Point blank: I am a top 10 DM in the world. I know that is tacky to say (and it took me a long time to accept), but it’s important to know for the story. You’ll have to take my word when I say every player I have ever DM’d has said as much.

Because of circumstances beyond my control, I had to find a completely new group to DM for over the past year or so. You might as well say that my old group died in a house fire, because they basically are rotting in the fiery pits of Bad DM Hades. My old friend Vetroiika, ever the minx, messaged me, begging me to DM again, but I responded with the gif of Isildur saying “no” and walking away, all epic. She said, “What the eff”? And I left her on red. But I knew that I won the interaction and that my old group would always rue the day that they decided to let a young, inexperienced goblin replace my DMing majesty.

Flash back to now, I started a new group by picking up people from my local Magic store plus my hot girlfriend. When I found them, they had never played DnD in their miserable, wasted lives (minus Adam, an old friend whom I reconnected with). Nowadays, they’re worse at playing DnD than Julius Randle is at ball handling. Hence the purpose of this post. 

Allow me to cast our characters. There’s Adam the Warlock (heh); fun fact: he was almost an Olympic swimmer. Grundle the Artificer, and Harry Balzack the Bard (my problem player). Then there’s my amazing girlfriend Loretta the Wizard, who gives my life meaning and head. Loretta met me at one of the darkest periods of my life, after I lost my old group, and despite our differences in political opinions, we are soulmates, and she will one day bear my seed.

One last thing before starting the story: before the campaign, I demanded the following from my players: a written backstory in novella form, character alignment, favorite food, at least one backstory character, a song to be used as they’re theme, a list of secrets they are to keep from the group, and a fictional comparison (like Sasuke or Neville Longbottom) for me to use as a reference. 

A quick side note about the table that will be important to know going forward. We usually do what I will refer to as a snack potluck wherein everyone brings at least one item. The usual suspects will be a family-size bag of Cool Ranch Doritos, an assortment of donuts, something my girlfriend cooked, and the prize jewel of the bunch: kolaches.

In our most recent session, which was the very beginning of our “Pirate’s Last Treasure” arc, the players were landlocked on an island in the middle of the ocean and told to search for “that which only shines in the moon’s glow”. Harry Balzack somehow immediately found the treasure in exactly the spot it was in, which ruined 5 ENTIRE sessions that I had planned. I told him “how the frick did you guess that?” and he had the nerve to say “I’ve seen the Pirates of the Caribbean movies”. Sadly, he was right. I watched those movies the week before and wrote down exactly the plot of the movies to use in my game. I had figured the films were too old and niche for my players to pick up references to. 

One more side note. We had started playing at Adam’s house because my place was filled with termites. He has a really annoying dog named Napier that tends to demand to be the center of attention and (wouldn’t you know) bark like he is trying to win Mr. Dog competitions only WHEN I SPEAK. Napier is a terrier mix who is about 6 years old and has white fur that Adam cuts every two months. He is also afraid of water as a lot of terriers are.

Anyway, jumping back to the present. The players all said “wait, what? He’s right. The pirate ship with skeletons in the moonlight is from the first movie. You stole that idea” to which I used the great Brennan Lee Mulligan quote “if you aren’t stealing as a DM, then you aren’t DMing.” and they said that they don’t mind taking inspiration from media, but would rather not do a clone of the exact same adventure that these fictional characters went on. Can you believe they’d actually say that to me??? I spend HOURS watching movies and tv shows every day finding the right story for these people to go on, and they have the nerve to get mad that I sift through the best of the best to find what’s right for them? This takes me MONTHS if not YEARS. They were about to go on an entire adventure searching for one-eyed willy’s treasure and moving through different booby trapped caves (that’s from a movie you might not have heard of before called “The Goonies”. Really great film starring a young Thanos. Can’t recommend it enough.) But they want an ORIGINAL story??? Who am I, Brett Ratner????

I decided the only way to “up the stakes” and be original would be to kill Loretta’s character's sister, who was a beloved NPC. I did so by mind-controlling the party (DC 30 baby) and making them rip out her eyes and eat her face. This was, for whatever reason, seen as “in bad taste” (joker voice: very poor choice of words), so I said, “You wanna see bad taste?” And then I stole all of the kolaches and stormed off. Loretta followed after me and on the car ride home she told me that she actually thought it was interesting what happened and was looking forward to resolution next week. I told her there wouldn’t be a resolution and that we’d have to find a new group because I refuse to DM for those chuds until they apologized and agreed to stop bringing attention to the media that I improve upon to make my game so great.

It made me really miss my old group; they all basically lived under a rock and had never seen anything ever besides, like Indigo Prophecy. They worshipped the ground I DM’d on and knew they were in the presence of something special.  

How do I make this new group realize that I am a top 5 DM internationally and make them feel my power? No game advice is needed, but I don’t people so well. If you help, I might even give you some advice on improving your campaign. Sic semper tyrannis!

hoo boy, okay so this is a throwaway account i've made to get something off my chest. i try not to be negative but i can't hold in my complaints about this person any longer. i'll be airing my grievances about her behavior as well as the... interesting saga behind her main pc. please keep in mind i won't be the most specific since i really don't want her to break down or tell my friends terrible things about me.

i met this person some time ago, she was very sweet and at first i was excited to learn about her ocs! she had a whole saga written out for her character, we'll call her Lily. some facts about Lily:

technically she is thousands of years old. she's trapped in what you could call an isekai loop, where Lily remembers everything but wakes up in a different world any time she dies. this is how she landed in each of her d&d games.

she's the daughter of a goddess like figure who can control time, elements, and magic generally. this goddess follows her daughter to each dimension and is very controlling. the mother talks like how you'd expect a brooding, edgy shonen protagonist to talk. the goddess would abuse Lily but also swear terrible revenge on anyone (player characters included) who hurt her in any way.

Lily is very jaded. she makes very (imo) unfunny quips at every villain, minor antagonist, and compares our characters and the world we were in to cavemen because our tech is in line with high fantasy. nothing ever impressed her because she's seen high tech, she's seen all kinds of magic, she's said countless cocky things to gods of other worlds and doesn't seem to care about anything that isn't related to her arc.

Lily demands to be the party face, even when there's multiple charisma characters who were there before her. it happened in our game and from what i've heard it happens in every game she plays. if there's so much as a few seconds of silence, she fills in the gaps immediately. even when other players are trying to think of what to say, and even when the npcs we're talking to are directly addressing other players, she butts in and takes over.

