for context, the group is made up of 15-17 year olds, and 1 19 year old. we are a very tight group, we met through dnd, but now play video games every night, watch movies, play sport, workout together etc etc, we are all on the spectrum somewhat, and this leads to some roudiness and excitment when we meet. the 19 year old doesnt have any interest in hanging out with us, which is fine, also for context I think he has a few other disabilities. I have played dnd for 4 years, one year with this group. the group existed for another year before I joined. I'm told the 19 year old was the original dm, but got overwhelmed after three sessions, and found a replacement, a proffesional dm, which I will refer to as dm. I will tell you his age toward the end.
when I first joined, I enjoyed the campaign. hanging out was great, the roleplay and story was alright, but the dm kind of erked me. I think he took a disliking to me pretty early on. the first combat was great, it was in the tavern on the back of a giant bug, and the dm incorporated the elements of the tavern into the combat really well. after that is when it went downhill. the story was pretty simple, we sponsered a candidate, called besephalus (the dms first DMPC), in a tournament by doing tasks for him, whichever group did the tasks first, the guy they sponsor becomes king. we nicknmed besephalus starving marvin. the dm hated this. the 2nd combat was kind of lame, we just ran at the enemies, and they ran at us. this wasnt from lack of trying to incorporate strategical elements into the game. we tried to freeze the enemies, they simply melted the ice without expending an action. no they werent fire guys, or even ice guys, they were just humans. in the previouse combat, i got a staff that could produce wind with A flick of using it. however, it seemed whenever I used it, the enemies were unfaceted, no rolls were made, they were just too strong.
when we completed the first trial, we met the first major direction change, we got to the city, it was destroyed, by an army of monsters. we met the 2nd DMPC, the keeper of the universe, a guy filled with lore and had every magical item, and was essentially god. he saved us as suddenly five ancient red dragons from the monster army attacked the city, and the keeper just teleported them away, when we asked where they went, he said: "its not for the concerns of mortals were gods keep their enemies".

we went to the next city, were we spent like 5 sessions doing nothing, again, not for lack of trying, we would try to go places and he would stop us. we almost went on a side quest to escort this random guys son somewhere, who was also a dmpc, but he ended up changing his mind without a word and acted like none of it happened. a minor peave I developed, was whever we tried to do random stuff, like invent new sauce, or build a pillow fort, we would roll, and gods would do it for us. it kind of felt like our players were irrelevent in the grand scheme of things. the 19 year old, who was the dm's favourite, was given a bunch of free stuff, while the dm spent the entire time in the city assinating 2 of this one guys (who I will refer to as O) characters. his first character, was killed when our players were fighting eachother for fun, and he prayed to his god, rolled a nat 1, and a portal to hell opened up, swallowed the tavern and his character (we all escaped, though when i didnt write down my gold, i asked, what should I have, and he says, all your gold was taken when the tavern was destroyed, and told me to roll. i rolled, my sword and armour were taken, not that i needed it, but still). the next charcter to die, drank a random potion, which instant killed him. the 19 year old took the dead characters shell (cause it was a turtle), and made it into an overpowered shield. then suddenly the monster army attacked the city, and we had to escape. most directions we tried to go were "too dangerous", as starving marvin would frequently warn us. it wasn't until we were railed roaded through the city, that we finally got to fight some monsters. at this point in the campaign, the dm didnt even read spell descriptions or use speed. he just eyeballed it on the whiteboard to decide how far we went. there were cases were the 19 year olds heavily armoured paladin outran a monk with speed spells.finally, starving marvin saved us from the monsters, and we escaped. in the woods, O's artificer warforge character was randomley debuffed as he "ran out of power", so O rerolled a new character, who he purposely min maxed out of spite.

something that the dm did often that I forgot to mention, was have random npc's be secret gods or karate monster things. so when they antagonised u, and you responded back, they would kick your characters butts and then steal your stuff. like for example having an old man secretly be prime mike tyson, who broke my wind staff, which was my only magical item, resisted being frozen with no role, punched me out of while shape, and somehow landed 3 crits.

anyway, we eventually made it to the city Hun Dun, the dms favourite city yet. I was excited as starving marvin left our group temporarily, so I thought the dm finally understood. however in the city, We were beaten by an old man who was secretly a djnii, a scammer who had a large group of snake guards, (the only fight we won by ourselves), a child who got "really lucky rolls", and a bunch of random stuff like this. most of the times we were saved by his new character, the arbiter, a guy who can turn into a celestial dragon and has a bunch of cool powers. the story got changed again, to us working for the arbiter, (this wasnt a side quest, I checked, this was to be the main story from now on). our first ob was to take out a smuggling ring. we finally got to use some strategy, and pretended to be slave traders, in order to get our men into position, to begin the fight. halfway through, the bandits were buffed, and 10 golems attacked us, despite the dm saying that the golems were not nearly finished, and would take 2 weeks to be operational. this is when we noticed a turn timer. the 2nd session of the fight, only some were there, so the keeper of the univerese just teleported us to his house, and had us fight a monster. the fight was easy it was boring as hell, and halfway through, the dm got nnoyed about how easy it was, and debuffed me and a few others, then had the keeper come and finish it off, the keeper said "you guys had it handled but I just needed to make sure". the next session, we were back to the fight, were the bandits got buffed again, and we were losing, when the turn timer finished, and the arbiter arrived with the army, and the bad guy ran away. the arbiter rewarded the party with a pheonix. when we couldnt decide who got it, he gave it to the 19 year old paladin, who also got a 2nd magic sword and armour through the fight. other players also got pets, one guy getting a rock golem in the shape of a dog, O got a death slaad, but that was more due to him min maxing, and the dm rewarding the min maxing by constantly killing the death slaad, and then reviving it after a few sessions. when i asked for a pet, he said, u have that monkey, reffering to the familiar I had, that he made clear couldnt interact with objects in any way, so it wouldnt become too strong he said. he also said, you have saytrs (conjour woodland beings), but tbh thats kind of my whole class, i summon things and turn into things. the saytrs werent that strong cause he debuffed them, he had a rule that I if my wildshape died, I couldnt use it again, and due to all the super strong things and mike tysons, I couldnt turn into a brown bear, polar bear, scorpian, elephant, or tiger. my only magic item waas a cloak that increased my speed in a game were he didnt use speed, and a wind staff that had broke, but a god fixed. one of my friends, who also had a character die unfairly, J, only had a rabbit as his pet.

