicking her out of the game. What do you think?

Hello, you can call me Remy since this is the name that i made when creating this account, i played dnd for 4 years and i have 2 campaign that wasn't total crap, one i just played for 3 sessions because the DM stopped playing, and the other is a homebrew DnD Dark souls themed campaign that was actually super fun the 1 session, i rlly hope that the next one is a lot more fun, i want you to know that english is my second language and that i'm from Brazil, so here is a lot more difficult to find a table in real life, so i play online.

Since i knew about DnD i wanted to play, but it was rlly hard to find a table that wasn't payed, i think of it as a hobby, i don't want to waste money on it even if it could be fun. So after my 1 horrible campaign i decided to make my own with my friends, was league of legends themed and we had a lot of fun and because of personal problems i stopped DMing, but i keept learning and trying to find a game that wasn't total shit. So i found this game with my friend that'll call Sah, we entered like a job interview together, answered the questions and we passed, we only needed to make a character, it was a forgotten realms game and we never heard of it, never played any baldurs gate bc the 1 and 2 looked a bit rough, and the 3 was super heavy and i don't think it could run on m hamster powered computer, so we were going to search, trying to look fun and crazy concepts, Sah always liked a buff girl and i always liked quirky and funny characters, i also LOVE reptiles and amphibians, but i discarted a grung bc of the "need to rest in water" debuff, and artificer my favorite class because guns didn't existed and i was tired of playing only it, Sah had chose their Giant Woman Half-orc and i was struggling, never had a creative block so the DM sayed that i should talk to a guy that knew everything, lets name him "Nerd" because that was what he was to my eyes, a nerd, i'm a nerd but he was just so anoying that i couldn't handle.

I went to ask Nerd if he could help me with my character and i knew that it was going to be a bad time when he asked "Do you know the history of Cormyr", before the DM made a PDF explaining all the things in the word, made us sit and listen to his 30 min yap, insted of letting us read, it was super boring and i wanted to quit there, but my psychologist told me that i needed uncomfortable moments to make my social skills better, so i gave it another chance and talked to Nerd. We spent 2 hours talking about the setting, not me of course, i was listening to his yap, and when i asked him anything a little bit out of the ordinary he didn't knew, he wanted to let me know things that i wasn't going to use, and when i asked something i really wanted to hear he just started to going back to the things he wanted to say, basically half of the things he spoke to me outside of the setting was wrong, he clearly knew very poorly "weird dnd stuff" like that various book contains different versions of playable races, and that i shouldn't do anything crazy, that i should stick to making a wizard, and then, oh boy, we went on a discussion on why he was such an ass, he sayed to me that for an exemple campaigns in a normal world shouldn't be allowed players play races like half-orcs, because orcs are EEEVIL, and that the town is going to hate the race, and like, isn't it what an arc should be? You are hated in the beggining and then you save the people and they realise "wait, maybe we went a little rough on that guy", Shrek, Nimona and other shows couldn't exist in this mentality because Nerd princess didn't like them, he was the kind of DM if you were a little big stronger he would say "nuh uh" to your character and toss you aside, basically, a no fun.

After the discussion i left with anger, because i didn't want to make a player that i would play with and that is the DMs best friend to ruin my game, and the DM looked like a nice guy, i trusted in him, i wanted to leave but i didn't and i was proud, before the discussion we had the idea to make a lizardfolk druid that is from Chult, the dinosaur land, and i made the character and backstory really nice, he was from Chult but didn't felt that he was strong enough to protect their land so he went to adventure to become stronger and come back to his people one day, a neat story, i wrote all the travel to go to Cormyr and my character ended up a minor Purple Dragon member (The main Knights in the kingdom), a Purple Dragon trainee if i must say, it was fun making it, my idea was that he was going to be very curious and atentive, asking really weird questions about humans and local behavior, so i waited 2 weeks after the DM said that my lore was good.

Session day and i was really anxious, maybe wasn't going to be a bad session at all, so the DM said that we should roll a d20 and we rolled, i got 12 and another guy got 12 too, and Nerd got 20, so he went up first, after talking a lot in a bar the other guy came in to scene, and they kept looking, and i was waiting for my character be introduced, i tough in a lot of ways to got to them, and look, wasn't my turn, now they are in a shelter, nice, so Nerd asks the ladie "do you have any fruit" she said "Yes i told a boy to pick up some for me", i tought it was me, made sense uk? My character should do things that the government didn't want to send soldiers to do, so simple taks should be my job, but the DM simply ignored that statement and made the woman grab some fruit to them in the storage, at this rated had passed 30 minutes and nothing, like, my character wasn't so hard to introduce, maybe in a few minutes i would be a major character, saving everybody or at least having a nice line, right?

They continued the story, they went to a tavern, and i wasn't paying so much attention anymore i was really bored, the i wasn't there to watch a gameplay, i wanted to be a character, not the main character but at least interact with something, so i waited, and waited, and they came back to the house after spending an eternity at the bar, and the DM sayed "you hear a noise outside the house" man i was excited, my character went to Cormyr as a hobo, he slept under bridges and ate trash, he also set some dinos free when arriving the continent from Chult, so some dinos must be wandering around, you know? Maybe was a dino and i could enter, YEAH FINALLY, after a really long while of them preparing to go inside, they went looking, DM described footsteps in the chicken coop, i was thinking it was me looking at the chickens, uk chickens are kinda like dinos, but then he described that the thing was eating the chickens, and like, yea ok, i could do that when i was hungry, a little weird since i was a druid but ok, and then the players went in and BLAM, A GNOLL, the gnolls was relevant to the story because of some attack that went LITERALLY THE OTHER SIDE OF TOWN, but ok, i asked when i was going to enter and he said "soon", it was about 1 hour of the game and i didn't played yet.

I rlly wanted to leave the table but i knew i needed to fight my discomfort in the table, so i did stayed, and waited, but this time i was totally unnaware, was rlly boring waiting to play, and i was rlly bad, i had a headache, my stomach was hurting because of the discomfort, and i force myself to stayed there, but then, then the main characters after burying a body they went to the PURPLE DRAGON FORTRESS, man i had a bit of hope, but i knew that wasn't going to last, after they spoke to 5 different characters and the game had been played by 1 hour and a half, i gave up, it should be 3 hours of gameplay, and we was in the half of the game and i didn't had any chance of making anything, so i just left, told the DM that i didn't want to wait 1 hour and a half to play the fucking game, and blocked him, probably not going to play other DnD campaigns in a while, only the dark souls one bc it was pretty cool, the leasson here is:don't fking make ur players wait more than one hour to play, at least warn them, don't make their expectations too high.

I know it was a bit too long but i rlly was sad about this campaign.

This one is still ongoing, but it's gone to a point where it stopped being funny a while ago. Not a full horror experience, but one of the most frustrating things I've experienced. This was a Pathfinder 1e campaign, just keep that in mind.

So, around 2 and a half years ago, I joined an already-started campaign, as a substitute for another player. Being the newest member, I decided to adapt and fill whatever role the party needed, and most of them were frontline/tanks (Inquisitor, Fighter, Paladin). Since the setting was not a gritty GOT low-magic one, I asked if it was OK if I made a glass cannon spellcaster. The DM liked it, the party liked it, so I got to work.

Now, saying the campaign was homebrew-heavy would be an understatement. I'm not talking about Hybrid or Alternative classes, but more of the flavor of what Valda and Kibbles provide for DnD. I was not comfortable with the system yet, so I asked if it was going to be an issue if I played a RAW build. DM said it was perfectly fine, those classes were just flavor in case someone wanted to try something new, but not a requirement.

Fast forward to our first fight. I am rocking less than half of the HP of the rest of the party, but I should be fine as long as I know how to position my character. Right?

Wrong. Every. Single. Enemy will either: Spawn in combat right next to me, risk MULTIPLE opportunity attacks just to down me or, the funniest example, the enemy just so happen to be hiding on the ceiling and dropped right on top of me, downing me before we rolled for initiative. They got to the point that they would stand there and wait for someone to heal me so they could down me again. They were not single-enemy fights, and most of them would rock 10 to 20 enemies + gimmick, so that meant every time my turn was skipped in death saving throws, a good hour/hour and a half would pass before it was my turn... to roll a death saving throw again.

It started to dawn on me why every single player had a build that put them on the three digits of HP. When I asked my DM about the focus I was getting, they responded with "Well, the enemy can see you are a spellcaster, and they prioritize the person that can kill a lot of them easily", which is very fair, but still it didn't sit well with me. I brought up that I was not having fun, and that maybe I should create a new character that fitted the battle mechanics better, but they said that I was filling a necessary niche, I was just "unlucky".

Inquisitor and I started keeping notes as a joke of how many spells I'd cast in combat. We noticed last session that the last time I did anything was on June 1st thanks to a surprise round. I have been eating the dust ever since.

