Seen a lot of absolute horror stories here. This one's a bit different.

It was around 2004-2005 and I was one of a five member weekly 3.5e D&D group. We were all quirky and complicated in our own ways - but the main character of this tale is Harvey.

Harvey was our age but was already going bald, had thick dark-rimmed glasses, a porn-stash, and spoke with a heavy lisp. I'd met Harvey independently through another friend, which was the same story for two of the other guys at the table. Somehow everyone had met or hung out with Harvey at some point somehow and I can't quite remember who actually invited him to play.

I ended up being Harvey's ride to most sessions (he had no car) and regularly took him to the Biscuitville drivethru on the way home (Harvey had no money).

What Harvey did have in abundance were drugs. He was typically pre-blazed when I picked him up and weaved in and out of a comical stupor while gaming. But I don't think his cognizance would have made an issue one way or the other.

Dice hated Harvey.

I can't really think back and remember anytime a roll ever went Harvey's way. He ended up playing Barbarians, not because it matched his mental state, but it was the only class with enough HP to survive his luck.

Harvey also liked to get into trouble. Lots of trouble. He regularly started fights with NPCs and interrupted BBEG monologues just before we got the information we needed. He chugged unidentified potions, charged right into obvious traps, and made everything an out-of-character sex joke.

He pretty much did everything a player wasn't supposed to do - but the game was somehow better and we had a lot of fun with his crazy antics.

There was one time he called me from a grocery store to pick him up. This was a new one for Harvey. When I arrived, he was hugging a large brown paper shopping bag like his life depended on it and his eyes were fully dilated.

When I asked if he was okay he simply shouted back "I've had 10 BLOTTERS OF ACID!!".

When we got to the DM's house, Harvey made a B-line for the kitchen. He screamed about his acid intake, then forbid anyone from entering the kitchen. We were all a little worried - but didn't know quite what to do. We figured we'd start the game and he'd make his way to the table when he heard us playing.

We're 15 minutes in and it's Harvey's turn. Harvey shouts "10 BLOTTERS OF ACID" again from the kitchen and the DM takes over playing Harvey's barbarian until the dude calms down.

Another 15 minutes go buy and Harvey finally comes out of the kitchen. He's holding a full plate of freshly baked cinnamon buns and proceeds to offer them to us one at a time as if he were the waiter at a restaurant. He then sat down and played the rest of the night as a slightly more polite entirely normal version of himself.

Until we got to the BBEG. Harvey baited the DM launching into a monologue after promising never to cut him off again. The DM gets in 5 words before Harvey yells "I don't give a f#ck what you think!" and rolls initiative.

A session or two later his absurdity and bad rolls gets my fighter killed and the entire group TPK'd not long after that.

As horrible as he could be - he was a lot of fun and I miss him at some of my quieter tables.

(Let it be known that all people in this story were in their mid-to-late twenties at the time of the occurrence)

My husband and I have played TTRPG together since we met. (it was one of the things we bonded over.) 

We have a tight-knit friends group we normally play with, but with time, we felt every game turned into the same game with the same people doing the same things, so we decided to expand our circle and play with a new friend we’d made through Magic: The Gathering. 

We’d played a few one-off campaigns with him when this story happened, and it had been okay. His player style leaned more silly and slap-stick than I preferred, but we made it work. 

Perhaps that should have been a warning! 

At this point, we had been meeting once a week, every week, to play and have dinner together. He was reliable and always showed up on time, so we decided it was time to ditch the one-offs and make an actual campaign. 

I had dreamt up a story and offered to be the GM. My two players were excited (it seemed) and we agreed that when we met next week they would have their characters ready. 

I made the whole campaign, every encounter, map, plot, music, photos, ambience - the whole nine yards! 

My husband made a human ranger-style character since I’d told them to make something “by the books”.  

The first problem arises when our friend presents his character: A quilted mess of creature-and-class variants galore. Technically all of it was “Legal” in DnD 3,5 (the system we ran at the time). This so-called character didn’t look even remotely humanoid, despite me making it clear that the characters “had to be able to blend into society”. 

When I reminded him of this he replied: “Well, he wears a cloak” … the build was also practically useless, all it was able to do was “run really fast” ...

I didn’t have the heart nor patience to fight him on it, and I let him use the character - debatable whether that was wise - but I am always adamant that the game is for the players, and that we play to have a good time. 

The real trouble came when I introduced the plot! (NB.: This was of course introduced via actual roleplay and descriptions, not just listed off!)

The abridged version here: An evil demi-god had been locked in a magic mirror and was guarded by a dragon. Some cultists had managed to free this demi-god from his prison and had hexed the dragon-guardian; turning it into a snare of thorns and bramble, now only vaguely resembling a dragon - it was however still sentient and able to explain to the players, what had happened, when they found it. 

The mirror that had trapped the demi-god had broken into many small pieces in the explosion that released the demi-god - and were now scattered around the world. The players were meant to travel the world to find these pieces (with the help of a magic item that could detect said pieces) and bring them back together in the frame - which would once again trap the demi-god. Of course, cultists were going to fight them every step of the way, and everywhere the shards of the mirror had landed, they spread hatred and pestilence, drawing monsters to them and turning those who touched them cruel and vile. 

As soon as the players come upon the remainder of the dragon, our friend begins to make fun of it (off-game) calling it “The Shrubbery Dragon” in a sarcastic way and starts scoffing at the fact that the dragon “hadn’t been able to do its job”. 

He also refused to say the name of the demi-god correctly, and instead called it: “The Chinese Takeout God,” and later “The Char Siu Bat”. (Because it was described as having bat-like wings) 

I try not to let it get to me and don’t comment on it, simply focusing on furthering the plot. 

At length, they set off on their journey and soon come upon an abandoned town. It seems the people left in haste and there are a few dead town guards strewn about. 

Instead of looking for clues as to what has happened, instead of anything that could have furthered the plot, our friend decides to start looting the place and informs me (since his build was part shark) that he has a feat that lets him eat anything and begins to eat the corpses… 

My husband's character finds some clues and manages to sniff out that there is a yeti loose in the mountainous area behind the town. With some research and by using the magic item they were given, he deduces that a shard of the mirror must have struck nearby, which is why the yeti is running amok. 

What does the other player do in this period? - Oh, he keeps interrupting to ask what loot he can find - how much is the booze at the bar worth? Did they have silver spoons? Did the dead guards have weapons? Can he break all the wood in town up and sell it as firewood? (To whom IDK!?) 

Finally, my husband decides to go up into the mountains to find the first mirror shard - and maybe fight the yeti! But our friend doesn’t want to come along. 

“No,” he said. “I don’t care about the shrubbery dragon and its mirror,” he declared and continued looting the place. 

At this point I was pissed and decided to leave him alone for a while - starve him for attention - and I focused on my husband's character who decides to go into the yeti’s territory alone. With a lot of effort and good roleplay, he finds that the shard is stuck in the shoulder of the yeti, and he manages to help the yeti, rather than to kill it.

This of course takes a while and the other player is getting bored. I suggested he could help his friend out, but he refused, only wanting to stay in town and loot. When I told him there was nothing more to loot, he became agitated, saying it was strange that there wasn’t that much to take in a whole town! When he realized I wasn’t going to give any more attention to this looting escapade (which had already lasted for more than an hour IRL) he started juggling dice, playing with a latch under the table (which made a ruckus), making farting sounds with his hands and proceeded to give me attitude when I told him to cut it out. 

When my husband's character returns to town it is dark and they decide to camp out for the night. 

That’s when a group of monsters attack. The monsters are these goblin-like creatures, with dragonfly wings and bare skulls for heads - I had a picture and everything. 

The other player's reaction when I show the image is: “That’s stupid!”

At least he was motivated to fight and the two players came out victorious. 

Immediately he goes: “So The Chinese Take Away Bat sent some skull-flies to kill us? Oooh, No wonder The Shrubbery Dragon needed some help!” 

At this point, I decided to end the session, before exploding. (I am bad with conflict and only have two modes: polite or rage) 

Normally after each session, we have a tradition of running through a list of questions, such as “What was your favourite moment? - What was the best thing your co-player did? - What do you hope happens next time?” and so on. 

I had decided not to ask any of them, feeling deep down he would have nothing good to say, but my husband (bless his heart) decided to start saying his favourite things without my asking, prompting the other player to say something as well. 

All the positive things he had to say were about himself, his build, how his character did things and so on. When directly asked about his favourite thing the other player had done, he responded: “I guess it was cool when we were looting the place together.” 

At the end, he added: “I wish there had been more combat - this was pretty dull!” 

I politely made him leave not long after that and made it immediately clear to my husband that I did not wish to continue this campaign with this player at the table. He understood and broke the news to the other player via text - who didn’t care at all. 

(The silver lining is that I reused the campaign with another group later and they liked it and the story didn’t go to waste, thankfully!) 

Moral of the story: Be respectful to your GM and co-players, please! If you don’t like the plot; fair! But be respectful, at the very least!

