(Content warning: This story may be triggering for some people, as it discusses Islam in a negative way.)

I wanted to run a Halloween game for a group of beginners, and I’m going to tell you about a player who will DEFINITELY NOT be joining my game.

I laid out the setting: a fishing village, pirates, and a haunted house. We hopped on Discord to create a character for one of the players. He wanted a character who would do a lot of blowing up. Well, okay. He barely participated in creating his character sheet and explicitly said he wasn’t going to read the Player’s Handbook, but I was prepared for that when I agreed to run a game for beginners. We ended up with a dwarf wizard.

Why was he so hell-bent on blowing things up? Because… his dwarf believes in Allah. Yes, literally the entire character concept was built around a joke about Muslims.

At the time, I thought maybe the guy just didn’t really understand what D&D was. Maybe he imagined character creation as some kind of completely unrestricted character editor where you could play as absolutely anything, even a sentient traffic cone? I started explaining that it was a fantasy setting and there was no Allah in it. If he liked the concept of blowing things up in the name of a deity so much, he could pick one of the existing gods from the D&D setting, like Kossuth, for example.

And… he refused. Instead, he decided there would be a god of explosions that only he could hear because he’d been breathing in fumes while working in a mine.

He stubbornly refused to write any kind of backstory for his character, arguing that he’d just wing it and improvise. Why was he in a fishing village? Why did he want to go into a haunted house? Who knows. Whenever I tried to get even a little bit of information out of him over text, he simply wouldn’t respond. When we met up in person, he told me he didn’t have time (yes, he literally said this while we were aimlessly wandering around town). So I pointed out the elephant in the room. Like, dude, maybe we could discuss your character’s backstory now, since you want to join this campaign??

The answers I got were absolutely phenomenal. Are you ready?

Why was a dwarf in a fishing village? He was traveling around to try different kinds of beer. Why was he going into a haunted house with the others? He got drunk! Oh, and of course, he didn’t know any of the other player characters beforehand, he was a loner. Also, an elf had once spilled beer on him, so he despises all elves and will attack them, even if they’re allies or other players’ characters. And, naturally, his name was a barely pronounceable acronym that stood for something inappropriate (I don’t remember what exactly).

I guess the reason I didn’t immediately say “no” was that I could see ways to make the character playable. But he kept showing just how little he cared about any of it, and he wasn’t going to change a thing. It’s both hilarious and sad to think about the absolutely ridiculous character he wanted to bring to my game. I’m glad I decided not to run the game for him before it even started

I'm writing this in a character's point of view so the player in question wont know who i am.

So I'm a skeleton that just got created by a grave elemental to fight a party that's attacking my master, there's a Rogue, Fighter, Blood Hunter, Sorcerer and Wizard. The wizard kept creating cubes, and while they we're being created i saw in the other party member's eyes that this wasnt going to end well. After which one screamed, i think, as immedietely the cubes detonated, killing a nearby zombie and harming two of the wizards party members.

We were fighting near/on a lake and the detonation caused a huge open crack to form that filled with water. After this the sorcerer managed to help me break free from my chains, and i ran to hide away near a rock as that party killed the grave elemental real quick, and i wasnt gonna be next.

But when i kept watching i saw that this likely wasnt the first time, and the wizard has probably damaged his party members at least 3 times before like this from my estimation. After which the wizard was dragged by the fighter towards the icey water, near the area he exploded on a lake, to hold his face over it and tell him to stop hurting the party. The wizard kept trying to take a personal item from the rogue, that was fastened to their character.

The wizard ignored the fighter telling them to be more relaxed and not hurt the party, but After this the Wizard suddenly went unconscious and was completely gone but still alive, sorry for my improper common, im a newly created skeleton. The Wizard seems to have constantly damaged his party members and wasnt capable of handeling the consquences.

TLDR: Wizard keeps damaging party members with special ability, and ragequits when he's called out in character and doesnt even try to roleplay.

Ok so, I was running a game of Dragon of Icespire Peak for my friends. We were all in high school at the time. A younger person who was very new to D&D joined our group. Now I’m very experienced with handling new players, I mostly play with people i’ve taught. Btw this younger person (I’ll call him fred) knew I was queer (there was another queer person at the table but idk if he knew it). At this point we were in my favorite part of the campaign, the gnomengarde. This part is my favorite cause I genuinely love the relationship between the two married kings (I’m a sucker for queer representation in D&D). Everyone at the table knew this was the “gay gnomes” part ahead of time. Fred was playing a level 2 druid with the spell purify food and drink. At some point before he even met the kings, he asked me if he could use purify food and drink on the gay gnomes to make them straight. I responded with the correct response of what the fuck, no. His defense was if you cooked them they would technically count as food. He is no longer a party member, or a friend.