I don't plan on leaving the group because they are my friend group and TTRPGs are, honestly, the only time we can hang out together monthly without work or life being in the way. But it's getting hard not to astral project to a better game when combat rolls around, to be fully honest

NSFW because some crimes were of a heavy topic or missing context.

Not a typical horror story per say, in fact, everyone in the campaign is still enjoying the game, me too. However the things that happened in it is... well you will see.

Our campaign was going for a rather unique homebrew system that was inspired from the Fate Series Holy Grail War. Basically, you need to understand to context of our campaign to understand what I am a about to show you, but Fate Fans will pretty much understand what is going on.

The Holy Grail war is a Battle Royale ritual where 7 mages/summoners called "Masters" summoned 7 Spirits called "Servants", Servants are legendary characters from myth, or history that made their mark on mankind. For example, Napoleon, Oda Nobunaga, Medusa and famous enough, King Arthur (who for some reason is genderbent). Usually there are two catergories of Servants, the Knights class whom are the Saber, the Archer and the Lancer, and the Cavalry class, the Rider, the Assassin, the Caster and the Berserker. However Extra Classes like Ruler, Foreigner and Avenger do exist, but rarely.

The goal of the holy grail war is to get your Servants kill either the other Masters or their Servants, until enough Servants was killed, their souls will be sacrificed to the battlefield they were fighting on. Once enough Servants is dead, either in combat or the loss of their masters, the prize the masters and their Servants was seeking for, the Holy Grail would be summoned. A powerful wish-granting device or a source of magical power that most mages in this universe is seeking.

Also, the game takes place in a small mordern Japanese city called Fuyuki.

How this works in game, was it take place in discord, each master have a private text channel while the Dm plays the NPCs and the Servants. Fuyuki might be small but it is divided by several district, Masters need to scout to find other masters. There was also a passage of time system, where a day was divided by multiple phases, like Morning, Afternoon, Evening and Night.

Also, Servants are very power beings, so murderhobo tendencies would be greats which bring us to the law mechanism.

Apart from Fuyuki's finest, the Fuyuki police department, there is also two other important faction in all Holy Grail Wars, the Holy Church.

The Holy Church, based in the Vaticans are the Wing of the Catholic Church that acts like the Men in Black but for all things Magic. Their mission is to oversee the war to make it not go out of hand and keep the mystics from the public, as well as keeping them safe from any magical dangers. Let's say if there is a naught master who go on a murderhobo killing spree, the Church will send their Rogue-paladin Ninja fighters called "Executioners" to send the Murderhobo to meet Jesus. Or they will rally the other masters and their Servants to gang up on this trouble maker.

The Mage Association is basically Hogwarts, they based themselves within the Big Ben and they supervise all thing magical, such as a holy grail war. If there is a troublemaker that offends them, they will pin a bounty on the troublemaker and send powerful Mage Hunters after them. They are also responsible for covering up any mage related incidents from the public.

The Holy Church and the Mage Association while they don't get along, do work together time to time. They also act as the "Anti-Crime" mechanism of the story. However it only works if the said crime was caught or discovered.

Which bring us to the story, where I was one of the 6 Player Masters. While I met some masters in game, we just had a cordial conversation as people don't wish to descend into hostilities just yet, or even wanting to form an alliance.

However once Morning 0 ended, the DM posted this in the general chat...

https://preview.redd.it/13izg6e1iy3e1.jpg?width=646&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=45a95b022a0247cb54aa84cbb6e84eb3afbc2d23

https://preview.redd.it/tsdd08o3iy3e1.png?width=328&format=png&auto=webp&s=56b015826375edf48815f678cabf9884a16af2fe

https://preview.redd.it/m7m6z524iy3e1.png?width=220&format=png&auto=webp&s=023785b36c2add71175ef6166a46c27b97b3a02a

All these was committed by just six players/Master in a morning in game, the Church and the Not-Hogwarts is going to have their hands full.

About a year ago, I saw a poster at my university campus advertising a D&D campaign. I was new to the hobby and pretty desperate for a group to play with, so I contacted the DM and made my way into the discord server they had created.

Even before we began playing, there were a few things that, looking back, I realize were pretty big red flags. The server had amassed about ten people before the DM stopped letting people in, so it was decided that everyone would be separated into two groups, each playing on different nights of the week. The only exception was the DM's friend (this will be important later), who had more experience running D&D than the DM and would be around to help.

I rolled up my character, a Bard, and I wouldn't be telling you that he was a Bard if it wasn't important to what happened next. Before our first session, the DM's friend proposed adding an NSFW chat, creating a poll for it. IIRC, only a few people had voted before they went ahead with adding it, and one of the server members wasn't fond of that, so they left. Almost everyone else immediately started ragging on them for being a prude or whatever; I wasn't there for any of it, but reading the messages back a few hours later, I saw that someone had said something to the effect of “Well what did they expect? One of our players is literally playing a bard.”

So yeah.

We didn't have a session 0 (another red flag that flew over my head) and jumped straight into the adventure, which was pirate themed! I meet my soon-to-be crew in a tavern, naturally, where the Barbarian (this player will also be important later, I swear) is playing a betting game with some stranger. He loses, and his first instinct is to fully decapitate the dude.

This is where it would have been nice to know in advance what kind of party members I'd be playing with. My character was chaotic good, and while he wasn't necessarily AGAINST violence, he considered homicide a last resort. And my team was made up of a murderhobo and a junkie Druid, who had a weird obsession with collecting the Barbarian's dragonborn sweat to make drugs.

So we meet our new captain, the DMPC (🚩), futz around for a bit on her ship, and the session ends. It's worth noting that there were originally five people in my group, but two of them just stopped showing up after the first session. Literally, I could see one of them playing Rainbow Six Siege during game time, and all efforts to contact them were fruitless. So our crew of five was now a crew of three, and this will ALSO be important.

Next session comes around, and our mission is to take back a secret island hideout taken over by our captain's former crew, who mutinied for…reasons. Druid and I swim to the island at night, staking out a house that used to belong to the captain, before we're caught by one of the captain's former crew mates. We escape, intending to head back to the ship, until DM asks us to make Dexterity saving throws. Druid fails and falls into a pit trap, I succeed and continue running; but DM only asks me to make another. I fail this one, fall into another pit trap, and the DM celebrates with “Finally, I got you!” before switching over to Barbarian's POV so he can mount a full-scale rescue for us.

So I had a problem with that. I can't recall all of the details, but I remember thinking it was unfair that our characters were seemingly unavoidably thrown into traps, even after multiple successes on my part, and I accused the DM of railroading. The DM heard my concerns, but insisted that they did what they had to do “for the story”. I backed off, trying to be understanding, but it still left a sour taste in my mouth.

So some time passes. We have a few more sessions, then suddenly, Druid drops out of my group so he can focus on his character in the other group. So now it's just me and Barbarian, and unfortunately for me, we're going through Barbarian's character arc right now, so I'm feeling very, very left out. I raise my concerns to the DM, asking if I can perhaps join the second group with a new character, but they deny it, saying that they intend to bring the groups together at some point in the future. I relent, but some time later, I find out that the Barbarian player is now playing a Cleric in the other group. A few more sessions of playing second fiddle to Barbarian later, I ask again if I can join the other group, and the DM compromises…by allowing a player from the second group to join my group.

(apropos of nothing, that character was a kitsune blood hunter with a weird obsession with letting people touch their “soft and fluffy” tails, and even as an out and proud furry I was a little weirded out.)

At this point, I've had it. I've been debating leaving this group for a while, as recently I had found an in-person group that I was having a ton of fun with--more fun than I was having with this group. I gave the DM an ultimatum: they can let me join the other group, or I'm quitting, full stop.

To appease me, the DM finally allows the two groups to merge--but all that means is that I'm now a part of a group that's eight characters big, with two players playing two characters, NOT including the three or four DMPCs running around with us as well. My feelings of being brushed off to the side are only getting worse, especially because we're STILL going through Barbarian's character arc, supposedly.

The straw that broke the camel's back for me was the Blood Hunter's player. I live in a predominantly Hispanic community, which means people throw out N-words left and right and think it's okay. Blood Hunter was one such person, and I finally put my foot down and told them “Hey, I don't appreciate you using that word and I'd like you to stop.” They responded, “Okay, I'll stop using that word--around you.”

I finally quit after that. Even if playing was fun (it wasn't), I decided these weren't the kinds of people I wanted to interact with anymore, and I told the DM that I'd be leaving the campaign. For what it's worth, they wished me well in finding a new group, and to this day, I wonder if that campaign is still going on and they're having fun. (If you think you were a part of that campaign, let me know how it went, I'm curious lol)

NSFW tag for the depressing reality, just to be safe. Made me terrible emotional, so I feel the warning might be needed.