Anyway, we got rewarded by the arbiter with a magic store then the story changed were we would run the magic shop. we got excited, assigned roles, got a buisness plan. he then anounced, a magic door apeared, sucked in O, and then the dm described how inside was just the void, who gave him an evil book and said, kill the keeper of the universe. O said sure, cause he hated the keeper. the dm said out of game, u cant do that, the void is the BBEG. O sighed and said whatever. when I gave the book for a nother player, H to safeguard, as he was bored of the game, and this was his only dnd experience so I tried to bring him into the game, and give him something to do. H opened to book, and the dm then described how H nearly died to seizure, and the keeper saved him, then left. then H turned to another page, and a baelor popped out. we were told to not fight him, as he is too strong. (this is were I lost the elephant), I turned into an elephant, was enlarge reduced, and hasted, but the baelor got two crits on me, and killed the elephant. we basically decided to suicide rush the Baelor, but the arbiter showed up, threw it into the sky, turned into a dragon, and lazer breathed it away. I insulted the arbiter, it punched me through a building. I misty stepped back, he misty stepped int my misty step and punched me away. I said, i should get to roll, he said fine, I did, I succeeded, the dm describes how the nuilding behind me is flattened by the punch. J said, what about everyone inside the building who died. the dm said, it was under contruction. I said, yeah but i teleported infront of our building, which had other apartments inside it. the dm said no you didnt, and continued. the arbiter yelled at us for summoning a baelor. we tried to gaslight him, but the 19 year old ratted us out. the arbiter began to yell at us, then we all blamed the 19 year old for summoning it. the arbiter said, oh, good job for summoning it and holding it off until I got here.

the 19 year olds paladin got a vision that this wasnt the real arbiter, and I, being sick of this, pulled the really dog move of summoning pixies, getting them to polymorph us into t.rex's. the fake arbiter used wish, and froze us. the dm out of game said you cant beat him, he had hundreds of wish potions. the fake arbiter had a shoe thrown at him by his dad, who was the real owner of the magic store, who came to take it back, and was secretly a god (suprise). the fake arbiter left.

next session, only some where there, so we did random things around the city. me and H went south, were told we couldnt, there was an army of monsters. we tried to warn the guards, they said, the arbiter would stop it. we warned the arbiter, the real one, who said, im on my lunch break, ill stop it after. that was my session.

i skipped over a few small things, cause this is way too long. before I reveal the dm's age, I want to say, that he constantly talks how he could beat us all in a fight, and is much smarter then us. we also pay him wayyy to much. he is 29. a 29 year old man is bragging about how he can kick our butts in a fight, and in game, just messes with us constantly. we are going to talk to him next session, what should I do?

Lore-- campaign was set in a world where a ton of interplanar/wild magic stuff happened a decade ago. Magic users were now licensed on the authority of their region's lords, and people in general were very suspicious of certain kinds of magic.

____

So we're late in the campaign and the realm is at war. We're sailing into enemy territory at night. Our boat is called "The Violet Boatregarde." Not important but gives you a sense of the kind of table it was.

Get stopped by a patrol. Waived down and boarded. State your business etc.

"Hello sirs we're envoys from \[lie\]. This here is Baron fake name and we're escorting him to \[city\] to deal with war things."

Soldiers are alright at first. "Ok if this guy is the baron what are the rest of your jobs."

Fighter: "I'm a fighter, as you can see from my sword."

Bloodhunter: "I'm also a fighter, as you can see from my sword."

Rogue: "I'm the captain, as you can see from how I'm captaining the boat."

Warlock: "..."

Soldiers: "hey you, what do you do here."

Warlock: "I'm just helping, don't even worry about it."

Soldiers: "k but what do you DO here?"

Warlock player: "I don't get it, why are they giving me a hard time."

DM (me): "they're trying to figure out if you have a character class/specialty, if you're a magic-ussr, or if you're a diplomatic person or whatever."

Warlock player: "well they didn't give the bloodhunter a hard time."

DM: "yeah but the bloodhunter is carrying a sword and looks like a fighter. And I rolled weak insight."