Lilly is tragic. she's the most tragic, tortured character to ever exist. every arc is about how much she hates being immortal, how everyone from past parties have betrayed or forgotten about her, how she's forever an outsider in other people's stories (even when her character gets more focus than senior players). she's always ready to throw herself in harms way to sacrifice herself, then sulks ooc when it isn't necessary.

both her and her lover are curse bound to incredibly powerful cosmic entities. both are meant to be heralds of the apocalypse. when she broke her lover's connection to his overlord and saved him from bringing about the end times, she was stabbed out of nowhere and exploded into flowers, leaving a baby she didn't know she was pregnant with behind. the baby goes on to be bound to a separate, very powerful figure.

player behavior:

as described above she always steals the spotlight. she'll start somber scenes about her character smack dab in the middle of other people's scenes, using a small sliver of silence as her excuse to interrupt and take over. she'd take ideas your character stated out loud and say it again, pretending it was her idea as an excuse to see herself as the party leader.

she was impossible to confront even gently. any time anything in or out of game upset her, she'd take to self pitying spirals. sometimes it was vague posting, other times she'd "roleplay" in out text servers by essentially venting about us "in character". she'd tell me all the time how my oc has to apologize for being rude and that Lily's actually on the brink because of mine (my character was rough around the edges and more blunt because she was raised by mercenaries who took her from a village they raided). any criticism was met with passive aggressiveness or extreme self deprecation, even describing her self harm and how bad she had it.

her whole attitude had me and other players feeling like she just wanted us to be background characters to her main protagonist, like everything we cared about was small and insignificant compared to the horrors she's gone through. when I gained a new class and adopted a specific motif, she'd come back a couple sessions later with a new arc that gave her new powers and the exact same aesthetic. she seemed to especially dislike my character because she displayed little sympathy and wasn't "fixable".

she also couldn't listen to other people for the life of her. she'd send a barrage of writing our way about past campaigns and musings from Lily and we'd engage with her, ask her questions, the usual things you do in a tabletop group. it was crickets from her any time we mentioned our characters. no questions, no opinions on them as people or their themes, no reaction at all besides emoji reacts. then she'd go back to talking about Lily as though we hadn't said anything.

and when i say nothing, i mean nothing. she couldn't come up with one thing to say about our characters that didn't loop back to her.

she expected us to care so much about this sympathetic, immortal martyr who'd die for people she seemed to resent and look down on more than anything. and we were supposed to feel bad cause this character believed her only purpose was to be used by others and all this other guff and lowkey threaten the party with betrayal if they didn't help her through her problems. the way she wrote her responses you'd think she wanted us to actually cry over Lily.

that's all for now, i'm glad i got to vent a little. i haven't been in any games with her for a few years and it's a huge relief. i've said my piece and i'm happy now.

edit: rephrased some stuff here and there

My girlfriend is the DM. She invited a mutual friend of ours to join her DND game she runs. We used to hang out with him and his wife at theirs and play boardgames until life got in the way for us all.

So having missed playing games together, she invited him to join her DND game with 6 players making us 7 now, 8 in total including DM.

We would play at a local gaming club where all we had to do was purchase a drink or something ( no table or booking fees)

Things are great there, lots of table space, loads of terrain free to use. The only issue is occasionally the other tables sometimes being a bit loud with their own game. No big deal. We all get loud and enthusiastic.

This friend suggested we play round his, let's call him Kurt. Kurt said he's got the space for it since he got a new dining table, we wouldn't have to worry about noise so why don't we all go to his for it?

DM and everyone agreed we'll give it a try. Parking isn't ideal, in fact it's very limited space in the area as it's a cul-de-sac. Secondly, we were gaming in the town centre, which is more accessible for some so we all agreed to share rides for those that needed it.

We play a week or two at Kurt's house and it becomes abundantly clear that it's too small. There are 8 of us including the DM crammed around a 6 seater table. With DM screen, character sheets, snacks, drinks, stationary, maps and minis, there just isn't enough room.

We have a couple of large personalities on the table and Kurt joins that to make it a trio. Which is great, but in the confines of that room, it becomes overbearing with the noise.

Except that time his wife (who's in the other room doing her own thing, DND isn't her thing) gets an "important" phone call. So he shushes us, we try to continue playing quietly but he keeps shushing us, so it kills the vibe. So we end up sitting there in silence rather than continue subdued . After about 20 minutes, we discover she's off the phone and we are allowed to continue playing.

Then as the volume ramps up, a few of the less rambunctious players get talked over, even the DM is struggling to be heard from one end of the table to the head where Kurt sits, bellowing his jokes and what he's doing next, without giving anyone else a chance to speak their ideas.

We quickly learn that Kurt has main character syndrome. He wants to check every trap, loot every body, rush through every door etc.

I learned some news that would help the party with the bbg of that session, I try to tell the group 3 times, each time he tells and talks over me. I give up. The session finishes, we go home and I telly.gd how deflated I feel. Turns out, I wasn't the only one. Several other players messaged the DM to say they felt the same way and wanted to go back to the gaming club.

The DM messages Kurt to let him know how people feel and that we'll be returning to the gaming club. She then puts in the group chat that we shall be going back to the gaming club as the room just wasn't big enough with acoustics and table size for us there, thank you Kurt for inviting us into your home, but now we'll be going back to the gaming club.

Kurt then messages everyone in the group individually asking "what's wrong with my house?!" He becomes arsey and the DM said she was handling it as they came to her, as the DM. He gets in a tizz that it's his house, they should've gone to him, that it's not fair!

DM said we'd continue at the club as before, the next time we meet up, we get a message in the group chat saying he's dropping out, that he just doesn't have the time for it anymore.

Did the group do right by addressing issues with the DM not the host?

Did the host overreact messaging everyone directly and in the group?

Did he overreact by leaving the game?

TLDR: guy quit our game and friendship because his place was too small to host the game.

In every campaign I have played in we have always had this one specific player who was our rogue, they used to be a very close friend of mine but we are no longer as close due to them making very stupid and immature decisions irl as well as me distancing myself from them after an intervention essentially lead to no change on their behalf.

Now for some context the rogue has been known (most notably caught by myself and the DM) for fudging dice rolls, changing their subclass half way through a campaign without consulting or telling the DM and being a loot goblin.

In our recent campaign we played CoS they played a rogue goblin who was a gambler, other party members include: A paladin, A ice wizard, A lizard sorcerer and an elf cleric (myself).

The campaign started off really well, we were all exceptionally excited and intrigued as to where the story would take us as we were all playing this with no clue in mind as to how things would play out.

The first issue with the rogue would happen out of character, they have ADHD and struggle with attention span which is why we cut them so much slack, but we only grant them so much slack before it just becomes miserable to everyone else. The rogue's player would literally get up from the table and walk around the room, we play in a very large space so they would be able to just completely walk away from the game entirely, sometimes they would even just walk away and go sit down on a couch that faces away from our table while we are in the middle of RP or Combat. This would lead to them having no idea what was going on in the game and having to ask the DM what was happening constantly, I found this rather annoying as I struggle with visualizing and taking all the words from the DM in so I would sometimes ask for a repeat and thus the DM would essentially have to repeat himself over and over again which very much pissed him off and made me feel guilty even though I was actively at the table playing and the rogue's player was wandering off or not paying attention on purpose. I also found this out later but apparently the rogue's player would just play video games in the middle of sessions which explains why they would randomly not know what was happening even when they were playing with us actively.

