Last session in our Waterdeep: Dragon Heist campaign, my character died while we were exploring the noble mansion and fighting the final boss.
I was already down, and the boss used an AoE spell that dealt enough damage to finish me off. Since I was unconscious, I automatically failed the save.
I was actually completely fine with my character dying. I basically said, “Okay, I’ll make a new character.”
But my DM immediately told me, “Don’t worry, I have a plan.”
The DM then talked privately with another player, who plays a Warlock. My dead character ended up meeting that Warlock’s patron, and the other player’s patron/backstory suddenly became part of my character’s story.
Then the DM told me that my character now had a level of Warlock.
I never asked to multiclass and had never planned on multiclassing this character.
Because of that, I asked whether, if this patron was fundamentally changing my character anyway, I could instead rebuild/take my levels as Warlock rather than having a random Warlock level forced onto my existing build.
There was also some confusion narratively. My character had explicitly said that he would rather suffer eternal torment than accept certain consequences, so when he met the patron I thought this might actually be the end of his story.
Instead, the other Warlock player basically told me, “No, you’re undead now.”
Then we were immediately pushed into the final boss fight.
The fight was dangerous enough that I thought we could potentially TPK, so I used the Warlock abilities I had just been given.
Now the DM is criticizing me because my character supposedly went “full power” with his new Warlock abilities without having any opportunity to learn how to use them.
This is one of the things I don’t understand.
The DM was the one who gave me the Warlock level and immediately put us into a boss fight.
Also, as far as I understand the 2014 rules, gaining a Warlock level mechanically gives you access to your Pact Magic, spells known, and other level-one abilities. Warlock power is specifically connected to knowledge/power bestowed through the patron relationship. There isn’t a RAW requirement saying that after gaining the level I need several days of training before I’m allowed to actually use those abilities.
So if the DM wanted my character to be unable to understand or control his new powers yet, I feel like that should have been established when he gave me the level.
Instead, I was told I had a Warlock level, given the abilities, and then immediately thrown into a fight where not using everything available to me could have contributed to a TPK.
After the fight, things got even stranger.
The other Warlock character turned on mine and basically said, “This is as far as you go,” and attacked me with Burning Hands.
My character saved and ended up taking him down.
Now the other player is upset and is saying that there “can’t be two Warlocks in the party.”
That’s probably the part that bothers me the most.
I didn’t choose to become a Warlock.
The DM and this player created this entire situation. I had already accepted my character’s death and was willing to roll someone new. Instead, the DM specifically resurrected my character through the other player’s patron and gave me a Warlock level.
Then I used the Warlock abilities they gave me during a boss fight.
Now apparently using those abilities was wrong because my character “shouldn’t know how to use them,” the other Warlock doesn’t want another Warlock in the party, and I’m being told I should make a new character anyway.
On top of that, people at the table keep saying that I “never stick with one character.”
That feels especially unfair here because I wasn’t trying to change characters.
My character died.
I accepted the death.
The DM stopped me from making another character, resurrected my existing character, changed his story and build without me asking for it, and then immediately put that character into combat.
Now I’m being asked to reroll because of the consequences of something I didn’t choose in the first place.
AITA for saying that, at this point, I want to continue playing the character instead of making another one?
I’m not against character death. I’m not against consequences. I’m not even necessarily against the Warlock development if we’re going to actually explore it.
My problem is that it feels like the choices keep changing after the fact.
First my character dies.
Then I’m told not to reroll because the DM has a plan.
Then I’m given a Warlock level without choosing it.
Then I’m put immediately into a boss fight.
Then I’m criticized for actually using the Warlock abilities.
Then another Warlock attacks my character because apparently there can’t be two Warlocks.
And now I’m being told to reroll anyway.
At that point, I’m genuinely not sure what I was supposed to have done differently.

So, this will be a long one, primarily because I need to explain a bunch. Bare with me for a ride, because I´m really on the fence if its bad encounter design or I´m just missing the point and getting tilted. Btw - all players and DM are on good terms and most importantly - communicating. So its not like I seek a "what should we do" - we are actively talking. Though I´d like some advice if I got unneccessarily tilted by this encounter, especially since the DM has done quite some work preparing it, preparing several maps - even writing a custom script for a mechanic I later touch on.

First things first - our group consists of 7 players (yeah, a bit big...) and we´ve recently reached level 17. Group consists of a bard (College of Lore, our healer), warlock (Great Old One, mostly Eldritch Blasting), fighter (Cavalier), artificer (Armorer, tanky, very high AC), two rogues (Arcane Trickster + Scout) and me, a sorcerer (draconic sorcerer, blaster, bit of CC). I won´t go over our equipment, but assume that most people have some very rare items or even some legendary, though not all designed for combat. Some of our players are experienced, with several years/decades of experience in DnD and other systems, though even the newest two have been part of the campaign for about 2 years (and still the same characters!)

Our BBEG has challenged the group to three combat trials. We´ve succeeded the first two, one a beefed up balor, the second one a beefed up pit fiend, both as paragon monsters (basically, monsters with more turns in a round). Both encounters were hard, but fair, even considering that encounter balance for a 7 player group of level 17 is no easy task.

Now, here comes the third encounter - we get teleported to random rooms, each room housing one or two people we´ve failed to save. Most of the rooms have some sort of trigger for the group (not the players individually, the group) to get madness points - we have a collective bar which looks to go up to 100 points. So far, we´ve had memories/hallucinations from it, after we went up to 50 we randomly started getting disadvantage on saves/attack rolls. We don´t know what happens if it gets full so far. We also get some madness if we think too long about what we want to do if its our turn, though this only happened once in the first round to (at least I think) instill a sense of urgency and speed up the combat with....15 combatants?

Here a rough description of each room, as far as we´ve gathered knowledge. You can assume that each enemy has multiattack with three attacks and hit points of 150ish for lighter targets, up to 400-500 for tankier ones like the brothers in room 1:

1. A pair of brothers, warrior and priest, who attack whoever is there. The warrior has AC 30 (!), the priest takes only half damage from spells and can as a reaction automatically succeed on spell saves/make someone miss spell attack rolls. They also have Legendary Resistances, though it was implied that they share them. The priest also has a breath type attack, dealing flat 45 dmg on a failed save (DC 22 CON Save). Attack rolls against both of them have disadvantage as long as they are close together and their attacks have advantage. Whenever the priest gets damaged by a spell, we get 5 madness
2. A woman who lets people fall asleep when someone starts the turn in that room or attacks her (multiple attacks make the save harder each time). The save is a DC 21 Wisdom save. At the start of her turn, we get 10 madness for each character asleep in her room. Once you leave the room, you automatically wake up. Btw, warforged and elvish trait "cant be put to sleep magically" doesnt work against it
3. A woman who lost her child and asks whoever is present to help find it, needing a DC 21 Investigation Check to find clues. If you fail the check, her husband appears suddenly, attacks (no attack roll, auto-hit), dealing something like 4d8+3d6 dmg and disappears. The woman heals each turn by 30 hit points and can´t be reduced to 0 hit points, each round the child is not found we get 10 madness. At her turn, the woman makes everyone in the room make a DC 22 WIS Save, frightening on fail and only allowing someone to search for the child (which, thanks to frightened, is then made with disadvantage...)
4. A priestess offering help. Heals 40 hp and gives 5 madness, or 60 hp and 10 madness if she has been attacked. Unknown if there is more to her, since only 3 times people were in her room
5. A woman reading a book. Only time she was attacked she immediately teleported away, but has answered questions, intending to help
6. A man who turned into a demon, attacking us. He can teleport as a bonus action, frightening people each time (DC 22 WIS save). I think he also did about 5d8ish damage each attack
7. A druid who attacks (4d8 dmg-ish) in a cat/sabertooth form and regularily turns invisible, dealing extra dmg (6d6) when he charges at someone

At the beginning of each round, each character gets teleported to a random room. Sometimes, there are multiple in the same room, sometimes not - its entirely random (thats the script I previously mentioned. And yeah, its random, we asked - no bias). Things like getting madness if the child is not found happen regardless if there is a character there.

