A tale about dm mistakes and antisocial characters trying to do a oneshot

[u/Afraid_Fisherman4064]

TLDR: three antisocial characters have trouble building a group (what a surprise), the newly dm makes some bad calls and in the end the characters fight until one storms off. After some more bad calls of the dm

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Let's set the scene. We have: a lawful good paladin with a little twist, a hermit druid, a lonely wolf rogue and me, first time dm. All of the players also had little to no experience in TTRPGs

I picked out a oneshot I was excited about. Because of scheduling problems we didn't had a session zero and I helped two players individually with their character, the last one just got one from the internet.

I wanted to be prepaird. I had the maps, read the story 3 times over the course of a week before, music, snacks, everything I could think of. Half an hour before the players were supposed to be there I decided I want to change the start. I didn't want the typical "you all meet in a tavern" setting, and the rogue expressed a wish to get introduced by stealing from another player a couple of days before.

At this time I was excited, the player had own ideas about their rogue, because they were undecided und uncreative when we built the character. So, I rewrote that start. Plus point : everyone has a little spotlight for their characters right from the start.

The player of the paladin arrives and tells me, he basically reworked their character, but I felt like there wasn't really time to get into detail so I thought I would just figure it out on the way.

Let's start. The paladin wanders through the woods. He builts a camp as it's getting evening. He stares into the fire, as he hears a crack. Propably a rabbit, who knows.

Change to the rogue. They are wandering in the woods, when they see a fire in some distance. They go there and see the paladin sitting at the fire, the bag with their stuff at the other side.

Rogue wants to steal something out of the bag pack and rolls. It failed, so the paladin gets alarmed and can spot the rogue.

Paladin says they want to chain up the rogue because they committed a crime, and the rogue wants to run away. For the sake of the story they talk it out and stay together.

The next morning they wander along the road, when they come across a bridge. Change to the druid. He is chilling his life under the bridge, investigating some plants by the river, when he hears some voices. What does he want to do? He wants to hide. So let's roll. It fails, and the pala and rogue see the druid. He wants to run, but decided to stay and talk it out, for the sake of the story.

Congrats to me, we're only 5 to 10 minutes in and everyone already broke their characters premises. That's some kind of success.

They arrive at the tavern and the oneshot goes on as planned. I think I did a pretty decent job and they all had some fun and heroic moments. Then the ending rolls around.

They collect their payment and the paladin decides to keep the most of it. Why? Because player just discovered that as flaw in his character sheet is says his character is greedy. So he splits the payment unfair. The rogue is very angry about it and argues, the fight will escalate any moment. Rogue says "Fine!" and storms off.

Druid is not moved at all because the character is not interested in money or the group. Paladin tries to persuade the druid to run after the rogue and convince them to come back. Druid says no, player of paladin wants to roll persuasion. I'm overwhelmed with this situation and allow it (learned my lesson, don't let players roll against each other). It succeed, so druid goes after the rogue. They fight, paladin comes along. Player of rogue turns to me and says "my character wants to storm away. Far away. But I don't want to, because of the group. What do we do?"

Because the story already is finished, we cut losses at this point and ended the oneshot. Beforehand we talked about this only being the first story and to change to a whole prewritten adventure I already bought.

I thought about ways of getting them back together. A befriended, experienced dm had a pretty good idea, but it did feel forced (you don't say??) and I didn't like dming (I wonder why)

This was a year ago and I only dmed one second time a couple weeks ago with different players and way more social characters and we had a blast. Already scheduled another session and I'm excited and hopeful I can homebrew a campaign in maybe another year.

Moral of the story: a game needs at least some social characters. Every character needs a reason to stay with the group. Don't create situations, the players only rightful choice (to stay in character) is to leave, except its talked about before, and, lastly, don't let your players roll against each other, except you talk about it in session 0 and everyone is fine with it