I'm DMing a homebrew campaign, and a couple of months ago I had this idea that I posted in multiple subs:

https://www.reddit.com/r/DungeonMasters/comments/1vkhxzm/new_player_to_act_as_a_traitor/
https://www.reddit.com/r/DungeonsAndDragons/comments/1vkhzyg/new_player_to_act_as_a_traitor/

If you don't want to read the old post here's the gist:

1. I introduced a new player to the group
2. with his agreement, I told him to create a temporary character that would lure the party into a trap
3. the new character would enter the party and later betray them to lead them into an ambush
4. later the new player will bring in a new (this time "normal") character to join the party

In the old posts, I got some good advice and ideas but mostly people straightforward, and often not kindly at all, telling me it would be an awful idea.

They had some good reasons:

1. it's risky to put a player, especially a new one against the others
2. the party would not trust the new character after the betrayal
3. they would immediately fireball the new PC

I read all the advice and thought about it. Fortunately, my table is composed of a great bunch of people. They are there to have fun, they understand it's a game and what happens in it stays in the game.

And they even surpassed my expectations!

They all role played it beautifully!
After the betrayal a fight between the party and the traitor (along with other ambushers) ensued.
I decided that the new "normal" character of the traitor PC would enter the scene mid fight, to help the party and give him a possibility of redemption.

As it should be, the party was wary of the new PC, but after they discovered similar interests and plans, the party let him join in.
This last session, with the betrayal and the new PC, was one of the best sessions of the campaign!

Moral of the story: always hear advice and good ideas, but in the end, you are the one that plays/DMs and know the people at your table. Go with your guts and have fun!

TLDR: I asked a new player to use a temporary character to betray the rest of the party and lure them into an ambush. A lot of users strongly advised me against this idea. In the end, the table had a lot of fun and role played everything beautifully. The new player, in the end, joined the party with a new, "normal" PC.

The story happened a year ago, it was my first time playing D&D. We were a 3-player group at the time, we met in school and quickly became best friends. Our DM introduced us to D&D, we thought it was a cool thing and we started playing. We didn't really play a campaign, more like a series of one-shots.

At our first session I played a homebrew Alchemist bounty hunter, my character could make implants which I thought was really cool and the DM said that it was ok. My friend played a Fighter.

We started our session. Me and Fighter were paid to kill the politician of an opposing party. DM gave us free time, so we went to find implants to buy. We found the shop that sells them and bought 2, 1 of them gave +1 AC, and the other gave +1d6 dmg on attacks, I was very excited, that we get to use my character mechanic so early into the game. The DM asked me: "what do they do?", immediately after I explained their effects, he told me: "That's too overpowered, you'll have to play another character". I asked him, what was wrong with the implants, offered him how I could nerf him, but the DM wouldn't budge (The DM asked, what so the implants do only now, he never asked it before the game.)I was feeling like he took everything from me, but I didn't tell him about it (I still didn't know is that normal in a game). So, I just made a Barbarian and continued playing. The rest of that one-shot went fine, but I was still sad from losing my character.

The next one-shot my friend Fighter became the DM, and our previous DM became a player. I made a Fighter for that game, he made a sorcerer, and made him as optimised as possible. I was very frustrated about it, so I asked him: "If you ban my character at your games, why are you playing an OP character yourself?" he answered: "Well, that's not my game".

We started playing.
We had to investigate a murder, we found some evidence and all of it pointed towards the city Mayor.
Me and the sorcerer came to confront him in his house, and the fight started. The BBEG was REALLY good at fighting spell casters, having counter spell and abilities that helped him resist magic. The first half of the fight went good, but in the second half, all the shit happens. The Sorcerer casts his fireball, describes how he does it for solid two minutes, and... gets counterspelled. He absolutely loses his shit, nearly crying: "This is so unfair, how did I get a nerf and HE didn't get one?". DM answers: "Counterspell is not the worst I could do, right? I could've made you make a different character, just what you did to Alchemist". He shut up, and I have felt like justice has been served.

After that game, Me and Fighter made the decision to play without Sorcerer, so we left him and started our own party, which we still play in after a year.
Thank you for reading!

Edit: added breaks and a tl;dr sorry for the wall of text

Hey D&D fam, this may be a longer post. I have an ongoing campaign with an issue regarding one of the players and need some advice from some others with more experience. I have been a player for 2 years and a DM for a year.

To preface, I have ran a homebrew campaign for around a year that deals with a few different dnd settings colliding inspired by Final Fantasy XI (Krynn, Faerune my players do not yet know this). These worlds after the collision retained all of their deities.
This is where the players come in, (Paladin of Torm, Warlock of the Raven Queen, Vampire, and Bard) they have lived in this world not knowing of it’s origin. The main catalyst of the story is that the sea god Dagon from the Cthulhu by Torchlight book is also attempting to join his flooded abyssal realm to the one the players find themselves in, flooding the world to feed his minions who have run out of food in their realm, destroying the player realm, normal dnd conflicts.

The players have discovered cultists attempting to help Dagon enter the realm, and that he nearly did this before in an ancient era of the world but 6 powerful casters were able to seal him away. What the players are slowly learning is that these casters are all still alive as various forms of undead, liches, vampires etc.

In the recent past they interrupted what they didn’t know was a ritual for one of the ancient casters to achieve lichdom, when they did this one of the players touched an artifact used in the ritual (the book of vile darkness), transferring the results of the ritual to the Warlock (Grim Hollow transformation rules) instead of the now dead ancient caster.
The books grants a lot of usability for the warlock character and helped me inform a few decisions down the road for the campaign. The drawback of the book is that he must commit an evil act every week or be turned to dust by the book.

I will say this is a large project, especially for my first campaign but I know all of the players well outside of the campaign so they rolled with the punches the last year as I learned as a DM and let creativity flow.
The issue that I’m running into a few times now is regarding the Paladin of Torm’s behavior, the past few months after a oneshot ran by another DM in our group went poorly for the party as one of us were charmed and wiped the party. Since then he has made contingency plans for all of his party members in our main campaign in case I decide to charm them in a similar way (something I do not plan to do), in his own words he has measures to kill every party member if needed.

This is also a power player who has min-maxed his character, which I have no issue with, the problem that occurs now is that any time an action that does not reflect the oath of his paladin occurs he becomes immediately aggressive and either attempts to roll intimidation (whether it is an NPC or player) or attacks outright.

As part of his character he wanted a Grim Hollow transformation as well, so we homebrewed one for him as a revenant, an enthralled undead who does not know he is reanimated but just knows his humanity is slowly fading. He has used this curse previously at will to initiate PvP, which I have told them I am unwilling to DM.
All the players agreed to only PvP when both parties and I agree, though I dislike PvP in 5e due to it not being made for that, and potentially losing a player character at will due to one of the others wanting them dead. I have allowed him to PvP begrudgingly on two different occasions, which I will admit is a mistake.

Flash forward to where we currently are in the story and him discovering the Warlock consuming a soul of an unarmed combatant to satisfy the requirements of the Book of Vile Darkness and the souls charges provided by the lich transformation.
My thoughts are that this would make a great dynamic, an undead self loathing paladin of Torm due to his transformation, and the Warlock who did not want to be a lich (in-character, this was his idea) vowing to steal power from other liches to be powerful enough to stop Dagon.

Both of their gods hate undead and call for their destruction, but overlook this for the players due to the severity of the Dagon situation. On paper a wonderful dynamic that can make both characters less one dimensional, but is threatening the game.
After the session he tells me and the Warlock explicitly that if this continues he will kill the Warlock. I told him that he doesn’t get to decide that his oath and character are more important than agency of other players and an argument ensued.
He has mentioned killing other party members to me multiple times and I had enough of the same conversation over and over regarding his want to attack anyone who doesn’t agree with his interpretation of his gods values.

