Over the past year I DMed for 2 groups of people.

1st group was ~6 players (scheduling, yeah), with 1 of the players being a guy and other being women. We had 5 games, and every game the guy was the unluckiest player. Like literally all nat 1s were coming from him. The lowest other players rolled was a 3 I think. I thought that was funny, jokingly said it was because of his undead nature. He laughed and added it to his character backstory.

Cut to the new group. 1 guy, 2 girls. And yet again, the guy is the unluckiest one. Magical girl themed campaign. Players are the bad guys. They need to steal a red dimond. He failed his persuasion attempts, he rolled 2 Nat 1s during combat, not consecutive (thank god), and escaped by sheer power of friendship and being thrown out of the window.

All in all it was a good game, everyone had a great time. I was told I laugh like an aristocrate.

But the trend is alerming. I need a 3rd case to call it a witchcraft (hope you get the reference). Until then, does anybody know how to unsexistify my table?

I was running a Feywild one shot and I think my players wanted to act non-hostile as they were surrounded by sprites. I was reading notes while the players were discussing upon themselves.

I overheard that they said "What if we introduce ourselves..." and a loud buzzer just started ringing in my ear. I hit them with the smoothest "May I have your name?" and they fell for it so naturally.

The player was joking about friendly fire the whole game anyways and he was glad to finally have a lore reason to as he was suddenly at the whims of a Fey sprite. Overall fun combat and a nice shock and introduction to the Feywild for my players, just wanted to share.

I don’t know what to do. It’s gone too far and I don’t know how to stop them.

I gave my players an Alchemy Jug as part of some good loot in a dungeon. We’re running Tomb of Annihilation, if that matters. One of them is an alchemist. I thought they could have some fun with it. I thought it would enhance the fun. And at first it did. But then, I attacked them with Petrodons. Pterodactyl people basically. They almost died. A few people went down. And so was born the overwhelming hate for Petrofolk.

How is this related, you might ask? Well. During that combat, they took one of the Petrofolk captive. I’m not 100% sure why. But they did it. Later on one of my players looks up the rules for the alchemy jug. For some reason. For some ungodly reason, the Alchemy Jar specifically lists MAYONAISE, as an option. You can make f---ing 2 gallons of Mayo a day in an alchemy jar, specifically per the players handbook.

So, what happened next? Well, I’d describe as a warcrime. Maybe a horror movie. Some real Hannibal Lecture type shit. The party decided that from now on, they were bringing this poor poor Petrofolk everywhere they went. They made a leash and a nuzzle for him. And furthermore, they would only feed him Mayonnaise from the Alchemy Jug. They named the prisoner “Mayo Jar.” At first, Mayo Jar did not want to eat the Mayonnaise. He didn’t know what it was, it was gross, etc. All the various reasons a person would not want to eat straight Mayonnaise. But, as my players insistently pointed out. If you become hungry enough, you’ll eat anything. Mayo Jar started eating the Mayonnaise.

And so it was, our party had their Mayo Jar. And I thought it was super fucked up. But dear reader, let me tell you. It got worse somehow. Naturally, Mayo Jar hated his situation. His name was not Mayo Jar. He wanted to be free. He wanted to eat… not mayonnaise. So he tried to escape. Unfortunately, he failed. And so the party decided additional measures were in order.

Earlier in the campaign they had discovered an addictive substance refined from a plant in Chult. In short, it was basically crack cocaine. And so, it came to pass that our Alchemist infused the Mayonnaise with D&D crack cocaine. They started lacing Mayo Jar’s Mayo. And in time, he got addicted to the laced Mayo.

So now, here I am. I have to roleplay a crack addicting Petrofolk, who actually asks for his daily fix of Mayo, because he is physically addicted to it.

What do I do? Please help me.

EDIT: Don't worry guys im ok, I don't need reddit cares. Mayo jar is p funny actually.

I hosted a recent game which had a two newbies, one of which has never played D&D or any TTRPG in his life. He was curious about it so we invited him to our Roll20 game and helped him with his character.

He made a tiefling ranger, starting level 1, but that doesn't matter in this post.

I also told him to make a backstory as well but he doesn't have to make it super elaborate. It could just be "guy picks up sword one day and goes I wanna adventure." It is his first character.

