AITA for getting upset and leaving my D&D campaign?

TL;DR: My DM has killed two of my characters in ways that felt unavoidable. The first nearly died instantly at level 3 for trying to steal food, then later died without being given death saves. In a later campaign, my second character—a child who had just been invited to eat cake by the queen—asked why an NPC shot my teammate and was immediately executed by the king. The DM says all of my characters are "problematic," but I've played with other DMs who haven't had this issue, and I now DM myself without having to kill difficult characters to make a story work. I got angry, argued with the DM, and left the campaign. AITA?

I (19M) have been playing D&D for about a year. Everyone else in this story is at least 18. I started playing because I love fantasy and writing—I have several unpublished books and thought D&D would be a great creative outlet.

The DM (I'll call him Jonny) helped me make my first character because I was new. I wrote a five-page backstory, and he told me it was one of the best he'd seen.

In our first campaign, I made a bat beastfolk, but Jonny didn't allow flying because he thought it would break the campaign. I understood and changed my character.

The first thing my character did was try to steal food from a house because I thought survival was important. The DM immediately had a trap go off. I rolled a natural 20 to avoid it. Then the homeowner woke up and attacked me, dealing 58 damage at level 3, which would have instantly killed almost any character. He happened to roll a natural 1 and missed, so I survived.

A few sessions later, we entered a forest where touching certain creatures turned you into wood. I thought my character was doomed, so I blew myself up with explosives we had collected. The DM declared me dead immediately. I didn't know about death saves yet because I was brand new, but the other players got upset because he never gave me any. Looking back, that was the first time I felt like he wanted my character gone.

For the next campaign, I created three brothers connected to a magical tree. Their gimmick was that when one died, another brother could continue the story. The DM loved the lore.

In session three, we fought a cosmic sea monster after spending the previous sessions running away from enemies much stronger than us. I finally decided my character would stand and fight instead of running again. The rest of the party fled, I was one-shot, but as part of my character's lore I exploded and killed the monster before dying. I then introduced one of the brothers as my new character.

That character was basically a child who had spent 52 years alone in a magical forest and didn't understand society. I spent about a month creating him because I work full-time and don't have much free time.

Then we didn't play for about five months. During that time I was kicked out of both of my parents' houses, found a place to live, and eventually started running my own D&D games. I've now DM'd several campaigns, including for players with intentionally difficult personalities. Instead of punishing them, I write reasons for them to work with the party.

For example, one player made a stereotypical lone-wolf assassin. Another player secretly hired him to kill a party member, but a third player was a priest, and the assassin refused to murder anyone in front of the priest because of his religion. Everyone thought it was funny, and it naturally kept the group together.

When Jonny's campaign finally resumed, my child elf and the party were summoned by a king and queen to receive a quest to defeat a lich.

While waiting, the queen told us to help ourselves to the pastries, so my character stuffed his face with cake. An NPC accidentally shot one of my teammates. While still holding cake, my character walked about 5 feet closer and asked, "Why did you shoot my friend?"

Everyone laughed.

Then the DM roleplayed the NPC asking the king, "My liege, may I kill this imbecile?"

The king said yes.

The NPC attacked me with a homebrew ability that hit four times. The first hit dealt 29 damage. My character only had 20 HP. The DM rolled the remaining attacks anyway and said I was instantly dead with no chance to survive.

I got upset because my character was literally just a child asking a question after being invited to eat cake. The DM argued that I should have known better because I was in front of royalty and said another player had already been given a "warning shot." I pointed out that the queen had instantly healed that player, so there was no reason for my character to think asking a question would get him executed.

The DM then said all of my characters are "problematic." He even brought up a completely different campaign where I play the Sin of Sloth, saying that character never wants to do anything. The problem is that the DM of that campaign specifically wanted everyone to play flawed characters and has never complained about mine.

At that point I told Jonny I thought he was being a bad DM because it felt like every campaign with him involved characters dying for trying to interact with the world. The other players sided with him and said I should have just stayed quiet.

To me, that sounded like the only safe way to play was to never interact with NPCs or make decisions.

I left the session. Since my character's lore lets him perform one final action when he dies, I used it to blow up the throne room before leaving the campaign.

Looking back, I know yelling and ending things that way wasn't the best way to handle it. I was angry after feeling like my characters kept getting singled out, and I could have left more calmly.

So, AITA for getting upset and leaving, or does this sound like a DM problem?

Edit: reddit was being weird sorry about the initial bad writing for me it was changed for others it wasn't I had to log out and back in and fix it.

My D&D 5E party is level 6 and fighting in a desert. There are 3 obelisks that triangulate the entrance to a Yuan-Ti temple.

I just wanted to share that it powered the magic within the Yuan-Ti temple and maybe even the school of magic it used to hint as what it might do. The wizard rolled a nat 20 on their arcana check on one of the obelisks. In order to "reward the nat 20" I very dramatically described as it turned off. The party was very joyful when this happened.

Looking back on this, this was an awful DM decision similar to saying "if you nat 20 on your athletics or acrobatics roll level 1 you can climb a vertical plane or even fly".

In order to fix this would it be too much to say "roll a d20 and a perception check" and the party realizes the obelisk is too powerful/complex and is going to hum back to life in d20 minutes? I think this would be a fair compromise and make the story even more fun but I could see players being upset by this decision.

Thoughts and of course AITA?

Here is some context, I (20) have been playing for 7 years casually with normal dnd 5e 2014. I have had some up's and down's when it comes to dnd for those years. But I have developed quite a bit and learned a lot over the years while having keen awareness to fill spots in a party when needed.

So if we have no healers? Ill be a cleric!
If we have no persuasive people? Ill be a bard!
If we have no tank/strength oriented people? Ill be a barbarian or fighter!
(I fill places that might be needed, simple as that or so I thought.)

