So, I’m (39/F) running a D&D group that’s been playing most of this year. My wife, a married couple she is friends with the wife of, and a married couple I’m friends with through the wife. We’ve been getting along well, it’s been nice. Twice a month every other weekend pretty regularly with a fun potluck addition to the whole thing. With rotating hosting duties. We’re all in the same age range.

Last session they died, which I warned them at the beginning about death and having backup characters as everyone was generally new to D&D. The couple I’m friends with (Barbarian = husband, Cleric = wife) have been seriously mad at me for the past week and it’s been a dumb kind of drama.

So, the story:

They cleared the way to the dungeon’s vault and decided to talk their way past the two minions tasked with clearing the way. They did great to get by them, but were warned no one was to enter the vault before their master. They convinced the minions it was fine and went in to loot the place. The minions did what good minions do who are left alive, and went to report the way was clear to their boss.

So their first Mindflayer shows up at the door of the vault as they’re dividing up their loot. Queue shocked face.

Now normally this pack of plucky adventurers manages to kill anything I throw at them. Even when I’m worried for their survival. So I wasn’t worried this time at all. It was 1 Mindflayer against 5 players including a barbarian with an axe specifically designed to murder Mindflayers.

Except he never got a hit in. And the Mindflayer rolled beautifully. And they all ended up downed with the Barbarian straight up killed by brain extraction. The Mindflayer had 10 health left. The remaining Druid and Ranger have this surely. Except the Druid misses. Then the Ranger misses both her shots. Mind you, the Ranger is my wife and I have definitely helped her build this character up. She has at least +11 to hit. She never misses. Except this time.

And that was it, everyone down. Fuck! Okay, I’ll have to figure out how to get them out of this next session so I guess we end here.

My original plan was for this section if they get downed, the thing that makes narrative sense is they end up mindflayers, the bad guys have all the mcguffins and effectively win. So I’d have them play as mindflayers attacking the town to see if the NPCs could win or not against them. Then they’d roll new characters dealing with the rise of this new Illithid Empire and trying to fix what their old characters couldn’t prevent. Fun hook, a chance to be villains for a change for the two players who are more chaotic, and a chance to explore new classes and characters.

Except! The Barbarian looks like I kicked his puppy off a cliff for the rest of the session. And the Cleric is straight up mad at me. During one turn she wants to shove a bead of force into a hole she left in the Mindflayer except she didn’t and I’m being technical and I’m going to suggest that shoving it in its mouth would be pretty fucking cool except she snaps angrily at me about it and is like whatever fine I do this. So I’m a little thrown back by the anger directed at me. And confused.

After the session she is pretending I don’t exist and obviously mad. The other couple, the wife (Sorcerer) and husband (Druid) are both like hey don’t feel bad! We knew we could die, because I am obviously feeling bad that they died. It wasn’t my plan but it made sense in the moment with how things went. It didn’t feel like a moment to pull my punches. There were definitely moments of seeing my rolls and being like “I know what I have to do but I don’t know if I have the strength” but yeah I totally did.

We leave for the night, my wife isn’t sure if the cleric was mad at me. I’m like I’m probably just reading her wrong.

I check in the next day, the cleric says she still wants to be my friend but she needs time to process.

Seeing they were upset I think maybe I should change my mindflayer doom ending plan and come up with a narrative way to bring them back from this death. Easy enough, I got a plan. I ask the barbarian how he wants to be revived: true resurrection or possibly reincarnation instead. He doesn’t reply.

A couple of days later he replies with an ultimatum that he doesn’t want to keep playing without his character. Either I reverse the TPK or I start a new campaign so he can play the same character, whatever works for everyone. Otherwise he doesn’t want to continue playing.

I think on this.

I decide to tell him that I’m definitely not starting a new campaign because a character died. That’s right out. But I’d already asked him about coming back, and I shared that I had a narrative plan for people being able to bring back their characters but first playing new characters to accomplish this. He doesn’t respond.

The wife calls me 4 days after the session to talk at me for 30 minutes about how she was very mad at me. I was very cold and unkind when I killed their characters and after the session. I pointed out that maybe she saw it through that lens, but I was feeling pretty bad on the inside but trying to continue the fight, be respectful to their deaths, and do so in a meaningful way for the narrative aspect. She told me I care about the dice and randomness of things and stats the most in D&D and that she cares about narrative, not me.

Let me tell you how much I love people telling me what I’m feeling, what is important to me, etc. It’s zero percent. It’s a good way to make me lose respect for you.

And yes, the girl who returned to school for film and is focusing on writing cares nothing about narrative.

So she tells me she had enough tragedy in her work life and real life and doesn’t need it in her entertainment. Fun aside: my wife blurted out “our d&d characters dying is not a tragedy” when I shared that with her.

Of course this is the cleric who a couple of sessions back was visibly upset when her character got downed for the first time. The session continued for an hour and she still left in a shitty mood. Everyone else was up, she got healed up before she made her second death saving throw. It was fine.

Anyway, she ends the call with it feeling pretty clear she’s done with D&D. I imagine the barbarian is too, I mean hey the ultimatum that I’m not choosing option A or B for.

The Sorcerer’s brother has moved in with them and has been wanting to play. Great, we can add him to their spot and maybe someone else.

Except they message me Saturday to say they are going to stay in the campaign and “play more superficially” and “attempt to move forward with your new direction” whatever the hell those two passive aggressive things mean. Yay, you’re staying. I’m so excited.

Don’t get me wrong, I believe in second chances. But now I’ve lost respect for both of you over how you’ve turned this into a weeklong drama. I never thought they’d react or behave this way. I don’t know if it’s just going to be super awkward and not work out or if we can move past this and still enjoy the game with them.

I’ll give it a shot of course. I’m lowkey dreading our next session though and that’s not fun.

But I’ve decided I’m not going to second guess my plans for the campaign or my choices just because I’m afraid I’ll make them mad again. Maybe I am not the DM for them, and that’ll be fine.

Meanwhile, since the Sorcerer’s brother can only play at their house because of his son, I’ll be starting a second campaign that I’m pretty excited about to include the Sorcerer, Druid, Brother, and my wife the Ranger. So… backup campaign?

Oh, maybe you’re wondering my plans for next session: well they hand delivered the mcguffins to the villains. So they get to fight their old characters who are now newborn mindflayers as the town transforms around them. I know the rest of the group will enjoy it, not sure about the Barb and Cleric.

I have dropped out of exactly ONE D&D game in my 23 years of playing and this is that story.

It was 2008 and I'd been playing often with my friend Andrew. Several times he talked about his main campaign that he ran for 4 of his high school friends and how much fun they had. Intrigued, I asked to join and was invited in.

At this point they'd been playing for a year and were level 12. I opted to play a Ranger/Scout and since we were starting at high level I asked what magic items I could have. Andrew said I could have a single +1 weapon and one other minor magic item, so I picked a +1 longbow and a magical quiver. This seemed odd but figured it must be a low magic campaign.

I show up to the first session and everything seems fine at first. We introduce my character and engage in some light roleplay. Then I learned that two of the players still had their original characters (the Cleric and the Wizard), while the other two had gone through several throughout the campaign. Nothing odd there necessarily, but then I learned that the Wizard and Cleric had used this as an opportunity to horde all the dead characters' magic items as well as all the relevant plot hooks.

Since the DM didn't like characters starting with magic items, this meant that Cleric and Wizard had tons of magic items between the two of them while the rest of us had a smattering of +1 weapons and trinkets. Also, because Cleric and Wizard had the only relevant plot hooks, it meant that rest of us were apparently unimportant. Any course of action I suggested that they didn't like was met with, "We don't know you so you can just leave if you don't like it." This applied not only to me, but the other two players as well. Through all of this, Andrew kept completely silent and seemed content to let it play out.

After the first session I listened to the other players complain about the situation for over an hour after Wizard and Cleric left. I agreed to attempt some pushback and they would back me up. This was all done in the presence of Andrew, who seemed to understand the situation. When I attempted to follow through with the plan, the other players and the DM simply watched it happen, nothing was done, and we continued on with the Wizard and Cleric show after being told once again that my character could "just leave" if I didn't like their decisions. I was dumbfounded.

The last straw was when we finally got into our first dungeon as a party. During the 2nd combat I rolled a Nat 1 on an attack so Andrew says my bowstring has broken. Okay, critical fails are a shitty house rule but whatever, I can finish the fight with javelins and restring my bow after the fight. We cleaned up the remaining enemies and I told the DM I was going to restring my bow. This is when he decided to tell me that I couldn't restring my bow because it's a magic bow and therefore requires a magic bowstring.

I argued that a magic bowstring probably shouldn't be able to break then, but I was told that I rolled a Nat 1, so that's what happened. I complained that I was an archer and he had just taken away one of the only 2 magic items he gave me; he didn't care and everyone seemed to think it was funny.

I tried to carry on but after that I was done and exited from the game. It just goes to show how group dynamics can be so different from one table to the next. In all our other games Andrew had been very fun and reasonable, but around his high school friends it was a different story.

Alrighty this is my horror story. FIgured its a bit of a rant and sort of a question if i overreacted.

Be me first time DND person I joined a group online. did an interview with the DM seemed interesting. the game was about a continet where humans were just starting to get a foothold.

I Made a character Half Human fighter noble background. Long backstory short. My character was wanted because he stole his family sword. an elven blade after his father was going to use him as a sacrifice to do a ritual. i ran away narked on my shitty family and the humans who were mighty interested in giant evil ritual offered my character a one way trip out of my homelands and to "safety".

Be not me the three stooges. our Rogue Lucus, Our Cleric Dwargen Steelguard. and the worst of them Lilliana high elf wizard

Now Rogue and Cleric were tripping over themselves to simp for the Wizard likely because she was a girl but i digress they mainly were "yes men" in this whole clusterfk.

Now session one and two were rather simple. we got to the continent and fought some basic monsters for the new human government. We got tasked with going to visit the dwarves that live near the humans landing zone with a diplomat as a show of good faith to new neighbors. This is where the poo hit the fan for me. as a throw away the DM mentioned i saw a wanted poster with my face and name on it. i walked over and took it down and ripped it up. Wizard who wasnt even in the same party of the city Metagamed it and asked me about it later. In character my character was asked to roll charisma agenst her Int/wisdom dont remember which to see if i can explain away what was bothering me. I roll bad she doesnt. i mention it was something form my past and was nothing to worry about.. Wizard girl doesnt let up and casts Charm person on me. and because i wasnt expecting it i was told to roll at disadvantage. i got a 18 and a Nat 1... DM ruled that because i was charmed by her i had to do as she told me. She demanded to know what was on the paper Charm forced me to answer so i did. said i was a wanted man by an elven nobility. hearing this the wizard decided to strip me of my weapons and chain me up all while i was under charm to turn me in for the gold. So i get dragged away from all of the stuff and put in there room chained gaged and bsically everything to keep me prisoner.

. For two Entire sessions i was under the effects of charm. meaning i wasnt alloed to talk unless i was told to. do anyhting and even in combat i wasnt allowed to roll dice or chose my targets to hit. At one point i left the call to go to the bathroom and came back 4 hours later with them still playing and my character still not being in my controle. i get a bit of time durning rests between casts to try and convince people to stop her mind control but it doenst work. so there i sat for Two 2-3 hour sessions unable to really play. I asked the DM if i was wanted at the table, i asked for him to talk to the Wizard character no dice. i told him that if this continues next time she loses concentration my character might run or attack the party.

finally came to a head after Wizard girl used mind controlled fighter (my old character) as a bargeing chip with bandits. needless to say the bandits didnt honor there word and attacked the party. Wizard got hit lost concentration and i got control of my character back Wizard dint servive that fight and i ran after it leaving the game after the argument about me being a backstabbing troll. So yeah mostly venting half "how muchof an ahole was i?" thing.

(edit a bit more info on the whole left for 4 hours bit) Well ibe gotten called AI and a fake so i figured i would give a bit more into on that part of the story because people question how it happen. I left to go to the bathroom and made dinner. i was home alone on a weekend and what stands out to me on that day wasnt the DND game but Playing video games with a buddy of mine i think it was the conane exiles game but idk anymore this was years ago. so forgive my unreliable narration. i left at basically the start of the session and totally forgot i was on the skype/discord call until i was turning my computer off for the evening hope that clears a few things up.

So just to say thanks to crispys tavern, den of the drake and crit crab you're horror stories help me to see what not to do as a forever dm I run 16 groups a week usually 8 people in the group I was even in the local paper for it with a group going at the time of the pic taken . Just wanted to really thank the YouTube guys for helping along the way I really needed the help and glad I got it

I had fun in the early part of a recent campaign, and I'm grateful to our GM, but overall this one went poorly in a memorable way. We were playing "Godbound", whose premise is that you're granted divine power and get to radically reshape the world. A level 1 PC can likely pummel 3 generic bandits without using any powers, and can easily start as an experienced mage, mystic martial artist, wielder of a mighty artifact, &c. To gain levels you need to change the world by spending earned Dominion points. Dominion can do things like "train the peasants as soldiers/engineers/mages", "turn people into werewolves with no drawbacks", and "create permanent ideal weather over this region".

We began play in a land called the Bleak Reach, and we weren't Godbound yet. We were common mortals! We explored the area around our desperate village of ragtag survivors, looking for help or resources. We raided a crazy factory of cyborg zombies and then delved into the local ancient ruin. In the process we narrowly survived battles with 1 HD monsters and got promoted to "heroic mortal" status, beginning to get much tougher than normal people. Then a giant monster bled on us and that justified why we were now Godbound, ready to Save the World. This was all fun.

My character, Mason, was from Lom, which is Militant Atheist Revolutionary France. He was conflicted about having "divine power" and never sought worship, only heroism. Our party looked at the situation from our newly empowered perspective: Village was a mess. Entire north coast of the Bleak Reach seemed to have been murdered recently. Lom was invading from the east. So we decided to relocate the villagers with our powers. We scouted the west and our options were a village of deformed people who wouldn't shut up about how ugly outsiders are, and a coast with fish people. The fishman king immediately mind-controlled several of us. He talked Mason into spending Dominion on shapeshifting the civilians into more fish people to live in this underwater kingdom. Most of them. One other PC, call him Vamp, was now a vampire/lich, who took charge of the rest. So, we had "saved" the villagers. Yay?

Now, Bleak Reach's canon description says the coastline is a tolerable place full of refugee settlements, and the interior has mysterious evils that somehow cause every kingdom-building attempt there to fail within years. To me that means monsters and curses of the type Godbound are meant to overpower, gradually denting the zone of horror and building a new land. The locals can't handle a curse or a dragon, and the PCs get to be cool heroes fixing that stuff.

We encountered: a giant gore doll spider I think we actually killed. A nightmare monster that escaped. A hive of xenomorphs that survived a combined attack including minions, magic, and Mason flying overhead and shredding all the ground in a huge area. Unbeatable Mechagodzilla. To get stronger we pried open a distant ruin full of lasers, and with no warning it set off an explosion so huge it blew up half of a city miles away, killing countless people.

Then we faced a set of hell portals in the central mountains. I think we did actually seal one, and after two massive battles we entered another to slaughter the demon court behind it. Unbeatable, effectively, until Mason used a once-ever power to become so unstoppable he beat the demon lord to death with his fists. All right, a true victory that would meaningfully change things!

GM said that wasn't the far end of the hell dimension. Any remaining baddies could re-open it someday.

Meanwhile, the GM introduced Robot, a friend's character. He was rapidly building a civilization of totally loyal robots and cultists in a corner of the mountains that was not menaced by anything unbeatable. Vamp meanwhile played out how he bit the captain of the guards in our relocated village, forcing him to drink blood and address Vamp as "Father".

Mason was increasingly traumatized and hopeless. He tried to liberate people from Lom and got around 1000 people, <0.1% of the population, setting up a village of cool griffin shapeshifters. Neat little project. Nowhere near "liberating Lom". The village got menaced by the nightmare monster and we could only drive it off, so he had saved people only to drop them into massive danger.

Mason got invited to a fancy party in a bizarrely pleasant mansion and garden, hosted by a gracious woman who was the first kind and important person he'd met. He enjoyed the food and discussing architecture. Then he found out he had been tricked into eating human flesh. The woman led him to kill lesser villains in the mansion. That was a trick too, because she wasn't an innocent victim as claimed. Mason rescued maybe one civilian out of dozens, because the ghoulish masters were so powerful the party of Godbound got driven off. Mason had to abandon a sack of mice who'd been civilians temporarily transformed to smuggle them to safety. Oh, and when we found out that the woman was in on all this murder, Mason and Vamp tried to murder her. Looking bored, she lashed out with powers that would've killed us two demigods if we didn't back off. She got away, while talking about how "aren't humans the real monsters".