This feels like its been the most campaign ending event I've ever had playing pen and paper games. Other times I've seen how we could continue on by adding other players, but this one is done for good.

This was with a friend group. Work, family and other obligations meant we only got around to this group once a month, as scheduling made it nearly impossible to find time for even that. This was not ideal for most of us, as we usually wasted a bit too much time catching back up on the events of last time. On top of the social catchup, this meant pretty slow progress, and we sometimes joked about it being another episode of dragonball Z for the ridiculously little progress we sometimes made during a session. One big part of why this took so long, was that most of the game was really more roleplaying than anything else. This was great fun, but obviously made the game drag sometimes, and be much more information heavy than just combat. With only 3 players, it was manageable, but we always had to ensure we remembered exactly how everything was looking every time.

The players all wanted a lot of grand, campaign defining issues, rather than having an external problem to fight. We had these 3 players: Michael, the cursed beast Barbarian who was slowly turning into a monstrosity. Elis, the Wild Magic Sorcerer being torn apart by her own magic. Carlos, a Genie Warlock who desperately searched for a way to not end up trapped in his lamp upon death. The party was hardly well balanced, and had a whole book of problems each, and it was by design. They wanted combat to be a failure state, and they lacked the tools to truly avoid combat. It made for a very interesting group to DM for, and it kept tensions high for the players, knowing their lack of tools meant that a lot of fights simply weren't possible to win, instead forcing them to find alternate solutions. It was fantastic for the first 4 years of the game, but it had gotten gradually worse over the last year.

Now, problem number 1 that had gotten really bad over the last year: because it took so long for us to get anywhere, they got impatient. Even without discussion with me, Michael and Elis would quickly overplay their issue, pushing it at a rate that didn't make a lot of sense in-game. Talking to them got the expected responses that was identical: Things are going too slowly in IRL terms. But with so many scheduling conflicts (Michael being an ER doctor and Elis having a lot of private travel plans, and Carlos having a lot of family obligations), it was difficult for me to do much about it. I had time and flexibility, but they did not.

Problem 2: Elis was so impatient she'd push herself in everywhere. It got bad enough that Carlos grabbed me after a game and said she was being a bit too attention hogging. He didn't get as much time on account of being more passive (more of a failure on my part), and when he did, Elis would push herself in as well. I had a small talk to her, but she wasn't willing to talk much. This was odd, considering she had been a friend of mine for almost two full decades and never acted this way before, but she agreed she'd give the others room. I tried to figure out a way to manage the focus better, too, but with limited time, this caused tension.

But in what appeared as a very passive aggressive act, and not at all what we had talked about, near the end of the next session during a short scuffle with a hag that Carlos had tried to deal with, Elis "passed out" from "overusing magic". After the session, when we started talking about the next session, Carlos was a bit miffed at how the session had ended up, to which Elis promptly announced she'd skip a session or two, "probably". She made the usual assurances that everything was fine, and wanted nothing changed. She just needed a personal break.

Attempt to talk to her mostly failed. Texts were dismissive and short, and she didn't want to talk on the phone. My wife, a childhood friend of hers, couldn't even get through to her. This is about where worry started to set in. She'd had dips in her life before, she had no real support network to speak of, and no family to go to. But she'd never been afraid to reach out to and rely on us in the past. There was of course the possibility that something was going on with one of the other players that I didn't know about (and I have missed this stuff before), but this kind of change still felt very concerning.

We played another session, just with Michael and Carlos, and started arranging the next session. Once again, Elis wasn't possible to get any dates out of, defaulting to a "I think I'll sit out another session." response. While she might have been trying to hog the attention a bit much lately, all 3 characters were necessary to actually make the group dynamic work.. This much roleplaying just didn't work as well when it was only two players. If we couldn't get her back in, there was the likelihood we'd need to somehow bring in another player, or just give up on this campaign and the stories we had been building. Neither option made Carlos or Michael happy, so we kept trying to stay in touch with her, trying to figure out a solution to whatever was causing this.

Then, a bit out of nowhere, Michael arranged a sudden meet up with me, my wife (who wasn't even a player in the group) and Carlos. Through his work, Michael had found out Elis had been admitted to the ER, and was about to be moved into hospice care because her fight with something wasn't going to end in her favor. She'd told none of us about any kind of illness. I'm pretty sure Michael was wrong in even sharing this info with us, and he still lacked any specifics about what was going on. We'd seen nothing obvious, not even the doctor at the table.

Thankfully, she reached out herself a few days later, saying she couldn't attend any more sessions. When pressed, and suggestions of holding the session "at her place" was brought up, with Michael prodding about her with his info about having been by the ER, she finally admitted what was going on. She had cancer. Her frequent travel plans had been attempts to get help from hospitals and private clinics out of country. Every avenue of help she had sought out had failed, and there wasn't more to do now. She hadn't wanted us to know. She didn't want us to worry, and she wanted to tell us after she had successfully beat it. But that wasn't going to happen now.

We held a single last session about 1 week ago. They were quite accommodating at the Hospice. We went by when we had time, going at least once a day afterwards. Even the last session was very hard for her to participate in, so we didnt try to do another. Then, yesterday, we learned she had passed away.

Nobody has even considered suggesting dates for another session, and we probably won't. We had the last send off for her, and it's probably going to be how we let it end. I have not touched any notes since, and I probably won't ever again.

Right now, this'll have to be a horribly tragic end to a tale that should not have ended so early. 34 years old. Fuck cancer.

TLDR @ end

Firstly, I’d like to thank XP to level 3 for introducing me to this subreddit, I’ve spent many an hour reading stories to pass the time and thought to myself, “damn, I’m lucky I’ve never had a bad TTRPG experience”… ...until I remembered this.

It’s the beginning of 2020 (cue dramatic music) and my dad has just started a new job.  After his first week, he comes home and tells me some interesting news.  The other guy in the office runs a bi-weekly D&D campaign in the local pub and has invited my dad along.  I’m rather surprised by this as, other than my retellings of moments in The Oxventure Guild sessions, I didn’t think he knew much about D&D.  Turns out my dad is an even bigger nerd than I realised and that him & one of his brothers used to pull all-nighters playing AD&D back in the 80s.  Turns out, all my talk of Corazon, Dob, Merilwen, Prudence & Egbert has reignited a spark and he was going to play a session at the pub.

  I asked if he could float the idea with the DM if I could just sit and watch as I’d never played and wanted to just get some idea of how it really all works, only to find out I was joining the session as well.

  Fast forward and we’re all sitting in the pub about to play.  This is where I met the 3 important people in this story, let’s call them J, Z and DF.  The campaign is Dungeon of the Mad Mage & including dad & myself, there are six other players.  The DM does a great a job of introducing the two of us into the story as the party is crawling through the dungeon.  Dice are rolled, checks are failed, attacks are made and the whole session goes great.  So great in fact, we are both invited back to continue the story.

  Sadly, the campaign is short lived.  As I said above, the year is 2020 and we only get 3 sessions in before COVID19 shuts the world down.  Fortunately, we have a WhatsApp group and 4 of us (plus DM) eventually start a different campaign over Skype which runs for around 6 months.  J & Z don’t take part, however over lockdown I become good friends with the 2 of them through WhatsApp.  So good in fact, between lockdowns they invite me to their home and a heavily homebrewed ICRPG campaign.  I can comfortably say that the sessions I had with them were best TTRPG moments of my life (outside my own eventual DMing).  J & Johnny Chiodini of Oxventure are my DM inspirations.  The worlds J comes up with, the stories he weaves & the plots he twists immersed me like nothing else.

  These are the best kinds of people; we don’t talk as regularly (I moved away) but when we do it’s like nothing has changed.  They are wonderful and I hope everyone gets to play with a J & Z like me.

 Unfortunately, this is where I must move on to the worst kinds… DF.

  As I have said, a lot of my early D&D experience was during COVID and as such, most was online.  DF reached out to me privately and asked if I wanted to join a campaign he was running on Tabletop Simulator.  This got me quite excited as I assumed it was going to be as close to the real thing as possible with “actual” dice rolling, minis & maps etc.  I jumped at the chance and was told I was going to be in a party of 4, with 2 people coming from the pub sessions.  This felt good as it meant I was playing with people I had (a little) experience with so when game day rolled around, I jumped on Skype & fired up Tabletop Simulator.

 Well an hour passed and it was just DF & myself… we had been getting to know each other (him asking most of the questions) and telling about ourselves when I asked if anyone was actually going to be joining?  DF made some excuse saying it was just going to be the 2 of us so I asked if we could start anyway as I wanted more experience with the game.  DF agreed to begin but in hindsight, seemed a little annoyed by this request.  Now up until this point, I had experience with 2 very good DMs so I was ready for some good roleplay and some cinematic battles.