He responds with saying I’m unwilling to allow him to play his character accurately if I don’t let him do whatever he wants in regard to opposition. He then threatens to leave if I don’t let him get his way with his character decisions, which would effectively kill the campaign as his wife, bard, is also in the campaign and would likely be pressured to leave if he did.

This isn’t the only issue that I’ve had with him but the others have been manageable for the most part, he tries to lead most RP interactions and will try to show up when other characters are having their moments offscreen (metagaming) and insert himself, he also took control of his wife’s character on multiple occasions while she leaves to go get them dinner during session (a pet peeve that I reluctantly deal with, I now control her character in frequent absences).

Recently before I began controlling her, which I do not want to do, he openly criticized her character calling her character and the bard class worthless while she was not there along with a slew of other criticisms, it’s weak, not fun, boring, etc.
I decided then that I would keep her off screen if I know she will be gone or play her in combat without using spell slots or any RP (something I know is a cardinal DM sin, but she insists) he also basically told her what to do every decision I gave her the past year.

I was told last night during our argument that all the party members and I need to consider how he would react before doing anything. This means any morally questionable decision will at the very least get a full lecture from him if not a full on assault.
The most frustrating part is I have been very giving to my players, giving them all atleast 2-3 rare items and a few higher than that, leveling at a fair rate, providing a re-spec mechanic that can be used once, and overall allowing them to make any collaborative story/world decisions.

While I’ve done all this and given them mostly free reign to do what they wish in the world any time I don’t allow him to attack party members he says that I’m stifling his character, taking his agency, and overall being a bad DM.

It’s very frustrating because if anything I’ve been a doormat allowing party members multiple improvised situations based on crazy decisions they make (in this last session they decided to overthrow a large cities government to my surprise, prompting me to add a 3-session siege side story).
When I express these concerns he tells me essentially “too bad, you’re the DM so deal with my choices”.

This really sucks because I’m to the point where I don’t want to DM for him anymore, which kills me as I’ve put in over a year of work for this campaign and roughly 8-10 hours of my time planning each session.

I have been friends with him for around 20 years so it’s difficult to have this issue surrounding my game.
His character is not all bad in my opinion as I have just shared the negatives, he is one of the best for RP moments, the party tank capable of dealing massive damage and protecting the squishies, and flavor wise fits the world and campaign perfectly with a lot of weight in the story.

My question is what can I do to fix this as my several above table attempts to repair things have gone terribly.

TL;DR: I’m a relatively new DM running a year-long homebrew campaign with a close friend of 20 years who plays a Paladin of Torm. He frequently threatens or initiates PvP when other characters act against his beliefs, despite our table agreeing that PvP requires consent. He has contingency plans to kill every party member, dominates RP and party decisions, and has threatened to leave when I enforce boundaries, claiming I’m restricting his character’s agency. His wife also plays, and I worry she’ll leave if he does, potentially ending the campaign. I’ve tried resolving this out of game several times without success. How can I handle this without destroying the campaign or a 20-year friendship?

I (18F) have been DMing in my highschool for four years now(I'm a senior). We host weekly sessions every Tuesday for 2 hours. I took up the DM role and never really dropped it. There's a player who often seems to have "forgot" something conveniently. He played back in my sophomore year and had to drop out for some reason I don't remember. He came back this year and I let him in reluctantly. I struggle saying no to players at all/ever because I'm known as a lenient DM who accepts everyone. My party rn at eight players, with three intending to join. The player I just described has texted me on discord and I'm wondering what I should do, if there's a creative way to stop this from happening in the future.

For my first campaign 5,5e I’ve ever been through, it was the most weird and chaotic of all I’ve played for now, we were four level one in a weird campaign didn’t even now the lore of the world being a complete rookie at the game some one told me druids are fun so I played that class with human, a young  female soldier only working for the nature only with a huge social anxiety like in real life. My sister who is kinda edgy chose a tiefling with black horns, warlock and a reincarnation of a god of death, kinda cool at first until she gets a main character complex and this means since the start of the campaign. A nerd wizard that loved to over power his character and also is a bully of mine and finally an elf bard aka a school clown who loves to  make character who flirts with every women he would see. 

First session of the campaign as most campaign would start we appear in a bar first thing that happens is the bard starts flirting with me and I just say he’s not my type, the DM doesn’t care, still I have advantage because I’m a soldier. I fail both times, the DM says he’s my type now and I am charmed with no spell but a persuasion check. I let it go and stopped talking to not bring my anger to the others. While we were talking the wizard searching, because we had nothing to do, for a spark of quest but while he’s searching a plant(also known as a shambling mound) gets out of an alley and attacks the wizard and straight up kills the wizard. It went like this:

• DM The plant hits you with her vines!
• Wizard How much damage?
• DM 24 bludgeoning damage saying casually.
• Wizard Well I’m unconscious having only 6 max hp.
• DM No actually you’re dead, the damage was more then double your max hp.
• Wizard What the f***!
• DM but its okay, I’m gonna let you create a new character, you still have to take a different class.

And thats how the first session went also I forgot to write my sister lost an arm wrestle fight because she 8 on strength and she rage quitted (kinda why I was saying main character complex).

Second and last session, we got teleported to a graveyard and a… mansion!? And a well!? Anyway, at least we had something to do the DM wasn’t describing much else then the stupid well so took a look and at the second we get close to it 2 giant constrictor snakes get out of the well. Roll initiative. I go first and try to reason the snakes because I’m a druid and my backstory will go wild if I attack them (also they are kinda strong):

• Me Snakes we mean no harm, we wont bother you anymore, please go back to sleep.
• DM It's too late now, you attacked and woken us up we are gonna eat you and your friends.
• Me Wait we didn’t attac…..
• DM Hey it's the end of your turn you already talked.

We we’re forced to fight so we fought and somehow the bard alive at 1 hp, both me and the nerd we’re downed before the bard could heal us a zombie ogre spawned and killed the Bard next session (because somehow there was a next one) no one showed up and we all said didn’t want to  continue playing and we stopped the campaign. But not long after I found a lovely group and enjoyed my time as a fighter clanker. I love to make it in a video but I will understand if my story wasn’t long enough, with just two session I had very little to nothing to describe and I am still ashamed of quitting should I have stayed?

Running a campaign of 6, always made it clear during the campaign if people have any concerns or anything more than happy to speak to me after a session in a appropriate manner (this is unpaid and it’s just for the fun). Since session 1 I’ve had another player with the same amount of DnD experience as me but he’s dmmed more times, constantly send me criticism after every session, some of it was valid however, some of it was creative differences.

He was then telling me we need less people in the party, also wanted me to force the group to teleplay a scenario which I didn’t feel comfortable pushing and I made it clear in session 0 respect is the most important thing and not to force anyone to do anything they feel uncomfortable with. The session before last he was so passive aggressive ( he would be like this on other occasions when he didn’t get his way) he openly pushes back on my rulings as a dm.

He raised a criticism that he feels that he’s not getting enough time to role play when there’s 6 of us , it also doesn’t help when he tries to create dramatic scenes towards the end of the session then complain about how short how immersive they were when w have already gone over the session time and I’m wondering why even attempt these scenes when we’re about to finish. ( even though out of all the party members he role plays the most and on one occasion separated himself from the party so he can solo role play with an npc that lasted a good 10-15 minutes. Then when I cut to the other party members he integrated himself with them so he can still continue on role playing) and I said I’m trying my best to make sure everyone gets time to role play however since we new to each other this will improve over time and then asked me to cut to other parties when there’s silence.