Mason was humiliated, tricked into cannibalism, barely able to make the tiniest dent in his main goal, guilty of aiding a vampire and slaughtering half a city by accident, and from a culture that says "all supposed gods are evil and need to die". In character, guess how he was feeling?

So then we visited Patria, Vamp's homeland. There we fought a giant monster we had only driven away before. There we looked like total fools causing a lot of property damage. We fled and flew back over a region with that giant gore doll spider; it was back. Finally we decided to check out a random patch of rumored danger, hoping we could "clear a hex". Turned out there was an invisible, untouchable, army-scale force of supernatural archers with homing arrows that shoot through walls and the ground and do divine-scale damage, driving us off.

"What now?" asked the GM.

"Mason quits. He retires to Bright Republic [relatively nice country] and tries to live in peace."

"Uh... you want to switch characters?"

"No."

The moral of the story: Know just how doomful and bleak the setting is going to be, by player and GM agreement. I think what our GM was going for was, "Every inch is crawling with unstoppable threats and you can't accomplish anything". The way I imagined it was, "The threat level rises inland from goblin tribes to dragons to a few seriously scary demons, and you can push evil back". In this game where you're supposed to be world-changing heroes, I ironically had the best time before we reached that stage, while we were kind of accomplishing something.

Addendum: This same GM also briefly ran a game set in the Bright Republic. There, canon says they treat magical people as superheroes and are dangerously unprepared for how powerful Godbound are. GM's interpretation was, they've got magic shock collars capable of brainwashing/forcing Godbound into obedience. So again, I think he's got different expectations -- but this would be OK, if he and the players agreed on that interpretation going in.

TL;DR: I rambled a lot, but basically, a player kept ditching our group, and when he finally realized we were playing without him, he got mad about it.

Honestly, I could’ve probably picked a better title, and this might not really be much of a horror story, but, well, hear me out. Also, English isn’t my first language, so… sorry in advance.

I’ve got a group of friends I’ve known for a long time. Love them to bits. A few years ago (like four years now), they said they wanted to try D&D. I was already super into D&D back then, playing and DMing a lot, so they asked me to DM for them.

We started playing in this homebrew world I made, and for the most part, it went really well. Like, really well. There were five players and me as the DM. I know my friends don’t all like the same stuff, so I made sure there was a bit of everything in the game. Some of them really loved roleplaying, while others were more into combat and exploring.

Up to this point, things were fine, right? But after about a year, some problems started popping up. One of my players, who’s a really good friend of mine, likes to play... combo characters? Min-maxed ones? Not sure what the right word is. And, honestly, I don’t mind that. The issue is more with him. He usually builds these super min-maxed characters that are amazing at one thing but kind of useless in everything else. I feel like he gets so into the mechanics that he doesn’t stop to think if he’ll even enjoy playing that character.

So, the first problems started when he came to me saying he wasn’t enjoying his character (the first one in that campaign). Which, honestly, is fine. We’re not always going to love our characters, right? So I told him he could make a new one, and I’d figure out a way to blend the new character in and the old one out. No big deal. I just wanted him to play something he’d enjoy more.

And, surprise surprise, he started as a fighter but then came back with a rogue multiclass because, in his words, “now I can do an absurd amount of damage.” Which, cool, if that’s what he’s into. I think that character lasted… five sessions, maybe? Then he wanted to change again. And this has been going on for years. I’ve honestly lost track of how many characters he’s switched through. But hey, I usually just let him do his thing. It’s not really the problem.

The real problem started during our last few sessions (which, for context, were almost a year ago—you’ll see why). He was there, but... not present. Since we don’t live in the same city, we play online. But I noticed that during the sessions, he wasn’t doing anything. Like, no talking, no taking action, nothing. During combat, he’d say something, but only when I called on him because of initiative. I figured maybe he was just tired—life happens.

But it kept getting worse. Then he straight-up didn’t show up for a session and sent a message a few hours later, saying he was sorry but someone called him to play football, and he forgot to let us know. That happened once. Then twice. By the third time, I just stopped scheduling sessions altogether. Look, no one’s forcing you to play D&D if you don’t want to. Right? But at least give us the courtesy of saying so.

Fast forward a few months. One random Tuesday, I wake up to so many texts from this player asking, “When’s our next session? I really want to play! I’m craving D&D!”

So I responded, “We’re already playing a different campaign with another group. We told you about it, and you didn’t care. We don’t play that campaign anymore.” For context, three players and I had started a new campaign. The fourth player didn’t have much time anymore and decided not to join. And when we told this guy, he couldn’t have cared less, so we just moved on.

Apparently, he was appalled by this. Like, absolutely offended. He hit us with, “But I love D&D!” and claimed we weren’t being understanding enough. He seriously expected us to just sit around and wait for him to be in the mood to play. Only play when he could, wanted to, or felt like it.

He spent months. Months without even mentioning playing. He just did his own thing, and then, out of nowhere, when he suddenly decides he wants to play, he’s shocked that we’re already playing without him? Like, dude. No. Just no.

Now here’s where the horror story really starts. He began aggressively texting the group, calling us assholes and a lot worse (it wasn’t in English, so I’m not sure how all the translations go). Then it escalated to personal insults, and that’s where I drew the line completely. Look, he was a very good friend of mine, but this? This isn’t how you handle things. He could’ve just talked to us like an adult. Maybe we could’ve set up a one-shot or something to scratch that itch. But you can’t act that irresponsibly and then expect people to coddle you or wait around forever.

We ended up kicking him out of the group. I didn’t block him or anything, but he hasn’t reached out to me since. And honestly, it’s sad. We’ve been friends for so long, why not just talk to us like adults? Things could’ve been handled so much better. Oh well. Don’t get me wrong, I still care about him. I still think he’s a good person. He’s just not in the right place right now.

(CW- Sex stuff.)

I don't expect anyone to have sympathy for me on this one.

So i've got an online game going on Friday nights fairly late. There are only four of us and we're supposed to rotate who the DM is every session. But for the last month I was the only one running it because the other players were very preoccupied. Player A had a family issue, Player B started a new job with a weird schedule, Player C was recovering from a bad hand injury, and i've been having my own family difficulties.

So for the last two weeks when Player B couldn't show up, Player A and I would sit in a voicechat, drink and write out light RP with our characters. Player C said they didn't see the point in playing if the party cleric didn't show up, so if B wasn't on, C typically wasn't either.

Now, without going into any extravagant details, at some point late last session, Player C entered the chat unannounced while Player A's character and my character were having sex.

He didn't duck out right away, instead he demanded some kind of explanation so he could understand what the hell we were doing, so our drunk asses decided to ask him if he wanted to jump in on the RP. THAT'S the moment he noped the fuck out of the chat.

I understand what it seemed like we were implying. We were basically suggesting his character break the whole thing up, not participate, but that's not likely what it sounded like from where he was sitting.

So sometime early Saturday morning I got a long angry text message from Player C about the "disgusting display" that Player A and I were doing.

The worst part is I don't clearly remember a lot of this. Apparently we got so drunk that we eventually stopped making sense, but somewhere in between was a male kobold and a male goblin proving that "inverted reverse-cowgirl" was, in fact, a thing. And I guess at some point I was also choking him with my tail for some reason.

So I texted back a lengthy apology to Player C, telling him that I would talk to Player A, and that it wouldn't happen again. They replied that it was so disgusting that they needed to let Player B know.

Wait, what?

So I apologized again and Player C went silent. Haven't heard anything else from them since.

A few hours llater I got a text from Player B. She told me she thought the whole thing was hysterical, and she wanted to know if we were going to keep that canon, and if we did she wanted to know if Player A's character and mine would be an "official couple". I told her that we hadn't talked about it and that it was just the product of the two of us being incredibly drunk. She suggested that could be the in-character explaination as well, and concluded by explaining that her gnome cleric had a yaoi fixation.

Player A has said they don't care if we keep what happened canonical, because he thinks it's funny, and he thinks our characters being a couple provides entertaining RP opportunities. I am okay with it as well, but Player B's interest in the subject and Player C's revulsion to how we handled it kind of make this a tricky situation. Until this resolves, I'm pretty sure I need to lay off the booze.

Got recommended to share this here so here goes. I'd been in this group for a bit, the DM always struck me as a little bit off but I chalked it up to being a little bit cringey from being too into anime and being another Matt Mercer wannabe or some shit.

He'd made the game set in the world of Arknights, the anime gacha game. I wasnt familiar when I joined the game, just thought the description he made of the worldbuilding on LFG sounded interesting. If I'd known that from the start that probably would've been enough of a red flag that I'd have kept looking elsewhere.

It also turned out that the DM already had 3 players from a previous campaign that dissolved from having 2 players leave (another red flag but they painted it as one being a murderhobo and the other an apologist for their actions so I shrugged it off)

It also comes out that the DM is a smalltime vtuber (for the uninitiated, a twitch streamer with an avatar rather than a face cam usually anime in style) little nervous about that but dont wanna judge as some of my favorite content creators ended up getting vtuber models and playing with other vtubers who I think are pretty neat so I figure hey, I'll look past that because it doesnt necessarily mean anything.

A few sessions go by and the campaign is a little dry but I'd been wanting to get in another game for a while, the time slot worked nicely during a time when my schedule was really full, I really liked my character, and again the premise for the world seemed interesting. Then one of the players started sharing W.I.P. sketches they were making of their character during their sessions.

Okay thats pretty cool and hey they're actually really good drawings. Like REALLY good professionally made drawings. And it's impressive, until eventually several more sessions later they start drawing below the belt, and they dont censor anything but while I gave up on drawing, I've grown up surrounded by artists (both friends and family) so yet again this is something I look past because artistic nudity is a form of expression (even if it seemed a bit needless though I've been called a prude before and I'm at least a little on the ace spectrum so I figure ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ it must just be a me thing that I dont get)

Anyway I guess this gets the DM to feel more comfortable opening up about 18+ shit because about an hour ago he starts talking about this hentai manga that a friend recommended to him which has such an intricate plot that it made him forget it was a hentai manga and that it was such a compelling read. He posted a link which embedded and it was called some shit like "cumdump paradise" with tags like inflation, loli, rape, gore, amputee, and monster.

Needless to say I am no longer in that discord server and have blocked the DM in question preemptively but dear god I feel nauseous and dirty from having played at that table.....

I've been playing DnD for a few years on and off, starting 5e back in 2015. My now fiancé introduced me to a group a few years after this that had a few friends from high school that I used to play 4e with (I didn't know any better), so I thought it would be fun. The DM was new and a few player took advantage of that, but he improved for the homebrew campaign that he made after: A steampunk fantasy game where we were playing as members of a research team. There we still some kinks to work out (we had 3 level 20 NPCs on the crew), but the game was fun and combat was fluid.

The problem was a two players that I'll call Moth and Skull. Skull was a homebrew (get used to seeing that) skeleton rouge/fighter that was basically a variant human with the undead template. He would stealth away from the party and come back later (always unharmed) to relay scouting intel, cheat on rolls for both character creation and in game (we were on DnD Beyond with everyone able to see roll history. The worst one, I saw him rolling the same save 8 times and only mentioned the highest). His character was romancing Moth's, which became central to the plot.

The much more problematic play was Moth, a homebrew half-dragon goddess (Yes, really) artificer with connections to the crew via backstory that made her favored by every NPC. We'll call this one Dragon. Dragon had a flight speed, natural weapons, a proficiency/day sleep breath weapon with no save, and a few homebrew magical items that made her the only one who could effectively research. Moth and the DM were personal friends, so she was able to get away with everything; didn't want to make stats for her character: DM made it for her, didn't want to roll: she could roll play for nat 20s, leaves mid combat: all enemies ignore her (I almost lost my character after I left for the bathroom once), and she was always the solution to every major problem in the game. Dragon could sing beautifully and handle nearly every social interaction with a -2 to her charisma, repair our ship (an artifact level magic item) at level 5, and had an entire chapter in game specifically for her character. At one point, two other players (my fiancé and one of Moth's friends) started a lesbian relationship. Moth started spewing a bunch of homophobic nonsense (Her friend was an actual lesbian BTW) and I think had a hand in punishing the party in game by making the DM have the captain of the crew (one of the level 20 NPCs) leave the crew behind out of having a "broken heart". He was dating neither one of those PCs and now we had to make a new ship. But we made it through the arc. Dragon fell in love the Skull's character and they retired to live out their eternal lives. We can finally let someone else have a chapter.

Wrong. Moth's next character was worse. A homebrew race and subclass: a siren bard of the Deep Sea College (we had four bards at the time, including myself as one for the original two in the game). We'll call this one Siren. Siren could cast spells ignoring material and somatic components by singing alone (she could still use these components if needed, so Silence wasn't a counter), had a swim speed, water breathing, and the ability to substitute consumed components for ones of equal value (she would go diving for pearls every time she needed diamond dust). She was trying to seduce a different PC, but got bored play a "support" character after 4 sessions and had a big tearful send off after being discovered Siren was a princess whos kingdom needed her. Whatever, someone else can have a turn now, right?

Wrong again. Moth's next character was a halfling warlock with a homebrew subclass called Hexgun (It is exactly what you think it is) who could summon her patron at-will. A level 20 homebrew demigod patron without even burning a spell slot. Let's call her Hex and yes, she started to try to seduce another PC. Hex was violent (she tried to shoot my character once, then complained when I casted Hold Person on her), didn't take no for an answer, and could use all Hexblade features and evocations on her guns. But the DM wised up this time. He made summoning her patron take a full action, requiring a nat 20 (still OP but, much more fair). The player who's character she was trying to seduce was also much more okay with keeping it in out of session role play, meaning she took less screen time. Thing finally starting being more about the party and less about her. Finally we could move on.

No new character. This time we had actual tragedy happen. Moth's grand father dies and she said she needed to leave the game. My thoughts went out to her as, even after all the crap she pulled, I still felt terrible for her. Everyone in the group each bought flowers for the loved ones funeral, trying to give as much support as we could. She said she didn't have the heart to keep playing for now, so the DM closed to campaign early. I didn't get to do much in game, but still had fun with out of session RP. Each PC got a text channel on the Discord server and if you wanted to roleplay with someone, you just typed in their tab. The DM announced a new game he was working on that we could start the new week. This was great for everyone. No negative feelings and Moth had time to mourn. A new slate that she could join in with later.

No... She was there. As cheery as ever. Already had Skull make her a character for the game and everything. I was naturally confused and a bit annoyed. Many of us were. We found out later that she was bored of the setting and talked the DM into ending the game. Her grand father really did pass away and, although I have no real evidence, it seemed like she used that to guilt the DM into starting something new. I shrugged it off, looking to the Discord server to back up all the old roleplay. But she deleted the channel. Over a year of roleplay gone as she only backed up her roleplay. I went from annoyed to furious, telling the DM about my issues and leaving the game.

Since I'm sure there will be the usual questions I see on here:
-I did communicate with her and the DM. This usually ended in vague announcements to the server, hinting at problems that were supposed to be private.
-I was typically quiet in the games, only talking when asked or there was a long period of silence.
-Only one other person was using homebrew (a College of Orchestra bard/not me) to a far lesser extent.
-Yes, I was one of two PCs not in a romantic relationship. Almost all of my characters are asexual.
-My PC didn't out right hate any of Moth's. My PC was curious about Dragon, didn't have time to care about Siren, and avoided Hex after being shot at.
-The only other character who had a major impact on the story was the other original bard and only once. All others were Moth's PC or because of Moth's PC.

I posted this as a comment a while back and have been told a couple of times I should put it in as a post, so here goes.

Nearly 15 years ago now, a fella I was dating pretty casually was invited to play D&D by a superior at his work, so he and a few of his co-workers showed up at the guy's house and got started.

After rolling characters, his superior (The DM) says to them:

"You all awaken, but at first aren't sure that you have - the darkness is total, and all you can tell is that you're in an enclosed space with about an inch of liquid on what seems to be a stone and dirt floor."