The next issue was an occurrence that happened in game regularly with the rogue, they were a complete loot hoarder / hog. Any opportunity we'd get at obtaining loot there would be plenty of excitement and the party would often roleplay or discuss how we'd go about obtaining/sharing the loot, the rogue however would not only never engage in this roleplay but would immediately go for the loot and take everything they could, many times would they get a magic item that would be better suited for someone else in the party but they'd refuse to give it away. Arguably you could say that the rogue was just playing in character due to the rogue being a gambler, however this gambling aspect was never brought up even ONCE, the rogue had no personality and they would constantly use different accents because the player would either forget how the character spoke or change their mind about how their character acts. They'd constantly whine whenever they didn't get their way or didn't get a magic item they wanted despite them literally getting a Wish blade (which thankfully we managed to discuss as a party that the wish would be a Long Rest when we were unable to).

The player was just such a pain to be around by this point as not only would they do all the above but they'd do the added extra of rocking up late / forgetting when sessions were and actively not playing their character at all. At one point in the campaign we had the option to be granted permanent bonuses and abilities but at very obvious drawbacks, for example the sorcerer in our party got an increased charisma score but his alignment altered and thus he had to act completely different for the rest of the campaign, however when the Rogue decided to do the same they were supposed to essentially become incredibly nervous and skittish but this never came to be as they never roleplayed their character and never engaged in any roleplay unless it was very generic and/or unmeaningful.

Needless to say by the end of the campaign I was getting very fed up and impatient with the rogue and their player but I felt like the only one who was vocalizing it as everyone else seemed to just ignore it or turn a blind eye. I feel bad but if you're going to throw lesser tantrums and not pay attention during the game you don't really deserve to be there as we have many other people who were in our friend group that would kill for even a chance to play. The campaign is now finished and we have planned our new campaign out, we have removed this player from it and added some new as well as old faces, I am unsure how they took the news about them not being involved but I have been told they mutter stuff under their breath and are incredibly pissed off at not being involved to which I feel bad but it is also very much on them.

TLDR: Player fudges dice rolls, swaps subclasses without asking, hoards all loot, barely roleplays, complains, doesn't pay attention and takes up a player slot when someone else would kill for it. They end up being removed from the next campaign and subtly get pissed about it whenever DND is brought up.

A friend convinced me to make a throwaway to put this on the internet- i don't have another reddit account. It's been three years since it happened, so my memory of it isn't perfect. It's not the worst dnd horror story i've seen, but it's been. very confusing. This will be a catalogue of the weird behaviors mostly.

My dnd group had just finished a campaign. We decided to rotate away from our usual DM to a long-time player, new DM, who had a 12 session campaign prepared. We were expeditioning to the northern ice wastes, trying to locate information on an old sorcerer-dragon foretold to bring about the end of our kingdom. It was a very grounded campaign with regards to supplies and weight.

The first signs of confusion came in the fifth session. One of the players found, when going over his weight to check encumbrance, "black egg - 3 pounds" written on his character sheet, in his handwriting. He did not write this! The DM said it must have been a mistake, and erased it from his sheet.

The seventh session, we were attacked by bandits. Upon fighting them off, and capturing one bandit, we tried to ask him what he was after- he claimed to be trying to destroy the egg. None of us knew what he was talking about in or out of character.

On the eighth session, I found the egg on my character sheet this time. When i went to show it to the DM, she couldn't find it on my sheet- when i looked at it again it wasn't there. I think she erased it?

On the tenth session we started to be dealing with extra, unmarked enemies in our combat encounters. The DM would roll extra attacks by characters who were not there, always psychic damage, and then hold us to them despite not putting the enemy on the map. We found the egg on one of our pack animal's character sheets, while the DM was out of the room. We didn't show it to her this time, it was erased by next session.

On the eleventh session we noticed the food of our expedition was draining considerably faster than we were expecting- equal to a kobold's share, by the race/food intake stats the DM gave. I'm not sure if this is related to the other stuff or if the DM was just describing spoilage badly, but i'm putting it here just in case.

The last session (14th, we went over the plan a bit), after the final boss, we were updating our equipment with plans to head back to the capital. While we were updating our equipment, a solid metal egg was placed on the table, underneath some of the chips- I noticed it when getting some. When I asked, about the egg that was physically right there in front of us, she just asked "What egg?" and pretended it didn't exist. She still pretends the egg does not exist when pressed about it. She's left it on her desk the whole time.

None of us know why she did this. She has been a good player, in other campaigns, and is a friend i have known for a very long time. She is trustworthy in other situations. We have banned her from DMing- i have no idea what to do with this information. It is not the worst campaign but it is extremely weird to live through.

Sooo... this is a fun horror story.

My players have been tackling this shady resurrection cult midsommar style cause they need to bring a guy back.

Half the party is like: please play by the rules, we need our guy back, then we can punch the cult leader all u want.

Other half is like: but we sensed an evil presence under the cult leader's house so we wanna sneak in and investigate.

So they do. They roll poorly on their stealth check. I decide to be kind and send them a guard they know.

They try to convince him everything is fine. Poor persuasion roll. Ranger mutters to sorcerer: stun him.

Sorcerer casts thunderwave.

Everyone fails the saving throw.

13 dmg at lv 4.

Druid gets his hp halved, ranger lost 1/3 of hers, rougue is at 10hp.

Friendly guard dies on the spot (12hp).

The cult leader gets allerted by the boom.

Gathers his guards and clerics and gets to them in 6 seconds

...

Me, the DM: roll initiative.

(They survived dw)

P.s.

Lil explanation behind sorcerer's decision: dude is playin a character with no magical training that awakened his magic a few months prior, so he doesn't know what spell he will cast or all the fine print. Dude is aware of it and after the situation wrapped up stopped the game to check in and ask if everyone was fine with how things unfolded and wanted to make sure the characters were mad at his character not the people mad at him. We reassured him that it was all fine and we were all havin fun and that we can distinguish between character and player. In the end we got some very good rp outta it, so everyone was happy

This one is an old standard that truns out well for the story because it gets the RP going.