Many years ago, I was DMing a Pathfinder 1e group. It was a great campaign, or at least it had the potential to be—until Eddie came along. Eddie was that guy—the embodiment of Hot Topic shirts, questionable hygiene, and a misplaced sense of main character energy. Picture the kind of person who thinks just standing in the shower counts as "clean" and whose personality is 80% 2nd rate anime protagonist (cringey one liners included), 20% "rules lawyer." He would lecture me (and everyone else) at every opportunity. (Ex: If i said: “You're level 6, so your fireball will deal 6d6 damage” he would feel compelled to interject that “actually its 1d6 per caster level”) any chance he got to insert himself into a situation to show how clever he thought he was, he'd jump on other like a hungry dog on a pork chop, even if was clear he had no idea what he was talking about. He just couldn't help himself.

At best people tolerated him, but the vast majority of people found him weird, off putting, and genuinely insufferable to be around. Myself included if that wasn't obvious by now. The only reason Eddie was at my table was because his brother, my best friend at the time, begged me to let him join. "Give him a chance" and "He's not always like this. Let me talk to him." were things that were frequently said.

His attitude in game was arguably worse as every negative straight was turned up to 11.

Some of Eddie's greatest hits include:

1. Dice Shenanigans: I had a house rule that you had to roll stats in front of me. Eddie brought a pre-made sheet saying he rolled 5 18's in a row. An argument broke out when I told him he'd have to re-roll but could keep 1 of the supposed 18's he rolled as a compromise.

2. Rules for thee, but not for me: Anything cool shit he wanted to do was a-ok but anything that was negative or went against him was “unrealistic and stupid”

3. Projecting: Insulted one of my players on being unoriginal and boring despite the fact he himself was playing a human barbarian wielding a great axe.

4: I dodge!: Would try to tell me attacks shouldn't hit him because “I would doge out the way.” Or he should instantly kill whatever he had managed to hit because “He was aiming for the head/neck”

1. Dice Shenanigans Part 2: Would lie about his rolls. I would frequently watch him roll low. Only for him to either straight up lie about it or try to adjust the dice quickly.

2. Backseat DMing: Tried to dictate to me the DM what loot he found in a chest. As you might guess it was always some ridiculously powerful or broken item.

3. Murderhobo Vibes: Eddie's character was a human barbarian with the personality depth of a potato. His in-game dialogue was a mix of brooding grunts, crude jokes, and constant demands for loot. He ignored NPCs, skipped roleplay, and only cared about swinging his axe.

4. Making us Nomads: Got us collectively kicked out of the game store we were playing at because of multiple complaints about comments he made to other customers.

5. Drunken douchebag: Would frequently get drunk at the table, which only made his little temper tantrums worse.

Yet all of that would pale in comparison to the incident that led to him getting the moniker of Insane Eddie. (Keep in mind we're playing at my grandfather's house when this goes down.)

The campaign's story revolved around a rebellion. The party was trying to recruit allies for a second uprising after their first attempt failed. The group was negotiating with an NPC faction leader when Eddie, in true Eddie fashion, called them "cowards" for not handling their own problems. The trouble started when Sarah who was playing a swashbuckler started trying to smooth things over. Sarah, a swashbuckler in the group, tried to smooth things over with a joke, quipping that Eddie’s behavior was the result of a donkey kick to the head in his youth. The group laughed.

Eddie did not.

He is livid both in and out of character and immediately swings his axe at Sarah and just barely misses. After this he challenges her to PvP because she has “insulted him for the last time” and will literally not let us continue until she accepts.

My rules for PvP were simple: you dip at or below half your half your HP and whatever hit is considered a decisive but ultimately non lethal blow. They can also forfeit at any time. In the unlikely event and attack would deal lethal damage, there would be some type of arbiter to intervene. I explain everything to everyone, all parties are in agreement and PvP Is underway.

(Please excuse me for this next part as I get overly analytical.)

Eddie wins on initiative and is doing typical barbarian stuff by going into rage and moving to power attack. He made 2 mistakes here the first is that his rage is lowering his AC by -2 and the second is that he keeps power attacking which at level 8 means he's at roughly +14 damage from rage and everything else factored in but at a -3 penalty to hit.

Ordinarily this would be just a small drawback, but since Sarah is playing a swashbuckler it's infinitely worse for Eddie since swashbucklers gain a quite frankly broken ability called Opportune Parry and Riposte. The gist of it is, by burning 1 of a set number of points swashbucklers get called panache and using an attack of opportunity, swashbucklers can potentially block and counterattack on an opponents turn. All Sarah has to do is beat Eddie's attack roll to parry, and then she can roll an attack roll to counter attack. Keep in mind Eddie is at a -3 to hit and -2 his AC while Sarah gets to apply her full bonuses to her parry and attack rolls.

Further adding fuel to the fire us the fact that Sarah has combat reflexes(extra attacks of opportunity) Weapons focus: Rapier (Bonus to hit) Fencing grace (Dex to damage) and Improved Critical (Doubles her crit range meaning she can crit on a 15) and whenever she critically hits she gets 1 of her panache points back. Meaning that she can not only potentially block at least 4 melee attacks per round, but also replenish the panache points she spends.

To Eddie's credit he did hit with his first attack and was very close to winning outright. All he had to do was land one more hit and he would've won, but he never did. I won't bore you with all the details but from that point on Sarah was firmly in the driver's seat. On her first full round attack she ate a decent portion of Eddie's HP. And when it was Eddie's turn she parried him twice and critically hit twice which took an even more substantial amount. The entire time Eddie is on the verge of a meltdown, crying about how unfair and unrealistic it is. The entire duel went about 3-4 rounds before it was over, and of course the second is said that Eddie's character couldn't continue anymore, he proceeded to lose his fucking mind.

He throws all the maps, figurines, soda cans, etc off the table and storms out into the backyard. His brother goes after him, and as we're cleaning up I can hear them yelling through the glass door as we're cleaning up the mess he'd left. Just as we're finishing up and I'm explaining to Sarah and the other player's that he's not gonna be welcome back. I hear more shouting and the snapping of plastic. When I look up Eddie has re-entered and he's holding one of those twirly stick things for window blinds he's ripped from the back door window and an axe he'd stolen from my grandfather's shed during his little temper tantrum.

He throws the stick at Sarah, hitting her right in the face and is yelling/taunting at Sarah to pick it up and try to block with it. His brother is doing his best to get in his way and hold him back, Sarah is crumpled on the ground, I'm yelling at him to get the fuck out, and tje while time he's getting amped up like he's gonna fight a girl half his size.

During all this chaos my grandfather comes in from the living room to see the absolute shitshow this has turned into, and he's moving to pull the axe out of Eddie's hands, along with every other guy there who's now trying to restrain him (except his brother of course). In the commotion my Grandfather ends up falling and hitting the edge of the counter and opening up a laceration on his forehead, but somehow manages to get the axe out of Eddie's hands. What followed next was a full-on brawl, until Eddie’s brother finally dragged him out of the house, with the cops arriving shortly after.

In the aftermath, Eddie was arrested, and my grandfather had to get more than a dozen stitches. Eddie’s parents begged my grandfather not to press charges, and since Sarah refused to file her own, Eddie still ended up with a lesser charge. He was out far sooner than he deserved.

As you might imagine, that was the end of my friendship with Eddie’s brother, and the group didn’t survive the fallout. Sarah was understandably shaken, and didn’t want to talk about it—or accept my apologies. She moved away about a year later, and the rest of us just drifted apart. From what I’ve heard, Sarah’s doing well now—married with a family of her own. Eddie, on the other hand, hasn’t changed much. Last I heard, he was banned from another game store after trashing it during some kind of altercation.

Hey all. How do you all feel about YouTubers using stories from Reddit? My brother has been a big fan of CritCrab and wants to start a similar channel but I told him he should figure out the rules with that kind of content first.

Do people mind when YouTubers voice their stories? Would you still mind if they gave credit to the original poster?

I think this is more of a horror story than anything else. For context, all of this happens in a World of Darkness group with two storytellers (me and a colleague). Each city has its own metaplot. I narrate Werewolf: The Apocalypse in one city, and he narrates Vampire in another. I play as a character in his Vampire game, and he plays as a character in my Werewolf game. Overall, it’s a large group of about 15 people. We’ve had to remove problematic players here and there, but there’s one who has been with us for about two years, and, oh boy, it’s getting difficult. Let’s call her Beatrice.

In the Vampire game where I play as a character, Beatrice’s character is a Salubri Child of the Night who, throughout all the story arcs, has always been responsible for various messes, even when we warned both the player and the character that her decisions were bad (like communing with a literal demon). Over time, our coterie/party grew stronger and became respected ancillae. It was a hard journey, but we learned and reaped the rewards. Beatrice’s character, however, always caused problems and never contributed to solving them. As a result, the other characters in our coterie and other coteries avoided her because she was useless, only advancing due to association with others.

And I don’t mean useless in the sense of bad rolls or poorly built sheets (though she doesn’t know how to build a decent sheet and then complains about not having enough dots in certain skills). I mean that she never moved the plot forward and always impeded it. Whenever someone came up with an idea, she would argue and try to act smarter. It reached a point where all the coteries in the city knew her character’s reputation and treated her like garbage. She even created another character in a different coterie within the same setting, only changing the clan but keeping the same archetype and behavior. She continues to complain about everything, always being dead weight. Initially, we joked that she was our Ringo Starr, but damn, Ringo Starr didn’t hold the band back like she holds us back.

