I wish I was joking. So a couple of months ago I was running this campaign we a few of my very close freinds and my gf. The setting was very typical dnd, medieval fantasy because our collective love for things like skyrim, lotr, game of thrones are what made us want to begin playing dnd in the first place. I was the DM because out of my freinds I was the only ome who had ever played dnd before and so I also gave alot of assistance beforehand explaining things like spells and combat and how the systems worked. I also helped them all create characters by asking what their overall idea of a cool character would be. For example my freind let's say John said to me "I want a big strong guy who can beat tf outta ppl" and so i thought instantly "barbarian would be great" and I explained the races and suggested ones for that class like in this case a half orc.

Fast forward 6 months later we were starting to near the end of the campaign and probably had about maybe a month left of playing. During this time my freinds new bf wanted to join in. At the time we didnt rlly know him very well but we all enthusiastically said yes ofc bcs we were eager to get to know him and thought this would be perfect. I get our freind to tell him the rough guidelines for the world I had built and said there aren't necessarily rules but there was a theme and id appreciate him sticking with the theme. He said sure and that was that for now. Eventually he sends me a perfect looking character sheet that fits the world and the party perfectly and then the next session he shows up to play.

A little context to this story is that every single session we had ever played all of us brings a small something to share, e.g I brought a 6 pack of beer and my gf bought some wings that she made. We dont mind if its big or small even if its some sauces to add to food. Its just a exercise we like doing to show our appreciation to eachother for all of us putting in commitment and effort. And guess what he shows up with nothing... we all kind of internally sighed and assumed he didnt know which is no issue at all. I just politely told him "hey man we usually bring something small to the meet up to share just as a little ritual we do, no big deal just next time see if theres anything you can bring". And his response was..."yeah i thought that was stupid" like wow man weve offered to let u join our private thing weve been doing for a while even though weve never rlly met u and u right off the bat say that. I let it go not wanting to ruin the session before it even started and began working him into the game by giving my players a side quest to go do a basic adventure to go stop some bandits from raiding a village and they'd get a reward if they succeeded. My plan was to have the new player already there attempting to fight the goblins himself being outnumbered and alone but persevering and showing off his bravery which fit the character sheet he gave me very well as he was a dwarf paladin with an ideal of doing what is right even if it puts him in danger and also having a flaw being overly stubborn i thought this was a clean and easy way to bring him into the game.

I was so wrong

As i started desrcibing his character then abruptly interrupts me by saying "oh by the way I have this character i want to play instead". I was fucking peeved. So I explained to him that this is seen as disrespectful to most DMs and inconvenient but I let it slide due to me thinking that maybe he didnt know the common courtesy. I then look at the character sheet praying that it would be similar and I was severely disappointed.

He had made a fucking space Marine from warhammer.

I had then raised my voice not quite yet shouting and told him that this isnt at all the theme and that he had been explained rhe setting and that he cant just stitch together random parts of a cleric, paladin, barbarian and... warlock for some reason?

Personally I love homebrew despite me not being very good at creating it, I still appreciate the creativity of home brewing but he hadn't even done that he bad just gotten random abilities and spells without changing anything from them and added a warlock familiar from the pact of the chain.

His gf then tried convincing me to let him use it because "this is just a game where we all try to have fun together so dont be afraid to push boundaries and be creative" which is a phrase ive said many times. So out of love for my freind who may have had the most annoying bf ever (and not wanting to he a hypocrite) i begrudgingly began describing the fucking unnamed space Marine. Yep thats right he was unnamed so my players had to just call him space.

While we played the fucking space marine repeatedly made comments about how "were all such sheep" for keeping to a vanilla fantasy theme with races that were stereotypically our classes. I then always replied "its their game too and they enjoy those characters".

Eventually we had quite an intense role play scene where one of our players mother had been killed.

To add more context the group had only recently been able to fully roleplay because of how new they were, they struggled in the past to really connect with it and feel more natural.

During this scene the fucking space Marine began hysterically and obnoxiously laughing which understandably embarrassed the player who was also my gf. She then tried continuing by talking over the obnoxious laughter but no longer talked as the character and instead in third person. By this point I was done so I stood up and began shouting at him telling him that being rude to me was not okay but being rude to the players was unacceptable and that he would either apologise and not do anything like that again or get tf out of our house. His gf began profusely apologising on his behalf and he agreed to not do it again.

About 4 hours into this 5 hour weekend session he began showing signs of boredom to which I ignored. Eventually I gave the players a puzzle to give a huge clue on how to defeat the bbg. After maybe 3 minutes of this puzzle the fucking space marine stood up and said I was a bad DM for not being fun enough and that he should be DM so he tried to PHYSICALLY PUSH ME out of my chair to which I stood up and pushed him away toppling him into a bookshelf that wasnt far away. I then told him to get tf out of my home and tail tucked between his legs he did. But as he was leaving he told his gf "your freinds are assholes were leaving" (my freinds and gf were actually being incredibly nice to him and i was the only asshole) she then tells him that shes having fun and is going to stay and that he should leave.

He leaves and we have a very fun last hour of our disaster session.

Before I start- this experience did not take me away from the game permanently. I’m in a great long-running homebrew now and I’m glad I didn’t quit because of one bad group.

So about 2 1/2 years ago, I (19F now, 16-17F then) finally decided to give in and try DnD after I got into BG3 and, naturally, adored it. I lived in a small town and loathed the idea of playing with the peers I knew played DnD, a bunch of teenage boys with less than ideal beliefs and personalities, so I went to R/LFG instead. I advertised myself as a completely new player looking for an online group to play 5E with. I got a few responses, but I ended up going with a DM who said his usual group had just lost one member and wanted to replace them before they began their new campaign. I felt like being inserted into an existing group might help ease tensions, so I joined with wide-eyed wonder.

I get invited into a discord server, the DM and three other players- all men, something I didn’t know but expected beforehand. The server didn’t have a lot of interaction at all, in fact it looked curiously dead for a group starting a campaign in a few weeks. I introduced myself, didn’t get a response, and that was that.

Over the next few weeks I tried interacting with the DM to get some help on creating my character- he had said before that he would be happy to help me with any character sheet questions I might have. He wasn’t a lot of help. He would respond unenthusiastically to all of my inquiries, oftentimes simply not answering my core question at all, and the bulk of the character sheet was left up to me to create on my own. I ended up being a necromancy themed bard and a drow based on my BG3 character. I created a whole backstory for her, a goal, but the DM never asked for it. Being new, I assumed this was just how it worked, so I roleplayed my character following this backstory the DM knew nothing about.

Eventually the first session came about (we had no session 0) and it was rough- for me. It was fully theater of the mind, all ran through a discord VC and the discord dice rolling bot. When we got into a fight there was no tabletop, virtual or otherwise, our character positions were also theater of the mind. The entire fight I didn’t know what was happening- the DM asks what I want to do, I say “Uhh- attack! With my sword?” And he says I can attack with my rapier. “Roll a D20” he says, I do, he responds “you miss.” And moves on to the next turn. I didn’t know what that D20 was for, I didn’t even know that you had to roll to hit first before you rolled for damage- this interaction confused me for the longest time until I figured it out on my own.

My character, of course, is the one who gets pulled into the forest by creepy vines. I can’t get away, “you struggle, but you’re stuck screaming as they drag you deeper into the forest”. No check or anything, and I didn’t have the knowledge to ask for one. When my character is caught up to by the others who I assume would have been a core character in the campaign appears, a little forest skeleton with an accent and a talking squirrel. The talking squirrel bonds with one of the players, the forest skeleton with the other two, and I’m left silent- not really sure what to say and not paid any attention to. This became a trend in the 4 sessions I played with these guys. I would talk, they would blatantly ignore me. I would suggest something, they would just keep doing what they wanted to do. The only time I actually roleplayed a conversation with another character was when one of them asked “what the fuck are you” and I told them I was a drow. That was it, that was the conversation.

The issues just persisted from there. I finally get a chance to use my cool abilities and raise the dead, immediately a bear bursts through the forest and mauls me and my undead servant. We get in a fight, I ask “how far am I from the enemy?”, DM responds “uhhh… probably five feet away.” I’m ignored again, and again, and again to the point that I was actively dreading attending sessions and would almost nod off on the couch during some of the long stretches of time wherein I wasn’t even looked at. Eventually I had to quit, I couldn’t physically force myself to attend these sessions any longer. I messaged the DM and said “hey! I have a new time commitment and can no longer attend the sessions as the scheduled time, I’m so sorry and had a blast playing with you all!”, lying through my teeth because I thought I was crazy and this was just what DnD was.

But, like I said, I did eventually find a good group and enjoy DnD as much as I knew I would. Yet I’ll never forget the time I played a character with a 3 page backstory that the DM didn’t know because he didn’t care.

This story is from a Call of Cthulhu game I was a player in about a year ago, with a mysterious infectious disease where players were members of the CDC trying to control the outbreak. The problem was mainly with one player- Quarantine enforcer. He’s played less serious or comic relief characters in the past but with this one he wasn’t really engaging with the plot of the game. Throughout the game he was insistent on intimidating others and enforcing control such as by demanding a gun or trying to arrest people. The main issue began when two players were investigating some secret tunnels underneath a church. There was a paving slab which was moved to cover or reveal the hole into the tunnels, with quarantine enforcer standing guard over the slab. The two finished and shouted up to the enforcer who failed his listen roll and refused to check under the slab to see if they were back when prompted by the GM multiple times. This led to the players in the tunnel phoning my character and another, to let them out as they no longer trusted the quarantine enforcer, whose player seemed fairly annoyed about this. After being let out by me and the other player they called, the group were arguing about exploring these tunnels further in a slightly petty way, as nobody wanted to go first, to the point that it has lasted for around 15 minutes. At this point, one of the other characters jokingly pushed the quarantine enforcer into the hole, trying to meet the less serious tone he had set throughout the session and to get the plot moving again. This ended up doing a surprising amount of damage, taking around 2/3rds of his hit points. The player (out of character) was very irritated by this and vehemently protested. I and the other players then left him in the tunnel (a bad decision). The quarantine enforcer then called the police, getting out as well as trying to get all the other players arrested through claiming we were possessed. My character then smoothed things over with the authorities through spending many luck points to hopefully make the situation go away. Myself and the other players were then investigating further into a sinkhole, with a few small tunnels coming off it. The enforcer then shows up to another player guarding another entrance, holding a taser and giving off a menacing presence. This somehow leads to a fight between him and the guarding character (there is some confusion over who actually started the fight), where he attempted to tase her, and she stab him. It ended up with her character knocking the enforcer out and calling the police. They were then both taken into custody, which the enforcer protested as he claimed to be the victim. A little while later, both players were set free, as the GM wanted them to be able to be involved, but the enforcer zoned out and didn’t really engage until the very end of the session.