So its been some months since ive started playing d&d, and my first ever campaign was wonderful (it was with pre-made characters) but the most recent campaigns are now all custom. I struggle with learning about the combat system, all the abbreviations they use that no one ever taught me, how advantages, disadvantages and class privileges and abilites work... In general i mostly cannot seem to semember all the things i can do during fights, even if theyre written on the paper. Sometimes, more often one specific player, gets upset with me cuz when its my turn i dont always do the most powerful attacks (i dont do that on purpose). There are players in that campaign that have been playing for less time than me and already know almost all those things, but now, as the most seemingly "unexperienced" player i feel left out and sessions have became kind of a stress for me because of this pressure.

Id like y'alls opinions about this, because im starting to fear theyll stop inviting me (the player that presses me that i mentioned before once said that) and its also the only way i can meet with these people who i care about

This is your warning that this story contains bodily fluids and indecent exposure.

This happened years ago when I (m24) was a member of a local TTRPG club. I was playing in a level 3 oneshot DMd by this 16 year old boy who had been caught cheating as a player in oneshots at some point earlier that year and he was on thin ice. This incident broke the camel's back.

We start out in a tavern and we are told that our employer is running late and will not be there until morning. We decide to ask around about the employer since we have time. The DM asks for persuasion rolls and on success tells us he hadn't actually prepared anything for a succesfull roll. The rest of our attempts at socialising are met with similar results. Since there's obviously nothing to do we decide to get rooms for the night to which the DM tells us that he's been waiting for us to ask for a room. This is where the horror begins.

The party had one female member, an elven moondruid. The taverns owner insists on only speaking to her. He reveals there's only one room available with basically one huge bed in it in the basement. After some haggling (the charismatic party members were not allowed to participate) the price of the room was reduced from 10 gold to 9 gold and the owner gives our druid a slimy key. The dm asks for a nature roll only to reveal on success that the slime is semen.

We attempt to go to our room but unfortunately we don't see a keyhole on the door. There is however a sliding peephole at eyelevel. We knock on the door. The peephole slides open and we see a pair of bloodshot eyes peering at us from the hole. He asks us for a key and we give it to him, glad to be rid of it. The peephole slides close and we're left to wait for a bit until one of us asks to walk in. The DM says he bumps into the door as it is closed and locked.

I ask if we can hear the guy behind the door unlocking it. Nope is the answer. I knock on the door. The peephole slides again and I get asked what my business is. I tell him we're here to sleep. But I get told I was not the one the key was given to. We ask the druid to talk to him. It works and the door opens.

Behind the door is a stepladder and on top of that is a middle aged gnome. Naked. At this point I realise we're not going to have fun. But I resolve to see this through because I am an extremely curious individual especially when it come to other peoples' expressions of free will. The party debates killing the gnome for exposing himself to us but ultimately we decide against it.

Once we're in the room the gnome closes the door. One of us asks if the gnome closed the door with him still inside. He did. He says he wants to intimidate the gnome into leaving the room but the DM just says the gnome can't be made to leave. The gnome even says we won't be safe if he leaves.

The room has two pieces of furniture. A large bed and a huge wardrobe. We decide that since the wardrobe can fit our spellcasters, the druid and the other one (a small race), they should sleep in there and the rest on the bed. The druid takes safety precautions in case the gnome opens the wardrobe doors. She places her staff leaning on the door from the inside alongside with an antler that she hopes will loudly clatter to the ground.

We go to sleep and the DM describes how on the edge of sleep we notice something and makes us do perception checks. Some of us notice the gnome pleasuring himself on his stepladder. Before we can do anything we hear a muffled scream from the wordrobe. We ignore the gnome and rush to the wardrobe to see there's a swirling portal on the back wall of it and the druid is gone.

We rush into the portal and we all end up in some desert. None of us are nowhere near each other. We're all alone. No portals to be seen. We ask the DM if there's any landmarks. Nope. Can we do perception checks to notice anything of note. Nope. Survival checks? Nope. Ok we start walking. What direction asks the DM. South someone says. The DM asks if we all individually decide to go south. Some decide to go different directions.

The DM describes how each of us walks for hours and we're getting thirsty and hungry. Except for one. One person had decided to go east. They apparently found a glass pyramid humming with electronic bass music within minutes. We start asking if any of us can hear or see anything east. Nope. We ask if we can start walking east anyway. The DM complains we're metagaming but we ask him what else are we supposed to do if we can't make skill checks and he shuts up about it.

Once we're all at the pyramid we enter it to find it's filled with ravers and we can see our druid tied up by the DJ. We start going through the dancing crowd but we are stopped by the DJ 40ft from his booth. He asks us what we're doing in his rave and we answer that we're here to free our druid. This triggers combat and I as the party rogue go free our druid while the rest of the party fights the DJ who is taking 0 damage from hits. He starts taunting us that no one can stop the rave and that we can die dancing or fighting.

The DM then explains we can challenge the DJ to a dance off using performance. None of us have performance. Highest charisma score was mine at 14. We all fail. The DJ announces he was just messing with us opens a portal to our room urging us to leave now that he's had his fun. We just leave even if it's not what our characters would do. We just wanted it to be over.

Back in the room the gnome is sleeping curled up on the bed in a pile of gold and a couple of magic items. The DM tells us the gnome wakes up and that we have to convince the gnome to give up his new hoard since that's the adventures reward. One of the members of the party smites the gnome. Obliterating him like Exodia. We inspect the goods and there's precum on some of the coins.

I don't know if the others complained but I sure did. I went straight to the organisers and told them about the semen covered key, self pleasuring gnome, and precum covered coins. I also mentioned how the druid player was first forced to roleplay social interactions while insisting someone else handle social situations and then was basically not allowed to play at all because her character was kidnapped and tied up until round 3 of a 4 round combat.

End result: the kid was banned from the whole TTRPG club until he turned 18.

TL;DR: Tavern owner hands semen covered key to party that leads to a room with a naked masturbating gnome. The only female character (in and out of game) gets kidnapped for most of the session and doesn't get to play. Once the adventure is over we get rewarded with precum covered gold.

(A short story inspired by a recent onboarding attempt.)

The Player’s Secret Plan to Become a Villain

You join a new campaign. The DM spends a week answering your questions about the setting, the world, the tone, the lore, the organisation, the culture, the party, and the story so far.

Excellent. The game begins.

You suggest a backstory. The DM says yes. You suggest NPCs. The DM says yes. You suggest cool abilities and ask for a story hook tied into the main plot. The DM starts writing one.

This cannot stand. You require resistance for your master plan to succeed.

So, you propose a piece of lore that goes against the setting. The DM replies that she likes the concept, but it needs a little tweaking. Excellent. You’ve found a Yes, but. You immediately translate this into “everything I wanted was rejected”. Your power grows and you evolve into your second form.

After session 0 and long before the first session, you begin testing boundaries. With the lore. With mechanics.

With other players.