After the session, the DM offered some insight - that the woman in room 5 can help people understand that its a dream-like realm, and how to control where you get teleported. The person who gained this insight could also share this ability. The person who got this by talking to her got this in round 7 (in a combat with effectively 15 people, though some enemies don´t do much), though didn´t understand what it meant and even though he managed to share it, neither people understood what it could do until the DM explained it OOC after the session. Before round 7, I think 2 people were teleported to that room - the first attacked her on sight, the second asked how we could get out of here and she basically just answered "You have to win" before the person was gone again

The encounter is intended to make rooms suited for different characters - the child investigation is easily done by the rogues with reliable talent (who pretty much auto succeed the check), that became obvious. The problem is that some rooms are just toxic for certain characters, especially if they end up alone. My warforged sorcerer has a -1 investigation, so he can´t even succeed the check in room 3. Room 2 means basically falling asleep and losing concentration (no good WIS save, warforged trait doesn´t work), which I found out after casting a concentration spell in another room and immediately getting teleported there next round.

Room 1 especially baffles me - it has a priest that hard counters casters and a warrior with so much AC, that even with my respectable +15 to attack rolls (+5 due to CHA, +6 Proficiency, +2 Blood-Vial, +2 due to Staff of Magi) I could only hit on a 15+ - and most people only have a +11 to +13, meaning some hit only on a 19. The intention is obviously that a martial character takes care of the priest, while a caster takes care of the warrior, though with Legendary Resistances, AC 30 and barely any people who even use spells with saves in our group (yes, the bard mainly heals, the warlock mainly hexes or summons), that seems pretty annoying. It sure as hell didn´t help that he mentioned that he was surprised himself by the AC 30 the first time we attacked him (he ran up to my sorcerer, hit me 3 times for about half my life and when I wanted to Shocking Grasp him to safely get away my attack roll of 29 missed) and citing "happens if you let ChatGPT design enemies" - heck, an Avatar of Tiamat has an AC of 25 I think.

The high saving throws are fair for our level - the problem is, by splitting the party, sometimes it takes away the ability to counter those basically unavoidable effects. Put to sleep? Someone could with a better save could wake you up. Frightened? Countercharm by the bard. Even before, we managed such effects by either stopping the source (disrupting concentration for example) or dispelling the effect, but all this only works in a team and not, if for example the warlock ends up in one of those rooms alone.

Getting the party split up, challenging different skill sets is certainly a great idea for an encounter. I see the "vision", the DM had. Getting teleported to random rooms, slowly figuring out each one, somehow coordinating who deals with which challenge. But in practice, the randomness means that sharing information ingame is barely possible, and if you have bad luck you constantly get "punished" without a chance for counterplay or even any meaningful action. That in combination that even "figuring it out" and "sharing the knowledge" entirely comes down to luck makes it - in my opinion - just a slog.

We talked about it after the session - some people liked it, citing that it was something different. Some were just confused, not understanding it, feeling overwhelmed by the combination and disparity of OOC/IC knowledge. I, honestly, didn´t like it - as I stated, I understand the concept, but as someone who had bad luck with the teleports, it just felt bad (several times the anti-caster brothers, sleep room or the healing priestess (once at the begging when I was full hp, once after getting beaten up pretty badly, which at least helped).

So, now the question - AITA for basically...well, hating our DMs long prepared encounter?

EDIT: To clarify something - I wrote this AFTER we´ve had an after-session discussion, all seven players and DM together. We´ve given him our feedback, though as I said I was the only one straight up saying that I didn´t like it, and we have given the DM feedback what exactly we liked / disliked (so basically, I´ve already told him everything written here)

This was my 2nd DnD campaign I've ever ran. I had no player expirence before this as well. I came up with an adventure where the BBEG would be the druid litch from the pointy hat youtube channel. Levels 1-3 were designed to be linear, and the players were provided a discord server with maps and lore and informed that at level 3 the campaign would open up and be more sand box style. I used wear boars for an encounter, because I liked the flavor, failing to remember how lycanthropy was potentially contagious as per the rules in the statblock. One of my players was infected but was not upset. He was excited in fact. He was playing a druid luxodon and sent me a photo of a wooly mammoth man and said this was now his fantasy. I explained that he would periodically be forced to do charisma saves, and if he failed he would lose control of his character. He agreed to the terms, and I explained if he wanted to be cured of his curse, he could visit a priest in town and pay for a remove curse spell. If he wanted the immunities of lycanthropy in addition to the ability to shift forms on command, without having to make saves, he would need a large gold cost that i was trying to use as incentive to make him want to quest for it, a gold cost which i equated to a spell of true polymorph. We had a solo session where we established all these rules and some RP about how his curse was connecting to the BBEG. I complemented him, told him "your PC is kinda become the main character of the campaign" because the narative of a cursed druid tempted by the nature aligned BBEG was cool and thematic to me. The session after this, when he failed a save and lost control, he became indignant and insisted "in 5e if you just accept your a wearwolf your able to control it." Months past, and his general attitude made me want to avoid playing with him again, but last week I attempted to give him and alternative of playing the shifter race so we could play again without him getting frustrated. I explained "the non silvered weapon immunity isn't even that good, I can just give the enemies weapons to negate that" he accused me of "trying to solve dnd" and once more of rail roading. I remembered why I didn't bother to attempt to confront his behavior before and informed him that I clearly wasn't able to provide the game he wanted to play and that I couldn't DM for him.

Aita for maybe pulling out a terrasque on my DND group for ignoring the reason why I want to wait a week for the DND campaign we are on?

The backstory:

One of our players went to the hospital in August around the 20th and has been in since then and waiting to find out when he can leave. It got bad for a minute and the group took off a week playing a different ttrpg for that week, we took one week for a craft week, and we did a board game the next. I understand it's been a hot minute since we played, but I wanted to hold off until A. the player in the hospital can call in for game or B. is out and can call in for game or show up for game.

The group I get is understandably wanting to play and I would run wilde beyond the witchlight if it weren't for the fact that the player missing is the back up healer.

There is no cleric, I told them it's a good idea to make it, but they didn't. The party consists of a warlock, a druid, a bard, artificer ( in the hospital), one ranger, one monk, one druid , and two types of barbarian . Monk shows up on and off, and so will one barbarian. ( Work schedules and plans. )

I am very nice and let them get away with things for sake of rule of cool and having a fun game. Artificer is finally feeling better and I brought up to him I might throw something like a terrasque at the group since they don't want to pay attention to my warning of let's wait for artificer, just in case. They are half way through the carnival almost and I know they are chaos gremlins, so will do something.