 This was not the case…

Don’t get me wrong, starting in a tavern is very cliché, but can still be very enjoyable.  This was not; virtually no description, no flavour, just a brief statement of how a band of goblins rush in and begin slaughtering the patrons.  Roll initiative straight off the bat.  Unfortunately for me, every single one of my attack rolls were utter garbage and strangely, the DMPC doesn’t roll below a 15.  The fight is… messy but eventually the tavern is cleared.  As a Rogue, I begin to clear the pockets & loot the bar as “everyone else is dead”.

This is where my first real experience of railroading rears it’s ugly head.  I make it clear that I am behind the bar and in the back room (which also has a back door to the outside) looting a chest when all of a sudden, the town guard BURST in and attempt to arrest me.  I protest as I am in the backroom and therefore out-of-site.  DF goes to say “they saw you go in as they came through the door”.  I argue but to no avail.  I am suddenly in the middle of the room being threatened with execution due to “breaking & entering” and “theft” UNLESS I help the town by finding out where the goblins keep coming from.

I give in and agree as I get the feeling this is the direction the plot has to go in.  There is a commotion outside and we (myself, DMPC & guards) are suddenly outside the front of the tavern, about to be attacked by more gobbos.  I argue that my rogue was originally in the back room and would have left through the back door.  DF gives in and puts my token at the back of the building which allows me to actually deal some good surprise damage in the following battle.

We are victorious (mainly due to the suspiciously powerful DMPC) and session ends.  I chat with DF for a bit longer as we both have time to kill and learn he recently quit his job and was now looking after his elderly parents.  We end the call and a second session never happens, in fact he never speaks with me again.

Around a year later in 2021 I find out he’d been jailed for being a paedophile after police found around 100,000 files on various devices including “some of the worst this court has ever encountered” and therefore, hadn’t quit his job but in fact fired in 2019 for being a massive nonce.

This made me sick to my stomach, the fact this kind of scum walk among us and we have no idea, the fact I was in a 1-1 Skype call for 4 hours with this monster and I hadn’t a clue.  I will admit that looking back at it, he gave off a strange vibe that made me feel uncomfortable but I just put it down to my own social anxiety.

TLDR: My first experience with D&D introduced me to the wonders of TTRPGs, 2 amazing people whom I love and a filthy paedophile who deserves the worst.

Hear me out on this one. I started as a DM in a group of 4 (3 Players and me), we were all first time players. I read into the rules and watched tutorials for days so I could help them with character creation and explain the game. They were too lazy to read into it, so I did the legwork for all of us since I'm the DM.

We played for 2 sessions, before the group fell apart due to 2 players getting into a fight outside of DnD. And I'm not getting too into the details, but I can't play with this group anymore without it being really awkward for me.

I've been telling a couple people that I play DnD and I had TONS and I say TOOOONS of people asking me to DM for them who have never played before. So I decided to make a new group out of the people who are interested.

I decided to do a one shot to show them the game without having them to commit to a campaign right away. 5 Players RSVP'ed. Come the day, I prepared everything, cooked dinner, bought drinks, cleaned the place. Then one of them called in sick in the morning. Then a second one texted me that she won't come after all because she thinks she's not creative enough for DnD. Then when it came to gaming 2 came an hour late and another one never came at all and didn't respond to texts or calls.
I then made their characters with them, explained the game and then we started the one shot. We all enjoyed the game and they later asked me if they could join me at my next campaign. Let's call her Shadowheart and let's call him Wyll.

I still had a lot of people requesting to play DnD so I did another one shot with them and invited Shadowheart and Wyll. They were both interested, however Wyll couldn't come due to work and Shadowheart ditched us on the same day to be with her new boyfriend.

So I played the next DnD session with 3 newbies and 2 advanced players. Rinse and repeat character creation with them (I have already prepped pre-made ones but still had to explain what classes do) and explained the game. At this point I was so over explaining the entire game.

But holy shit playing with the advanced players was AWESOME. Usually it always ended up with the new players not talking a lot, so I had to do most of the talking. But with the advanced players they even roleplayed with me, it was the first time I had so much fun as a DM.

After the session I had them all clap for me which was incredibly cute and the advanced players asked me to invite them to the next one shot. However when they said that I noticed I don't want to do a one shot ever again. I want to play a game where I don't have to explain their characters and game mechanics over and over again.

From the 3 newbies we had one who didn't understand the game mechanics after me explaining to them over and over again (I really don't want to explain anymore), one would love to join my campaign however he lives 8h away and one player very very seldom will have time to play. 2 advanced were already in another campaign so can't join.

There were still a lot of first time players wanting to play. I should add that I have invited them a lot of times but they always ditch last minute as well.

So at the end I decided to just start the campaign with Shadowheart and Wyll. But since I asked them to level up the characters we created together, it has been a drag. They just want to come and play. I proposed that I help them with level up. However Shadowheart is a warlock, so I had sent her a list of spells and what they do and what I'd recommend (she wanted new spells) and told her to either roll for HP or choose the standard. Haven't heard back from her since. Wyll wanted to change the name for his fighter, so I asked him to send me the new name. He hasn't gotten back to me ever since.

All in all, I wanted to rant that playing with new players suck (DISCLAMER: I DON'T MEAN ALL NEW PLAYERS ARE LIKE THIS JUST THE ONES I PLAYED WITH SO FAR). They are not into the game at all. I have to help them with every last step and the moment they have to do something themselves they abondan the game entirely. And also it's seldom a new player is good at roleplaying right away so it's one sided.

And yes I know, at the end of it all it's probably because I'm just impatient. So I give up. Rant over thanks for reading

Wow guys this one’s a doozy. For context the group I’m playing with are all lifelong friends of my gf (23f) who is the DM.

About 3 months ago my gf asked me (19m) to play DnD with her and her friends to help show them how mature I was (for the 1/2 year we’ve been together they’ve been messing with her calling her a cradle robber, etc.) and kinda treating me like a little kid who wandered to the adult table. This becomes more and more ironic as the game progresses.

The group consisted of me and 5 others not including my gf. The poop Barbarian was a player we’ll call Abby’s (23f) little brother we’ll call Derek who was a year older than me and the only other guy at the table. I could see the red flags almost immediately when he showed up 30 min late and brought an already opened bag of Cheeto Puffs as his contribution to the potluck we had discussed over text (I brought a plate of cinnamon roles). We then read out our characters, mine was a Kobold Artificer named Zebede, the other 4 were; a ranger, monk, fighter, cleric and ofc Derek playing the Chaotic Neutral Bugbear Barbarian named Scoobs.

We began roleplaying our party meeting up on a ship, on our way for whatever reasons to an island with tons of magical artifacts. All was going well, we were meeting important npcs with info, fleshing out our characters personalities and getting into the immersive world my gf had spent almost a decade writing when all of the sudden he begins to rp his character Scoobs having stomach troubles before telling us that he was incontinent due to his low intelligence score. Initially it was kinda funny but then devolved when he began explicitly detailing the diarrhea trail his character left all over the current room we were in, that being the very no nonsense, hardcore Captain of the ship. Derek and his sister found this to be hilarious and were erupting (pun intended) with laughter until my gf asked us to roll initiative. Naturally a lvl 1 party against a pirate captain and a whole crew did not end well. Prior to this we had discussed the real life implications of our actions in game and serious game setting. Guess he didn’t get the memo… after a brutal combat and what I guess were some fudged dice rolls on the part of my gf we barely survived the encounter with the Ranger and I going down at least twice.

After this point we made some lucky rolls and managed to steer the ship to port. Due to needing a star alignment to light our path to our first artifact we were forced to forgo a long rest in favor of finding the treasure. Cut to us stumbling upon a whimsical former pirate king Lich who agrees to give us the first artifact in exchange for a battle of riddles… I watched Derek’s little eyes light up and knew we were screwed. Turning to the lich in character before any of us could stop him and said “Does a Bugbear shit in the woods?!” before proceeding to describe the absolute deluge of filth he released upon the lichs prized treasure chamber. As for what happened next I don’t think I have to tell you what happens when a lich casts power word kill on lvl 1 characters with less than half their health. Derek didn’t have any jokes to make shockingly and said “Damn” while looking confused at my gf like bro what did u think would happen?!?!?? Luckily before I or her could say anything the Cleric spoke up and asked him why he did that and told him that our character deaths were completely avoidable and all his fault. Derek did not like this and began using his ADHD and social anxiety as an excuse for his behavior before implying that maybe if our cleric had done more healing we wouldn’t all be dead?? Suffice to say the night was cut short and my gf’s feelings were pretty hurt. About an hour later Derek sent a huge text to chat apologizing and saying he would do better next time and that him and his sister still really wanted to play and thought my gf had made a cool adventure they wanted to play out. A few days later we got back together with new characters and Derek being himself has made it as annoying as possible. I’ve discussed ending the campaign with my GF or kicking Derek, neither of which she wants to do since Abby will take it personally and she doesn’t want to lose her friendship with their family. Lmk if you guys want any more Derek stories as this is still an ongoing issue.