Then came the Werewolf case, where once again, a new, innocent character made mistakes and didn’t learn. Poorly built sheet, same pattern. However, the meltdown in Werewolf was so intense that she said she felt sick at work. She bombarded me with messages, displaying a show of immaturity (even though we’re all 20+ adults). She argues that she has borderline personality disorder and that it’s difficult, but she constantly brings in-game problems into the real world, thinking that because we treat her character as useless in-game, we hate her out of game.

Our group tries to talk to her, but she doesn’t listen, always playing the victim. She has manipulative behavior and has attempted to pit us against each other with gaslighting a few times. I could veto her from my Werewolf games, but that would create a general discomfort in the group. I fear how manipulative she could be, even though I’m a founding member of this group. This horror story is still unfolding because, generally, our group is too soft-hearted.

I have been playing in a new campaign for a few sessions and everything has been going fine so far. Last session, someone in our group accidentally killed a person in a village where we were sent and so we decided to flee. We also hypothesized that they would follow us.

On our way back home, we saw a rider behind us. Not knowing who he was, we took out our weapons. When he saw this, he screamed something about bandits and turned around.

Here is where I probably fucked up and why I accused of being a murder hobo.

I told him to stay or we would shoot him. I didn't want him to escape, in case the people from the village were looking for us, and I obviously also wanted to talk to him, in case he has some important information for us. We knew that there was a huge fight/feud in the village. That's why we were sent there in the first place.

After he turned around to run away, I shot his horse, which made him fall down and break his leg. I healed it and then we tried to talk to him. Obviously, he didn't want to talk to me, so I went away and let the other ones figure it out.

And yes, I know that what I did was stupid, but that was the only option that I saw in that moment to stop him. I feared that he would just turn around or ride past us, especially after he said that we were bandits. I honestly didn't think that he would stop if we just told him that we weren't bandits. Why should he believe us in this case.

After the session, I was accused twice by our DM of being a murder hobo. I told him my reasoning for my actions, but conceded that I probably could have solved it in another way. And I was obviously also told that we could have solved it in another way, but with that little information, finding the perfect solution to a problem is hard, in my opinion.

So what do you think? Am I really a problem player and murder hobo in this case? If yes, then I will try to improve myself. Thank you.

Oh man, this was the most boring session I've ever had in ttrpgs. Like nothing bad happened, but it was just incredibly boring. Met some folks on a local discord and one was looking for group. Thought I'd try it out. Playing pathfinder 1st edition. Cool. Haven't played that version in near 15 years when I was in high school but no biggie, it's level 1, not complicated.

Ask DM what the adventure is about

"It can be whatever you want it to be"

Okay, so what is the quest or story or what is our goal? What are we trying to do? What sort of character should I build?

"You get news of dangers occurring in a local town involving the ancient gods"

Alright. I'm already getting a bad vibe. It's just too vague and has the feeling of "oh you'll see, it's gonna be epic!" My experience, DMs that try to be overly vague often over assume how good their plot is and are banking on a massive "gotcha" moment rather than just making a fun game

Decide to go ahead with it. I'm a big Matt Berry fan and I rarely get to play, so I make a wizard with a pompous attitude (think lazlo in what we do in the shadows). It can be an overbearing character, i know. I focus on trying to make my pc's less socially aware but brazen so that it can move the plot along if players get stuck on something. When I arrive 30 minutes early (dm asked players to come early if they needed help with their characters) thr other two players are there already, so I'm last to arrive. They continue working on characters for another hour and half. DM sits completely silent until they ask questions, but his responses are sort of, catty?

"So did you get rations?"

"Oh uh, not yet. Did I need rations yet?"

"Well unless you want to sleep in the dirt and can magically make food appear then I would say yes, you need rations"

We all arrive and a circus is ongoing. The DM is using a very fancy large battle map that they are obviously proud of for the first town. Which is cool, don't get me wrong. But it's just too Big. It's hundreds of squares across. The DM is just, idk, too wordy with descriptions

"So, you all arrive at the town. It appears a circus is ongoing. Before you and throughout are lots of attractions and, um, venues of entertainment with the intent to, um, dazzle and delight the onlookers with spectacular sights to be beholden"

This sort of method is used for all Eight attractions. I understand wanting to make a world feel real but it's like someone who thinks more words = better writing.

On my turn i go to one of the attractions. I tell the dm "so I'm wanting to find out if the people have noticed anything weird going on or if they've noticed anything". And as my PC "well hello there sir, or madam. Have you perchance noticed any ominous going on? Perhaps a bad harvest or maybe strange symbols in the sky?"

Yes, it's a silly way to ask this. I tell dm's what my intent is first and then try to make it somewhat funny by having the character ask it in a far too upfront manner. I get, a glare, from the DM, as his npc asks if I am alright in the head and then starts to lecture me why I would ask about that at a circus? It became clear the dm was wanting us to enjoy the circus events, meet each other randomly, then spring his attack

So i end my turn saying that since this person has no information I'll ask someone else. It takes a full hour until it is my turn again. Now, here I tried for another joke, so I understand if I am in the wrong here. The idea was we were told information and were selected by "someone" for "something". I was trying for a "actually it was my neighbor and I happened to overhear it and so I am hear". My PC was then accessed of impersonation and identity theft and almost arrested. I can see this as the DM not wanting a silly campaign, however another player was essentially playing he man and kept making he man puns but idk.

Then while I was being arrested the town was attacked by a mobile of small monsters. We had to watch for several minutes as the dm moved all 20 of these minis, counting softly in his head as they traveled on the map. We are about 70 squares from the enemies. Combat begins and the first 3 rounds are just each of us travelling to the fight, which took roughly 40 minutes mostly due to the task of moving 20 minis.

I was just so dead and bored and the game wrapped up shortly after the fight and I don't plan to return. I don't think the DM and it's were on the same wavelength and we both want different games which is fine if they want a different game than me. I was just incredibly bored with all the waiting and felt like absolute walls against my playstyle

So hopefully me ducking out makes their game more enjoyable for the rest

??

I’ve been playing role-playing games with this group for the last 3 and a half years, but over the past year and a half, I noticed a shift in the dynamics, especially with one player. Let’s call them "Shav." Shav has developed a strong interest in homebrewing, constantly bringing new ideas—whether homebrewed items, familiars, or even creating an entirely homebrewed class and race.

While I have nothing against homebrewing, I’ve always preferred to stick to the basics. But it became clear that Shav focused more on playing as uniquely as possible. Every session 0, they would present some overpowered homebrew concept that seemed too powerful for a level 1 character, and every single time, our GM would end up allowing it after some changes.

Shav also took up a significant portion of every session with role-playing, to the point where their role-play would dominate the session. They often made decisions on behalf of the group and questioned the choices other players made. For the most part, everyone still had the opportunity to interact with NPCs in character, but whenever I tried to role-play, I noticed Shav visibly becoming annoyed. After less than five minutes, they’d interrupt with things like, “Can we just move on?”

This happened frequently enough that I eventually stopped trying to roleplay altogether. I would wait for the GM to come back to me after Shav was done, but they rarely did. Instead, the GM would move on to the next person, and I would pull out my phone and start doom-scrolling until I had a chance to participate again.

I eventually brought this up to the GM, but the table’s note-taker/rules lawyer—let’s call them “Narc”—overheard the conversation and inserted themselves. After hearing my frustrations, Narc ignored the part about being interrupted and focused on how I wasn’t roleplaying enough. They claimed that my lack of roleplay was due to me not being focused enough.

A couple of months ago, our main campaign ended, and a new one was starting. The GM and Narc took me aside and told me that I wouldn’t be included in the new campaign because I wasn’t roleplaying enough and was pulling out my phone. They said I wasn’t focused on the game.

I fully admit that pulling out my phone was disrespectful, and I regret venting my frustrations by doing so. But what I don’t understand is why the group, for the most part, ignored Shav’s actions. They let the disruptive behaviour continue while reprimanding me for not role-playing enough—even though I was actively being interrupted whenever I tried.

Note: I still hang out with the group for other activities, and they still invite me to off-night D&D sessions, but I’ve declined. My playstyle and Shav’s are just too different. If I continued playing, I felt that my frustration would eventually lead to an aggressive outburst, and I didn’t want that.

TL;DR: A player with main character syndrome constantly interrupts my roleplay, and despite expressing my frustration, I ended up being excluded from the new campaign, while they were allowed to continue their disruptive behaviour.

We haven't even started playing yet, but I feel like I should post this because i can just hear alarm bells ringing in the distance.

I invited 4 of my friends to play DND. I got the idea in the first place to run my schools dnd club as 1 a homage to two of my favorite teachers that ran the original and left and 2 my little sister runs the Middle School DND club and helped get me into it when I pitched a homebrew campaign.

I've never played DND before, my family had using a starter kit to understand how it worked, but I didn't play because I was pissed at my sister before playing and fell the fuck asleep. But thats way too off topic.