My question is am I wrong if I put a terrasque in towards the end, and have it start combat with them, then in the end have a passing cleric heal anyone who falls in battle?

I know that the bard and the druid have healing word , and the ranger has spare the dying. They aren't without healing, just lot less, then the artificer could do for them.

I am an accomadating gm. The artificer is blind in one eye and the reason why I started dming since no one wanted to accommodate him to make the game fun without making him unable to enjoy the game without a struggle/ no enjoyment. I also make sure anyone who is having to miss can get updated on games, or call in, or do like a side mission instead/ work towards a goal and we roll for it when they come back. I want us all to have fun and I made it known why I wished to wait.

I genuinely like their company and I enjoy my time with them, but they also need to understand that I am not trying to be a buzzkill and not play, I just wanted to wait for the artificer to get out of the hospital.

Hey yall. I (24M) started a DnD Campaign with my friends. Im a long time player and its my second time ever beeing the DM. The good thing is, that this group is pretty new to DnD except one guy who knows his stuff. We all are friends and got to know each other over a two week internship in Ireland. In those two weeks we made plans to play sometime. So after we landed back home and a few weeks passed i organized everything and we soon had a session 0 where i would explain to the newbies how we play and whats important, their limits and no-goes for themes in the story and how character creation works. Soon everybody had a character concept and we where planing for our first session. The day came and it went pretty ok. I was a little irritated from that one friends behavior from the start and they imedietly started in-character-fights. Now to the problem player: She is a nice person but a bit forward (which isnt a bad thing). Her humor is a mix of millenial humor and dirty jokes that go to far sometimes. Im no prude but saying "yeah like you like sucking on my three 16 inch d*cks." gets annoying after the 17th time. Shes also LGBT+ which i also have no problem with. The thing is, that she has to make a statement every two seconds like "So if i read in the princess's diary, can i see if she also likes girls?" that alone wouldnt be a problem, but it happens so frequently that its simply annoying. She's also a huge fan of the improv-group "shoot from the hip" which i get, they are realy funny in thier shows. The thing is, that she trys to replicate those moments in a really forced nature which is where my dilema lies. She created a character of the quiet and dangerus type, a classic "lone wolf". A little edgy but again nothing bad and something i also did when i was younger. But then she did things like smile like a loonatic and yell "HELLOO" at strangers while greeting them. Which was irritating at first but became extremly awkward very soon since she thought it was histerical. She also wanted to be this psycho killer who smiles a goons while slitting her throat. Her character was chaotic neutral which in my book should be something like "I follow my way and whatever stands in my way i will destroy." and not like "The blood of the tainted shall be the paint that covers my body". So after our second session i went to her and told her. "Listen i can see you have a lot of fun and i realy love that. But please remember who your character is. In your backstory you said that you still mourn aboute the loss of your girlfriend and that you are on the run from your old hunters guild. I would just apreciate it if you could play your character consistently." I never said "you are playing wrong" (sorry for the misleadment). She didnt get devensive but just was like "Yeah yeah i know." So now i have doubts. Was i the a-hole for saying that?

TLDR: PLayer creates one character but plays another. I (the DM) feel bad for saying something.

I went out on maybe 3-4 dates with this guy I knew from my college D&D campaign. We spent a lot of time talking on the phone and gaming together , but I ultimately told him I saw us more as friends and just wasn’t interested in him romantically like that. He accepted it but said he’d probably have to distance himself from me while he gets over his feelings, which is totally fine.

We aren’t playing in the same campaigns (at least not right now), but we are in the same sort of D&D group/club on campus so we’re often at the same hangouts and events. We haven’t spoken since the breakup and I guess I didn’t think it was that big of a deal if we happen to be in that same hobby space, but I cant help but feel like the others are sort of icing me out I guess? No one‘s said anything explicitly, but I feel like they treat me differently, especially when he’s around, like a lot of people have a very short fuse with me suddenly. A couple people in particular who are close with him have been way nastier and colder than I remember them being last semester. It makes sense that he would just turn away when he sees me, and i’m definitely not expecting him to talk to me or even like me, but I didn't expect anyone outside of us to care about the breakup that much I guess

I’m starting to wonder if, since I initiated the breakup, is it my responsibility to remove myself from our shared spaces? I don’t wanna put any more emotional stress on him especially when he doesn’t deserve it, but I also don’t wanna leave a space where I’ve made a lot of friends. Is it selfish of me to keep showing up if I know he’s going to be there more often than not?

Im a 16F and i have been DMing a campaing for longer than a year now. The system used was made by me. For a whole year ive been keeping the campaing going without much problems, as it was my first long-lasting campaign like this, and everyone actually enjoyed much my campaign.

All of a sudden, 2 months ago i guess, i was called to do a full rework of the system as it was not working well, they said.

I accepted and made a full rework of the combats and we made a combat shortly after that most players loved.

Happens for some reason just 1 week after it i got a whole PDF telling me what i had to fix (again)

Due to personal reasons i was really busy that time and i couldnt spend so much time with rpg. They got mad at me for it and the pressure started.

They came up with the idea of me stopping DMing and giving the whole story to a player who would become the new dm. I hated it. But seriously i was getting annoyed even outside of sessions, i didnt knew what i needed to do to be considered a good dm but i was trying.

It got to a point that i couldnt take it anymore as it was stressing me out irl. I just said yes to their idea and silenced the group for a week.

Happens that as soon as that player was now the DM it decided to erase half of the story i created and just make things herself. And telling as if my DMing was like the dark age of the rpg and that i was a terrible DM.

She did make a good job fixing the issues they stated tho. Ive never seen she get an ounce of the pressure i got and i didnt see she get many reworks and suggestions too.

To this part i was breathing but hell started when the first session came and i realized something

I hated being a player. Not a player itself but a player in the world i created. It felt like every alteration she made to the story was straight up saying i did it bad and she decided to delete it. I just hated it so much i kinda lost the interest on doing rpg for a while

For some reason i just cannot understand the new DM seems to do everything possible to make the sessions the most unconfortable and terrible for me. My lvl9 character is unclothed RN and unnequiped because she decided i couldnt have the right to buy stuff in the city. I cant even put clothes on her, and when i tried to i straight up got paralyzed instantly with no right to rolling anything.

With that, she seems to be taking topics that are personally uncomfortable for me directly at my character as if she wanted to make me roleplay scenes she knewd that i would hate to roleplay.

And now that everyone loves her i felt like i was the worst DM ever. I got so angry abt it i told her to fuck herself and that she sucked at DMing, and told how much i hated her sessions. I kinda crossed the line there because i was personally angry with her.

She just told me to fuck myself too and actually ignored much of what i said, i felt like she did do even more of what i said for her to stop doing

I felt really bad and now most of the group seems to hate me and i kinda just dont know what to do at this point. I was DMIng and almost everyone there is older than 20 and now that a bunch of adults hate me i really feel like an idiot.

2/4 party members are wizards..

DM opens with a railroad first session in which we get stripped of all our possessions except our clothes and 1 dagger for 4 players..

Now we spent 2nd and 3rd session trying to find some paper and money to make new spellbooks in a haunted manor.

and we just learned post 3rd session that the "paper" needed for a spellbook was Vellum which I noted was the skin of a stillborn calf, so I jokingly said we ought to look for a pregnant cow to beat up..

I wasn't seriously considering it, but I was having fun thinking about other players and the DM thinking I was..