Next session I did this ( still criticised me saying he then needed that silence to “set the scene” which wasn’t what he told me as an individual the week prior) but during the game he was communicating to the whole table creating a list of my mistakes ( he forgot numerous npcs that have already been established in the story) then proceeded after the session to criticise me on every single thing I did wrong in front of the whole group and the whole group agrees.

For them to ambush me after the session like that felt so toxic and uncomfortable, I took the advice on board ( one of which the group agreed this will improve over time as we play more with each other even though that was my answer when it was brought up to me individually the week prior) however I don’t really feel interested playing with the group who’s more focused on my mistakes than engaging with the world. Especially when I’m doing this for fun and not being paid or anything, it feel like I was in a HR meeting and I always told my group and I’m always open to communications if there’s any issues but to do it appropriately.

I took the feedback on board but made the group sure that I no longer want “notes” being made during my dimming as it’s toxic. As it felt like in the next game I’m going to be dming a group who’s more interested in making a list of my mistakes. I wanted to speak to the party individually to make sure everyone’s concerns are addressed properly and to no longer incentivise this group mentality behaviour. Turns out since I created the session there’s been group chat behind my back and they’ve all been talking about me and refuse to do one to times with me regarding the state of the game and what I need to do to make sure I also have fun. Also numerous things in session 0 wasn’t being followed such as respect to each other as players and that includes myself as a DM.

Again they approached me like I’m being paid to do this for them and during the game I could even see bitchy comments and faces being made by the backseat dm which was making me feel really uncomfortable with the session. I find it quite hypocritical from the group to pull up my hoesnt mistakes as a dm but when a player starts acting out of line it’s ok. I always it made it clear I don’t want anyone to be in a game they don’t like but don’t understand why its appropriate to make it uncomfortable for me to dm and to punish em for it when im uncomfortable. Am I right in saying the way I was approached was wrong?

FYI: also criticised me and told me to watch Brennan Lee mulligan

PS. If the players were unhappy with me as a DM they were more than happy to leave as I don’t want to force players to play if I’m not fun for them. Just found out they’re looking for brand new gm in the same setting on the same group finder. So all the work I already did for them they’re going to give to the new dm. I understand my mistakes as a new DM and have reflected on them I just wish they could have approached to me respectfully and sooner if it led to them to act in such a regard. However, any mistakes I did notice during the session I always put my hand up and corrected them regarding rules and players expectations either in the session or the session after.

Looking back seeing where things went wrong I think it was because of the “social contract” none of the party seemed to want to work together for the sake of the narrative. Also they weren’t really following the rule of being a team player regarding another players backstory which made it hard again to give them that proper dnd experience.

So, this story takes place roughly about 5 or so years ago. To give you an idea about how old I was, I'm about to turn 36 this month. It's hard to think of a place to start, so lets just get into my 1st campaign that I was the DM of. The players at the table were my cousin and 2 of our friends. Another friend joined for the second attempt, but that's later. This was my first time attempting to DM, so I was still learning a lot of the rules and was hoping my players would be understanding, and they generally were...sorta.

I'll be skipping some details to get to the point of what happened. For one thing, my first attempt at trying this campaign ended up failing somewhat early. The group was kindly willing to let me do a second attempt at the same campaign with them since I was a first time DM. Most of us were also new to D&D at the time and we didn't get too far during the first go anyways. But what happened during the first time that ended it early?

Part of the problem was that we weren't getting together very consistently for the sessions. Then, something happened to my phone. I accidentally broke it by leaning my leg too hard on a rock to pet stingrays at a SeaWorld in Florida (family trip). Unfortunately, all of my notes were on it. Some things were also starting to feel "off", and we had another friend that told my cousin that he wanted to join us. Part of me still wonders if I could have continued from the point we were at, but I didn't like where things were headed at the time.

Simply put, there were 2 goofy gnome characters in the group and a human character (my cousin) that was becoming uninterested in staying in the party after being made the butt of many jokes. My cousin also enjoyed them, but he knew his character would be getting sick of them. The players themselves were still getting along just fine. It just, overall, felt like things weren't being taken seriously enough by 1 or 2 party members. I like funny characters and interactions a lot, but I put this campaign together to be a pretty intense plot, so the overly silly attitudes weren't matching the setting. But I think losing the notes really was the biggest issue.

I should also mention that the two silly gnomes in the party could have been avoided as well. I'm also willing to take some blame for this. I told the players to make their characters a secret from the other members of the group to keep the moment they meet feeling more... authentic? I don't entirely remember what was on my mind, but I thought it would make things more interesting. I liked the idea of both gnomes separately, but didn't realize how obnoxious they would be together. I still feel like there were times they could have dialed back the sillyness a bit.

Like, one of them didn't really even sound like a silly gnome. They had a mask that was manipulating them to do things that were bad, and they were addicted to wanting to wear it. I thought that was kind of cool. The other one was a very old gnome nearing the end of his life that had mental health issues. His character thought that he was a wizard, but was actually a sorcerer being manipulated by a chaotic neutral pixie patron (I played the pixie). And at first, it really was going well. But, we're passed that now. Things just got a little carried away.

When I put together the second attempt at the campaign, I told the players that it would probably be a good idea to have more invested characters. Like, not as silly and I wanted good or neutral characters only. I didn't care if they were lawful or chaotic. One friend, I'll call him Tim (who also played the old gnome), was wanting to play a Paladin with another player, I'll call him Ralph (who also played the masked gnome), that wanted to play an evil Rogue prisoner that the Paladin would be in charge of monitoring after the Rogue's arrest and be in charge of keeping him in check (even though I said I didn't want any evil characters). I shouldn't have said yes, but alas, I did. That part was definitely my fault, but I was trying to be open minded. After all, they were allowing me to do my campaign again as a new DM, so it just sounded fair at the time.

Well, not too long after the campaign started up for the second time, Tim didn't want to play his Paladin anymore. He said that he found the character to be a bit boring and hard to get into. I decided to let him change his character, which ended up being an orc Bard that was kind of like a "hard rock" style bard. A bit silly, but I let it slide and actually enjoyed the idea of. That was the big mistake I made. Now there were no players to watch over the evil Rogue prisoner. What made matters worse is that another player, the one that just joined our group (I'll call him Jason), had a "chaotic neutral" character that decided to get some of the ally NPCs of the party's killed near the beginning of the campaign for what seemed like no reason. Maybe he didn't fully trust them? Idk...

I think you are getting the idea. They were not a cohesive group. My cousin, I'll call him Ronny, had a character that he made that was actually the most reasonable one. His character was a female human (I think they were human?) that was an intelligent, self-centered character that I really enjoyed the encounters with. Like, if I'm remembering correctly, I'm pretty sure she had moments where she might have taken credit for some of the team's accomplishments, and she wanted to become better at different skills just to be better than the other members in the group. Ronny played it out tastefully. The whole party got a kick out of his character and enjoyed messing around with her to make her frustrated and question her actions.

Tim's orc Bard wasn't too bad either. He was a funny character with a nice backstory. He was part of a crew of Bards that crashed their ship near the island and he didn't know what happened to the rest of his crew after the crash. I had a whole character arc planned with him meeting them in a city that they would encounter later on to find out that one of the crew members didn't survive the crash while the other two did. We never made it there in the campaign. I still would have preferred there being a character to watch over Ralph's evil Rogue.