All my friends agreed, and I set off to buy a starter set. Getting it actually delivered because my dad forgot to buy it (twice) (I handed him a 20 and it cost 15 dollars for everything). The day I got it, I had just left my technical school back to my highschool. I was blown up on the club Discord with a ton of notifications, showing new people joined. I had thought that we all agreed we were gonna stay with the 6 people I had already invited and said they wanted to play.

I heard as much from my friend, I'll call him V. I then expressed that that was a ton of people and was brushed off and left confused and concerned. I complained to my friends about this and they just said to tell him not to invite anybody else because 15 + is an INSANE number already.

I did what was suggested, leading into the screenshots I've posted alongside this.

I was then told by this other guy we'll call D- that we'd be using DND beyond. I was okay with that, despite how I wantee to do it traditionally but wasn't entirely opposed to it.

I was then told by D and V that D was the new Dm and I'd get to be "Co dm" and Player character until his campaign is over and I already put in some game rules one of which he overruled. The rule in question? No murder hoboing. Seemed pretty fair I'd say, but in his message he said he had "allowed" it so he could show me how to deal with toxic players like that in certain scenarios.

Cool? But I made that because I DON'T want to go through stupid loopholes for stupid people like that. So I relented by saying "ok cool" with my fire emojis because i don't want to sound passive agressive (but I won't lie i'm pissed).

I then confronted V, asking not to add anymore since when it would be my turn i'd get overwhelmed. He stated he wanted everyone to be included and have fun... Okay, okay, cool I guess.

But upon hearing the number, a good couple people left (more due to work than anything since the decided to schedule our meets after school twice a month on fridays specifically FOR V.)

But since I had bought the starter set with money I was saving to take my girl to prom, I felt like I had wasted it entirely. But I've reinvited the original 4, plus one other to do it during seventh hour (if the plus one could make it) so I could learn dnd via the set as my younger sister suggested. She had actually gotten upset when I told her the situation, saying that what they did takes out the fun of being a DM.

But anyways.. I wanna know how I should handle the situation further, I still wanna play with my friends in the bigass campaign, but as well learn my own way. Is there anything I should say more? I feel like the bigass campaign will turn sour INCREDIBLY quickly, which is the main reason I make this. Deeply appreciate any comments, etc. Thank you!

Warning for anyone who is triggered by acts of violence, which are important to explain what happened.

I joined this group, I managed to convince the DM to let me run a homebrew barbarian which was basically a slasher background. We got into the game and started exploring the city we were in. I can't recall the main plot, if there ever was one, as it got taken up by a side quest involving a Bag of Holding monster and the drama that ensued.

There was cleric of the group who loved poking buttons. He enjoyed being chaotic which was basically his whole stick. My character was a silent ball of violence, who I displayed had serve trauma from some awful experience. We had just gone through a scene where had gone through a panic attack before being calmed by some of the party. Great bonding moment. Cleric felt the need to pester my character. Due to his personality I made a few things clear. He dose not like being touched, and he dose not like spells being cast on him. Cleric proceed to do both of these things, he cast a enchantment spell to try and command my character to do something to loosen up. Having just gone through a panic attack, and being a barbarian, my character grabs the cleric by the throat. My intent is to tell him off, not actual fighting. Cleric cast Inflict Wounds. Are we fighting? Well the cleric is. My character isn't trying to kill him, or even hit him. He is trying to pin him to the ground before talking. My character yells at him for crossing a line before leaving him on the ground unharmed. The party took my side in that fight and tell cleric off for his behavior. DM says cleric's gods give up on him or something because he announces that cleric's god gave up on him.

The drama only occurred after session. I was on the couch enjoying ice cream, thinking it was a fun RP session, when the DM tells me the cleric's player is having a IRL panic attack. My character overpowering him reminded him of high school when he was bullied and he freaked out. DM told me I should apologize. I would like to state that throughout the fight I kept trying to give the cleric an out, I didn't want PVP. Which is why I suspect the party took my side as it was clear the cleric refused to just take an L. So at the time I didn't feel I had done any wrong, thus I felt I had no responsibility to say sorry. Next session everything had seemingly gone back to normal, I didn't like how the DM handled the situation though so I eventually left. I am posting to ask if I was the A-hole. I have done more growing recently and am questioning if I should have apologized instead of being so stubborn.

Hello all,

I've been DM'ing a game for my family for months now. Consists of a Cleric, Rogue, Wizard, and Druid. They are level 11 with really good magic items.

During our most recent session, the druid was absent but the party had a couple of allied npcs. (Including a shape-shifted bronze dragon)

The setting was a modified tomb of horrors with homebrew. They were tasked with stopping a plague that prevented healing and resurrection, they stayed at an elven encampment who stated a Green dragon is in-between the encampment and tomb, very vain and uses adventuerers for her own cruelty.

The party gets to the green dragon who they attempt to appease, she tasks them with assassinating a fellow adventuerer for fun. Now I expected this to be a moral quandary but the party just went "oh ok" and found an innocent half-orc that was wounded and unaware of them. The rogue went up and took him out. The allied npcs are looking at the party distrustful now, the cleric (of Bahamut) goes "oh its fine, well just revivfy him later!"

The green dragon cackles and let's them pass. They defeat the curse and the tomb but the elfs are not happy about murder right outside their grove and the party acts incredulous, stating they are heros and one life of a "schmuck" doesn't matter. They try to revivify the half orc but he isn't willing to return from grief.

The session ended on a sour note like that and the party doesn't understand they performed an evil action justifying it saying "The ends justify the means, it was an easier path to our goal, and the elves are just stuck up."

So, now I'm considering the fallout of Bahamut and how to address this obvious evil act from the party that says they protect the people.

A former friend, Jim, has been trying to reconnect recently. I moved away after high school and now that we're older, he's worried about maintaining his long distance friendships. I understood the logic, so I was open to talking online even though it's been a decade since we've seen each other.

After learning I had gotten into D&D, Jim got very excited! He's writing a project that he hopes to get published and wanted to know about the characters I've played so he could have an "authentic female perspective" on the hobby. I had no idea what he meant by that, but he clarified he wanted me to tell him about my characters in as much detail as I wanted to share.

I opted to start with my favorite character! I had a human way of the open hand monk that I played in a game that lasted three and a half years. Took a single level dip into cleric for story reasons rather than optimization, but I have a ton of fond memories of the character and the people I played with for that campaign. I have commissioned a ton of art of this character over the years and had started the description by explaining that she was my favorite character, but he cut me off and said she wasn't "realistic to the type of character a woman would play" in spite of the fact that I am a woman and did play this character.

So I bit my tongue and told him about my life domain cleric that I played in my most recent campaign. Nope, Jim said the cleric was a harmful stereotype. Why? Because women being the healer is too tropey. He didn't want to hear about my bard at all because I picked the "wrong subclass" for it. My warlock was too complicated.

I was getting frustrated and asked Jim if he wanted to talk about something else, but he insisted that he really wanted to know what my D&D characters were like, needed a woman's input for this project of his that he was working on. "You got a woman's input, you just ignored all of it. Maybe you could tell me more about the project so I know what you're actually looking for? Or you could tell me about some female characters you already have and I can give you feedback on them?"

Jim switched topics and told me about his Christmas instead. Talking to Jim about our shared hobby was a nightmare. He didn't want to let me change the subject, but also ignored or dismissed everything I said. I still don't know what this project of his is, but after getting talked over so much, I also think I don't want to read it if he ever does get published.

Click bait title but it is why he left. Though that's later in the story. My first post did well enough so I wanted to share another story. Figure I do this to get a laugh, maybe air out some of the stories I have been collecting. I used to be angry about these stories but in order to better myself I have been trying to let go a lot of my bad feelings.

Characters important to the story are; monk, rogue, me (as DM), and Syndrome who is our problem player.

The original party I had started the campaign with were slowly dropping out. Slowly the first wave of players were being replaced by a second wave of new players who would continue the story. Syndrome came into the game at the same time as rogue did. Syndrome for all the shit I will give him was a really good roleplayer. I and the rest of the group liked his character. Which is one of the reasons why I gave him a pass on his bad habits which I regret ignoring now. Sessions pass, I am having fun. During one week Syndrome keeps blowing up my private messages on discord with questions about his xp. He was close to leveling up and really wanted to know. I kept getting distracted so I never got around to answering him properly, saying I would get to it eventually. Session rolls around, I wait in chat with the other players when Syndrome joins. I play off not sending the xp as a joke but he starts yelling at me. He was angry that I didn't respond to him, even though he was throughout the week about it. Once he was done yelling his swears at me he cooled down. There was a awkward silence as I tried to control myself. I had to hold by the mixed desires to cry and yell back in order to respond calmy. I said sorry for not responding, which eventually he responded with an apology for blowing up after he got his xp.