This happened a few years ago now but I've decided to share it now since my ttrpg experience has been pretty great since.

It was my first ever time playing D&D, I got invited by quite literally a friend of a friend. In this specific situation, this girl, let's call her Sara, invited my best friend, I'll call her Hailey, and I to join her friend's, David, new campaign he wanted to start. The players were then be Sara, Hailey, me and this other girl who could only join us every few sessions due to her busy schedule, she's not important, and David was going to dm.

Now 2 things are important to note here:

1. This was not only Hailey and I's first time playing, but also our first ever interaction with D&D. We knew nothing about it, hadn't watched anything explaining the game, nothing, total newbie. Which the other players and the dm were aware of and okay with.

2. We live in an area that is mostly french speaking, but Hailey and I are both bilingual, so for the 20 years we've known each other we've often spoken with each other using both french and english, sometimes switching between both languages in the middle of a sentence.

back to the story

The sessions were going to happen over zoom calls since we lived in different city. In the group chat we created, David welcomed us and then immediately told us we needed to create characters. He did not tell us how to do such task but instead sent us the PDF version of the Player's handbook (which was in english btw, important for later) and said to dm him with questions if needed. Now as most of you know, the player's handbook is pretty extensive and very overwhelming to newcomers so you can imagine my best friend and I were left a little shocked with the lack of directions. We did our best and created characters we were proud of.

For our first session, session 0, Hailey came over to my place so we could do the zoom call together and maybe help each other out.

David lead us through the rest of our character creations by making us roll our stats. He would tell us which dice to roll, not explain why we were rolling it, make us tell him our number and he would tell us what to write where, in a very robotic voice, yet again never explaining what it was or why we were doing it. I tried asking him more questions but he'd brushed it off saying we'd come back to that later (we never did).

After our character sheet was filled we went right into the story. He didn't explain anything else and told us to just act and do things as our character and would get mad if we didn't answer or acted quickly enough.

Keep in mind the game was being played in french, and we were all speaking french with each other, but this process was also extremely confusing to Hailey and me since nothing was being explained to us. So everytime we got confused we'd sometimes ask questions to EACH OTHER, using our normal way of speaking, aka a mix of french and english, and that would absolutely PISS OFF the dm.

He kept saying we were in a french area therefore we should all be speaking french, and we need to stop saying things in english.

Now, I would understand (somewhat because I think it's stupid either way) it could be frustrating for him to have a foreign language spoken at his table.... if he didn't understand it himself... BUT we knew he could speak, understand and read english because the only information he sent us, the players manual, WAS IN ENGLISH. And on top of that, we never spoke to him in english ever, only to each other as it has become a habit for us.

His dming style was just him telling us what to do all the time, and his superiority complex eventually tired me out.

I lasted 3 sessions of having him reminding us every 10minutes how great french was and how lucky we were to live in a beautiful french area, and getting annoyed if words in english were said (which again... our character sheets WERE ALSO IN ENGLISH BTW)

Anyways looking back at this now, it feels so incredibly stupid and pointless. Clearly he had issues

I did not engage with D&D again for 2 years until I started watching videos and livestream of people playing ttrpgs and now I run my own homebrew ttrpgs for my friends (hailey included) and I run them in english 😌 with french or any other language comments absolutely welcomed at my table.

Hello Reddit!

Longtime reader (Less reading more listening to Critcrab and other channels, etc) first time poster.

Now before getting into this story I want to be clear my party was pretty chill about the aftermath and still like me, I'm just letting out my insecure feelings about the ordeal (I really care about my party) so for context this is a homebrew campaign based off of 3.5 D&D. I ran this campaign before with the same players a year ago it was fun, but we agreed on rebooting the campaign all at Level 1 (Now I understand that's a bit scary, but I am careful to allow my players to get away and come back stronger)

Our story features the following:

Me: The DM

Puppet Bard: Mari

Orc Monk: Michael Amoranth

Edali: NPC Companion controlled by me

William Horge: NPC Companion controlled by me

For context I run a campaign "The Legend of Tzerdian: Into the Nightmare" (Edgy I know) that's inspired by a lot of things, a setting I spent 6 years plagiarizi-I mean writing for. It's based heavily off of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild with an open world and a final boss the players must prepare to face off, but also I have some actions impact the ending of the campaign whether it be minor or entire quest-lines.

Sessions 1-3: I gave exposition which boiled down to a parasitic magical crystal disease (The Fell) has been growing over the last 20 years and most cities and towns were safe as the churches had warded them off, all except one... Shoshin Town, a run down town ran by a mayor who had to deal with the greed instilled in the guards and the anti-elf beliefs built up by his father. Then a mercenary guild contacted a wood elven duchy which granted them permission to slay and Elder Mandrake who has gone mad. The ferns of which would could the outbreak impacting the already destitute town, but the way up to the Elder Mandrake on a twin pair of mountains (The Aitan Peaks) was guarded by a bandit clan known as the Scaled Covetors and someone known as Lord of the Aitan Peaks so due to the decrease in guild members and a need for stronger warriors the guild is holding a tournament in The town of Broad Hide and that they're offering a "special reward" for those who conquer the peaks.

Each player had their own motivation whether it's to use the guild membership to travel the world hunting down criminals to better learn as Michael lived an isolated life in the Troll ridden mountain range. Mari; however, lived a horrible life in a chaotic, frantic and dangerous demi-plane ever since she was 8 years old and barely managed to escape to the Material Plane (Took her 10 years to just get out).

The first sessions had the players remain in the starting town Ghorgn Town, recruiting Edali (An anomalous wizard) and William Horge (A former mercenary and performer now fallen far from fame and now lives in destitute)

Now along the way the party had some random encounters and they earned some XP (I do half milestone half standard xp system) but not enough to get to Level 2. Which is fine I have a lot of encounters in the Town of Broadhide (Where they're going) that'll get them some XP. I even did some backstory sessions which granted reduced XP (As I didn't want them to suddenly become Lvl 2, but I still wanted an incentive to exploring their backstory) I even grant 10 XP per sentence of notes they take, but they were only 1/3rd of the way to Level 2.

They eventually stopped to a Dwarven dominated town called Ironhorn Town overruled by the Churches of Magni and Modi (The two nordic demi-gods who survived Ragnarok) and the two churches' main goal is to preserve and better understand the long forgotten pantheon of their ancestors; however, in a part of the alleyways is a thick fog (Which makes those it afflicts forget where they are and what they're doing at any moment) that cannot be dispelled by low-mid level spells which pours out of a well, known as the Well of Helheim, (Operated by the Scaled Covetors) where there's an ancient dwarven storeroom full of relics the bandits stole and sell off in an illegal underground arena and black market. But their real goal is to kill the challengers (and encourage other participants to do so) so they can take the newcomer's equipment and sell them off.

Now do note I made the arena rise in difficult and go from Level 1 battles to Level 5, and I'd allow them to rest and even lead them to one of the churches to which a Paladin named Archibald offered the party compensation if they could retrieve the items, but wanted to test them (Which boiled down to, do enough battles to acquire a minor gemstone). I mentioned how "There are rumors of some of the bandits offering to knock out travelers and let them into the well, but the bandits would be safe as they wore a mask that allowed them to breathe (I even introduced one of the bandits, but that ended in a humorous scene of the bandit misunderstanding the party's need for a cart to leave town, which the bandit mistook as them "Wanting a cart to leave the above-side of town" the party left and were on their way.

Now it's time for the meat and potatoes of the story.

Basically I built up this random boss relevant to Mari's backstory. Basically in the Circus there are ranks to being a puppet Thralls (Puppets with no sentience), Puppets (Standard puppet people), Shepards (Puppets who lure puppets in to kill them), Domain Shepards (Shepards who serve under a Duke and gain power from them) and Dukes (Rulers of the regions of the land. Sometimes these peoples can go insane from just staying in the demi-plane long enough or acquiring forbidden knowledge.

The boss was called The Mad Shepard, a Domain Shepard of a Spider-like Duchess who Mari sensed as "It seems this being is calling out across throughout the hills, drawing in for any and all nearby puppets, luckily you resist" Do note the Mad Shepard was doing this from hundreds of miles away. Now the Mad Shepard is a Cursed Encounter on my random encounter table (Basically I roll a 1d20 for difficulty for the encounter and a 1d100 for the specific encounter) and the Mad Shepard is a 1 for the difficulty, a CR 8 monster, but I allowed Mari to be able to roll survival to track down the Mad Shepard, she succeeded.

Now we agreed at the start of the game to keep her backstory well hidden and she told the party that they were "dealing with someone from her past" now she did not know the Mad Shepard personally, but she knows of it's kind. So the rest of the party obliged.