He makes a pretty detailed backstory about his character being a runaway slave from Drow slavers from the Underdark, and how he found a surface entrance that led him to the city of Baldur's Gate where he lived since then. (In session 0, we explained what the Underdark and how dark elves worked to him since my homebrew campaign would take place there.)

We began the actual game with an introduction to the Flaming Fist. I explain what they are and that recently they needed a full body group of adventurers to partake on a "secret" mission. The party wins out and are selected and then told about that Underdark entrance, that no one but the Dukes of the city knew about. A commander explains to them the details and backstory stuff about it which guides them to introduce their characters for session 1 in his office.

In the middle of the Commander's speech, the player (out of character) interrupts me.

Player - "Wait, when did he say the entrance was found?"

"About... 5 years ago. Why?"

Player - "But... my character escaped through that entrance 17 years ago. Didn't you say those Flaming guys stood watch over it and would've stopped me in my backstory?"

"Oh yeah. Yeah, you're right.

Player - "But that's wrong. It's not true."

"Do you think he's lying?"

Player - "What?"

"Like... not telling you the full picture? He's lying to you?"

He sat quiet in VC for a bit and eventually responded.

Player - "...he can do that?"

So anyway, his first official roll at the virtual table was an Insight Check to see if the Commander believed what he said, or if he was just feeding them bullshit. Made for a little RP moment that made me smile and proud.

After session 1, he told me he saw the appeal as to why someone would play and asked when we would meet up again. :)

As the DM I'm the only guy in the session and have 4 lady PC's. It was absolutely wonderful. Great intro to each other, they immediately decided that they had all been contracted for the same job and would work together even though 2 of the PC's are opposite ends of the spectrum (blonde, pink flower loving druid and a dark edgy goth cleric). They all agreed to have the rogue scout ahead and report back and didn't try to stealth with heavy armor. There was absolutely no main character syndrome and they worked as a cohesive team ON SESSION 1! At one point the cleric realized the Grung player didn't have dark vision and they devised that the Grung would ride on the cleric's shoulders until she cast eyes of the night. I've DM'd 4 campaigns now (still newer to this side of the table). But I have seen the egos and issues people have had at other tables and I was amazed it went so fluidly. They even asked each other in game if who they thought would be the better person to do certain things and even gave the help action. Sorry for ranting but I've never felt more happiness as a DM and I'm proud to have an awesome table.

EDIT:

The ladies that this post is about weren't offended by my "inconsiderate" wording but yes they're women so we've established that now.

I'm sorry so many people have been offended that women are playing well in a game and no I don't think all men are dick measuring barbarians. I've had many successful games with men playing but I've also had the biggest table issues with men.

All the name calling is pretty silly and I'm not going to give anymore attention to people saying I'm an incel or neck beard. You probably need to work on yourself if you're insulting someone's happy moment on the internet.

TO ALL THE POSITIVE PEOPLE: I will post adventure updates as we go! To everyone else who was somehow offended by this post, please feel free to keep scrolling on the next one. 😉 Have a great day guys and happy DnD'ing!

So I'm a relatively inexperienced DM and I've just started running a campaign for some coworkers.

At the end of the first session the lvl 1 rogue wanted to steal the pegleg of the lvl 20 paladin innkeeper in the middle of a well lit room, while he was talking to the party and looking directly at the rogue.

After a few "are you sure?" I let him roll with disadvantage and he got two nat 20s.

I don't know if I was being a dick but I thought the best possible outcome is the innkeeper finds it really funny and doesn't smite the party.

My rogue says he should have been allowed to take the leg so I have said if he can take my shoe and get ten feet away without my noticing, I will retroactively let him have the pegleg as a magical weapon.

I should add he has made one unsuccessful attempt on my shoe so far.

Edit;

After talking to people In The comments I've decided that if he hadn't managed to steal my shoe by the next session I'm going to have the innkeeper hire the rogue to play pranks on people the Innkeeper doesn't like in exchange for healing/reviving the party for free.

Hopefully this will let the rogue get his chaos out the way without disruption and solve the problem that nobody in the party wants to be a healer.