So he and his buddies then spent a total of about two hours doing things like trying to taste the water, ("it tastes exactly like muddy water") scream to see if they could get some idea of what was going on via the sound of the echoes, (they couldn't) etc.. one of the players had a spell that made light, but when they tried to cast it, the DM said "You recite the incantation and perform the somatics, but the darkness remains absolute."

They called it after about two hours, and my fella told me about it over lunch a few days later. Wow. We were both giggling over it and kinda coming up with half-hearted explanations for what was going on.

So he got invited back to the next session not the next week, but the week after, and went, thinking that maybe something had happened while he was away and they were actually going to do something... but nope. He gets there, and everyone is still in this wet room, unable to see. After about an hour of the same sort of thing, my fella zoned out, and by the time they called the session, no forward progress had been made.

A couple of days later, he and I met up to shoot pool, and he told me about it again, and that he had apparently been invited to a third session, but had made up an excuse. He was not invited back, and I guess things were mildly awkward between he and his superior after that for a little while.

He left for another job about 8 months later, and asked one of his co-workers what had come of that game, and the guy told him that everyone had gotten frustrated and an argument had broken out, but the DM had been unwilling to budge, so they all decided they were done with it.

tl;dr: Decade-old RPG community turned out to be an abusive, narcisistic, almost cultlike mess that ostracizes "dissidents" and does not really care about anyone or even borderline sex-offender behavior. They still try guilt-tripping me into coming back.

EDIT: Added a tl;dr and edited some paragraphs for clarification.

This is going to be a long one. I don't even know where to start from.

So, a little bit of background: I've been in a synchronous PbP RPG community I founded along with some friends (and "friends") for at least 10 years. The first half of that was rough, but we eventually managed to weed out weirdos and such. Or so I thought.

Back in 2018, we eventually started migrating en masse to an online platform that's kind of popular in our country. We also pivoted to DnD 5e (initially). The combination of those two things, along with our (then) only DM's schedule, eventually made us one of the most populated communities in the platform, while also making us meet a whole new bunch of players. Some good, some meh, some absolutely terrible. As always, we weeded out the most glaring ones. Or... So I thought.

Since the first one, we've never had (blatant) nazis, really intolerant people or anything like that really lasting among us. But we've had a fair bunch of toxic people.

We've also eventually branched out (that will be very important later): the main community hub had a ton of scheduled DnD groups (one of which, by the end, I ended up DM'ing), but also a side DnD table (which used another world) and a side Mage: the Awakening table (which I DM'ed), both of which we jokingly called DLCs.

That being out of the way, meet Reptile, who I'll call that because of his obsession with dinosaurs and dragons. Reptile was always a weird, bit slow guy, who reproduced some stereotypes and backwards thinking, but for the longest time, seemed to do it either from ignorance or from unawareness.

The first real trouble with him started when, after some in-character disagreements (and OoC disagreements about his character), we found out he, IRL, was contemplating suicide. We first thought it was due to a sum of real-life problems and loneliness. But then it became increasingly more frequent, every single time coinciding with some drama happening in the game (or, at most, sometimes outside of the game but regarding it). Effectively, we... Kind of fell hostage to that, since most people (comprehensively so) didn't want to flip that coin.

He also got worse and worse with the weirdness. He always had some less-than-concealed kinks that he absolutely wanted people to know about. And, most of the time, actually explore. Which would not be an issue at all if he found people willing to do it with him. Not his RPG tables that weren't for the most part really into ERP shit.

That's when shit started getting real. It then hit the fan the first time when Reptile, playing in my Mage: the Awakening group, started obsessing with his character's (underaged btw) little sister NPC, whose writeup was definitely not a stand-in for his IRL little sister. It started out innocent, but he ended up getting borderline rape-y eventually. And me, the dumbass, kept trying to play it out and turn it off as seamlessly as possible, instead of actually shutting him down.

The next day, we talked a bit, I said how the character in question actually could be feeling about him now, and he... Flipped off. Started rambling about how he would never forgive himself, never see his character the same way, that maybe he should give up on anything and everything... And it went on and on.

I talked to most of the core people from the community and, instead of kicking him out, most agreed on keeping him out for some weeks or months, which we did and even found a private therapist for him with charges that he could actually pay for.

... Eventually, he moved back. In one of the groups, we didn't even move him out for that long. Most of us (including myself unfortunately) agreed that it would probably be worse for him if we kept him out of any and all interaction with the community and game. The one that took the most time was me, specially since I didn't really process the whole thing, was feeling assaulted myself and really was just confused a fucking lot about everything.

We started seeing some cracks in the facade. All of a sudden, the whole "passive" mysogynistic behavior didn't seem so passive for some of us. Neither did all the "pushing ERP" stuff or the infamous "Reptile's Archetypal Woman Character" meme we used to joke about. Unfortunately, for the most time, only me and one more person actually did anything that wasn't shrugging it off as "yeah, he's kinda weird."

Some years passed from that (2022) to now (2024), with some ressent for him growing bigger and bigger. From incel discourse regarding monogamy and one-sided harems, to more weird underage shit (and, a reminder: most of the time, he tried playing himself off as "progressive leftist who just didn't really catch on some social cues."

That being said, there was also another drama going on that I will address now, since both converge near the end.

Sticking to the animal motif: we had Boobie, the DM from the other side-table I mentioned; Cat, a friend that is kind of blunt and argumentative but sweet overall anyway; and Eagle, a kinda-Twitter-famous player that is cool to interact with as long as you don't disagree on anything, named such from that one time she got adamant on seriously stating she could IRL fistfight a harpy eagle and win easily. We also had Ram, named such for being the "founder" of this iteraction of the community and pretty much a cult leader in there if I'm being perfectly honest.

Both me, Reptile and Ram also played in Boobie's DnD campaign. We were a group of 6 in total, which is kinda on the edge of being fine and being cursed, even in text format. But since we had some people who were less than ideal on being interactive, Boobie's brilliant idea to salvaging that marriage was having another kid finding a new player that should allegedly bring more life to the table. Yeah, instead of, you know, first culling the people that were only there as filler and didn't really add anything to us, most of the time only sending in filler interaction or not really paying attention and repeating stuff that has already been said. Or being disruptive overall. Then, maybe, find new players if there's still a gap.

And yeah, Reptile was one of those filler people, at least most of the time. Anyway, that's when he called Cat in. Except, apart from myself, Ram had some bad blood with Cat because he left one of his games years before, and also because they argued a lot about technicalities and didn't really see eye to eye in the whole "quantity vs. quality" stuff.

And then nobody except for me really contributed for Cat saving that marriage, since I was the only one that actually gave him some exposition on characters for him to create one that would mesh well with the group. The result is that he did create someone that breathed some life into the group... Or, specifically, into interactions with my character, which worked especially well since we collab'ed in that. Which in turn made people resentful, especially since we then spent a lot of time playing together.

They also got resentful of a lot of things, such as: us supposedly "tanking" a "beach episode"-style session since (among other things that we weren't really satisfied with) both characters... Weren't in the mood for it, even if we both said we could step out and let them play as they liked.

We had one situation where Cat asked Boobie for feedback and Boobie replied that Cat's character didn't interact enough with the other player characters and seemed only to engage with my character. This escalated into an argument between both, as Cat felt that while he actually could interact more in-game, he was being given greater criticism when compared to other players that had the same activity level but were even more detached. This table had 7 players now, and the other 3 rarely interacted, and when they did, it wasn't a proactive kind of action, just a post from the character saying "Yes, let's do this!" that didn't either advance the plot nor built any meaningful relationship dynamics with the other players. It was a "I could do better, but you're expecting more of me than the others and that's unfair" situation.

In the middle of this argument, Cat said that Ram's character was one of the most active ones and the only one that tried to advance the plot, but not one that was in touch with the other characters. Cat said Ram's character was "a quest-giver", and Boobie (maybe maliciously) misinterpreted that as if Cat said Ram's character was just a NPC. But that entire story now is beyond the point.

Thing is, since then, Boobie became increasingly more comtemptuous towards Cat (and me by proxy), both denying to answer and solve simple things OoC (most of the time regarding the game, though) and disregarding anything I said "since you always take Cat's side anyway", even when Cat wasn't even involved in the issue.

Ram also got increasingly resentful, even more than before, since the three of us had an argument that should've been friendly about currencies in worldbuilding. Since that misinterpretation and this argument, he also became increasingly confrontational with Cat specifically, but also throwing shade around.

Along the way, we also had Boobie trying to force Cat's character fantasy to be played out in a certain way, half the group getting upset when my character eventually got sad and depressed about something, or upset that someone did something that would really realistically fuck us up later, etc. Boobie also couldn't handle any discussion or being wrong, but instead of playing the "alright, but I prefer doing it this way" or anything, he just tried ridiculing the other person or shoving the issue under the rug. That was also a key part of the behavior of most people in the community, especially Ram.

Anyway, along the way we had three special issues. The first one was when, after all that happened, plus what started happening afterwards, I asked Boobie to kick Reptile out since I was getting my shit together and not wanting to keep playing with that PoS ever since that incident with his character's little sister, which he responded by saying I was being too finicky and "blowing it overboard as always", which Ram defended me (surprisingly) by saying that even though I supposedly like blowing stuff out of proportion, it was completely warranted given what happened. Of course, we're on r/rpghorrorstories so it doesn't end well: Boobie simply swept it under the rug for months.

Also, for context on the next one, I'll reiterate that I was not in as much as a single RPG table as I was in a PbP community with about 20 players, so we had a central place where we chatted and then we also had chats for individual campaigns.

The second special incident was when Cat had a pretty big argument with Eagle. Cat was a player in the Boobie's campaign we've been talking so far, but Eagle wasn't. Eagle was just a member of the community, and although not a player, often was there as a spectator in our games. After they had that argument, Cat asked Boobie to kick Eagle out of the campaign's chat, since being near her was making him uncomfortable and he did not want to interact with her. Boobie played it down as Cat being prissy and ignored him, keeping Eagle around at first. Cat had to explain the entire argument he had with Eagle to Boobie, a conversation that took over a hour, just so Boobie would agree on banning Eagle from the chat... Provided Cat would go around repeating this story to every other player in private and everyone agreed on kicking her out. Cat didn't do that, so Eagle was never kicked out in the end.

And the third one was when Cat had enough of all that shit. He once asked people (mainly Boobie) to format his text better, since the textblocks actually made him kind of sick and he couldn't really read and proccess anything. Boobie ignored him. His last session (remember, our games were text-based) eventually had him flipping off about it since the other one or two times he complained about it, nothing happened. That led to people (especially Ram, but also Boobie and one other player) start bullying him about it. That other player also did some stupid stuff afterwards but that's beyond the point. To Boobie surprise (and I say that unironically), Cat quit the game.

One funny thing is that Cat told me he actually was willing to just forgive the whole ordeal afterwards if the people involved at least came to him and apologized. They actually did the exact opposite, making fun of him behind his back even more and making a habit of actively avoiding being anywhere near him, while still mocking that last situation for a whole month.

The kicker is: Boobie eventually said he didn't do anything about the formatting because "if I was in Cat's shoes and was a player at his table, he wouldn't have done it for me if I asked him to." Boobie also said he wouldn't do anything about Reptile because "Reptile did nothing that deserves a kick, so I should be mature and endure him the same way I didn't kick Cat yet just because I don't like him."

... That was actually a conversation that happened.

I tried to continue playing there mainly because I really enjoyed playing that character, but in hindsight I should've quit then and there.

Anyway, we finally got to the actual reason I'm writing this. People (specially Cat, Eagle and I) were getting more pissed about Reptile every day that passed. We also had people mocking both me and Cat behind our backs, throwing a lot of shade around and so on, avoiding us on VC, etc. The last straw eventually came when (after some long debates and straight-up mocking about Reptile's characters), Reptile asked Eagle for advice in private.

He was trying to begin worldbuilding for his table, and he wanted to include lesbian romance for some background characters. He knew Eagle hated his guts, but since "she was a lesbian woman who liked writing", he tried pushing for it anyway. She said he probably wouldn't take her advice well, he insisted, so she said he shouldn't really get up to writing romance at all while he didn't sort out his mysogynistic shit. He went ballistic.

He then tried demonizing her to Ram and Ram's girlfriend, saying he was being persecuted and all that. That was the last straw for Ram, who then banned him from the main tables. Since we were both still in Boobie's table, I decided that was the moment for trying to get rid of Reptile again. So I went to Boobie and said that, since the first time didn't work, he could either kick Reptile out or I would leave.

Instead of just being sensible, he said "since I was forcing him to that decision" (after he consulted everyone else in the table apart from, of course, Reptile, and it ended up with people somehow not finding a consensus), he was half-considering kicking us both out, but he needed "some time to think on it, since we'd be on a 2-week hiatus anyway." I told him if he was willing to keep sweeping it like that and being so disregarding of my situation, I'd do him a favor and make the choice for him, so I imediatelly quit.

I should also add that he even said I was "being too harsh on Reptile" and that "the way I talked, it's as if he had actually abused a real child."

Remember, that was after Reptile:

1. Did the underage siscon thing back in my table;
2. Tried multiple times to push Ram into ERP with his dragonborns and lizardfolks in his table;
3. Forced us (with Boobie kinda consenting) to live with the absurdity of his... Adulterous aarakocra teenage pregnancy fantasy.
4. Was way too weird in any interaction regarding anything romance or sex-related in Boobie's table, the most blatant of those being some stalkery shit with my character.
5. Fetishized rape-y backgrounds.
6. Spewed incel BS about his lizardfolk's harem, who he also treated as naive children (... Yeah, a lot to proccess on that one).
7. Tried to induce Ram's character in my DnD campaign to sexually coerce his (again, underaged) tabaxi, then play it off as "an anime dialogue trope." That one basically got him kicked out of my games for good.

And some other stuff. Just to point out, people in there were usually fine with SA as a thing that is recognized to exist in the background. But never coming from players or player characters and never shown "on-screen."

Oh, and 8. Him trying to guilt trip us into pandering to him because he is depressed.

He also tried to justify some of that as "I'm autistic and don't really get social cues", which some people actually bought into, but, again, both Cat and I are autistic and a lot of people in there are just undiagnosed. We never had that level of behavior. When regarding sexual misconduct in-game, most people maybe have had one or two slipups years ago, but not on our mid 20s, not as repeatedly and not as insistent. Hell, in the early days there was a literal nazi among us and even he wasn't this bad in that regard (still a piece of shit human being and the first one to have kicked the bucket).

After that bit with Boobie, I deliberated alone for some time and eventually quit the community altogether. When I did it, some hours later Ram PM'ed me, asked why I did it, I explained and he went ballistic. He went on and in trying to guilt trip me into thinking I became "basically Cat's shade", "decayed" and on how I was "getting away from the people who did actually care about me." I tried talking, but eventually gave up.

Some other people spoke to me about it and were actually quite civil. Eagle, to my surprise, was one of those. I do admit I was being kind of an asshole to her in the last few months, but most of her grudges came from a venting text chat with Cat that got leaked, and then I started just going along the tide when people complained about her on some aspect or another.

Funny thing is, I was very fine with giving these people another shot if only they actually apologized and tried to rectify those mistakes. I didn't "become Cat's shade", he just was the first person in that entire community that didn''t play my concerns and insatisfactions off as me being "too prissy." Maybe we had a lot of things in common but come the fuck on, most of those things were things I already said earlier, or he convinced me through research.

That's another thing, they couldn't take criticism. If either one of us talked about anything RPG-related or worldbuilding-related that we (most times him) actually researched about to be speaking, people either assumed it was just an opinion or us being picky. While... No, DnD isn't the best fit for political or city-building style RPGs, spotlight is both something the DM gives you and you take yourself, non-player players aren't making the group livelier just by being there, 6d4 gives more streamlined results than 4d6, people should communicate their issues, etc.

Saying the opposite is kind of the same thing as claiming you could fistfight a harpy eagle and win 100% of times. Completely absurd, but here we are.

All the while, we both got mocked and chastized for saying all that, or at least called troublesome for it.

Some weeks later, Ram PM'ed me again, once more trying to guilt trip me into coming back. This tine I was way more mentally stable and just went monosylabbic with him. He also doubled down on saying he went out of his way to PM me, because he "doesn't really try and go after estranged people" and that he "still has the same take in everything." I said "sure" and went my merry way.

Boobie also apologized, but only because we still had a group chat together back then and it was making him look really bad in front of Eagle with the Lizard thing, and both she and Ram had the most social power in there honestly, for some fucking reason. I absolutely don't count that as truthsome, even if he seems to think "we're fine."