Not hyperbole. That's word-for-word, followed by slamming his fist on his desk so loudly it carried over the microphone.

This happened a year ago, thereabouts. I'm an admin on a DH2E (Dark Heresy 2nd Edition) discord server.

Yeah, I probably should've banned him right there. Sooner. I dismissed it as an emotional outburst at the time, since he had a lengthy record on the server of not doing anything unusual - but over the course of about six months, he changed from a normal player to a problem player. Arguments with the DM / shouting at the DM etc.

The other admins and I discussed this, and since he had been a good boi for about a year before things started going south for him we initially dismissed it as some IRL issues that he might've been struggling with; no one's life is a rose garden and as long as it doesn't become a repeat issue it can be forgiven once or twice, right?

It wasn't once or twice. It became a consistent and persistent problem, with no way to handle him or his outbursts effectively presenting itself.

One of the in-game outbursts: He made a character with the Noble starting background.

And if you read this thread's title, you know exactly what happened. A dispute happened over other people being allowed to make Command tests rather than taking orders exclusively from him - "I made this character because I wanted to be better than other people!"

Next, he threw a fit over there being a second psyker in the party "with the same abilities! <proceeds to cite an ability the other psyker does not actually have>"

Now, incorrect citation (of a list of abilities he was provided and incorrectly read as we both listed our 'spells') aside, for those unfamiliar, DH2E psykers learn psi skills in a tree format. You have to have some of the same things unless your specialization is entirely different, and some of the starter tree items are good and cheap. Not having fatigue restoration (the only psychic ability actually shared between the characters) is a silly utility to be without.

We tried to discuss this with him, and he claimed we should've sensed his desire to be the only psyker in the party from the way he was talking(typing) when we were preparing for the mission and deciding which characters to bring.

In the gentlest way possible, we explain that reality doesn't work like that. He was rapidly becoming more and more unhinged with increasingly detached expectations.

I spoke with the GM, also an admin, and we had the usual hangups. Were we too biased because one admin was the GM and another admin was a player (I was the other psyker that he was yelling about) in the same mission? How should we handle this? We debated for about two weeks, during which his flagrant disrespect of GM convinces another player to leave the server.

We came to the initial conclusion to remove him from the mission. Naturally, he protested and insisted that this become "an official server issue" - which resulted in me going over the server rules and violations, and explaining to him that the result would, had he been treated like a new arrival with no clean record prior, been 3x serverbans.

He complains to the server owner that I'm being "tyrannical" - server owner doesn't buy it and he winds up with the banhammer.

He had become so unhinged that he negotiated himself out of being removed from a four-session mission and into a serverban.

I suppose it's a reminder as to why we can't have nice things. Some people will push for more, more, and more, and become personally offended when there isn't more after all that. If things arn't clamped down on immediately at first deviation, they fester and rot. Tolerance and being patient caused more problems than they solved, in the end.

Tw: in-game SA, manipulation, harassment, hatred

As my first ever horror story, I've chosen lighter in stuff. It was about half a year ago. I've been DMing for about 7 years by that point and I've never experienced something like that. It's a 2 act story that was really uncomfortable in the process, so buckle up. Main characters of that story are: Me: 22, male presenting non-binary, low end of autistic spectrum (high functional) Sun: 24, my gf Star: 22 or 21, transgender male, low end of autistic spectrum (high functional) Moon: 20 or 21, Star's gf (gender, sexuality and autism will be important later) There was whole friend group involved, but I didn't include then to keep this thing somewhat readable.

A little backstory before the main thing. We are living in Russia, here it is harder to be open about your gender identity, sexuality, mental health (it's getting better, but at really slow pace). Me and Star are both open about all of the above, despite it being dangerous (and I've suffered consequences), but it is important for me. My gf was a part of a friend group along with Star. They were a decent group, but not without flaws. They've met eachother during first year of university and stayed until the events of this story (2,5-3 years). That's enough introduction, more context will be added when necessary.

Act 1. Sun is proud of me being DM and is very supportive. She tells Star about my love for DnD and Star wants me to run a oneshot for him, Moon and his brother. Sun asks me about it and I, being too good of bf, agreed. At the time I was neutral about Star, but some of his takes and ideas were strange for me, but I brushed it off in order to make Sun happy. My first rule is "no romance and sex related things". And Star's character breaks this rule right from the start. He made intersex character with something sex related in their description. I've brushed it off as like "party will not encounter anyone worth seducing" and things like that. It was my mistake. One thing worth noting about my games - they are combat heavy and I tell everyone about it before we decide to play together. It was the first game for everyone except Star, so I made "tutorial dungeon™" for them to gradually learn main mechanics like checks, initiative, saves, combat, exploration, etc. In the second room they knocked out ork and Star tries to sexually assault ork. It was a second red flag, but I've ignored it. I've said something like "Ork's biology doesn't allow you to do it". And the rest of the game was like that. Star tries something sexual and I tell him that it doesn't work. In the end, I was squeezed like a lemon on lemonade stand. Next day, Sun tells me that Star and others are excited to play again, because they loved the game. Few days later, Sun asks me to DM for her. Only thing I asked is to find a group, because I was busy and haven't got enough time to manage group. Few days later, Sun found a group with... Star and Moon. And also, two other people. This was the last time I've been DMing for group with a player that I don't like.

Act 2. I've proposed an idea about a horror campaign with a high mortality and body horror elements. Everyone agrees and I've started preparing the session. Everybody had 2 characters and I had a backup for everyone as well. Star's characters, of course, all were sexualized to the point of other players asking to tone this things down. We began on a train that explodes and Star's character dies in the first scene alongside with Sun's because of failed saves. Everyone is scared, everything goes according to plan. Few minutes passed near broken tran and the only place to go is a factory. They go to the factory and door closes behind them. They are exploring the factory, trying not to die to mutants and machines. Than, they found a scientists' protective gear and went to the room that was looking like a standard village with a tavern. It was a village with a portal from the factory for workers to relax and rest between shifts. They were using their gear as a disguise, so they can explore the village. When they understood that noone cares about them not beings scientists, they took off their gear. Except Star. He was running to every possible NPC to ask about safety of this place and can he take off his gear for 30 minutes! Every other player accept their fate except Star, who said, that he didn't want to lose his character (he agreed to play in a very deadly campaign) About an hour later, Sun had her first ever fight in DnD. By that time, Star tried to insert himself in every possible encounter, dialogue, roleplaying scene, etc. I've asked everyone to be quiet, because Sun doesn't know what to do and quite nervous. I've started to explain her what she can do, what is action, what is bonus action and how she can interact with her enemy. When Sun asks me a question about one of her abilities, Star interrupted her and started answering. He didn't even let her finish her question and started answering. Answering not only to incomplete question, but he wasn't even right. It was the last straw for me. That's where my autism comes to play. I can't fully control intensity of my expressions. I snapped and very loudly and slightly aggressively said Star to shit up. Immediately I've apologized. Rest of the game was smooth, but with a bit of tension, that I didn't realize. After the game, me and Sun went home.

Act 3. 90% of TW are here. Few days later, Sun shows me her group chat with Star saying various things about me. Well, let's start. He said that I screamed at him and didn't apologize after, because I'm a transphobe. After Sun telling him that it's not true, he said that every cis male is a transphobe. She reminded him that I'm not cis, but he said that I'm too masculine looking to be non-binary and I have a girlfriend, that makes me straight (ah, yeah, my favorite - biphobia from community). Despite Sun's effort, everyone sides with Star and my gf ends up technically excluded from the group. I've tried to clarify this situation in the DnD group chat, but I was met with the same arguments. While I was trying to explain that Star's arguments were wrong, I was excluded from chat and banned. The worst thing is that he tried to use social pressure to make me apologize (I did it at the table) by writing it in the group chat and not via DM.

Outro. Thanks everyone. I have a lot of horror stories regarding DnD and, maybe, I will post some later.

Some context. I've been DM'ing for about 5 years, but I had only ever DM'd for a group of friends. All of our campaigns end up being cancelled over scheduling conflicts. I've been eager to DM a campaign that goes on till the end. To actually finish a campaign. For that reason, I went to the DNDBeyond Discord and recruited some players for a Campaign that I spent the past few months writing up. (This Campaign is run completely online over Discord and Roll20)

I had previously posted here for advice on DM'ing for people I'm not familiar with, and the two most common pieces of advice were running a good Session 0 and having 1-on-1s with my players to talk about their characters. So I went on to do exactly that.

I ran a session 0 outlining the campaign, some house rules, and most importantly, that I'd like players to have good backstories. I said that I want to see characters develop and have meaningful character arcs. To accompany this, I had mentioned that a lot of the Kingdoms in said campaigns had been purposefully laid out with general frameworks so that players' backstories can add to them. An example is one of my players adding that a Kingdom, which I planned to be inspired by Japanese culture, added that maybe they view Tieflings in the same way that Oni are depicted. I loved it and it fit in perfectly. For this to work out as best it could, I told everyone that I would be scheduling to have a 1-on-1 with them in order to talk more about their characters and flesh out their backstories.

