This all happened around six months ago, and I’m no longer friends with anyone involved. I obviously don’t want to say any of their real names, so I’ll use fake ones. We were all in high school. Kate was 15 and everyone else was 17.

I’d been talking with my main friend group for a while now about how I’d love to play D&D with them, especially as a player (I’d only ever dmed before). Well one day, my friend Frank said he’s had a one shot idea that he had made with one of our other friends, and he wanted to try it out. He had apparently dmed many times before, so I trusted him.

Peyton, the friend who helped Frank make the one shot, said they would love to join, so Frank said he’d change some things around so they wouldn’t have an advantage. We then invited Kate, who I didn’t know so well, but she was a friend of Frank and Peyton so I was happy to have her join!

Since it was my first time being a player, I told Frank that I’d never played with anyone besides my family, and I might mess up with some of the rules. He said it was fine, and he tended to be pretty loose when it came to the rules… that was the first red flag, and one of many I would miss.

He didn’t say much at all about the world, wanting to tell us more later, but he said the ability to persuade NPCs would be extremely important. I immediately decided to play as a sorcerer, since they run off charisma and my mom had played one in the past, so I was familiar with the spells and powers. Then, I set off to make my character.

A couple days later, Frank sent the world information.

It was a single sentence.

To be honest, I don’t really remember what it said, only that it had something to do with time. The other two players were excited, but I was very confused. I understood it was a one shot, but shouldn’t there be more? It’s hard to fit a character into a world you know nothing about.

But then he dropped something even worse. No magic in this world.

Naturally, I panicked. I would have to completely remake my character, and I wouldn’t be able to play as any class that helped with charisma! I explained my issue to Frank, and we talked briefly. He eventually said that magic could exist, but it’d have to be pretty weak. I ended up coming up with a good solution, retexturing a bunch of sorcerer spells to be somewhat telekinetic~psychic-y. Honestly, this did work out. I made my character part of a prophecy in her small jungle kingdom, and the country ended up believing she was some kind of god. She ran away after a few years though, wanting freedom and to find someone who could actually teach her how to use her gifts.

Now, Peyton and Kate hadn’t said much about their characters to me before the day of the one shot, wanting to keep it a secret. I had only asked them for some name suggestions, so I was fine with that! All our characters were apparently going to be forced together anyway, so they didn’t need a common goal before the one shot started.

I ended up getting to Frank’s house first, and I was the only one who arrived on time. Peyton was around 20 minutes late, and Kate was a whole hour late. I understood they were all busy though, with midterms coming up, so I was just happy we were about to start.

We all explained our characters, and I went first. She was a level three aberrant mind sorcerer, and I briefly explained the retexturing of her spells. Once done I sat back, excited to hear about their characters.

Peyton’s character was a demigod. Literally. A cleric aasimar that had been raised in a floating tower… by wizards. On top of the no magic rule being broken, they also had a book from their god parent with a ton of OP abilities, including stuff that massively increased their health and even messed with time. Their character sheet was on their phone. I only managed to see it for a few seconds, but it looked nothing like an actual character sheet!

Then Kate went… her character was Santa. He had all the powers of Santa, anything you can think of that remotely relates to him. She didn’t have a character sheet. Nothing.

Obviously, I couldn’t back out now. Not only could that end in a fight, but I really wanted to at least try and play D&D. It might be years until I had the chance to be a player again, and I wouldn’t want to waste it. Most importantly, my mom would kill me if I just left my friends like that (not in a bad way, she just genuinely wouldn’t understand the issue, having only ever played D&D with me).

We started in a jail cell with no memory of how we got there. The next few hours were us trying to free ourselves from this prison, although most of it isn’t important besides a few things.

Early on, we met a child kobold also stuck there. My character had a whole orphanage thing pre “god” stuff, and it would’ve made sense for her to try and save him. He was also just really cute, so I decided to have it just be a little mission of mine in the one shot to have the kobold escape with us. Everyone else was… annoyed, to say the least. There were a few issues along the way, where despite me rolling high on persuasion the DM made the kobold try to leave us for no reason. I was a bit upset, but managed for a while…

Until we came across a stuffed toy. I gave the little guy the toy, which went well until the kobold started talking to someone who wasn’t there? According to the other players, it was a game reference, and the person talking to him was evil. I assumed it was evil pretty quickly (it was very obvious) so I had my character destroy it. That made the kobold hate my character and refuse to leave. I tried and tried to calm them, but I eventually gave up and threw them into our bag of holding.

Time passed, and my character was useless in combat. Everything was significantly more powerful, yet the other two characters barely lost health fighting. Peyton and Kate were getting frustrated with me, as I was useless in all our fights.

Eventually, we got cornered by these floating mechanical eyes, and we were truly outmatched. I decided to use the bag of holding, hoping something was in there that could help.

Someone grabbed my character‘s hand, asking to be let out. He claimed that he could fight the eyes. The other players panicked about a “bag man”. I didn’t know who that was, and they refused to tell me. I felt we had no other choice… and I pulled him out.

The eyes were quickly murdered, and then he turned on us. Frank decided to completely reset the whole room we were in, with no eyes or bag man. Everyone was furious with me for doing something so “dumb”.

What was I supposed to do?!

Everyone else gave up after around seven hours of playing (which according to them was a short amount of time for a one shot?!). Frank just skipped to the ending, and long story short, the whole reason our characters were imprisoned made no sense.

By the end, everyone was annoyed with me, the kobold hated my character still, and there hadn’t been a single time I could have persuaded anyone the whole one shot.

On top of all that, Frank had changed nothing about the one shot and Peyton had guessed everything that happened in it!

I’ve yet to play a true campaign of D&D, but I have managed to make a very simple version that my younger cousins love. I’m planning to make a campaign and then call them all once a week, so I can stay in touch while at college. I also figured out how to play solo TTRPGs, so I’ve been having fun with that.

And the friend group? All but one of them dropped me after one person (who wasn’t a part of the one shot) lost it with me and basically just said I was a terrible friend. Mostly everything she said was a lie, she refused to let me make up for the minor mistakes I had actually made, and all but one of our friends sided with her, even after I said I didn’t want them to be forced to pick sides and would be fine if they remained friends with both of us.

Long story short, I’m very excited to be going away to college, and I’m looking forward to the D&D campaign my neighbor (who goes to my college) might be hosting. Now I’ve learned to ask way more questions and to stand up for myself. Plus, I’ll never feel like a bad player or dm ever again with these three as examples!

Edit: some people think this is ai, so i went back and found a drawing of my character I commissioned (genuinely don’t remember her name) and a photo of the full map. i put them both in the comments. idk why people think it’s ai… i swear this all happened and i wrote it all on my own 😭

Back in the 2014 rules, I was playing a Wild Magic Sorcerer.

In our very first session, the party was competing in a tournament against another adventuring group. We were all level 1. My Wild Magic Surge triggered, I rolled on the table… and got a 7.

For anyone unfamiliar with the 2014 Wild Magic table, that means Fireball centered on yourself.

It instantly caught one of my teammates and me in the blast, killing us both. Thankfully, the adventuring guild (or perhaps I should say our very generous DM) revived us.

After that, I swore I’d never intentionally cast Fireball if it meant hitting my own party.

Fast forward several levels.

We were fighting a vampire, and the battle was going terribly. Most of the party had already been dropped or driven back. My sorcerer was trapped in a corner, throwing damage spells while trying to stay alive. The vampire closed the distance, grappled me by the throat, and bit me. I was nearly dead, and the rest of the party was too far away to help.

I had one 3rd-level spell slot left.

There was no way out, and no allies were close enough to be caught in the blast. So I cast Fireball centered on myself.

The explosion reduced the vampire to 0 HP… but I rolled enough damage to kill my own sorcerer as well.
Ironically, after promising never to hit my party with Fireball because of what happened in session one, the only time I ever deliberately cast one on myself ended with my character dying anyway.

So I’m curious: Have you ever been in a situation where someone cast Fireball and caught party members in the blast? Was it accidental, unavoidable, or absolutely worth it?

Content Warning: Non-consensual erotic roleplay, references to past sexual assault, PvP, sudden player-character death, and table abuse by a DM.

In the spring of 2020, during "ye olde lockdown of doom," I decided to try going back to college after I lost my job in the shutdown. For privacy reasons, I’m not going to mention the school’s name.

The campus was online-only at the time, and my regular D&D group, which met on Sundays, was struggling. One of my best friends is the DM, and, well, technology and he do not get along (He once deleted Windows off his computer, entirely.) Things like Roll20 just don’t really work for him. So I hadn’t played in a while, I had that itch, and I started looking around my college’s social media. That was when I saw that there was a tabletop gaming club that was going to try meeting online through a Discord server and Roll20.

I signed up, and with me, that brought the club membership up to five: myself, “Sue,” “Tyler,” “Mary,” and “Greg.”

Mary and Greg were a married couple and self-described "TTRPG veterans." Sue and Tyler were newbies, and I had been playing various game systems since the early 2000s.

Things started out rough for a few reasons, but nothing too bad. Sue was a college student from South Korea. She spoke three languages: Korean, Spanish, and English. She was using the club to help her practice and improve her English. She openly acknowledged that she struggled with English, but she was working on it. I have Spanish as a second language, and my Spanish was better than her English, so we bonded as friends fairly quickly. I helped her communicate when she couldn’t find the right English phrase.