I'm writing this now, some good 3-4 months later, because I finally got my shit together. And also because, recently, one kf them (another one, let's call him Bear, who I still really like and miss, like some other people in there) said to me "I could still go back if I some day want to, people don't care that much about what happened", as if it was them that should pardon something, not me. I don't hold it against him, but it was a pretty poor word choice.

Also, I saw a post on another sub that reminded me of this a little bit.

The most hilarious thing is, in my opinion, that I'm now more willing to go back to playing with Reptile than to even interact with Boobie or with Ram's abusive ass.

Reptile is pathetic, but at least I can make fun of his absolutely shit behavior and turn him into a living meme. Boobie is just a pathetic PoS who doesn't even have that as a redeeming quality.

I play a dnd 5e campaign with my friends and it's a quest grind with no real story

I am playing a cleric and my friend is playing a vengeance paladin and at level 5 we had a issue with hold person

After my friend got hold person at level 5 my dm rubbed his eyes and looked at his phone scrolling down and down

I soon found out that all are quests where changed from bandits, orcs, and humanoids to undead so to make the spell useless

But after I used turn undead on the zombies we where facing he again looked at his phone scolled and changed the quests to monsters and beasts just anything that would not be affected by turn undead and hold person

That's about it, my problem with it is that he is actively making spells and abilities useless

To finish it off, here is a list of things I think he is avoiding for monsters

-low mental stats to combat my spell save

-low attack bonus because we both have high ac

-low damage or damage over time because of the paladins high hit ponits

-low con and dex for the paladins smites other then Devine smite

• just one high hp enemy because path to the grave + paladin go brrrrrr

This was the first time I’ve played D&D in a while, but a store nearby was running a few one-shot sessions where it was random people thrown in.

I got paired up with 5 other people, one of whom was a DM in his game but the store wanted the employees to run the game, so he was only permitted to be a player.

I was a Wizard, the former DM was the Cleric, we also had a Fighter, a Barbarian, a Ranger, and a Rogue. We had premade character sheets from the store, but we all could choose which class we wanted. The former DM chose Cleric, later on during the campaign despite being a Life Domain, refused to heal anyone.

Our quest was to infiltrate a cult planning to assassinate a local queen. We were to disguise ourselves and blend into one of 3 groups in the cult, steal the key, fight the big bad, get paid.

The second we get to the temple the Cleric goes off on his own and myself (Wizard) and the Rogue go after him, splitting the party. The cleric goes and interrupts the boss, calls attention to myself and the rogue, and then when it’s our turn, he gets up from the table and walks away.

The rogue outright rips the key from the chest of the guy holding and bolts, leaving my Wizard standing there. One Misty Step and a Dash later and me and the Rogue are back in the center room of the temple having caught up with the Cleric, but I got charmed. Seeing this, the Cleric role plays as me being a traitor and he precedes to summon a Celestial and kill my character after that his character walks out of the temple saying “My character gives up on the mission and I’m really bored”

This guy was a former DM who was upset he couldn’t DM for this game and took it out on the rest of the party, my Wizard especially.

The local comic book store, "Smith Family Comics", announced on Facebook it would be hosting an adults-only DnD campaign. I figured, hey, I'm new to the area, I've played DnD once before and really enjoyed it. Why not?

Well.

The announcement said there was a $5 entry fee, so I showed up at Session 0 with my dollars and an open mind. Everything seemed fine. We got to know each other, built our characters, and discussed technicalities. At the end, "Jimmy", the guy working the store and the events, had us all write down our email addresses, and he said he'd be communicating with us via email.

Session 1 arrives. I show up and head to the back room of the store-

"Five dollars, please!"

The first red flag was that Jimmy and I have different definitions of what an entry fee is. All sessions cost $5 to play. I hand over my dollars and continued on my way.

The back room was a madhouse. Eight new people were there; they'd arrived at start time and started building their characters right then. The DM, "Mike", offered them the pre-made character sheets he'd created. Seven of the people refused, and they held up gameplay for over an hour while they created characters. The only person who picked the pre-made character sheet was a 14-year-old. Nobody ever explained why the 14-year-old was at adult DnD.

Session 2 arrives. Of the eight people who randomly showed up at the previous session, only two showed up again (one of whom was the 14-year-old). It starts over 1.5 hours after the announced start time. This is because there are adult triplets who all arrive separately. Triplet 1 arrives early. Triplet 2 arrives 45 minutes late. Triplet 3 arrives 1.5-2 hours late and spends the entire rest of the session on their phone. It's important to note that the triplets do this every single session.

After each session, the organizer Jimmy sends out an email with a form asking about availability and feedback. I notice they're still advertising the DnD campaign on Facebook, so I suggest they close entry and stop advertising it. On the next email, Jimmy states that entry is now closed.

Two days later, Jimmy posts another ad for the DnD campaign on Facebook.

At this point, I notice the Facebook page for the comic book store mentioned once that the store has its own Discord server. I join.

From this point forward, Jimmy sends out no more availability forms. Sometimes he announced the next session in an email. Sometimes he announced the next session in the Discord server's DnD channel. Sometimes he announced the next session on the Facebook page.

One time, Jimmy sent out a session announcement on Discord and in an email, but he put different times on each announcement. When he realized the error, he did not send another email with the correct time. I don't have constant access to Discord, I didn't know he was announcing anything on Discord, and I'd seen the email announcement, so I arrived an hour late.

To my knowledge, at no point has Jimmy asked if everyone follows the comic book store on Facebook. To my knowledge, at no point has Jimmy checked if all the players are part of the store's Discord server.

For one session, Jimmy only posted the session announcement on Facebook, on a jpg he posted of the comic book store's event calendar. Mike sent out an email 12 hours before the session began to remind us of the session, which is the first I'd heard about it.

On another occasion, Jimmy scheduled the session from 1-4pm on a Friday afternoon. Obviously, almost none of us were able to make that one.

I have seen no emails from Jimmy in a while, so I checked Discord. Jimmy asked two of the players for their availability and then announced (only on Discord) our next session: three days after Thanksgiving. You know. The most traveled time period in the US. Which is where we live.

My sibling is calling this a horror story. I have tried to be patient, but I am losing my mind. I do love DnD, and Mike is a great DM. Jimmy himself is a really nice guy. But I don't think I can do this anymore.

It was one of the first successful campaigns I ran, a long time ago, when I was young enough to still be going on vacations with my parents.

This one particular year we went to Croatia. Me, my little brother, our parent's friends siblings, and a son of another of my parent's friends. It was a true wonder of random things coming together: all the young people actually wanted to play and got a good feeling of the game (even tough some played for the first time), I had all days of time lying on the beach thinking of the next session, and then, in the evenings we played.

As the weather in Croatia is pretty hot in the summer I created a winter setting placed in some generic fantasy world. The campaign took place between unpassable mountains and frozen ocean, so I pretty much closed the world up for the purpose of keeping things small.

My little bro played a hunter, the older sibling was a sorceress, younger one a barbarian, and the single son was a bard. I know describing this in such way sounds weird but I don't want to go further into details. The point is that it was a well balanced team lacking pretty much only a healer. The bard player happened to be of the wonderful kind that just automatically works with you to keep the story going by causing all kinds of interesting interactions and being overall proactive.

We played like 10 sessions maybe that year and ended the campaign in a cool spot where the team defeated an evil wizard trying to overthrow a little mountain kingdom. They reached 8-ish levels by this time if I remember correctly.

So, a year pass and our parents all get together and decide to go the same place again. All the same people are coming, so I message everyone asking if they want to pick the story up where we left it. They all agree.

As we arrived, there was one new family with their son being in the same age group as we were. He takes interest in what we are doing and the team cheers him to join up as a healer. He agrees, and even tough it's his first time playing, he also catches the bug.

An addition of a dwarf cleric (of Moradin if I remember correctly) boosted the teams capabilities significantly - we played 3.0 edition D&D and I implemented some survival elements, so an ability to heal was worth more than anything. Knowing that I can let my DM's dark urges loose a bit in this situation I plan on introducing an adult white dragon as the next BBEG. It all goes well, until they start climbing the beast's mountain...

I planned the session with multiple challenges along the climb and then in the dragons cave, with frozen undead guarding the entrance, and some lesser giants keeping tabs on wyrm's kitchen and treasury. But, all of a sudden, halfway up the mountain, the party's pillar of good and righteousness decides to just abandon quest.

"I turn back and go down" - he said out of nowhere. People asked him for one good reason for this decision, but he just replied that he does not feel like fighting a dragon.

There was a lore timer on this event (and I can't remember what it was), so turning back from the mountain would have serious consequences for some poor NPCs. The party then decided that - well - they will let the cleric go and proceed on their own.

Long story short, the challenges seriously overpowered the team without healing support. The bard was killed by a zombie ogre or something stupid like that, before even entering the cave. Then the barbarian was surprise attacked by a giant (yup, this actually happened) and ended up on like -8 or so HP, the sorceress was taken by the dragon and iced to the ceiling Luke Skywalker style, and the hunter crawled out like The Revenant, never to show his face around those parts again.

And for the cleric: without the aid of hunter and barbarian, and with heavy armor on, he slipped while climbing down. The fall didn't kill him on the spot. The wolves did, and they started with the legs...

And this, my gaming fellas, is what happens when someone suddenly decides to go all rogue and abbandons his team just because he can.

(Disclaimer: i used the light hearted tag because it seemed to fit best out of the ones i had available. I don't think it properly fits but i figured i needed a tag so that's the one i picked.)

I don't really know whether this is the right subreddit for this, but i don't know where else to put this. There is a player in both of the ttrpgs i play who makes the game less fun to play when he's present. The way he plays his characters seems to lack common sense and they act in ways that seem like they don't value their lives, like they're video game avatars.

But that's small fry. If that was the only thing i think i could overlook it. Much worse than that, he just will. Not. Shut. The. Fuck. Up. Perhaps I'm looking at this from a biased perspective, as I'm a fairly quiet player. I tend to be mostly silent in scenes my characters aren't present in except for the rare joke of course. In scenes my characters are in, i quite consistently wait my turn to speak and if I do get overzealous and interrupt someone i apologise and ask them politely to finish. This guy interjects with infuriating little quips and jokes that are either the same joke told the 50th time (even less funny than the last 49 times) or just not funny in the first place, all the time. It honestly feels like in scenes where my characters are present and his aren't, he still somehow manages to talk more than me.

There's a palpable difference in the atmosphere and tone of the game when he's present and when he's not. In the few sessions where he's been not present or we've started without him (because he also wakes up incredibly late and arrives 1hr+ late to the sessions very often) the game stayed on task more with less sidetracking and it felt like a more balanced experience between all the players.

The reason I'm even posting this is because i really want to know what i can say and to whom to solve this. People always say "talk to your group, it fixes everything" and so did i, until suddenly my socially inept ass had to find a way to say "the way you play this game is ruining my experience" in a way that doesn't make me sound like a massive twat. If this isn't the right sub for that, could you maybe point me in the right direction instead?

The automatic length flairs are incredibly useful to me. If you want a trigger warning, put it as a [] in front of your title. If you want to say it's light hearted, put it there.

What the allowed flairs should be are: length, meta, media. Not sure what contest is, maybe that too. The rest: into the title it should go.

I kicked this player a long time ago, so I feel comfortable sharing this at this point, so here goes. There were dozens of reasons why we ultimately ended up kicking this player, but listing every teeny tiny thing isn't worth it.

The cast, recently edited the letters into fake names to better suit the forum guidelines:

Me (the DM)
Problem Player, we’ll call Pam
PP's GF, who we’ll call Gina - self explanatory. I liked Gina, but she was the Problem Player's girlfriend, which made me reluctant to kick Problem Player earlier, since I presumed they'd be a package deal. And well. Gina was WAY cooler than Pam, and I enjoy having her around.
Three other players. I'll call them Abby, Bea, and Craig.

1. Pam would constantly try to fight me on rules, interrupting combat so I could read the rules aloud to her and prove that I was following them. This would turn what should have been 1 hour of combat, to 2 hours.

2. If Pam made a bad call in the story or in combat, would scream directly into the microphone and demand that I let her redo the entire scene. For example, once her character stepped into a trap, and she had a screaming fit because she wasn't allowed to redo her approach. Sometimes I would let her do it just to save my energy. Other times, if I refused to budge and she wasn't in the mood to scream, she would often mute her mic and then leave paragraphs of self flagellating "apology".

3. Pam refused to communicate honestly about content that made her uncomfortable. I take things like triggers, player safety and even mild discomfort very seriously, especially during session zero. However on multiple occasions, she had meltdowns about other player actions that would at best bring the session to a screeching halt. For example, Abby and Craig wanting to kill an NPC to sneak into a building. Or Bea’s character yelling at Problem Player's character. But, no matter how many times I asked her to tell me what kind of content she was uncomfortable with, she would always answer that she was comfortable with anything.

The final nail in the coffin wasn't even in session, but during some downtime, time we were all hanging out. We were all talking about enjoying horror games. Pam bemoaned her disdain for horror games, and unable to bear hearing a normal conversation about people enjoying a thing she doesn't like, had an absolute crying, sobbing meltdown and once again left chat, hurdling it toward an awkward, uncomfortable silence. After months of her constantly having meltdowns, no matter how much we tried to communicate with her so we could avoid triggering said meltdowns, at a certain point, friendship and compassion isn't enough. None of us were having fun anymore.

I did my best to be kind and compassionate when I told her she was no longer going to be a part of our games, and I do hope she finds happiness and friends that mesh better with her. But I will say, ever since, game night has gone smoothly and my players have been way more excited to play.

Part 1: https://www.reddit.com/r/rpghorrorstories/comments/1gpsn6g/the_dmpc_proposed_to_me_and_it_destroyed_our/

Part 2: https://www.reddit.com/r/rpghorrorstories/comments/1gqmrk7/the_dmpc_proposed_to_me_and_it_destroyed_our/

In this part, you’ll read the dramatic climax of this whole saga. Honestly, I don’t even know how to prepare you for it except to say the drama was so intense it wrecked both the campaign and some real-life friendships. Fair warning: this part includes microaggressions, mentions of child exploitation and sexual harassment.

When the DM invited me to build a new setting for our campaign, I was thrilled. He told me to stick to the general feel of the homebrew but that I could add my own flavor. He also wanted it to have “realistic” themes and suggested looking at real-world civilizations for inspiration.

I was excited about the creative challenge, but I asked why he wanted to move the campaign to a new setting and how it would all go down. He confided that the current setting would be destroyed soon, so the party would need to relocate many people to a new place. The Sorcerer’s family knew about this impending disaster and was planning to move and seize control of a new city, using their cult and resources. The DM also suggested this would be a chance for my character to gain influence within the Sorcerer’s family and help shape this new place, while the Sorcerer pursued his own goals.

I thought this was a win-win situation, but I knew it would take a lot of work. We agreed I’d take the time I needed to set things up and only join sessions where my character’s input or guidance was necessary. We also planned for the DM to host a session to lay the groundwork for my character’s temporary exit.

So, in the next session, most players were there, including the Wizard and Cleric, who I barely saw before this. The DM set events in motion, giving closure to storylines tied to the current setting. We had some great scenes, including one where the Rogue received a magical dagger from the Sorcerer as a symbol of his love and promise to build an empire for her. They shared a romantic moment that led to a fade-to-black scene. The session ended with the start of a massive disaster, forcing a citywide evacuation. The Sorcerer would lead everyone, including the party, to a “promised land”—the new setting. The roleplay was really good, and everyone was excited for what came next.

After that, the DM let me know I could take my time since my character would be traveling separately with the Sorcerer’s family. When we reconnected, it would be after a time skip. I was worried the party might resent my character for “abandoning” them, but the DM reassured me that they’d understand because when they next saw Rogue, she’d be pregnant.

I didn’t love that he made this decision as soon as our characters had intimacy, but I didn’t mind the idea of a pregnancy, as I thought it could add a fresh dynamic to the story. Thus, I focused on building the new setting, which was really exciting. Since the Wizard was mostly absent, the DM guided me, keeping communication open, praising my ideas, and encouraging me daily. This built a level of trust between us (yes, I know…).

I spent months building the setting, incorporating features that each player could enjoy. I added a temple for the Cleric and cult, an underground entertainment area for Bard, and a commercial district for Artificer. I even asked each player for input to make it more engaging. Bard’s advice? To double-check every detail because Druid would be returning and he was going to give me hell.