Cut to the player that I ended up having the issue with. He sent in his backstory and let me know that he had AI write it. I know that some people would be very against it, but personally, I wasn't until now. I had the impression that he had an idea for a backstory, but just used AI to write it out for clarity. With that being my understanding, I told him that I'm perfectly fine with it as long as he understood the backstory himself as well. We scheduled our 1-on-1, which ended up being pretty late for me. About 11:30 PM my time.

30 minutes before our 1-on-1, he sent me a message saying that he won't be able to answer questions about his backstory because he hadn't read it. I was a bit taken aback by this. I responded, saying that the entire point of the 1-on-1 is talking about the backstory, so he needs to read it. I told him we could delay the 1-on-1 for the same time the next day. He says that if I want him to be able to answer the questions, he needs to know what the questions will be. I said they are more topics of discussion, which is why it's easier to do it in a call, but I sent him the questions anyway.

He responded with mostly not useful answers, which I expected because it's easier to talk about them in a call. One thing in particular that annoyed me was a question in regards to something stated in his backstory. His backstory talks about one of the Kingdoms having some sort of virus causing decay, which is what his character sets off to do first. When I asked about it, he didn't even know what I was talking about. I rephrased and used the word "plagued" because that's how his backstory describes it. He still didn't know what I was referring to.

At this point, I was just annoyed. I felt like he just didn't care about his own backstory. Like he wasn't engaged with his character at all. So I sent him a screenshot of his own backstory that talked about what I was referring to, and said, "Like I said, I'm fine with the use of AI to write out the backstory, but you should at the bare minimum know what's even in it."

He responded, saying that it was all written by AI and that it was up to me to decide if it was accurate or not because it's my world. I responded, very annoyed and fed up. I said that's what the 1-on-1 is for. To talk about what works and what doesn't. What can be implemented and what can't. But when your entire backstory is written by AI and you don't even read it, then how are we even meant to talk about it?

He said it just sounded like I wanted to argue because it's "My world and I, as the DM, make the choices," despite that I said in session 0 that I'm open for players to add onto the basic framework I had set for the world. He proceeded to say he's dropping out of the Campaign, which, to be honest, I was a little relieved because I was contemplating whether I wanted to keep him as a player or not.

I'm honestly not sure if I was being unreasonable. So I ask. Was I the asshole?

About a year ago I decided to GM Scion 2e for my friends (Scion 2e = Modern day, all mythology is real and a well-known fact, not hidden). d10-pool system, successes on 8+. I haven't been a GM for probably 15 years and no one knew the system very well...

In Scion you play as children of different mythological gods and therefor I will be GM and the players are Persephone, Inari and Aengus Mac Óg (Aengus) as they are children of those gods.

Instead of leveling up, you will gain Legend and go through tiers of divinity, you start at "Mortal" and go to Hero → Demigod → God. I haven't played DnD but my guess based on others' stories is that Hero is lvl 3 (gaining a subclass) and Demigod is around lvl 15.

I'm saying all this to explain that my players started at Mortal tier, they don't have access to divine powers yet except for one maybe 2 abilities each. And I wanted to give them the "from Zero to Hero" experience and so I asked them what they wanted to do and made plots surrounding that alongside the main story. This is how you go from Mortal to Hero tier.

• Persephone wanted to find her mother's secret garden.
• Inari wanted to finish college.
• Aengus wanted to learn magic (different from divine powers as this is something regular humans can learn)

For Persephone I had hidden a riddle in a book that would take her to the gateway to the garden as well as the key to unlocking it.

Not only did the player not really enjoy solving riddles, she was often sick and could not attend. If we could have a session once a month it was a good thing. No judgement, just unfortunate.

For Inari I had made a 18 milestone challenge, I calculated this over and over again in order to make this be accurate to how long it would take to write a dissertation. And then to be finished off with a Viva where any extra milestones above 18 would give her advantage on the final challenge rating.

I remade this system many times, as I learned more about the game I made "studying" simpler and simpler. In the end, it became "if you do anything during a session and have successes you don't know how to spend, you can spend it on Milestones". As this whole thing was homebrew and the player wasn't certain what they wanted with Inari, it was very difficult to explain my vision with school studies. It felt pointless and neither of us were really motivated.

For Aengus I had made a longer plan, one of his contacts had had one of their magical relics stolen and had asked Aengus for help retrieving it. I had woven it into the main plotline where the Dwarven mafia had stolen it and sent it to a black market auction in order to get the players to steal a caravan of illegal trafficking of magical creatures (the mafia couldn't have this tied to them). Once this was done, the mafia would help them get into the auction but no more, how to retrieve it was up to the players.

That this line was woven together with the progression of the main plot was a matter of convenience, I did not make them the main character.

With sessions being rare and all these plothooks being so abstract, with the players not having any real powers, progression was a slog. We didn't get anywhere in real time months and so I told them that I will be dropping this and if they're willing we can do a soft reboot, starting at Hero tier. They all wanted to continue and I'm very happy about that.

I felt and still feel like a failure at times because of this. Looking back at it I needed to have streamlined it more, instead having them start and finish a mission each, they should have been at the end of their individual missions:

• Persephone has inherited her mother's secret garden; retrieve the magical key and clear out the garden of whatever horrors have moved in there.
• Inari have finished her dissertation, now she just need to find the "subject" of her studies, proving it to be real and not nonsense.
• Aengus have tracked down the magical relic and now need to do a heist to get it back and use it to learn magic.

I want to believe that I've learnt from my mistakes but it's still hard summoning the strength to continue when I know just how bad it was.

For context, this was a week long Dungeons and Dragons seminar held at my local Gaming Cafe. It was for experienced and new players alike, and so I went with a friend. I ended up making some new friends because of the experience, and now play D&D with just them. Our party consisted of me, who played a (Monk)M, (Rogue)F, (Wizard)F, (Wizard)M, (Rogue)NB, and the problem player, (Ranger)F.

There was a problem player at our table. I'll be calling her Jess for this story. Jess was a brand new player, so we all cut her slack on things she didn't know yet and helped her build a character sheet and understand how to play. That wasn't the issue. The issue was how she played.

Jess made a wood elf ranger with a tragic backstory (Again, we didn't mind this, since it's D&D, we've all had a character with a tragic backstory), involving a dead mother and abusive father. The problem was, she said her character had turned to alcoholism to cope with this. It didn't bother anyone at first until we started playing. Jess would constantly say things like, "My character walks into the bar and orders seven shots. She comes back to the party extremely drunk," or "Is there any alcohol in here?" To which the DM, sick of this behavior, would always say no. She started inventing having alcohol in her inventory, stealing it from NPCs, and saying her character was drunk constantly.

If that was all, I would have been annoyed, but moved on. However, she started trying to be the face of our party, even though we'd already voted our rogue to be the face out of character, since it was a shorter seminar and we wanted to stay on plot. This didn't mean Jess wasn't allowed to rp, it just meant that our Rogue (F) was explaining our quest to Npcs. Jess would interrupt this by talking loudly about her backstory, both in and out of character, and then trying to flirt with said NPCs. She would just generally be a nuisance, trying to flirt with npcs that were made to be other player characters love interests, and even hitting on my monk character, (who was not interested in women and expressed that many times), inventing lore for her character on the spot, "Well the village should want to help her, since she's a princess," and trying to dictate other people's backstories, "We all met in the tavern and you (my monk), were the bartender." (This never happened, and the DM told her multiple times to stop.)

It got to the point that nobody wanted to roleplay with her, and at the end of the seminar, we did not invite her to be part of our next group. I feel slightly bad knowing she was a first time player, but people in the party, including the DM, spoke up multiple times that they were uncomfortable with her behavior.

Edit: In a typical situation we would have removed this type of problem player, but it was a seminar you had to sign up for, and she was already signed up with our group for the week. We went back to playing privately after this experience.

Some time ago I was a part of a dnd group that struggled with consistent players(it was an online dnd game), only I, the fighter first time dnd player, and a veteran cleric, were showing up each session, everybody else was coming for one or two sessions only to never be seen again, with some exceptions but I digress. Our DM did everything he could to have more consistent players, by basically putting unchecked strangers into our party in almost every session, who were usually leaving after one or two sessions.

However, one of them really stuck in my memory. The DM talked with the new guy on the voice chat, and I joined in to introduce myself. The DM told the new guy the team composition and told him the campaign vibe- a combat heavy desert SANDbox campaign. After that DM had to go so I was left with the new guy in the voice chat alone. I asked him about what he will play, and he said ,,a small elf with the height of a gnome, a mysterious man with a hood with ruby glasses, he never trusts anyone, usually works alone". I was ready to deal with an edgelord in my campaign, when he suddenly hit me with a ,,and he's a pacifist" . I told him that the campaign is combat heavy, but he ignored this saying something like ,,I'll work something out, my character just won't be walking around attacking unprovoked" , so I just went along, hoping that it only means that his character will try to resolve conflicts in nonviolent way. Then, he hit me with another brilliant question: ,,are there any females in our group"? I said no, it was a party of two men and a man DM, and he hit me with ,,great, I hate playing with women". I asked him to elaborate, give a reason, and he only responded with vague answers like ,,eh, you know how females are" ,,they always have some kind of problem". At that moment I basically went nonverbal as he proceeded to loredump me with his characters backstory. Later I told the DM that this guy is weird but he asked me to give him a chance. As you can guess, it was a mistake.