Now I gave the party three warnings while I took a break to set up the fight.

Me: "Remember you can always flee."

Me: "Are you sure you want to do this?"

Me: "Are you REALLY sure you want to do this?"

The party heard my advice and proceeded with caution, I began to play boss music from the Bloodborne Ost. Then... I read out the following block text...

[Treading along the road of cracked cobble where ruined buildings burnt to a crisp lie dormant only one point of interest lives and breathes in this desolate place, the chapel nestled in the heart of this former village. The chapel with a large rusted copper bell being struck and booming across the hills every so often with chunks of rot and filth breaking off the surface and sliding off.

The building erected onto the grounds has several walkways leading up to a central doorway in the front with a marble arch and trimmings etched into the side with broken statues of various holy figures. Broken stained glass windows reveal small short pathetic rooms with candles and urns laid out on ornate tables.

Once you and your band of adventurers enter this chapel’s secrets are laid out in front of you. The chapel beholds a long series of pews starting off with thick layers of dust covering the red velvet cushioning and the black wood frames until a certain point does the sight contort. Nude broken bodies of gender-less humanoids, cracks lining their bodies with streaks of black liquid etched into the sides, their eyes hollowed out only adorned with daggers and torn clothing. 

Then the black liquid can be seen running out of the various wounds in the glass-like corpses and running along the central pathway, unnaturally. Until the lectern is reached to which a large horrid lanky figure barely clothed only in light stained robes. Glistening silvery strings suspending them from the ceiling with a blindfold wrapped around their head. Then the humanoid makes a loud creaking sound before shaking and jerking violently until they come crashing down onto the floor.]

Now I want to say my players did great for the battle, but some things I must mention.

1. The Mad Shepard has 45 HP.

2. It had class levels, it was a Level 6 Wizard.

3. It had four feats.

Heighten Spell: Able to cast spells at a higher level.

Silent Spell: A spell can be cast without verbal components.

Still Spell: A spell can be cast without somatic components.

Swift Spell: The first spell cast is treated as a swift action thus allowing (three one action spells to be cast in one round).

4. It had a magic item, a quarterstaff "The Lamb's Cane" which would allow the user to cast Lvl 1 Sleep without the cost of a spell slot.

5. While the boss had dangerous spells like Sound Lance, Blindness and Hold Person I had it's strategy use spells at random even the least optimal ones as IT WAS INSANE.

6. It would taunt Mari through telepathy (Her player enjoyed it toying with her)

7. The Mad Shepard had a unique ability, basically it wasn't alone six Chime Maidens which were defenseless weak puppets that channel their will through the chimes of the Mad Shepard to give him full damage immunity, which would reduce per Chime Maiden slain (When you land a hit on the Mad Shepard it would outline and point out the closest Chime Maiden).

Round 1: The party's attacks didn't land on the Mad Shepard and he even resisted a Flare spell from Mari. The Mad Shepard climb along the ceiling in range of the party.

Round 2: Michael landed a critical, and while it didn't deal damage it ricocheted off the wall and instantly killed one of the Chime Maidens reducing the damage resist by 1/6th.

Round 3: Edali casted a Fireball on a thrall, it went wild (Due to weird gimmick shit) a coffin appeared, but did nothing he casted a second and killed the thrall. The Mad Shepard being able to cast three spells per turn (Thanks to swift spell) he attempted to blind Mari (She beat the save using an inspiration), attempted to cast Sleep on Michael (Who resisted) but then it casted one last... spell...

The MAD SHEPARD casts Sound Lance and targets Michael

Sound Lance in 3.5 is proportionate to caster level, so it deals 6D8 SOUND damage or 6-48 Sound damage, it dealt 15 damage reducing Michael's hp to -15/9, he used 7 inspiration rolls out of 23 to take half damage... I offered my once per campaign deal. He could've revived his character but if he died or any other character of his died, they wouldn't get another chance. He didn't take it.

The rest of the round consisted of William Horge, Mari and Edali fleeing taking Michael's body with them...

His last words were... "I never... got to do... what I sought..."

After the session everyone was happy with the session I made sure to ask if they felt it was fair and they said it wasn't...

Or rather it wasn't fair to Michael as Mari had led them to his doom (I was a bit scared I did something wrong) and ever since we have been preparing for our next session. Hopefully whoever finds this has a brighter day, and enjoyed the stupidity of our group.

Oh... and the best part of all of this... This was the first combat of the campaign...

This is Essbee signing off!

A friend and I were invited into an ongoing campaign by a mutual friend of ours and we were all super excited to play together. We created a pair of Bard and Rogue siblings who had survived on the streets together after escaping the Faewild when we were teenagers.

The other members of the party were a Ranger, they used to play a Cleric but were using this temporary character when we joined, and a Sorceror, who had devoured the soul of the Cleric's God before we had joined the campaign. As a result of this the Sorceror had a Charisma stat of 24, we were all playing Lv. 8 characters, and the Cleric had left the party as they were understandly quite pissed off. How this whole scenario went down or why the DM had allowed this to happen is beyond me.

The session started off with a lot of Stronghold administration, which quite frankly is not my idea of a good time. The Sorceror used this opportunity to order the rest of us around, "Go get this, we need that, as per my last raven." It all just felt like a weird power trip for him. The DM just let this all happen because, I mean, the Sorceror "did have a 24 Charisma stat."

Eventually we got down to the business of adventuring. We had two questlines available to us, rescue a captured NPC or explore a dungeon in search of information about a long running questline. We decided that saving the NPC was the more pertinent quest and then out of nowhere the Sorceror proclaimed that actually we were going to explore the dungeon. No discussion, this is what we were doing and we had no choice in the matter.

Again the DM didn't step in at any point and honestly neither my friend nor I were really that bothered. We were both on the same page that this was going to be our first and last session with this party. After a long, drawn out combat the Sorceror took the opportunity to invite us into the party because we both seemed very useful. How kind of him. My friend and I gave him a curt, "We'll get back to you," and promptly left.

Honestly the Sorceror's behaviour was one thing but the fact that the DM just went along with his behaviour was just baffling.

So I play Dnd at a local game shop that is kind of shitty. Not that the store itself is bad but the element is. I can’t tell you how many murderhobos, rapehobos, and general shitty players I deal with. But its the only game shop in the area so I just kind of bounce from games or kick people when things get too fucked up. That and I kind of have built up a tolerance.

But this one guy takes the fucking cake. We were playing a campaign years ago. I was a dragonborn druid, “that guy” was a tiefling barbarian, and our DM (paid DM) was running a dark souls/elden ring esque campaign but with more roleplay. Like we lived in a castle with a lord who would send us on missions to help the battered towns in the area from the various monsters, demons, and magic wielding warlords that would ravage them.

“That guy” was not the sharpest tool in the shed. He was constantly assuming NPCs were out to get him or secret spies or whatever and would kill them or mouth off or accidentally reveal secrets and fuck up our mission. And potential allies in this campaign were in short supply so his behavior often isolated us.

He also argued with the DM alot and accused him of trying to kill the party or railroad us because encounters were tough. He also got mad when DM stopped him from raping a dying NPC who tried to assassinate the party. He said “Oh he can kill us but I can’t give him a taste of his own medicine” and “I am paying for this game so why do you keep trying to control my actions!” This led to another back and forth about railroading.

The final straw was when he died after a particularly brutal confrontation with a particularly nasty undead spellcasting warlord character who we had heard horror stories about. The rest of us fled after he died and he began summoning backup in a fight we were already losing. 

He was LIVID! He accused the DM of targeted harassment and being unfair and the DM just told him he could roll a new character and that death was a part of dnd.

Then the guy said “I am paying you 20 bucks a fucking session just for it to be all for nothing?!?! Fuck no—I want my money back?” DM refused and the guy kept yelling so DM offered him a refund on this session and he could bow out of the campaign but he said “No I want my entire campaign’s worth of money back!”

DM looked at him like he’s crazy and said “You paid for hundreds of dollars worth of sessions and used them. Hell no you ain’t getting that back.” And the guy just said “Well you basically ripped me off! Its called false advertising and fraud!” 

This went back and forth until he said “Fine! I’m gonna tell the store owner” and the store owner who has seen him play multiple sessions with DM just laughed in his face so he said “Ok DM—lets see how you like losing everything. You’ll be hearing from my lawyer!”

He then stormed out and we never heard from him or any lawyer ever.

I left this one person's rp group. They weren't being a total jerk. Let me list some of the shitty things they did (in roleplays), and after that state my reasoning why I left their group.

-First off, I have this oc who's aroace- Scott. But they wanted to me to change that so they could make him a gf

-Secondly, there's this other oc who I always had shipped with theirs. They got upset that he was supposed to die at the end of the roleplay I made him for. Also they got upset that I made him in a different rp group to ship with someone else's oc. They held a grudge for months afterwards. They also got mad that I made him to be that specific roleplay's villain.