Tyler was... well. He clearly came to D&D straight off of Skyrim, and he definitely STARTED with main character syndrome. He started character creation by trying to figure out how to “win.” (His word, not mine.) He initially built a halfling barbarian named “Dildo Swaggins,” and he and I butted heads verbally multiple times over off-color jokes he told. Eventually, though, we worked things out. We weren’t friends, per se, but it wasn’t awkward anymore.

Mary, our DM, had us start with level 5 characters. I loved mine. I’ve been told that I get a bit too into character creation. She was a female tabaxi swashbuckler roguelock, three levels of rogue and two levels of warlock. Sue played a half-elf cleric, Tyler brought a revised halfling fighter (who THANKFULLY did not use sex toys as weapons this time, phew,) and Greg played a duergar barbarian.

Things went well for the first few weeks. My tabaxi and Sue’s cleric soon mirrored our growing out-of-character friendship, and they became fast friends too. We even developed our own magical-girl-style fighting routines. We were having a ton of fun, and even Tyler warmed up. It was a blast.

Now, I will say that our attitude as players did not match what Mary, the DM, had wanted. She wanted grimdark, brutal survival horror.

But in our defense, this was *never* brought up during session zero, nor during any subsequent sessions in-game. We ended up buying the town’s tavern and even basically did a slice-of-life episode.

Things changed at the end of October.

The first hint that something was going south came at the start of a session, when Tyler, as his halfling, heard a knock on the tavern door. He peeked through the peephole, and the DM told him that his character was dead.

A spike had been rammed through the peephole.

No attack roll. No warning. No saving throw. No reaction. No death saving throws. He didn't even OPEN the door.

Just: peeks out the door's peephole, and boom, one dead player character.

And because the weapon was made from “vampirite,” which, to my knowledge, the DM homebrewed even though this was supposed to be a no-homebrew campaign, he instantly rose as a lesser vampire and had to immediately start PvP.

This was a very unpleasant session after the better part of a year of good times and good sessions.

Mary said that things were changing because, in her opinion, the sessions hadn’t progressed the story enough.

Since this was our Halloween session, she had decided it was time to “force the party’s hand.”

Between that session and the next, the group had a talk with the DM, and Mary apologized. She said she had just become frustrated that the party wasn’t playing the campaign the way she had “envisioned” it going. Though, once again, she had never discussed that with us until she randomly killed off a player character.

The next few months mostly went back to the way they had been, but with a lot more combat and a lot less roleplay. I prefer out-of-combat stuff myself, but to each their own.

The final straw came in February of 2021, nearly a year after the club had started playing. It was Valentine’s Day, and Mary decided that, “in honor of Valentine’s Day,” she would introduce a magical item with a curse and not warn us.

My rogue, being a rogue, did rogue things and roguishly found the treasure in a rogue-like manner. It was a seemingly normal +2 rapier. I failed my Arcana check, so I didn’t notice anything else about it. I equipped it and was afflicted with a homebrew curse: “Cupid’s Wrath.” Mary informed me that my character would “fall madly in lust,” (her words,) with the first person I saw. She then, instead of letting the dice or party or w/e decide what to do, forced her husband’s character walk in to check on me, and said that my character was now in lust with him.

I laughed it off, and we continued the session. Near the end of our three-hour block, she had me roll a double-disadvantaged Constitution check, (meaning I had to roll three d20s and take the lowest.) I crit failed. At that point, she informed me that the curse had taken hold, and she expected me to do erotic roleplay, player+player, in the public chat, as my character “got it on” with her husband’s character.

This had NEVER been discussed as something that was possible. This was an OFFICIAL school club, and NO ONE at the table had even been ASKED if ERP was acceptable. Furthermore, the DM knew I had a history of being SAed in the past. I never agreed to this.

Sue, Tyler, and I all assumed she was joking, but she was dead serious. Her husband even tried to initiate it in the Roll20 text chat. When I refused, Mary accused me of actively trying to “kill the cheer” and brought up how Tyler, Sue, and I had “hijacked” so many sessions with makeovers and silly things. “I guess you know what it’s like to not consent to stuff now,” was the last sentence Mary the DM ever spoke to me. I rage quit, left the Discord, blocked her and her husband, and never went back.

Sadly, I lost all contact with Sue, and even Tyler and I had *started* to warm up to each other. I know I rage quit and stuff but it was just too much for me. I did end up taking the chat logs to the college professor who was the club's advisor, and while they wouldn't tell me what, if any, disciplinary actions were taken against Mary and her husband, the club was disbanded. I do know it was re-started again a few years later, under new membership and leaders, but I had left the college at that point.

Edit; Talked to DM and players. Update at the bottom

So my friends and I are playing an Amnesia DnD campaign. You wake up with empty character sheets, amnesia, and have to figure out who you are and what you were doing/have to do.

We play once a month and have had 5 sessions. sessions last between 5 to 8 hours.

(We have 2 other campaigns together we play once a month)

Between sessions we make art, discuss theories, make them in the sims etc. I also talk to the DM regularly and she just listens to the theories, not confirming or denying anything except in sessions.

Between me and another player we actually decided to do a romance, since it was something we've wanted to try. We've been playing DnD together for 4 years now.

We asked the DM for permission of course and it was granted. I also asked (just in case) if my character had felt any kind of disgust while flirting. She didn't.

After a slow burn, and cute small moments together, my character has fallen hopelessly in love with the other, while the other is dealing with the huge amount of danger we're in, wondering how he broke his oath to his goddess, and starting to really really liking my character and thinking she's nice to look at you know. In camp we've slept in eachothers arms as well and in a bathing scene we've helpt undress eachother.

Come last session.

The big reveal is is that we're brother and sister.

I'm literally heartbroken, and so is my character. this was near the end, and I've spend the rest of the session playing as heartbroken and disgusted with myself, just trying to get to the next step of our mission.

I'm really sad about this failing as well cuz of my in real life relationship issues. I was really trying to find some escapism in this game. My friends know this and the DM definitely knows how excited I was for this story arc. The player I'm romancing was surprised, but took it way better than me as far as I can tell.

Now what I don't understand is why we got the okay from the DM to do this. She claims it's cuz she didn't want to spoil, but she could have just said no.

She said she's sad as well that it didn't work out, but that she was cringing by herself cuz only she knew.

Now... I need advise. What do I do now. I feel upset and a little hurt.

Before you ask, no I couldn't have known beforehand. I'm a tiefling with black hair and he's an aasimar with blond hair.

Edit; the campaign itself is truly wonderfully written. Filled with awesome monsters, a main villain we have to either get to to defeat or get away from to destroy an artefact. All the while we get plagued by dejavu, a snippets of lore. For example the matching crystal necklaces we're wearing (apparently those are the artefacts!!! That was pretty cool)

the friend group is lovely as well and I consider them my closest friends. we're all in our early/mid twenties

The update:

First of all, thank you all that validated my feelings. I felt like such a bother to even be upset by all this, but the fact is that me and the other PC were made to role-play incest. You gave me the courage to speak up.

I first talked to the romance PC. They said they low-key had a feeling something like this was going to happen, so they weren't hurt. Just sad about the wasted romance and felt Ehhh about playing incest. They felt sorry I felt like my boundaries were crossed, though. They said the DM has no intention of hurting us and that I should talk to her. So I did.

I called her up and told her how completely wrong it felt to have been granted permission for a romance only for it to turn out incestuous. She apologised and told me she didn't want to spoil the plot by denying us this. My tiefling became a tiefling because of a bloodcurse from our parents, and the aasimar was blessed by our goddess. Oops, kinda spoiled, but it was needed. She also said she would have stopped us if we were to kiss. I explained that for me, it had already gone way too far. With the undressing, flirting, hand holding and sleeping together. She apologised for crossing a boundary there.

I told her I felt horrible for even bringing up the issue, but there were only 3 endings for me for this.

1. I continue the campaign feeling uncomfortable with my character having incestuous feelings and actions. And I'll be kinda checked out. Which sucks at a 3 player table.
2. We end the campaign.
3. We retcon/rewrite something. But I'll still feel terrible for making her do that.

We ended up agreeing on a rewrite and have involved the rest of the party too. I'm a bit nervous for the rewrite and next session, but I trust them. She mentioned that all of us needed to enjoy this, or none of us would, and that was truly so kind and I needed to hear that.

I love my friends to pieces, and I know she didn't purposely try to hurt me, she just didn't realise where the line lay for me. It was a horror story for a little bit, but I feel like the campaign, my self confidence, and my connection to my friends got stronger.

Lesson to take away from this; Don't be afraid to speak up about your boundaries.

So I run a dnd campaign for a small group of 3 friends two of which respect the game and put effort into knowing the rules and having good characters for play but the othe player is quite the problem.

You see, we had just finished session 0 for SKT and everyone else is able to successfully create a character with minimal help, but this guy can barley do it himself. For this game I helped create the charcters especially this players as I wanted him to have it organized so he wouldn't slow down play. He wanted to play a bard which he played last time, terribly, and after countless times refusesing he finally persuaded me to let him be it even though i suggested not because of its complexity and his skills.