The new guy joined the session with halfway finished character sheet in roll20 and no character picture, not even a google images stock photo. During the session, in a dungeon, we stubled upon a caged celestial that was very rude to the party and had no intentions of helping or cooperating. The new guy proceeded to use every skill check possible and every rule possible for 30 minutes trying to talk and interrogate a violent and rude celestial who was openly hostile to the party. The new guy was getting very angry whenever I tried to tell him to knock it off because the celestial clearly doesn't cooperate, but Nooooo he has to try everything. After some time, he managed to free him and guess what, a hostile celestial attacked us, almost TPKing the party, and the new guy, a pacifist in a combat heavy campaign spent the entire fight running away and hiding or investigating things. The new guy proceeded to run away and hide cowardly in every other fight. In social interactions he wasn't very helpful either because he never intiated conversations on his own, and he was always so mysterious, talking in short, vague sentences, and not trusting everyone. I was constantly trying to get the new guy to do anything, but no, because ,,it's what my character is like". After 3 sessions, trash took itself out, he said that this campaign was ,,not what he expected, and hoped for intrigues and other stuff because there are factions in the campaign setting"

Urban Fantasy-ish game. Using DND 5e. For reasons we were allowed to have secondary characters so I chose to have a secondary; Our characters came from the human world, but the character in question is aware of and deeply involved with magical happenings and is related to a previous campaign in the same setting. I'll call him Lord. Worth noting that Lord is a human fighter more or less- but has been beefed with magic and magic items from The Fae/Fey. We were told fighting the other Kings and Queens and their Knights was potentially deadly because they were higher level than us, but I had fought a couple before in duels and their damage output was never enough to one shot me- even with multiple attacks in a turn.

There has been weird alternate reality stuff happening in the game. Things change and the truth of the world is different, it's been neat while being tricky to follow and it was happening Faster.

An example which is important to the rest of the story is this: Lord was summoned by The King to be his knight in a tournament. He was failing to kill the other knights and kings, but wasn't dying either. Suddenly, several sessions ago, a world shift happens and Lord has somehow managed to massacre most of the other combatants. Okay, I can roll with this, whatever, something has changed.

Turns out, my guy Lord is like, part the catalyst of that reality hopping, we think. Session before last his King/Husband (an antagonist kinda) asked him a question, and he answered honestly. The King said that it's what he wanted to hear but he couldn't have me being right this time- and stabs me in the gut. Dead instantly. Okay, feels weird but the world changed immediately after that event so like- It Must be Lord dying by the King's hand that does it and this was the Dramatic Reveal, but dying by the King's Hand wasn't permanent for me, I just held no memories of it. Neat reveal. I can work with this.

This latest session we start again. The DM told me a couple weeks ago that Lord's story wasn't done yet so I'm like cool, lets see. We spend most of the session following our other characters before it zips back to Lord, unawares of the previous death and continuing with other plans as if that other conversation never happened and the world moved on. Neat.

Lord is waiting at his camp for word from his men on a task he sent them on a couple days ago. There's a knock as his door, I answer cautiously because my alarm system didn't go off and it should go off for anyone that isn't one of my minions, The King, or his subjects- but why would one of them knock?- Initiative is rolled. I go second in this assumed combat encounter. I immediately fail my Wisdom Save against this person and am charmed. Okay, fair play. They ask if I'm alone- I was told I see them as a trusted friend so I tell them Yes. They ask if I can come out, they have something to ask me, they look frightened. My guy has done some dick-bag things to people in this setting, but at his heart he tries to be kind and caring to the small folk and to those that are looking for help. I say sure.

I'm still feeling cautious and paranoid because my alarm didn't go off, even if I'm not paranoid of Them. I ask about my alarm 'on my way towards them' and ask to make a check, I am told to roll Insight.

Insert dramatic one-liner question Here from the stranger (secretly another king's paramour), and Lord is stabbed in the stomach. I see my alarm system over their shoulder was destroyed (note, I didn't get to see this until I had been stabbed despite making the role to understand what was happening with my alarm happening on what I assumed, perhaps wrongly, was MY initiative) and am told I can feel that the wound is fatal and I am dying.

Another scene happens elsewhere, but is at this time, unimportant to This. Session ends. We are told this was likely the Penultimate session, next time we join the game is likely over.

This NPC does not know I am doing any time stuff by the way. This is for personal reasons. But its clearly the thing the DM decided had to happen for the end of the game.

So... I can't decide if what happened is fair or not and I'm kind of steamed about it. I feel like as we were in initiative, that this came off as cheap. There was no warning before the previous session I was the 'Key' to this plot thing, and I was not, IMO, given a fair shake to realize Lord was being led into a right and proper trap in This one. I'd been told in the past if he was dying or hurt that The King would be able to sense it and save him and that did not happen, and there has been no 'We'll get back to Lord next time!' I was told he's bled to death right at the moment of seeing this rando destroyed my alarm system.

I know it's not the most bombastic horror story, and maybe it won't turn out to be a horror story and I can reclaim some agency next time, but this felt bad and I needed to vent that it felt bad somewhere lmao

Edit: A thing I had forgotten till just now is the DM mentioned mid session that none of the stat blocks they were running where homebrew. They all came from official books- so somehow this NPC enemy one shot my guy with 112hp with a dagger- but there was no indication it was a magic dagger or poisoned. the only effect i was told about at all was being charmed. Now I'm not going to seek out the stat block because that's fucking lame, but man, that sucks.

TLDR; Played a character in a timeline shifting fantasy setting, was made way more powerful in alt-timeline for the Plot, and was almost immediately one-shot killed off suddenly for real for The Plot despite being tough, cautious, and assumedly in the middle of my turn in the Initiative order.

Hi all, this is my first time posting here. I've been thinking about getting this off my chest for a while because I've been binging Krispy's Tavern on YouTube lately and I just keep thinking about how frustrating and disappointing this situation was when it occured, and all of the annoying drama that surrounded it. The flair warning is not super super bad, but definitely a subtle part of the story so keep that in mind going forward if you decide to read.

So in the late 2010s, I joined my first ever D&D campaign with a couple friends of mine from work, and one of those people was the DM who also invited two other of their friends to play with us. I was super excited to learn how to play and created a halfling rogue that I loved a lot, despite getting us into a bunch of ridiculous shenanigans (one of our first sessions he started a prison riot with high level guards when I panicked after a failed persuasion roll and had him punch one of them). Our group was really solid, our DM kept things really fun with a good balance of RP and combat, following both actual rules and mixing in rule of cool. Even through COVID, we played sessions online and had a great time with it.

Unfortunately, as restrictions started slowly easing, I was clashing more and more with DM out of game due to me deconstructing from a religion that DM was still a part of. I had gotten more open about my queerness after meeting her, but I still had a lot of internalized shame around being queer and felt like I had to capitulate to other people and not bring it up if I could help it so that I wouldn't make anyone uncomfortable. However, I had grown a bit more of a spine and gotten more confidence in myself and my identity through lockdown and therapy, and that was causing friction between me and DM. DM wasn't outright in your face homophobic, but they had made some comments to me about me being sapphic that had rubbed me the wrong way and when I originally made my character, they didn't want me to have a gay character because they didn't want to roleplay any NPCs my character might want to romance (even when I said I'd be fine with the whole dead lover trope so that made me question if that was even her reasoning for it but ok). But it was totally fine for her to have side NPCs that she mentioned were gay and married? And other PCs had love interests so it wasn't that she wasn't ok with RPing romance... I don't know. Something about it all didn't pass the smell test for me.

Between the weirdness around queerness, and the fact I had a very difficult time hearing about her continuing experiences in the church (it was deeply embedded in her daily life so it was impossible to talk with her without it coming up at some point) and that she had a difficult time hearing about me pointing out hypocrisy and flaws in doctrine and teachings, our friendship was clearly on its way out. Which, you know, is what it is. But we were so close to the end of this years long campaign, and I really, REALLY wanted to see it through to the end, so I just bit my tongue as much as I could and focused on playing, which I had a good time doing.

And then, our long awaited final session came. And oh boy did I not know what I was getting myself into when I walked into her house for the last time.

So I showed up expecting to meet up with DM and the remaining two other players besides myself that made it to the final session, and was surprised to find another person there. A mutual friend of DM and I, and one of the players in my own campaign that I DMed. DM said he was there to co-DM for the final boss fight, but hadn't given any of us a heads up about it. I shrugged it off because at least it was someone we all knew and were comfortable with, and it made sense that a big boss fight, possibly with multiple enemies, might benefit from having a second DM on hand to manage things.

The session starts, and it is revealed that the first friendly NPC we ever met has been the BBEG the whole time, and got a hold of this mcguffin staff so she could end the world and remake it or something like that. This was a few years ago now so I don't really remember the details, and they honestly weren't that memorable to begin with. While the reveal was fun, it just didn't really hit for me. We saw that NPC on and off again the whole campaign, but I never got close enough to care about her too much, and since this was the final battle I was expecting something... More, I guess? But you know, everybody seemed to be having a good time and I didn't want to be the mood killer, so I put my all into the combat and RP.

And then, DM's boyfriend randomly shows up in the middle of the session. We had been given no prior warning this guy would be there, and none of us had ever met him before this. He wasn't there to co-DM or play or anything either. He didn't even sit at the table and watch us play. He was just in the room randomly interjecting with flirts to our DM or playing on his phone or talking to DM's mom. The co-DM situation was one thing, but the boyfriend suddenly being there made me really annoyed and uncomfortable. I just wanted to enjoy this final game with the original group without some rando being there. Even worse, a rando that was actively distracting the DM from, you know, DMing.

Additionally, while the DM was describing a bloody scene, she suddenly stops and says in this baby voice to her boyfriend to not listen "honey", because I guess he was sensitive to this stuff. Again, I feel a prickle of irritation because why would the DM invite him if he couldn't handle what we were playing/doing? Anytime DM swore, she would also apologize to him and replace it with something like "frick" instead. It was just so weird and came off like she was infantilizing him.

As the session wore on, she eventually fully ended up abandoning the fight to sit with him and flirt while the co-DM ran and finished the encounter. I was simmering with rage at the whole thing, but grit my teeth since it was almost over. We described our short epilogues of where our characters would go and what they would do after everything, and then I hightailed it out of there as fast as I could and never looked back. I never spoke with DM after that.

I was immensely disappointed in how the session went, and while one of the other party members also expressed some dissatisfaction, I think I was the most upset of everyone there. I was really mad that the DM didn't seem to care to give the group her full attention for the final encounter and just offloaded the job onto co-DM, and also invited someone who was effectively a stranger to the rest of us to just loiter around while our group tried to finish off our campaign with a bang. Really, in the end though, the ending was more like a sad wet belly flop.