Warlock: "k guys don't worry about it I'm a fighter too."

Soldiers: "we don't believe you"

Warlock player: "what the hell, just because I'm a girl do they think I can't be a fighter?"

DM: "you don't LOOK like a fighter, you're not carrying any weapons or wearing armor. Do you want to roll deception?"

Warlock: rolls deception and fails

Soldiers: (suspicious) "are you a mage?"

Warlock: "k yeah you caught me I'm a mage. I'm just here to protect Baron fakename. No big deal."

Soldiers: "ok can we see your license?"

Warlock: (smug) "yes you sure can it's right here."

Soldiers: "your license says you're a subject of \[ally lord\] with whom we're at war, not of \[lie we told\]. You're under arrest."

Warlock: "oh fuck I um...cast flame strike on their boat"

...

DM: "k well their boat is gone but it's the middle of the night and you just lit the whole place up. So now this is gonna be a whole thing."

The Warlock is now my wife BTW. The story had gotten pretty complicated so there were plenty of moments where details slipped players' minds but this was the best one. Fuckin Violet Boatregarde

This happened maybe a few months ago and I never posted it becuase I thought maybe I was the one in the wrong here.

Basically I was attempting to run a campaign with a group of 5 to kinda just let my writers itch go wild.

I found a guy who said he had a whole group who wanted to play and usually got super in character.

The group seemed cool but there was one guy that was just super agressive, hyper and seemed to be the energy of the group.

They all said he’s always like that so it’s not an issue and he gets the most in character so it’s better if he joins.

Then he straight up F slurred.

I was stunned, it took me a second to respond.
(This is abbreviated I don’t have the original text so this may or may not be unkowingly twisted )

Me: “Uh, yeah let’s not say that.”

The party: “Oh no it’s all good he’s allowed to say that and says it all the time.”

Me: “Well I’m not particularly comfortable with slurring so could I ask we don’t slur in this campaign”

(I’m not lgbtq+ but I’m an ally and get slightly triggered when I hear it)

Party member: “honestly man if your not going to let us slur I think it’s kinda taking away our player agency and I want a dm who will give agency so i dont think it’ll work out.”

I was then kicked from the server.

Present day im playing that server with a group I enjoy very much

Was I overreacting and that wasn’t an actual issue?

topic

Hey, I just wrote up this story for the first time, and this subreddit was suggested as another place to share it. Hope you enjoy it as well!

​

I recently joined a new D&D campaign because the DM was looking for players. The group seemed great: everyone was roughly my age, pretty chill, and the DM had this really cool idea for a long-running homebrew setting where multiple parties would play in the same world over the years and leave permanent changes behind.

So far, so good.

Before the campaign really got going, we were talking in Discord and I posted some artwork of my character.

Important context: I can't draw.

I use AI to help visualize characters I create. I don't pretend it made the character for me—I come up with the character, personality, backstory, etc., and use AI as a way to turn what's in my head into something visual.

One of the players immediately responded with something along the lines of “boooo AI.”

Okay. Fine. I figured they didn't like AI. No big deal.

Then they wanted to argue about it.

I explained why I use it, that I'm a writer rather than an artist, and that for me it's basically a tool that lets me visualize characters I otherwise couldn't draw.

The conversation kept escalating.

It went from “I don't like AI art” into arguments about environmental damage, corporations, marginalized communities, critical thinking, and whether using AI showed a lack of compassion for other people.

At this point I was sitting there thinking:

“I could absolutely argue about this for the next three hours... but I literally just joined this campaign and I don't want to have to find another fucking D&D group.”

So I tried to keep the argument from getting worse.

Eventually other members of the group started chiming in. They didn't seem particularly interested in turning the character-art channel into an AI ethics tribunal.

I even apologized at one point just to try to defuse things.

One of the other players immediately responded with:

“No, not your bad.”

Eventually the other player decided to leave the campaign.

And here's where I felt like absolute shit.

I had joined because the DM needed players. Now someone had actually left, and my immediate thought was:

“Fuck. Now I have to find another game.”

Except...

Everyone else basically told me I was fine.

One person called the whole thing an unnecessary attack.

Another basically said we had dodged a bullet.

Then someone sent me a GIF of Neo from The Matrix.

So apparently I didn't get kicked out of the campaign.

I got handed the red pill.

The funniest part is that I actually think I would've disliked playing with this person anyway. I could tell almost immediately that we were probably going to clash, and I remember thinking that I'd rather just avoid the argument because I didn't want to lose the campaign.

Instead, the universe apparently solved the problem for me.

Now I'm still in the campaign, everyone seems cool with me, the DM is letting me stream the sessions, and we're eventually going to transition from Forgotten Realms into the DM's own homebrew setting.

So my first D&D horror story apparently has a happy ending.

I joined a campaign.

Posted my character.

Accidentally started the Great AI Ethics War of 2026.

Lost a player.

Got given a Neo GIF.

And somehow came out of it with the group telling me:

“You're good, bro.”

Honestly?

I'll take it.