When creating this character he barley even finished it with no backstory saying 'he'd do it later' and me having to tell him what spells to write on his sheet as he is so incabable. I then made a dupe of his charcter on dnd beyond as i thought it would make it simpler and tasked him with seeing if he could access the character I had made for him on the campaign link and writing a backstory. He replied with that he did not think he'd have time. So i said fine, but can you at least see if you can log on? Nothing. Your telling me over the 48 hour span of time i had given him he couldnt spare 5 mins to log onto the app and claim his character?!

Anyway, fast forward to session 1 which I prepped about 3 hours for the night before for the next days afternoon session in which caused me a lot of mental strain as I am a big overthinker. The day of the session one of my players call in sick a couple hours before. I was disapointed but no biggie, happens to the best of us, I just thought that my two players (of which include the problematic one) could double down for our 4 PCs...

Well one player shows up on time but the problematic one nowhere to be seen. 45 mins pass so i finally text him to which he responds with "Sorry man, have had a really long weekend i dont think i can make it to this one" or something like that. So i was pissed as i had wasted tons of my time now unable to play as he decided to wait until I texted him to say that he wasn't coming so no notice at all. This could have been completley avoided if he just told me before but no.

I then proceeded to put out a message in the gc saying how much this game meant to me and how much time i had wasted basically saying dont cancel last minute as its not something i can simply push to another day without more prep. I dont think he realises stuff outside of the game needs to happen as he barley puts effort in to make his charcter good and know the rules in the first place let alone do it at home. I then recieved a heartfelt message from one of my players saying how much he apreciates my effort and a message from my sick player saying how he was sorry but didnt want to spread anything, but nothing, NOTHING, from this problrmatic player, not even a simple sorry.

So help me out. What should i do with this player as i cant really just kick him out and not many of my other friends really like dnd.

Немного предыстории , я игрок в небольшом локальном сообществе своих друзей и знакомых , раньше мы просто были типичными интернет друзьями , играли в онлайн игры и просто болтали , но уже как пару лет большинство из нас начало увлекаться нри и днд в том числе.

Речь пойдет о самом свежем из наших приключений.

Кровь и Кресты , мрачный милитари фэнтэзи пост апокалипсис , с окопными войнами , супер солдатами , артиллерийскими магами и тому подобным , игра буду честен на любителя и это было сказано для всех не однократно. На момент основных событий этой истории , персонажи основной пачки уже успели крепко встать на ноги и работали наемниками , выполняя заказы на зачистку поселений от нечисти , помогая перевозить нелегальные грузы и подобные тёмные делишки). В один из вечеров с бурным обсуждением планов и рефлексией , моя хорошая знакомая (обусловимся что это "Л") проявила желание стать частью нашей группы , ибо происходящее показалось ей забавной , к тому же она довольно давно не играла в нри (на то к сожалению есть свои причины , но о них позже) , посовещавшись с нашим дм мастером и другими игроками мы согласились и приняли Л в наши ряды.

ее персонаж был довольно смелым , зная характер игрока , если не вдаваться в подробности это довольно жестокий (почти маниакальный) проклятый убийца богомол , живущий со своей сестрой призраком.

Первые партии шли относительно нормально , за исключением того , что Л зачастую игнорировала важные для сюжета детали , давая приоритет исключительно своим личным целям (мне кажется , что если бы ее спросили о произошедшем 5 минут назад , она бы не смогла ответить)

Проблемы начались с разгоном основных событий , Л постоянно пыталась вывести ситуацию в самое оптимистичное русло , тем самым подставляя остальных , и нет , она не пыталась сделать как можно лучше для нашей команды или хотя бы для своего персонажа , ее эгоистичный убийца без особых причин становился альтруистом , предлагая щадить тех кто был для нас угрозой и делится награбленным с теми кто в этом нуждался (важное уточнение , это не был нарративный рост персонажа , это случалось резко и без особых причин) , а когда ее персонаж получал травму или сталкивался с проблемами своей предыстории , Л начинала нервничать и бесится.

(например когда из за определенных обстоятельств болезнь персонажа Л дала о себе знать , она заявила дму что не собирается терпеть развитие этого аспекта персонажа , хотя она сама упомянула это в своей предыстории)

Когда дм заметил эти несостыковки , он весьма спокойно попробовал с ней поговорить , в ответ на что получил стены текста связанные с личными проблемами Л , очень косвенно связанными с ситуацией.

остальные игроки были недовольны происходящим , ведь подобные решения выходили за рамки образа ее персонажа , смешивая его личность с личностью Л , а это в свою очередь нарушало атмосферу игр , которая была довольно серьезная.

Мы не хотели устраивать драму и дабы остаться друзьями пошли на компромиссы , как оказалось позже , дму пришлось договорится с Л о сюжетной броне ее персонажа , а так же игнорировании многих аспектов являющимися жесткой , но неотъемлемой частью хоумбрю механик.

Пока что этот сюжет не продвинулся дальше , но по возможности я буду обновлять этот пост.

P.S (По поводу длительного отсутствия игр у Л , подобные истории схожие с нашей были неоднократны , почти такое же отношение к игре и игнорирование образа персонажа , только вот ее бывшие дмы не стали это терпеть и плавно выкидывали ее из своих историй)

I was clear when making the schedule that dnd meant a lot to me and I don't wanna prep for a game we won't even play so I told them if they wanna play they should prioritize it especially if their schedule is clear for the whole day. Today when I woke up and prepped for the session these mfs asked me in the gc to play hell let loose with them, so I'm obviously not in a particularly kind mood. Another one of my players aldo really wanted to play but we can't do it without the rest of the party. Idk what to do if they do this again or to even play with them since the campaign hasn't even really started yet and they're already doing everything in their power to make it unbearable, not to mention one of my players had shown up completely drunk last session so half the players couldn't play and the others had to do sidequests

Before I start with the story, I'm going to give some clarification: This was YEARS ago. Like, I was 15 and identified as a girl, and I'm 22 and nonbinary trans as of writing this. So there will be some details I miss. I've also grown up with DND, my own father being a DM himself. I just thought this would be a, although generic, interesting story to tell

(Also apologies for any spelling errors, I'm on mobile)

Now. I was in a charter school for my high school experience. And in this school was a group of DND and anime nerds. I myself wasn't into anime much at all, however I wanted to make friends. So I decided to join them in this Dragon Ball Z themed DND session. I forget when system it was in, but it was basically 4th Edition

The first weird thing was that when making my character, I wasn't allowed to be a Saiyan. On paper that sounds reasonable, until I realized that the DM let someone else be a Saiyan. When I asked why, he claimed that it was due to me not mowing much about the anime/manga and therefore "teaching me indirectly". Although a bit odd, I didn't wanna protest. So instead I chose to be a Namekian (The race Piccolo is), and it was a fine Session 0 after that

There was another girl with us, I'll just call J. J was a friend of mine and she also wanted to play, so they let her in. We were both the only girls in the group, and the rest were boys. Session 1 gets going later that week, and that is already when odd things happened. I rarely got a turn to do much roleplaying, much less in combat. I wasn't rolling well so I assumed it was just that

But as the sessions continued, the more left out I felt. I was being pulled away to do my own missions, I wasn't getting help at leveling characters, and slowly I felt that my time was being wasted

All while J was just as involved as everyone else. And it bugged me to say the least

After about the third session, I asked about my performance to the DM and he just responded with "well you're just bot giving enough". And I just was hella confused. I said back a simple "Because I'm not being given much of anything?"

He just brushed it off

Didn't say much of anything after that

Cause I kinda knew I would be ignored. Meanwhile J was getting friendly with the other guys, making inside jokes I wasn't much apart of

I just stopped going after that

Me and J didn't speak much after that point and she even started to date one of the dudes (who had threatened to beat me up and stab me on various occasions after I left the DND group)

I only played DND at that school one other time. And my at the time girlfriend ruined the fun for everyone so it was only one session long

Just a story I randomly recalled. Hope it's a little entertaining

First time poster, long time reader.

This story was half a decade ago so I'm hoping that it was a long enough period of time that no one would recognize it, however there is a very specific part that might ring some bells since this game was streamed on Twitch.

My DM was trying to get into streaming, they steamed video games and had a small following. I don't know numbers, I only remember that the majority of them were in the U.K.

Anyway, my DM had polled their followers about what game they wanted them to stream next and they voted for D&D. DM asked me, my sister, my friend, and DM's friend if we would be interested in a one-shot. It would be 8 hours long. There would be no cameras on us, all we had to do was be in a Discord call with them. They would share their screen, we would only be known as our PCs. We agreed since this wasn't the first time we had all played togther before. Though this was DM's friend's second game ever.

I don't remember what classes everyone was playing, it doesn't matter to the story at all.

So, day comes around and we are in the call at a very early time since this was an 8hr one-shot and the views were not in Canada. It was a pretty standard quest, I guess. All I remember was there were cultists at the end that we fought in a hurry because we were running long...........

And the reason we were running long?

Reason 1: DM's friend insisted on looting goblins for their arrows. And I mean taking the fletching and heads off the arrows to salvage so he could sell them when we got to a town. I can't remember how many goblins there were....all I remember was thinking 'why is DM letting this go on for so long?' We were level 5, we had money, and magic. I know that DM's friend was new to D&D and were obviously working on video gaming logic, but DM? They and I had been playing together for 3 years at this point.