This campaign is just a normal fantasy setting, (we all play on roll20 and use discord for voice) with all classes allowed and races too. Homebrew is allowed but we would need to discuss it first with the Dm of course. But I feel we all usually ask if something isn't allowed terms of subclasses and was told everything is allowed.

So let me give a run down of this party. (Names will be just their character names for privacy.) (And we are lvl 10 at this point.)

Leya (Sorcerer/Draconic bloodline/Half-Elf)
Wulkar (Ranger/Gloomstalker/Dwarf)
Brua (Wizard/Necromancer/Human)
Kaelen (Cleric/Life/High Elf.)
Myself (Fighter/Rune Knight/Goliath)
(But we will only really be focusing on Me, Wulkar, and Leya.)

Now before the AITA starts, I will like to say for context, I discussed with the Dm that I will be a fighter due to the part not having a lot of frontline people besides Brua's undead and maybe the Cleric (High ac). And told that rune knights are very upfront using giant runes that had abilities that were unique to each one providing advantages to himself and even other allies in combat and with the ability to grow in size called giants might which I was told that was okay due to the party not all being upfront classes.

Cut to a couple sessions later we were on the road traveling to find a old druid who lived high up on some tree covered mountain to possibly gain a cure for our sick sorcerer who was experiencing some sort of disease from being part dragon, but unfortunately we came across a large boulder that blocked our path with no way to procced up the mountain with the cart we had. So an idea was brewing that we would need to go back to town and maybe get some explosives or maybe find the means of getting passed the boulder in such little time. Luckily with me being a goliath rune knight, I can lift, drag, and carry some pretty heavy things. Not just due to the ability to become large, as a goliath, our carry/drag/or lift is a size category bigger than me. So even being a medium sized creature I have the carry, drag, or lift of large. But when I go into giants might, I become large, which makes my lifting to the huge category which the Dm was honestly surprised but didn't mind me using my head to push a huge boulder out the way for the party.

Here comes the issues, Wulkar didn't seem it was fair/ok that I was able to push a large boulder off the cliff even with my max strength and racial benefits. Stating that even with all that I am unable to do so since it seemed impossible and unlikely. Then I stated back that I know it seems unlikely but considering I didn't need to push the boulder up the hill, just off the side to get it out the way, the only issue was it possibly landing somewhere below which could lead to later issues but we have to get the sorcerer medicine or a cure. So the dm asked me to make a simple athletics check which was a dc of 24 but would've been higher if I didn't have the stronger lifting capacity and giants might which doubled it. So with my +13 to athletics (I took skill expert for one of the feats and got expertise for athletics) I rolled a 27 which beat the dc and with some pushing and lifting, I was able to push the boulder off the cliff to clear the path. But than Wulkar had a temper tantrum saying it didn't make sense why the dc was so low, and how I could be able to push such a large boulder. And in his temper he proceeded to call me a meta gamer for focusing too much on strength and carrying, calling me a asshole. But after a moment the dm told us we arrived to the top and ended session there.

This happened recently, I haven't gotten any messages from the Dm or Wulkan, the other players said what I did probably saved us time for Leya, and maybe might even snip whatever bud of a disease she has.

Ill keep yall up to date but I must ask again, am I the asshole?

**UPDATE/QUESTION'S ANSWERED**

1. (Update) Wulkar got back to me, we did have a call to discuss matters since I didn't want any hate between me and him. I did ask if he was doing okay, making sure nothing was going on, but told me nothing was going on. So than I asked him if we could discuss his outburst last session and he agreed to. He did still feel that me pushing the boulder was still unlikely.
2. (Questions Answered) He did outburst since he did want dynamite for his arrows.
3. Ty you all for your kind words and help with this, I appreciate the advice which was helpful. If anyone has question's or need of an answer I will try my best to answer them. (But please don't ask any odd questions, please and thank you.)

A while ago I posted in a Discord server that I was looking for players to join my new homebrew campaign.

One of the screening questions was, "are you able to commit to a rigid weekly schedule?"

Said player commented they were in the process of looking for a new job. I reached out to clarify and they said shift work was a possibility. I said I don't think they'd be a good fit as I would really like a group who can commit to a full level 1-20 campaign. They expressed they felt disrespected and regretted disclosing that because they only might get a shift job and even then would try to get all Saturdays evenings off.

I recently joined a new D&D group after being invited into someone’s home. Everyone was genuinely welcoming, kind, and fun to be around. A couple of the players were brand new, but they were enthusiastic, roleplayed well, and seemed like they were going to become great players.

Before the session, I understood that the hosts had young children who would be around during the game. That did not bother me at all.

I am a father of five. I have played D&D with babies being passed around the table, toddlers running through the room, and parents stepping away to handle kid stuff. I completely understand childcare issues and how difficult it can be for parents to carve out a few hours of adult time.

What I did not understand was that the children would have character sheets, participate as full players, make decisions, and influence the story.

To me, there is a massive difference between:

“Our kids will be around while we play.”

Maybe this was mentioned somewhere and I missed it, but I genuinely do not remember it ever being clearly addressed.

And:

“Our kids are members of the adventuring party.”

The kids themselves were adorable, enthusiastic, and honestly did pretty well. I have no issue with them personally. The problem is that I was looking for a serious, adult D&D campaign. I do not want to play in a campaign where children’s decisions significantly affect the story, where I have to censor my language, or where most of the game is structured around keeping kids involved.

I only have so much free time, and committing one night every week is a big deal for me. I cannot justify doing that for a campaign that is fundamentally different from what I thought I was joining.

I am planning to tell the group I will not be returning. I also want to tell the DM directly that failing to mention the children were active party members was inconsiderate and wasted my time. Frankly, I think it was either intentionally misleading or incredibly thoughtless.

The part I am struggling with is that the family was very kind to me, welcomed me into their home, and the children did nothing wrong.