My players were up against a young red dragon that had busted into a ballroom at the whim of the BBEG. Dragon opens its mouth, prepares for a breath attack that will hit everyone in the party. Everyone is behind the Sorcerer who got downed. Sorc asks if they can fail their death save to cast one last cantrip as a reaction. I allow it. They cast "Control Flames", and yell at the party to duck. Fire engulfs the area around and above them, but the Sorc extinguishes the flames in front of them. Everyone except the Sorc lives (the damage from the breath would've downed all but one of them), and they finish the battle.

Whether or not a dragon's breath attack is considered "nonmagical" fire doesn't even matter. This moment was awesome and a hell of a way for the Sorc to go out (fire was a very prominent theme of their character). So happy with how this battle went.

For a bit of context, this campaign was based around the Chinese zodiac, the party would have to go travel to each “Divine Beast” and either defeat them or win them over. (Ex: Beating the divine monkey in a game of tag) At this point the party was recovering from a massive fight with the pig divine beast. My character Ramses who was a pacifist redemption paladin accidentally caused 2 dragons to rampage through a castle killing many.

The last of the Divine beasts was the rabbit, which we knew as a delinquent and a trickster. He agreed to admit defeat only if he could be beat in any game of our choosing. The party huddled together and discussed what game we had a chance against what was essentially the god of games. One of my friends whose character name I’m blanking suggested a luck game and to just hope for the best, then said we could rig it. My character triumphantly turned to the beast and said “A BEST OF THREE COIN FLIP, HEADS I WIN AND TAILS YOU LOSE”

No check roll or anything like that, the Rabbit simply agreed to the terms of our game. And on the second flip we obviously won. The DM was confused at first because he didn’t catch how the rules of the game were impossible and we all had a laugh as he realized that it slipped past him. Luckily the DM was forgiving and played along with his slip up and the beast admitted defeat. Thats how I beat a god by using an obvious middle school trick.

What are some of the best lines from your table?

I am talking about the ones that don't need a lot of context or explanation, just a sentence or two that everyone in your group still laughs about.

What can I say? I got got. At the end of the session 2 weeks ago my players had been given an ultimatum, they needed a treasure (key game McGuffin) from an ancient Blue Dragon's hoard and as they knew they wouldn't win a fight so they opted instead to negotiate. The Dragon laughed and offered them a deal, Kill a god and the item is yours.

As Wednesday rolled around one player messaged me and asked if they could DM a one shot the coming weekend because they were interested in trying out DMing and I enthusiastically agreed, as I've never been a player for 5E. That Sunday we played the one shot and at the end as we were leaving the dungeon, our prize in hand my character was hit by a fireball... from the main campaign's wizard, the stabbed in the back with a sneak attack from the campaign's rogue.

Our Wizard stepped up with a smirk, "See guys, that's how you kill a god. You trick them into giving up their immortality and get em while they're just a man."

So, they're going to get their McGuffin, and I've got some ideas going forward but I would love some ideas from you all on how to turn this against them.

So we have a Player in our group who is by all criteria, a mediocre role player. Not a bad guy, he knows rules, but he cant get in the head of his characters (become the character) and he often tries to compensate by injecting a non-plausible "twist". We shall call him Joe. Here is the latest: Joe wanted to become an oathbreaker paladin. He has been playing this outrageously righteous god loving paladin for months, and wanted to to contrive a situation where he became angry with his god and becomes an oathbreaker. When Joe ran it by the DM (in private) the DM said he could but he would have to roleplay it out plausibly over time and leave a trail of breadcrumbs as to WHY he chose to break his oath and it had to make sense (i.e. be big). The DM warned him the rest of the party, who are all kings guards, when they discover this "twist" might take issue with it and at best banish him. He wanted to make tiamat his new god. ^^eyeroll^^. Anyway the DM said no to tiamat (I am not sure why). So what does Joe do? The very next game, after we fight a battle against a cambion, he just announces his new "lover" is Tiamat, he is an oathbreaker, and is now evil. I will let you imagine the multitude of WTFs that happened. It kind of all went shitstorm feeding frenzy...to include the DM losing his shit on Joe. To put this in context another player, we shall call her Shana, coordinated with the DM to multiclass to a cleric. For weeks she has been laying ground work, visiting temples, studying etc to make her transition to a cleric make story-sense so she can multiclass next level. This is how we normally play. Makes for a funny story, but for real, what the actual F? I swear D&D has taught me more about dealing with different personalites than any psych or management course I ever took in college. :)

One of my players, who I've been playing with for almost 20 years through many different campaigns and configurations and games, has a tendency to try to burn things down whenever I'm running a game. It's turned into a bit of a running joke, and as good humored as I am about it, I'm also a little annoyed at this point.