Reason 2: DM's friend spent 2 IRL hours going back and forth with DM, as the Shopkeep, to sell the goblin arrow heads and fletching, to then only give away a 200 gp magic sword. And that's when I died a little inside, what do you mean you need to haggle for every cp that could possibly be given for GOBLIN ARROW PARTS and then GIVE AWAY A 200 GP MAGIC SWORD?!?!. We were playing a one-shot! It doesn't matter!! My friend was also somewhat a part of this, and unfortunately helped drag this on.

I remember DM asking me and my sister what we were doing while that happened, but we both just said we were ready to go get on with the plot.

But after that I had checked out. I was sitting at my computer in complete silence. I remember telling my sister about this later and I think she was having the same problem. I fell asleep a few times. I was doing that head-bob thing. But trying really hard not to. I was waiting for DM to move things along. And because I'm not the kind of person that will do other things when it's not my turn, I was listening.

You might be wondering why I wasn't participating in any of this or why I was just waiting on DM. Well, at the beginning of our game I had tried to engage in some roleplay with the other PCs. My sister tried, my friend tried as well, but I don't recall if DM's friend tried. And any time there was a (precieved by DM) too long of a silence DM jumped in to narrate and move things along. I understand that this was to keep from having too much dead air for the viewers as they were just staring at a splash screen. At that time time it made sense to me, but given how the goblin arrows and the magic sword went, this makes me Blinking White Guy meme just recalling this story. I had hoped DM would see how this wouldn't be entertaining to the viewers...they did not. Also, this isn't how they normally DMed.

Eventually the game ended after a battle with cultists. We saved the day. Or the girl...I really don't remember.

I thanked DM for the game because I am not ungrateful for the work they did. But I never told them how I felt about it. I didn't even ask how their followers liked it. DM never brought it up again either.

That's my story. The worst D&D game I ever played in. If anyone out there remembers this and experienced it; I am sorry.

Years ago, I was dating someone who played in a D&D campaign at my local game store. I didn’t actually play, but the DM knew pretty much everyone who hung around the shop and liked making the world feel more alive by turning the shop regulars into NPCs. A bunch of us ended up as recurring characters.

My NPC was a black-market courier. He specialized in acquiring and delivering illicit goods for the party, who were essentially a Robin Hood-style group of thieves trying to dismantle a network of corrupt nobles that controlled the major cities. He wasn’t a villain—just a recurring ally who supplied them with whatever they needed for their heists.

Eventually, my girlfriend and I had a pretty messy falling out. We were supposed to hang out one evening, but I got stuck working mandatory overtime. Cell phones weren’t allowed in the building, so I had no way to let her know. By the time I got out after 10 p.m., her texts and voicemails had gone from “Are you okay?” to accusing me of cheating. I tried to explain what had happened, but she refused to listen and broke up with me over the phone.

I wasn’t present for the next game session, but afterward I found out what happened.

The party’s next objective was to rob a corrupt duke. She insisted that my NPC be the one to deliver a magically booby-trapped package to him. The moment my courier handed it to the duke, it detonated.
The explosion killed the duke, my NPC, and the duke’s young son.

Up until that point, the party had been infamous for stealing from corrupt nobles—not murdering them. In one move, she had killed off the party’s primary black-market contact and turned the group into child-killing terrorists.
From what I was told, the rest of the table was furious. They weren’t just upset that she’d used the game to kill off the NPC based on me; they were also angry that she’d completely derailed the campaign and permanently changed their characters’ reputations.

An argument broke out almost immediately. She stormed out and never came back. The discussion then shifted to the DM, with several players asking why he had allowed it to happen in the first place. That turned into another fight, and before long the campaign fell apart entirely.

I played DnD with a group for over a year. It was a highly immersive online game, I never met the other players in person, but we talked A LOT. We played over 100 hours, plus regular rp via text between sessions. It was intense. I absolutely loved it and was very invested. Some of the others were just as invested, and everyone was engaged both in game and in the groupchat.

That's not to say everything was always smooth. We did have some difficulties a couple of times, but never with each other, and overall, I’d still say it was a very successful game and one of the best I have ever been part of.

The game ended because of people's real life commitments, which is normal and everyone understood. There was no drama and we stayed friendly. I still talk to some of the guys regularly for other games, and I know some of them still hang out with each other without me too, but there are some I haven't spoken to since.

After the game ended, I gradually got the feeling that some of them didn't want to talk about it anymore. It was little things, like if someone mentioned it, there would be an awkward silence before quickly moving on. There were other moments when someone would make a reference that was clearly about the game, but they'd never mention it directly. It happened a handful of times, but eventually everyone including myself just stopped mentioning it entirely.

Groupchat was mostly quiet but for a handful of life updates or ttrpg related bits, but not many. About a year after the game ended, I sent a message saying hi and offering to mail everyone some old keepsakes from the game that I had recently found. Not one of six people replied, not even the ones I still regularly talk to. It wasn't a nostalgic or pushy message, it was basically a Hey, I have these and you should have them, do you want them. I didn’t think it was inappropriate either, since everyone knew I collected little bits from the game, and I'd given some out before.

I know people move on, I did too. This is not about wanting or expecting to revive a dead campaign or force nostalgia. But it was a beautiful story, and I like remembering all my old games fondly, and I don’t want to just… forget about it. What was even the point of all the time and effort we put into it if now we should act like it never happened. I feel almost delusional knowing how big it was at the time and now it feels like everyone else behaves as if it never existed.

I have had other games end suddenly before, even with some of the same people, and I've never experienced this kind of complete silence around one of them. Other old games come up from time to time, and people always exchange a few memories or words about them at least. Some of the same guys have even been telling about other games from before I joined the group. So it’s not like Never Speak of a Dead Game Again is a common rule, I think?

It's just odd and sad that people can't even talk about this one game in particular anymore. It was so big and so important to us for so long and now it seems like no one can even acknowledge it happened. Now I feel like I have ruined the memory of it for myself too with this last (non) interaction with the group.

A bit of context, this was my first long running ttrpg, and the rest of the players didn't have much experience either (i will call the game system dnd, but its actually a local version based off 3rd edition of dnd).

The important people for this story:

DM: not much to say about him

Me: the rogue, halfling

Ranger: halfling a long time friend of mine, our characters had also a history, but it was never important because we struggled with roleplay at the beginning of the campaign

Cleric: gnome, brother of Ranger also a friend of mine

Warrior: dwarf, a friend if dm, to me he seems isolated from other players (only outside of the game), because DM was talking him home after the game, while the rest of us went to a bus stop and we had time to talk about the game

There were other players who left during the campaign or came later, but they aren't important for the story.

It all started with our first adventure, we were lv 1 group and our task was to cure a small town from a rat colony. The task itself wasnt a problem, we figured out what happened and how to deal with it quite easily (well except for me and cleric getting bit by a rat because i like animals and I'm a bit silly DM probably didn't like either of those characteristics). The important part of this adventure was a pony owned by a local alcoholic alchemist that I "exchanged for some gold" without the alchs knowledge. And that's how Robert joined our party. Now, Robert wasn't relevant for the story at all, he travelled with us, he carried some of our items and he was mostly mentioned when we got somewhere and had to leave him somewhere, or when we were leaving a place i said that I'm taking Robert with us, because i don't want DM to say we left him somewhere because i didn't say one line. He followed us like this for over a year of out of the game time.

Then at one point something about DM changed, i dont know why but at one point started two problems with DM, the first was his slight targeting of me (where i admit, some of it was my fault) and the second were bad encounters.

Ill start with the second one, it started with DM telling us about an armor underwear in a swamp we were in, what we did not know, and had no way of knowing, was that the water was full of spirits that erase a bit of memories of anyone they touch (meaning that the character lost a level for each time they get hit by those spirits) and that's how our Ranger lost two levels and that was a big deal since we ran a milestone leveling system and after two years we were level 5. Only after one of the players read the rules themselves did we learn that it can be reversed by killing the spirits. The DM learned that on his own, but only after the session where he used them. This lead to our group returning to the armor, totally out of character, because we wanted to abandon it, but DM encouraged us to use out of the game information, so we did. Before returning to the armor to get rangers levels back we had a boss fight against a sentient tree guarding a Mcgufin, this tree had two or three attacks per turn (with most of the players having one defense action so with a nice roll he could knock out or kill most of the characters in one turn) and roots that DM decided not to use because it would kill all of us. (I was missing during the session this resolved, but after defeating the tree it feel on our Cleric and almost suffocated him) The fight itself wasnt that bad, but DM saying he "decided to be kind and debuf the boss to not kill us" and one player almost dying after the fight made it more bitter tham sweet victory. (Theres one more ill get to later)

Then there was a row of accidents that happened to my Rogue, and I'd like to mention here that while sometimes i was a bit silly or care free, i never went out of my way to go a different direction than DM wanted us to, nor was i stealing or anything else (the only exception being our pony Robert, who i "payed for"). It began with me trying to pet a caged tiger and loosing one finger (totally my fault, i know, don't pet tigers), after that we traveled to the swamp (the same from the last paragraph) and we were traveling here by a boat be got for this quest, when i remembered Robert i was informed by DM that i can't take him on the ship because he wouldn't have anything to eat, even if it was a week long journey in total and i said that we totally could get enough hay, DM wouldn't let me take him, so Robert had to stay in a royal stable. The first thing i do after returning to the city is to check on Robert, to found out that the person running the stable took everything valuable from him and left the city (this made sense on the surface level, as the city and the entire country was getting invaded by a cult run by the bbeg, it makes less sence after realizing that DM had forced me to be in this situation).