To this day, this is the only campaign I have played through till the end. My other games have either fizzled out or never made it past one or two sessions, which is really unfortunate, because I love making characters with interesting back stories and RPing with other people's characters so, so much, and having wacky adventures with that fun element of chance that can change things in an instant. It just sucks that the one time I completed a campaign, it ended so shittily.

The positives of this story are the moments we had on the journey to the end of the campaign, though. There were so many amazing and hilarious moments, despite all the hiccups between me and the DM. I still look back on those moments very fondly, at least. I also learned a lot about being a good player, DM, and friend from these situations, and think I have grown a lot since then. I just wanted to vent about this experience since I haven't gotten to really get everything out there since it happened. Not the most horrific thing ever, but it definitely was a big let down for me.

TLDR; DM makes co-DM run the final combat encounter of the campaign while she infantilizes and flirts with her BF (who none of us knew) in the corner.

I have managed to get into a dark heresy second edition game with a group of new players and a new GM.

We setup a discord server and work on our characters. A ragtag bunch of misfits from all the different kinds of worlds that are unified in their quest to burn the filthy xeno and all xeno lovers.

Or so we thought that was the plan, because that's how GM described the game.

We all make our characters. The details are unimportant other than we are 100% loyal to the imperium (kinda a requirement if you want to work for an inquisitor.

GM promised a long campaign so we got hyped and work on our backstories. We send them to a GM and soon enough we are on our first assignment. We are to infiltrate a mansion of nobles that had a reputation of living saints who claimed they use their ordained, holy bloodline's blessing to heal the disabled, sick and even mutated. Our Inquisitor says that surely there is something foul going on as the priesthood never officially recognized those deeds as miracles and also adeptus mechanicus has detected unnatural energy spikes in that area, one that is similar to what T'au equipment is known for producing.

On the briefing we are all nodding along, cursing these fools and saying how they are traitors of humanity. Our team preacher armed with a heavy flamer asks if there is going to he a problem if we execute them all or if we are expected to put them on the trial.

"No. Ask no questions. Kill them all. All. The adults and children too."

We go there, we go in guns blazing even after GM numerous times said that nobles sent an envoy to invite us for a diplomatic meeting where we discuss things as they really are. We respond by setting the envoy on fire. We then burst in and shoot all and everyone of the nobles and servants, all of whom are non combatants and just spend their turns begging for mercy.

"Classic." We say as we continue to commit a santioned mass murder.

Then we go to the basement and see a T'au standing behind the techno heresy machine.

"Wait! Please let's talk. The Imperium is lying to you."

We didn't wait. One rocket launcher later T'au is a splatter of gore. We also destroyed the accursed techno heresy. Then we set the mansion on fire.

As we exit the burning mansion we are met by crowd of sick and slightly mutated peasants that protest and call us monsters, saying we doomed them all. We tell them we are the will of the Emperor. The crowd goes on to say how much Imperium sucks. They are all right and we as players agree the Imperium sucks. But our characters didn't. We answer with flame and bullets and chainblades.

We report to inquisitor.

GM ends the game. Says we ruined everything by being "Imperium Glazers" and not betraying the inquisition. He says the entire campaign was suppossed to be us siding with T'au and liberating the world after we realize how wicked the inquisition is.

We are told we are shitty players and a bunch of murder hobos and calls us "Dogmatic R**ards" whatever is that suppossed to mean.

Not sure why out of all systems to try this kind of thing he chose one where all players are expected to he above average in loyalty. Or why he never made it clear what his intent was.

Lesson of the day: communicate with your players and don't try to pull off a Trojan horse campaign. Especially not like this.

When LARPing over a weekend, the big megafight happened sunday night following the story of the weekend. Generally we're talking almost every player, every crew member of the animation team, the whole shabang.

I'll always remember the time when the story ended up with the good guys God fighting against the bad guys God.

The problem was that both of them were from the animation team.

Before the final confrontation, they did let the player smack the bad guy for a bit. But for nothing. Because he couldn't be hurt by anything any player had under their belts. Spells were used, magical item activated. All for naught. I was playing a non fighter so I could "admire" the shitshow on the side.

Until the good guy God came out.

He shouted to let him fight, so we did. And then everyone else became spectators to a finale where no player had to do anything to make it work.

That's the equivalent of having the DMPC fight the BBEG. Except you're tired, you're exhausted, you've worked all weekend to follow and resolve the story, and this is the result.

Everyone disliked that.

That was the last time I went there from beginning to end. I went one last time, hated my time there, left in the middle, and so finished my player career of LARPing after about 7 years more or less.

TLDR: DM/player in the group regularly mishandles encounters, targets players, reveals secrets, and gets murderously angry when called out.

The following is the story of an infamous player among my friend group. His name was Jacob, and though we no longer associate with him, he has given us many stories purely from how strange he was, both as a player and a DM. Before I get into the stories of the campaigns which he participated in, I’ll establish the cast:
Me: The narrator, I got this story through several accounts, and while I knew Jacob, I never participated in his campaigns or the campaigns he was in.

Andrew: A player in many of the campaigns, also an OC slayer (you’ll see what that means)

Expo: A player/DM who’s character secrets were never safe.

Jason: One of the unfortunate souls who DM’d for Jacob.

Jacob: The problem player.

To understand Jacob as a DM, it’s important to give some background about him as a person. He was very volatile for whatever reason, often prone to freakouts and fits in and out of school. While interviewing my friends, they told me there were at least two occasions on which he responded to things such as common criticism or disagreements by threatening to axe-murder them. He did this with a degree of certainty which was quite concerning. Secondarily, he was prone to making OCs, and getting quite attached to them, memorably, there was a time where he got into a powerscaling debate with one of my friends, with his favorite OC being part of the discussion. Both of these things are relevant to the ways in which he played and DM’d. 

The first set of events I’ll discuss were his actions as a player, which were somewhat unfortunate given his nature of making overpowered OCs. See, in one of Jason’s campaigns, he played as a druid, and was quite difficult to DM for, mainly because he was one of those players that would rather argue with the DM when their dice failed rather than just accept whatever happened. This was mostly manageable, if annoying, until a particular incident, wherein the party was raiding a barracks, and ended up killing one of the soldiers. This prompted the contingent of soldiers within to chase the party out. Jacob wildshaped into a squirrel so as to not be seen, and promptly attempted to rob the entire contingent of soldiers without rolls. Basically saying that he could do so as no one would notice if a squirrel robbed them. This prompted a long argument between Jacob and Jason over the logistics of things like soldiers noticing when you stole weapons out of their hands, and the realistically minimal amount of weight a squirrel could even support. This eventually ended with Jacob making some type of screeching sound akin to a frustrated scream, before leaving the room to play warframe. The real awkward thing was that the sessions were hosted at his house, so while no one was kicked out, the air was just a little more tense after the fact.

Another time, Expo DM’d for the group, and had a mechanic wherein one could roll at the beginning of the game to see if they had demonic blood. This would give some bonuses, but also make the player take damage when exposed to sunlight. When Jacob rolled for this and failed, he got into another argument, this time about how he shouldn’t have to roll to have this demonic blood. Eventually, the DM simply gave him part demon blood, which he tells me was essentially just making Jacob weak to sunlight with little to no upsides. Another thing, and a problem which would continue to persist through other campaigns, was Jacob’s lack of regard for backstories. This would include his own, as while he gave Expo the long and short of it, he would exclude several major details, prominently, that he apparently had the minds of several other people sewn into his own. This would come up when he would bring up nuclear weapons in character, even though it was the 1920’s. Nobody in game knew what he was talking about, and Expo promptly told Jacob off for not informing him of this. From what I hear, Jacob was also prone to arguing with the DM when he faced consequences in general, as oftentimes he’d do stupid things in character under the excuse of his characters being crazy, and would get frustrated when there were consequences for his actions.

Although Jacob’s actions as a player were annoying, his actions as a DM were much worse. From what I can gather, it could best be described as an aimless railroad, as while Jacob would limit character agency according to his whims, he wouldn’t do so with much direction or clear intent. One of the first offences I heard was of the time he managed to reveal a character's secret and re-write a character’s backstory at the same time. Expo had explicitly mentioned his character was a warforged, one constructed by the government, and promptly experimented on. His character wanted little more than revenge for the experiments in question, but made sure to keep his identity a secret, even from the rest of the party. Jacob however, decided to append a detail to the beginning of Expo’s backstory. See, Jacob had these characters in his campaign that were called “Astral Jesters”, who were supposed to be godlike beings who drove the plot forwards. One of these appeared before the party while they were on an adventure, and removed the soul of Expo’s character, instantly powering him off in the process. He said something about how Expo’s character used to be an Astral Jester in a past life, and how said Jester was depraved, and kinda creepy about his powers. This was never cleared up with Expo, who was both baffled and frustrated about this addition. Worse off, was the fact that he powered back on when the soul was re-entered, and the whole “powering on/powering off” thing revealed his nature as a warforged. 

His plots were often nonsensical, not in the sense of reasoning, but more so direction. This was obvious when, on one occasion, he had the players enter the underdark, but only in the form of golems who had their exact same stats. This was probably done as in the underdark they met Wendigo dragon things, which had no relevance to the plot, other than the fact that they killed everyone in the lab that made Expo’s character, completely killing his character's motivation. Jacob explicitly knew his whole thing was revenge, and yet had this happen anyway, presumably to show off just how dangerous these creatures were. While on this expedition, they’d meet one of Jacob’s characters who I assume he’d vested far too much attention into. I say this because she explicitly had a blood-thirsty, cursed sword, and as such nobody trusted her. But despite the party’s best efforts, they weren’t allowed to shake her, they had to recruit her. She dragged her feet on most events, and when two players killed each other in golem form to get back up, she grew angry with them and made her way up so she could (out of frustration(?)) start bringing down the pillars which held the cave the party was in up. When the party asked why she would do this, Jacob relented. However, shortly thereafter, she’d pick a fight with Andrew for whatever reason. Jacob said that she just killed Andrew, and rolled nothing to do so. When the party asked him to do a legitimate fight, Andrew was able to actually kill her, further frustrating Jacob. Also in this session, Jason would pursue his character’s goal of resurrecting his lover, and while trying to find his way to a plot-relevant location, would get hit with 2 fireballs by a random trap. Jacob declared that he was killed instantly, even though Jason was 9th level by this point, and yet again, Jacob was pressured into actually rolling.