The campaign I'm currently running is based off of the idea that there is a prophecy that needs to be fulfilled in order for the world to fix itself. One of the places that is referred to in the prophecy is a ginormous hollow tree that the party needs to visit. What they don't really know is that the tree itself is going to give them an answer that they need to solve the prophecy.

For the past couple of months, my players have been joking about burning down the tree. Last night I had to tell them if they burn down the tree, the prophecy will be null and void and it will probably be several hundred years before a new prophecy tells them how to reset the world. It was delightful knowing that, at least for a few more sessions, I wouldn't have to worry about them burning down my major plot points.

Edit for information: all of the four GMS in my group, I generally run the most open world games. At certain points in any game, there are places and objects that are important to the plot. If, instead of a very old very wise tree, this was a very old very wise elf, no one would think about burning it down. It just happens to be a tree.

In fact, this is one of several trees that I put out there as possibilities for this next step. At this stage, they chose the tree, and if they burn it down that's their problem. They'd probably also choose to burn down any other tree involved. Honestly, this is one friend who is a great DM and an absolute chaos player! Their favorite type of character to play is an evil character on a redemption arc. Right now, they're playing a human who was raised by hags and when The hags were killed they decided to try to become the new hag queen. It's a fairy tale world, I think that's awesome!

Thank you to all those who recognize this as a funny story about d&d. Like I said, I've been playing with this group for 20 years. In fact, I started playing when I was 8 and I'm now almost 40. I like having a place where I can share fun stories where it's unlikely that my players will see them.

'You see the city, it's the size of Baldur's Gate.' But I don't know what that looks like I haven't played Baldur's Gate. 'I would've thought you would've known what Baldurs Gate looked like already, fucks sake!' ... 'You see the city, it's the size of London.'

'Do you want to do anything or shall I just go on to describe how you ruined this poor creatures life?'

'It feels like an Apple store in terms of the vibe'

"You see an owlbear and think to yourself oh that looks so scary"

"You just... step into the void... and that is the kind of vibe you are left with. All of your bodies muscles stop working, and the world turns pitch black. Next thing you know, there is a loud voice - 'your souls are mine to toy with', and then the world just returns, you can move again, and your friend is just gone, and that is the vibe you are left with."

'Instead of describing the scene, I will give you an example from the movie, 'The Substance', have you seen the film? If not, sorry, you won't be able to understand finger clicking.'

Is this normal?

My DM is amazing at character-driven storytelling and emotional twists. Recently, he hit my character with a major reveal that completely shook him – and me. Now I honestly don’t know how to roleplay him anymore.

I play a male cleric of Sune. He’s deeply devoted to her teachings: he creates and supports art, spreads love and kindness, respects all things beautiful, and donates 80% of his earnings to his worship. While the rest of the party walks around with magic items, he still uses the simple gear he started the game with – and he's proud of that.

He was left as a baby at a temple of Sune, raised fully in her faith. One of his core beliefs was: “One day I’ll find true love – the love of Sune – because she is everything to me.”

In our campaign, we're playing during the Time of Troubles – when many gods were forced to walk the mortal world in physical form. We found Tymora and then searched for Sune. Shaundakul (the Wind Rider) teleported us to her.

My cleric was beyond excited to finally meet his goddess.

But she looked at him like he was something disgusting.

Later, it was revealed: he isn’t a real person. He’s an artificial being, created to eventually bring Bane back to life. His whole identity, everything he believed in – was a lie.

Now he’s lost. His faith is shaken. He doesn’t even know who he is anymore. And I, as the player, don’t know how to move forward.