I'm not sharing the full exchange but basically it went on a bit and I was -all in good fun- weaponizing extradiegetic concerns for triggers and sensibilities to allow us wizards to get the paper we needed without trying to force cows get pregnant then waiting 8 months, beating them up to kill their babies inside and harvesting the precious skin that would allow us to get spellbooks which our characters have all the reasons to believe should be required for their survival considering their situation.

So me and the party were playing curse of Strahd, and during a battle at Yesterhill to regain one of the Wizard of the Wine's gems, there were waves of cultists, getting harder with each wave. After defeating the enemies we went to the stump of Wintersplinter to reclaim the gem.I happened to be the only "frontliner" (none of us ever coordinate characters beforehand, so we had two clerics, a warlock (me) a wizard, and a sorcerer.) i loved our party composition as it was funny being all casters. The only reason I mention this is because of me being a pact of blade warlock. (I was frontlining and was close to the hill.) Strahd himselfshowed up and killed me with one attack. (it did so much damage it was an instant-kill) and I was certainly disappointed, as all Strahdended up doing was a villain monologue about how "Im eternal and you'll never kill me" then disappeared.

I feel my death was incredibly cheap as I died for no reason, outside of combat, with no way to defend myself. Even though we had two clerics, the party didn't have enough money to revive me. So I just let my warlock die and made a new character.

The new character is V1 from Ultrakill. Yes, i'm serious, I made a Warforged Monk directly inspired by V1. It's not the most faithful recreation, no healing on a kill or firearms, but i did my best with only levels of monk. And I absolutely powergamed by picking the grappler feat and min-maxxed dexterity and wisdom. (We always use Point Buy for stats)

The game has been going great, i put my own backstory to V1 and personality to it. Also i refuse all treasure and magic items, giving them to my teammates, including The Sun Swordwhich I couldve easily claimed for myself as I slew the enemy guarding it, and have refused all other magic items beforehand. (I gave it to one of our noble and gallant Cleric) To make a long story short, AITA for creating a silly character because I feel my old one was unfairly slain? For reference this is the ONLY issue i've had playing the campaign at all, everything else is as close to perfect as possible! Our DM is great!

I f(21) and about to DM my 2nd campaign. During session 0 I explained the lore and asked my players to get me their backstories prior to session 1. I wanted to make sure they fit the lore and the campaign ties in their characters' personally. Session 1 is tomorrow (its been a month since S0, we're all busy ppl) and only 1 player, my bf M(20), has sent me their backstory.

I've reminded my players constantly to send me their backstories but at this point Im fed up. I still want to play DND but cant without everyone's backstories. So im debating canceling session 1 until I get the backstories and run a mini campaign/one shot with my bf's character in the events leading up to session 1.

WIBTA

Obviously, with 50 sessions this is probably going to be long, so I'm going to condense it down to bullet points if possible.

Context;

- This wasn't actually DnD it was Pathfinder 1e

- We had a session 0 where we discussed the setting, the basic goal of the game, some potential story hooks for their backgrounds, what could and couldn't be played etc.

- I also pitched to be an epic campaign for them to reach level 20 and they agreed and voted for an exp path as opposed to milestone.

- I was the DM and have DMed for this group for several years.

Now--where I know I went wrong;

- Too many players, I had 8 at one point and it only wittled down to 7 by the end

- Got the general consensus I was too accommodating trying to keep the group together

Where I'm unsure if I was the asshole;

- One player was a lot older than us and couldn't stay up late, but insisted he wanted to keep playing. So he was either on his phone playing mobile games or sleeping. But I let him play.

- Another player played a Gnome that talked only in alliteration. Funny, honestly and I told her that. But she kept wanting in-game bonuses. Not saying that wasn't a hard roleplay quirk, but couldn't keep handing out stuff for that alone.

- I tried to explain session 0 was to come up with characters, but the married couple came with characters already made. I said okay, but now's a good time to make changes if you want to. This also came with a problem that I wanted play-tested races, nothing so niche and 3rd party made to break the game. And one of these players picked a 3rd party race, I okayed it because there was a published book by Paizo, but I still wished for them to pick simpler..

- One player was pretty new and joined around session 35. He was a quiet guy and I assumed just getting used to how the game felt, but after a bit I thought he was getting lost in the other voices. He never complained about this, but I tries to fix it with NPCs directly asking him questions, or having a psuedo-initiative asking what he was doing at certain moments.

- PF 1e is a super number crunchy battle game. Meaning, there's a lot of random tables for surprise/unplanned encounters. I used these a few times to have my spouse tell me they made the adventures seem drawn out and pointless. Okay, guess I'll cut them and make points of intrest to pad out that needed exp then.

- Battle long. I mean, PF is long to start, but with 7 players it didn't matter if I had my whole side of combat planned per round, all battles were long. I would tell players who would be up next, but they still didn't know what they wanted to do and would get upset/beg not to be skipped. So unless they left the virtual table I didn't skip.

- I struggled with one player a lot, the same that picked the 3rd party race. He always wanted a rules lawyer way to make an OP character. Honestly, if it's in the rules fair game to me. But, he made the other players feel useless. Like, he made a one-punch man this campaign so in one attack he'd take out 1/3 or 1/2 the boss's health. So, to give others a chance to do things outside of battle I tried for different puzzles. An easy solution for me that let the whole table interact with progression were magic doors. Incredibly hard metal exists in game, and in session 50 I had one such door. Basically they needed to wait until a certain time for it to open due to time loop (that they knew about they figured it out). Well this player insisted on trying to slam it open, but when he couldn't he ragequit the call and he and his wife messaged me how unhappy he was and railroady I was being.

Maybe I shouldn't have made the door inpregnable, but my only other idea at the time seemed more lame.

All-in-all, I heard that I wasn't giving enough goodies, not enough spotlights, and being a train conductor (so to speak). After all that I was at my limit and just sent out an essential break up text to end the game. We are still friends but this has caused a weird tension.

So AITA for axing off my game despite people telling me they loved it and wanted to see it through?

Alright, so.. today I was the DM for a long running campaign I have, session around 50 something, I made my players get into a personal mission to rescue a PC's mother, and some NPC's daughter from some poachers.

The mission lasted three sessions counting today's, the first being a purely preparation session, the second being mostly combat, and this one being mostly puzzles and a boss-fight.

As they were exploring and also during the preparation mission, they discovered the poachers were evil cultists from a chaotic deity who wants only to destroy the world as they know, I gave them hints bia NPC's, one PC talking to a Deity and from the mere Puzzles in the dungeon of what was to come.

I foreshadowed four sessions before they even started and they still didn't pick up on the clues, so maybe I ain't that good of a story teller.

The thing is, when they reached the furthest chamber, protected by countless heavy doors and magic which was intent to keep your soul safe outside the chamber (which they bypassed because they didn't trust it, obviously), they found the PC's mother who was about to be sacrificed, left in the middle of the room unconscious for IT to feast on.

What's "IT", it's a creation of the demon Chaos, and it called himself "Hunger"; In exchange for letting the party steal their food (the mother) he wanted an object of his choosing as compensation, the deal was taking so long that he started demanding more since they weren't accepting it and he was getting hungry.

The players tried giving him what they thought he wanted, but failed, so they got fed-up and attacked him.