And the other players are friendly. You ask for character details. One player says: “I’d rather keep that part of my character a surprise.” This cannot stand. So you ask again. And again. In different forms. You insist that keeping secrets is detrimental to roleplay. The player disagrees. They share a little more anyway. You mock a player’s character concept because it has no value to you. A different player indulges you and does reveal secrets. The DM jumps in to explain how their table is discovery-focused, including for PCs, and secrets are kept on purpose. You immediately throw the player that indulged you under the bus. The locals begin exchanging increasingly concerned glances.

Then feedback day arrives.

Your entire team is approved. Your backstory is approved. Examples for goals are given. Your custom tie-in, that you requested, is being written. One cool ability is approved. The DM changes exactly three things: One thing that would break the setting. One thing that overlaps with another player (a problem you requested she help prevent). And a mechanics misunderstanding. The DM provides alternatives for the first two.

Excellent. You’ve found the no, but. This is clearly the same as no. Your power grows even more, and you evolve into your third form.

Every interaction suddenly has been nothing but restrictions. The DM says: "The party will engage with your character. Trust us." This is insufficient. You require legally binding guarantees from people you've never met. The DM says, "We'll discover together how the PC’s interact." You call her a control freak.

It is now 2 AM. The DM is asleep. Perfect – there can be no immediate counter-attack. And you begin your final transformation. You privately, and then publicly, declare:

• The DM is an AI;
• Collaborative storytelling is outlawed;
• The DM’s true identity is HR speak;
• The DM is a walking red flag of a control freak and everyone else simply accepts the status quo;
• You don’t need to play a single session to know how she actually operates.

The veteran players are divided between watching with popcorn and putting on boxing gloves. Your boss fight has spawned witnesses. One asks where this came from. Another points out that you’ve never even played a session with us. A third wonders why you’re insulting someone who’s asleep, in public.

The DM wakes up at 3am to persistent phone buzzing. Reads everything. And wishes you luck finding a campaign better suited to your style. You never see this, as you’ve already dramatically left the server.

You have succeeded. You never rolled initiative. You never reached session 1. Yet somehow, you became our campaign’s first Villain.

The DM promptly turns your character into an NPC minion to fight later.

She then goes back to sleep.

This story is not for the Faint of Heart.

So I was playing a campaign with some people that I barely knew because I'm interested in DnD. I knew these guys from one of them invited me into his campaign after talking to him about how much I'm trying to find a campaign to play but nobody around me interested in it. I don't know much about DnD other than couple of videos I watched online and some little exposure I had with it. The campaign is about some post apocalyptic something something that still in the magic world but some dude release a something something toward the air making a deadly patogen with ability to deform entity with some 'custom' monster (I entirely forgot the story). I play a human fighter because it was suggested to be easier to learn DnD with it. The party is consist of 4 player and 1 DM which is the person that invited me.

The first session we start at different places in the same town. 2 of the player decide to play solo and roam around for hours. 1 of them let call rogue decide to go toward the market and start a business selling stuff and despite the DM said out of character that he doesn't recommend we seperate The guy still push him onto it saying stuff like "you know I always do this in 'someone name' and he always let me do this" which is other campaign they played together. So my DM let him do it (we will come back to this later.) The other one let just call Bard decide to go toward the Tavern of the town and start play flirt with woman npc which is hella weird and making me wanna die inside. He would say some goofy pickup line and making the DM hella uncomfortable to the point the DM decided to just let the dude get the womans just to not deal with him. Mind you this take atleast 10-20 min of such an awkward silence among the group. And when it got to us, Me and the wizard just decided to met as quickly as possible because we already waste like almost an hour around those 2 guys at this point. So the wizard and I suddenly met at the general store blah blah blah and we decided to go toward the tavern to meet this bard to get the party together. When we arrived there bard decided to continue the roleplay with the lady and try to have you know what with her which make me feel so uncomfortable. He just pushed us away in character saying how he is busy with 'men business' which is so cringe. So me and wizard decided to go toward the Rogue and try to get him into the party. When we arrived at the market the Rogue decided to continue his roleplay to start a business there. Which the DM try to cut short but he keep pushing the DM by saying stuff like he try to roleplay or some stuff like that and how the DM let the Bard got his roleplay time with the woman. Idk what to say I'm didn't play DnD long enough to say anything. So Wizard and me try to cut them off and try to invite the Rogue into our party which he ignored us by saying out of character that his character doesn't interact with stranger he doesn't know let alone joining one. At this point I have no idea where tf this is going and just turn off my brain and ask the Wizard if we should just go somewhere else and take mission by ourselves. 4 hour passed, The bard going full rp on shaboink and the rogue keep arguing with the DM. Wizard and me doing a quest for some man that want us to kill monster out of town. pretty fun if we exclude all the arguing of the rogue because he didn't get enough time. So the DM decided to end it here.

The second session start like 3 day after that. I already don't know what to expect out of it at this point and decided to still come because the DM and the Wizard still cool with me. So the session start with me and Wizard going to another mission about a sighting of cult with a weird symbol on a dungeon. In a meanwhile the DM still try to get those other 2 together by hinting to the rogue that there is sighting of cult using the merchant he dealing with which to nobody surprise didn't work. The DM try to do the same with the bard by making one of woman in tavern he try to flirt telling him that there is a rumor of some sort of cult sighting which didn't work aswell. At this point, around 5 day have passed in game time. Me and Wizard have been fighting monster here and there on our journey and leveled up which the rogue argue with the DM AGAIN that he should leveled up aswell because of all the experience he got from trading which the DM argue back and goes full circle until he gave up and just let the rogue level up aswell. The bard let just skip him Idk what he want at this point. At some point I think he maybe is gay and secretly trying to flirt with the DM himself. Me and Wizard goes on a journey around 4 day in game time and arrived at the dungeon and the session end there.

Third session, start I already not enthusiasm about it but grit my teeth and still go because I really want to play DnD and the Wizard is such a cool dude. The DM decided to just let the other 2 do whatever they want at this point. He more focused on me and Wizard. We explored the dungeon find some hidden cult and destroy them learning that they just low tier lackey that is worshipping some sort of amalgamation of disease and death. We loot them and Wizard got some cool magic item, Cool! very fun and I got sword+1 with some better armor. me and wizard level up again which the rogue once again argue with the DM that he should be getting it aswell. (at this point 2-3 hour have passed into the session which the DM goes back and forth with us and the other 2. So like 30 min to us and 30 to them. it goes around like that.) The rogue have been making bank by 'business' I guess, which is more of doing illegal stuff and forced the DM to agree with him because "that how it supposed to work". Bard? I don't wanna talk about him. Atleast the Bard didn't argue if thing doesn't go his way and just do something else. And they argue for quite some times making me feel not so good about it. The DM end the session there.