When I asked the DM about it, he said he and the Druid had patched things up, and he’d be returning as a co-DM since the Wizard hadn’t been around enough for him to enjoy being a PC. He told me there were no plans for the Druid to rejoin as a player, but that it wouldn’t hurt to add things he might like. I messaged the Druid to ask for his input, but he never replied, even though I knew he was active on social media. When I asked the DM about it, he assured me the Druid didn’t dislike me—he even joked that I was “the best of the gold-diggers” in the DM’s life. Lovely.

So I braced myself for the Druid’s return and tried to attend sessions where my input was needed. But soon enough, my workload exploded. The DM wanted my character to create a new spy/assassin guild to keep tabs on the city, and I was expected to roleplay every aspect of this in sessions without time to set it up in the background. It was stressful, especially since the Artificer had endless requests for her business dealings, which I was also expected to help with.

The DM was letting the Artificer do almost anything she wanted with her character, and she kept pulling the spotlight. She often overshadowed the Wizard and Cleric, and the only reason the Warlock stayed relevant was because the Artificer was romancing him.

As a surprise to no one, the DM and Artificer started hanging out a lot in real life, along with the Warlock. They’d even share updates in our group chat about their outings. At first, Cleric was happy for them and asked to join next time, but they ignored him every time.

Shortly after, Wizard reached out to apologize for their absence, explaining that they had recently started dating Cleric and wanted to keep things private until it felt more serious. They thought that announcing the relationship to the group might actually ease some of the tension—especially since Artificer seemed to be getting territorial around Warlock, as if she wanted to get back together with him. Surprisingly, the announcement did improve things, at least temporarily. Cleric became more active in sessions, and I made sure they’d both have meaningful involvement when we reached the new setting.

But things quickly soured. Cleric, feeling encouraged by the positive response, overstepped by showing up unannounced to one of DM, Warlock, and Artificer’s hangouts after they’d casually shared the location in our group chat. From what I heard, Artificer berated Cleric, and Warlock—who was supposedly friends with both—just stood by. Rather than defusing the situation, the DM let Artificer continue to undermine Cleric in-game, justifying it was something “her character would do”

I wasn’t around for most of the drama, but Cleric and Wizard filled me in during a private get-together. When I brought it up with the DM, he said he hadn’t meant for things to spiral like this, claiming it was just lingering tension between Cleric and Artificer that had built up over the years. Wizard agreed that the issues between Cleric and Artificer were theirs to resolve, but pointed out that the DM had been fanning the flames. It honestly seemed like the DM just didn’t like Cleric, even though he’d always deny it. Either way, the damage was done. Wizard felt little motivation to attend sessions anymore—if they’d had any to begin with, while of course, Cleric just abandoned ship.

With the Wizard and Cleric out, the DM brought the Druid back as a player and backup DM. Druid inspected every detail I’d added to the setting, nitpicking its “realism” (even though a lot of it was based on Artificer’s requests). And no one stepped in to call him out on anything. Not to mention, the “gold digger” jokes made a comeback.

One day, while I was struggling to revise yet another part of the setting under Druid’s scrutiny, I broke down. My partner found me mid-panic attack. He didn’t know much about D&D, but he told me I shouldn’t keep playing if it was causing this much stress. I tried to explain how much work I’d put in and how hard it was to just walk away. He wasn’t happy with me deciding to stay but suggested I talk to DM since we were supposedly close.

So I did, even though I was still in a bad headspace. I explained my frustrations, but the DM was defensive, saying I’d “asked for this” and had always complained about not having enough to do. I panicked again, saying it wasn’t fair that I had so much responsibility while others didn’t. He got angry but then apologized and said he’d “fix everything” and that I could take a break for my mental health.

This is when the love-bombing started. The DM checked in constantly, calling me one of the best players he’d ever had, suggesting we hang out as friends, and updating me on changes he’d made to make things easier for me. He even claimed to have talked to the Druid and Artificer to keep them in line. And I’m sad to say, it got to me—I agreed to keep playing, but only in sessions that directly impacted my character’s story.

The next time I was invited, we had a session at Artificer’s house. She let me in and told me to go ahead and join the group at the table; she had to grab something from her room. As I got closer, I could hear DM talking openly about “mixed girls” in a way that felt objectifying. When Warlock noticed me, they went quiet for a moment, saying they hadn’t expected me so soon and brushed it off as “locker-room talk” about their “types.” Artificer later backed them up, saying it was just harmless chatter.

I told them I wasn’t comfortable with conversations like that, especially since I identify as ace. DM seemed surprised, asking questions about how things worked between me and my partner and how I could be sure. I made it clear I didn’t want to discuss it further, but he never fully respected that boundary. Warlock and Artificer just laughed it off, and without Wizard or Cleric around, I started wondering if I was just being sensitive—after all, it wasn’t the first time people had been intrusive about my sexuality.

One thing I can say in DM’s favor is that he kept his word about not letting Artificer make any more changes. But the same can’t be said about Druid. When he took over as DM, he was distant—barely looking at me, keeping things short, and constantly questioning my character’s choices. In one scene, he had me speak with an NPC my character had good relations with, who suddenly turned hostile. When I asked why, the NPC claimed he didn’t want to work with a “child exploiter.” I was stunned and tried to assure him that wasn’t true, but he insisted that my character’s guild employed children with a “by any means necessary” approach. I felt sick. DM, who was playing as a PC at the time, said nothing.

When I confronted DM about this, he said he didn’t want to override Druid’s choices. I pointed out that he’d intervened with Wizard as DM, but he brushed it off, saying Wizard was just a poor fit for the role. I kept pushing back against the “child exploiter” allegations, but DM argued that he’d warned me his world was “realistic” and that in an assassin’s guild, things like that happen. He claimed he put it “in the background” since I’d refused to role-play it directly. I was horrified and told him my character wanted out of the guild entirely. He replied that it would mean she’d need to start a new system from scratch—something he said was completely my responsibility.

Seeing my reaction, he backtracked, offering to work with me on changing things and promising to keep Druid from bringing it up again. Not long after this ordeal, Druid refused to DM any further.

When DM and I began working to set things right, part of our solution played out in-game. His character shifted from a player role to a guide for mine, letting my character take the lead in planning and speaking. Around that time, I began noticing that every time I said certain words, both Warlock and DM would ask me to repeat myself. I’d assumed it was because of my pronunciation and was too embarrassed to bring it up. But recently, I caught Warlock and DM exchanging glances when they did this, and when DM noticed me staring, he’d just say, “I just love how you pronounce those words,” with Warlock smirking and nodding.

You’d think I’d have told them off, but I felt even more embarrassed instead. Maybe it was because when I glanced at Druid, his expression seemed irritated, like he was annoyed with me.

Two sessions later, I woke up to a flood of texts—and an indecent picture from DM. He was talking about how he could “make me happy” and other things I don’t even want to repeat. I was completely stunned and couldn’t react. The next day, he had deleted everything and texted, “Oops, wrong person.” That finally snapped me out of it. I told him off and said he couldn’t just send something like that without apologizing. He insisted he’d “never do that with a taken woman” and even showed screenshots of another conversation, claiming the messages were meant for someone else. He said he thought I hadn’t seen the image, which is why he hadn’t apologized.

Not knowing how to respond, I asked my partner for advice. My partner was furious, saying he hated this guy and thought the whole thing seemed deliberate. I also reached out to Wizard, who told me they’d talk to DM to get to the bottom of things. DM showed Wizard the same “proof” he showed me, and Wizard offered to mediate between us if I really wanted to keep playing.

I know some of you are probably wondering why I’d even consider staying after this. The truth? I didn’t want to lose all the work I’d put into this campaign. And somehow, DM knew this. He called me, saying he’d restart the entire world if needed to regain my trust. Something in me just snapped—I called him and let him have it, screaming for hours. I felt better afterward, and he even said he deserved it. He kept promising to make whatever changes I wanted if I stayed.

Wizard, though, was not happy with how it was handled, especially since DM had apparently told both Druid and Bard about the incident. They both said they didn’t see what the “big deal” was since the messages “obviously weren’t meant for me” and the picture “wasn’t even that explicit.” That made me feel like maybe I’d overreacted, so I asked Wizard and my partner to drop it—I didn’t want to keep revisiting it. They both respected my wishes.

This is when the love-bombing started again, but by now, I was finally seeing through all of it. When he realized it wasn’t working, he went public on Telegram, inviting everyone back—Cleric included—for an “epic battle” and hinting at a fresh start afterward. He knew exactly how to get a reaction from me, and I took the bait. I asked if he was planning to kill our characters and erase my work. He claimed he wasn’t, but said he wanted to start fresh in *my* setting, suggesting we all make new characters to take down the cult since “we clearly weren’t the good guys.” Then, he said I was welcome to create a “hero type” character if I wanted, “as long as it’s female” since he “really enjoyed how I played female characters.” I didn’t respond to that.

Right around this time, Druid had clearly had enough and made a sarcastic remark asking if “DM was planning to marry in real life as well.” DM said no, unless it was for something like immigration purposes (which I have never had issues with), and that he’d do it for any of his friends. This sparked a huge argument, and Druid ended up leaving the Telegram group and the campaign for good. DM insisted that Druid just couldn’t handle that he wasn’t his only friend and that Druid should stay out of his business.

After all this drama, Warlock cited “scheduling conflicts” as his reason for stepping away from the campaign. I still showed up to the session DM invited us to, along with Wizard, because we both wanted to see what he had planned. However, we decided to go last minute, and I didn’t bring my entire library of lore with me. DM punished me for this by reducing my points, and I distinctly remember Artificer laughing about it.

I remember after everything was done, DM tried asking if I was mad at him for the deduction, to which I didn’t respond. However, I felt really bad about how much work I put into everything and started venting to my partner. They asked, “Okay, but when was the last time you had fun in this campaign?” That prompted my second emotional breakdown. My partner was there to comfort me and talk to me about the sunk cost fallacy, and to give it time. And I did. Both Wizard and I decided to ghost the table and never look back.

That was a year ago. I found out from the grapevine that Artificer and Warlock got back together. They’re currently “chill” with Wizard and Cleric, who are engaged! I’m expected to be a bridesmaid! As for the rest, I haven’t heard anything since.

Oh, and DM? He’s dating Artificer’s best friend, who is ten years younger than him. But hey, that’s a story in itself.

I hope everyone here had a great time. I admit, it was nice to vent here. And don't worry I'm in a much better table now with no DMPCs in sight.

TL;DR: DM made me do all the work of world building for him, let the other players treat me badly, crossed my boundaries, made innapropiare comments regarding my ethnicity, and sent me a leud picture. The table is no more, and I am in a much better place now.

This story has been floating in my head for a while now and I just want it out into the world. This story is from a couple years ago in a group I no longer play with. Details will be a little fuzzy as I am going completely from memory but I'm going to try my best.

So a little background. This group is online. That was fully online. We used Discord and Roll 20 and played with all cameras off. It was just us, our computers, and a dream. The dm had created the world and story but we were using 5e rules. The lore and vibe were all over the place. It really just what was their current hyperfixation and how can they put it into DnD. I have no problem with that (as I kinda do the same thing when I DM) but it did make for some confusing world building.

The story of the game revolved around us being the first to forge this ultimate sword before an evil demon lord does. Basically the story was a chosen one story around one of the party members (not me) and we had to aid them in forging this sword to vanquish their evil dad. However we got so sidetracked, it ended up having the same urgency as Skyrim's main quest.

This needs a lot of backstory so here we go. I swear it's necessary to understand the context.

My character was a tiefling artificer who grew up in a cult of Asmodeus. They ran away when they were old enough and started adventuring. I loved this character. At some point, my character had come across their old cult and the DM, in the character of the old cult leader, asked me to rejoin. I decided yes, why not, and had my character leave the party for a bit to rejoin this cult. It wasn't the best thing I could've done in hindsight and I do take accountability that I didn't stop and ask the DM if I could do this rather than just going ahead. However in the days after that session, we took a little break. During that time, the DM and I worked out what my character would do during this time skip and what rejoining the cult for a bit meant for them. I decided my character would have definitely had enough of the cult and would try to leave. The DM got excited at this prospect and wanted to have a one on one session outside the scheduled time. We were online so this was possible. In that session, my character somehow ended up getting a one on one meet with Asmodeus, where it was revealed I was his great grandchild and he thought the current cult was taking his name in vain. He offered a pact to lend me his power to take down the cult and be able to finally escape, once and for all. I accepted the pact and multiclassed into warlock. I was pretty stoked for this. Characters taking on warlock levels happened more times than it should in that group's games; I was excited I could have my little artificer be one of the warlock multiclasses. Also I was a level higher than the party, so that was pretty cool. After that, the party meets back up with my character (in a way that wasn't really satisfying but that's another story) who now leads that sect of the cult. My character leaves the cult to fend for itself and rejoins the party.

Fast forward a couple sessions and we're in an inter dimensional mansion meeting with two important NPCs discussing the fate of the world regarding the all powerful sword. It is established that my character communicates with their patron through their mechanical arm, which carries a demonic red energy in the cogs and wiring (aesthetics are very important to me). This communication lets Asmodeus spy on me, I think?, but also acts as my character's arcane focus for their warlock spells. Well actually it was the arcane focus for the artificer and warlock spells, and it was a hidden gun too. It was pretty important for her to keep around. I was just going along with things, trying to make sense of the story and lore when suddenly a demon comes crashing through the wall and starts attacking everyone. I don't remember if we roll initiative but it wouldn't have mattered as we were way too underleveled for this fight. The DM describes our attacks barely doing anything. I try to shoot the demon when my character, I think fails a saving throw?, and is knocked unconscious as she is thrown against the wall. Before anything else happens, the DM describes the arm glowing brighter and my character starts moving. She quickly charges into battle, scaring off the demon and it becomes apparent she is possessed by Asmodeus. I ask if I can do something here, but the DM says I can't do anything. In all the chaos, one of the NPCs helping us had died. I think from the demon attack, but I can't be sure. As my character comes to, the surviving NPC immediately blames her for the attack, saying that bringing the arm with the power of Asmodeus in this interdimensional mansion alerts the BBEG to his location. He angrily sends us away and the session ends. The party (in character) get mad at me for causing his death and I keep repeating I had no idea this would have happened. As far as I knew, I was never told this specific thing would happen and this specific NPC would die because of it.

In the following sessions, whenever these two NPCs are brought up - and it's a lot because they are integral to reforging the sword - my character gets blamed for the death. And it's not simple teasing though. It was NPCs getting mad I had the audacity to bring my arcane focus around with me and causing the death of an NPC we had been spending weeks trying to meet. At the time, I didn't want to tell the party how much it bothered me because I didn't wanna be a spoilsport and, really, a small part of me tried to accept that it was deserved punishment for my character's actions. The excuse the DM had was something along the lines of evil power attracts more evil power and you accepted the pact with an evil demon lord so bad things are going to happen. I don't know whose in the right or wrong here. I still can't make up my mind if it was deserved punishment for my character's actions or if the DM had a very specific plot point in mind and "hand of god" their way to it. I think the warlock pact was a massive character moment for my PC but it was very much spoiled by this and future events. In any case, this won't be my last post here as I have many more horror stories to share from this group.

So what do you think reddit? What went wrong here? How could this have been prevented?

TL;DR:

My PC accepted a warlock pact with Asmodeus which led to the BBEG being able to track the party. The DM took control of my PC during a vital fight where a demon sent by the BBEG attacked us. The DM used that to describe how an NPC we had spent weeks tracking had died from the monster attack.

A few years ago I was playing D&D 5e with a group of mostly irl friends and someone that we picked up from the local game shop who offered to host at their house, this story is about the pickup player that offered to host.

The party was riding on an airship to an archipelago when the airship was attacked and we managed to crash land our way into the ocean near one of the islands as the only survivors.

After we got our footing and introduced ourselves to each other, there was one player, a Paladin, that we hadn't formally met.

We asked him what his name was, but he dodged the question, so we said something like, "Alright then, let's say we're fighting a group of bandits and need to call out to you in the heat of battle, how should we refer to you?"

His response? "Scary questions have scary answers." At that, we all gave a collective "....alright then," and kept it moving.

After some time, it came out that the DM didn't actually know what the player character's name was, odd right?

After the campaign ended and we were well into a different campaign by that point, the player sent an email to the DM letting him know that his name was Solomon the whole time.

First things first, no native speaker so sorry for bad grammar.