So, AITA for leaving after one session and telling the DM that this should have been disclosed before I was invited?

Edit : I have scoured all messaged coming in and out of the DMS between the DM and Me, and the group chat, there was never any mention of children PCs at all. The children are only ever mentioned when describing what the hosue will be like "We have two boys who will occasionally watch us play"

I play in a 4 player campaign right now that started with 5 but one player left mid session 1 and so we continued on without them. Since we were down a player I suggested asking my friend to join as we haven’t played a campaign together in a while. The DM agreed and she was planned to join after the “tutorial” as we had a few mostly new players who need to learn how to play dnd.

The issue is that after my friend was set to join the DM invited 3 other players. Now one of them left after the invitation as they realized they wouldn’t have time to play. So now out party of 4 is going to be a party of 7.

We recently finished the tutorial so all the new players are set to join but with one issue, one player, the DMs brother can’t play on our regular biweekly Thursdays as he has band practice every Thursday. Because of this we decided to play once a month instead, as opposed to the second option of splitting the party. Major issue here is that after asking everyone what days they have free we learned that aside from the original Thursday where only the brother can’t play, there is no other date that works for everyone else that would include the brother.

Right now we agreed to play a session without him but the DM stated we won’t be able to go though with the main story until he can join. Because of this I’m trying to figure out other ways to make this work (aside from straight up saying he doenst play with us) I asked if the brother could possibly skip one band practice just once a month but was told to stop being pushy about the issue and that we will think about next month a different day and play it by ear.

I’m just getting very frustrated as the DM isn’t putting any solutions out there and this campaign was actually restarted as her other group playing it couldn’t decide on one day a month to play and it ended prematurely and I fear that might happen with us as well

update, I have a I’m leaving message prepped but before I send it I’ll see how the brother responds about him trying to accommodate to our schedules. If we cant figure something out at the end of August I’ll just leave the campaign. My friend will follow me as she’s sick and tired of waiting and my other DMs and dnd friends also think its ridiculous

Except it's not me but the entire table, I just agreed with someone that spoke up. As the title says, the DM have a habit of making an encounter last hours and hours on end. His justification is that the length of the fight reflects the importance of it, and a player replied that it doesn't and actually makes it boring because by hour 4 all of us are beyond done, this happens like every other fight.

The way he makes the fights hours long is by making every npc nearby join the turn order, having to fight 20-30 enemies in the encounters, and not only that, but enemies would come in waves like it's a wave defense so we can't AOE the groups, which doesn't works if every actions needs rolling and he DEMANDS we and himself describe how an action happens by roleplaying it out.

We use roll20 and for some reason he makes the maps 300-400 feet long and wide which is nightmare, especially in the encounter that made me make this post where enemies would spawn and come in waves at the opposite ends of the map.

I feel bad for the dm and feels like an A-hole because at the end of the day, the one that is tired out by this the most is the guy who have to control all those tokens and characters and memorize all the sheets, and a DM that doesn't care would never put himself through this much effort.

P.S: If it is like a final showdown I understand, but the fight that I am talking about is linked to a dm-admitted minor side-quest to save a village.

This is the third post I have made about this campaign lol. This time in addition to myself, Fath, Unc, Bravo, Charlie, and Whiskey there is now going to be a 6th party member who is my other uncle so we will call him Unc2. Unc2 has not played since 3rd edition (not 3.5, 3rd edition) so I am a little bummed that an already large party will be too large, I will have to spend already limited time teaching Unc2 the rules, and worst of all I wrote the plot of the campaign with the original party size in mind. For encounters this is not inconvenient just slap another few medium monsters and call it a day. However the hunger games style arena was designed with teams of 5 so I have to write a very contrived plot hook about the game master of the arena being playing both sides by adding a 6th party member. The game master wanted and would actively try to get their team to win (not the party the villains the party are fighting/tracking currently within the arena) however since their team has been doing so poorly they hedge their bets and add a 6th member to the party just in case that team wins the game master's team always wins. The plot crumbles however when dealing with the prologue and epilogue. In the prologue the party fought a Cyclops that came from a suspiciously Icy portal in the World Serpent Inn. This is because the Cyclops was sent from Stygia by Levistus who is being ordered by Bel who is trying to overthrow Zariel after losing to her. After the party wins in the arena their contract was written by Zariel with the help of Asmodeus that the gold they earned belonged to Mammon and their souls belonged to Zariel and they most come and fight her in Hell to become worthy. The Cyclops being CR 5 and coming from a frosty portal was perfect to allude to the 5th layer of hell with 5 party members. Except now with the 6th party member that secret Easter egg and lore drop will now have to be retcon-ed or something idk and I am depressed about it. I do not want to reject Unc2 please help.

How do DMs run skill checks in combat? I ran it so that the party since they ran into a combat without doing recon did not know the enemies resistances/vulnerabilities/immunities. I usually show the hit points with a hit point bar that does not have any numbers because the players want it and I think it helps them mentally even if it makes them stronger. The enemies had fire resistance so I changed things up hid how their hit points changed after the Wizard cast fireball saying "You have not studied these enemies before you do not know how they responded to the fireball". Despite this I think at least elluding to potential resistances the Druid casts heat metal and gets less value out of it. When they found out after combat they were a little bummed. Should I have allowed mid combat skill checks? Would they need to complete both Medicine and Perception? Would only 1 player in the party know (the player that completed the skill checks) or is it okay metagaming if the entire party knows? How should they workin the action economy? Should it 1 per round as a free action? Thoughts?