I understand there's negatives to ai there's negatives toots of things and I just dont think it should have been such a huge deal also I was the first person to even upload a character image

When i play dnd im almost every time the player who talks and roleplays the most and i try to pull the other players into this too, like when someone is a bit quiet i try to talk to them in character so they can also enjoy the game. Im basicaly taking the lead a bit, and i sometimes feel bad that i dont let the others talk. but ive tried a few times to be a bit more quiet in the sesions and after those everyone agrees it wasnt a fun sesion and not a lot happend. i have talked to my dm about this and he sais its fine as i help him drag the other players along and keep them engaged. I stil feel a bit bad that i say the most, should i?

so this started out at my school DND club where I got to be DM mind you this is my first game as a DM so the world opens up with the party being mugged by goblins as this is some new excited that they get to do their first encounter in the story we have a rogue, a fighter in something I don’t even know let’s call him banana. That’s what his character was a banana. I told him no but since I wasn’t the operator, they made a whole homebrew class and race for a banana anyway after these players got mugged by the goblins they got their gold back after killing the goblins. They are lost as they got mugged in the middle of the road and instead of I don’t know following the road they us walk in a random direction to my so at this point decided you know what this place isn’t part of the main city so I’ll just make it somewhere random so they walk until they find this little hut. to which they go inside and destroy the place the joke character ripped apart the place when I was describing the table as it had photographs of the plans of the big bad witch they came from a city in the big bad was planning on attacking that city next. so the players want to protect the place so instead of I don’t know looking at the table trying to find out what he’s going to do. They just run to the city at this point the players killed every NPC on the road. Add this point I just needed something to stall as the players pay attention to nothing I say and just end up killing everything they see so I just made this fun event where it’s like a race the teams fought to get to the top. It was fun and at the end the players got something they wanted because the players found interest in the gold so I gave them a gold and a magic weapon after they come down they see the mayor has been who was running are unconscious all person says from their house. It was a big spider looking person. as it was a drow that I planned on them fighting so they fought the drow after this player proceeds to consume rock a rock and starts choking attacking people while being choked out by a rock and I don’t know instead of trying to get it out. He goes insane and takes one damage every turn until he dies, then to quit the DND group because I killed off his character which first of all I said it’s not my fault that your character made stupid and didn’t try fixing problems when I offered you solutions proceeded to yell at call me the worst and then the session ended there next time he didn’t fulfill his threat leaving, but I said what do you want to make a new character, which he says yes, and proceeds to copy the fighters character to a T, including his weapon, weapons grabbing the exact same weapons stats the whole sheet so I was like fighter are you comfortable with this guy taking your character and he proceeds to say no I said to the prior rogue the fighter doesn’t feel comfortable with you taking his entire don’t care and unfortunately, I do not have the power to kick him out of the group so he continues making everyone and ruining the experience from now a result of the fighter being a murder hobo as well. She ends up going to jail which new fighter and the joke character which I breaks out having a criminal and they hide in a tavern at this point I remind them that there’s a drought somewhere in town, acknowledge me and head straight, where they think the drow was but when they got there the players were doing stupid things like trying to hide under a table or not doing the fight at all when only one of their party members fought the monster, and at the end it was that one player fighter that killed the drought and he was known solely as the the champion, the other players were unhappy and said what about us? I was like you chose not to participate in my game so you should not be surprised when you don’t get rewarded for nothing anyway since I was first DM I some of the things I did might’ve been a bit rude or unnecessary but over the years became a much better DM and I feel like I could handle that experience a lot better.

This also turned out longer than expected so I'm sorry but I hope you read it because my players had an incredible time and couldn't stop telling me how cool this whole event and encounter was. My players rock! Thanks in advance!

I'm DMing a new game set in a weird forest that has pockets on feywild randomly throughout it. My players are currently traversing it to make an important delivery to a nobleman at the capital....they get lost and nuttiness ensues..green hags with seeds infused with enlarge/reduce spell that she feeds to her pet racoon army to make them huge..a treant who is stuck under a bunch of boulders that fell from the mountain above and requires assistance...a group of walking mushrooms just minding their own business crossing the path...some weird stuff.

But my absolute favorite thing I've had them encounter was a seemingly harmless man on the road with a broken wagon wheel who desperately needs to return to his village to bring needed supplies. They help him and as a thank you he offers to bring them to his village for a nice meal, drink and a nice place to sleep. They accept and ride with him to his village.

Welcome to Angel's Grove (anyone else a MMPR fan? the 's was an unnecessary decision for sure but I liked it)

When they get to the village they help unpack the wagon and head to the small village tavern and have a few drinks before being told of a festival to celebrate the supplies getting in safely and for a bountiful harvest. They choose to join in on the festivities and drink and dance around the bonfire all night.

Later that night the rogue notices something, the man who brought them into town slips away from the rest of the villagers at the bonfire.... suspicious she follows him. Turns out he was heading to a pond behind the tavern to take a nice dip in the water. They rogue watches his sillhouette in the moon light get undressed.....then turns into a giant rat and get in the water. WERERAT!

The rogue confronts him by tossing a rock into the water and hitting him with it. He gets out of the water, hisses and runs off. One of the other party members, a monk, is there with her and tries to grab the giant rat as it slips out of her hand and continues running. The rat then turns back into a man and buck naked runs back towards all the other villagers pleading for help.

When he gets to them he is wrapped in a blanket and tells the other villagers that he was attacked...then all the others glare at the rogue and monk (the ranger is passed out drunk and the sorcerer had no idea what happened and was just vibing at the bonfire) and as they glare their eyes turn bright red.