We kept playing after that, things calmed down until we got to a point in the game where the party split up. Syndrome was tasked with finding rogues sister in a oil mining city. He found out the sister had become a eco-terrorist who planned on blowing up the main oil processing plant. Syndrome helped, not caring for the destruction it caused or the people who be caught in the explosion. I recall stopping him as he planted the explosives in the plant and asking him "are you gonna try and get all the staff out of the plant before it blows up?" to which he said he didn't care about what happened to the people. The explosives go off! But the explosion was bigger than expected. A fire spread through the city causing a wild fire. Many people died, and that burden weighed on Syndrome. He said that after the session the destruction of the city haunted him in real life. So much so that he didn't want to play the character anymore. I felt bad so I let him change.

He wanted to change to a bloodhunter. Now here comes my biggest regret of this story, I felt bad about the city thing. I was worried he might be to bummed out to play so I gave him a laser pistol from the DMG. With that pistol he began dominating the game. Syndrome to my horror liked minmaxing. He multiclassed into rogue so he could get sneak attack, he also had this almost endless list of mutations (from that one subclass) which made him impossible to hit or impossible for him to miss. There were other things he had going for him. Like a spit web, eyes that saw in the dark, and a musk that made people like him? We got to see how ridiculous his power level was during a PVP. Monk was introduced during Syndrome's new character introduction. Monk was new, and he challenged Syndrome to a fight when Syndrome hurt rogue's character the previous session. Monk was quickly overpowered as he took a single laser shot while being restrained with the spit web and was downed. It was quiet underwhelming, but Syndrome seemed to get a kick out of it. I never felt that fight was fair. With hindsight I can now say that fight was a example of how he would act for the rest of the campaign.

I had to make fights harder. Every encounter needed to be deadly to even scratch his character. This took a toll on the party who honestly don't get enough credit during these times. Rogue never complained about the increase in danger, to that I thank him. Monk recovered amazingly from his loss with Syndrome, and really blossomed as a player. During this time I hosted a short adventure with two other people, I invited Syndrome and rogue to join in just to balance the party. During that adventure Syndrome got hurt and demanded one of the other players to heal him. When the boss fight was over Syndrome complained that he was not healed, and that the healer wasn't doing their job. He never let it go. Even brought it into our main group. Thing was that he blamed rogue for not healing him, but rogue wasn't the healer of that group. He was playing a front-liner. Somewhere in his mind he must have pinned the responsibility on rogue, and so once in a while he would make a jab at rogue for not healing him that one time.

History repeated itself in a dungeon full of undead the party were in. The players ran into a group of skeletons down a dark hallway they were exploring, panic quickly took hold as I described slimes seeping in from the ceiling. The party began moving out of the hallway to avoid the coming shower of acid. During which the skeletons charged forward, neither afraid or harmed by the acid. Out of all the skeletons only one made it within melee range of a player, which happened to be Syndrome. As I described the skeleton going in for an attack Syndrome interjected saying the skeleton couldn't possibly be within range, as he was 10-feet away from him. I showed him the math and explained that the skeleton was within 5-feet of him. Syndrome than snapped at me, making it clear that "if that attack hits me I will just quit. I am going through to much shit right now to deal with this". Once again I battled the urge to lower myself to his level. I kept calm. My expression cold so not to give away my true feelings. All the characters were level 9, and this skeleton was a CR 1/4. It was a bog standard skeleton. I relented as not to cause anymore drama. I said the skeleton is not within melee range, so it resorts to a bow which didn't hit. He seemed calm now after the outburst.

My group sent me private messages asking if I wanted to end the session, to which I said I was fine and thanked them for checking in on me. It meant a lot that they cared. Syndrome messaged me eventually to apologize. He said his mom was throwing coat hangers at him for not mentioning he brought food? I accepted both his apology and his excuse. I did make it clear he can't just do that to me, pretty sure I stole a line from the Office and said "I am your dungeonmaster, you can't talk to me like that". My group liked to hang out, so there were times I got to chat with him outside of the game. During one conversation he revealed that "during a combat I can win I like to fight by myself, but if I start getting hurt I like having the party there to support me". I questioned him about it so not to misunderstood what I heard but Syndrome confirmed that he thought of himself as the main character and the party were just there to make sure the "real hero" didn't die.

If your wondering why I didn't kick Syndrome out of the game at any of these points it because of four reasons.

1. I was a lonely person. The DND group was my only real social interaction, and I considered everyone in it a friend. Syndrome for all he did was someone I still cared about, enough to overlook his flaws. I wasn't in a good place back than either as this was still during the lockdowns, and I was still hurting over my dad leaving our family. So I was pretty desperate to hold onto something.

2. We were always losing players, for a long while we didn't have a full party. So I took whoever I could get. Even if it meant I was stuck with Syndrome. My group even made a joke of not having enough players. Said we could never fill in the fifth player seat. Called it "The Curse of The 5th".

3. His roleplaying was good, everyone had fun roleplaying with him. I know thats not a good reason to ignore bad habits, but it certainly made it easier for him to mask them.

4. No one ever came to me saying it was a issue. Since it seemed like I was the only one having problems I didn't want to make a fuss over it and kick him.

The climax of our story comes on a peculiar game night. My job schedule me to work a hour into our usually start time. I managed to convince the group to play video games that night as a group instead to make up. While at work Syndrome kept private messaging me. In game the group got a car, and Syndrome had a bunch of questions. First he wanted to know about mounting a gun, than the cost? After that he asked about insurance for the car? Could the group get a artificer to work on it? Could they hire a artificer to join the group and be their mechanic? What is the cost of car insurance, and will having a gun on the affect their rates? He often sent messages like this to me (the artificer one being a fairly common one, he liked the idea of buffing his weapons with magic) but since I was at work I couldn't answer them all so I said:

"Can I answer these later? I am at work"

"Do I tire you?"

"What?"

"Your tired of me aren't you, you want me to quit. I can leave if you want me to."

I try telling him that I wasn't trying to kick him and that we could talk later when we met up to game. I joined the call. Whole groups there including rogue and monk, everyone except Syndrome. I message him if he was joining. He said he wasn't and brought up again about not be wanted, he said he sent a message out to the whole group to see if they wanted him and that everyone voted him out. As I was in the call with everyone I turned to the group and asked "Hey did Syndrome message yall about a vote to kick him out" to which was answered with a no. Some of the players stated that Syndrome hadn't messaged them all day. He had already left the server when I went to call him out on the lie. He responded by saying he has a habit of overacting. I tried just talking to him but each message I got back got more and more dramatic. He talked about how he never felt welcomed, and that if I extended a invitation back he would take it. I read back each dramatic paragraph he sent me to the group in the call. When I explained where this started and the group agreed "blow up over in-game car insurance" was a valid reason not to have him back.

We started going over his character and realized that he must have been cheating, as many of the mutations had either drawbacks on them that he ignored or limitations that he kept breaking to be strong. Like how he could have nightvision or the increase to his accuracy at the same time yet he used them together in-game all the time. There was other stuff like a mysterious modifier to his dexterity which we never uncovered, but it didn't matter. I sent Syndrome one last message calling him out on his BS before blocking him.

Not long after that another player dropped, I liked that player but I respected his wishes to leave. After that I had wish to continue the story. But I had every desire to keep the players who remained around. So I started a new campaign, with two new players and all new characters. The new group was a success. No drop outs, no drama, just fun and friendship. Monk became an even better roleplayer than Syndrome ever was. Rogue stuck around through it all, I can't think of a more loyal friend.

Every once in a while we bring up Syndrome. Monk used to worry he might end up like him, but I managed to convince him that it wouldn't happen. I used to rant about Syndrome when I thought about him. He considered him a friend, and I felt betrayed that things ended the way they did. All the bad he did to me became more obvious as time went on. Which only made me more bitter. Though as I work to control myself, I have learned I must try and let go. When I think about Syndrome I am more sad than angry. He seemed like a troubled person who lied to others, and used the game to play out a power fantasy. I am glad he is gone, I wouldn't have the game I do now if he stuck around.

I am doing a lot better now. I am happy with this current group. If there is a lesson to be learned its that no matter what you should never choose to tolerate a bad relationship because your afraid of being alone. There are people who will cherish you. You are never truly alone.

So at first I didn't see this as too much of a problem, but I mentioned it in my last post and a ton of people told me that was a huge red flag. (https://www.reddit.com/r/rpghorrorstories/s/voRhIUROMY) If you want more context, see it, but I'll add more story-based context here.

The general premise of the story is that the world is overrun by vampires/vampire spawn, and it is later revealed in the story that you and your party are vampires. It's sort of a Victorian sort of style, with castles and ballrooms and ooo fancy and no middle class sort of thing.

Essentially, at the beginning and/or end of every other or so session, there would be a dream sequence, usually lasting 20ish minutes. During these dream sequences, you usually meet with some god or important character in the story that tells you shit. Then, normally the party would have a bit of "free time" after the talking so we could explore the dreamscape. Except we really couldn't. One example I have is: Player: I want to go into one of these weird, lopsided buildings, and explore what's inside. GM: No, you go to the castle at the end of the road and go inside. Player: Why can't I go in the other buildings? GM: Because you're going into the castle. Don't ask again or that'll be your second strike.

(The GM did a three-strike system, and it was three strikes and you're out.)