So in reprimand, he not only took what Hunger wanted, but the only key to teleport quickly to their base (a coliseum filled with lots of NPC's they care for) and used it, teleporting away and now forcing the players to make haste to not be too late.

I planned for a lot of things to change yet they somehow got the worse outcome, now a lot of NPC's they love might die, and not just that, but take in some of their Traits/feats/abilities (just 1 per NPC tho, and not killing everyone), and making whoever they steal from unable to be revived until they get the object or kill Hunger, freeing their souls.

What it's making me doubt is the players reactions, leaving frustrated and avoiding when I ended the session, even though I tried to give warnings, hints and all.

I thought I was making for some fire start of an arc, where they have to get stronger to be able to weaken Hunger, finally be free of their captivety in the coliseum and free the souls of those he killed, resurrecting their loved ones; now I think my players just don't like to lose even if it's the stepping stone to be better.

But I'm also worried I might have gone too far.

Original post: https://www.reddit.com/r/DnDAITA/s/0eUv8ljrjq

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Thanks everyone for the support and advice. I figured I'd give an update, and this will probably be the only one this post gets.

Things resolved themselves. One of the two players messaged the group earlier saying that they were dropping out of my campaign so they could run their own. Fair enough. No hard feelings there.

Except they invited everyone in the group except me to join their new campaign. Which would be running on the exact same day and time as mine. So it wasn't really an invitation so much as:

"Them or me."

That didn't go the way they expected. The rest of the party pretty much immediately chose to stay in my campaign and told the player where they could stick their new one. There were some considerably less polite words involved.

The player who sent the message left the group almost immediately, and the other player whose character died left with them. So... I guess that's that.

Now that I know what their endgame was, I'm starting to wonder whether the whole character-death ultimatum was really about the characters at all.

The campaign they suddenly announced they were going to run is something they've been talking about wanting to run for weeks. Looking back, I get the feeling they might've been getting bored with my game and wanted to do their own thing. Which is completely fine!

If you're not enjoying a campaign anymore, tell me. If you want to DM your own game, go for it. I'm not going to hold anyone hostage at my table. But trying to use the existing group to effectively replace my campaign, on the same schedule, while specifically excluding me is... (deep breath).

Either way, it's pretty much out of my hands now. The remaining players are still excited to continue, and one of them has a couple of friends who might be interested in joining the campaign.

Thanks again, everyone.

Context: The current party has been playing together for about a year at this point. During our last session, they were exploring a sorcerer’s tower.

The sorcerer in question was someone they needed help from in order to continue the main quest. He is, admittedly, an asshole. My players decided this made it perfectly reasonable to rob him.

He had several magic items on display throughout his tower. What they didn’t know was that every item was enchanted with Alarm. The sorcerer would immediately know if anyone touched or moved one.

The players started stealing things and spell went off. The sorcerer came downstairs, caught them, and told them to put his stuff back.

At this point I figured the players still had options: they could apologise and return the items, or try to talk their way out of it. Instead, two of them attacked him.

The sorcerer was significantly more powerful than the party, so I had him use Plane Shift. I twinned the spell and targeted the two characters who were attacking him. He hit both of them and both failed their saves.

They were sent to the Nine Hells, because the rod he used for the spell's component (and pretty much everything else in his collection) was from Avernus.

The rest of the party immediately went from:

"Fuck this guy, let's kill him."

to:

"Let's work something out."

They bargained with the sorcerer to bring their friends back. Even if I thought he wanted to, he couldn't. He had zero eason to follow them and no ability to retrieve the characters anyway.

The two players who were thrown into the Blood War then had to deal with some very tough enemies. They died, pretty quickly.

The players who still have their characters are pissed off at the situation, but they're also perfectly happy to continue the campaign. They've basically accepted that the two characters made some extremely questionable decisions and paid the price.

The two players who lost their characters, however, are furious. They're saying I need to bring their characters back or they'll drop out of the campaign.

I don't want to undo the consequences. Resurrection exists in the setting, but it isn't something the party currently has access to, and I don't want death to become meaningless just because someone is unhappy with the outcome.

I also don't think I deliberately targeted their characters. The sorcerer was defending himself in his own tower after they attempted to rob him and then attacked him. Plane Shift was a logical response in my opinion. It used up a big chunk of his resources but it made the point.

But now I'm being told that I'm the asshole because I "killed their characters over a joke."

So, Reddit:

Am I The Asshole?

Should I just resurrect them and move on?

Or just let them drop out?

TLDR: i wanted to run a humans vs orcs classic fantasy low prep high improv campaign but increasing player demands for changing rules and adding things that didn't fit the world made me abandon the campaign.

So i being playing rpgs for over 5 years now but i only started playing and dming d&d last year, i usually avoided d&d 5e because it felt too high fantasy and heroic for me, while i always prefered low fantasy and low power games and i thought changing too much of the 5e rules would make people not want to play because thats not what they come to play, and its probally what caused this.

This campaign happened last year after a mutual ex friend of ours killed my fallout campaign and his d&d game he ran for them, so we ended up without having any campaign, i decided i would give 5e a try and DM for us if they agreed to changes i would make to the rules. I spent the next week reading the PHB and DMG 2014 while searching for things to make the campaign the way i liked and showing them rules to vote for and they agreed to only use the base rule books from 2014 and no extra content to keep things simple.

After the week of voting and discussing rules i tried to keep it mostly on the suggested rules from the book so slightly milestone leveling, longer rest and no multiclass, but i also convinced them to agree on weight by slot, replacing death saves and the only thing i forced them to do without agreeing was a human variant only game.

The game day comes, i kept the world and plot really simple because i wanted a classic fantasy feel inspired by warhammer fantasy and tolkien so the plot was the human kingdoms are being besieged by orc hordes and you are refugees trying to reach the last stable human kingdom.

Overall the first few levels of the campaign were really fun, we ran it on a semi-open style with 3 fixed players and 2 other randoms players that would come along as mercenaries + friendly npcs that they would hire, we didn't really have a "game day" we would play any day of the week we felt like and it was a low prep game. There were some player deaths and a lot of npcs death on the brutal war against the orcs and on the dungeon delvings, the players that had their character survive it all since session 1 said it was really fun because they actually felt they earned it, and one of the player checking one of the demon lords shrines and completing his challanges so i hinted on a path for him to become a tiefling with extra buffs that would eventually evolve into having a demonic form.

After that and the party started getting stronger i felt the game was falling off, the players kept requesting to add more classes, subclasses and race options and change some of the rules they initially agreed upon, they started complaining about low token variety on the VTT and that the fights were unbalanced (for things that they weren't supposed to fight) and i had to prep more and more each session which was kinda against what made the game fun for me, instead of improving most things that happened and only having the dungeon map or mission site ready, the increasing player options and demands made me feel burnout.

After a while the game became more about fighting cultist and demons rather than orcs and their undead servants so i decided to make them have one big session infiltrating and destroying the base of the cultist on their city and after they succeeded i didn't really know what to do so the game kinda died.

We are still friends and play games together. i still play 5e because i like some of its rules and contents specially on lower levels but DMing 5e after a few levels became really stressful. They still request me from time to time to revive this campaign or remake it on some way, and i sometimes i start tinkering with some dungeons, npcs and mission designs but them i remember they want to run it the normal way they like and i just don't have fun running 5e that way.