-They didn't join another roleplay group i planned to make because this third oc of mine was supposed to have a canon gf in it, but they wanted to make him said gf.

Those are some of the things they did that rubbed me the wrong way. Now for why I left the rp:

-I felt like I was being treated unfairly. The person + the other admin weren't giving anyone else's characters The spotlight, instead focusing everything onto themselves, which really rubbed me the wrong way, so I left it. One of my other friends who was in the rp did a bit of snooping around after I left, and they didn't even both to notify everyone that me and a few others left. In his words, he said: "It's giving 'I don't want to know that I made people upset'."

This has been on my mind lately as the absolute worst PbP experience I’ve had of D&D. I want to share it this.

I’m going to try to shorten this out the best I can because it was a lot of information. I’ll do my best to answer questions.

So, I made a genie warlock half drow. I displayed underdark culture as well as genie stuff with mannerisms, way of speech, and cultural norms. I never insulted anyone. For clarification, I referred to myself in character as “this one” over saying “me” or “I” only sometimes changing it up, deferred to all lady characters for their opinions over mine, and didn’t regard those who couldn’t fend for themselves very highly if they had character classes. For example, if the fighter was afraid, I’d wave my own hand to dismiss said fear and walk in front of the party. Those who refused to train, I would display disgust. One character I said wouldn’t last a day in Menzoberranzan. They called me sexist and would refer to me like that out of character.

However, I did question other characters when something didn’t sound right, notably a map maker NPC. Walking with a clique of characters who always responded on the same time of the server, they felt tentative to have me around because the death cleric did not like my spellcasting. I summoned familiars and creatures to fight for my character, which the death cleric with a skeleton raised called having said summons was slavery. Pointing out the animated dead, saying that they needed to recast or it would become hostile is different from summoning because mine can be dismissed, stopped concentration on, or gone after 1 hour. They did not like that (person is nonbinary) and started telling their friend group I cannot be trusted.

However, one person saw value. The necromancer girlfriend of said death cleric. My warlock was to help them fend off a vampire lord. So we needed information on the land. The map maker was an NPC. They said they saw making maps an art form because maps are never true, only the interpretation of the map maker. So I laughed and asked if all the maps were fiction. She said they were not doodles. I had to ask if we needed an interpreter for a map we were given that we would not understand, because we weren’t cartographers, what use was the map to us? The map maker said to hire them to interpret the map. I had to ask if she made the maps. She said she did. How much? 15 gold for the maps, 10 gold to have her per day. So I pointed out that the maps, that she made, needed a cartographer to decipher her interpretation, and that she was the only cartographer in the city, was a racket. I still bought the maps because maybe I could compare them.

I left the store. The other players were falling over themselves to apologize to the NPC, who acted emotionally hurt. I became the bad guy because I ruined their friendship with the map maker. They came to me and said I could no longer help them with their quest.

It became unbearable with all the gossip and cold shoulders so I said I was walking to the next town. They said I’d die out there. I ignored their warnings knowing I could defend myself, unlike the group that woke up together, ate together and went everywhere together. They never even had a different opinion among themselves. I managed to walk to the next town plagued by bandits without incident. I volunteered to find and fight said bandits, feeling exiled from the starting town.

They got a new friend: a rogue. However, this rogue was skittish of undead, and after a few encounters with NPC’s that did not go well, her attempt to attack another PC because of how much they called him a threat due to previous interactions, and the skeleton butler was the straw that broke the camels back. The rogue even felt like they had to apologize to them the manipulation was so strong. But they went into hiding, which, eventually, they were attacked and kidnapped by bandits!

My character managed to get a whole team together to locate and fight the bandits. We were making money deals buying potions, planning, I learned the map I had was missing 60% of authentic information which I began to make my own corrections on it other players were filling in. I liked the change of the new town. I even gave a motivation speech how we would loot the bandits to fund our shops in this place.

So we gathered allies. A grave cleric of Kelemvor came from the first town also rejected by the necro team (which included a tiefling sorceress) joined us. So we left to find traces of activity, and fight to loot them.

Little did I know that the team of friends and lovers had access to high level mages (PC’s of staff) who could use Scry, and scried on their missing friend. Somehow they learned she was out in the desert.

The same desert to the same bandits we were marching towards.

They picked up the guy who was a threat to them, because, as a HexClock, he could pwn their whole team if they fought him (he happened to be my characters friend when he learned we were both making scrolls of Counterspell).

Our encounters: 3 large cactus enemies with 15 foot necro damage max HP draining grapple effects with explosive spines when at half HP with explosive deaths followed by 5 scorpions. Then a pair of statues at the temple site which attacked in advantage, all our attacks at disadvantage, who could teleport all over the field. Also a quicksand trap with a Strength check 15 to escape. We couldn’t succeed, not even with the help action, but as soon as the cleric grappled my character to move them from the quicksand, the DM called shenanigans and ended the trap.

Their encounters: 5 gnolls. 3 were weak, 2 had enough HP to survive at least 3 attacks while each one of that group was over level 5.

Our gold: nothing

Their gold: 1500 each and magic items

With no investigation result high enough to decipher the quicksand trap, my only idea was that there had to be another level on the other side to open it and I would cast Summon Undead to bring the Ghostly Spirit to go through the door and open the lever.

The second group finds us (after traveling through the corpses we left behind), and the HexClock gave my Genielock the Arnold/Withers hand shake with arm flex, I ask why was he here. We learn about the friend they scared off who got captured for being alone.

Oh, my replacement against the vampire lord. Nice.

I joke about how the HexClock’s back must be hurting for carrying the team out into the desert. He said that it didn’t hurt cause all of them were light weights. They didn’t say anything.

So after I refused to open the door for them, and said they could beat it, that we’ll save my replacement—I mean their friend, and we’ll send them on their way, the lady necromancer finally apologized for the shunning, and the slander. She also apologized to the Grave cleric with us, who was pivotal in getting here and fighting creatures. Seeing as how it was okay for all parties present, I summoned the Ghostly Spirit, pulled the lever on the door, and the temple doors opened (later it was said that the DM only allowed that because everyone was waiting on it, not that it was the way inside. None of us figured out the puzzle.)

When we’re in, we fight 7 special giant scorpions who ambush us and team friendship is freaking out. For our group, it’s business as usual (first time?). Pairing up in strategies we save the sorc tiefling who flies out of scorpion claws with repelling blast (she thought fighting them in melee was a good idea because fancy sword), the wizard lady, the death cleric who began to worry cause low HP. It was the hardest fight of their life. For us, it was Tuesday! The cheese grater mechanic ate 4 of the 7 up, and the rest was mopped up by the Hex and everyone’s random attacks with fireballs.

We battle around 12 bandits later, and finally find the friend. We take the gold, even bathe, and we finally have a short rest for the first time (team friendship had 2 long rests before getting here but DM didn’t want us to get to friend before they did).

When we learn that the bandit leader is behind a pair of double doors and a super trap that did a lot of fire damage, we made a plan with Team Friendship: let’s kill the bandit captain together. They slowly agreed.

But the Grave Cleric, OOC, said that the amount of favoritism team friendship had been getting was unfair and unbalanced to the DM and the DM canceled the quest, and sped it to the end because “I’ve grown uncomfortable with the inner conflict”. (I suspect he didn’t want the fatal trap to hit Team Friendship).

Our characters left, on much better terms (or so I thought; they were just paying lip service later on when they were describing how much of an asshole I was). This whole quest took 1 IRL month. I physically aged as combat was 1 round a day for each encounter because the DM was attending the other team. Worst quest I ever played.

I no longer play on that server. In fact, I play on a different server that had the same concept as that one but did it x5 better. I enjoy my time where I’m wanted now.

Addendum: Team Friendship also got 2000 more exp than us individually despite our encounters being significantly more deadlier than theirs, with higher CR’s and ambush tactics where they had first surprise rounds for spontaneous ground eruptions with no perception check allowed to detect them. Team Friendship was higher level than ours when they returned.

Just remembered: I forgot to add that the HexClock was the danger that the rogue decided to attack which was part of the reason she ran away.

Before I can get to the Tea, I do need to add some context. I'm a forever DM for many of my groups and not an actief poster. But I need help if I'm crazy or actule being gaslight. So this post not just for Tea, but also for my mental sanity.

I joined a group through a public post as a player for the new group. Their playing 3.5e and I mostly played Pathfinder 1e, which should be very similar. But here already the first redflag's showed, since the way they did initiative was a whole world apart from what I have played. Because they said there is a declare phase before you can act. after the session I pick up my book and try to find this imaginary phase that didn't exist and confroted them. This is when the gaslighting started and most problematic player showed his face, he stated that has alway's been how initiative since AD&D. This was a lie and i called him out on it, while this wasn't the only rule i called him out on. But they are minor in comparison and not the main story.