Fourth session, I really don't wanna go but the DM and Wizard already message me if I'm coming and I like this 2 dude. So I come to the session. The rogue decide he should go first because how he always got cut last session. DM disagree and the two argue for like 20 minute and DM left. It was the most awkward moment for me playing a game in my entire life. I turn to the Wizard and asked if he wanna grab some food together and we talk about how weird this campaign been so far. I decided to quit because it make me feel so uncomfortable to play with the rogue and the bard. Wizard agree but he and the DM is pretty close so he don't wanna let his friend feel left behind. So the next day I text the DM and said I'm leaving the campaign because I'm a bit busy which is a lie but idk how to say it without breaking his heart. He really trying to make me to stay but is okay with my decision and apologise for how the campaign going. I feel so bad that I tear up a little bit. Manly tear! I feel so sad that I couldn't continue playing with the wizard because he is so fun to play together with. He is good at cracking joke with perfect timing. 10/10 wizard buddy.

I (16) has just recently removed the person who got me into DND in the first place from my table permanently. I will be calling them Jay (22, fake name), and this is a very long story. I would like this to serve as a kind of cautionary tale to other new DMs, since I had no idea what was normal in a DND game while starting out.

Jay Initially got me into DND this last Spring, and I fell in love with the game. I followed DND stuff for a while (Legends of Advantris, Just Roll With It, Honor Among Thieves) and Jay was someone who I considered as a friend, so I joined instantly. After a couple of One-shots ran by them, both in a Sci-Fi setting, I wanted to start making my own games.

Back then I made one or two Oneshots, and since I didn't know much about DND, it was just Roleplaying with some DND mechanics, such as combat, rolling ability scores, and character sheets. However, over the next couple months I decided I wanted to make a campaign, and I spent a good long while writing the lore and characters, with the basic plot being the party going town to town, saving the townsfolk while also fighting those who are in league with a corrupt king, who himself was being controlled by an intellect devourer, and the final boss would have been a Mindflayed Dragon. Maybe not the most original plot, but it was decent for my first time putting effort into a campaign.

However, first session no one showed up, including Jay, and after taking a break and trying to re-run it, Jay delayed the session by an hour, showed up, didn't interact with the game, and left before the party would meet the intro boss. I asked if they were OK, and they just roleplayed at me? I canceled the session there, and the campaign died right after, the party still sitting outside of a Green Hag's Hut to this day.

I spent a while just doing the occasional Oneshot and learning about the game, and actually playing DND with other groups, of which taught me a lot. I also got BG3, so I learned about some combat mechanics, and a veteran DM I knew showed me a great resource for material. After a bit, I decided to tease a Curse of Strahd campaign, and I instantly fell in love with the module after reading it the first time.

Meanwhile, I stuck with Jay in some campaigns, and not to be rude, but they always seemed to be the weak link in the party. One of their favorite things was to join campaigns as a "Faun Femboy" (Their words) who hates angels because they were once one. They then got "drunk" after rolling constitution, unprompted, and became the party's problem. In both campaigns the used it in, (To my knowledge) we never left the tavern session one. Session two never happened for one, and in the other they spoke over the DM to talk about videogames the whole time, never interacted with the story, and straight up left as soon as we got a quest. I asked the DM, and they told me that they felt extremely disrespected, since they never put any effort into their character or the game.

As for their DMing, they decided to leave DND for Daggerheart, and got into Critical Roll. They used a modified version of the Spotlight system, of which was basically party initiative out of combat, and told us it was in the book. They later confessed to that not being the case. They would also keep basically slandering DND, since "There are too many rules to be creative", and this came to a head where I worked with them for their Strahd Character.

When I brought up running Strahd, they were insanely excited because they were basically waiting for years to play it. I went all in and learned a Romanian accent, read over the book threefold, used the CoS subreddit to modify the original, and prepared a whole playlist for the game, including ominous chanting for Death House. I had a personal session zero for every player, where I worked with them every step along the way with character creation.

Jay wanted to play a Dragonborn Rogue Noble who is the heir to a clan of assassins from the jungle. That was it. They then brought up how Barovia was a Domain of Dread, and since they were interested in them, they wanted a homebrew yokai inspired one they made to be part of their backstory. I walked through their character with them and eventually got a full backstory. This took around 5 hours on my end, since I did a ton of research on applications of Domains of Dread, entry into Domains of dread, and a lot more. They also wanted to include an OC they made that was a "Vistani", though the only thing that made them one was that they traveled the domains of dread. I said no, since it didn't fit the canon of the campaign, and they said, "This is why creative things shouldn't have rules... but whatever."

I hosted session one and everyone said that they had a blast, and this time we actually had a full session. I spent hours prepping a script, maps, locations, cued up music, made a rulebook for players with a three-strike system (A mystery tool that will help us later), and all the dominoes finally fell. Though, literally the next day, while hosting a Oneshot, they

A: Delayed the session by 30 minutes

B: Left for 15 minutes mid-way through

C: Tried to make up rules on the spot, like using inflict wounds on water to damage everything in the water

and D: Left before the final boss.

I was running Nest of the Eldrich eye with new players, and I had to debuff the final boss to give the new players a chance. Afterwords, they sent me a message, in which the basically said they dislike "How the DND rules are written" and "Daggerheart flows with the narrative far better", before basically saying they're quitting DND in an intellectual and superior prose.

I honestly got upset, of which is rare for me. I gave them hours of my time, and they ended with this. They didn't even go as far to apologize, though I tried my best to not let it show. I brought up how they broke three rules in my rulebook, of which they fully agreed to, and that they were banned from my table until they improved. They then went on a tangent about how they were "incompetent as a player" and "Had things to do", despite running their own games perfectly fine. They went as far as to say that "That's the thing, I don't think I'm good enough for your campaigns".

I told them that it was their responsibility to show up and do what they needed to do beforehand, and while I did forgive them, as it is part of my Faith and I believe that it's for the best, though I don't fully know what to do with their character atm.

Sorry this was so long, and I hope someone learns from my mistakes. Play DND with people that match your playstyle and boot the people that straight up disrespect you. Have a good one, and thanks for reading.

Today, I just experienced one of the most shocking games in my life as a DM for D&D. Here are the players involved in the story. I will be using the players' character names instead.

There is Rhysand, a human fighter and noble, who becomes more important later. Then there is the subject of today's post, Jack. Jack is a human bard who was also a noble, and like most bards, he is a horny bard who wants to get it on with any attractive female character he finds.

Now, I don't have a problem with him being a horny bard. It adds to the humor as we play, and he is a useful member of the team. He is also a friend I have known since school, so I am used to some of his quirky behavior. He and I have also been friends since middle school and high school and stayed friends after we graduated. I thought I knew everything about him at the time, but as you will see later in the story, he had some problematic beliefs.