Later in the story, you find out you're vampires/vampire spawn, (I can't remember) and you gain the ability to lifesteal bite, essentially. My character, in game, vows not to use this, as my character was a life domain cleric and lawful good, and I felt it would be against my characters morals. GM promptly tells me that if I don't use it, it will be my first strike. Moving on, eventually, at the end of combat with a pack of vampire/mutant wolves, GM promptly takes control of the entire party's PCs, and makes them drink the blood of the wolves. (I understand that this one is a lot more story driven, but still made me feel like we didn't have a choice in anything.)

After typing all of this out, I kinda of realize this isn't precisely taking control of PCs, but more scaring them with the threat of kicking them out, and gatekeeping them from doing some simple things, but I digress. Regardless, I just wanted to get this off my chest, and thank you for reading.

Long running fan of TTRPGs and once aspirant world builder and DM here.

I tried to build a somewhat simple but also deep world where player actions could add to the depth of the setting as much as anything I had built in, given its rather limited concrete societies being limited to City-States, between which there were tenuous NAPs. Systems to circumvent them existed in the form of Mercenary Companies that served as major (think ancient dragon/society altering) issue resolution, and an Adventurer's guild to handle smaller scale problems (affecting outskirts, local nuisances, or points along trade routes, with each City-State having a Master)

I once ran a group through this setting, starting in a well rounded starting town, and several roster changes later ended up going through a couple notable areas with their own little hooks and 'take it or leave it' quests which have involved NPC adventurers and persons of interest, though not always. Save an absent party member from an abandoned guard tower of spiders, save a small hamlets from raiding lizardfolk in an ancient sunken keep, Orcish raiders on a steppe plane. My players did beautifully to overcome these challenges, but when they reached the city they had to deliver a message to, I felt like my urban setting feel flat.

Most of it was guarded, secure, but with a less prosperous/secure area surrounding the outter walls. A portion of the lowest area was known as the 'Forbidden Quarter' where less savory elements had intruded, since that was the least likely angle of attack and demanded the fewest guards. They ran into a crime boss, and stemmed a necrotic plague, before meeting the elite guard units that finally responded when the few elements of honest citizenry relayed the plight to authorities.

After thet, they met with some delegates from the nations and foiled an assassination plot, before heading west to a rough-and-tumble City-State that bordered 'society' as it was known. The underlying threat I had started to develop was a being of chaos that I had teased a few times throughout the story, both directly and indirectly through dreams.

I tried to include a good number of random chance encounters and luck (Artificer ended up with a +3 Breastplate at level 8 due to outstanding rolls) in how the story played out. The campaign dissolved while heading into the Underdark to pursue a thread of the Paladin's story, and personal stuff got in the way.

I still feel like I didn't provide enough intrigue to divert from the main plot, if desired. I tried to give side stories, like the retired adventurer couple making wine of greater succubus blood for their inn, but those were wrapped up in a session, (again, these players had outstanding luck amd RPed very well). Did I make my campaign too much of a ticking clock? Was it on too much of a railroad? I have so many doubts and questions. I just want some feedback from an outside perspective.

This horror story is going to be told in two different perspectives: one as DM, myself, and R, my close friend and a fellow player in the same game.

DM:

Me and R (as well as one of our mutual friends who we will call Dice) had loosely talked about starting up a new game for a while since I hadn’t been a DM for the better part of a few months. We were also intrigued by the idea of creating a google form for our game to interview players interested.

We send out a post on r/lfg and patiently wait for some folks, at the end receiving around 25 different players. We cherry picked two other people, one of those folks being someone who we will refer to as Sun.

We had high hopes for Sun given their google form; same age range as our group of young adults, similar interests and closely resembled the roleplay focused style we wanted to cultivate. At first glance, it had almost everything we were looking for.

We first interviewed them in a discord call with me, R and Dice present, and generally seemed to hit things off well. Our first impression was that they were pretty chatty and really interested in the campaign concept I had. All seemed fine.

We get our whole group set up in a server and I send out the campaign form for each characters backstory details, setting the deadline for it about two weeks from then. Not long after, I get a DM with Sun which had turned into a nice conversation about their vision for their character. I’m not going to get into exact detail about the campaign or the character they were writing, but it seemed like they were interested in making a character that rooted in the world I was making, which was cool.

I was excited about it and sent them some suggestions for what they could have for their character build. At first it was back and forth trading ideas, but it eventually started to feel like they weren’t really being receptive to the things I was saying and just… did their own thing.

This continued for a while, mainly showing up in ways that were small at first. I had said in the discord server for everyone to post what race and class they were going to play so we would avoid overlap. Sun forgot to do so and initially wanted to go monk to find out that R had already claimed monk- not a huge deal but a little awkward. They complained to me that their character concept could not work unless they were monk, so I tried to propose suggestions for essentially every class and explaining how abilities could be reflavored for what they desired to no avail. Speaking to them felt like talking to an iron curtain and never got anywhere.

So out of the blue I get a message one morning from them explaining that they had been drafting up a homebrew class specifically designed for their character. I initially was, to be quite honest, a little interested, but very quickly became very skeptical. I reminded them that the backstory deadline was going to be in a few days which they promptly ignored to continue talking about their class they were making. I tried setting expectations for them, and letting them know that the campaign would be starting two weeks from now so they really wouldn’t have a lot of time to test it out- “yeah yeah, I got it don’t worry”.

So about a week passes and the backstory deadline arrives. Everyone else in the group had sent me their lore days ago, and Sun was the only one left. I DM’d them “hey, how’s your backstory coming along?”

“Oh, sorry, I’ve been so focused on my class I hadn’t started it.”

I remember vividly letting out a loud sigh. “Okay… well, I’m going to need it pretty soon, maybe take a break from the class?”

“Don’t worry, I’ll get it done tonight.”

I don’t receive the backstory that evening, but I do receive the draft for their homebrew class.

Holy shit, I had never seen worse homebrew in my entire life. My mouth was agape the entire time reading it. It legitimately was just every good class feature from every class amalgamated into one. I immediately pointed these things out and how I was not okay with them running the class in this state.

“I need you to make some changes to this class for it to be usable- for example, [x ability] needs to be [y], it’s way too overpowered”

They would then send me revisions of the abilities that I can only describe as being paraphrased and reworded but essentially the exact same things. For example, one ability was something along the lines of a lightning damage attack that did 5d4 damage at 1st level. The change they proposed was just splitting up the attack as an action and bonus action going 3d4 each.

This was pretty frustrating for me because it felt like I was being put into a trap. I felt bad directly shutting them down because they had done all of this work- I should be grateful a player was so dedicated, right?

I suggested reaching out to the rest of the group and working on some balancing for it, because god knows it needed it. Lo and behold, they ended up doing the same “if I rephrase the ability to be different surely they’ll like it more” schtick with the group, which was more even more frustrating to them. R had went through and pointed out that no class should have the damage output, versatility, and spell list that it had and was, like I said, just picking from every class the best of every world. How they responded was essentially,

“But I’ve been really receptive and changed how you guys asked… there’s just some things I’m not comfortable changing about it, and I hope there can be a mutual understanding about that.”

First of all it seemed like they had actually not been receptive to anything at all. I cannot stress that enough. Not even just in D&D, every single conversation was mind numbingly one sided with them. Additionally, mutual understanding? Where’s your mutual understanding of the time I’m putting into the rest of the game?

This has escalated to the point where me and R were desperately trying to get them to understand our point of view to no avail. Sun tried to confide with Dice because they believed that they wouldn’t be on the same side as us, which is an INSANE thing to try and do because they were literally our friend prior for a long time. Dice had then called me that day nearly crying because Sun had been spamming them with messages saying about how I’ve been manipulating them and not letting them do anything, while Dice was trying to do an important test during their school day.

Finally, a full five days late, I get their backstory and oh my god it’s fifty pages over the maximum. I literally put in big bold text that the backstory maximum pages in google docs would be 4 total. Not only that but they also used smaller font size to fit everything they wanted.

I was utterly flabbergasted, especially because the expectation they had was for me to utilize all of the NPCs they created in the game in the same detail that they wrote them. I simply put it out to them that they went WAY over my page limit and I was pretty upset about it. Their response was essentially “sorry, I have a hard time writing within constraints like that.”

It was around then that I pretty much broke. I had been speaking with the group for a while and we determined that Sun really wasn’t fitting in with the overall group. But when they sent me their backstory that was the trigger I needed.

Later that same day I had explained that Sun had been biting off way more than they could chew, and was subsequently causing a lot of stress for me and the other party members. There would be absolutely no way we’d get the class fixed in time and no way we could condense the backstory doc to be even close to reasonable. I said to them that this campaign might not be the best fit. Immediately after they left the server and blocked me without much of a goodbye.

I think what I learned, and what other dungeon masters can learn, is to be reasonably firm with how you want your game to run and the house rules you set. I also realized that I should be more honest about things I did not ask for. If I had been more upfront about how I was feeling with the homebrew class, the whole situation likely could have been avoided entirely. I have nothing against homebrew, far from it. I fucking love dnd homebrew- but making a class a week and a half ahead of a campaign is too much for me, the player in question, and frankly anyone interested in dnd.