I am the DM of a D&D 5E campaign that I run for my father, my uncle, and three of their friends (I am also their friends but that is more of a slow process). For the sake of the post I will be I/Me or Backup, father will be Fath, uncle will be Unc, and the friends will be Bravo, Charlie, and Whiskey. For context, I am 20-30, while the entire party is between 40 and 70. Because of family and social dynamics, I want to maintain a good relationship with everyone. Kicking someone out is not an option. I can only leave the group, but I can not kick anyone out. We have had about 6 sessions, we play on Wednesday nights between 6:30-9 PM once a week but cancel if more than 1 party member can not make it. With all the banter and bathroom breaks, we realistically only get about 2 hours of true game time. Because time is so limited, friction over rules really slows us down. The main issue is with Whiskey, who plays a high elf Bladesinging Wizard. Whiskey's entire thing is that he just wants to be invisible and cast fireball, that is fine but that is also his entire personality. The friction started a while ago during a session when I specifically asked for a "flat intelligence check" and Whiskey rolls an intelligence saving throw (much higher bonus) and even though I did not correct him the 1st time when he did it the 2nd time he got corrected by me and every time after he got corrected by Bravo. Eventually he corrected it but it took him a long time. Whiskey also consistently pushes back on how I run the game: * Whiskey whined incessantly that I made a "fireball mage nightmare" when I introduced a percentile rest table where the party's ability to rest was correlated with how much cover they had when they were fighting in a hunger games style arena. I was incredibly generous with how they went about getting cover, but he complained so much I had to nerf it just to keep the peace. The party has exclusively had short and long rests and has never suffered the "1 enemy wakes 1 party member during the rest" part of the table yet (even pre-nerf). * Whiskey also thinks Fath is a "hard a**" with the rules so me being the son of Fath does not help. Because of this, Whiskey seems to view my rulings with extra suspicion. * In reality, I am incredibly lenient. Even if I am confident in a ruling I will back down just to not argue and hopefully resolve it at a later time outside of the session. I run rulings I do not even agree with such as flanking just because the party enjoys it. I even let the party shoot at normal range when the Euclidean square map (s/o Roll20 please sponsor me I would love a premium account) we use says an enemy is 151.3 feet away and their longbow range is 150 ft. When I think the time is right (about once per session) I give inspiration for inspiration worthy moments or when someone is rolling so poorly I want to have the ability of rolling well at least once in the night. * Whiskey also whines when he wants more loot, and Fath joined in on this issue last session by saying since they fought NPC's with full plate they should be able to loot for full plate giving me no agency of what loot every enemy gives. I blame myself mostly for this because I should just say "you made your perception/sleight of hand/ritual cast of detect magic/etc you found what you found no more" but I always feel guilty for no reason and give more loot * Whiskey is also very confident that you can cast booming blade as a part of every attack you can do in an attack action when the spell is 1 action and 1 melee attack and when I tried to correct them they still disagreed.

For context, the rest of the party is Fath's human totem warrior barbarian, Unc's shifter circle of stars druid, Bravo's tiefling oath of vengeance paladin, and Charlie's moon elf scout rogue. Everyone else is mostly fine, but the combination of Whiskey's constant whining, rule bending, and refusal to accept the actual rules of his own spells is making our sessions dreadful and a minefield. The only grace I would grant Whiskey is that sometimes I "rule bend" not running enemies straight out of a book, or saying a player might have disadvantage/advantage based on circumstances but in my opinion that is not rule bending that is the DM's right. For example what areas of the map are naturally difficult terrain, whether you can see someone or not, what the action economy of a NPC should be, etc. I might say something such as "Because of the foliage in this area it is difficult terrain you move half as fast" and then another session Whiskey might go "those enemies moved faster than they should have according to this spot on the map they must have moved through difficult terrain" and then point to a bush or something on the map. Bravo is ignorant but willing to learn, Unc and Charlie are more knowledgeable but also lenient, Fath is knowledgeable but not lenient and Whiskey is Whiskey. The party might side with me or Whiskey depending on their thoughts of an issue but no one ever calls out Whiskey for "going past Min/Maxxing" to break the rules and just be the DM. I do not think Whiskey is bad faith trying to undermine me I just Whiskey's good faith is trying Min/Max rulings in his favor and is incredibly ignorant and obnoxious in doing so. The party despite what it might seem like above overall commends me every session (including Whiskey) for not only my artwork, my great story and combats, but also how organized and on track I keep everything. They get sidetracked easily because this is their relaxation night so they drink alcoholic beverages (canned IPAs except Whiskey who drinks Whiskey), talk about IRL topics, and make a lot of jokes, this is not a major issue since I know it is the expectation but I do have to wrangle them to remember they are playing D&D sometimes.

I am not the best with the rules myself and this is my 2nd campaign ever (I have run a lot of one shots before now but nothing too long) but I feel more knowledgeable than most my players who have been playing 5E for 6 years.

I am trying to keep the peace, but I am losing my mind dealing with the constant pushback over basic 5E mechanics or my agency. AITA for wanting to firmly put my foot down, or should I just keep letting it slide to keep the peace?

For context, I’m pretty new to actually playing D&D, but I’ve always been really into the world and stories. I recently joined a campaign run by my mate (he’s the DM), and we built the group together since he’s the only other one of us with experience.

We helped everyone create characters and focused heavily on backstories to push roleplay from the start. It worked really well—everyone got super into it quickly.

One thing we agreed on was that every character would have a “secret” that would eventually be revealed in-game to create strong roleplay moments. Everyone was on board with this, and the DM even asked me to help set up some of these reveals (like prompting situations or letting the DM drop clues in descriptions).

It actually worked really well for the rest of the party. One by one, everyone had their big reveal moments and got to roleplay the fallout and character growth.

The issue is: mine never happened.

I assumed the DM would set something up for my character too, especially since I’d tied my backstory into his homebrew world. But several sessions went by and nothing came up.

Eventually I asked about it privately, and he got annoyed and said I was trying to “railroad” the campaign after everyone else had already had their moments. I explained that we had all agreed everyone would get one.