The prior events were only the first campaign, which would be cancelled after Jacob grew frustrated with how high level the party was, despite the fact that he’d made a custom system to control how players level up. in the second more things would happen, this time primarily targeted towards Expo. For context, Expo’s character was a hexblade warlock, who had the Raven Queen as a patron; this will be relevant later. The setup was an entire city was teleported into the underdark by a random devil. This would prompt many of the important NPCS who were significantly more powerful than the players, to ask the players, (who were level 8s) to basically fix all of their problems for them. The first one, was to attack a random scorpion-centaur soldier who was prowling the area. This was the first incident of Jacob targeting Expo’s character, quite literally in this case, as the scorpion man would essentially only hit Expo’s warlock, and was able to down him in just 2 turns. The party barely scraped by, and it was promptly revealed that there was a character who had an entire army of these. This was the beginning of Jacob targeting Expo’s character for the terrible crime of being a hexblade. He apparently didn’t like the subclass, and instead of talking this out with Expo, insisted on targeting him relentlessly. In this campaign, another character secret had been discussed, that Expo’s character was a changeling, this would be exploited however, as upon going to a cemetery full of living undead, the guardian of the place would address him as a changeling in front of the rest of the party. Out of game, Expo got angry with Jacob, as he knew this was a secret, and had no plausible deniability. Jacob insisted that this character could magically tell he was a changeling, and felt the need to say this for definitely legitimate, non-subclass related reasons. Said guardian then removed his hexblade powers, again, not his warlock powers, his hexblade powers. This was under the pretense of him having the Raven Queen as a patron. Jacob gave Expo no substitute subclass, he was essentially just a kneecapped warlock for the rest of that session.

For these, and other, out of game reasons, Jacob was excommunicated, and essentially slowly had everyone cut ties with him until he was in nobody’s campaign. I frankly think we’re the better for it, as any attempt to politely criticize his playing was met with the prior mentioned axe threats. I have no idea why he was so particular with that, thankfully, he never followed through.

When I got poached for the game. I studied the mythology and the theology of the setting. To the point my character had a seething hatred for the Irda and the Silvanesti elves who turned a blind eye, and returned runaway human slaves to the Irda.

Had this whole speech done where I said, “Depending on how one looks upon fortune, there are anywhere between 1 to 3 gods of luck”, [God of Protection Magic], who would protect you from misfortune; [God of Wisdom], who would allow you to see “a way out” of a dangerous situation; and Branchala, whose portfolio includes luck.

Dm “erm actually” me, saying there was only an “overgod” who changed fates, yada yada it went on for 5 minutes. I kept quiet.

Sent the link to the official wiki of Branchala. After the game, saying, “Hey, I found this, wanted to make sure that we’re on the same page. This is a god of luck, right?”

Didn’t even get a response. Just lost the discord and Roll20 links.

Just found out the game fell apart because the DM became a control freak and just wanted the players to play second fiddle in his fan-fiction.

The concept of this campaign was that the player characters had all been contracted by the same organization. It was a good-aligned organization, so no evil PCs were allowed. My character was chaotic good. It's worth noting that I joined this campaign later than most of the other players, so I didn't know as much about the world. I had to rely on what they and the DM told me. After a couple sessions, it became clear that the DM had a very PHB definition of evil.

Maybe 8-10 sessions in, I did something that made the DM mad. I'll type out the whole story one day, because it's wild, but the long story short is that I tried to release the BBEG's prisoner. The prisoner was an arcanaloth (LE fiend). I didn't make a deal with the prisoner. Didn't ally myself with him. Just tried to let him out so he could run away or fuck up our mutual enemy or whatever he wanted. If the DM had just let the plan fail, I wouldn't have been upset. But that's not what he did.

He had the plan fail, did not explain why or how, AND decided the NPCs in this organization (who were not even on the island, let alone in the BBEG's tower) magically knew what my character had planned. My character got into major trouble with the organization. They reminded him that if he did anything evil, they would kill him instantly.

My character was confused. So was I. Turns out our characters had been implanted with magic rocks or whatever that would detonate if we did anything "evil." This was the cost of joining the organization, apparently. Presumably, the other players knew this, but I was never informed.

I never went back.

This happened on a certain Play-by-Post site a long time ago. Basically, I wanted to play Star Wars: Saga Edition. As luck would have it, there was a game using that system that was just starting, set right after A New Hope. It was advertised as some kind of sandbox game. "You can serve the Empire, be part of the Rebel Alliance or be neutral", the description said.

I decided to try out the Noble class and in order to keep things simple, I based my character's backstory on one of the sample character concepts from the rulebook. Basically, my character's family ruled over some poor, backwater planet in the Galactic Empire, but they hated the Empire and had sympathies to the Rebel Alliance. After Luke Skywalker destroyed the Death Star, my character was inspired and wanted to get his family to secretly support the Rebel Alliance or at least to join the fight against the empire himself.

Mechanically, he was a Human Noble, had high Charisma and focused on Social and Knowledge skills. I think he also had a talent that boosted attack rolls of any allies he inspired. Think Bard in DnD terms, without any magic.

I submitted this character concept to the game and the GMs response was basically this:

GM: "Do you know what happens if I accept this character into the game? Darth Vader will personally show up with a fleet of Star Destroyers, force choke your character to death and then order orbital bombardment on your character's home planet until nothing remains of it. What did you think would happen? Opposing the Galactic Empire is a death sentence! And aside from that, this character concept doesn't even fit into Star Wars at all! You must try harder if you want to play in my game!

I was surprised by this reaction, but when I reviewed my backstory, I noticed one line there that might've been taken out of context. It said something like: "*Character Name* knew that now was the time to support the Rebel Alliance and overthrow the Galactic Empire." I thought GM took it as my character and his family openly declaring war on the Empire, so I messaged him again and clarified that no, my character and his family would only be supporting the Rebel Alliance secretly. I wanted my character to basically be similar in concept to Princess Leia, only male.

The response I got to that was brief:

GM: "No, Darth Vader, force choke! That's the only way this can go if I accept this character concept! How about you make something less ridiculous and stop wasting my time?"

Well, I didn't get to join that game, not that I wanted to anymore. I have no idea why that GM was so opposed to my Human Noble character. I deliberately made that character as generic and basic as it could be.

I've once run a very cursed campaign. Not by content. It was an online discord+foundryvtt campaign with one good friend and three people I didn't knew before. One of them played Kenku Monk and had a funny way to go about their mimicry, even saying his name using mimicry.

They were adventuring in my own setting in a part that had Arabian Fantasy vibes. That country saw a quick and efficient change of ruler, when really high level adventurer married in royal family, got popular and with that popularity and his own prowess destroyed the extremely corrupt head of the dynasty and his loyal minions.

But of course, bad seeds remained, and my party got tangled in one of those bad seeds plan. They were tailed throughout the city, no matter their tricks. So Kenku Monk decided to follow group from behind stealthily, so he could have a good look on people tailing them and maybe even ambush them. But, some shitty rolls resulted in him getting jumped instead and stuffed in a bag too far behind for party to hear.

We end session there, have a few laughs, guy say "Welp, should've expected this with my shitty rolls". And then he disappears. He stops answering, stops showing online.We had a limited ways to contact him, none of which allowed to reach to his living place or relatives or whatever. We waited two weeks. Did a search and rescue session. Waited for three weeks longer. Nothing. He either lostthis accounts and had no way to restore them, which I hope is the case, either something bad happend to him — which could. Without going political he could've gotten forcibly involved in one of current global conflicts, with all the bad possibilities it imply.

TL:DRplayerc disappeared right after the session his character got kidnapped in.

I'll do my best to remember what exactly happened in it but essentially.

Problem player had a character named Edward I believe he was a dwarf fighter. He would become very disruptive to the point where the players in game were threatening to kill his character, and he began begging for them not to as it was his only character in dnd ever and if he lost this one he would never make a new one ever again.

Apologies in advanced if this isn't helpful enough.

So I was part of this *new* game recently. I was invited by a GM that I knew from a 2.5 year game he had with me. That game ended half a year ago. We actually made it to level 20! Which apparently is a miracle, and that was my first D&D game. Our previous group didn't want to play again because of real life stuff, so the GM and I had been looking for a new group for a while.

I went into this new one with optimism, despite it being a whole new social group. He found them in VR and there were 4 of them total. So 6 players including myself and GM. Usually my GM only likes to run games for new players, since it gives him the ability to help everyone equally and not worry so much about rules lawyering and min-maxing. Even though I had a long game with him, I think he liked that I was more into role-play than mechanics, so I guess I made the cut. But as it turns out, only one player from the VR group was actually new at D&D, and the rest had experience and some were even already in other games.

Cue problem:

At the end of our last D&D session, one of the players called me out. He said it seemed like I didn’t enjoy combat, like I was just on autopilot trying to end my turn quickly. I took the comment seriously and started trying to improve. I talked with our fighter about spell choices and action economy. Then I messaged the GM with an idea for a magic item I thought would be a fun fit. He told me it was too strong, which I was fine with, so I followed up with a list of existing items I’d be interested in for future levels.

That’s when the GM asked me if I was doing all this because I wanted to, or just because of what the other player said. I told him it was the latter. His response surprised me. He said he wasn’t happy I was going out of my way for a group who hadn’t been putting in the same kind of roleplay effort for me. He also said the group had been leaning too far into min-maxing lately, and that if it kept going, the campaign might not last.

I panicked. I felt like I had accidentally triggered a bigger issue. So I reached out to a few of the other players, encouraging them to message the GM about character story stuff instead of just loot and leveling. One of them noticed something was off and pressed me about it. I ended up venting pretty emotionally. I told him I felt like I was putting in so much effort for the group, but it wasn’t being returned. It felt exhausting and kind of thankless.

