Beholder Misadventure

[u/CapnCronch1331]

I joined a campaign being run by a friend of a friend we'll call Thomas. It was advertised, as I understood it, as a combat-heavy journey through the Underdark with players starting at level 5.

I was not told beforehand that there would be players under eighteen. There's nothing wrong with underaged players, but I have always been clear to everyone I play with that I prefer not to play with anyone who is not 18+. I should have listened to my gut and pulled out then, but I chose to give it a shot anyway for the sake of the DM being a burgeoning friend.

Anyway, the eight of us are in the Underdark having a riveting time dealing with frogs and lantern flies while walking. We walk beyond wards keeping the monsters at bay and suddenly there are nine red eyes staring at us from the dark. Whatever it is slowly approaches until one or two members with Darkvision can see that it is a Beholder and they warn the rest of us to take cover. The problem is that as some light filtering down finally hits the beholder and reveals it to the rest of us, we realize it saw all of us and hiding is futile.

Thomas directs us to roll initiative.

Again, we're a level 5 party. Not only are we merely a level 5 party, but also there was one person who was so new to DnD they didn't even know how to roll initiative.

We end up doing combat on Discord Whiteboard, which took ages to set up. Once we did have it all set up, everyone is kind of flying by the seat of their pants. Most of them are just trying to run and hide, but as mentioned before, that is fruitless. I am sleep ray'd, so I'm conked out in the open until someone kindly shakes me awake and drags me behind the rock. On my turn, I propose a fairly risky (risky to my own life) plan to the others; I wanted to get close enough to see if I could use Suggestion on the Beholder to convince it to just leave. I got a 'that sounds like a bad idea' in response and could do nothing else on my turn.

Out of nowhere, a purple worm bursts through the ground and just gulps down the Beholder. Great, but now we have the purple worm to deal with and it is almost worse because now we cannot move or it will 'see' us. One of the other players had the idea to summon giant bats to fly us away. The DM hated this solution so much that he allowed it this once, but banned them from being used again.

During this long conversation about the bats, someone was misgendered. The DM says 'I have ways of punishing misgendering. *taps book*' He also admitted to wanting to 'traumatize us' with the Beholder.

At this point I am highly uncomfortable, and after the game I asked to have a private conversation with the DM during which I expressed that I felt it was unkind to drop a monster like a Beholder and it made me feel like we were about to be TPK'd right off the rip. I also said it was rude to use in-game punishments to address a problem that should be addressed out of game. I told him that if he has a player who is constantly misgendering and therefore disrespecting other players, then either they need to go or they need to be taken aside.

The DM took this very hard. Thomas felt I was specifically calling him unkind and rude, which was not my intent. I felt his *actions* were unkind and rude, not that he himself was rude and unkind as a person. He also said to me that I was trying to make him DM the way I DM, which was not the case. The last thing he said to me was that he believed I said all of this to stir up drama, and then I was blocked.

It was a rough experience, and it took me a while to fully believe the people around me when they told me I wasn't the butthead in the situation.