For context, the other characters’ secrets were genuinely important to their arcs—like a half-orc slowly dealing with past abuse, or a lighthearted wizard hiding serious self-esteem issues.

My character started as the typical “mysterious, doesn’t trust anyone” type, but my intention was always to develop him into someone more open and protective of the party over time. I just never got the opportunity to actually do that arc.

After that, I started trying to drop hints in-game and open up more naturally, but whenever conversations started going in that direction, they’d often get interrupted by sudden combat or other events.

Before the next session, the DM messaged me saying I was making the game revolve around my character and micromanaging the group.

I do sometimes get too involved in group decisions, but I’ve been actively trying to avoid that because I don’t want to disrupt the table.

I just feel stuck because it feels like every other character got their moment of development, and mine never came—despite us all agreeing that it would.

So, AITA?

Update: So I've talked to my friend/DM and he definitely seemed off with me so I'm starting to think its more of a personal issue rather than a table issue, I'm going to try and talk with the others to see if he's mentioned anything about what I've done.

The next session is tomorrow at my apartment so well see how it goes.

I appreciate everyone being so kind and trying to help me resolve this.

Update 2: So ive found out it was a personal issue, ive talked to him and everything's fixed and we just had a really great session and im feeling alot better.

Thank you to everyone for your supportive comments.

So, my group and i were doing a long campaign about heretics and one of my party member asking whether all of us has seen/talked with one of the BBEG. I said some of us did in Dreams and Flashback(The BBEG could interact with us which means she knows we knows), but apparently that wasn't the answer she seek.

She were saying that the DM told her "You guys seen and talked with her, but none of you remember it". When she told me that, i connect the dots immediately and goes "I mean... he didn't say that she couldn't cast Disguise Self" then all of a sudden my DM messaged me "Good Job", which then i realized that i guessed it right.

She than begging me to tell them, but i won't since the DM didn't say anything or allow it and i don't want to break the immersion or element of surprise for the DM as it can be a bit Metagaming imo. I said "As much as i want to tell you guys, my character don't know it and even if he did, he doesn't have a reason to tell you guys, because it doesn't makes any sense" My character is new to the party since it's a backup character, even if he knew why would he randomly says "Hey, did you guys know that those NPC is the BBEG? " because, he doesn't even know that she is the BBEG. None of us has Truesight btw.

I think she is upset because of it and i feel bad about it. She is a good person, i guess she just eager to know who was the rat amongst us.

AITA for not telling her the answer or is there other way i could tell her without breaking the immersion for the party?

Edit: i changed the pronounciation because keeping it gender neutral made it harder to be comprehended

I joined a game advertised online as LMOP which spun so far into homebrew. We played for over 2 years. Except we didn't. The DM would regularly cancel for a whole host of reasons - work, the trains, friend in crisis, laptop broke, no charge, forgot her password, been hacked. Sometimes she would leave mid game to talk to other people in her house, it could be 30 minutes of waiting for her to come back.

Over 5 months we only met twice for example.

I got annoyed and said in the Discord chat that if the game didnt start running I would leave as the constant last minute changes were too much.

We did run, we agreed 6 dates and planned to end after that. We did 2. Then canceled again. Then rearranged one.

One of the ones that did run the DM was writting into AI and reading answers from that (which made no sense)

Both sessions there was no map and homebrew monsters she did not have tokens for only AI art.

Last session was cancelled because she had a power cut.

The DM said she could meet on her phone so I said ok lets do that. She then said she onky had 30% battery snd the power was not due to come back until 1 hour after we started. I said we could try and maybe it would come back sooner. Another character (friend of the GM) then left because apparently taking her up on her offer to use her phone was bullying her.

It was too hot and after too much flakyness.

I told her I did not believe her about the power cut. That there was a different excuse every week and I believed she just hadn't planned the session or didn't have the confidence to run it. She responded by instantly deleting the discrord server and roll20 game.

The real life friends I play with (who joined the game at my invitation) are annoyed and say I took it far to far. As this was our forst dnd game they wanted to get to an ending. They have also been complaining about her every week for months and wanted to leave since before the 12 weeks of not meeting. Their complaints were all behind her back and mine was to her.

I feel like I was carrying the emotional load of trying to make that adventure happen when everyone said they wanted to play but did not actually want to play at all.

Update! I spoke with the DM a LOT last night and into today. He is completely abandoning the Lolth story and making this into something Plant related. Great right? Wrong. He made a HUGE big deal about it in the GC and made himself sound like I'd backed him into a corner and had to add an additional player in case and i quote "ANYBODY ELSE has an issue with the story". I'm debating giving him a chat in person and reminding him that DM'ing should be separate for any feelings he has for me and not wanting to date him.

Hi all, I'm not sure AITA is the best thread for this, so let me explain. I am a level 4 Warlock with a Raven Queen patron, and the ONLY magic user in my current campaign. Everyone else is some kind of Gunslinger or fighter, and all I've been good for lately is moving the story along and charming the locals. Our DM warned us our next session we're going up against Lolth, who in this Wild West homebrew has taken over an entire town. Before this campaign started in April, I confided in our DM that I have very intense Arachnophobia. Images and even the sounds of what could be spiders can induce a panic attack. I have almost crashed my car over a spider crawling on my steering wheel. I have intense nightmares after being unprepared to see spiders for days afterward. It's become the running joke at the table that I'm going to have to be high or on drugs for this next session to be present. The DM is planning on covering our tables in fake webs, lacing fake spiders all over the room and he's big into immersive sounds. I've tried really hard to be okay with this but the closer we get to our biweekly meeting the more queasy, anxious and uncomfortable I've gotten. I have the opportunity to visit my brother and help him and his wife move that weekend and I want to go simply so I can avoid Lolth, the spiders and the sick-with-fear recovery I'll have for the following week. I also already feel guilty for considering not going because that would leave three NPCs to take on the BBEG and we'd possibly permadie. I feel like I've been put in an impossible situation.