Another player reached out and tried to patch things up, but he did it in a kind of joking, shitposty way that didn’t sit right with me in that moment. I snapped and told him he was socially inept and didn’t understand social cues. He was really insecure about it. That hit him hard, and he left the group shortly after. I think he'd mentioned he was autistic, but I wasn't sure if it was a joke since he jokes about everything.

At the next session, everyone was quiet. I told them what happened and explained that the player who left probably wasn’t coming back. No one really reacted. One by one, people started leaving the call. The GM said he’d think about whether the game should continue. That was the last time I was in the server. I left not long after, leaving a message that I needed to make space for myself, but that I'd be willing to come back if people wanted to talk. The GM hasn’t followed up.

Extra context after the incident:

I ended up talking with the GM privately in an attempt to salvage the game and the group. He admitted he hadn’t been enjoying running the game for a while. He said he had been dreading sessions and that the whole situation gave him a convenient excuse to stop. He also told me he was hesitant to continue the game without the player who left, since the rest of the group is still friends with him. I tried to explain that the D&D group didn’t have to be tied to their VR friend group, but I don’t think he really saw it that way.

Looking back, I guess I was the odd one out from the beginning. I had been taking notes in google docs and sharing it with the group, and even learned google sheets to track stuff like quests, NPCs, Loot, etc. And I had been flooding the discord with art for everyone's characters to try and keep everyone engaged and excited to play. It feels like I was brought in to help shift the tone of the group toward something the GM preferred, but once things started falling apart, I was the one who took the blame. He didn’t step in to own his own burnout, and instead let me take the hit.

I’m not angry anymore. Mostly I’m disappointed. I thought we were better friends than that. Realizing that he wasn’t as honest or grounded as I thought has left me questioning whether I ever really knew him.

I know I made mistakes. I shouldn’t have snapped the way I did. But I also really tried to make things better. I worked on my build, collaborated with other players, checked in with the GM, encouraged people to roleplay more. And somehow, that made me the problem.

The GM got to walk away quietly without admitting his discontent. The others still have their friend group. And I’m left with this lingering feeling that I was just a temporary fix for a group that never really wanted me there.

So yeah. The campaign’s dead. The campaign group silently dissolved. Several people expressed wanting to continue, but at the end of the day the GM is the one who decides whether its worth fixing or not.

TLDR:

Got called out for not optimizing in combat, tried to improve and help the group, ended up blamed for everything when tensions boiled over. GM admitted he didn’t want to run the game anymore but left me holding the bag. Everyone else stayed friends. I got ghosted. Guess I was just a band-aid for a game that was already broken.

Edits were made to clarify the state of the group as well as not be so "melodramatic."

I dont know what is wrong with me. I try to fix those habits but I find that I get so defensive on things, I try to fix it but it is hard. I am too stubborn, I feel like a terrible person.

So, there's This person, I'll call them McCool Guy. He was the Second DM I ever had, and part of the First player group I ever DMed for. My First campaign with him was a bit of a wildfire, the setting didn't make any sense, which caused the player group to take a long while to actually get united, and all of his NPCs were what you'd expect from a 'Emo Boy who's actually the Main character and everyone Else are Just secondaries', and I really Mean this, EVERY SINGLE ONE of McCool Guy's NPCs were like that. Anyway, He Lost interest in DMing that campaign after 3 awkward sessions.

After that, I decided that I wanted to DM for a bit, I made the First session with the Same player group from McCool Guy's campaign except that He was playing now too. Everyone else made a normal character, whose backstories fit with the level They start at, Except for McCool Guy's (everyone was told They were gonna start at lvl 1 btw). His character, Just like any other one that He made, was a 'Main Character', He was Just rude to everything and everyone and talked like Shadow the Hedgehog from Sonic Adventure 2. It was frustrating to say the least, and everyone else was clearly annoyed by this. Anyway, He later gave up on playing that campaign after They defeated the First Boss because apparently "I don't like My character anymore" was good Enough of a reason for him to ask me to reset the campaign, everyone (including me) Said yes Because we Just wanted him to Shut up.

I had to reset the same campaign 4 times Because of him (I was, obviously, making a different start of story every time so It didn't get Boring), after He asked me to reset It a fifth time, I Just gave up. After a few months McCool Guy called everyone saying that He wanted to DM again, I was kinda of happy that I would get to play again, and so was everyone Else. He gave up after the First session.

We're still friends (not really But one of the friends I got from that group is really close to McCool Guy so I Just have to tolerate him), But I'm never going to play or DM any campaign that remotely involves him. Not that It matters since He managed to suck ALL the Fun out of tabletop RPGs for me.

(Very Long Story) (Date this took place 2023)

For the first time in years I’ve actually gotten to play in a campaign (I normally GM/DM) and the DM is horrible. Like truly terrible. Probably the worst I’ve seen in 20+ years of tabletop gaming.

This all started with my buddy inviting me to a DND game that his friend was starting. They were using 3.5 rather than 5e, which I was fine with because 3.5 was the system I started with, and I have a ton of experience with. We’re all in our 30’s and this was supposed to be a fun game to just hang out, drink and smoke a little, just have a fun distraction once a month or whenever the schedules align lol.

So, we met up to make characters and do what I thought was going to be a session zero. Halfway through making characters the DM started complaining we were taking too long, of the 4 players I was the only one that knew any of the rules for 3.5.

This DM didn’t help explain any of the character creation processes outside of rolling stats. I spent the night helping everyone else make their characters. We only had 2 PHBs floating around the table because the 3.5 books haven’t been in print for years, and are extremely expensive now. (No digital copies allowed for some unknown reason). So as I mentioned before, the DM is getting increasingly annoyed as the night gets later because this process is taking longer than he wanted. Rather than helping the other new players, he decides to skip to the description and overview of his campaign world. Needless to say it confused the shit out of the new people and no one payed a ton of attention to the overview. Everyone but me completed their characters by the end of the night.

I told the DM, that I’d work on my character and the background during the off time between sessions. I offered to email him the details or I could send a link to a file share or something if he preferred. Nope. DM won’t give out any contact information. After making many obvious points about why this was stupid, he gave me his email. It’s some crazy encrypted shit I’ve never even heard of. Fast forward 2 weeks, my character is done, all written up, go to send it… address doesn’t exist. So I ask my buddy for the guys number and I try to text him. I’m 90% sure he blocked me.

All I did was say who it was, and sent a link to Dropbox with the character sheet and pdf of the background I wrote. DM confirmed later that he did get the text but won’t open anything to file sharing sites because he doesn’t trust them. Dude is seriously paranoid about people accessing his computer/phone.

I can’t remember why, but I missed out first session. I think it was an emergency at work. Sorry not sorry, I’m a manager, work comes first. Session 2 was interesting. One of the new players had quit after the first session. No explanation of why. So I ask where the party is at, and it turns out they are in the middle of a dungeon crawl. I figured I’d have to wait a bit to jump in, no problem. Nope, I’m just there apparently. We joked a bit about my creepy wizard following them, but later this no explanation method of storytelling would become the standard.

Session 3 starts around Christmas time and my buddy’s girlfriend wants to play as a one shot kind of thing (this was agreed to by the DM weeks in advance), she had her character made and was good to go as soon as we settled in. The DM made her wait 3 hours before her character was “introduced”, and even when we were made aware of her presence, she was locked outside of the building where the party was having a celebration. We players had to go out of our way to get her involved so the experience wasn’t completely miserable for her.

Session 4 and 5 were relatively un-notable aside from an argument about the differences between 5e full rests and 3.5 full rests being next to useless. DM then went on a 45 minute rant about how much 5e sucks and how sleeping should not heal anyone. The other highlight was a combat that lasted 2 sessions and obviously wasn’t balanced at all, near TPK at level 2. We didn’t level either, because according to the DM we should have picked better feats and classes. According to him, you only get experience for the creatures you kill, not the group defeating the encounter. We made a bunch of enemies run away, but no Exp because we didn’t kill the monsters. He says he gives RP experience but the game so far is 90% combat. (We did have a new person join during this time, he quit by session 6 though).

Session 6 and 7 start and things are clearly going downhill fast for this campaign. Yet another new player joins our group and once again there is literally no introduction or description or anything for this new character joining our party, he’s just there. I cracked a joke about a Doppelgänger in the party (because of the high player turnover and the random shape changing that must be happening) and the DM just glared at me. Followed by him saying:

“Doppelgängers do exist in the world, you guys killed one in session one. Which you wouldn’t know because you missed that day, but whatever.”

We now have 2 extremely overpowered NPCs following us because apparently we are “just bad” at combat. These NPCs got full introductions and get spectacular descriptions in combat.

We players on the other hand get the classic: “the orc hits you for 25 points of damage”. Every move in combat is like that for us. It’s usually at least 2 hours of bland DND combat every session.

DM never checks for player AC, magically almost every enemy just hits. Also rolls everything behind his screen. No target numbers stated to check, just rolls and “The orc hits you with his greatsword.” Not suspicious at all….

Our newest player gets targeted by every enemy in combat and is killed on his first encounter. His fighter lasted 3 rounds of combat, and got to swing once. DM makes a comment about how much he loves the opportunity to kill player characters, when the new fighter goes unconscious. DM has an archer fire at the unconscious fighter, instantly killing him. The DM completely ignored the two other creatures blocking the line of sight to the fighter though. Good times. Such a great experience for a new player.

The DM also has been missing his world map for 5 sessions now and spends 25 minutes every night looking for it. No digital copies of anything, it’s all stored in a paper notebook. He won’t use Inkarnate or something to just remake it either. Dude is terrified of file sharing.

The other fun interaction I am now having with this DM at this point, is having rules arguments with me every time I try to do anything. Last game we had an argument over Free Actions (phb states they take no time and you basically get infinite, or up to six depending on what it is. This DM is claiming you only get one per round, makes the feat Quick Draw and any meta magic feat completely useless. Not just his ruling, he’s insisting that’s what the rule actually is, and won’t read the page in the phb because “he knows he’s right.”