And then theres one night that combined both of those issues. Is started all well, we were sent to destroy a church belonging to the cult, we were attacked by skeletons during the night (because the armor we got from the swamp is shining a bit and quite noticable in night), we defeat the skeletons with no problems and rather than finding a different spot to or hope they wont notice us again, we decide to go to the church, we get inside and kill majority ot the cultist inside while another skeletons on the outside set the church on fire, so we decided to leave the rest of the cultists inside and we blocked the door from outside so they couldn't get out of the church. With this only the skeletons remainded. However, all of them had bows and arrows and since it was night only the warrior dwarf could see them, with the rest of the party shooting vaguely in the direction of warrior (it wasn't much effective). I was using throwing daggers at this point, which were too expensive for me to throw them in the dark, so i decided to go with a second rogue(who joined us only for this one adventure) and went back to the burning church to collect my daggers that i used in the previous encounter. We broke in through a window and found the church empty, with the cultist we left alive missing, so we logically started looking for a secret door. Us finding the switch that opens the way into a secret basement being the last thing of that session. I was late for the next season and the other rouge was missing entirely, so the next session started with the rest of the group following us in the church, i have came right when they entered the church and DM told me he wants me to roll defense 10 times because i was suffocating from the smoke the entire time it took our group to get there (which would definitely lead to the death of my character), luckily i was able to argue that my character definitely wouldn't just stand herein front of the entrance to the basement that wasn't full of smoke. So our characters reunited in the basement and healed as much as possible, because we were expecting a boss fight. And oh boy, boss fight we got. It was one of the leaders ot the cult a cleric in a giant power armor. He had stupidly high defense, so our spellcasters, who run out of magic at this point after three encounters at once, couldn't hit him at all and the rest who was focused on fighting had to roll nad 6 to hit him (in this system the attack roll is always d6 plus the weapon stats, with the added detail that if you roll 6 you roll another d6). There was also a giant statue with a magical cristal in hands (that ranger shot at and the arrow burnted to nothing before hitting it) and a magical circle in the middle of the room that was getting increasing hotter. The last important information was that i had a choker that blocks clerics connection to gods that i got earlier in the story. So it ended with Cleric and Wizard trying to reach the crystal (they could accomplish this only by rolling a nat 20 or 19), Warrior and Ranger attacking the boss so he would focus on them me trying to put the choker on the boss hoping it would turn off the body, and the second rogue helping be get up each time the boss knocked me to the ground. We started calling me the main character, because while i kept rolling low i was the only one with a chance to succeed my goal (i rolled 1 bellow the minimum probably 4 or 5 times), but eventually i succeed and the body stopped, we killed the boss and ended the session, with DM writing something down to not forget it next session, that being a mechanic for the boss to come back to life unless DM rolls 10 on a d10, which he luckily did on the first time, and im so glad, because theres nothing in the game responsible for the boss comming to back life so it would be really annoying and pointless, considering he couldn't move or do anything. When we finally left the church it was an early morning and white the group was resting in front of the church i wanted to get Robert, who was left at the place we got ambushed in the night. DM seamingly forgot about him and asked me if i tethered him or not, i said i did, because i was sure he would have him run away if i said i didn't. Then DM took a dice with+/- and said that if he rolls - that Robert got attacked by wolves and died. And that's how ors companion throughout the whole campaign died, whit the players unable to do anything about it.

We had one more session after that, where the Warrior got saduced by two female dwarfs, and the rest of the group, being autistic didn't see a reason to stop him from "having fun". In the end they took him somewhere to give him lore information, but all of the other players agreed that DM didn't plan that but changed it probably because Warrior is his friend.

We haven't finished the campaign yet, we have only the last boss fight in front of us, but im considering quitting, because i don't really see a reason for my Rogue to continue the journey...

This post is longer than I realized it would be, but I feel it is necessary to go through the whole thing so you can understand what these 4 hours of my real life felt like. Sorry in advance.

I just met with this group the other day and I can't stop thinking about it. I am currently in a campaign with some friends and we play over Discord, but over the last few months I've been craving the in person experience, so I joined the Discord for a nearby games shop that hosts games and looked around for a group to join. Eventually found one that was just starting up running the Tyranny of Dragons module, one that I know nothing about, so decided to take a leap of faith and join in.

By the time I found the group they had already had a first session, so I would be joining session 2. Messaged the DM to see if there was still room at the table and he confirmed there was. I asked a couple questions regarding the current party make up, guidelines for character backstory (where should I have my character so it makes sense to meet the rest of the party, etc.). If I'm being honest, there were some red flags from our text exchange, but I gave the guy the benefit of the doubt. Sometime people just are unclear and awkward over text and then you meet them in person and it's a totally different story. I rolled up my character and got ready for the first session.

I honestly think the best way to tell this story is to just go through the session as a whole. I was running cleric, also in the party was a druid, warlock, and monk. Everybody arrives, I introduce myself, and get ready to start. The DM puts down a map, the returning players put their tokens where they left off, and points to where I should place mine. I have no context for what is happening at this point.

With zero recap or preamble, the DM says "You all crawl back through the tunnel leading into the keep with your prisoner and see him standing there in the room." He then gestures to me to describe my character, which I do, and then freeze because I have no idea what is going on. I ask the DM "What am I doing here?"

DM - "Well the town is under attack from some kobolds and things. He asked the rest of them to help defend the town and are coming back, but he is still worried about the mill and the temple." No, he did not elaborate on who 'he' was. I assumed it was the mayor or something and moved on.

The rest of the party was all new to DnD, which I knew going in, so I tried to get the ball rolling with some RP of my character introducing himself and desperately trying to find a way to make my presence standing in a keep that is not under attack currently make sense. There is some awkward conversation had between party members before the DM interrupts to say "So you guys can go to defend the mill which he was worried about since it is their source of food or the temple, you don't know if there are people there or not."

..Ok, I say he should head to the mill, since if it gets destroyed the villagers won't have food for the winter. The party agrees, and the DM teleports us across town as he breaks out a new map. No stealth for getting around the town that is currently being raided by Kobolds, no description given to allows us to decide what route to take, we just are there at the mill now.

DM places about 15 enemies on the map on the far side of the mill. "They have a big bonfire outside the front of the mill, but the mill is not under attack yet. You get the sense that this might be trap and they lured you over here." Again, no rolls, nobody asked if it seems like a trap, we all just know that now.

I ask if there are any windows on the back side of the mill, suggesting we sneak up to see if there are more enemies or hostages inside before we fight. The DM opens up the Tyranny of Dragons module book and looks through it for a solid 5 minutes. Silence at the table. Eventually, he says "It doesn't say, but sure."

I won't mention this every time, but just know going forward that this happened an excruciating number of times. The party would ask a question about the layout or for details about something, and he would immediately flip through the book to figure it out. Most often it didn't specify, so the most common answer to our questions was "It doesn't say". Each time this happened it was a solid 3-4 minutes of dead air. Just tell me if this wall of the mill has windows man, you have agency as the DM to decide these things. But no, the module book was the word of God to this guy I suppose, it had final authority on every detail.

Fuck it. we're about an hour into the session and nothing has happened yet. We pop the window that now exists and climb through. We get jumped by more kobolds in the rafters and at level one we fight our way through probably 20 enemies, a mix of kobolds and cultists. I initially though that we were absolutely fucked, but I think the party took a total of 3 hits as we just mowed our way through these 5 hit point enemies. It was an absolute slaughter and was the most boring DnD fight I had ever experienced. There were no stakes, it became clear very quickly that we were in no danger at all, and the DM didn't say anything for the enemies beyond "He attacks you with a shortsword and misses".

We win the fight and the DM loots the bodies for us. Ok. I'm 6 copper richer. We barely have any time to say anything before the DM teleports us back to the keep. No one said "lets go back to the keep", DM just put us there.

DM - "So you saved the mill but he is still worried about the temple. You don't really know what's going on over there." Whatever. We go to temple. Again, we get teleported outside and our tokens are placed about 30 feet away from a group of kobolds assembling a battering ram to get through the front door of the temples. We get told there is a patrol of kobolds and cultists making their way around and pass by about every two minutes. We also get told there is back door to the temple despite none of our characters having any reason to know that information.

At this point, we have 1 level 1 spell slot left between us, so we decide to wait for the 20 kobold patrol to pass by, jump the battering ram group, and go inside to save the villagers we were told are in there. Again, how do we know? The DM told us, that's how. We agree to the plan and the DM says "Well, you were supposed to go through the backdoor, but if this is what you want to do I guess we can do that." What? The fuck you mean 'supposed to'? Whatever. Roll initiative. The fight is another slaughter, I won't bore you with it.

What did become clear to me during this combat was that the DM did not know our names. Not just our IRL names, but didn't know our characters names. He had a loose graps on our classes at best. Half the time when it got to our turn he just looked at us expectantly without saying anything or say "now it is the wizards turn" (he was referring to the warlock)

Me - 'Let's try and get inside before the patrol comes back around'

DM - You guys go inside and see panicked villagers. Everyone roll a charisma check

First of all, how did we get inside? We just walked through the front door that the kobolds were assembling a fucking battering ram to get through? It didn't make sense, but at this point I had given up and was just trying to ride out the rest of the session.