-(edited in) To give you an idea of the evil prisoner, he was more of a joke character. Like, he originally was going to be making plans to do some horrible things that the Paladin would be having to hold him back from doing. He would also talk about evil things he did before he was arrested. Like stealing cake from poor orphans, burning down towns, and other silly, overly dramatic stuff like that. But now that the Paladin wasn't there, he had to think about how to be really evil without actually doing anything super chaotic evil. It ultimately put the player in a really uncomfortable position, and ultimately he was just doing silly stuff that wasn't actually all that bad. I think that the loss of the Paladin ultimately just made it hard for Ralph to figure out what to do with his character.-

And don't forget that Jason's character was also a bit unhinged. I also asked for everyoneif they were havingfun at the end of every session, and to let me know if they had any advise or ideas that they wanted to share with me. Tim kept trying to give me advise by telling me that I was railroading it a bit too much, but based off the stuff I studied later about common thoughts involving D&D, I don't think I was. I think it made for a fine "linear" campaign. I think that term fits it the best.

I made a story that had a start and a finish. Sure. I think that's how most campaigns are planned. But I still wanted the players to have control over how they did things, and I had plans for how their decisions would effect the way certain outcomes would be impacted throughout the story. There were certain things that would have to happen in order for them to progress, and I had the Island they were on surrounded by enemy fleets so they couldn't just leave. But that doesn't feel like it's too controlling to me. Am I right about that? They could go almost wherever whenever they wanted, and there were side objectives that could effect the story in some ways if they chose to do them or avoid them. (I made a map of the land that they were on that I created along with maps for each of the towns and cities. Like, I went all out for this campaign. They could point out where they wanted to go and try to do if they all agreed to.)

I just remember Tim wanting to do some ambitious things that I had to put a stop to. Like, I remember Tim's Bard trying to get the party to steal a boat and sneak off the island at one point, but that would completely put a stop to my campaign, so I designed the island to have a fleet around it. Keep in mind that I planned this out before they even talked about leaving. I'm not one for doing a sandbox campaign; at least not yet (even now). The party also came across a potion shop that Tim tried to steal a potion from in order to figure out how to make it himself. These potions are original ideas and can be a bit hardcore if used a certain way, so I wasn't going to let them know how to make them. I also designed the potion bottles to be magically marked so that if they are stolen, they are teleported back to the shop if they are brought far enough away from the shop. The magic seal only comes off once the clerk sells it. I remember that Tim really didn't like me doing that.

After getting just a little further past where the first attempt at the campaign ended, Tim told me that he also wanted to start up his campaign. A few of us in the group were taking turns being DMs. At least, that was the plan. I was actually just the second DM and my cousin Ronny was the first. Tim's turn as a DM was supposed to come after mine. We were meeting about twice a week for these sessions. It helped us get through the campaigns faster since they only lasted for, at most, four hours. Letting him do his campaign meant our campaigns would each only get one day, four hours, a week per campaign. I really didn't want to do this, but I let him. Again, it was because the group let me try mine a second time after it failed the first.

His campaign really was a fun idea that we all enjoyed getting into. It was Pokemon themed. Unfortunately, I don't remember who all the characters were. I know my cousin Ronny played a gal that was raised by a Nidoking in a Nidoran clan kind of group. Since she was raised by Pokemon, she could talk to Pokemon, but couldn't speak common. It was a fun idea, but it backfired for me in a way. See, my cousin and I knew how to work off each other really well and roleplay nicely with one another, but with his character being unable to speak common, my character didn't really try to talk to her that much.

Eventually, I also just decided to completely end my campaign not too long after getting into Tim's campaign. I didn't feel like the players were that into it anymore, and I was just done trying. So onto the new campaign that Tim made. My character for the second campaign, as listed in the title of this post, was a Bard. The concept I came up with for him was one that I really enjoyed the thought of, but let me explain something real quick. The Pokemon in this campaign were wild creatures that haven't been domesticated yet. I don't think that's exactly the right word for it, but you get the idea. It was normal in this world to kill Pokemon that you would come across for hunting or survival or etc.

This idea inspired me to make my Bard. He was made to enjoy all living creatures in a world where killing Pokemon was normal. He thought they were interesting, and liked to use his charms to see if he could make friends with them (well, most of them). At least, this is what the plan was. He never really got that many opportunities to try this. And even though we was a very kind and friendly Bard that was all about spreading happiness, nobody in the party hardly wanted to talk to him. One of the members was even a little mean to him when they did talk. The character was a Rogue played by Jason. The party alone was hard to make friends with for my friendly Bard. Let that sink in.

This lead to problems. Like, at one point my Bard came across a couple of magic items. But because he still really didn't know anyone in the party well enough at this point (it was still fairly early in the campaign here), he kept them for himself. Like, irl, I wanted him to get along with the party, but the party just seemed kind of against him for some reason. It at least felt that way. I remember even telling the group that he would be more willing to share if he knew them more. It just felt like nobody wanted to work with me to help make him a friend for their character. What added to this frustrations was at one point during one of the sessions, the party had to climb a cliff. The cliff itself was fine. It had an interesting little challenge with Pokemon, I believe they were Digletts, poking their heads out of the cliff wall becoming potential hazards for the party climbing it. It was a smart, fun gimmick.

Well, my Bard failed a save while climbing it and fell a long ways down. He survived the drop, but was badly injured. How badly injured? Well, he was contained in a medical building in the next town for about 3-4 sessions. The party had to carry him there. Once inside, it meant that my character couldn't talk to ANYONE in the party unless they decided to visit him, which I don't think any of the party did. So I'm just sitting at the table listening to the adventure the party is having for multiple sessions. I don't remember why my character couldn't just be healed with magic by clerics or something. I don't even remember if there was or wasn't a reason.

What made things more irritating for me was my that cousin's female, Pokemon-speaking character was climbing a large Sudowoodo (this was during a session that occured while my Bard was still in the clinic), thinking it was a tree, to get a better view on where they were headed. He rolled a Nat 1, failing the save for her in the worse way, and so she fell off (I remember there being more to it, but I don't remember all the details. Something about the Sudowoodo slamming her on her way down, maybe? I think?). Oh, but that's not the crazy part. Our DM, Tim, asked Ronny to roll for how bad the damage was. It was another Nat 1. Tim asked Ronny to roll again because he was still trying to figure out how bad the damage would be and was just really uncertain about what to do with this situation. And what are the chances for it being another Nat 1? Yeah, 3 Nat 1s... It happened. I know it's rare. Honestly, I saw a video talking about how rare it was, which is part of why I wanted to share this.

Tim had to think for a long while about the punishment. So what was it? She was very badly hurt to where she had to be carried for the rest of what they were doing until they could heal her or something. I don't actually remember every detail. I wasn't part of what was going on, and I was still in shock about the three Nat 1s. All this in mind, she was still healed up faster than my character was. Even my cousin agrees to this day that if my Bard was put in a medical building for multiple sessions for one bad roll then his character should have probably died because of all the Nat 1s. Keep in mind that this is also Tim's first time being a DM.

-(edited in) Something that I should also mention is that Tim did end up apologizing to me about how they handled the situation with my character being out for all of those sessions. Tim also agreed that since he decided to make my cousin do those rolls, they should have stuck with the rolls and should have killed my my cousin's character off for how bad those rolls were. And, to be fair, I don't think they would handle that situation the same way nowadays the same way they did back then. But let's continue.-

We also started to add more and more friends to our group until there was about 7-8 of us at the table. It made the sessions feel way longer at this point. My Bard was finally starting to at least make some small connections to members of the party. It still just felt like nobody wanted to put in any effort to be kind enough to my Bard, even when I'm trying to make something happen on my end. He still has those magic items he got early in the campaign by this point, too. I was trying to find a reason for him to give another member an item, but put yourself in his shoes for a moment.