Damn, sorry if it ended up being a long one. :/

I've been playing together with this group since 2019, the members changed a little, but most of them were friends of mine from college that I invited, the storie itself doesn't have nothing to do whit none of them tho. The first DM invited a friend of his to the group last year, this friend was a girl, who we'll call Suzie. All the rest of the group was made of men, all the typical nerd guys. They were a bit uncomfortable close to each other at first, but eventually we all became good friends. The horror begins at the second campaign, DM'ed by the Second DM. Both my character and Suzie's started to flirt in character. What made DM2 kinda upset I think, he started to have all npcs be very hot and flirt whit Suzie. The character was a flirty femme fatale type so we just shrugged off not paying any mind. Months pass by and Suzie and I we're dating outside the game too, but we've kept it off the table to don't seen weird when we played. Than she showed me some creepy behavior from DM 2, some kind of really bad flirting ngl. Like, her character was hit by a whip, than he would message her something like "do you mind being whipped??👀" On top of that, I've learned that DM1 invited her to the game in a form of apologize for some very VERY creepy and shitty advances towards her, in a way she was still feeling sick for what happened and trying to ignore. I've told her to talk to DM2 about his weird behavior and that we we're already dating. She did and he stopped everything, but she didn't mentioned the part where we're dating, she just said that she was dating someone. Eventually she moved away from the city and we broke up in really good therms, we still talk to each other as good friends till today. That campaign ended and the guys are already planning a third one, but I feel bad being around these 2 guys, DM1 in particular. We've been having fun trough this years but I just can't anymore. I already dm for another group online, I won't stop playing. I just feel kinda bad all this happened.

So, we needed a new player and our GM gave a few people a try over the course of a roughly two weeks. We have our guy now, but here are the rejected cases. Nothing too wild, but worth mentioning.

1. "The dumbass".

Let us call this one P. P was introduced to us by a former (but on good terms) player. P had no prior experience but was supposedly eager to learn. P turns out to be a borderline illiterate dudebro with an IQ rivaling a can of luncheon meat. He could not understand what any of the stats meant or even identify them when he had to, even after we explained them to him more than 4 times! And on a simple system to boot. He had zero engagement with the game, as 90% of the time he watched soccer videos on his phone and commented on them. Our GM kicked him out about halfway into the session. He gave us one of the most bovine looks I have seen on a person and asked a flat "why?" We plain told him that he was not a good fit left it at that. We are still unsure why he was suggested by our former co-player.

2. "The 80s cartoon hero PvPer."

This will be known as F. F is a college friend of a group member and with a lot of confirmed tabletop experience! Hurray! Well... I wish it was that simple. Our current game's setting is modern with occult elements. Almost everyone, including the magically gifted is at least a bit familiar with firearms, as it is the weapon of the era. F however, proceeded to make a character with martial arts skills, a sword and nothing else. Our GM warned him that his character is not viable for the setting and that he would die very quickly. He also asked why he chose that. F insisted on what he chose, claiming that his character thinks guns are for "weaklings".He got a "You dumbfuck" look by all of us for that. Our GM let him do as he wanted (a decision he admitted was wrong) saying the responsibility is his. The problem was much worse than the obvious. We began play, F tried to stay out of lines of fire and get the drop on monsters and cultists, while the rest of us moved as a squad, shooting (and occasionally magicing) stuff dead. We were annoyed, but figured he would get killed at some point and change his tune. We corner one of the BBEG's lower lieutenants, who for the record poisoned a goddamn town and he begins to run away. I and another player declare that we open fire as he is fleeing. F declares that he attacks us. US! With his sword! We stare dumbfounded for a moment and we all ask, why?! He replies that shooting a fleeing man is cowardly and makes us as bad as him. We stare dumbfounded again and ask the GM if this goes. Thankfully, he vetoed it, let us take the shots at the villain and stated that F's character was court martialed and locked up for being insane. F protested about "railroading" and left shortly after. Our GM sent him a message telling that he can play again, IF he makes a character that can work in the setting and party. He never responded.

How adding one player brought our campaign to its knees

TLDR dm's friend joins group, tries to break the game anyway possible, says that he hates roleplay in a group tailored to roleplay before aggravating everyone in the group, breaking miniatures and getting permaband from all game shops.

So there I was, my best friend who has never played dnd before and a couple of friends who would love a session or two. We made the decision to test the waters by going to our local game shop and having someone from the store run our game. our small party was joined by two other amazing people and we set out to explore the Spelljammer series with our DM. I know what your thinking, Spelljammer, that is definitely a mid campaign, so many errors and it isn't that fun right? Well, luckily for us, our DM was and still is absolutely amazing. He was patient, was excited for every little aspect of role playing we wanted to do, incorporated some fun things from the Baldur's gate game for the stalwarts and was patient as new players found their feet in the game.

Our party was made up of a bunch of rag tag characters, I will try to keep it vague for anonymity sake. We had two holy fighters, an assassin, fighter, a warlock (who did not select eldritch blast for roleplaying reasons) and a bard. Our group was into a heavily story based play as we really just wanted to see where we could take our characters. DND at the local games store quickly become our favourite day of the week.

Just like out of a scene from a horror movie, when everyone was at their best and things couldn't possibly go wrong, we had a session where a couple of players couldn't make it. Our DM trying to help the group out invited a now very ex-friend to try and salvage the next part of the story. Ironically, our players had heard whispers of a rival npc who we had beaten in a race before who was looking to solidify power in an ancient tomb. Our players who were present ordered our flagship to intercept the npc and stop them from gaining access to that power. This is when the new guy made his move.

Instead of introducing himself to the group, he immediately targeted one of our new to the game players, trying to steal a sentimental item from them, in front of the whole group. PVP was something that was never even mentioned to the group and the DM was taken aback by what was happening and, to his credit, sat back to see how the rest of us were going to handle it. Immediately, our assassin went at him with his blades. his sneak strike triggered and he basically critted immediately. the problem player who I will now refer to as PP stumbled back off the flying ships but managed to throw our assassin overboard as well (The PP was adamant in his player creation that their character could fly or else they weren't "joining the party"). Immediately, the rest of us jumped in our single driver pods and raced down to soften their descent onto the planet. Our assassin, as he was a badass, grappled PP so if he was to die from the fall, so would PP. Luckily thanks to well, mainly the DM, but also to us, the single pods were able to create a net to catch our two party members.

We immediately paused the game in shop and asked PP why he did that? His response summed up the next 8 weeks of play. " I just did it because funny!" No, I did not miss a word, did not write that wrong. He would say things like, that is what my PC would do. We eventually looked at his character sheet and in his backstory, ideals and bonds was written, "for the lolz". Please give me strength Torm.

We delved back into the session without any major problems, found our rival and stopped them from finishing their ritual sacrifice killing him in the process. Session ended right? wrong! As the group along with the DM are putting our dice away PP yells "I sneak attack the assassin!" Our DM, clearly agitated by now says roll for it, anything below a 17 and we keep packing up. Guy rolled an 18. Enter combat again, Assassin hits and crits and rolls basically an instant death. "I cast shield" PP says with a smug look on his face. I love playing bard. I love the counterspell reaction casting. Instantly I call out that I cast counter spell and his face turns from sheer joy to absolute dread. "But you have to roll initiative to be in this fight" He called out. DM- nope, this is my table, it would make sense for the bard to help out his friend and ally in a fight against a character that they just met and has attacked him twice. Player falls to zero. Assassin puts the knife in, session ends with another death.

The next week week, our DM came down with COVID (Spicy Cough) and was unable to make it. I put my hand up to run the session and PP came to the table again. He knew that the group had a chat group and grabbed the nearest person's phone and added himself to it. We were a little shocked about that but thought that he had already spoken to the Dm and was already given permission to join. The session went without a hitch and we thought that PP might have turned a new leaf. Nope.

Over the next couple of sessions he spoke over players, argued with the DM about various rulings and magical items that he could have and anytime someone in the group was trying to role play a scene in the story he would try and cut them short because we weren't in combat. It got to a head one night when we were versing a series of monsters in an arena. Again PP chose a flying character and was mucking around the whole time in combat. PP was a spellcaster who flew over a couple of giants who in turn grabbed him and flung him to the floor, knocking him unconscious. No one had a problem with that as we were all, even though it was session 14 for us, still feeling out our characters. We healed him and continued fighting. The spellcaster architype that PP chose was the wild magic sorcerer, one that had a wild magic D1,000 homebrew list of consequences whenever wild magic was triggered. Instead of helping us in combat, PP tried to trigger as many wild magic consequences as possible! Most of the time, the people who bore the brunt of this were the party who were in the fight of their lives and already had the DM cheat a little to heal a couple of the players. We ended the session with the boss of that encounter popping up. To try and salvage something out of the session, the group sat around with the DM talking about some of the potential strategies to take the boss down as quickly as possibly with contingency plans in case something had failed.

Next session, instantly the main boss is polymorphed into a human baby. defenceless, unable to move and by itself. We planned this perfectly. One of our players was to throw the boss up into the air as high as possible to try and get some fall damage. another was to cast a level 3 spell and during this time, buss and rebuffs were going to fly thick and fast. That was the plan. PP was next. He agreed before the session to hold his turn and hit the creature in the air. "I'm doing this for the lols!" He exclaimed before casting a couple of different things before, triggering his wild magic. We instantly got hit by a fountain of water, triggering the boss monster to take a measly 3 points of damage whilst everyone else was flung into the air taking fall damage. Groans, confused looks and some side eyes were all thrown around the table before we tried our best to kill the boss. With luck (and a DM who could tell we were over it), we ended up defeating the creature, finishing the stage much earlier than anyone had expected. Both in roleplay and in real life, we asked why he put the whole party's life in danger, and again, we were met by the "because its funny" line. I wish I was making it up.

To salvage again, another disjointed session, the DM had us mounting our flying ship and encountering a mindflayer vessel (Nautiloid for people who have played Baldur's Gate). They were ambushing us for reasons. PP, who just spend one and a half sessions faffing around, almost leading to two TPK's, get's flung over to the other ship and destroys the vessel using what is actually an impressive sum of spells. Unfortunately, this whole encounter was built to, again, get everyone back to playing was taken away from us by PP. 45 minutes of playtime his turn took as the rest of the table packed their bags, had arms crossed and waited for the 1 V whole encounter went down. The DM was pissed. He pulled PP for a chat after the game and said he needed to knock it off. The wild magic table was still in the game, but was definitely nerfed for the remainder of our Spelljammer run.

Just to our new campaign. By now, almost all the fun from our sessions were dried up. No player wanted to leave because our sessions were magical. We knew everyone got along but PP was draining us of any fun aspect. We were looking forward to making new characters for our next adventure. We were posting in our chat about the characters we made, really focussing on the background and what they wanted to try and do. We had an agreement that we would all create a character without talking to the rest of the party to see what would happen. Funnily enough, all the group became spellcasters apart from one lone kobold barbarian who came from a primitive tribe on the outskirts of no where. All bar one of the players was size small and all had a great backstory that we were keen on elaborating on when the time was right. We joked about how our players would buck the trope of meeting in a tavern but at café in "fantasy Amsterdam" with a lot of other recreational activities taking place. All of us were getting into the role play again. All except one.

PP wanted to try and break the game again. They built a flying character who was also a fantasy mechanic who built creatures out of all sorts of metals and gems. To give PP credit, they built a creature who fit our earlier jokes and that was basically the extent of their character. For the lolz, I have a creature. He did want the creature to fly and was giving the DM a hard time because the DM put his foot down again with what his character could do.

And here is where our Kobold barbarian decided to give a little bit back to PP. Now, the person playing the kobold is an ex football player, you can tell by how wide the guys shoulders is. He decided that a kobold who has no concept about money, mechanical creatures and bartering would definitely try to help the party by selling anything. The kobold does come from a tribe where what is yours is mine and what is mine is yours after all.

Halfway through our third session we are talking to our first VIP NPC. A person who we are doing some dealings with. In the midst of our contract negotiations, the kobold tries to sweeten the deal. "Group would like to offer mechanical creature for deal. We will accept no smaller than 10 copper pieces!" group laughs as this is what we can all picture the kobold doing. PP gets visibly angry and yells for him not to even think about it or he would attack the kobold. The man playing the kobold, again think retired football player who is no where in physical condition to play but still big enough to scare people says that it is what the kobold would do, but this is a great chance to say to the kobold why the creature is important and there is absolutely no way that the DM will allow the creature to actually be sold so it does play into the role playing element. PP then says that his character would attack the kobold if he tries to sell the creature. Again, football player says calmly, just give a small reason to the kobold why, I can even spit ball some ideas if you're stuck, I will continue to try and sell it if you only threaten my character again. PP- stop it or else. Dm- okay, this is getting too heated, let's cool down and end the session there. football player nods to Dm in acknowledgement that it has probably gone a little too far and starts packing up. PP leaves quickly out the store and 20 minutes after starts threatening the football player that he would actually harm him IN REAL LIFE if this continues. The football player again pleads with PP to just think about how this one small bit of roleplay would bring the two closer but PP was having none of it. Later the football player messaged a couple of us stating that he was doing this "for the lolz" as well as trying every so harshly to try and get PP to tell us something about their character's backstory.

​

Next session, it was clear that football player had dropped the whole selling the creature shtick for the time being. It was clear that there was tension in the air. What made it somewhat ironic was that the football player sat next to PP that day and was still actually fairly reasonable considering everything. the evening got underway and we ended up having to break into a tower and fight our way through to the top to free another VIP. The first encounter was met with some close up and personal combat. this caught our spellcasters off guard and had them scrambling to keep some distance. The kobold was getting hit with a couple of melee attacks and PP's creature ended up being flanked and valiantly, was taken down after giving it its' all to the cause. What I haven't told you yet is that the football player and their wife loved to use their 3D printer to supply us with miniatures for our games night. they loved making our characters and tried to tie the enemies with things that they thought we would fight. PP, seeing his mechanical companion break apart, stood up started yelling and picked up his miniature. Before anyone had time to react, he jammed his miniature into the enemy that bested his mechanical friend breaking the two miniatures in the process.

​

The table was stunned. You could clearly see that both the football player and his wife were visibly annoyed. The football player let out a noise before covering his hand and his mouth whilst his wife was almost in tears. Without skipping a beat, PP as calmly as I have ever seen a person who has just full on raged just says, " hey the miniatures were fragile anyway" before sitting down. The DM paused the game and spoke with the football player who urged him to continue this session for the benefit of the group. The session ended with everyone giving PP a wide birth. Football player was understandably upset but was calmer than most would have been in that situation. After the session finished, we all walked our separate ways except for PP, rightly so, was running as fast as he could away from the group. Football player just shook his head before saying his goodbyes to the group.

Needless to say that was the final straw for PP in our group. Our DM was notified by the local game shops staff that PP had received many complaints for more than just his table and was informed that they were finally banning him from playing DND at the store. We later found out that the DM had been filing complaints again PP as well and that it wasn't the first time that PP was banned from playing DND at different tables. Another interesting tid bit was that the store was giving him a temporary ban from the store and were going to review his ban in a couple of months. The reason for a review, PP was also on their final warning at another games store in another game type. We just recently found out that PP is now permanently banned from all board game store in our town and his address has been blacklisted from the store website.

As for our group, the next session was back to how it was in the promised times. Everyone was laughing and smiling. Best of all, the whole session had not an inkling of combat. We did that for the lolz

Hello people of r/rpghorrorstories, it's my first time posting here and my story is more funny than scary or annoying. I hope a bit of fun will not kill the general mood around here (kidding).

So, I am an eternal GM for a rather large group of people that I know pretty well. We generally play in a West Marches-esque way, where I come up with ways to avoid keeping fixed team composition. Whoever wants to play at given date, comes. It works wonders when most of the group have kids/work/other stuff on their heads.

We recently had a pretty big campaign wrapped up in an epic finale. What started as exploration/survival game, after almost 70 sessions, ended up on such high fantasy notes that I decided to tone the next one down a bit.

So, being inspired by the recent season of True Detective, I moved the setting to the far north of my homebrew, generic fantasy world. The game would take place in an imperial naval city, where magic is pretty much prohibited, and non-human species can not have citizenship. Also, there are social tensions between imperials and locals (think of Nords from Skyrim), as per usual, to keep things interesting. The players would take roles of city guardsmen solving criminal cases. And one important thing: the city where it all happens is a shithole where no sane person actually wants to stay for longer than he has to: there is the cold weather, polar night and day cycle, dangerous wildlife, opressive government, etc..