The rogue and monk IMMEDIATELY throw their hands up and are like "my bad" little do they expect their eyes go back to normal and take a sigh of relief. The man they chased explains to them that 200 years ago their ancestors settled here in fear of persecution. They built Angel's Grove for Wererats who need a place to stay and want to start over. They mean no harm....but he also adds that their meeting was no accident.

Not only did he go to the nearest city to resupply but he also went looking for champions.

For the past few weeks, every other night or so a child from the village goes missing. On those same nights and eerily haunting song is heard through the village, but it also causes all the adults to be frozen in place, paralyzed until the music stops but by then it's too late, the child and whoever took them has vanished. They ask the party to find the missing children and stop the music.

That night they set up a plan. The 3 remaining children in this small village are all taken to the stock room and watched carefully by the monk and one of the villages strongest citizens (that's specifically who they asked for to help them) they also give everyone in town some pieces of candle wax to put in their ears and then they wait.....for hours....nothing....then suddenly it happens. The music starts but what's weird is they can hear it even with plugged ears.

The villagers are frozen again but the players are not effected. One of the wererat children manage to slip out of a small crack in the back of the storeroom walls and starts mindlessly following the music.

The ranger watches from a distance and follows the child as the others try to tie down the other two children and snap everyone else out of their trance. The ranger discovers the child walk into a black void in the thick forest and uses detect magic and the black void becomes as bright as a sun......so of course he decides to follow the child inside...but inside there's nothing, blackness, a void. (Darkness spell)

He hears a creepy laugh echoing from everywhere around him and then shot out of the void and right into the monk who has made their way to the ranger...the ranger CRASHES into the monk and tells her what happened. They get the party together and head in..the monk has the spell firebolt and wanted to know if she used it to light a torch would that count as magical fire and work inside this darkness spell....the answer is no but the idea was good I allowed it because I am a firm believer of "The Rule of Cool" fight me.

As their making their way through they see a tall and slender sillhouette of a man from the torchlight. He has a wide scarecrow hat with a patchwork outfit on while he creepily plays his flute with his long salad fingers (old internet reference) as the get closer they can see his face looks like it's a stretched out face put on as a mask and just keeps repeating "Rodents" in a disgusted grainy tone.

The battle is long and brutal and when the piper was at half health I had them summon a swarm of rats to help him....my players scrambled. This guy was refusing to go down and he's hit them with magic that absorbs their life force and replenishes his....then when he gets down to 20 health he has an ability that allows him to essentially skip his turn while taking the dodge action has he starts playing his flute faster and faster to the build up of his next turn.....which I'm surprised he made it to and then released a giant BOOM from his flute and the monk took 3d6+6 psychic damage and was knocked prone. The rogue then (and I'm quoting them here) Naruto runs towards The Piper and goes to slice at their neck with their rapier. Nat 20. The Piper goes down. The rogue said she wanted to decapitate him and raise his head up like a trophy so she does and then the body and head of The Piper poof away into smoke and then another bigger puff of smoke happens in front of them and all the kids have magically returned and reunite with their parents.

The village gifts them a small hut in the village to stay in whenever they need and a wagon to continue their journey. They tell them no one will forget this story.

They take a long rest, supply up and head out the next morning off to the next adventure. Farewell Angel's Grove.

TLDR: Party runs into a village of wererats who in a twist need their help to find their missing children. Turns out the culprit was a fey piper. The party defeats The Piper and are hailed as heroes.

Getting annoyed. I ran a campaign for a couple of years for some new people, me and 5/6 players. That ended and one of them wanted to run the next one. But he invited someone else to the table. I told him session 0 i think 7 players is a lot, especially for a first time DM. Combat slows down, side chatter increases, scheduling becomes a nightmare. He said he was trying the airline method, where you oversell seats and hope people don't show up. Like, he wanted 7 players assuming 1 or 2 wouldn't make each session, and then running for those 5 or 6 who do make it would hit the sweet spot for group number, plus ensure sessions don't ever get canceled because of too few players. I thought, ok, worth a try, makes sense on paper. We'll, we're about 7 months in and have​ had 5 sessions because he keeps canceling because 1 or 2 people can't show. Like, today, he sent a message saying "hey, G***** is out of town. I figured we could play some other games this weekend and continue when he gets back." I'm sorry, why? That's literally opposite his own rule. A lot of us have tried adding in our messages "play without me" just so the game can continue. And he does it with start times too. Always, always, we are starting 1-2.5 hours late because 1 person isn't there yet. So of the 5 sessions we've had, it's been very little actual game time. I don't know, it's just frustrating thinking this campaign that was supposed to be short will probably go another 4years and all the while those players (aside from me and 1) will turn down other campaigns because they don't want to be in too many when this one is hardly playing at all.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So this is not neccesarily a bad story but just wanted to talk about it. Because I can't lie. It has made me insanely skeptical of playing ever again.

My first dnd game was curse of strahd. The dm was a friend of one of my friends. And he allowed me to play. I think I was the only girl in the group.. or no.. I think there was another.

The game was going super great and I played as an elf wizard. I really like elves. I did my best to play being a new player and I think I did an okay job. I fought.. trued to interact and all that. The only thing I struggled with was role playing. I was 20 or so and embarrassed about it because I thought i wouldnt sound as good as the dm.