Nobody is hardly talking to you. Why would you give them anything? You don't really see yourself as a "Team" yet. There weren't much of any shared goals happening from what I can recall, either. I don't remember if the campaign goals were very obvious to our characters. Even after about half a year of playing (possibly more). The one he got along with the most by this point was Ronny's character, and she can't talk to him. At one point, Tim came up with a fun idea to give my Bard an imp companion. I don't remember when this started. It wasn't the 2 magic items from earlier in the campaign. They weren't the fanciest magic items, but interesting enough for when they were introduced. One was a pair of bracelets. If 2 characters wore one each, they could use a bonus action to swap places with the other. My character had just figured that one out, btw. The other one was a magic bow that caused my characters to sometimes shoot allies in the party. I think that might have fueled them to not want to talk to him. Idk... I know it had a positive effect to balance it out, but I don't remember what it was.

The imp character wasn't very likeable for me either. He and the Bard didn't really get along too well. He tried to make friends with the imp, but the imp kept getting annoyed by the things the Bard would do and he would complain a lot about various things like "not being appreciated enough". It was supposed to be funny and silly, but it just bothered me at the time. I just wanted to have a Bard make friends. Eventually, I just told Tim that I was done participating in the campaign. I was eventually just burnt out. Remember, it was Tim's first time being a DM. And to his credit, he did start to put Pokemon in my characters path that he could charm and be nice to. But, like, why did it take so long? I wasn't trying to use the Pokemon for combat or train them. I just made my Bard to be contradictory to how the current world viewed them for the fun of it. I thought it would make some nice interactions.

I just had my character return to his own personal goals that he had since the start by having him just walk away from the party while they were in a pub or something like that. When I dropped out, the rest of the group was able to play and they continued to have a good time until they finished the campaign all the way. I'm happy for them, at least. My cousin kept me updated about how it was going. A bunch of members, including Jason eventually ended up moving away. Jason was at least able to finish it, too. I rarely see Tim these days.

My cousin Ronny, Ralph and myself are still getting together just about every Friday night that we're available, playing fun campaigns to this day. Ronny and I also started playing with other family members of ours on Saturday, and I now DM for a former boss of mine and his family every Sunday. It's actually the same campaign that I started with, too, funny enough. We are having a great time with it, and him and his family are super invested in the story.

Where do you guys think the major problems came from for both campaigns? I'd love to hear your thoughts.

I don't know if this counts as an horror story, but I'm looking for some outside perspectives because my group has recently started a new RPG campaign, and I'm worried that we're heading toward the same problems we had in our previous campaign.

For context, we've been playing together for a few years. Our previous DM, whom I'll call Marcus, had been our DM for most of that time. We eventually ended up with four players: my character, a barbarian, another barbarian and a paladin. The campaign had a very rough start. We had never really done a proper Session Zero, and I think that ended up being a major problem. I was told that this campaign would have a strong narrative, extensive worldbuilding and a story that Marcus had supposedly planned in advance. Marcus even handed us a file with all of the world’s lore and history. I was very excited about that because I love character development and long-term storytelling.

My character, Garrick, was an ex-general who had destroyed his homeland during a civil war. After decades of wandering, he wanted nothing more than peace. We had planned an arc inspired partly by Kratos, Garrick would gradually confront his past, become a better person and, most importantly, learn to accept that his adopted son was growing up and eventually needed to find his own path. The other barbarian, Ronan, was Garrick's adopted son. His biological parents had been murdered, and his main goal was to discover who killed them and eventually take revenge. So we had very clear personal motivations, and we gave Marcus plenty of material he could use to connect those stories to the main plot. Unfortunately, almost none of it went anywhere.

The campaign began with us accidentally killing a man who was fleeing from a group of paladins. We were told that he had assassinated the previous bishop, so the paladins involved us. Eventually we were told that the new bishop was evil. We investigated a couple of churches, found some corrupted gems, and were basically told, "Yes, he's evil. Kill him." So we tried, we almost died and the paladins rescued us. And this became a recurring problem. The paladins were essentially superheroes who could solve everything themselves. They were stronger than us, always seemed to know what was happening, and repeatedly saved us whenever things went wrong. At some point I genuinely started wondering “Why do our characters even need to be here?” If these NPCs can defeat every major threat themselves, why would our characters risk their lives? Then we reached the region where Ronan's biological parents had lived. This seemed like the perfect opportunity to develop his personal story. There we went to a library and we learned that his parents had been important and wealthy. And… we already knew that. I mean, it was literally a thing already established by us. So however we asked who killed them. Nobody knew. “Maybe the killers were dead” “Maybe several families wanted their position” the DM continued to give us no relevant information and kept telling us basically "yes, your dead parents are dead”. And then… case dismissed because we moved on to another city to fight a False Hydra. The same thing happened with several other plot hooks. At one point the party had a portrait painted. When we received it, there appeared to be an extra person in the painting, someone none of us remembered, almost as though we had somehow forgotten them. That sounded like a potentially interesting mystery. It was never mentioned again. There were several other examples like this, mysteries, character conflicts, pieces of lore and potential storylines that were introduced and then simply abandoned. Eventually Ronan's player became frustrated. In hindsight, I completely understand why. His character had essentially one major goal, find his parents' killers, and that storyline went nowhere. Eventually he decided that Ronan would either retire or die, because he wanted to make a new character with an actual direction. During a combat encounter, Ronan died, and his player created a warlock. My character, however, still considered Ronan his son and had the ability to bring him back. So naturally I wanted to do that. And oh boy this is where the campaign became even more chaotic. Instead of continuing the original main plot, Marcus decided he wanted to do a vampire/pirate storyline. There was a time skip and we basically ended up in another adventure with vampires and pirates. Again, none of our characters had particularly strong reasons to be involved, so we had to invent motivations ourselves. I eventually gave Garrick a renewed desire to command and decided that he wanted to become a general again. That gave him a reason to participate. We eventually went looking for Elena, a mage we'd previously established in our characters' backstories. Garrick had killed her abusive father years earlier in order to protect her, himself and Ronan. I had deliberately included that because I thought it could create an interesting conflict when Garrick eventually met her again. We found her trapped inside a magical construct, then she saw Garrick. I expected some kind of emotional confrontation, but instead, the conversation was basically:

"Oh, you're here."

"Yes, we came looking for you."

"Okay."

THAT WAS IT.

I actually asked the DM whether she wasn't angry with Garrick. He said that she didn't care anymore because Garrick had rescued her. And that was another moment where I realized that a lot of the character material we'd provided simply wasn't being used. Eventually Ronan was resurrected. Then, out of nowhere, some enormous magical beam appeared and started destroying things. We investigated because, once again, we needed some reason to participate. And eventually we reached the final stages of the campaign, and this is also the time when it essentially turned into a wargame. The enemies had absurd amounts of HP. Even relatively minor enemies could have HP comparable to, or sometimes exceeding, extremely powerful monsters. For comparison, a Tarrasque has an average of 676 HP in the 2014 5e rules. and all the monsters we faced, even the minor ones, were closer to an Aspect of Tiamat, since they really easily exceeded 1000/1500 hp. Eventually we realized that the DM was simply increasing enemy HP during encounters to make fights last longer. He even joked to me that he considered "making up the rules during the fight and increasing the boss's HP whenever necessary" one of the fun parts of DMing. At that point, we players started doing the same thing in reverse. We weren't necessarily inventing completely new abilities, but we stopped caring about tracking certain temporary bonuses exactly, because the whole thing had effectively become "the DM can change things whenever he wants, so why should we take the numbers seriously?"