I presented this setting to the players, pretty much telling them that it is made specifically to reduce the dice rolling, magic shenanigans and powergaming to minimum, while promoting problem solving and roleplay. I also made a short pdf with a description of the city and general character guidelines, and posted it on our Discord server. Every character was required to be stationed in this city unwillingly due to some past problems (i.e. demotion in the ranks of imperial guard) and the "win" condition would be to get promoted and leave.

So, ready for the first session, I went to our host's place. I tought that my guidelines were simple enough and that I made the task of creating characters easier by limiting the choices of mechanical nature. What's simplier than coming up with a "cop who got framed for XYZ and now he must climb up the ranks to get back on his enemies" or "a Nord who tries to assimilate in imperial society by entering the ranks of law enforcement"?

As we all sat around the table, my players for this night all took out their sheets and started the introductions. All was going well, everybody keeping to the theme... And then HE presents: the monkey man.

Yup, no mistake here. One of my players came up with an idea to make an orphan who was raised by monkeys in a jungle, some Tarzan wannabe, and then got found and took by a travelling circus, just to get left in a imperial monastery, from where - somehow - he ended up among city guard.

You could actually feel the mental "WHYYY" of others, trying to find a reasonable place for monkey man in this setting or at least comprehend how the player came up with this idea habing read the guidelines.

So much for a gritty, noir atmosphere of a snow-covered imperial Sin City. All is well that ends well it seems, for then we quickly persuaded the player in question to abandon his idea for the sake of this setting alone, and just keep it simple. Now he is an illiterate barbarian who gets all the best reviews as a guardsman, because he always stays true to his beliefs and is generally just a good man among some pretty shady characters.

And funny thing: after maybe a dozen sessions deep in the campaign he will probably be the first character to "win" this by being promoted and relegated to some better place.

Part 1: https://www.reddit.com/r/rpghorrorstories/comments/1gpsn6g/the_dmpc_proposed_to_me_and_it_destroyed_our/
Part 3: https://www.reddit.com/r/rpghorrorstories/comments/1grnl8t/the_dmpc_proposed_to_me_and_it_destroyed_our/

In the last part, I explained the lead-up to the inciting incident. Now, I’ll cover the fallout—and the “marriage” itself.

After the whole proposal fiasco, I asked the DM for a chat. I wanted to know why Sorcerer would marry my Rogue, especially since she wasn’t even in love with him, as it didn’t make much sense for him to trust a spy. The DM assured me it was to “protect her and the kids” and that he knew Rogue wasn’t in love with him. He even added that “in time, Rogue will come to love me.” I wasn’t thrilled with the idea, but as a newbie, I figured the DM knew what he was doing, especially since the campaign was engaging and well-run.

I agreed but asked to build up the story. I wanted to see the fallout with the assassin’s guild, explore how her siblings would cope with all this, and see how my Rogue balanced being both a party member and married to our sponsor. He assured me we’d cover all this during his next session as DM. But he then said we’d have to wait until he could “convince his stepsister to get over it.” When I asked what he meant, he explained that Bard and Druid were mad at him for proposing to a “newbie,” though he thought he could bring Bard back. He insisted it wasn’t about me and that it was “an above-table issue” he’d handle.

So, I decided to focus on my character’s new goals and inner conflict. I wanted Rogue to feel realistic, so I planned for her to struggle with readjusting to nobility and her fears of losing everything. Wizard suggested I keep a diary to deepen her character, and it ended up being a great idea the DM also liked.

While waiting for the next big session, Wizard ran a lighthearted story for Paladin, Sorcerer, and me for some character-building. In it, Sorcerer announced his marriage to his family and coordinated a rescue for the children. Paladin, meanwhile, wrestled with protecting someone he didn’t even trust at first. It was great for building Rogue and Paladin’s dynamic, and we even had some heartfelt moments. But at the end, Sorcerer returned from a solo mission and made it clear to Paladin that he was not to see Rogue as anything other than “mistress of the house” and that she was “only mine.”

Apparently, Sorcerer’s protectiveness—and jealousy—was part of his “character flaws,” though it was strange how he’d never shown this before. But, since the campaign had already dealt with complex topics, I went along with it, thinking it was part of the plan (yes, I know).

Then Bard came back, and the DM started DMing again. He immediately focused on her, setting up a mini-arc where she struggled with Sorcerer rejecting her advances (news to me, since there was no hint of this earlier). Bard threw a fit, cursed my character, then rolled to seduce an NPC who was Sorcerer’s cousin and looked just like him. The roll succeeded, and the DM and Bard roleplayed it all out in graphic detail. When asked, the DM said Bard had always wanted to do more “romantic” roleplay but that he had rejected the idea, as it felt weird flirting with his sister, however he promised she was free to seduce now. After this, Bard never had an issue with the DM again—on or off the table.

And what happened to our big marriage story arc? Well, Sorcerer pulled Rogue aside, had her sign a magical blood-binding contract, reassured her the kids were adopted by the family, and—boom—they were married. He also informed me the guild was “taken care of” and that the kids were already in the mansion. The whole thing took less than Bard’s mini-arc—and definitely less time than that intimate scene. No rolls, no real conflict, just…nothing. It was anticlimactic, to say the least.

In the next session, Paladin cited scheduling conflicts, so Wizard was tasked with recruiting new players since they had done a “great job” bringing me in. Wizard, ever so diligent found some friends, and DM interviewed them, approving three new characters:

Cleric: Part of a secret cult run by Sorcerer’s family.

Artificer: Sponsored by Sorcerer’s family and hopes to work for them.

Warlock: Sold his soul to a demon connected to the cult and supposedly key to the family’s future plans.

Artificer and Warlock were exes, and Warlock and Cleric had a “flirtationship.” They were all close friends now, which, spoiler alert, would matter in Part 3.

By the time they joined, Rogue was “mistress of the household” and expected to be a mentor figure to the new players. I was excited to guide the party, give them some respect, and join them on their first main mission. Sorcerer didn’t like it, saying things like, “The mistress of this household shouldn’t be doing things beneath her.” But Rogue convinced him to let her go, arguing she needed to see if they were trustworthy. He reluctantly agreed.

The mission was easy, since it was tailored to the new characters’ level, but Rogue ended up doing most of the heavy lifting as the only martial character. She got hurt, but Cleric healed her. Still, Sorcerer used this as an excuse to forbid her from going on dangerous missions again. Rogue pushed back, but the tension between them was growing.

I told the DM I wasn’t happy with Rogue being barred from missions, as it defeated the purpose of D&D. He said that wasn’t the intention, but now that Rogue was “a married woman,” she had to balance that role, too. He then mentioned he wanted to make the campaign more magic-based, and he didn’t think my character “fit” because she was “just a Rogue.” After a long argument, we compromised on giving her “tasks” while the others did magic-related missions.

What I didn’t realize was that these tasks would involve either going on dates with Sorcerer, enduring constant reminders from NPCs that Rogue wasn’t “good enough,” or repeatedly proving herself to Sorcerer’s family members. Every. Single. Session. Meanwhile, the others were off on actual adventures.

I did my best to roll with it. I refined my character, learned new skills, and stayed true to Rogue. But… I was basically a housewife. I told the DM this wasn’t working and that I felt like an NPC. Seeing how upset I was, he admitted he struggled to give Rogue meaningful tasks without conflicting with Sorcerer’s family’s values and that it would be “out of character” for Sorcerer to let his wife just “wander off.”

Frustrated, I asked why Rogue had to marry him if it wasn’t a true part of the story. He replied that he “just liked Rogue.” When I asked if he meant Sorcerer or himself, he said both. He added that he had “a thing for girls with accents” and liked that Rogue was mixed-race like me. So I asked if he was attracted to me, and he swore up and down that it wasn’t like that. He just thought Rogue was “perfect” for Sorcerer and wanted her to be a “powerful mistress” but needed to handle the other players’ arcs. He promised to “fix it,” and, unfortunately, I trusted him again.

By this time, Wizard was becoming absent from both the game and my life. Meanwhile, the DM started focusing more on Warlock and Artificer, who were getting closer to him, while Cleric was also starting to disappear (relevant for Part 3). Whenever there was a disagreement, they’d just label me as “dramatic.” So, I believed them and kept quiet.

Finally, to “make me happy,” the DM decided to give me a project. He wanted to move our adventures to a new setting and asked me to design it. Everything—its economy, social systems, and religions. And as an amateur writer and total fool, I happily accepted.

In Part 3, we’ll dive into emotional breakdowns, betrayals, and the thrilling finale to the worst table ever.

Time: Spring 2011
Location: Local Gaming store in a small town in the US

A small gaming club had emerged at this local store, which amounted to people gathering together once a month for a few hours on a Saturday morning to game together, in a variety of one-shot games with a rotating assortment of GM's, and people who didn't play the one-shots would sit down and play various CCG's instead.

I asked to run d6 Star Wars, which is one of my favorite RPG's. People seemed excited to play this, and I created a library of several dozen pre-gen characters of wide variety of Star Wars archetypes, dusted off my Star Wars miniatures, and generally got ready to run a one-shot Star Wars game.

The one-shot came and went, and it went pretty good. People had fun, I got a lot of praise for it, and most of the people in that one shot seemed interested in an ongoing campaign. I was really excited at the chance to run an ongoing Star Wars campaign for the first time in many years.

So, the next Saturday, we gathered at the house of one of the players to start a campaign.

The first sign of trouble was that instead of the library of carefully crafted pre-gens all designed to be pretty typical Star Wars characters of various sorts (smugglers, starfighter pilots, bounty hunters etc.) they all wanted to create their own characters (and not re-use the characters they had for the one-shot). . .and they all immediately dove straight in to trying to powergame as much as they could, all wanting to create combat monsters that could do as much damage (and sustain as much damage) as possible, ignoring other important skills (like knowing how to fly a ship, repair things, or plot a course for a ship). They spent more time looking through equipment books for the blasters that do the most damage than they did anything else.

When it came time to run the actual adventure, I went with my pretty standard Star Wars game scenario, set in the New Republic era with the players working as agents of the New Republic. They were given a light freighter, some "pocket money" credits, some basic weapons and gear, and given a pretty typical mission (something about going to an Imperial-held planet and stealing some important equipment from an Imperial base, IIRC).

They didn't even pretend to follow that mission, basically running off with the ship and wanting to become space pirates, just attacking everything in sight to get money and stuff (and they seemed to think they'd get more character progression from it, but this wasn't a game where you get more XP from fighting). They ignored the actual assignment and wanted to basically start shaking people down in the spaceport for money. . .and if any authorities get in the way, to blast them and keep going.

There was one Force User amongst the characters, who was being played by a Wiccan girl who tried to play her character as some Force-using mystic from a primitive planet. Okay, that's perfectly allowed. . .but she kept trying to do things that were blatantly against the "rules" for Force users, in that they would get her Dark Side points. In this version of the Star Wars RPG, those points are serious business, and becoming Dark Side would mean becoming an NPC.

She was indignant about this, and tried lecturing me, at length, on the ethics and morality of the use of ritual magick and how nothing she was trying to do in-game was wrong, and how I was being "stuck up Lawful Good" in trying to "force" what she saw as "my" beliefs on her. . .and she absolutely would NOT listen to me saying that's the rules of the setting, even when I was literally quoting lines from the movies about the rules for using the Force to justify the rules she wanted to break. She was basically playing a self-insert character with how she imagined her neo-pagan magic as Force powers and was seeing me saying that everything she was trying to do was "Dark Side" as a personal insult against her religious beliefs and practices.

Eventually the session just fizzled out as they kept wanting to mug people in the spaceport and rob ships that were parked, and their total lack of any finesse/negotiation/stealth skills and heavy focus on pure combat wasn't exactly good for this. It just kind of petered out because they started to get bored with being space murderhobos, and I told them that the next encounter would be an overwhelming encounter against the entire Imperial garrison, up to and including AT-ST and AT-AT activity (and a possible TIE Bomber airstrike) against whoever is going around the spaceport shooting the place up and piling up bodies. Rather than play out that "Custer's Last Stand", it ended, with some hard feelings and snarky comments about me being a "Killer GM".

. . .and I found I wasn't really welcome at the gaming club anymore, in fact they disbanded the club shortly afterwards (deleted the Facebook group for the club, took down the signs for it at the gaming store). I found out from the one person at that game that I knew away from that club (said Wiccan girl) that the rest of the folks there had said I was too "goody two shoes" to run games for a "mature" gaming group like them.

Our story begins in the before times. Before the world shut down and everyone started doing everything from home. My friend was a dungeon master at our local game shop. He ran a series of long form campaigns that took players from level 1 to 20.

Once the final bad guy was defeated, Once the final cheerleader was safe from harm, the in-game party would disband, only for their sons and daughters to come together decades later to face a new threat.

This game lasted for a long time. Players would join, and players would leave. great stories were told. Characters in previous iterations became so powerful they served as gods in the next cycle.

This game went on for years and years before Covid eventually caused it to move to Roll20. It was called many things, but as the campaign transitioned from one game to the next, we starting calling it simply. "The Tuesday Game."

I knew half the players in this game, though I would only officially join as a player myself in 2021, after the game transitioned from in person, to online.

As the years move on, I became a regular member of the group. As usual people came and people went as life and schedules changed. But yesterday, our DM announced that within about four sessions, we would finish this campaign. And once we had, he would be retiring as our forever DM. Some one else could take the reins.

I happen to have just finished updating the basement of my house, and have a brand new room that would be perfect for in-person games. I was talking to a few members of the party after session wrapped for the day, and explained that while I didn't feel like taking over the timeslot and running "The Tuesday Game™", I wouldn't mind running something smaller. I was sitting in a separate discord room from the main group with a few fellow players that are all still local. We got to chatting about the possibility of playing in person again with drawn maps and figures and printed character sheets, just like the old days. THis quickly spiraled into making a game table with an inset TV, and 3D printing custom figures, and other such things.

We kick around ideas and something resembling a plan starts to form. It would be a game set in legally distinct Ravenloft, and would -not- feature Strahd. We have all played Curse of Strahd in the past, and were familiar with the plot and setting, But I didn't want to just run it again.

As we discuss the setting and lore, one of the other players joins our call. They are notably not local. Without the needed context that we are planning an in-person game, They offer their own two cents on the things we are discussing. It was never intrusive or unwelcome, and the conversation continued on.

When players started to talk about character ideas, I remembered the situation at hand and told the newcomer that we were discussing an in-person game at my house, not wanting to get their hopes up. However, they made it clear that their hopes were already sky high. This was exactly the game they have wanted to play in for a long time now. They already had a character thought up and it would just be perfect for the themes already mentioned.

I insist that this will be an in-person game, and while I have no problem playing with them in other games, they just live many many hours away from me, and I would not suggest that commute. Furthermore, I also insist that I do not want to just run this game in Roll20. The whole point was to utilize the space in my house and play a game in person again.

Their first suggestion is to run the game in Foundry, since that was already mentioned. This came from a suggestion of using Foundry for maps on a screen or maybe building one of those inset screen tables to game on. Again, the rest of us emphasize the idea was to play in person.

The newcomer's second suggestion is that we can play at their house, which has a full D&D setup with plenty of terrain and minis and everything! And again... we point out that none of us live in the same state as them, and we all live less than 30 minutes from each other, or at least from my house, which is centrally located.

At each moment I make sure I tell them that its just logistics, and I would love to play in another online game with them... just not this one. But, the damage is apparently already done. After some sudden accusations of excluding people, the new player leaves, and runs to the GM complaining that he can't let me take his game offline because it would kick half the party out. This results in further reassuring that falls on equally deaf ears. It ends with the player announcing to everyone that they will not stand for discrimination and leaving the server in spectacular fashion...

And so let this be a cautionary tale to all of you. If you refuse to drive six hours one way to run a D&D game in someone's house for them to play in, this apparently makes you a bigot...

CW: Racism, Bigotry, Implied SA on NPCs, Self-Harm.

Alright, this will be a long one, but I need to put this somewhere to send people when I talk about this later. Let this hopefully serve as a warning to new players finding themselves in groups that are a bad environment for playing, there are better groups! So without further preamble:

This happened in my last few semesters of college, I (20 M at the time) matched with a guy on Tinder (also 20 M), whom we'll call Tinder Guy, and we eventually got to talking about DnD 5e in which I told him that I had only played one game previously and have been looking for a DnD group ever since. He explained that his friends regularly play DnD 5e and that he could see about adding me to the group if I'd like. I was ecstatic, I instantly jumped at the opportunity and we met at the local coffee shop for our combo first date and to create my first character. The meet-up went well and we created my first ever DnD Character: an Aasimar Tempest Cleric of Kord.