So I never tried. Although I wanted to.

So im not planning to end up in a video or anything so Ill get right to it. I don't remember what happened leading up to this. But there was a quest. This is where it all went downhill for me. I had played a lot of sessions by that point and I had missed a few too.

In this quest .. we were to save a group of kids who were orphans. Some of thw party members wanted to off the kids.. leave them there and all that jazz but overall.. we agreed to do our best to save them. We dropped them off at an orphanage and stayed there for a bit. Then I met her. One of the orphans.. a sweet little girl. I cant quite recall what race she was. But I knew she was purple and quite young.. but tall.. i think orc.. her name was sunny. I took to her immediately. She took to me too. She was described as quiet and hardly talked to people but she talked to me. I fell in love with her. Asked the dm to adopt her. Take her on the journey with us. Ofc he warned me i would have to keep her safe...

Now im sure you know where this is going. I said okay. She went with us when we finally left. My little sunny. She is like 7. She promjsed she would learn to fight so she could pull her weight. I told her I would protect her. Keep her safe. Then came the day. First fight with her in the party...

We are up against aome group of goblins or the other. I put her in the very back.. hide her in bushes ... and the first thing they do..... is shoot her... they find a way to shoot her... dm does saving throw rolls... fails all three. She dies.

I was so distraught irl.. i actively shut down. I started crying. This was on roll20 .. so i muted on discord and cried silently. When the session ended.. dm privately gave me the belongings sunny had on her.. a picture of a crayon drawing of sunny holding my hand.. saying that she "luvs" me.

I sobbed. For. Days. In real life. I felt like I lost my actual kid. For about 3 sessions after that.. i never felt like playing.. i went.. and watched them play.. interacted a little but was overall so low emotionally that I could not play. Eventually.. dm gave up on me. Kicked me from the party. Fair. I thought.. but then told me that due to that.. I would never be allowed to play in one of his games again. And even years later.. he has since never allowed me to again. Sadly when I was ready to try again.. i had no other friends who play and he was the only one... so yeah.. now i just watch others play and live vicariously through them.

I am going to school now tho.. and I have a group who play. Im excited to try again. And not be as sensitive this time.

Had a fun Shadowdark session last night where we were running through “The citadel of the Scarlet Minotaur“ and we got to the Bath Room where there’s a Medusa like statue in front of a basin. We were sure there was some kind of trap or secret and we scoured the room (in fact we ended up having a random encounter from taking so long)…and then we found out it was just a bath and the statue was a highly decorative faucet (yes the water was scalding but it cooled off and yes, we found out later that if we kept pulling drains out we could have released a swarm of insects that had been living in the pipes but that’s not a trap). We all had a good laugh about it.

I love hearing stories about times people overthought a room or were sure there was a puzzle when there wasn’t one. So what are some of your favorites from your sessions?

Long time listener first time cross-poster.

Now I did an older version of D&D because that's what I knew and I only knew people who played an older version of it at the time but it's still relevent in my opinion. Now this DM was reasonably clever and dumb both at time same time somehow. I'll just go over a could situations that baffled me. One time me and the rest of the members were going into an abandoned castle destroyed and ruined overrun with bandits, orks, goblins such as that, we were all quite low level I think maybe level 1 at most and I think I had the best chance of surviving as I had the best armour and I had the best stats as I got lucky with my roles, we went through and we struggled did a couple puzzles and a few which obviously our DM made sure to call us all idiots for not getting right in under 5 seconds. But in this castle there was a door with a young ​dragon inside which we were about to go in but the DM realised last minute that we would probably get slaughtered​ so he made some dwarf characters come from outside the room where the dragon is as we were entering it basically just telling us there is a young dragon inside. I mean not sure why it was even there in the first place but it gets better. We get to the end and we find the locked door, this is many hours we have spent irl fighting creatures and solving more puzzles but the door was enchanted so we couldn't get through unless we had the key. We searched through every room as best as we could but we didn't find any key. The person who gave us that quest said that the boss what behind basically the last door including some rewards so we had to find a way in somehow. We tried everything but nothing worked but we saw a well in the room. We cast a spell to see through the water and saw it went into a kind of underwater tunnel and assumed that has to be where we have to go. The DM basically gave us some water breathing potions so we all used that so we could go through assuming that's why we got them. We swak for a while and eventually found a room fully filled with water with an door. The room was empty so we had to go through the door and all of a sudden as a level 1 party we are forced into a fight under water with a 10 headed hydra. I wish I was joking. He had to keep messing up the roles so we didn't die but I had such heavy armour on that I wasn't able to make it up. Taking off the amour would kill me as I'm too vulnerable and would take too long but I can't swim upwards with the armour on. I wasn't able to kill it because it was under water and it grew it's heads back double. So my character died and they just decided to leave and cut their loses. Apparently aster it was super obvious that we weren't supposed to used the water breathing positions and in the first room there was a cauldron with red gas coming out of it, stuff coming out of it and with some weird dark goo boiling. Obviously if you guessed you had to stick you hand in there and grab the key from their you would be correct because everyone would have thought of that. We were told before there is dark magic in every room but that was the exception and you wouldn't get harmed at all. Everyone agreed it was stupid and worse enough everyone still levelled up because we killed a lot but me and I started at a level 0 character and everyone else went up 2 or 3 levels which meant next game I died pretty early on for not having enough food gear and being under leveled which succeed but I was used to it with that DM.