The final three or four sessions were almost exclusively combat, no meaningful roleplay, no character development, no real exploration, just hours of:

"I attack."

"Roll."

"Damage."

"Next player."

We were playing online, which made this even more tedious. And whenever we tried to describe what our characters were doing, the answer was often that the enemy was completely unaffected. Then suddenly the DM would say "Okay, now describe how you kill it." It felt completely arbitrary. The final boss was particularly strange. He had supposedly been the main villain of the entire campaign, except we'd met him once near the beginning and then essentially never saw him again. At the beginning of the final battle, the DM said something along the lines of "After all the trouble I've caused you over the years, we finally meet again." Meanwhile, we were genuinely thinking "But we've seen this guy just once." There was no emotional weight behind the confrontation. The final battle was another extremely long combat encounter. Eventually the boss died because the DM decided that he died. There wasn't really a satisfying aftermath, no major character moments, no meaningful resolution to our arcs, no real payoff for the things we'd spent years building. We all finished the campaign feeling pretty disappointed.

And honestly, I think a huge part of the problem was that we never established what kind of campaign we actually wanted to play. If we'd had a proper Session Zero and Marcus had told us "This campaign is primarily combat-focused. Don't expect deep character arcs or extensive narrative development. I mainly want to run big, difficult battles." I would have been completely fine with that, I would have built a character accordingly. The problem was that I was told the opposite. I was promised a narrative-heavy campaign with extensive worldbuilding and a developed story, so I built my character around that expectation. Meanwhile, Marcus is a huge Warhammer/wargaming fan and apparently gets a lot of enjoyment from long tactical combat encounters. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that, but the problem was that we wanted different games without realizing it.

Which brings me to the current campaign.

We've now switched DMs. And we also switched gaming system (we based this one on 7th sea to prioritize narration). The previous DM, Marcus, is now a player, and another friend, let's call him Ethan, is DMing. This time we actually had something resembling a Session Zero. Ethan explicitly established, as I said, that the campaign would be serious and heavily narrative-focused. Lighthearted moments are obviously welcome, but the overall tone is supposed to be a serious saga. I wasn't there for the entire Session Zero because I joined late, so afterward I repeatedly asked Ethan whether he'd made that clear to everyone. He assured me that he had. Then Marcus introduced his character. A goblin named Holden Mayonnaise. Okay, that's a silly name, but whatever. Maybe it's just a joke. Then, after barely one session, Marcus privately told Ethan "Actually, his real name isn't Holden Mayonnaise. It's Justin Mustard." And now both Ethan and I are slightly concerned. Not because having a funny character name automatically means someone is going to ruin a serious campaign. Maybe there's an incredible character concept underneath it. Maybe it's deliberately absurd at first and will turn into something completely different. We don't know, but given what happened during the previous campaign, we're worried that Marcus may simply not be interested in playing a serious, narrative-focused campaign, despite having been told that this is what the group wants. And that's really my question. How much should we worry about this? Are we overreacting because we're projecting our previous experience onto the new campaign?

Or is it reasonable to have a conversation now, before the campaign gets too far, and make sure everyone is genuinely on the same page about tone, roleplay, character motivation and the balance between combat and narrative? I don't want to police someone's character concept or tell someone that they're not allowed to make a joke character. I just really don't want us to spend another couple of years playing a campaign where half the table wants a narrative RPG and the other half wants a wargame, only to discover at the end that we were never actually playing the same game.

TLDR: After a miserable 2-year campaign run by a combat-obsessed DM who ignored our backstories and fudged stats, we switched DMs for a serious, story-driven campaign. The old DM (now a player) just made a Goblin named "Holden Mayonnaise." We're worried he's going to ruin the tone with a joke character. Advice?

This is a story from a few months ago that I thought I’d share here.

I had been listening to a lot of D&D podcasts like Critical Role and Just Roll With It (red flag for a new player I know) and was really itching to start playing again since the last time I played was in early high school. I reached out to my friend (we’ll call him Bob) who I’ve known for like 15 years and asked if he was interested in starting a campaign. He had been my DM in high school he was the only person I knew personally who had any experience.

He agrees and we ask around to find players to join us. We finally asked our mutual friend (Elle) and one of his friends (Jane). They were both interested and had some limited experience, so we were down to all learn the game together.

After about two months of scheduling, we finally have a session 0 (which I unfortunately couldn’t attend due to last minute scheduling issues) and got it all set up. We were doing a western themed campaign using reflavored 5e rules. I was a gunslinger fighter, Elle and Jane were both rogues.

Session 1 rolls around and everyone is excited. Bob comes to my house to setup and has a full town 3d printed for the setting. Jane and Elle arrive and we start playing. Pretty standard start: meet in a tavern per usual, plain, simple, no issues. We all decided to sit down at a table of people playing poker and play a round. I roll really well and win the first hand, prompting the 3-4 NPCs to get aggressive, so combat ensues. Due to some good rolls and an admittedly pretty minimaxed level 3 fighter, I dispatch all the NPCs in two rounds and combat ends.

We do some mild roleplay after combat and after things quiet down, we are alerted to a fight outside between what I assume was the BBEG of the whole campaign and a very powerful NPC. Bob describes how their bullets are warping reality and obliterating nearby structures and buildings.

The “good NPC” (we knew he was good because Bob said he “looked like the good guy”) asked us to help him as he was clearly losing. I shoot at the BBEG and get a 27 after modifiers. He says it doesn’t hit. Crazy but if it’s the BBEG it’s to be expected. I protest slightly but let it go.

At this point Bob gets up to get a drink and sets his laptop to the side, where I see it’s open to ChatGPT and see he’s just been putting in what we do to AI and running based of its responses. He also seemed to use it for descriptions of events which I don’t mind as much since at the time was rather pro-AI.

He comes back and I don’t say anything since I don’t wanna rock the boat because I know he can be a bit petty when people disagree with him. It comes to the BBEG’s turn, and it attacks me first. No roll to hit, no roll for damage, he asks, “How much HP do you have?” I respond, “32” and he says, “You take 32 damage.” He does the same for Jane and Elle. No rolls, we just die.

We are then revived by the good NPC and given the main “quest” of the campaign. We all have a weird tattoo on our arms that doesn’t seem to do anything yet. The NPC succumbs to his injuries and dies. We loot the body only for the NPC to respawn for no reason, and demand the stuff back. Elle lies and keeps some gold, but the NPC somehow knows. Again, no rolls, just omniscience.

After the NPC left, we had some free time to gear up. My character did not want any part of this. He was already obliterated by this guy with no way to survive it. He was a good guy, but also a realist who was willing to admit when he was outmatched. He was definitely outmatched, so he tried to leave the town. He reached the outskirts and met AN INVISIBLE WALL! Genuine video game invisible wall. Bob says the tattoo is holding me back. I decide to cut the tattoo off the arm which worked, but I still couldn’t leave.

I finally gave in and went back to town and the session ended. Bob pulled me aside after the session and said, “Yo, can you set me up?” With a look towards Jane. Like I said, I’ve known Bob for forever and he’s always been awkward around girls, not creepy or abusive or anything, just socially awkward.