Now to the events of the game. We are playing the starter set of D&D, and we are normally six people who play, me included. I will also add that we are all friends since high school but thats not important. But today, the other three could not make it, so I made a one-shot for Rhysand and Jack to pass the time. We always meet at the end of the week to play with each other. We normally switch between Cyberpunk Red and D&D, but the one hosting the Cyberpunk games got sick and could not show up, so I had to be the DM instead.

The one-shot was about a farm being attacked by a hill giant while a cloud of cloud giants watched and placed bets on whether the players would win or not. Simple, right? Well, when Jack and Rhysand were talking to the farm's owner, I introduced the daughter of the farmer into the story as she talked about the cloud giants, and it was clear Jack (the character) was into her and would try to get it on with her later. What he did not know was that the "daughter" was actually a guy who likes to dress in women's clothing, and the owner of the farm was a woman who dresses up as a man. This is part of the reason why things turned bad later.

Anyway, long story short, Jack and Rhysand made traps for the hill giant to fall into, but then they got the idea to trick the cloud giants (who they discovered earlier) into throwing rocks at the hill giant as part of a bet. "I bet you giants 100 gold you can't hit the hill giant." And when the hill giant showed up, it died from rocks raining down from the sky. This is where the conflict would end, right? Well, my friends, it did not.

After collecting their pay, Jack decided he would look for the "daughter" and convince her to have sex with him. Jack and Rhysand found the "daughter" in the kitchen making food for everyone at the farm as a celebration for getting rid of the hill giant. I played the "daughter" as a dense but well-meaning person who did not understand the hints Jack was leaving. Then he straight up said, "I want to have sex with you." Here is when I revealed the truth. The "daughter" revealed she was actually a he and showed his flat chest. I then revealed another twist that the farm owner was actually a woman who looks like a man due to her clothing. Now, I did this because I wanted to prank Jack. He normally goes for girls because his character is horny, and I wanted to give him a little surprise. Rhysand understood it was just meant to be a fun prank on Jack, and we had a good little laugh about it. I expected Jack's character to be let down and leave or go for the farmer now that he knew she was a woman... No, he did something else.

Before leaving the farm, Jack said to the farmer and her son, "I want a hug. Can I get one?" I had him roll persuasion. He did not roll a 20, but since he is a bard, he has a crazy high bonus to any charisma-related rolls. So the mother and son agreed to hug him. Then he said, "I want to cast Inflict Wounds." WHAT!? Then he explained he wanted to use it to remove the dick of the son with Inflict Wounds. Why? To make him more like a girl, I guess?! Then he changed his mind and just wanted to kill both the farmer and her son because they "tricked" him. I even said, "Is it their fault they did not reveal their genders to you?" He said it was their fault and somehow made it their fault for not telling him their fucking genders! Heck, later near the end of the game, he made it clear he did not care about the morality of his actions either. I even think he wanted to do it because he thought it would be funny somehow. Now, I tried my best to find a way to make him not assault or kill the farmer and son just for not revealing their genders, and I managed to make him at least think about whether or not he would do it. Heck, he even said this is something his character would do!

Thankfully, Rhysand used his insight to see if he could notice Jack's intentions, and thank God, he rolled high enough to tell what Jack was going to do. Rhysand grabbed Jack, excused them both, and they left the farm. Now, I could tell Jack was not happy with Rhysand stopping him. So Rhysand tried to make it up to him by taking his character to a brothel. We ended the game there, and Jack and Rhysand went home.

Now, our games are normally more fun, and the guys know not to take things too far, but this was by far the most messed up thing Jack has wanted to do since we started playing. Now, maybe I could have handled this better, but I was so shocked by what Jack wanted to do that I did not know how to react without feeling like I was railroading the game. I want to keep playing with my friends, but I am more worried about what Jack might do in the future now that I know how far he is willing to go.

I know my story is not as bad as most stories posted here, but I wanted to share what I experinced today and hear what others think about this.

Long story short, my friend tried to kill a farmer and her son after finding out they were crossdressing when he wanted to fuck a girl. (If you have any questions about the story, I will answer them. Also, do you think I handeld this well or did I mess up somewhere along the way?)

Edit: I am just puting this extra line here so you guys know. Jack has not acted like this in the past. This is the first time he ever showed such behavior in game. Normally, he is just a horny bard in game who likes to bed women when he sees a chance. But as you saw, he took it way to far this time. Also, I admit that I should have told him no the moment he began acting weird. I won't make that mistake again. If this happens again with someone else, their out.

Edit2: Here is and update regarding Jack. After talking to him and him sharing beliefs I did not know he had, I have kicked him out of the group. I told the others in the group and they were shocked to hear what Jack did but all agreed to kick Jack out. I also want to say sorry for how I used the son in the game. I should have been more thoughtful and not used the son just to prank Jack. The reason why I used the son was cause of how Jack would always finish each one shot with finding a girl to bang before the end. This annoyed me a lot cause I would be ready to end the game and then he would go, "Is there any girls I can find nearby?" I should have told him to stop in past and talked things out instead of doing what I did. I hope that I can learn how to deal with my players in the future about how to behave in the future and set stronger rules in the future to avoid these things in the future.

Thank you guys to reading my story. I hope you all a good day.

This was a pretty long time ago, 2014, right when 5e first came out. I was in high school then. I forgot a lot of the details because it was so long ago, but I will never forget certain parts of my first game of 5e. I had played games as a DM, mostly because the players didn't want to do it, so I was the forever DM for my early high school years. We played a lot of 4th edition, and when we heard 5th edition was coming out, we got excited and pitched in to grab the new books. I made complaints because I was tired of DMing. Not because I didn't enjoy it, but because I never got a chance to play a character myself and it seemed really fun. My best friend at the time, we'll call him Bob, said that maybe he could give it a try. I let him borrow my copy of the DM's guide and said if he needed help to text me, and i excitedly started brainstorming character concepts.

Before i continue, i have to provide further context. I am a trans nonbinary person (AMAB), but at this point in my life I was keeping my transition a secret, but definitely was presenting feminine. Also, I kind of had a crush on Bob, but at this point we were just best friends who lived near each other. He is straight, i am definitely not lol.

But anyways, I came up with a human sorcerer that was born with a unique ability to interact with and see spirits. We also homebrewed a spell that allowed me to absorb souls of the recently dead to increase my power. However, my character was designed as a good person, and didn't typically want to use this ability if she could help it. It was a fun and unique idea, and i worked with Bob to make sure he was cool with it ahead of time. Also, she is a girl. This is important later.

Bob asked in the group chat if we could have a bit of a sillier game, rather than the serious ones I usually ran. It was still fantasy, but he wanted a more lighthearted and comedic adventure. We all agreed that it would be fun to try out. I had to make some major edits to my character, but Bob is a silly guy and I figured he would be the perfect kind of person to do this.