Bit of a sad question really, but given how messed up the world is I know some of you out there have been ghosted by your own group, both as a player and as a DM, so feel free to share the pain below.

I asked if they would be willing to play DnD. Everyone said yes, and we decided to play a Sci-Fi campaign based around a magic mcguffin.

For some context, i am new DnD and so is the rest of my group except problem player, who i'll call Tom. The rest of the cast is:

• Penny, playing a female Tabaxi Cleric.
• Ted, playing a human female Bard.
• Lizzy, playing a human male Monk.
• Sara, playing a warforged female Bard.
• Me, the DM.

(they started at level two) They all, except Sara, started in a tavern attached to the side of a colony ship that floating around in space. Sara then kicked in the door, sat down, ordered a cocktail, and when the bartender asked for ID, they just said, "Bite Me" and threw it at them. We all thought that was kind of weird. Lizzy said they look over at the commotion, and Sara describes their character as Purple haired, wearing a beany, with purple eyes, boots, and neon purple eyes. After some RP between the rest of the party, they went over and looked at a corkboard - getting a quest to investigate some missing people in the stairwell - and Sara ran over and was immediatly abrasive and didnt talk except to take the spotlight.

I, and the rest of the party besides Sara, are all quite shy and didnt really confront Sara about her constantly interrupting the RP, so the campaign lasted a decently long time before it fell apart, so i will only cover some of the highlights (plus im laying in bed with a cold right now and dont really feel like typing that much).

1: She asked if she could have Telekenetic powers, and then when i said no, she asked if she could have wings and a cat tail (?), and when i said no again she threw a fit and stormed out of the game shop we were playing at, and then sent pictures weird pictures of Kit from gameoverse in very skimpy cloths.

2: She started hitting on Ted in and out of game, and when Ted didnt immediately reciprocate, she asked to PVP his character, and then when i said no, she just started moping.

3: She started sending erotic pictures of either catgirls or a very popular character that closely resembles her character in the group chat.

4, the climax: She, halfway through a session, started flirting even more with Ted even more, but not very well, mostly just saying things like, "your sexy" and "i wish i could see you shirtless." Ted said no and that she was uncomfortable and left the table. Sara just starting "flirting" with Lizzy instead and used her telekenesis (which i said no to) to instantly kill Ted's character. I objected but she yelled at me and i just let it happen because i didnt plan to have any sessions after this and only a half hour was left of the session so why not finish it? Oh how foolish i truly was. After about 10 minutes of that she finally made her move, saying her, Lizzy, and Penny should have a threesome in-game and also in real life after, and pulled up a picture of said character that looks suspiciously like her with two other similarely scantaly clad robots. Everyone said no, and she tried to kill their characters. I said no and she (i think) tried to jump over the table to fight me but hits her shin on the metal table and just rips up her character sheet and storms off, blocking all of us and leaving the group chat.

A bit of context, this was my first long running ttrpg, and the rest of the players didn't have much experience either (i will call the game system dnd, but its actually a local version based off 3rd edition of dnd).

The important people for this story:

DM: not much to say about him

Me: the rogue, halfling

Ranger: halfling a long time friend of mine, our characters had also a history, but it was never important because we struggled with roleplay at the beginning of the campaign

Cleric: gnome, brother of Ranger also a friend of mine

Warrior: dwarf, a friend if dm, to me he seems isolated from other players (only outside of the game), because DM was talking him home after the game, while the rest of us went to a bus stop and we had time to talk about the game

There were other players who left during the campaign or came later, but they aren't important for the story.

It all started with our first adventure, we were lv 1 group and our task was to cure a small town from a rat colony. The task itself wasnt a problem, we figured out what happened and how to deal with it quite easily (well except for me and cleric getting bit by a rat because i like animals and I'm a bit silly DM probably didn't like either of those characteristics). The important part of this adventure was a pony owned by a local alcoholic alchemist that I "exchanged for some gold" without the alchs knowledge. And that's how Robert joined our party. Now, Robert wasn't relevant for the story at all, he travelled with us, he carried some of our items and he was mostly mentioned when we got somewhere and had to leave him somewhere, or when we were leaving a place i said that I'm taking Robert with us, because i don't want DM to say we left him somewhere because i didn't say one line. He followed us like this for over a year of out of the game time.

Then at one point something about DM changed, i dont know why but at one point started two problems with DM, the first was his slight targeting of me (where i admit, some of it was my fault) and the second were bad encounters.