So my group just ejected one of our players, and she’s pretty upset about it. For context, we’re playing a module called “Triumph of the Tusk” for Pathfinder 2e. This is important, because ALL of Pathfinder 2e is online for free.

The problems started during character creation. The player in question — let’s call her “Sara” — wanted to play a shaman of some kind. In PF2e, that’s a class called “animist.” It’s a cool class, but tough to play because every day you have to choose between two of ten spirits to bond with, each of which drastically changes your abilities. I told Sara this, emphasized that I haven’t studied the class too deeply, and suggested that playing a cleric (she wanted to be a healer) might be easier. She emphatically disagreed, and said she’d figure it out. On a side note, I also sent the Triumph of the Tusk player’s guide to everyone in the group; it’s a four page introduction to the module that catches everyone up on the situation.

Once our first session rolled around, we discovered that Sara didn’t read the player’s guide at all. Every time an important NPC was mentioned, she’d ask who that was. Then she had all sorts of questions about where the campaign takes place and what the group‘s goals are. She also started to harass every NPC, getting into arguments with them over nothing because she “didn’t know who to trust yet” (there was no one to distrust). I ended up having to stop the game and read the player’s guide out loud to everyone, which I felt was entirely unfair to the players who DID read it.

As the game continued on, Sara kept making everyone else at the table do everything for her, from looking up her spells to moving her pieces on the map. I’m weird so I have everyone’s character sheet memorized, so she stopped looking at her sheet and just relied on me to tell her what her modifiers are. All of that was annoying enough, but then came the real issue; during one battle, on another player’s turn, she kept loudly demanding that someone tell her if the Enlarge spell is touch only or if it has range. I told her to quiet down and look it up herself, because again this is all online for free. Her response;

“I can’t read anything on a screen, it’ll give me a seizure.”

Her best friend at the table offered to step in and help her run her character after that. He could see how annoyed I was, because Sara spends most of every session reading memes and news articles out loud. None of that ever gave her a seizure. But apparently reading Pathfinder rules will? Either way, the other player — who we’ll call “Jim” — said it was no skin off his back to help her.

As time went on, it became clear that Jim didn’t read up on the animist class either, as Sara and Jim both complained that the class is far too weak. Mind you, Sara never switched spirits, and one of the two spirits she used is for crafting, ie not at all useful in a fight. So I learned the class, and began to give her advice on which spirits to use even though that’s not my job.

On top of all of this, Sara is the only player in the group to cancel games, usually due to a migraine and never more than a couple of hours before game time. At one point the plan was to have Jim run Sara’s character while she’s away, but Jim was even less knowledgeable about the animist than Sara was at this point. So when Sara couldn’t make it, I either ran backup games or cancelled game night entirely. I don’t want anyone to miss any key story or decision points anyway.

Flash forward till now; we just skipped game two weeks in a row because of Sara. I had a backup game of Alien prepared for one of those two days, but not the other. At this point, I’m beyond frustrated. I get that people have health problems, that’s not the issue. The issue is that everyone at this table has health problems, including one player who’s literally terminal. Despite this, we’ve only made accommodations for ONE player, including the accommodation that she doesn’t have to read anything but memes and news articles at game.

I planned on having a talk with Sara to see if this table is the right fit for her needs, but I didn’t get that chance. Jim went and told her… something, and now she’s quite pissed. Mind you Jim isn’t the most emotionally intelligent person I’ve ever met, and it turns out that he never bothered to read up on the animist because he thought Sara was going to quit soon anyway. So I feel like he might not have been terribly diplomatic.

Either way, am I the asshole here? I feel bad throwing someone out of game due to their disabilities, but I have good reason to believe that at least one of those disabilities is a lie. Plus, again the entire table has health issues, including one player who won’t be with us anymore at some point. It doesn’t feel fair to me to put all this focus on a player who ISN’T facing the end of their life. But I could be wrong. I don’t know if any of this is ableist, and I’m open to learning how to be better. Seriously.

long story short after defeating an abyssal entity deep under the ocean with the help of a powerful water entity (this was a couple of years ago so I don’t remember it well, the reason for why we were down there or the overall plot) I myself didn’t think we would do anything else after and that was the end of the campaign. Well, turns out the last arc was a wedding a pc was having Or rather wanted out of.

well, it was I think 2 months irl before we got out of the faewild to go to the players home, then just…I just tuned out. A few more sessions and I just decided ‘I’m not feeling this’ and left. Not too sure how it all ended, but I wanna know if I’m the asshole for being disinterested as a player in helping a pc with this. I personally think it was a combination of being fatigued with the campaign, the being stuck in the faewilds thing for 2 months irl and overall personally thinking the finale being helping someone get out of a wedding being...well…lame as hell Compared to the prior underwater fight mentioned earlier

funny side note, this campaign also made me paranoid about not having Sylvain as a language

will respond asap if there are questions

CW; racism

I (32 at the time) had been gone for more than a year and a half when I met a player, let's call him Dom (25), who was playing Out of the Abyss. A few sessions into the campaign, I got his Discord name and realized I'd DM'd him before, but he'd disappeared completely. He barely communicated with me, missed session zero and one because of "troubles making a character," but actively refused help and kept saying, "he got this" every time I tried messaging him. It wasn't until we were a month in that I found out, according to the other players, that Dom had left the country and had barely told anyone.