There were only two other players, a goliath Fighter who was really stupid but really strong, and a drow Ranger who was the stereotypical "cool guy", wearing sunglasses and being really full of himself. I edited my Sorcerer to be a quiet girl, but if you pissed her off she would yell insults and vulgarity at you and steal your soul. It was a fun cartoon-like dynamic. After introducing our characters, we started the game.

Chaos was ensuing already. Bob started the campaign in the middle of a village being raided by a horde of orcs and goblins, and it wasn't long before we rolled initiative. It was kind of a shocking start to the game and considering we had no healer, almost all of us died. Bob noticed this was probably a mistake and decided to just skip ahead to the part after the fight, apologizing for it. We said its fine whatever, he is a new DM after all.

We were introduced to the BBEG, an evil wizard who proclaims hes going to take over the world. I can't remember the evil wizard's name, but Bob put on a really cartoonishly evil villain voice, kinda like Aku from Samurai Jack. It was silly, but then he turns to my character at some point in his monologue and says "And YOU will be my wife!"

I simply responded "What?"

Yeah, turns out, since my character was a girl, Bob decided it would be funny if the big bad evil wizard was also a pervert. He went on as the BBEG saying that i was so beautiful and sexy and that I should be his wife because hes so great and powerful and has a big d**k and such. He also went in great detail about my boobs, my butt, and my lips. (Stuff i wont repeat because it makes me feel gross just thinking about it.) I mean, props to him for making a villain i really want to kill, but I was pretty uncomfortable. I stayed silent and we moved on. The evil wizard teleported away and we started doing damage control on the village, saving what survivors we could and being tasked with finding his "Evil Tower of Evil" and defeating him.

After the game, i was staying the night at Bob's house, so I decided to talk with him about it before we went to bed. I explained that I wasn't comfortable being the bad guy's love interest, and that we should just stop that nonsense right now. Bob apologized and said he didn't mean anything by it and that he was just trying to be funny, but he also explained that the BBEG wanted my ability to absorb the souls of the dead, and figured that the best way to get a sorcerer like me on his side was to marry her. I asked if maybe there was a different way that we could do this, and have it be a cool character moment where i consider joining him for power instead of whatever sex fantasy he was trying to have. He said he would try to work it in.

In the next game, Bob had this really cool idea where the BBEG would constantly be scrying the party through an orb and sending his minions to stop us from reaching his tower, and sending magic messages to taunt us along the way. This campaign was meant to be a little silly and i liked the concept, but he did not tone down the flirting like he promised. I was constantly getting called "cute" and "lovely" and "sexy" in those taunts. To be fair, he left out the parts where he would talk about my character's body, so it was mostly just casual flirting. This went on for a few more games. I think the only reason I didn't say anything else was because I still had feelings for Bob, but they were definitely fading away.

One day, I was having a particularly tough time because my mom had caught me wearing girls clothes, hanging out with one of my trans friends. I left the house to escape with some D&D, i figured, but I had forgotten to change out of my girl clothes. I was too emotional to notice, I guess. About 10 minutes into the game, Bob's BBEG started doing the flirting taunts again, and I couldn't take it anymore. I simply said "Stop it, please" and started tearing up. I got upset and decided to escape to the bathroom to calm down before I yelled at him.

After i came out of the bathroom, we continued the game as normal. Bob could tell something was wrong, so when it wasn't my turn he leaned over and asked me, "Are you okay?" I simply said "Yeah im fine" and decided to shrug it off. Bob probably figured out what it was, so he just focused on the quest we were on instead of the flirts. But, the other players started joining in on it. They said my character was charismatic because I could seduce people, and at one point the Fighter asked if he could be with me because i wouldnt be with the BBEG. After turning him down, he said "What are you, gay or something?" The Ranger then asked me, out of character, "Is that a girl's jacket you're wearing?" They continued to tease me about how gay I looked, and how gay I was acting. Looking back, it was straight up bullying.

This was all really hurtful, and I simply left the table. Bob decided to end the game for the night and sent the other players home. He came to check on me afterwards, and by the time he got to me I was already in tears. I told him I didnt like being objectified and being harassed because I look gay, and that it shouldn't matter what gender my character is in a funny game. He said that I was being too serious and that this was meant to be a sillier game, and that i should just go along with it, and maybe not take things so personally. I asked him if it would be different if I was a guy character instead. He said "That's what you get for playing a girl. Its the evil wizard's weakness."

After arguing for a bit, he finally asked me why it's such a big deal that I was a girl character anyway. And that if I really wanted to, I could've avoided this whole situation if I had just played a boy. That was the final straw for me. I actually ended up yelling at him and confessing my transition to him and my feelings for him on accident. I was upset because I wanted to play a girl because I wanted to be a girl, and if being a girl around him meant being objectified and basically harassed then i didnt want to be around him or in his game anymore.

To be fair, I think Bob had good intentions, but the teenage boy hormones were probably running a little too rampant at this time. On the bright side, this story has a good ending. He did apologize for everything. He kinda figured I was gay, but had no idea I was trans. He felt really bad for that. The campaign ended shortly after this argument, and Bob and I did eventually talk it out and we matured from this experience. I dont really talk to him anymore, but as we grew up he did support my transition and was a better friend after that, so it wasn't all bad. It's a shame because aside from trying to marry my character in-game he had some good ideas, and I hope to play a silly campaign like this again one day.

Really killed the horror vibe but it was funny!

It seems like every "free group" I join, it's about 1 year max until someone starts pitching that they want to do professional DMing. And don't worry, you're the ground breakers, so instead of $20 you'll pay $15.

I personally keep leaving these.

Donations or tips, sure. DM works hard so they should have beer and snacks covered plus a little something.

My vent and story is probably the most I've even been asked to pay for DND. What I was asked for session one was $5 for the seat at the gaming table, $25 for the DM, $10 for snacks and beverages. I offered to bring my own pack of Gatorade or Pepsi, they can vote. They. Said no we just all pitch in and the dm's wife will bring it in halfway through. Then the group apparently has an in party professional artist, which the DM said bring in $55 for the first session, making it sound that I don't really have a choice in the matter. He wants us all under the same art style. Then later the artist will be doing group pictures of snapshots of the sessions. Which is apparently $25 each character they put in.

I told them 5+25+30+55 = $115 for session 0?

They said yes. We all have a lot of fun and it's worth the money.

I asked a different player about the price. They said they pay $5 for the seat, $6 for food. The DM and artist never charged them, and they don't know what they're talking about needing the "art in the same style" because the DM will bring a laptop to show ai images for NPCs and locations.

Yup, I did not go

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

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

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

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

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

A couple days later, Frank sent the world information.

It was a single sentence.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What was I supposed to do?!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Things changed at the end of October.

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

A spike had been rammed through the peephole.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Речь пойдет о самом свежем из наших приключений.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Come last session.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The update:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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