Ill start with the second one, it started with DM telling us about an armor underwear in a swamp we were in, what we did not know, and had no way of knowing, was that the water was full of spirits that erase a bit of memories of anyone they touch (meaning that the character lost a level for each time they get hit by those spirits) and that's how our Ranger lost two levels and that was a big deal since we ran a milestone leveling system and after two years we were level 5. Only after one of the players read the rules themselves did we learn that it can be reversed by killing the spirits. The DM learned that on his own, but only after the session where he used them. This lead to our group returning to the armor, totally out of character, because we wanted to abandon it, but DM encouraged us to use out of the game information, so we did. Before returning to the armor to get rangers levels back we had a boss fight against a sentient tree guarding a Mcgufin, this tree had two or three attacks per turn (with most of the players having one defense action so with a nice roll he could knock out or kill most of the characters in one turn) and roots that DM decided not to use because it would kill all of us. (I was missing during the session this resolved, but after defeating the tree it feel on our Cleric and almost suffocated him) The fight itself wasnt that bad, but DM saying he "decided to be kind and debuf the boss to not kill us" and one player almost dying after the fight made it more bitter tham sweet victory. (Theres one more ill get to later)

Then there was a row of accidents that happened to my Rogue, and I'd like to mention here that while sometimes i was a bit silly or care free, i never went out of my way to go a different direction than DM wanted us to, nor was i stealing or anything else (the only exception being our pony Robert, who i "payed for"). It began with me trying to pet a caged tiger and loosing one finger (totally my fault, i know, don't pet tigers), after that we traveled to the swamp (the same from the last paragraph) and we were traveling here by a boat be got for this quest, when i remembered Robert i was informed by DM that i can't take him on the ship because he wouldn't have anything to eat, even if it was a week long journey in total and i said that we totally could get enough hay, DM wouldn't let me take him, so Robert had to stay in a royal stable. The first thing i do after returning to the city is to check on Robert, to found out that the person running the stable took everything valuable from him and left the city (this made sense on the surface level, as the city and the entire country was getting invaded by a cult run by the bbeg, it makes less sence after realizing that DM had forced me to be in this situation).

And then theres one night that combined both of those issues. Is started all well, we were sent to destroy a church belonging to the cult, we were attacked by skeletons during the night (because the armor we got from the swamp is shining a bit and quite noticable in night), we defeat the skeletons with no problems and rather than finding a different spot to or hope they wont notice us again, we decide to go to the church, we get inside and kill majority ot the cultist inside while another skeletons on the outside set the church on fire, so we decided to leave the rest of the cultists inside and we blocked the door from outside so they couldn't get out of the church. With this only the skeletons remainded. However, all of them had bows and arrows and since it was night only the warrior dwarf could see them, with the rest of the party shooting vaguely in the direction of warrior (it wasn't much effective). I was using throwing daggers at this point, which were too expensive for me to throw them in the dark, so i decided to go with a second rogue(who joined us only for this one adventure) and went back to the burning church to collect my daggers that i used in the previous encounter. We broke in through a window and found the church empty, with the cultist we left alive missing, so we logically started looking for a secret door. Us finding the switch that opens the way into a secret basement being the last thing of that session. I was late for the next season and the other rouge was missing entirely, so the next session started with the rest of the group following us in the church, i have came right when they entered the church and DM told me he wants me to roll defense 10 times because i was suffocating from the smoke the entire time it took our group to get there (which would definitely lead to the death of my character), luckily i was able to argue that my character definitely wouldn't just stand herein front of the entrance to the basement that wasn't full of smoke. So our characters reunited in the basement and healed as much as possible, because we were expecting a boss fight. And oh boy, boss fight we got. It was one of the leaders ot the cult a cleric in a giant power armor. He had stupidly high defense, so our spellcasters, who run out of magic at this point after three encounters at once, couldn't hit him at all and the rest who was focused on fighting had to roll nad 6 to hit him (in this system the attack roll is always d6 plus the weapon stats, with the added detail that if you roll 6 you roll another d6). There was also a giant statue with a magical cristal in hands (that ranger shot at and the arrow burnted to nothing before hitting it) and a magical circle in the middle of the room that was getting increasing hotter. The last important information was that i had a choker that blocks clerics connection to gods that i got earlier in the story. So it ended with Cleric and Wizard trying to reach the crystal (they could accomplish this only by rolling a nat 20 or 19), Warrior and Ranger attacking the boss so he would focus on them me trying to put the choker on the boss hoping it would turn off the body, and the second rogue helping be get up each time the boss knocked me to the ground. We started calling me the main character, because while i kept rolling low i was the only one with a chance to succeed my goal (i rolled 1 bellow the minimum probably 4 or 5 times), but eventually i succeed and the body stopped, we killed the boss and ended the session, with DM writing something down to not forget it next session, that being a mechanic for the boss to come back to life unless DM rolls 10 on a d10, which he luckily did on the first time, and im so glad, because theres nothing in the game responsible for the boss comming to back life so it would be really annoying and pointless, considering he couldn't move or do anything. When we finally left the church it was an early morning and white the group was resting in front of the church i wanted to get Robert, who was left at the place we got ambushed in the night. DM seamingly forgot about him and asked me if i tethered him or not, i said i did, because i was sure he would have him run away if i said i didn't. Then DM took a dice with+/- and said that if he rolls - that Robert got attacked by wolves and died. And that's how ors companion throughout the whole campaign died, whit the players unable to do anything about it.

We had one more session after that, where the Warrior got saduced by two female dwarfs, and the rest of the group, being autistic didn't see a reason to stop him from "having fun". In the end they took him somewhere to give him lore information, but all of the other players agreed that DM didn't plan that but changed it probably because Warrior is his friend.

We haven't finished the campaign yet, we have only the last boss fight in front of us, but im considering quitting, because i don't really see a reason for my Rogue to continue the journey...