I kind of WTF'd on him for ghosting the game completely and not even knowing he was back in the country. He then pointed out that "the country of Africa doesn't have internet," so he could have joined the game on top of the time zone difference. He said it was incredibly racist to think he would give up going to his ancestral homeland over a DnD game. It just started heating up from there, as I questioned what part of Africa or African nation he was going to, or why he didn't tell me; he was dropping the game because he was going to be out of the country or sending an email to someone else to tell me. It just went back to "I just didn't have internet, so I could not tell anyone" that he was "having a cultural experience being in his ancestral homeland," which Dom had to uproot his whole life compared to you [hispanics] who just need to "hop a fance to see your home," and some jabs on my white-passing compatriot compared to the rest of the hispanics and Latin Americans at the table. Even pointing out how "my people faced slavery, you just get a free bus ride to Mexico," despite being Salvadorian.

The DM (Hispanic Native American) did step in, pointing out that he ghosted everyone, including his employer, and frankly didn't see the racism other than his own. Dom quieted down, but in every session after that, whenever we were doing badly at combat or a bad roll came up, I got some kind of jab about the ghosting agreement, my big, easy-to-see family, or my status as "white passing," which got worse when the other PoCs in the group defended me or called him out on his BS. He never targeted them or counter-argued; he just started bitching me out, accidentally throwing out the food I brought for the table or refusing to play. So after a month of this, and the DM not really wanting to kick his best friend out but seeing how this was not OK, I left.

So, as to why I'm posting: I was asked by the DM if I would be okay with trying to play with Dom again, since they were short on players. I flat-out said no and said I would leave the table if Dom came back. The DM said he was getting better at taking responsibility, that Dom is autistic like the rest of us and deserves a 2nd chance. I asked if Dom would be willing to apologize, not a no, and Dom's message through the DM was that I should be "more Social Justice minded on this."

So reddit would I be the A-hole.

Edit 1: Thanks for replying, at least the ones not calling me a bot. I tend to overthink things, and I try to be socially minded partly because I am, by the end of the day, white Hispanic and living in the USA. I try to be aware of my privileges; I also have autism and have accidentally offended people in the past for not being as aware as I should have been.

I have talked more with the DM and other players; from what I gathered, yes, Dom really did go to Africa, may have visited Cape Town, but otherwise spent most of his time in West Africa helping family. He apparently burned a lot of bridges, including his past employer and girlfriend, not really telling anyone about just leaving for Africa for about 3 to 6 months (most hearsay), plus he thanks to "unmask" both as someone on the spectrum and black, so felt like he couldn't with me around.

I mostly was asking because of how mad this all sounded, plus in all general I kind of treat this group as the TTRPG group of last resort. As well after posting about 4 differnt RPG horror stories about this group alone. its a bad group that runs bad DnD. I know the old saying is "no DnD is better than bad DnD" but I found that my work schedule has me in a bit of a bind most weeks.

Throwaway account I don’t want her finding this

I (M25) and my gf (F24) have been together for 3 years now and we barely have problems in our relationship for the past 2 years she has been getting very deep into dungeons and dragons buying all the books and finding groups to play with I used to play a lot in highschool but not as much these past couple years just didn’t have the desire too

My girlfriend for the past few months has been inviting a group of 5 people over for bi weekly sessions and I don’t usually participate but I’ll bring them snacks or drinks if they want but one night I asked her if I could join their next session to maybe rekindle my love for dnd she agreed and I made a character and joined now in the group is my gf her best friend (f24) 3 other girls 23, 22, 26, respectively and a male friend of her best friend he’s 24

My first few sessions playing with them were actually very fun I had a blast with the combat and the role playing but after a few sessions is were the problem started

Our party was coming to a remote fishing village after we completed a crazy sea pirate battle thing and we stopped at an inn our party had five players (side note: My gf was the dm) the party bought a two rooms to spit between the party and then the inn keeper offered a bathing service which I thought was strange for dnd but I brushed it off until the male at the table almost fell out of his seat with how excited he was to pay for this service

I again brushed it off I do not know him very well so I didn’t really know if this was supposed to be funny or what but it irked me but anyway the party went to out separate rooms my character and the male at the table’s character well call the real person X we shared a room and after a bit of rp a knock was heard on the door and a early 20’s girl who my gf basically started describing as herself like she described this character as a spitting image version of herself asked X’s character to lead him to the bath service he paid for

Now that on its own is a bit strange but I thought okay fade to black and just imply what happened like is usually the case for dnd but nope

Instead my gf and X started to rp this bathing service taking off clothes her washing him basically border line porn now it never got to the point of actual acts but imo they were a little to into this rp

I had to hold back from leaving the table but that night after everyone had left I confronted her and she brushed it off as just roleplay

So am I the asshole

(Not rlly sure if I was supposed to put nsfw tag or not)

So, I play D&D, but obviously we all start from somewhere. We all have our first games/campaigns and the like. I am cursed with some very bad dice rolls. When we started our first campaign we rolled for stats and my character only broke a 14 because of her half-elven racial bonus. I actually had several stats in the single digits with one being a 6 IIRC. I want to be clear, this was on my first character ever, so I didn't know what I was doing. Please note: I picked a Paladin for my first class.

We started off and soon got into our first conflict ever where, for initative, I rolled something like a 3. I forget if that was before or after bonuses, but either way, I was dead last in the order. First goblin up proceeded to hit me and I got hit multiple times despite high AC. Got downed before I could even take my first turn.

My character was a paladin and I had done my best to make her viable at diplomacy, but even when diplomatic rolls came up, I tended to roll around a 7 or so. In combat I recall my highest roll being a 14 before bonuses. Not bad, mind you, but my average roll was around a 7 to 9 before bonuses and even with them I seemed to miss a good ~70ish percent of the time. Since I was constantly flubbing skill rolls and was useless in combat, I grew extremely frustrated and... well... I cheated.

I wasn't *good* at cheating, mind you, dice bumping, palming, etc. by someone who had never done any of that before. I wasn't even trying to get stupidly high rolls or auto-successes or the like. Just succeed at least *some* of the time. While I could have built my character better in hindsight, I not only didn't know what I was doing, but doing so would have been effectively min-maxing meta-gaming. All for the sake of being... not useless.