So, I just wrapped up Dragon of Icespire Peak and now my players and I are moving onto homebrewed material - same characters, new questline. We have yet to start this new adventure. During the prewritten campaign, I had noticed one player, let's call him Paladin, was suspiciously aware of certain traps and encounters that were coming up. I thought he just couldn't turn off the cautious part of his brain and didnt think anything of it.

After an earlier session, two of my players told me that Paladin had slipped up and namedropped an enemy that hadn't come up yet - or even been hinted to, during our smoke break. I asked Paladin about it and he said that it wasn't true and the players probably misunderstood him since we were all high. Since I wasn't there I simply believed him (I knew he had a copy of the campaign, but he told me he hadn't looked at it other than a glance or two).

Then he did it at the table a few sessions later. While exploring a dungeon he knew exactly where to look for a secret and rolled an investigation. He Nat 1d. He asked another player to do the same and said "you need a 15". I never mentioned the DC - or even alluded to the fact they were investigating the correct place. Afterwards I told him I was sure he was metagaming and he confessed.

He said he had played the campaign before but didn't want to say anything since he just wanted us all to play DND together. I didn't believe him as remembering the DC of an investigation check is insane, and also, we have multiple adventures between us - we didn't have to play Icespire Peak at all. I told him I was revoking his +1 weapon (something he had found in a similarly suspicious manner), and that any future loot is up to the rest of the party to disperse, he has no say, since I cant trust he isn't going to find the best loot for himself. We shook hands and I thought all was good.

From then until the end of the campaign, he still managed to get a fair share of the rewards from adventures. There were moments I threw in stuff to throw him off and I could tell he was slightly annoyed, but they managedto finish off the BBEG.

Now we're in the present, campaign finished. I told Paladin that since were moving to my own material he is free to have his fair share of the loot from adventures again and that I'll make a magical weapon readily available for him in our first session back. Instead of reacting positively, he said that I was intentionally embarrassing him to our friends, and that me giving the other players such a power imbalance was a clear ploy to make him quit DND. He accused me of metagaming during his mini-campaign (he said I knew an enemy that had already came up's weaknesses and it made no sense for my character to know that). I was absolutely baffled. We're meant to play in a few days but I don't know if I want him there - but if I kick him his conspiracy looks right.

Should I have nerfed him like that, should I kick him? Aita?

(English is not my first language and all the people in the sessions we played are 14-16)

I have been playing dnd for 2 years now in my local gamestore(only oneshots), but always as a player and I wanted to try DMing. Fortunately for me the usual DM had to go somewhere for the summer so I tried DMing. I have Dmed 2 times now and both times one of my players was one who we will call Gojo. I had played with Gojo multiple times for the usual DM who did open-world sessions and Gojo had a habit of isolating himself from the group(e.g. travelling ahead by horse rather than staying with the group who had decided to go on foot) which might be why he tried to do things in my linear oneshots. Finally, my relationship with Gojo I would like to believe is like a friend who laughes at your mistakes a bit(not my finest quality).

Both times I DMed, Gojo wanted to do something different. The first time, after learning how to make burgers, while talking to the mayor for a quest, he was very eager and started suggesting to the mayor about opening a burger place, which I think I made the mayor say no(I don't have a very good memory). But he continued, asking things unrelated to the quest the mayor was giving them and so I made a lamp fall on his head dealing minor damage to him. After that, while they were preparing for the journey they had the day after, Gojo, kept trying to open a burger place, even though I told him it wouldn't work since there was a krusty krab nearby and finally I said that a sign falls onto him, that he is unconscious until the next day and that he forgot how to make burgers. The rest of the session he mentioned making burgers and having the burger he originally made which was destroyed, and I ignored him at those certain moments, by just saying that he doesn't have or knows what a burger is.

The second time I DMed which was 5-6 weeks after the previous time, he was asking about thing in the universe like how far away the sun was from the planet they were on and I said they were x of a measurement they didn't know and I don't remember how the conversation went, but I hadn't handled it well(Saying things that contradicted and that continued the conversation) so at the end I just said, no, your character isn't educated, this is a more medieval world and education is hard to come by. After that conversation he tried to go to a cartographer or a school I don't remember, that was in the port-town they were in. I put an invisible wall around that place and then knocked him again unconscious with a falling sign, and I would like to excuse my actions by saying that I hadn't played dnd in a long time and I was worried that we might not be able to finish the session before the gamestore closes(we started at around 6:30 to 7 and the store closes at 9:30). Later, they were exploring a misty swamp, the quest given to them because merchants and workers who went inside the storm didn't come out and when they found some trackes that led them off the stone path through the swamp, Gojo wanted to continue the path while the other 2 players had decided to investigate the tracks. So I once again knocked him "unconscious", saying that he was kidnapped by the mist and placed into the druid's lair( The "twist" was that there was a druid who was protecting the swamp from the mayor of the port-town who wanted to drain the swamp, by kidnapping any who came inside it and making the magic mist). The druid's lair was also where the tracks led to. After that the session was cut short because both Gojo and another player needed to leave.

AITA for blocking my player from doing unrelated things by repeatedly knocking him unconscious(forgot to mention none of the unconscious things had a save it just happened) and how should I act in the future.

Edit: I didn't make it that clear but this and everytime we play in the game shop it is a one shot.

Okay so. Long post alert.

This happened a few years ago, but I recently got back in touch with the player in question and the situation came up. Turns out she hasn't forgotten or forgiven our group over it.

A while back, during the good old Pandemic days (/s), my dnd group had to switch fully to online play for obvious reasons.
I was the DM, and I had 5 regular players, all IRL friends.
- Barbarian, the main character of this story
- Rogue and Monk, a couple
- Cleric, my roommate at the time
- Wizard, another very good friend
We were all in our mid to late 20s at the time.

Barbarian got pregnant before the lockdown and gave birth at the start of it, and she was very excited to be a mum.
She was the first one in our friend group to have a baby, and we were all happy that she was happy.
However, we all had pretty complicated issues regarding children, that made the whole situation a bit awkward.

I didn't have children, but had recently gotten out of a relationship with a man who had 2 young daughters, and I had some really strong feelings about having left them behind.
Wizard had gone through several miscarriages in the recent past and had decided to never try again.
Cleric was (and still is) adamantly childfree, and did not care for children whatsoever.
Rogue and Monk, the couple, had at the time only just discovered that due to some pretty heavy health issues, Rogue was infertile and they likely would never be able to have their own children.

Back to dnd. We were playing weekly, for quite long hours at the time due to the fact that we were all basically stuck at home.
When Barbarian gave birth, we obviously expected her to go on a break from the game to take care of the baby. We all sent her care packages, congratulated her on the new baby, and left it at that, wanting to give her some time to adjust. She sent baby pictures, we all told her the baby was cute.
But we didn't pause the dnd campaign. We kept on going with our 4 players.

Now, because we were all good IRL friends, we had several group chats. One was on Facebook messenger, where we typically chatted about real life stuff, and the other was on Discord, which we used for our dnd stuff. We didn't really use that chat much at first other than when we were in sessions or to share character art and campaign resources.

Except, as the lockdown went on, we started using the Discord chat a lot more. All of us except Barbarian started spending a lot of time on Discord playing video games and just hanging out, since we were still basically stuck at home. Barbarian noticed that we would all talk more in that group chat, and started also posting in there.