The following is a re-telling of my characters under this DM and all of their horrible deaths.

Tempest Cleric

This was an in-person game and a homebrew world of the DM. The DM ended up being Tinder Guy's best friend. The DM was a white cis-gendered man in his early 20s. The game was being hosted at the DM and his fiance's (Fiance) apartment, which they shared with another player (the Roommate). Rounding out the group was Tinder Guy, another mutual friend of theirs (Mutual Friend), and me. During these in-person games, we'd take a break midway to go grab food, and here I learned that the DM was one of those straight white guys who would regularly say the F-word. Completely was not ok with me as a gay man, but Tinder Guy seemed to completely ignore this and so I stupidly decided to do the same.

Quick side note: I'm not one to judge someone else's living situation but this apartment was filthy. Im talking trash and trash bags in piles around the kitchen, odd smells, the bathroom was COVERED in what I assume was the GMs beard hair, and the cats they had would regularly go on the floor. I was grateful when we moved from in-person games to online mid-way through my first campaign with them.

Im not sure how far into this campaign we were playing, but my character was introduced to the party having survived a shipwreck in the middle of the ocean. Once being picked up, the campaign continued with us headed to the continent's capital to win a grand tournament. The prize of this tournament is a seat on the ruling council that advised the King. After a few rounds of combat, our party finds out that the tournament is rigged. After some sleuthing, I and another character interrogate one of the contestants who forfeited later in the game. During the interrogation, the NPC seemed to me like they were telling half-truths, so I rolled insght. I get a natural 20 insight check, and the DM tells me that the NPC is telling the truth, so I drop it, but still can't shake my suspicion.

The winner is declared, as some wizard wins against my character, defeating him in one shot. This eventually leads our party to try and investigate what is truly going on, and who the ruling council is. We find ourselves investigating one of the ruling council's favorite hangouts: a brothel that offers the most luxury services on the continent. We end up in this council member's regular suite and meet my first red flag. I should have ghosted this entire group here, but I was a very unconfident young adult, new to DnD, and was still in a situationship with Tinder Guy (more on that later). In the room is the council member's favorite escort, who claimed that she could be whatever we wanted, and seemed content in her job. The horrifying part was that none of us could discern her age, but the DM described that she looked young. The entire party reacted in disgust at this, and we spent the rest of the time ignoring this girl.

One of our players finds that the mirror on the wall is a portal to the mirror dimension. Entering it, our party eventually discovers that the ruling council is actually in charge of the city, and the tournament is now just a way for them to appoint anyone they wish to the council. The most recent addition, and who I fought, was a dracolich. We encounter this dracolich in the mirror dimension and one of the players wild shapes into a horse for the rest of us to outrun him and get back to the material world. Our team has a new goal: defeat the ruling council, and restore power to the king.

However, this was the first problem with this DM, who clearly did not understand how to properly run a plot. Our party is thwarted at every possible step. Go to a PC's underground contact? He dies from a mysterious poison as we talk to him. Go to the library? It burns down while we are trying to do research. Ask around town? An extremely overpowered assassin causes us to seek shelter in an Inn outside of town. At this point, Im getting frustrated as it feels like I'm playing a game of pretend with a toddler who keeps saying "Nuh-uh" whenever I try to do something. Eventually, getting nowhere our party decides to send someone into the mirror world as we learned one thing in our adventure thus far: entering the mirror world means that you swap places with your mirror self which lives a separate life to you. I offer up my PC, and we make the switch so the party can interrogate my mirror self.

This is where my PC dies for the first time. I decided that while Im in the mirror world, I would go out and do some sneaking around. I roll a dirty 20 for stealth and am pretty unseen as I make my way to the keep that holds the evil ruling council. The entire keep is blocked off by a red-wired fence. I reach out and touch the fence, and am instantly killed by some force that shocks my character's body to death. The party brings my PC to a nearby temple, and one player rolls a Nat 20 religion check, and Kord responds to his prayer a resurrects me as a Revannent.

After this whole debacle, and still not getting anywhere, our party leaves the city in hopes of finding information outside the town and returning with a plan and means to defeat the ruling council since we deduce that we'll get no luck within the city. The campaign does not last long here.

To skip around a bit: Our party ends up being assaulted by an extremely overpowered sea monster and my character dies again but comes back since he is a revenant. We continue looking for any other city with any means of finding information and find nothing. Tinder Guy's character gets instantly killed by a guy whose sword instantly decapitates any target he gets a Nat 20 on no matter the HP, but is revived by my character. Eventually, me and my character are starting to get quite upset. My character's whole backstory is that he's adventuring to gain experience and prove himself to his god, but it feels like I can do nothing but fail at every step.

Thankfully, the campaign did not take too long after this. To wrap this one up, our party gets a hold of the Deck of Many Things. With one of the cards, we learn who was truly behind the ruling council: the contestant my character rolled a Nat 20 insight on!! I immediately mentioned this, wondering how she could out-lie what was a 28 insight, and the DM explained that she had an item that made it so no one could effectively insight any of her words. I was dumbfounded, but dropped it, as another player managed to get a wish and with it wished that the ruling council never existed. This immediately ended the campaign, as without the ruling council, none of our characters ever met.

This meant that my very first character still ended up dying a horrible death. As I was introduced to the party being the only survivor of a shipwreck in the middle of the ocean. Basically, without that ship, my character died lost at sea.

I should have stopped playing with this group here, but again I was still trying to make things work with Tinder Guy. I had never been in a relationship before, and this was the first time I'd met someone after the first date, so I thought he could be my first. I even expressed my dislike for the DM play style, and Tinder Guy saw my point! However, he assured me that even with this I could still have fun. So, I stuck around. We moved online after this campaign and then moved into playing Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden.

Icewindale Campaign

This campaign saw multiple character deaths, not even from just me, but the entire party. The only character that never died was Roommate's evil sorcerer as this player was heavily into min-maxing his characters. I also honestly think the DM just really liked Roommate, and so that player always had some level of plot armor.

Also, I have no idea how this setting actually is supposed to run. This campaign soured me to the setting so much, that I never looked into how it was supposed to be played, and Im sure the DM took many liberties.

We begin, and I play a Kenku Cleric to the God of Peace. This was also my first (and only ever) pacifist character who would focus mainly on buffs and healing the party. As a child, he was blessed by the Frost Maiden, and as a result, is resistant to frost damage. In our first mission, we discover that we will eventually have to go against her, and my character openly tells everyone that I will be there to support the party in that final fight, but that I would only be healing as my character couldn't justify harming someone he saw saved his life.

Some adventures later, we come to the death of this PC. We encounter a troll who has not noticed us yet. I, again being a new player, had never encountered a troll before, and so I asked the DM if a troll was an intelligent being I could potentially talk to or reason with. He shrugs and just answers that my character wouldn't know and so I wouldn't. He then forbade any of the other players from informing me either with the reason that we would be essentially meta-gaming (he did things like this a lot). My character yells out to the troll in an attempt to reason with it, it roars, and we roll initiative!

My character and Fiance's character after a few rounds go down, and the other players (out of melee) finish off the Troll. I informed the other players that they would know that my character has a med pack, and anyone can use it to instantly stabilize both our characters. The DM announces that this was meta-gaming, and forbids anyone from using the med-pack saying that due to the meta-gaming, their characters now can't know about the item. Both me and Fiance fail our death saves, and our characters die with no one else having any way to cast revivify. I felt horrible, cause I felt like the reason for Fiance's character dying, and apologized to her for getting us both killed. She was fine with it and we re-rolled new characters.

My next character was a noble necromancer who was my first ever evil character. To make a long story short, as I'm jumping around a lot, but a lot of the NPCs we have met at this point have been truly bad people. We have yet to come across any NPC that showed any amount of kindness our way, so I was of the mind that I might have more fun playing an evil character like Roommate. The only thing that was evil about this character was that she wanted power, and saw people as a means to an end to get it. This character ended up in the final fight with the Frost Maiden. After three of the five characters go down, my character decides to make a run for it but doesn't make it far enough and is stopped by the Frost Maiden. I cast shatter, and finish off the Frost Maiden. Only 1 character ended up dying in this fight, and our party boards a ship to go back to the mainland.

On the ship, my character opens a book she found in the Frost Maiden's keep and is cursed with something that appears to be counting down. My character asks Mutual Friend's character (a druid at the time) to cast Greater Restoration on me. He does so and the counter immediately goes to zero, at which point a blue orb is pulled out of my body and I am informed that my character, a wizard, can no longer cast any spells as the magic has been removed from my body. My evil character, who is now living her worst fear, just asks the party to end her at this point. They oblige, and Mutual Friend's character finishes off my necromancer with a magical dagger that dooms any person's soul that falls to this blade to have their soul sent to the nine hells no matter what. This I shrugged at, considering that due to this character's nature, she was probably headed there anyway, but had this been another character I would have been fuming.

The next character was a package deal with the Tinder Guy's new character to replace his that died during the Frost Madien fight. I played a moth fairy cleric of light (I thought it was fun). Tinder Guy's character was an elf from the Feywild who had amnesia and could not remember anything before 100 years ago. They had met 50 years ago and were traveling ever since. At this point, the campaign's main "bad guy" was a Dwegar King who wanted to wipe Icewind Dale off the map, and build a Dwegar city on top of it. When our party enters the Dwegar Keep, we stumble across another Dwegar who speaks to us in the undercommon dialect of dwarvish. My character knew dwarvish, so he began trying to communicate in that language, but the Dwegar kept looking annoyed/uncomfortable with me speaking that language. I roll insight to figure out why and the DM responds that it seems the Dwegar views the Dwarf language as unrefined, as if I'm speaking a dumber version of his language and he hates the sound. I respond, "Oh, so he's racist." The DM defends the Dwegar, "No, he's not racist, think of it as if you heard a black man speaking ghetto, it's like that." I was at a loss for words at this. There had been previous instances where I had called out an NPC for being racist toward another race or species in this campaign, but this was the first time he had defended an NPC. Not to mention he defended racism, with what seemed like racism. We end up arguing back and forth where I then say him calling AAV "ghetto" was problematic, and he eventually joked, "Oh! I understand the characters you play now! They're all white girls, they care so much about racism they see it in everything."

I left this out until now, but I feel it's now important to mention: I am Puerto Rican. If you are unfamiliar, I'll simplify: I am a Latino man. I'm not even white-passing, my skin is brown, I have curly black hair, and I am very proud of my heritage so to go without knowing is impossible. At that last remark, I blinked and reminded him that I was a person of color, that the reason I kept calling out NPCs for being racist was because I felt they were and I was (and still am) very sensitive to that in my games. He eventually dropped it but still continued to make excuses for the Dwegar's racism.

I brought up this encounter to Tinder Guy over text as something that made me upset, and again he agreed with me that this was annoying but insisted we could have fun. I was no longer so sure, and also didn't like that in person he would not take my side or speak up with me over his friend. I wish I had left at this moment, as the DM was clearly bad at being a DM, but I didn't want to blow my shot with Tinder Guy.

Later, our party defends the city from a mechanical dragon the Dwegar had created, and I (surprisingly) don't die in this fight! The dragon leaves, and we are told to ask an imprisoned wizard at the nearby grand prison to see if he has any idea on how to defeat the dragon.

On the way, I forget exactly how this happened, but about half of our characters get cursed, mine included. The curse was I believe a homebrew of the DMs and worked like this: A random stat (determined by a d6) was reduced by a random number (determined by a d20). I rolled Intelligence and then proceeded to roll my d20 and got a natural 20. My Character's INT was reduced to 1, and I was now essentially a moth with no ability to cast spells. Great!

At the prison, the party goes to ask the wizard questions. He has been brought into an interrogation chamber and is surrounded by an anti-magic bubble. My character, decided to wander a bit, in search of light. I asked the DM what the brightest thing in the room was, and he answered that it was the anti-magic bubble. Now, as a new character, I had no idea that fairies were essentially made of magic. And so, my character touches the bubble and instead of the DM rolling damage, he describes to the party that my character's body immediately explodes, killing me instantly.

This brings me to my final character with this group: a noble human wild magic sorcerer. She joins the group and multiple things happen. Fiance's second character dies in a truly tragic way, she meets the person who had given her Lycanthropy after spending the whole adventure trying to find her, but the character pretends to not remember her. I think the Roommate's character insights into this but doesn't say anything. The NPC eventually leaves, still pretending to not know her, and a random encounter ensues in which Fiance's character dies. This upset Fiance to the point of tears as she realized her final moments alive were overshadowed by the fact that someone close to her character refused to acknowledge her existence. This was one moment that I truly began to disengage from this whole campaign, and started looking for some way out where I could potentially still hang out with Tinder Guy as at this moment I had enough.

Later, we are summoned to the Keep by the Dwegar King to have a conversation where he tells the party his plans for Icewind Dale: he wants to destroy it, drive out and/or kill every citizen there, and then build his city on its ruins. Me and Fiance's new characters are appalled by this, but Mutual Friend and Tinder Guy's characters are on the Dwegar King's side as the Dwegar Kind had told them that this was pay back for the settler of Icewind Dale doing it to his people. My character agreed that what the settlers did to his people was bad, but he'd be killing an entire town of innocent people and that this wasn't ok. The DM laughed at this and told me that it was ironic that I didn't like racism in my games, but seemed completely ok to defend a settlement of colonizers. He then asked if it would be different if the Dwegar were instead Native American. Idiotic comparison aside, I was still against this, and I honestly was no longer sure our characters were fighting or if we all were. During this fight the Dwegar King revealed to my character that my parents had slaves of Dwegar, and if anything my character should be honor-bound to help him. This was straight-up something the DM had invented and was not part of my backstory at all. My character said that she would not help and that after leaving this Keep, she would seek to free her father's slaves.

I don't remember whose character threw the first punch, but this eventually ended in PVP. Those against the King were almost taken out, but the DM pulled some dies ex machina card and ended the fight without any of our characters dying, my character stormed out of the keep upset and experienced multiple wild magic surges after rolling a 1 on the wild magic surge table.

From here, I don't remember how this campaign ended, but I believe the DM abandoned it as he felt he was done with DnD and wanted to try a different system altogether. Tinder Guy and I met up in person at my apartment to make new characters under this new system, and eventually, I brought up all my grievances with the group and how I was still not enjoying myself. Eventually, I brought up our situationship. At this moment it had been two or three months since we met, and it felt like things weren't progressing between us. He had talked about wanting to take things slow, but at this moment they were going too slow for me and I wanted to start speeding things up a bit. He then informed me that he wasn't looking for anything serious right now and said that we should just be friends, but we could still do things like cuddle.

This fully blindsided me at the time, but I honestly should have seen this coming. Hell, looking back, Im kicking myself for not confronting him sooner. I asked him why he hadn't told me sooner that he had changed his mind, and he just shrugged and said he was busy with moving and just kept forgetting to mention it. He then left my apartment, and I never saw him in person again.

With now no reason to continue with that DnD group, I let the DM know that I couldn't continue playing because I was too busy with my final semester of college, and the next day I left the server and blocked all of Tinder Guy's friends. Tinder Guy continued to text me every now and then, but eventually, we stopped talking altogether.

When I retell this story now, and I've omitted quite a bit to write this all up, people always ask why I stuck around so long. And honestly, it was for multiple things, not just Tinder Guy even though he did play a part in me sticking around. I didn't have a lot of friends, it was the pandemic and so I was very lonely, and on top of it everyone online into DnD kept saying "Bad DnD is better than no DnD" and having gone through this I can say that that is completely untrue. These games had a genuine impact on my mental health seeing my characters die in so many awful ways, and with no closure to any of their stories. If anyone else is reading this and is also in a bad DnD group, just leave! Trust me, there are so many people playing DnD online nowadays that you can find a group that matches your play style, and I certainly have.

TLDR: Genuinely the worst DnD experience of my life. DM was horrible at pacing, running a game, or maintaining a cohesive plot, killed many of my characters (some via instant death), and had numerous incidents of ignorance and racism. I ended up ghosting the group. Moral of the sorry: no amount of loneliness is worth bad DnD.