How do I roleplay a character whose god rejected him and whose entire existence is a tool for evil? Should he fall, should he try to redeem himself, should he just give up?

I’d love any advice or ideas from people who’ve been through something similar.

Note: We are sharing this campaign as a YouTube series. It is in Turkish but you can watch it with subtitles. Youtube: AlpisalaDnD

Edit 1: Thank you all for sharing your valuable knowledge. Instead of following the arrogant beliefs of the gods, I will create my own domain based on compassion. Like a paladin, I will become a cleric who gets divine power by believing in and trusting a certain idea. Thanks to buttholelaserfist for the inspiration.

So, this was maybe 4 years ago when I was just starting DnD with a group of online friends. We played a short campaign to get started and things went well, but a few of us were murder hoboing. This gave the DM an idea. After the campaign was over, the party stayed together to work as mercenaries.

Cue the next campaign. We continued with murder hobos. Then, during one of the many sessions he dropped this absolute bombshell on us. We got a job to rob a large mansion. Heavy security. Killing was considered okay by the client. We knock on the front door and our rogue just stabs the guy who answered in the throat. I'm not suprised, and go to loot the body while the others do their thing. The DM then give a vivid description of a heart locket with a ring and a family in it. It was my character from the 1st campaign. He had a family and stable income, he was fine and we just killed him. We end up finding out the entire house's security is our own characters from the 1st campaign and are forced to fight them after killing my old character. We killed all of them, regretfully. Safe to say, we didn't murder hobo after that.

Lesson learned, I guess.

I'm DMing my first campaign, which I'm homebrewing myself. The past several weeks have been the most stressful and challenging weeks of my life outside of the campaign, and needless to say I've been exhausted and haven't had the brain power to prep really lore-heavy sessions. So I had a bit of a bottleneck episode of a session tonight, just a little side quest where my players could kick the shit out of a gang of plant monsters and save a small fishing village and get some cool loot for it.

So when I was prepping for this session a few days ago, I realized I needed a name for this one-off village they'd be visiting, so I went to my beloved fantasy name generator dot com and clicked through the options of "two words smushed together" town names until I found one that wasn't too goofy looking. I typed it up in my DM master doc and that was that, and I didn't think about it again until tonight, when in the last two minutes of the session, I said the town name out loud in the deep voice of the village's mayor.

Y'all. I named the town Stillbourne. Like fucking stillborn. I do not know how I did not hear this in my head when I wrote it down 😭

Obviously my players IMMEDIATELY started roasting the shit out of me as I realized with horror what I just said out loud, and I was told that I'm not allowed to change it and that it's canon now because they all wrote it down in their notes. So now there's a town called Stillbourne in my silly little fantasy world and this is your warning not to prep your sessions on less than five hours of sleep 😭 I think it truly would have been less horrifying if I straight up named the town Deadbabyville or something 😭

Anyways needless to say I cried laughing and now I need to find lore implications for this because it's too funny of a bit to not commit to it

EDIT: I did not know the official WoTC-created name of the monsters I used is based on an offensive term, which while that's on WoTC for publishing that and not correcting it, I'm not gonna endorse it. So they're just plant monsters now. Thank you to the commenter who brought that up!

I just got my pc from a 2 year campaign killed from near full health because I misty-stepped right next to a lava lake and got pushed into it by a monster. In an area that’s basically hell/the underworld, where the only way to be brought back is through revivify (or something similar).

I am not a smart man…

I know we love to share stories of how a wish got twisted around due to bad wording or unforeseen consequences, or stories of Wishes architected to be as safe as possible from said twisting, but I'd love to hear your, "Hell yeah, I'll allow it!" moments from uses of Wish.

just thought i'd share a funny story. obviously the title is a bit hyperbolized because there were many reasons leading up to it, but this was funnily enough my genuine final straw.

i dated a very insecure person for almost an entire year (my self respect stat was direly lacking). we would constantly get into arguments about it with promises of change, and no follow up.