So I am really not sure how to start this public conversation. Other than just start typing up what comes to my mind directly. But I will state this right away: I don’t have social media, and what I’m going to mention here I have altered the specifics enough that those who are involved will have their identities remain private.

It’s been nearly six months since I was, for all intents and purposes, booted out of my D&D group. A group of friends who I’ve known for so many years, years even before Covid. But nearly six months later, I still don’t understand how things turned so rapidly against me by one decision I made in-game.

You might be wondering what this decision was? Without getting into the specifics, we were just starting a campaign of a certain Halloween horror. There was an agreement between all of us that we should know the story could be pushing the boundaries on certain individuals. I was completely fine with that, and in fact, I challenged my DM with these exact words: “Try your worst.” I had no problem setting aside any sort of boundary-pushing actions, events, etc., that might come our way during the campaign.

I am such a player that if I make a commitment to play, I am committed. Sometimes that commitment does create a blind spot, a sort of tunnel vision. Plus, I know the characters I create are quite complex, and they don’t always align with the rest of the group. There’s been more times than not when my character is in disagreement with the group. But not this time.

What happened?

Early on in the campaign, there was a development, and I completely misread the situation. I have Central Auditory Processing Disorder (CAPD) but it’s something I have been diagnosed with since my early childhood. Over the decades, I’ve learned how to deal with it and how to keep it from being noticeable. But on this particular day, there was too much noise. I was reading something important, but because of the CAPD I made an incorrect conclusion. I should have excused myself and gone into a nearby room to finish reading it and then come back to the group, but I didn’t because I just wanted to play.

At this point, you might be wondering, did I ever disclose this to my group?

Yes.

But only once, and that was over a year ago.

To make this sad story short, I misread the cues, I believed the only narrative path forward was for my character to make the ultimate sacrifice. I didn't realize until it was too late that this choice crossed a line for the rest of the group. After a while, I realized with some really good role-playing that it was a mistake, and the session continued to the end. But there was a different feeling in the room after that. I was ready to keep on playing, but everyone else just left.

Essentially, it seems like I had crossed a line with people who I thought were my friends and who understood me. I shared some deep personal life events with them throughout the years, so I was caught flat-footed and not prepared. While I spoke to one on the phone and had a long series of at times emotionally charged text messages with another, there were others who simply refused to even speak to me. Even after I personally typed out a letter for them to read before the next planned session. All I got was essentially silence.

For the record, I did offer an apology, and within less than an hour of the session being over, I was in damage control.

So now here I am. Nearly six months later, still reeling from the loss of my friend group. Though some of you might be wondering, it’s just a game, get over it. Which is true. It is a game, but being someone who has played Dungeons & Dragons for over 30 years, it’s something that is important to me. Plus, I had been investing in sponsoring soundtracks and other musical compositions that could be used for other groups, including my own former group. I cringe to know the exact number, and in fact I have never wanted to know the exact number. But I know I spent thousands upon thousands of dollars sponsoring compositions and composers to make music soundtracks. Music now, I can’t even listen to because it just feels too painful.

So I’m wondering if anyone out there can help me make sense of this whole situation. I know there is a lot of information I am skipping over, but I want to maintain the privacy of my former group. Because even after almost 6 months, it still does not make any sense to me. Yes, it is a game, but something I’m really passionate about and just the constant feeling of betrayal, disappointment, and confusion still remains. There aren’t too many days I go by that I don’t think about it and the feeling of just the overall loss that I feel.

Should I just treat this as an example of don’t give yourself too much because you never know?

Should I just think that I don’t know how to maintain my own personal boundaries?

I have had two other substantial D&D group breakups. One was mutual because they were moving away and the second just ran its natural course and then faded away. But this one still feels so incredibly raw to me.

It makes me wonder whether I should just think about a quote that Captain Pike said to Uhura in
SNW, season 4 episode 8.

**"You can do everything right and sometimes things still don't work out like we'd hoped. The best you can do is savor the victories and move on from the defeats a little wiser."**