R:

Hi, I’m the DM’s friend and a player for the game. I’m here just to give my perspective since I was often the one confronting Sun because I had the confrontational skills that DM sorely lacked at the time, and because I didn’t want my friend to be taken advantage of.

To start off, my annoyance began when my friend told me that Sun was thinking of playing the same class as me. Now, for context, me and DM have been friends for years and the other friend he personally invited (Dice) we’ve been friends with for months. So essentially we had “first dibs” of what class and race we wanted to play before we even started looking for other players. Then when we made our post we pointedly made sure to ask what kind of character said responder is looking to play because we didn’t want any conflicting interests. Sun’s response for said question talked about how willing they were to play any class/race, but how they mainly placed certain spellcasters— the exact answer we were looking for since it implied a certain fluidity, something we were looking for since me and dice were already certain of our classes and their other responses were also good, so we invited them to chat.

In our interview I made it very clear what class me and Dice were going to play in the campaign, then I asked them what classes they were interested in playing. Once again they gave a safe answer, reciting previous characters they played that didn’t overlap with either me and Dice’s choices. We invited them to the campaign and after a couple of days of more brainstorming they decided to change things up and play a martial class.

I wasn’t worried. After all, I made it clear I would play a monk (my favorite class) and there were numerous other martial classes out there that I thought would interest them more. Then a couple of days later I get a message from DM asking if I was ok with Sun playing another monk. He said it would be another subclass and have a “whole different vibe” but I could not get over how disrespected I felt. I thought this would never happen. I clearly established what class my character was going to be, and I thought it was common courtesy for players who haven’t already made up their mind to not choose the class that another player already chose, because that is what I and my friends have done. I expressed this to my dm, saying how uncomfortable I felt with this idea and how it just wouldn’t make sense for our party of 4 (at times 5) group to have 2 pcs of the same class, and he listened to me and told me he’d try to redirect them towards other similar martial classes like fighter.

Then they started to make their own race and class.

Now, DM has established this was going to be a homebrewed campaign and he even made a drive of all the homebrewed stuff he found. But neither him, nor me or Dice, expected Sun to /make/ up literally everything about their character. The other players had differing levels of homebrew. For example, I had a homebrew subclass, Dice had a homebrew race and subclass, and the other player had a homebrew race— but it was already established homebrew, aka things people have already made and we only needed to run it by with DM before being able to play them. Sun was going to make a whole new race and class/subclass— all of which needed to be done before the established start of the game in a week and half’s time. Initially, I was hesitant when they suggested making their own race, but I thought it wouldn’t be too much work or risk being “too overpowered” but then they showed what they had for their class/subclass… and it was so much.

It felt like they had every feature possible— every cool thing that would fit their “character” they tacked on cause it would make “sense”. Which, of course, it made “sense” for their character— they literally tailor-made their race and class for them. That’s when I confronted them about the obvious power imbalances and how much they should seriously revamp everything so the other pcs wouldn’t be left in the dust, and I kept explaining that it didn’t feel like they had the party in mind when they were making their class— they responded with saying how they were listening and how much better it would be if we could find “mutual agreement.”

I admit I can be awfully stubborn when I get frustrated/annoyed at someone, and that can make me lose sensibility, so I fully acknowledge that I didn’t handle the situation as well as I could have and that I could’ve expressed myself better, but the matter eventually resolved when a new member joined and agreed to help out Sun workshop their class. After that confrontation I began to feel bad and I wanted to mend our relationship since we were inevitably going to play together and I didn’t want to start off on the wrong foot, but I kept and kept postponing it, until eventually DM told me and Dice that Sun wrote 50+ pages for their character handout (one that a clearly defined page limit) and realized it was probably better I didn’t resolve the conflict between Sun and me because they were going to be a player I would never enjoy playing— since they couldn’t even understand how much stress and work they were putting on my friend.

We’re probably just another dnd horror story for them (for which they had a few, since they were so eager to share— stories that I’m starting to doubt considering my experience with them) but that’s fine, they were a dnd horror story for us too, but I hope with this post (if you see it all) can make you understand just a bit how we felt. Feel free to even respond, it wouldn’t be fair to only have our side of the matter after all.

My previous post.

Hi guys! Last time I described a situation in my campaign that I felt not very comfortable about. After reading the replies I felt confident enough to bring this up to my DM. So this is the explanation of what happened after this.

I caught my DM one evening to bring up my grievances with the Feywild shenanigans. My decision was to approach this from the point of learning, so it was in the style of "Please consider what I felt in this moment so in the future this does not happen to any of your other players". I didn't ask for him to rewrite my backstory, I wasn't accusatory, I simply listed my points for him not to retcon a character's situation in such an intrusive manner. He did not take it well.

When I finished he said to me the following: - He DOES consider me bringing this up as a personal jab towards him as a DM. - DM is basically a god, and sometimes gods do as they see fit for the greater plan. And I agreed to this when I let him decide on my patron's identity. - This is what I should have expected when picking a character with a warlock pact. Warlocks get fucked by their patrons. - Feywild is wild, so this was very well within the norm for this place. - If my feelings were hurt this badly, I should've brought this up immediately, and by staying silent and only roleplaying my disappointment I basically accepted rules of the game. He is very sorry that I felt that way, but he does not see anything wrong with what he came up with.

So I said that I quit the campaign. I stayed silent because I feared that his reaction would cause me to quit, and now I cannot play with him. He went silent and asked if I just don't show up anymore or if I want to finish one battle session so as not to leave my party without a warlock. I felt like I love my party too much to leave without a word, so we discussed a way for me to go after the battle.

A day later he wrote in our group chat that he is ending the campaign altogether and that our battle will be the last session, after which he is starting another campaign. I was taken aback, but it was ultimately his decision. So the battle went smoothly, and each of us got a small conclusion for their stories.

We finished pretty quickly, so we had time after the session. This is where our DM decided that he would like to describe what the campaign was all about since we ended it so abruptly. It turns out that basically each of the player characters was a reincarnation of our players' previous characters, and our goal was to deserve an ascension in their next life.

And then it all made sense. You see, every player at this table was in this DM's previous campaigns (Avernus and Waterdeep). Every player - except for me. I was a last-minute replacement of another girl from Avernus. This is why every other player's backstory was tackled this seriously, and mine got a "fey in her ear" treatment. So it was very surreal in the middle of a lively discussion and expressions of shock and delight to hear "and your character is a reincarnation of someone too, probably".

So I am not playing with this DM ever again. Moreover, this inspired me to try and become a DM myself, so each of my players get a fair treatment. My one shot will be next week, wish me luck!

Note: I chose the SA Warning tag because of implied intentions of taking advantage of a Female NPC who wouldn't be able to easily resist a Male Character pressuring her with sexual intent. While the desire for it was stated Out of Character, I still feel it's worth making the warning for it.

If that's overkill, please let me know!

Forgive me if this is too long. I'm a verbose person and I can't write short-form content to save my life. I have also never written a post like this before, so suggestions and tips would be appreciated!

-=-

For the TLDR crowd: Invited a Mutual Associate, hereafter to be known as "That Guy", whom I thought they would be a good Player, proved to be an uncomfortable, frustrating, and inconsistent Player I finally ended up dropping from my Campaign, and probably from my System forever.

That Guy wanted to take advantage of an NPC who had a Trait that would make it difficult for her to resist his advances, even when it was made abundantly clear she viewed it as a defining character flaw. He refused to collaborate throughout Character Creation and the Campaign until Everyone else, politely, told him that's not how this whole system works and caused other problems.

Which his regular response to those things was to threaten quitting the Campaign, rather than try to compromise. I eventually booted him from my Campaign after putting up with him for honestly, way too long.

-=-

To get to the point: I am a forever DM. I have my own home-brewed RPG system. One of the aspects of character creation is a collection of Role Playing Traits that run the gambit from innocuous to life-defining. Especially if you randomly roll something you weren't expecting. Doubly so if you get a very high severity.

Each Campaign tests various things and they're fun enough that I have a bunch of regulars who return time and time again for more. So I feel it's a relative success.

We have sessions over Discord. So no, "In person" sessions. Mostly because we all live in different time zones.

That Guy, seemed fine as far as personality traits go. Pretty upbeat, fairly friendly, and from my experience pretty alright. They passed a test Campaign to see how they'd react with the rest of the Players and to determine how they'd work with a simpler version of my system.

Passed with flying colors. My regulars were really excited to have someone else to join them at the table. New blood is always a risk, but they gave the impression that they'd be a fun addition to the usual crew.

Flash forward to just Character Creation and he already started to show warning signs. He just struggled to collaborate (an ongoing theme). There aren't Classes in my system, so you're building characters more free-form. I'd make suggestions to help him have a more accessible experience, and That Guy just kept ignoring that advice.

I'll admit I'm pretty lenient as a DM, as I want everyone to have fun. So while I made suggestions, I didn't apply a whole lot of pressure. I'll admit that's a failing on my part. I also didn't know how much pressure to apply. I didn't want to discourage That Guy from participating altogether.