Suddenly the OG DM(original DM) had to take a back seat because of work. Someone else had to DM and I didn't trust the other player to DM, since he just started to gaslight me. I took it upon myself to DM again and choose for pathfinder 1e with mile-stones as Exp. This is where my pesonal hell started with this group and I realised that is should have run after the first redflag.

now the gaslight went next level, when i got a character sheet with backstory in a sheet that i haven't seen before. the sheet had many that made it clear it wasn't an official sheet, while it still had the official brand mark on it of pathfinder society. he used a custom editor to make his own sheet because it didnt have the thing he wanted in his sheet, like a table for dealing more damage to larger enemy's. again he said this been always been the case since AD&D including 3.5e. Again lying to me, since youre damage is based on your size and not the enemy's size.

I also had to shoot down his backstory, since he wanted to be an adopted ratfolk noble in a human kingdom. Something I don't do is give a title's to player in their backstory, even if you lose it in their backstory. But he didn't wanted to be a rich merchant or an aristrocrat, then followed with that i'm not coming up with solutions. Which is unfair to shoot things down before I can bring them up, then proceeds to call mee unamendable for not listening to OG DM request for normal Exp method. This was never ask, what was ask is "what is mile-stone and how does it work".

The problematic player then convinces me to play a custom race via the advanced race guid, which i normaly never allow as well. I then received the most insane request ever with 4 stat bonus(three +2 and one +4) and no downsides. This supposedly was the Changeling from Eberron and it clearly wasn't. After I again called him out on it, I then had to confront him on his backstory. Claiming he is a writer by heart and delivering a 2 page backstory within a few a hour's, which again read like he wanted to be the DM himself. When I confronted him, he said that i can't read. This is the point it broke me and I yelled "I'm done and I quite".

Now I feel broken and wondering if I'm crazy, asking help online to find my sanity.

THX for reading my story.

The unmentioned tragedies wrought by Hurricane Helene…

So I play a 5e campaign and I played a wizard, fighter, and now a cleric

And when I Announced I was playing a wizard (divination) He groaned and I asked if I shouldn't play him but he Said it was fine

But after I took the lucky feet (yes I'm a power building gremlin) He looked sad a little but in the next tavern when we were drunk, a assassin Buried a dagger into my level 3 character and I was dead

After that I Decided a play a Cavalier fighter and protected the Squishy spell casters and that allowed the barbarian to go ham instead of protecting them

But my dm was getting mad at my constant thwarting of the sneaky enemy's and low and behold the next fight we had, I fell into a vally and separated from my party a troll killed my level 5 character because I was already low hp

And now I play a grave domain cleric which took the barbarians high damage and doubled the damage (for one attack at least)

but I'm starting to think that the 3 assassin's that where in the tavern were supposed to kill me but did not after a cluch level 6 fire ball from the wizard brought them down low Enough for us to take them down

Now I know that the dm is targeting me but it might be my fault because as i Previously said I'm a power gaming gremlin and my characters might have been to strong and the deaths might have been Necessary for us to stop steam rolling the encounters

TL/DR - adversarial DM, who actively played against certain players if you weren’t playing D&D “the right way” really sucked the fun out and I dropped. I understand the campaign folded shortly after.

The Long version: Princes of the Apocalypse campaign. I joined a year or so in. A female Goliath fighter (it’s relevant the player was mid-20s and the only female) the rest males - a human cleric, a warlock / bard, an elf arcane archer, and me, a tiefling rogue. I joined a year or so into the campaign. DM was male, mid-40’s.

DM made it clear pretty quickly he didn’t think a woman should be playing a fighter, and was constantly finding ways to target the Goliath. Her breaking point was after he RP’d her walk-of-shame the morning after a tavern encounter- thankfully he didn’t RP the encounter itself, just the morning after, but none of this was with the player’s consent. I almost left at that point, but let myself get talked into staying so the campaign wouldn’t fold.

After the Goliath left, it was my turn. DM decided to really lean into the whole “everyone is racist against tieflings” trope, to the point where I confronted him out of game and told him if he wanted me murder-hobo’ing every NPC that crossed our paths, say the word, in which case I’m out, because that doesn’t interest me. He insisted he’s not racist, because he has friends of color (I wish I was making that up), and again, I let myself get talked into staying. To be fair, the racism stopped, but the fun had gone out of the character, so I killed him off and replaced him.

We got down into the underground temple complex. Two things quickly became apparent- the DM had a soft spot for the warlock, who somehow hit all his attacks and made all his saves, and he treated treasure like it was coming out of his own pocket. My final straw was, after clearing out 2 of the 4 temples, we headed back to the surface to recover. There was a small army gathered for no discernible purpose who agreed to heal and resupply us, for a 300% markup on standard gear prices, because inflation.

It was so petty and so ridiculous, I RP’d my character telling the others he had not seen one single reason in the last however long it had been to care about the people of the Dessarin Valley, and he was done bleeding for them. Then he rode off. I eventually heard the campaign just faded out after that.

I joined one of those DnD discord servers where you make a character to get approved to do quests. DMs create one-shot quests that are all set in the same world, and users can apply to join them. I'd rather join a full-on campaign, but I couldn't find any that fit my schedule, so this would have to do.

Someone posted a quest where you had to escort merchants to deliver a mysterious package, and I thought that was pretty interesting, so I joined.

This was the very first quest I joined. The quest was PBP instead of voice chat. The quest was scheduled to go on for four hours. It started with the usual tavern setting, we introduced our characters and all that, but it nearly took like two hours to actually leave the tavern because the DM was eager to teach the new guys how to play DnD, and went on a bunch of tangents to show how to play. That's not where the issues lied, however.

On the two hour mark, the DM announced a "5+ minute break" after we leave the tavern. Alright, cool, I thought, this won't take that long.

I was patiently waiting for the DM to announce the end of the break, but it never came. About 15 or so minutes after the break started, someone in our party asked when we start playing again. DM said they are making food, so it would be another half hour to finish and eat. At that point, I figured the break was gonna take long, so I decided to make food for myself as well.

I brought my phone up to the kitchen with me just in case the break ended before I finished, but I managed to cook a whole pot of alfredo and eat it before the end of the break. I casually mentioned it in the chat as a playful jab at the DM for taking so long, and they said they were making stews and rice. I don't cook much, but that sounds like it takes ages to make for what's supposed to be a short break.

Remember, their words were "5+ minutes", which is technically true, but incredibly misleading.

At this point, we're starting to get antsy to play again. This was my first quest, so I was trying to be patient and respectful. One player, who I'll call Gary, says we should start playing again, saying it's ok to go slow as long as we at least start. DM says "I can't, I'm with my mom, and she's ill." Keep in mind, they did not bring up their mother AT ALL until now. Like, I'm sorry about your mom, but bringing this up now makes it feel like you're guilt tripping us. So, everyone pretty much said "alright, I understand, I guess" and continued waiting.

It got to the point where another player, Greg, can't stay. So, the DM offers to repost the quest the next day at the same time and give priority to everyone who was in this quest. So, come next day, when it's time to do the quest, we find out that THE DM IS ALREADY DOING ANOTHER ONE WITH ANOTHER PARTY, AND WON'T BE DONE FOR ANOTHER FOUR HOURS.

After that, I just told them not to ping me. I didn't want to play that quest anymore, and everyone else either did the same or just couldn't make it. Later, an argument broke out between the DM, Gary, and Greg. I don't remember the specifics of the argument since DM deleted the quest post, likely to cover his behind, but it boiled down to Gary and Greg telling them off for disrespecting our time like that, and DM pretty much admitting that they did not care.

As I was writing this post, I went back to search for messages on Discord, come to find out that the DM is no longer in the server. My guess is they were kicked or banned by an admin for screwing up like this and trying to brush it under the rug.

TLDR: DM disrespected our time by dragging a 5 minute break into a rescheduling of the whole campaign and gave zero heads-up for why they were going to take so long until someone asked why.

Mandative "non native speaker, so sorry for bad grammar"

This one is a short and light one, I've remembered this some days ago, even if I don't have all the details let's get into it.

In the middle of the pandemic I've joined a discord game of dnd, I don't recall if it was DM'S own take on Greek mythology or Odyssey of Theroa or something. I've intended to play a Satyr lore bard, someone who wanted to finde the new epic heroes of the time and write their histories, and leave a heroic legacy. In the session zero, the DM told me all satyrs are always horny and love have sex above everything, "and you're a bard even? Hehehe guess I'll have to keep a eye in you around the female npcs hehe". I've just wanted to be light hearted support character but the DM insisted that I had to be a sex freak. Eventually I don't know if I left the server before the first session or if the game frizzled out, but yeah that happened.