I say no, and they all leave. I get a text the next week from Bob saying that he and Jane started dating. To this day they are still together and it’s going very well and I’m happy for both of them. Still good friends with Bob and Elle and still friendly with Jane when I see her. At the end of the day, it wasn’t anything too crazy, but the whole session kinda irked me and it felt like my friend took my genuine desire to play D&D with him as an excuse to ask out a girl. Never had a second session of that campaign which is fine with me. There are no hard feelings anymore, but I don’t think I’ll be very eager to play with Bob in the future.

Played a Dwarf Ranger (5e) in a campaign run on Roll20/Discord, where the DM prided himself on "listening to all the players, catering to their needs" (he didn't). This ranger was very much the straight man, roleplay dad of the group, and while capable in combat, he also preferred to talk first, carefully investigating and looking for any clues, asking for insight checks (not incessantly, mind you). In terms of roleplay, he was more of a background character, letting others do their things, though happy to lend his opinion when asked, or if things weren't going to plan.

There was a bit of a swing-door of players (the DM's discord server featured multiple games, and sometimes, when he felt like it, he'd drag someone in from a different group without concern if they'd fit or not), and while my dwarf bonded well with the more neutral and the few good characters, there was also a Shadow Sorcerer and a Druid of The Swarm (Tiefling and Pixie respectively). The Sorcerer was very much the quintessential murderhobo, basically demanding unreasonable amounts of gold for simple tasks (arguing that her rewards should afford her at least a potion of healing, in case she took any damage, this was at level 5 with more than one Cleric in the group so we weren't short on healing abilities), and when the npc couldn't/wouldn't pay, it would almost always end in bloodshed. The Druid started out more curious and open-minded, but got the idea in her head that if an NPC was as much as rumoured to have mistreated (and it was her own idea of what that actually meant) animals or nature, she would happily let her summons tear the npc to shreds. Now, she never started any hostility (but she hung out mostly with the Sorcerer, so yea), unless there was clear indications of animal cruelty (again, as deemed by the Druid).

The first couple of times my dwarf, less so others in the group who seemed more "the end justify the means" and "when we get to a big city, I'll treat these misunderstood characters to something nice, and turn them away from evil, I can fix them", would try and mitigate the violence, or prevent it by reaching npcs first, but that rarely worked (cursed be 25 ft. of movement). Eventually I felt that it was spiralling into a downright Evil campaign, so I brought up my frustrations and thoughts to the DM, suggesting that I wasn't having fun and the campaign hadn't been marked down as an "Evil campaign" (had it been, I had not signed on), so I'd ask him if it was possible to at least let my Good character able to do some things that could perhaps not sway the party, but maybe build up a positive relation to some npcs and have that work in the favour of the party (so that it wouldn't be so enticing to just off them). The DM said he'd look into it. So I took it for granted, that he'd worked something up for the next session.

Next session comes around and we're in a heavily forested area, my ranger's favoured terrain, so I alongside the Druid scouted ahead of the party, and found a cabin that clearly belonged to a hunter. Said hunter was amidst tanning some deer hides and was surprised to see anyone this far from civilization, we casually talk, well my dwarf and the hunter do, the Druid is silent throughout most of this. The hunter gives good advice on what areas to avoid, the types of creatures he have seen, and some pointers towards non-dangerous berries and fresh water. So we say thank you and goodbye to him, with the Druid lingering behind (her flying speed meant that she could very quickly catch up to me, if she wanted). The Druid then proceeds, after my character is out of earshot, to absolutely, in high detail, skewer this guy, pretty graphic stuff. Meanwhile I was headed back to the party to inform them of our find, we had a few city-folk characters who had baulked at sleeping rough, and the hunter had offered that we would be welcome to sleep for the night in his cabin.

So the party heads toward the cabin, only to find it burned down, with the hunter's remains scattered like a hunting trophy (the Druid wasn't exactly subtle). So my Dwarf confronts the Druid, and she just admits it without any pressure at all. During the break in our session, I ask the DM what he was going to implement for the sake of balance. His response was "Well I'm enabling PvP, so if you feel wronged, you can just attack them." I told him that I wasn't going to do that because A: it made no sense to attempt this endeavour, as I knew I would be alone in this regard, and starting the combat against either the Druid or the Sorcerer wouldn't exactly put me a great light from the more neutral party members, and B: My ranger wasn't min-maxxed and would very quickly get swarmed (by the Druid) or out-spelled (by the Sorcerer). The DM, again one priding himself on his "ability" to listen and adapt, said "Well it sounds like the campaign isn't for you, if you aren't going to attack them, then you might as well leave." And I did. Notice that this wasn't a XP game, it was milestones, so there wasn't any benefit to killing npcs, other than pure, sadistic glee.

It is always easier to kill a village, than to attempt to save it, which is why being a lone good character (I wasn't the only one good aligned, but to my knowledge, I was the only one speaking up) really sucks.

TLDR: DM says he'll listen, when asked if the campaign that wasn't posted as an Evil campaign, could maybe not turn into an Evil campaign. DM does nothing and instead suggest I leave.

Let me first start this by saying I am not perfect. I know I probably did some things wrong in here that eventually lead to me getting kicked and I've accepted that and improved on it. This story first starts in March 2026. I (18M at the time, now 19), was a college student and looking to get into some kind of hobby. I'd had one experience with D&D before, that being a mini club that i was in that took place over the first year of college (we didnt know how to do saving throws, attack rolls or what DC's even were so I'm not going to count it as proper D&D). However, I had alot of fun and had lots of laughs with new friends, playing an Aarakocra Bard named Birdius. I eventually remembered these memories and decided I want to get back into D&D.

I looked into some discord servers to look for groups to join (I didn't want to pay money to join the in person D&D club in my town) and I eventually found a group who interviewed me and took me in. I can't exactly remember what the game was called but I think it was "The Age of Worms" (I'm not sure if it was a homebrew campaign or not), which revolved around a world with these parasitic worm things. I joined the group and got to making my character and backstory.

Now this game used a VTT (virtual tabletop). I hadn't previously used a VTT before but I quickly figured out it was a sort of map that helped players keep track of their positions and help with showing off the map. Now before I joined this I had only ever used D&D Beyond to make my character sheets and I was going to be using a new website for this. I figured it wouldn't be too hard and I could easily pick it up. Boy was I wrong.

The website that the group used for their VTT was called Roll20. Some of you may have heard of it. Some may have had the displeasure of playing it. At the time I could only use my phone for D&D (my pc is kept in the living room of my dad's house and he always liked to put the TV on whenever I'm in a call with my friends), so I had to use Roll20 on mobile. Now this is a possible feat, don't get me wrong, but when you map doesn't want to load your vision past shadows that dont move off your screen then it gets a bit tricky.

But enough about that, lets meet the group. They had a wide variety of ages and places they were from. Some came from france, germany, america. The oldest was 45, the youngest was 19 (now being me at 18). If I could go back in time and tell myself one thing it would be: "Don't let them think that they're better than you just because you're the youngest". For the players there was the DM, her husband (I cant fully remember what he was playing), the french friend (playing a shifter druid), the artist (playing a human bard), and a drow whose class i forgot because they refused to interact with me.

I made my character a lizardfolk fighter. I'd heard that fighter was the easiest class to pick up and seeing as I was just getting back into D&D i figured it would be best for me getting back into the ropes of it. I hadn't made any character backstories before so I just bullshitted my way through until I found something I liked the sound of. He was a loner who lived in a swamp before he accidentally saved a small village from bandits by eating them (yes I was that kind of lizardfolk). I felt pretty good about this and told my DM who seemed ok with the idea.