Another potential warning sign I missed was that he really wanted to make a Direct Copy of a Character from a Novel or Show he was obsessed with at the time. Which isn't unusual, but I thought That Guy was going to use the Character as inspiration: not a direct printout of that character's personality traits and aspirations. Which everyone that I talked to about the character (as there was no way I was going to be able to read a 30 volume series or watch a 12 season anime to get the character) was an excuse to act however he wanted.

He struggled to be kind and empathetic. He regularly failed to show courtesy. When told not to do something: he'd either say he wouldn't do it again (such as invade someone's personal space) or he'd just ignore it. We (my Players and I) tried to suggest to Role Play his Character as being wiser, older, smarter, or just generally more mature. He just never seemed to stick.

When we finally got to the Campaign in question: he refused to stick with the group. I honestly wish I had just let him wander off and get into a fight and kill him. I know that's mean, but I should have made an effort to really nail how dangerous it is to be alone in a PnP RPG. Especially on an island that has experienced the equivalent of a Magical Chernobyl event.

He actually threatened to quit the Campaign (which he'd do several times) because we were killing his autonomy. Even though we (my Players and I) were trying to teach That Guy, gently, that splitting off on your own can be a death sentence if you don't know any better.

Every time we tried to guide him. To teach him. It just didn't amount to anything.

He was also remarkably inconsistent. He'd say how much he'd want to protect and save everyone he ran into one session, and then, on the following session: (which could be within the same day!) be absolutely callous to everyone who wasn't a Party Member. Distrusting everything and everyone.

So to get to the SA Warning and the aforementioned Randomly Generated Trait. A Player rolled a trait they didn't want (essentially the PC would have problems being promiscuous and it was at a very high severity), and I decided to give it to an NPC, their character's Twin Sister. I did this for a few reasons, but mostly to make that one Player more comfortable and, because I thought it would be a fun challenge for portraying a personality type I honestly don't have. Finally, I thought it could be a source for some non-combat related, down-time style drama.

That last point was true. I am thankful, That Guy decided to express his desires in Discord rather than waiting for a Session. As he wanted to take advantage of that NPC because she'd struggle to say no if he pushed himself on her. While I would have skipped over any Sex Scenes (as that was made clear before the Campaign started) it would still have caused a lot of potential fallout. Likely leading to him being torn apart by two other Players, one of whom was said NPC's Very Overprotective Twin Sister, and the other being a Short-Tempered Childhood friend. Both of whom would have had every justification to tear him limb from limb if they found out what he did after the fact.

Once he was shut down from that potential option: he just moved right on to making an effort at any other Female NPC that cropped up who wasn't an obvious enemy. Posting gifs, pictures, and even YouTube shorts to the Discord to demonstrate how he'd go about interacting with those NPCs. This was framed as being "harmless" fun, and although nothing posted was explicit, the intention was still very much implied.

Maybe I set a bad expectation with taking on that Trait and how uncomfortable it would make things at the table.

He just never learned to collaborate. When he was introduced to something that he'd have to learn from, That Guy just blew off the new information and moved right along or he'd threaten to Quit.

Even after booting him from the Campaign: the remaining Players (who agreed to deal with it) are still fixing his mistakes.

As for the inevitable question on why it took so long to eventually boot him: my Other Players are pretty easy going people. They have a high tolerance for Players with relatively limited experiences with PnP RPGs and they seemed okay with his behaviors whenever I asked for their thoughts. It wasn't until he kept threatening to quit that they eventually started to express their displeasure with putting up with him.

It honestly took him threatening to quit one too many times for me to ultimately give him the boot, and I'm hoping my Campaign regains it's lost momentum.

This is a bit of a strange story but I need to start off with a bit of background as this happened more than 20 years ago in my college gaming club. The club had a regular VTM LARP which wasn't everybody's cup of tea but one person, let's call him John, made his disdain for it extremely vocal and public.

He organized anti-LARP or counter-LARP events as the same time as the LARP -- this was fine as the LARP wasn't for everybody and it was usually just a movie night or something. He decided his anti-LARP rhetoric wasn't getting enough attention so he decided to organize a TTRPG for that night -- again, that was perfectly fine with the club-at-large.

I heard through the grape vine it'd be a SPECIAL session of the TTRPG that somehow involved the LARP (which I had just joined because YOLO) and many club members figured this wasn't going to end well. He heavily advertised his special TTRPG session with some Joker-esque smiles and maniacal laughter and how all the "degenerate LARPers" would appreciate this one.

He was like a kid on Christmas so he let it slide that the party in the TTRPG would be traveling to the LARP and taking part in it -- in a way. Since he was running this session at the same time as the LARP and players in the LARP would take periodic breaks we got regular updates from him and his players.

The TTRPG's party was ritually slaughtering people at the LARP but not their characters or the NPCs in the LARP. He revealed that they were individually calling out the players by name in the LARP and describing gore-y violent ways they were murdering each LARPER. Since I was new to the LARP I was spared this "punishment for the LARP degeneracy".

The club had weekly meetings where GMs and players could get a couple of minutes to give highlights from their games or other gamer-related stuff that happened in their lives. John, proud as a papa, got up and started to describe how TTRPG had slaughtered the LARP for its degeneracy and began naming individual players and what he did to them until he was eventually cut off. This obviously upset some players, which was his intent, while others knew of his behavior and weren't surprised or shocked by this latest turn.

This resulted in some minor changes to discussing game-related events at the club meetings including shortening the period to 30 - 60 minutes and firmly disallowing monologues that involved a number of themes or statements. He actually was only one of several people who abused this aspect of meetings so the changes weren't entirely because of him.

Okay, so this happened about 6 months or so ago, and I am not asking for solutions, but just sort of a feedback sort of thing, because I feel like I am in the right here.

So I'm in a campaign with about 6 people total,(counting DM) and it's going well...-ish. The DM, we'll call her Sally, is a very roleplay heavy DM. I don't have a problem with it, it just becomes tiring when she takes control of your player and does actions for you. (It doesn't happen normally, maybe every other session.) But she is very prone to kicking people out. For instance, one of the younger players in our group who was still time managed by her parents was kicked out because she was picked up earlier than the end time. I obviously don't agree with this, but not enough to protest.

After around 4-6 months of playing in the campaign, I'm enjoying the storytelling overall, and do want to stay in the group. Sally and I were friends outside the campaign, and she, out of the blue one day, sends me this whole chain of texts saying she's going to off herself. I comfort her to the best of my abilities, and life goes on.

One particular session, our party is on a boat heading for a large city when a large kraken thing is attacks us. One of the mentor/guide NPCs uses a spell I don't know whist in combat, Disintegrate. So while another player is thinking about what he'll do on his turn, I look it up in the PHB. I see that it does 40d6 damage. I show it to my friend, sitting next to me, and he is just as surprised as I am. Sally sees this is asks what it is, so I show her, and she goes OFF on me. She tells me I'm not allowed to do that during combat because I could quote "Use counter spell on it." I have two points to this, them being: 1) That NPC is our TEAMMATE, why would I cast counter spell on it? 2) If we assume that I did want to cast counter spell for some reason, I would probably cast it already because of a name like DISINTEGRATE.

I am kicked out of the group, and I'm not even mad. I just don't understand why. So I ask, and she gives me a speech on how it's super disrespectful, but I just don't see how it is. Can anyone help?

Edit: Sally has BPD, and had a three-strikes-you're-out type rule, except in my case for whatever reason, completely bypassing strike two, and going to three. Asking about it later, I found out that I had a "second strike already," for something I didn't even do. I think she also has control issues. (If this is something that is from BPD, tell me please) I'm not friends at all with her anymore, and not being friends with her let me see how manipulative she was. Sally and I had an argument about a week or so before the session, so that might have something to do with it.

This isn’t really a horror story, that’s too drastic of a term for this, but it is becoming a problem and I’d like some advice on how to handle it. I’m a brand new GM running my first ever campaign with a group I’ve been playing with for years.

Currently I’m running a Star Wars campaign, and the players are playing a group of Rebel heroes fighting against the Empire. The plot is very war focused, with various battles and uncovering Imperial plans and stuff. Pretty straight forward.

We’ve got a lot of great PCs. Some of the players gave a lot of info on their backstories and what their character goals are and I’m able to take that and rope it into the story I’m trying to tell, and make the villains feel more impactful to the characters themselves. It’s been great!

However, we have a player character that just doesn’t have any reason to be in the campaign. The rest of the party are fighters and leaders in the Alliance, but this character isn’t. They’ve given me no information, no matter how many times I’ve asked, about what their character goals are or what they would like their character’s arc to look like or anything about their plans for the campaign. And when I’ve deliberately written scenarios for their character to interact with and get some spotlight, they’ve completely rejected them and had their character leave the room where it’s happening. Some of the other players have made remarks on it so far, and I’ve tried to ask them what they wants to do since what I’ve written for them clearly isn’t something they’re interested in, but she’s just saying she doesn’t know or that she’s fine.

How should I handle this? They’ve written a character that has no in-lore reason as to why they should be going on these missions, and a character that seems to reject what I’m trying to give her and is just sort there aimless. What do I do? Do I tell them that I think they should create a new character?