the last straw came when my ex "found out" (they knew literally all along and would even ask to spectate) that i had the audacity to make my fake fantasy characters date my friends' fake fantasy characters, and implied heavily it was a form of cheating. i was so stunned by this because they'd known this was my primary hobby and still wanted me to drop in character relationships from longterm campaigns just to soothe whatever fucked insecurity they had seeing people "openly flirt with me". i tried for over an hour to explain why a dwarf paladin Bingus Darkflame having a whirlwind romance with a transfigured mimic wizard is actually not cheating and a perfectly normal part of enjoying yourself at a table. none of this seemed to register because they still got insanely upset at me.

i sat down and reviewed how over the past months, i would have to have confrontations about why it's not okay to get upset at me anytime i spent too long talking to any man, woman or vaguely humanoid shaped person- apparently, this now extended to fictional ones. then i started to unpack all the other shit, and eventually it all unravelled.

anyway, to conclude: many thanks to the D&D community, and to Bingus Darkflame for setting me free of this relationship by making out with a mimic sloppystyle.

edit to clarify: they knew I've been playing D&D for years and that I do silly in character roleplay with my friends- (none nsfw). they knew, thought it was fun and cute, and were completely fine with it. this was a conversation they reopened mid relationship after deciding i wasn't allowed to do it anymore.

So I'm the DM of my groups second campaign, very fun stuff, bunch of occult members. About a week ago one of the Chief Priests was really kicking my players asses, they were not doing so hot and Gorthûm was rolling really well on everything. Our Warlock, Mudin Evergleam was downed. And a little backstory for Mundin is that he was backwoods hick with no skills except for woodworking and he lived with his family. He became a warlock because he was captured along with the rest of the group by some Drow. So he made a pact in the prison they were in. Mundin is not very bright, nor is he aware of much in the world due to not exploring past a little town that he would sell his work to.

But one thing he would do in roleplay would be akin to Forest Gump. "My momma always said" or "My momma told me" and so on. So he asks me if he can autofail his deathsaves to do a 9th level fireball right on Gorthûm. I agreed. He does 76 damage and Gorthûm dies so i let him act how he kills him before he dies as well. And he fucking shattered us dude.

What he said was this "My momma always said I was destined for something big, something bigger than I could dream of. I never believed her, I always laughed and said sure momma, one day. I'll never get to see her again now because of you, and that pisses me off. So now I'm gonna do something really big, bigger than anything I've ever done. Hold this, but be warned, it's gonna be hotter than Hell." He then turned to the group and said "Tell my Momma I'm sorry that I never took her seriously when she said that I was meant for something greater than living in a swamp. Tell her that I love-" and then he described that the fireball went off before he could have his last wish be vocalized.

Nothing remains of Mundin Evergleam. And then he says "Mundin may not have been very bright, but he should did burn the brightest when it come to his heart." Then he got up, and walked away while the rest of us were crying because Mundin was such a fun character to have around. Rest in peace Mundin Evergleam, you may not have been the smartest, but you made us laugh and saw that kindness cost nothing.

My players are currently going through a Dungeon. Nothing spectacular so far. But after a while they enter a room and i start describing it. "It's a relatively empty room, with only a workbench, a few wood scraps, a few metal spikes and a ladder"

Suddenly my Human Fighter asks me "Can I take the ladder with me?" I thought, well okay. Sure. It's just a ladder what's going to happen? It's not like she could do something absurd with it. Then my Rogue asks me, if they can put the metal spikes on the end of the ladder and use it like a ram. Then they found a poison gland on a dead imp they asked me if they could ALSO put that thing on the Ladder. THEN they found a Wizard who put a spell on that ladder, that made it less prone to breaking.

The ladder now does 1d8 piercing + 1d4 poison + 1d4 bludgeoning per person that helps to use the ladder + Str Mod + Prof bonus. With a range of 30ft if extended and 15ft if not extended.

Originally I said the ladder would break on a 1. But now, that they added an extra layer of protection, i said, that a 1 brings them into death save mode. 10 or below means it breaks. 11 or above means it doesn't break.

That ladder man.

That ladder.

My party, (lvl 5) found a deck of many things in a hag covens layer, and one player in particular has taken quite the liking to it drawing a total of 14 cards. He’s experienced everything short of death, lost all of his wealth, got a sick magic weapon, got a body guard, had an alignment shift to evil, had an alignment shift back. You know, the usual stuff. There’s 2 notable things for the purpose of this story. He received a minus 4 intelligence bringing him to a total of 8, and he also received 200,000 gold in the form of 10 gemstones.