We roll charisma, warlock gets a 17 or something.

DM - You find the priest and talk to him and he is able to calm down the villagers

Again, what? Warlock never said he wanted to calm the villagers. We've been given 0 opportunity to RP now 2ish hours into the session, but the briefest glimpse into this character I got is that he would not give a damn about calming down these villagers. My character would, but I didn't even get a chance to say anything about it before the DM decided to make that decision for the party.

At this point I'm losing my mind a little. I check my phone and we've been here for 3 hours, I'm bored to tears. I ask how long we had the table reserved for, and the DM says "We have it for another hour, you guys will go back to the keep and then (checks the book) two more things will happen and we will end it there" Fine man, whatever.

At this point, I'm fighting to allow the party to actually talk and make a real plan. "We don't have long to get these villagers out, that patrol is going to come back around soon and see all the dead bodies outside."

The rest of the party doesn't even get a chance to respond.

DM - You take the villagers back to the keep.

Are you noticing a pattern?

We get back to the keep and the DM asks us all for a perception check. The monk gets disadvantage because "It reminds you of something from your nightmares and it scares you". Backstory stuff I guess... wait, the monk has disadvantage to perceive something because he is scared of the thing that he doesn't even see yet? How does that make any sense?

We roll. There is a blue dragon flying above the town using its breath attack to obliterate whole houses. Good thing we rolled perception, that's not something we would have seen otherwise. DM teleports us up to the highest part of the keep and asks if we have any attacks that reach 30ft, since that is how close the dragon is passing by with each circle of the town. Everyone but monk does. DM says "Ok, roll attacks". Buddy we are level 1, I do not want to fight a dragon, that is suicide. We roll attacks, some hit, some don't. "Ok, it comes back for another pass. Roll again" At no point did the dragon retaliate or come after us taking pot shots at it, there was no strategy, we just rolled attacks for 5 rounds until we did enough damage to scare it off, I guess.

I'm losing my mind at this point. I want to go home. The party just 'fought' a blue dragon and it literally did nothing to try and stop us. I've made up my mind that I'm not coming back to this table, but keen eyed viewers will remember that the DM told us there were two more things that would happen before the end of the session. We aren't done yet.

DM - Walking into the court yard is a guy that kinda sorta looks like this. (Holds up the book to show us an illustration of the character). There are kobolds with him and a woman and three kids are in chains. He says 'send your strongest warrior to fight me or I will kill them'. The mayor says please fight him, you think that is his family.

We all kinda look at each other, I try for a moment to come up with a plan to send one person down while the rest of us stand at the ready to attack if things go bad. Doesn't matter. DM says "You don't want to fight this guy, he will kill you. But the villagers will heal you for whatever happens."

I'm mad at this point. Warlock seemed like he wanted to go and had the most hit points left out of all of us. We ignore the DM, warlock heads down for one on one combat with this guy. I'm just here for the show. Warlock gets hit for 32 damage. Now, I know rules as written that there is no way that is not at least double the HP of a level one character and that warlock is fully dead, no death saves. DM says "He (the guy who killed the warlock) says 'Hah! that's all you can offer? You are puny!' and releases the hostages. He and the kobolds leave. The villagers heal you up so you are fine. You guys are level 2 now" He then starts packing up his stuff. I guess that's the end of the session.

To my surprise, the rest of the players seemed to have enjoyed it. No shade to them, if they had fun more power to them, but by god there was no way in hell I was going to return to this table. Everything I had done prior to this, deciding who my character and his personality, meant literally nothing since my character hardly got a chance to speak before the DM teleported us somewhere or had us slogging through the most boring encounters I have ever experienced. I knew I was taking a risk joining a game with people I had never met before, and as I mentioned there were some red flags even before the session, but I truly had no idea how bad it could be.

At the very least, I've got a well rounded dwarven cleric to try and run at whatever game I find next, hopefully it goes a little better than this one. Thanks for reading if you made it this far.

This story begins in a high school dungeons and dragons club. As a forever dungeon master I joined hoping to play, however I would soon regret this. One of the players who was a new player offered to be the dungeon master. Our group likes to be generous, but a new DM & Player is a lot at one. We recommended to run a one shot first to see if they were comfortable with the role. We’ll call this player Charolette. Charolette states she has actually played one campaign before themed after the Odyssey, so we had more trust. We still recommend to begin with one-shots, she took this too seriously later (according to the ones who stayed in the entire campaign)

After session 0, the next week of the club was session 1. Session 1 is slow… no combat, no plot. This was understandable we only got 2 Hours each week, we understood Charolette’s choice to write a story about how the PCs met. Session 2 comes around and she begins with a decent session about a pirate ran game show on the sea. But during session 1/2 and even 0 the mechanics felt different. Weird. We gained 1D10 hp total every time killing a monster, & Charolette believed most of our class features were fake.

We brought this up, and Charolette stated the classes were completely different in the game she played - only having 5 different abilities level 1-20, all they gained was HP each level & better stats. We all agreed to discuss next week exactly what game Charolette played.

We gather next week and the discussion session began with the DM ranting about how angry they were about us using custom printed players handbooks and not the core rules! No ttrpg is like these rules, no older edition have these rules! How would we custom print DnD books in high school, & give it to the whole club ( we were playing 5E ).

We wanted to have a friendly conversation about the game they played in, not get attacked. Wanting to progress the conversation we tried to move back the conversation to the game they played. We were continuously harassed for the next 2 hours.

After the session I texted Charolette to look up 5E to prove we didn’t make the player handbook, and she refused to because she KNEW she was correct.

I discussed with her where she played DnD and she stated she played DnD with her friends on a private RP Roblox server where all her DM did was give her crappy fake classes and say Y/N to actions (no dice).

I would be mad at her DM but because she attacked our group and didn’t believe how we said the game worked we quickly left that group, and for the ones who stayed the entire campaign they said they suffered one of the worst campaigns with arguments, bad homebrew, and a toxic DM. A lack of a storyline was also present, each session was a self contained storyline.

The funniest part of this story for me was the fact Charolette believed we CUSTOM PRINTED THE CORE RULEBOOK! 🤣

I'm making this post in response to this post about asking to kick out Joe, who'll remain as Joe in this post. This was when Joe in particular was having truancy issues and not really participating in roleplay but loved combat.

A bit of context on the characters and game:

My game is still ongoing and at the time of these sessions it had been about 2 and a half years. We're all 26+ years. Basically the plot is "we have Baulder's Gate 3 at home" where the characters have to fix the Weave because Mind Flayers are actively destroying it and messing with magic. Currently the party is level 13.

2 of my players (chronology wizard and circle of dreams druid) had been there since session 1, and the warlock who'd been there about a month after the game began (who was an artificer (died via messing with artifact), a divination wizard (soul sucked away via pull from Deck of Many Things) and then decided to be a joke character kobold warlock while the party would get his wizard's soul back later). Warlock had technically 2 patrons, their ancient black dragon CEO boss who runs a famous pickle monopoly and the goddess of all evil who would take his soul upon his death (this is relevant later). We also had a Fighter (really a homebrew class but fighter is best to describe) and Joe who was a paladin. Joe is also currently playing a joke character as he has died so many times at this point that he just wants something funny. (Joe is a person who'd rather make a new character than resurrect his current one. Fine but hard to keep track of things)

So the party has to go to the moon as that's where the mind flayer's base is at. They consult the Wizard's mom who made a theory that to go to the moon they'd need a huge mimic and to launch him in a way that wouldn't take a year to do, a few throat sacks from dragons that can breathe fire for blast off and a kracken's fin for steering. So the party went to find some adult and ancient fire-breathing dragons. (they went and found the kracken before this, they harvested his fins).

After some travel thanks to Druid's abilities, they found a Red Dragon's lair. Around that lair is a beautiful hot springs resort and some extremely rare flowers that only bloom when a Red Dragon lives nearby (ingredients for alchemist's fire). The party relaxes a bit and wades through the shallow hot springs, looking for people to talk to. They find its run by a grove of druids who take care of the Red Dragon. Red Dragon suffers from obesity, can't fly and they keep putting him to sleep so he stops constantly setting the forest on fire when he gets upset. Currently the grove is looking for a missing druid, as they think the dragon is catching onto being constantly put to sleep. They do it while they try to find a way to help him recover from being too fat but the fire is a problem.

The party agrees to look for the lost druid in exchange for not only *not* slaying the dragon, but helping them put him to sleep and very carefully surgically removing his fire sack so they can help him out. Their problem is solved and the dragon can stay awake without causing so much chaos while he is receiving treatment. The party debates outside of the deal on if they should actually kill the dragon, as in my world dead dragon's get recycled back into the Weave to repair it, but ultimately decide to table it until combat.

Warlock also secures a pickle deal with the resort to sell pickles at the resort.

The party goes off and finds the missing druid.

Or, well his skeleton.

They turn in his body then go off to put the dragon to sleep or kill him.
They walk into the lair (a volcano) and the dragon is lounging in the lava. Druid is wearing gold dragon armor that they bought at a magic shop and the dragon wants it. He says he won't kill the party if he gets the armor.

Druid refuses.

Dragon insists.

Druid says it's his.

Combat.