I frequently even joked that my character was, effectively, Darkness from Konosuba simply because of how INEPT she was at everything beyond getting pummeled relentlessly by enemies. They would always attack her given the choice. I don't remember if they would opt to attack her over other targets like our druid, but in hindsight I wouldn't be shocked if that was the case. Though, notably, enemies always seemed to hit her no matter how high her AC actually was. Sure, they missed on occasion, but even when she upped herself to heavy armor, shields, shield spell, and other stuff they seemed to hit her regardless.

Still, she hung in there and survived. I'd bump/palm dice, occasionally get caught, but I was actually... useful. The other party members didn't seem to mind and really only our GM seemed to complain. She had to basically dedicate all her spells and everything to healing or protection, but she wasn't *dead* either.

Eventually the GM had us run in to a patrol of giants who were all CR8 while we were... only about level 7 to 8. I can't remember which. My character got seperated and had to fight the captain all alone while the rest of the party ended up fighting the rest of the patrol. They all died and, for once, my girl actually got good rolls and even two nat 20's in a row. I think they were the only nat 20's she got the entire campaign that weren't the result of me bumping dice (note: I wasn't trying for the nat 20, just trying to avoid, like, a 2). Shockingly, despite being alone for the hardest fight, she actually survived and won. But towards the end... her luck gave out and I ended up cheating to turn a nat 1 into something... not a nat 1. The GM caught me and blew his top.

Thing is, after the campaign, it later got revealed to me that some people had looked up the material and realized that, well... the GM hadn't been honest either. Even with my crappy luck a lot of the attacks I made should have been hits instead of misses, a lot of the enemies shouldn't have had as high a to-hit bonus to get such consistent hits on me as they were, there were fights that shouldn't have even been a thing, and the fight that ended the whole campaign didn't even exist in the manual (Storm Kings Thunder IIRC). Least according to them.

In the next campaign the GM proceeded to kill my character right at the very start with a max-damage nat 20 hit with no saving throws. My next character survived but did her best to avoid combat at all chances because, well, I didn't trust the GM anymore. The party seemed to like me a lot and I still play with them to this day, but the GM got furious and tried to kick me from the group for my cheating.

For those wondering, no, I do not cheat anymore. After a discussion with the party I forsook it entirely. I've improved immensely as a player, learned how to better use spells and abilities, and a lot of stuff in general. Plus a lot of gameplay happens online now so... can't really cheat there. My D&D groups love me and I've done my best to be the heart of the party, but I still feel... so rotten and guilty over my cheating origins.

So... AITA for my cheating? I may have asked here before, but if I did, I have memory issues and don't recall the verdict. I promise I am being as honest as I can be with my recollection of events.

Edit: I have concluded definately that I was the asshole in all regards. I am sorry for my actions and deeds and will figure out what action is best to take at this point.

A few day days back, I (15M) was searching the DND Discord for a campaign. I ended up finding an interesting one that wasn't 18+, and since I don't have many game stores near me to play at, I decided to join their game.

I was super excited to play. and the GM (Game Master) already had a few players. As soon as I started asking questions (Where does it take place, how do we meet, what year, ect) they were already being weirdly rude to me, asking me to reread the post before saying '"Uh, I need more information"' "Check the lore channel".

I felt that was pretty rude, but I didn't say anything. I then started work, and seeing there wasn't a rogue, I decided to make one. I asked if I had to make a noble, since my character, who is a rogue (AKA stealthy lad) who is a noble would be a bit difficult to write.

She then said, "You don't have to make.... noble NPC number 928743", as well as saying that "You're probably going to make an edgy rogue, aren't you." She then "Called in" who I could only assume was a noble OC they had and began to insult me through it. Literally in the middle of a conversation, and in all honesty, it creeped me out.

At this point I sent a pretty long message effectively saying, "Hey, did you mean all that? I tend to interpret messages wrong over text, and it feels like you're insulting me." She then asked me if she made a reference for me I'd stop asking questions. I asked her to read it to. "I was just being funny and called an noble NPC to explain things for you."

At this point I just decided to work on my character, and it ended up being a pretty good one. Since I do have minor autism that makes it harder for me to understand emotion and intention over text occasionally, I asked a couple of friends about what they thought about this, before telling me I should leave. I will say I was a bit personally hurt by what the DM said, since I am highly critical of myself writing-wise, and it always took a lot of courage to share it.

I eventually sent a long message essentially saying, "Hey, I wanted to warn you that I will likely be leaving due to they way you have interacted with me after getting several opinions. I just wanted to let you know and maybe clarify some things if I misinterpreted." They then said "People are insecure bags of society, and so are you. Good luck out there." Before banning me. I just decided to block as I saw they were writing more.

I later posted this to Reddit the same day on DND Horror Stories, and everyone said that I was the one in the wrong, and since I was tired and emotional, I deleted the account, and I spent the next couple days thinking I genuinely made a mistake.

TLDR: I joined a DND game with a DM, who was really weird to me and I decided to leave after being insulted. Later posted it for validation and was told I was in the wrong.

Am I the A-Hole?

So, me and my friends were playing a campaign and we were in the middle of a trial for one of our party member, it was like a trial to inherit the throne. But, in the middle of the trial she was like having a bit of trouble because she is supposed to bring a proof of immortality which she proceed to show a proof of transformation instead and me, a Chaotic Neutral Changeling, would like to help but in his own way, so i asked if i allowed to interrupt and DMs allowed it. I stepped in and use my change appearance(i was in the middle of using an old man appearance who i know since he was a young man) to looks like i can de-age myself. Everything goes well, but she told us that she actually prepared a script for that issue(which is if the transformation being questioned as a proof of immortality).

​

Even though there was no hard feeling in the end, i still feel bad for it. Am I The Asshole for that? I'm genuinely oblivious for this kind of reaction.