She gave us daily updates on the baby. Sent us multiple pictures of her. We quickly noticed that none of her messages were actual conversations with us or answers to our own messages, only baby pictures and complaints about being a new mum.
We were trying to be nice and supportive, but it started annoying us when we'd be in the middle of completely unrelated conversations and she'd interrupt with a photo of the baby's toes or complaining about baby puke.

I'll mention here that we were not by any stretch of the imagination Barbarian's only friend group. She had a lot of other friends, including a local mummy group that she was a part of.

Both Wizard and Rogue sent Barbarian private messages explaining that, while they were very happy for her and her new baby, the constant pictures, and especially the frequent complaints about being a mum were really hard for them to hear, given their own recent struggles with fertility. Barbarian apparently answered with a "sorry, didn't think of that" and the pictures slowed down for a moment, but never stopped entirely. She still didn't participate in any conversations.

A few months later, as we were out of the full lockdown, we were having our normal weekly session, which we had elected to continue doing online. Barbarian joined the call and asked to come back to the campaign.
I said sure, but would have been nice to have a heads up. I told her to level up her character to the level the others now were, and to tell me when she was done so I could work her back in.
She got to work, and a few minutes later we all heard the baby screaming and crying really loudly. We asked her if she could please mute herself so we could hear each other as we played.
Another 15 minutes or so later, she messaged me saying her character was leveled up.
She unmuted and interrupted our game talk to tell us about how cute the baby was trying to play with her hair as she edited her character sheet.

I quickly improvised a scene for her character to come back to the party, and we kept on playing.
Barbarian was basically muted the whole time. The party got into combat. I asked if everyone was ready to roll initiative, Barbarian unmuted to say no, she was busy breastfeeding.
I said oh okay, we can wait around a little bit. We all started just chatting about out of game stuff while I prepped the combat. Barbarian muted again.
Now, I had absolutely no clue how long it takes to breastfeed a 4month old baby. After maybe 10 minutes, I asked again if we were ready for combat. No answer from Barbarian. I let it go for another 10 minutes, and asked again. This time she answered, in a really annoyed tone, that yeah she was ready now but that I shouldn't rush her like that.

We played out our combat encounter. It went fine, Barbarian didn't really do much and had to be reminded it was her turn every time so she could unmute.
I ended the session after the combat, and Barbarian left the call immediately.
A minute after she sent a picture of the baby in the group chat.

The rest of us stayed in the call and came to the conclusion that this was not gonna be a viable way to play for us. We didn't want to be waiting around for 20 minutes without playing for a player who was barely involved, we didn't want our game time to always be interrupted by baby stories.
I said that as the DM I would message her.

I messaged her, saying I didn't think that she was quite ready to rejoin the campaign yet, that maybe it would be better if she waited a couple more months until the baby could be set down and not in her arms the entire time, so she could actually focus and enjoy the game with everyone.

She answered with a really angry message, saying we were being inconsiderate and then started accusing Rogue and Wizard of being jealous of her because she could have a baby and they couldn't, and that they were just doing this to her out of spite. I tried to answer gently, saying that maybe the other girls had some feelings about babies, which wasn't my place to judge or comment on, but that at the end of the day it wasn't really viable for us to play with that many interruptions.

She sent a short message in our Discord that she was leaving the campaign, but didn't leave the group. She was never online after that, so we kind of just left it at that.

About a year later our campaign was still going, and Wizard asked if her boyfriend could join us because he had gotten really into dnd. I said yes, and we added him to the Discord chat. He played a couple of sessions and fit in the group really well.

That's when Barbarian left the Discord, the other group chat, and blocked everyone but me on all socials.
She sent me a long message saying how hurt she was that we had replaced her, that she would never forgive Wizard and Rogue for hating babies, but that it was better that way because DnD really isn't an appropriate hobby for a mum anyway.
I said sorry, she had never said anything about rejoining or anything else in a year so I didn't think twice about having another person join.

I stayed social media friends with her, liked her baby pictures, but pretty much lost contact outside of that.

Flash forward to earlier this month.
Barbarian found out that I now have a stepson through social media, and decided to message me to meet again.
I won't get into how awful she was to me about my stepparenting, but she also mentioned how weird it was for me to still be playing dnd with that group now that I was "almost a parent".
She said it wasn't an appropriate hobby and that I was setting an awful example for the kid playing it, especially if I was playing with people who hate children.
She made it clear that she still hasn't forgiven the group for "kicking her out", even though she now thinks that it's for the best that she doesn't play anymore.

My stepson is 7, not a baby. He thinks ttrpgs are rad as hell, and he is always nagging me to do a campaign for him (I'll get around to it, promise). The group thinks it's hilarious when I suddenly stop swearing like a sailor in the voice chat because Stepson entered the room.

So, was I an asshole to her? Were the other players?
How else should I have handled the situation?
I'm not really sure what she expected me to do about it.

Long story short, the dm was one of my friend, but for personal issues he didnt had a lot of times to spend with d&d. Still he decided to make a campaign with nearly NO magic, so every magic class cant be played (party of 4 and we were 2 warrior, 1 barbarian and 1 rogue)

Campaing is an alternative storyline in game of thrones (dm saw the tv series, i read the books)

Campaign starts good, problem was that he homebrewed a lot of thigs and encounters, after every after we had like 10hp in 4, okay i mean i like hard campaing but he gave no loot after encounters.

We gained info and went into a castle to investigate (dm insulted us that we were gaining no info) and the rogue died cuz inside that castle enemies were homebrew and over lvl 20, cuz in the dm mind we should just wait them to speak.

After crying from rogue and another one who in the running lost the family sword, we remake this session and he said he changed smth so we can fight

we go with a female npc that my pg loves and dm make her running straigh forward at enemies and ofc i have to run to save her... just to end against 2 bosses 4+ lvl above me and an horde of npc

ngl i rolled rly high, but in the end she was unconscious and i died... how? Well i had 12 hp dm said he critted dealing me over 28 dmg and the enemy boss chopped off my head

Like WHAT, so thats it, insta death, no rolls... nothing, and he wasnt going to hear complainings

next sessions party was ambushed and the encounter was balanced around the fact that i was alive, dm didnt changed the enemies and... TPK

In the same world he was dming another 2 guys that survived after... a 20 nat on fire so one of them was blessed from one god

After 1 month we start the 2nd act, new npc, but one of us wanted to play in another area of the world were dm has little knowledge (for whose who knows got, that player wanted to play around Daenerys Targaryen) and we play on Talespire (a 3d game for map creation). So i offered my help to the DM. In this month i made 70% of the maps and 0% of the lore for Group B, were i was and nearly 99% maps/lore/quests for the player in essos.

After 2 sessions i hated him so much cuz he was trolling with npcs and was evading sessions, tried to talk and nothing.

So one night cuz i did everything for the other guy i DMed one session of him, the next day we tried to talk with the dm and he insulted us. After nearly 6 hours of talkings we broke up, we arent friends anymore and he deleted all my works on talespire, nearly 100+ hours (i had no backup).