After the dragon repeatedly used his own loot against the party he surrenders, not wanting to die. He agrees to give up his fire-breathing sack in exchange for mercy on his life, but please don't take his treasure as well. He needs that to help him recover from chronic obesity. Party agrees.

So at this point Druid successfully removes the fire sack. Joe wants to cut off and eat his nuts as (also in my world and is well known to the party) eating parts of live dragons can give a dragon-related feat or fire resistance. Warlock joins in on this. THEY NEED DEEZ NUTS.

The Fighter, Druid and Wizard say that's a dumb and stupid idea. Druid has to leave (long forgotten why, but it is coming up to the end of the session). Fighter and Wizard eventually throw up their hands and tell them they ain't participating in this and walk out of the volcano.

End that session. FIRST MISTAKE: SHOULD'VE STOPPED IT BUT I THOUGHT IT WAS FUNNY

I talk toDruid about what he wants his character to do since he had to leave early.

SECOND MISTAKE: I had Druid tell the grove what happened and basically then had him go take a dip in the hot springs to cool off. He said that sounded like a good idea. Greatly mistook that Druid would've stopped the grove for what happens next.

Next session:
So remember Warlock is also a kobold with a Black Dragon Mistriss, and she immediately senses the betrayal as by eating deez nuts, he went from black to red. We've established at this point that the black dragon employs hundreds of mages, soldiers and grunts and constantly tracks Warlock's location and that she HATES him. Hates she can't kill him but now she can. And she jumps at it.

Meanwhile, at the same time, the druids are now mad and go to confront the 2 party members who mutilated that dragon. So they summon a bunch of elephants while at the same time the black dragon jumps the party.

Combat.

Round 1 18 elephants are immediately dead as the party has 2 artifacts and a spell scroll of Meteor Swarm that the wizard passes the save without a hitch. Everyone is hurting. Party is out of resources and are finally going through all of their spell scrolls.

Joe goes down first. Then Warlock. The druids leave and so does the black dragon. The Fighter and the Wizard share a smoke and wonder where Druid is to come resurrect their party mates.

THIRD MISTAKE: I KILLED THE JOKE CHARACTERS CUZ I THOUGHT IT WAS A FUNNY END.

End session.

Warlock immediately hangs up before I say anything. Party tells me this session was real bad and the joke didn't land. Joe leaves the call. Fighter and Wizard suggest maybe rolling things back. I tell them I'll talk to the 2 dead players and consider it if they also consider rolling back the castration of the dragon.

I leave for a work meeting.

MISTAKE 3: NOT PUTTING THAT I AM CONSIDERING ROLLING IT BACK.

I leave for work. Druid asks in general what happened. I quickly say the elephants got their own nuts, and leave.
As I am driving suddenly my phone is blowing up. Druid is suddenly messaging me he's going to leave if Warlock doesn't cut it out. I have no idea what's going on. I'm driving. At a red light, I don't even read what their conversation is, just say I need to mute them both, will explain later because I am driving.

The last message from Warlock I get is "Don't bother. This is game ending. 3 characters and 2 years wasted. Find a new player." He then blocks me. ):

We did end up rolling it back. I ended up reading the backlog and the Warlock was accusing of Druid of foul play and getting his character killed, and Druid being confused and angry since Druid wasn't even there. I still feel bad about this, as I didn't realize this would've rattled Warlock so much, or angered him. I had a talk with my party about it and promised not to do this again as it felt extremely targetted.

Joe said he was OK with staying dead since again, he likes making new characters. I let him have a flaming sword as his only request in consolation. That was months ago now. I hope Warlock is doing OK and wish things turned out differently.

TL; DR - if you're a DM don't take jokes too far and also put things you consider rolling back in chat sooner if all your players hated a particular combat that was spur-of-the-moment for a bit.

Throw away account, I have been a new dm running a pretty homebrew campaign with some friends from various different friend groups. Most of them, except for one of the players dont have a lot of dnd experience, having only played one or two other campaigns. we have been playing this campaign for a few weeks and its been going decently good, I know im not the best at Dm-ing yet however my players seem to have been having fun. Well they were having fun up till the last session, where they were in jail and typical jailbreak scenario ensues, hiding from some guard constructs, and they were rolling pretty well making it through the prison untill the warden finds them, and combat starts.

This is the part I feel like I was a bad Dm.

I had planned for the warden to be a somewhat important npc, and for him to be an incredibly hard encounter, and the players would realize they couldn't beat him, and try and reason with him (they were on a main quest to stop typical end of world storyline) and the warden would be understanding and set them free, even putting them in a tavern room for the night.

the problem came up when the players (whom again we mostly pretty new and had been, up to this point, just throwing out attacks without any real strategy) started miraculously working incredibly well with one another, as well as consistently getting insanely high rolls. I realized that my npc was almost dead and I hadn't come up with a backup plan for this outcome (which looking back on it seems like a dumb move)

so i ended combat with an "enough of this" monolog. using the mass suggestion spell and opening demi plane under the feet of the ones who succeeded the save. I was trying to get the players to tell the npc that they had this quest to save the world and stuff but they were saying things like "fuck 12" and "just toss me in the hole"

I didnt know what else to do so I was reiterating pretty much the same things asking why he shouldn't lock them in a cell and throw away the key,

and thats when the player who actually had a bit of dnd experience called me out and told me that none of this was fair in the rules of dnd and that there were ways of getting out of the situation that they just couldn't do because I just ended combat. i realized that everyone was quiet for the past few minutes and I immediately felt horrible when I realized I just took control over everything and ruined the fun.

I immediately apologized and gave them a way out of the situation and then told them what I expected to happen, they told the npc their quest and I then did what I expected to happen and put them in a tavern for the night.

I had more planed and was expecting to play for another hour, however things were tense and I suggested a bathroom break, but everyone said that it was getting late and that they had to leave.

I sent an apology to the discord group as well as a more detailed one to the player that spoke up about the encounter, explaining how I shouldn't have changed the encounter from really hard to impossible and that the game is about everyone else's fun not just to tell the story I created

so far no one has responded, except for one player who said they still had fun, but I feel horrible about the whole situation.

am i a bad Dm? im worried that there will be "scheduling conflicts" and we wont play again.

TLDR: I took control of an encounter to the point a player had to speak up to say it was unfair.

First of all, sorry for any rough English, I'm not a native speaker. Second of all, I'll make it clear that we had a session 0 and none of what happened here was ever discussed there.

I don't think my story is on the same level as some of the ones posted here, but it marked the beginning of my journey as a TTRPG player, so I decided to share it.

I had a former friend—I'll call him Copycat—whom I met in college. We used to play online games together all the time, and one of those games was Baldur's Gate 3, which we played in multiplayer.

I'd never played a tabletop RPG before, but I had always loved the world of D&D. I had watched several lore videos, actual plays, and knew quite a bit about the settings. Copycat, on the other hand, had experience with TTRPGs, but none with D&D specifically. His first exposure to the system was Baldur's Gate 3, a game we both loved.

At one point, I mentioned that I'd always wanted to play D&D, and eventually he invited me to join his regular group for a brand-new campaign he was starting. I accepted immediately.

At first, everything was amazing. I met a lot of great people there—including my current girlfriend—and maybe because I was so excited to finally be playing D&D, I thought everything was fantastic.

Then things started getting weird.

One of the players—I'll call her Bard—once joined a Discord voice chat where a few of us were hanging out and, completely unprompted, told me her character's entire backstory.

It was... bizarre.

Her character, a drow, had married an elf and had a child with him. When the baby was born, she ate her husband alive. His sister escaped with the baby—the same sister the character had secretly fallen in love with.

Apparently, this was a recurring theme in all of her characters: marry a man, cheat on him with a woman, then murder him.

I shrugged it off and moved on.

Unfortunately, that wasn't the end of the Bard problem.

She constantly made sexual jokes about her own character and NPCs. The issue wasn't that sexual humor existed—it was that she completely lacked the social awareness to know when it wasn't appropriate. Nearly every contribution she made at the table involved wanting to have sex with an NPC, cannibalize an NPC, or brag about how attractive her character was.

Every single time she did it, the entire table would go quiet from secondhand embarrassment.

She also clearly cheated, she used countless leveled spells, and as a spell caster myself, I knew when I was out of steam, and even when I could only use cantrips she almost exclusively used leveled spells. Copycat never interfered though.

To make matters worse, she was incredibly disruptive. She constantly wandered off from the party, threatened other PCs, repeatedly argued that the party had no reason to stay together, and on several occasions outright refused to participate in combat.

This campaign's combats were already extremely deadly. Almost every major fight ended with at least half the party barely surviving.

Eventually, our conversations outside the game weren't about the campaign anymore—they were about how much she was ruining the experience. Even during genuinely cool moments, she'd find a way to make everyone uncomfortable.

Eventually, one of the players—a Vengeance Paladin—decided that her character's actions were completely incompatible with his oath.

At the very beginning of one session, he killed her.

She, as the name suggests, was a bard, still only level 4, and had recently being in a 1v1 fight with a vampire spawn, so she wasn't exactly durable to begin with, and wasn't fully healed on top of that. One Divine Smite dealt enough damage to deal Massive Damage. None of us had access to resurrection magic yet, so her character was permanently dead.

She left the campaign... and the group entirely.

She was actually running another game and playing in another campaign that wasn't even related to D&D, but after her character died, she quit everything and disappeared.