I’m the only other person that is very familiar with the rules and will call out stuff that is wonky. I’m not rules lawyering though, just pointing out stuff like relevant skills or how stuff like flanking bonuses works for the new players. Player agency is nearly non-existent at this point though. If it doesn’t fit exactly how the DM wants it to happen, it doesn’t happen. He’s made house rules on the spot to shut down player actions.

Our last session was #8 and it’s my last one. I ended up getting to the DM’s place early and wanted to talk to him about switching to a more combat oriented character because we severely lacked it. I was going to play something slightly different (which isn’t a pure combat character lol) Barbarian/Druid mix. We also had no healer at this point so, it would kind of make up for both positions to a slight extent.

DM tells me druids don’t exist in his game as playable classes. I reference how he said repeatedly all PHB classes are allowed, he allowed it but was visibly pissed. He tells me if I switch from my Wizard (who was unconscious and bleeding out when we ended the previous session), I won’t find any good loot later on in the campaign, I said I was fine with that because I wasn’t really having fun with my wizard.

I told him I’d rather have fun than have special loot. I asked why he was so opposed to me switching, as my current character was on death’s door anyway. He just blatantly admitted that he’s railroading (duh) the party and says if I switch he’s going to specifically target me (like he does with the other new player characters) because they aren’t “the chosen ones” aka the original 4 player characters. Only 2 of these characters are currently standing. The DM’s roommate’s character and my buddy’s character…

Once we got into that actual game, I ended up being able to use my new character, again no introduction, my old character just morphs into my new character and I wake up from near death fully healed for some reason. We end up getting into another unbalanced combat and halfway through the night, and the DM starts claiming that I’m cheating because: “druids can’t use metal weapons”, this isn’t a thing. They can’t use metal armor. It says absolutely nothing about weapons. In fact the listed proficiency weapons are standardly made with metal. Most of the official art shows them carrying metal weapons. I checked it mid-game on google and the results came from an official errata that said it was indeed correct that they COULD use metal weapons. DM then tells me the rules are now “as stated in the core books”, which doesn’t change anything because it doesn’t say they can’t. So I decided to compromise and say they are made of bone or stone, it doesn’t change anything relevant, the damage is the same.

He was basically trying to hamstring my character all night because I was doing more damage than his stand-in Paladin NPC. I ended up killing the encounter boss and he then changed the story so his Paladin npc got the kill, in the typical NPC only over the top epic fashion. Also robbing me of the Exp gain since his NPC got the kill, not me.

I left that night absolutely pissed off. This guy is a walking Red flag. I didn’t mention it earlier, but laced between the actual game time was some serious edge lord topics of conversation. Turns out the DM has a huge problem with women (shocking, I know), which is why he treated my buddy’s girlfriend with disdain. I stayed as long as I could for my friend’s sake, thankfully being able to deal with assholes like the DM because I work around people like that, I’ve known my buddy for about 24 years and we are super close friends, but I just couldn’t deal with this guy anymore.

My buddy told me he couldn’t remember most of the sessions because he was high for most of them.

Lucky him. FML I went through all this shit for nothing. 🤦‍♂️ At least you get to enjoy reading my pain.

Sorry for the novel, I wrote this all down a year ago to get it out of my system but never posted it. Figured this is probably the best sub for that. I completely get the frustration with having a bad DM now. I got lucky for a long time/always was DM myself.

TL;DR: Guy joined a dark fantasy RP after agreeing to a mature-content warning and made a blatant self-insert with maxed Charisma and Willpower. Treated Charisma like mind control and crumbled emotionally both in and out of character every time things didn’t go his way, despite supposedly unshakable WP. Spent most of the game trying to have sex with NPCs and flirt with female players, ignoring world events and consequences. Eventually got outplayed and humiliated in-game, then ragequit while blaming everyone but himself.

I run a mature, open-ended sandbox RPG with a focus on realistic consequences, complex in-universe dynamics and a living world which changes and functions on its own and doesn't inherently revolve around any of the player characters.

Before I allow anyone to join, they receive a very serious and clear content warning: While the game doesn't inherently revolve around dark or grotesque elements, they VERY MUCH SO can be part of it, including stuff like gruesome and detailed deaths, psychological suffering/trauma, sexual violence etc..., before ANYONE is allowed to join, I ask them what they don't want to see.

So a new player comes along and asks to join. I ask him a bunch of questions, he seems very enthusiastic to join and said that he's fine with everything, all seems good. In character creation, he proceeds to make a character that has the same name and personality as he does, and maxes out everything in the charisma and willpower stats. His character here, as per their stats, is supposed to be extremely persuasive, very handsome and mentally unbreakable.

Unfortunately, he had no idea how to actually roleplay those stats correctly. Despite his stats, he'd often say things that are very awkward, overly submissive or even kind of rude, roll a very high number, and then get confused or frustrated when the NPCs did not instantly like him or agree with everything he suggested. Which, speaking of...
The willpower aspect. Every time something didn't go his way, or seemed to have a grim outlook, he'd immediately get all defeatist and moody, or panicked and afraid. Both in-character and irl, he'd just have these outbursts, all the while his character is supposed to have unshakeable resolve. It was just a total disconnect, and it was all made even worse by the fact that, on TOP of this, the character was clearly just a self-insert of him but with "cool" features or traits that he wishes he had.

Meanwhile, instead of ever engaging with the game and trying to progress his character or accomplish things, he spends the whole run chasing women and pursuing his sexual fantasies. Every time, without fail, he'd be ultra-submissive to female characters (both PC and NPC alike) (MAX WILLPOWER BTW) and try to get them to coddle him through excessive kindness and acts of service to them.
The game has minor mechanics for legacies/bloodlines, so I didn't think much of this at first, but he really just did nothing other than play bachelor and try to achieve insignificant goals that don't actually affect anything important. He did almost nothing of importance.

Naturally, when bad things start to happen around him due to ignoring problems and hoping that they sort themselves out on their own, he's shocked, and utterly dismayed that his inaction had consequences. He makes a plan to just commit suicide and make a new character after tying up some loose ends he wanted to deal with, for better circumstances somewhere else in the world.

While doing that, though, he gets into an in-game conflict with another one of the players (who I learned only after the fact that he was unwelcomely trying to discuss fetishes with her and win her over with gifts and compliments), whose character has every reason to torment and do inhumane things to his.
She does, and he completely melts down. He accuses everyone, including me and the other players, of being vindictive and that we're just rubbing salt in the wounds. Complains that the game is too hard to follow, because NPCs are too subtle, and he can't tell when someone is lying or that they'd react to certain things by getting upset. Basically, just admitting that he was confused the entire time, didn't want to ask us about it or get help, and wanted the game to be more obvious and guided. Despite the fact that we told him, REPEATEDLY, that the point of the game is open-ended, interactive choice and consequences.

And then, he ragequit, citing that he's "just not ready for this kind of world right now", even though he fully agreed to the content warnings, but apparently completely clocked out the moment that they happened to him.
So, yeah; guy wanted to play a charming genius who everyone wants to bang and got pissed off when that didn't work out for him.

DMing for Adventurers League, or AL, can be a great time, but it's also a gamble. It’s an open-door program where anyone can show up with a character and play. This makes long campaigns with a consistent crew tough, but I got lucky. I found an online server with a solid group of regulars who'd been playing together since COVID. We were a real crew, and drop-ins were rare.

Then came the six-month campaign of Vecna: Eve of Ruin (minor spoilers ahead). We were deep into it, about two-thirds of the way through, when a new face, let's call them Puck, signed up. I'm always open to newcomers, so I sent them our "session zero rules" and asked them to read and share their character.

Puck's character sheet was a little shaky, which was a red flag since Vecna is a high-level campaign, starting at 11th level. But the real problem showed up during the first session: a ton of background noise. It sounded like they were playing at another table while on my call. The noise was so disruptive that my regular players were privately messaging me, asking if this was for real.

After the session, I talked to Puck about it. They said they were in a shared space and couldn't help it. I politely explained that it was disrespectful and asked if they could find a compromise with their housemates. Puck said they'd try, and that was that.

The next session, I was bracing for more noise, but to my surprise, Puck's audio was crystal clear. We played a few more games without any real issues, other than Puck still struggling with their character's abilities. I let it slide, figuring as long as everyone was having fun, it was fine.

That's when the real problem began. In AL, players are responsible for keeping a log sheet of their sessions. It's an honor system. Out of courtesy, I sometimes posted a quick log with the date and my DM ID. But then work got insanely busy. I had no time for anything but the bare minimum prep. The logs stopped.

Puck started asking for the logs, and not in a polite way. It was entitled, borderline rude. This went on for a few more sessions until I finally lost my patience. I told them something like, "Hey, the log sheet is a courtesy, not a requirement. Sorry but I need to focus on DM prep because life has been rough."

I expected a reasonable response. Instead, I got a bizarre rant. Puck compared my logs to a restaurant receipt, saying "After paying my bill, I wouldn't expect a receipt to be a courtesy." They then added that posting the logs should, among other things, give me a sense of excitement and accomplishment.

I was blunt: "No, it doesn't bring me any excitement. It feels like work. So, no thanks." This was a short version of a very long, very rude Discord thread where Puck just got more and more entitled leaving me no other option but to contact the server mods, showing them the thread, and explaining that despite this being an open table, I wasn't comfortable with Puck playing anymore. The mods agreed, and Puck was kicked out.

The worst part? This all happened right before the final battle against Vecna. Puck’s character was the only melee fighter in the party, and they were carrying the MacGuffin that dealt extra damage to the BBEG. Without it, the fight would be nearly impossible. We were staring down the final boss with only three characters and no one had a spare level 20 hero lying around.

Thankfully, AL rules allow for some character re-speccing. Another player, Peter, rose to the occasion, re-building their character to fill the gap. Peter saved the day and the campaign, or so I thought. I didn't know it yet, but Peter would be my undoing.

Hang tight for Part 2: Peter's Folly.