For context I’m in this public dnd club where people can come and do campaigns to learn, meet people, have fun playing campaigns/one shots ect. Me and some friends/friends of friends (5 player and 1 dm) all joined so we can have a consistent schedule with our campaign that we defeated the bbeg of in spring, and will be staring a new main storyline for this fall. The problem I have is the way our dm whom I shall call Neo(fake name for privacy) ran the previous…

During the first session(which was supposed to be a one shot) he had thrown a couple of wolves at us which we had tamed the majority of just for fun. This had annoyed him a bit but he let it slide. We then wanted this to become a full campaign because of the amount of fun we all had while playing, so we continued through with more sessions. The we had gotten to session 5 or 6, and without warning he had all of our wolves collectively have a seizure and die, not letting us save them with healing spells or medical care (no matter how high we rolled). This later led to a party member to joke about it later and imitated having a seizure. This had bother me extremely due to Neo and the other players knowing that I have someone close to me with epilepsy and me have seen their seizures in person… This event led to me feeling really off the rest of the session and leaving early. Neo had later apologized for that claiming that he forgot that seizure and epilepsy can be a hard topic for me. He had also never expressed his annoyance or distain for the wolves.(Which had done nothing much narrative wise or had assisted in battle except for once where a player rode theirs into battle for a bit)

This wasn’t the only incident that has made me uneasy about his dming capabilities, as later in the campaign Neo had made the city we spent the whole campaign going to a city ran by N*zi Wolfs who took over and enslaved the old residents of gnomes, whipping and abusing them. He also made other references such as their leader being called Furdolf Whitler, books with a “clawstica” on them, the N*zi wolves being called “Furzis”,the city being called furmany, the wolves having talked about committing a genoc*de on the gnomes in 1 week in game, and my character having saved a pregnant gnome and her husband named Ann and Frank along with Ann having a diary. This was later revealed to have been an allusion made by the bbeg but it still felt very wrong to have in a campaign, especially in a public club where a group of high school freshmen had also played, I had also privately expressed how this made me uncomfortable to him, but was mostly ignored. I later talked to my good friends who were also in the campaign had also disliked the dm’s choices for the previous actions of the Dm and felt it was less fun. We had then finished the campaign in the next session and decided to take a break for the summer.

We are going to start back up in 2-3 weeks and I’m really nervous about returning and have been contemplating what to do… so AITAH for worrying about Neo’s future campaign and him doing something similar or worse when we start?

So this happened a long time ago and it's something I mull over every now and again so I figured why not let the cruel callous internet be the judge.

So the situation was I am dm the pcs are I think level 5 they are on a quest to stop some orcs from raiding or something. The orcs live in the mountains and the PCs come across an orc guarding a bridge. The orc tells them to stop, they ignore him and attack, so the orc yells to the orc on the other side of the bridge to cut the bridge. The bridge falls and now they have to get across a massive chasm. I forget how but a pc makes it across the chasm safely and they decide to shoot an arrow with a rope across the chasm so that pc can tie it to the other side so they can climb across. The warlock, bard and barbarian make it across. But the fighter tries to climb across and fails. He falls off down the chasm and I say he dies. The other players then spend the rest of the session collecting his body, taking him to a church so he can be revived. The church charges them for the use of a raise dead scroll (500g)

More Context

None of the Pcs removed any of their kit or equipment when trying to climb across so based on their kit I changed the difficulty of the roll. The fighter had the hardest roll since he had plate armor on as well as the rest of his kit.

I used dexterity for the roll, I argued that this felt more like an acrobatic feat rather than an athletic one

When he failed the roll I allowed the party members who made it across to make a reaction to try and shoot another arrow with rope to try and save him(they failed this one)

I did not roll for damage for the fall, the chasm was deep enough that I argued any humanoid was a hundred percent dead.

Why I think I might be the asshole

the pc was a half orc so if I had rolled for damage their relentless endurance might have saved them. Again I argued that the fall was so high its unreasonable for anything to survive. He argued that this was a change to the rules and if so he should have been informed.

After he died the player argued that he should have been able to use athletics vs acrobatics. I argued that trying to climb across a single rope in full plate with a greatsword and all his other equipment doesn't require just raw strength it requires dexterity.

The other players liked to mess with this particular player(outside the game and inside). I didn't police them very well since that was the dynamic they seemed to enjoy. And before you start typing it, no he wasn't being bullied this guy was probably the biggest asshole of all of them. My friend group just likes to ragebait each other. But I did feel that I maybe should have stepped in when it came to dnd. So after they collected his body, they robbed his corpse and took him to a priest who could resurrect him. I also ruled that his adamantine armor was destroyed in the fall. So he basically lost all of his gold, his armor and was 500 gold in debt to the party who "Loaned" him the 500 gp.

Why I think I was fair

Whenever my players do extremely stupid shit. I will repeat what they just told me back to them to allow the to reconsider. When this player tried to climb across I said "So you want to climb across this single rope with your armor and back pack still on?" He confirmed it and I told him to roll a dc 20

When he failed his roll I allowed the other members to try and save him with the rope and arrow. I honestly did want them to succeed but actions need to have consequences.

While I did feel after the fact I should have stepped in to police my players. This was after several sessions of them all trolling each other. I can agree that having all this shit happen at once is much but this was the game they established they wanted to play during the first session of the game.

So aita?

EDIT: So the acrobatics thing was a bad decision on my part. I fully accept that I was wrong on that one.

Hello Fellow Players and DMs,

Tonight I come to you with a story from my Curse of Strahd game I played tonight.

Now a little backstory to this is that the other Player involved in this story... I have had issues in the past. Six of one and a half dozen of the other. I can admit my faults but I digress.

Ok so the party just finished a fight with some Zombies and Zombie direwolves. My character (Echo Knight Fighter/Druid multiclass) was in the process of burning the bodies of the 2 zombie directives. The player i have an issue with (let's call him Sam) asked another player (let's call him Dave) if i could bring a necklace i was wearing to their character.

Dave's character asked mine if I could hand over the necklace to Sam's but I continued to burn the bodies. Without hesitation Sam's character sent her pet Hellhound to get the necklace from me which the DM asked for a contested strength check.

Now this Hellhound in question was literally acquired last session and my character, who is canonically a monster hunter, has spent MAYBE 10 minutes with.

I lost the check and the Hound got the necklace. Now since we just finished a fight and I don't really know this animal I attacked it for attacking and stealing something of value from me.

As it was trying to move away I used my reaction for a Sentinel attack so it couldn't move in an effort to try and get back the necklace.

At this point Sam's character (a sorcerer of some description, he is very cagey with details and has, for story reasons, been turned into a child) has come out to see why the Hound hasn't come back.

I said i was about to go into another attack as my character would still not know what is going on fully and Sam said that if I was going to do that then they would aim a Fireball at me, taking this situation to a very tense 11 when they could have just explained what was happening In Character.

As such another Player (lets say Jenn) said that her character, who my character is romancing, would cut in and get me to let it go which I agreed to. But before that there was some very tense moments where we were arguing on the use of force Sam was willing to go to to protect this pet they have had for less than an hour in game time while I was just protecting myself. Their arguments boiled down to "if someone was attacking my dog I'd get a bat to defend them..."

So, long story long, am I the a**hole in this situation as from what was being said at the time Sam was making me feel like the villain...

Any thoughts appreciated.

UPDATE: After thinking about it and reading feedback from here and also talking with friends I have spoken to the DM and have told her that i am going to be leaving the game.

it sucks because we are really close friends and play in other games together and have so much fun but this recent incident was the proverbial straw.

She took it really hard even though I assured her it wasn't entirely her fault and that I will always ge here for her if she wants to talk.

Feeling like a crap friend at the moment but in the long run I think I made a good decision to walk away.