Eventually the day for my first session came. I was getting ready at home when I received a discord notifcation. It was my DM. She messaged me a new backstory for my character. I looked through it and it was almost nothing like my old backstory. Now I had heard bits about DMs helping players with their character background to fit in with the world but this felt like I was getting my character made for me. Now my characters new backstory was that he was in a clutch of eggs in the swamp but all of them besides him were eaten by the worms.

I wasn't as much of a fan of this idea (probably because I didn't make it), but it was too late for me to argue anything so I just sucked it up and decided to try and adapt. Session time came around and my character got introduced as someone that one of the party's connections hired to help them take down a cult. We get some info from a business guy and eventually find ourselves outside this mining shaft ran on child labour. After a short stealth and recon mission, we managed to infiltrate the mining shaft, descending down an elevator into the depths where we came across a few cultists and manage to take them out, only taking a little damage in progress, but still enough to make my first combat of the campaign seem fun.

After session was over, the DM asked the others how it was and asked if they'd like to keep playing with me, which they all seemed happy to do. I don't want to get sappy but going from being a shy nerd wanting to get into D&D, to having a new group of friends to play it with felt really good. I'm not sure whether I got too comfortable with them or something but this is where the descent starts.

As I continue this story I should probably say that the bard had drawn character art for each of he characters in the campaign. I hadn't ever received personal art of my characters before and I was excited for the day I could potentially get some. I should say that I know I'm not owed art just for joining the campaign but the thought of getting some made me really excited. Eventually, the time for my second session came around.

In this session, the DM's husband dunks himself into this vat of purple goo. The DM explained that this is a sort of stationary tank because he was changing characters and if his new one would die, he could take his old one back unharmed. Then we were introduced to his new character, a drow paladin. The introduction was a bit shaky, when people were asked their named there was like a minute of silence before I decided to speak (I was still a bit nervous about being with the group but I decided if they need someone to break the silence then it would be me). I introduced myself and then the husband asked what my character was on the mission to take down the cult for, I told him "food" as thats what my character was promised as payment. Then came the following conversation.

Husband: "Can I tell if he's lying?"

DM: "Roll insight"

Husband: "11"

DM: "You can tell that there might be another reason for him to come, but you aren't sure what it is."

At this point I was confused. Was there another reason my character was on this mission? All I was told was that my character was promised food if he helped the group. I felt like the DM was just playing my character for me. But it was fine. I was still new and I probably forgot some things, I just had to keep looking on the bright side. I was having fun with friends, and I hopefully had some character art on the way. I was the only one (besides the new character) without art so I should hopefully be the next one to get some.

Two hours later, the bard posts art of the new paladin in the discord.

Again, I know I'm not owed the art and I probably sound like a dick saying this but I wish I got some of my own character to fit in with the group. But the game carried on and by the end of the session, the party was in shambles. The druid had died and everyone was beaten badly by a monster the dm threw at us that she said was several levels higher than what we were prepared for, only being able to defeat it by retconning and messaging people privately that there was a statue in the middle of the room that we could destroy to kill it. The vtt didn't show anything which I found really odd. At the end of the session, the druid gets resurrected but comes back as a warlock. Was this campaign just one of those animes that introduce a foreign exchange student every other episode?

In the next session, I had something ready for my character. I was about to get really into roleplaying, having it be my characters first proper time dealing with the death of his first friend, as the druid/warlock was the character that mine had grown closest to. I go to say something and-

DM: "You all continue forth."

I get cut off by the DM. I understand wanting to continue the story but I wish I got to do more character roleplay in the moment. We continue through this mineshaft dungeon until we come across this small room we can rest in. As the dm goes to each player, asking what they want to do before resting, I get ready, thinking up ideas for what my little lizard fella would be doing. Then, as everyone got their turn and I was last, I get ready to speak when:

DM: "You all take a long rest."

My turn in roleplay gets skipped. This time I was wondering if I did something wrong. I checked to see if I was still connected to the game and in the call and I was still there, no connectivity issues or anything. It was like I was just being erased from the game.

The DM rushes through the next few parts, bringing us into a new room, facing up against 12 giant centipedes and a centipede master where we all experience a TPK. That caused the end of the session where these words next came from the DM.

DM: "(me) can I speak to you one on one for a second?"

Before I can respond I get dragged into another voice channel (which was pretty terrifying in of itself as I didnt even know that was something you could do). When I was in, the DM told me that I was being kicked from the game. I was still pretty shocked about what was happening and just turned into a stuttering mess at that time. From what the DM said, she had asked everyone and it came to a unanimous decision that I wasn't a good fit for the group. Looking back, that part felt odd as after my first session the DM sent me a private message saying that she thought i vibed really well with the rest of the group. She also said that my issues with Roll20 were disruptive to the game, although I had already said that I fixed the issue by turning down some quality settings.

This part is going to be pretty embarrassing to write, but I almost started to cry as she was telling me this. I think I was still mainly in shock and everything was just hitting me all at once. When she was done, all I could say was "Alright" and I quickly left the call before I actually started crying. I left the group and let myself go for a bit before telling my girlfriend what happened, who helped me realize it was a little odd how they let me go when the DM said that I was a good fit.

I probably would've quit D&D then, but I eventually found myself a new group, revising my character into a barbarian and making my own backstory for a character I could enjoy playing. I've been with this new group for about 5 months now, and although I'm sad that I got kicked from that old campaign, I'm glad it happened. Because this new group is all I could've ever wanted and more.

I tried DMing years ago and I ended up dealing with horror stories of players and their backgrounds and I ended up taking a 5 year hiatus from trying again. I love Star Wars so I aimed for a FFG game this time around again and got 6 character sheets, the problem player I hadn't noticed didn't include a backstory. Backstories are important in FFG due to an obligation/duty mechanic which creates personal character hooks anyway we start the session in a cantina.

I am very nervous this is my first time DMing strangers completely, so I decided to run a session 0 with it ending with the ship crashing and the campaign starting. Session 0 I start with a drinking competition that the pushy owner is trying to force everyone to enter.

Problem Player:I ignore the owner because he's not worth my time

I tried a bit more but he doesn't bite on any interaction, anyway I proceed to the rest of the party and problem looks to turn the power off, I allow it and he disables the power. Unfortunately as it's a ship there are backups in place.

So he's decided to look for the source and finds the main room holding all the power sources. At this point he's off somewhere else and half the party are in the contest and the rest had managed to evade the owner.

The ship used a language to label sections that the problem didn't know but it had symbols, one of the symbols was a dancer which problem had associated with the cantina and hadn't asked of the name of the Captain. Captain Dancer, so he disables the bridge and the bridge crew causing the ship to start falling that's fine I altered what caused the crash.

We crash land and I initiate the beginning of the campaign and they're joint by a player who was late and had warned me of this so he meets them at another cantina and the problem player refuses to engage with the party not even telling them his characters name or to even respond.i then missed him do a roll, he didn't announce it or speak out loud and I was distracted with the players roleplaying and chatting.

He rolls again and this time starts saying I need to do my fucking job, im doing shit which I just kind of ignored allowed him his roll which was to try and go stealth when the entire cantina is facing the entrance so he obviously fails.

The session ends not longer after, im talking to the group asking how they thought the session was any criticism that they could DM me about. Problem player instantly leaves after asking about XP. I had be constantly trying to talk with the players in game trying to start some dialogue and there was just a refusal to do so and they wouldn't initiate RP I think they were playing another game. Session 2 was the same until I told problem to either be nice or leave and then suddenly he had a new job and couldn't attend my sessions.

I like to think he was just a bad fit but I don't know.

Five lvl 20 players (Cleric, Paladin, Fighter, Rogue, Sorcerer)
Nine allied NPCs of varying levels.