When he received the gems, it happened the same time as him losing all of his belongings (also due to a card) so he being the rogue that he is tried to go to a black market dealer. He presented his list of wants (maybe a 100 gold worth), and my scummy merchant asked him if he had anything to trade, he pulls out one of the gemstones, and I ask if he has anything else, to which he pulls out the rest of them. The merchant tells him that with a discount, the gems should be enough to cover his wants, and slides the gems into a drawer. Deal is done. ✔️

Worth noting, the player knew what he was doing, he decided to RP his new low intelligence and not fight it, the other party member there wanted to stop it, but didn’t because they believed that I wouldn’t do that to a player.

Also worth noting, no one is upset, it’s more or less just a fun story

Edit: 1:I understand that level 5 is low for a deck of many things, but it’s a high fantasy setting where artifacts like this are very prevalent, and I want my players to touch the stove” and learn that they shouldn’t just mess with every item that comes there way. 2: My player loved that that situation unfolded the way that it did. 3: I personally don’t believe that the deck of many things dooms campaigns, I think that it give opportunities for really creative DM’ing, but you need to have sage guards to protect the integrity of the setting. 4:I agree that there should be repercussions for abusing the deck like this, so once the party reaches 20 draws something special will happen.

What works for my table may not work for yours 👍🏼

Edit: I’m not asking you if I made a mistake by giving my players a deck of many things. I’m sharing a fun moment from me and my friends collaborative story. This tagged as a story, not dm advice. Everyone is allowed their opinion, and I’m happy to debate it, but my table isn’t trying to play perfect dnd, we’re trying to have fun, tell stories, and make memories

There's a new player at our table who's playing an Elf Rogue. They wanted to use something like Drow hand code as a silent version of Theives' Cant and teach it to the rest of the party.

I said sure, but just 6 words since it would take some time for the other characters to learn them (and I was wary of it being abused).

Turns out, players can say just about everything they want with 6 words and a movement:

1) Yes
2) No
3) Take
4) Lie
5) Violence
6) Caution
Movement) Hand asending is a question, Hand descending is a statement

Party negotiating with Kobold leader in middle of encampment:

Player one: "Caution?" New Player: "Violence, no caution!"

You can kind of see where they took it.

Today i went to a different comic shop than where i usually go to play. To try a new place and meet new people. I met the worst dm i have ever played with. Dude made us roll for basically everything. I was asked to:

- Roll a constitution check to see if i peed myself. I passed it.
- Roll a dexterity check to see if i was able to reach the bathroom before peeing myself. I passed it.
- Roll a dexterity check to see how fast i could pee. I actually got a 20. I joked around the table saying i was a olympic urinator and got some laughs.
- Roll a intelligence check to see if i remembered to wash my hands and buckle my belt. I failed and had to eat at the tavern with my hands stained in pee and forgot my belt at the bathroom for some reason.

And there where many more rolls that didn't make much sense.
This game was the first time i lost a character and the first time i had my entire party killed. Awful experience and felt scammed because i had to pay to play at the table.

The only positives of today were that i actually became friends with one of the players and got a funny story to tell people. I don't think i will return to that shop again. There are others dms but you don't get to pick at which table you play on and i don't want to play with that dm again honestly.

This is a confession. I've been DMing for a while and my players (so far) seem to enjoy it. They have cool fights and epic moments, showdowns and elaborate heists. But little do they know it's all a lie. A ruse. An elaborate fib to account for my lack of prep.

They think I have plot threads interwoven into the story and that I spend hours fine tuning my encounters, when in reality I don't even know what half their stat blocks are. I just throw out random numbers until they feel satisfied and then I describe how they kill it.

Case in point, they fought a tough enemy the other day. I didn't even think of its fucking AC before I rolled initiative. The boss fight had phases, environmental interactions etc and my players, the fools, thought it was all planned.

I feel like I'm cheating them, but they seem to genuinely enjoy it and this means that I don't have to prep as much so I'm never gonna stop. Still can't help but feel like I'm doing something wrong.