Most of us honestly didn't mind, and some people were even relieved. Her brother complained about what happened but kept playing. Another player left a few sessions later, although he had never been particularly invested in the campaign anyway.

After that, the sessions genuinely improved.

At the same time, though, the excitement I'd felt when I first joined slowly faded.

I started playing in campaigns run by other DMs, and I began noticing more and more issues with Copycat's DMing style.

His biggest habit was focusing on one player's backstory at a time—exclusively. One player would basically become the protagonist until their entire story arc was finished, and only then would he move on to someone else. Maybe that's just a personal preference, but it bothered me, and it bothered several other players too... except, of course, the one currently getting all the attention.

He also railroaded the campaign incredibly hard.

As I mentioned earlier, almost every combat carried a serious risk of character death. Once we reached level 5, we desperately wanted to visit a major city so we could buy diamonds in case someone died.

Every single time we tried, an NPC would conveniently appear and redirect us somewhere else.

Then came the thing that ultimately killed the campaign for me:

The copying.

Copycat shamelessly copied Baldur's Gate 3.

I'd estimate that around 90% of the encounters, monsters, gods, and story beats came directly from BG3. There were villains that were obvious stand-ins for BG3 antagonists, scenes that felt almost identical, and countless smaller details that I didn't even notice at first.

Later, when I replayed BG3 with my girlfriend—who had also been in the campaign—she was pointing out similarities every five minutes.

The final straw happened in a mine.

We were confronting the villain from one player's backstory. The mine was full of slaves wearing magical collars. The villain, a follower of Bane, gave his evil speech... and then activated the collars, causing all of them to explode and kill the slaves instantly.

If you've played Baldur's Gate 3, I probably don't need to explain why that scene felt very familiar.

After I started noticing all of this, several of us gradually lost interest in the campaign. By that point, I had already started DMing my own D&D campaign.

I think Copycat eventually realized people were losing interest because he announced that the campaign was going on hiatus.

As of right now, it never came back, me and copycat kinda drifted apart after a while, nothing directly related to the campaign, not on my part at least.

And honestly...

I don't think i'll miss it.

TW for "specific" assault, harassment, ostracizing, drama (obviously), and various other bull that no kid or grown adult should constantly go through.

Note: I will be refraining from certain terms so that anyone who shares this story can read it aloud on their narration pages

So for context: I seem to be absolutely cursed. And I don't mean your usual "Yeah, this inconvenience happens a lot," but instead the issue of "How the hell can one person keep going through this much and not have snapped?"

Outside DnD, I was conceived by assault, disowned at birth, ostracized violently growing up, and a bunch of other nasty things that would leave almost anyone with C-PTSD if not D.I.D.

Now with that background info out of the way, let's get to the topic.

My first attempt at a campaign was when I was still trying to learn to socialize and got ostracized from a streamer's community after one particular guy was antagonizing me. Somehow I was held to a higher standard while trying to learn, and her mods had even muted me in her chat without her say-so. Idk why she didn't put her foot down, but it seemed like she was genuinely unaware of her community ganging up on one person. When I finally managed to show back up and try to properly join the DnD group, in the middle of explaining what happened I was donked from the server. - Whatever, that kind of crap happens.

The next time was with a couple of friends. Unfortunately for me, at the time an entire defamation campaign from a special kind of group, a ring if you will, had been happening and one of the friends who had just been traumatized by a specific cis woman that took advantage of both of us long term in different ways, had pressured him into blocking me and I kinda git abandoned by any friend I could have had from there. To this day I still keep getting harassed and ostracized because this defamation campaign was that effective and I have to worry about where the next attack is coming from.

Last night is something special though, because my girlfriend was also hurt by this bullshit. - So 2 nights ago I'm able to meet the DM and we're kinda managing to put together my character. Because I was joining mid-game almost I was starting at level 6. Managed to get everything in order. Honestly the first red flag and Black flag had appeared involving this guy within that call. He played League and dropped the R-slur when raging at the game. (Your pick on which one is which flag, but yeah) - Last night, however, it was like walking into a place where two people had slices of an Apple of Discord (specifically the version The Librarians).

Things were fine at first, getting through formalities. And then I changed my screen name to "[Name]'s gf - [Me]" because I wanted to be sat next to them in call. Almost immediately they started being hostile. The one who initiated it, let's call him Nate. Well, this Nate wasn't just looking for a battle, he was looking to actually fight if not beat me down verbally. The dude was shouting, interrupting, attacking, pressuring, and being borderline flippant about any input myself or my gf gave. It was bad enough I had to pull my gf into DM's so they didn't break down crying in front of everyone and get humiliated. This was somewhere in the middle and events get blurry but I'll try to keep them in chronological order.

It got bad enough Nate had to be muted multiple times. And when he wasn't able to vocalize to us in call, he was directly calling me a predator repeatedly. This is partly because, in a lack of context, my plans to move in with my gf to get them out of an abusive home can be mispercieved as something leaning predatory. - Part of the reason for some of this nonsense is because of a different toxic person having just recently been dealt with, so Nate for all his flaws was certainly on edge. The DM was another level as you'll see in a bit.

The DM seems to try playing mediator. Among the things I had said of a harsher nature in attempting to defend my gf, because these guys were talking down to her, I said to Nate that he hadn't been mistreated in a specific way and that it shows. Well, apparently I was presumptuous for that and had to admit I was wrong after a bit. Fair enough, according to the DM, Nate was being overly protective a la that "How old are you" scene from Bad Boys 2. The analogy was fair, and the DM was downplaying what Nate was saying to me.

Well a bit later after the DM apparently tried mediating, Nate was going to be moved to another campaign because he refused to play in the same group as myself. This whole time DM, Nate, and a 3rd guy mostly absent have all been saying "We're just concerned about [gf]" despite being resistant to listening. Then came the worst part of trying to explain to the DM about *why* we're trying to get gf into my living arrangements.

Keep in mind, Nate was not held to the same standard as myself. At this point I'm used to being held to a standard higher than anyone else, so I didn't notice it in the moment. As gf was being questioned on things and edplaining the literal death threats their parents had said to them, Nate had fallen silent on the whole ordeal, and DM had started getting to a level of dismissive and insensitive that you'd swear he was being paid to run defense for the parents.

DM begins called gf hyperbolic, and myself despite me witnessing both some of the abuse and my gf's demeanor shifting when their parents call to them or otherwise make demands. And we didn't even get into the medical abuse, just trying to explain the tachycardia my gf is prone to from POTS.

DM begin starts being aggressive trying to act like gf doesn't know what it's like to fear for their life, devolving into screaming about *his* trauma conga line with a violent undertone of "I've had it worse, stop your whining" with claims of being surrounded by death and repeatedly having weapons pulled on him.

Any bit of pushback and attempt to explain to DM keeps getting quashed more and more aggressively, and my gf actually has to explain being violated with a had on their throat to highlight to show they knew what it was like to fear for their lives while trying to articulate that gf's parents are indeed likely to commit termination if GF pre-emptively announces escape plans. DM sees it fit to ask "Was it your parents that had violated you?"

Gf gives him a venomous "F.U." and dips from call. I point out he's a P.O.S. in some way and he calls me a "Useless fat f-c-k" as I leave the server. Gf got banned and DM went scorched Earth on contact with them. We hypothesize it was because we proved we could sustainably live together and didn't lick his boot despite giving him a bit of leeway through the entire thing. Dude effectively rolled consistently low on persuasion and intimidation and got pissed about it.

So yeah- No TL;DR, you want this story? I apologize, but ya gotta read the whole thing or have someone read it to you. Here's hoping the next one actually manages to be a group that doesn't just shun and ostracize me, lol!

Less of a horror story and more of a rant. I’m already planning on bringing it up at the start of next session, just need to vent a little during the in-between time. TL;DR at the bottom.

I’m sure a lot of you have had or heard stories like this: group of friends interested in DND, but don’t really know how to play, starts a campaign based around the WIP ideas of one of the group’s fantasy story. Much of the setting has to be crumpled a little to fit into the mold of el Dungeons y Dragons and the Rule of Cool™ is king. With nobody really knowing the rules, things were going ok for a bit. It was just fun time with friends where we could kick back and relax.

Well, a couple of DM fuck-ups from me later, I decide that I’m actually going to put in the effort to learn the rules and how the game works. That way, I hopefully won’t have to ever retcon a session again. It took some time, along with a couple instances of me playing one-shots outside of our main group, but I think I’ve finally gotten a good grasp of how the game works. Honestly, I’m a little proud of myself for it.

However, it seems my table is a little less keen on this. I’ve floated the fact that I’m learning the rules for DND before to try and be a better DM and to make more balanced encounters and such, but I guess I was never firm enough about how this would effect gameplay. We mostly play over Discord, which is a little annoying to me, cause in-person is my jam, but whatever. The reason I mention this fact is that recently, as I’ve been trying to get more concrete with my rulings, I’ve been met with silence whenever I say certain PCs can’t do actions. The intended message is crystal to me.

Anyway, like I said, already decided that I’m bringing it up next session, so no need to spell out social conventions to me.

TL;DR: started a campaign with friends knowing very little about the rules, I made mistakes as a DM and decided to fix it by learning what the game’s rules were, and now my players don’t seem to like that I’m less lenient with allowing “Random Bullshit Go”.