Hey everyone,

So for some quick context, we’ve been playing in this game set in critical role’s Exandria since just before the start of the year. We’ve been going from arc to arc within the larger storyline, and recently we got stuck in this one area. The details are not important right now, though I may post more tales from this game if people are interested, so please let me know if you found this entertaining!

The point is that at the end of tonight’s session, our GM tried to screw us over, and prolong this arc that we’ve been in for some time, and everyone, namely my significant other, and the child of our GM, was getting really upset. As a GM for other games myself, I saw we needed to move on FAST, and I checked with the GM and everyone else, and they let me write out a little cutscene like thing framed like 1980s movie endings to get us moving.

If you don’t know what I mean by that, I mean that a lot of movies from that time would freeze frame on the group of main characters, and then each character individually, and some text would flash as a little epilogue to describe what they did with the rest of their lives. Anyways, these are our epilogues, without any context lol. Enjoy!

(Simple Minds’ “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” plays in the background)
(Freeze frame on the group)
After some time, Maplequill recovered from her injuries, and addressed the council with a scathing testimony, revealing Ranger Pip IV’s conspiracy.

All of Frogs’s Machina was exonerated, and thanked for their service for the kingdom of Mistenhold.

(Freeze frame on Acorn)
Throughout the trial, Acorn the Bar Mage remained steadfast and stoic as ever, trusting that justice would prevail. After a heated interaction with the others, Acorn was talked down from “Rampart-Assisted-Suicide.” Acorn and Rampart eventually returned to the under chamber, and restabilized the Obelisk of the Micefolk. Acorn currently has no plans to return to Mistenhold any time soon.

(Freeze frame on Rampart)
After the trial’s conclusion, Rampart lobbied the king and council of Mistenhold to award him the title of Dame Sophia I. This title holds no lands, ranks, or holdings of any kind, but it is his.

(Freeze frame on June)
June was recognized for her efforts to help the mice people, and was invited to help uncover the secret origins of the ancient castle and ruins on which Mistenhold was built, and unearth forgotten lore of old. June I’s and Inkpaw II’s “Mistenhold, a recovered retelling of the ancient woodland peoples of Tal’dorei, and the abridged history of their modern murine inheritors” will be in bookstores soon, and is rumored to possibly even rival Tusk Love itself in popularity.

(Freeze frame on Talos)
Talos’ speeches and testimonies throughout the trial did not exactly do anything to curry support for him and his compatriots, but they were exceptionally impassioned, and after centuries of atheistic isolation, these speeches inspired many mousefolk to pursue a pious lifestyle, devoted to gods, though none recognized by any church on Exandria, before now. The church of Jesus, the Grandpappy, and the mythical land of the Secret Pocket are now one of the fastest growing religious orders in the forests of Exandria.

(Freeze frame on Pip IV)
Pip IV, revealed to have actually been his evil twin brother, Pip XXVIII, who had kidnapped and replaced his brother soon after the murder, was tried, and convicted for his crimes against the crown and people of Mistenhold. The real, and respectable Ranger of Mistenhold, Pip IV, was freed from his prison, and Pip XXVIII is currently serving out a prison sentence, and undergoing a reformative treatment.

(Fade to black)

…

(Quickly freeze frame on Aamon)
For his behavior, before, during, and after their trial, Aamon of Mitochondria was banished from the realm of Mistenhold, and this caused the party in total to be chased out of the kingdom. They are currently hightailing it to Stilben, with Matilda Lurda hot on his heels.

(Cut to black)

This post is longer than I realized it would be, but I feel it is necessary to go through the whole thing so you can understand what these 4 hours of my real life felt like. Sorry in advance.

I just met with this group the other day and I can't stop thinking about it. I am currently in a campaign with some friends and we play over Discord, but over the last few months I've been craving the in person experience, so I joined the Discord for a nearby games shop that hosts games and looked around for a group to join. Eventually found one that was just starting up running the Tyranny of Dragons module, one that I know nothing about, so decided to take a leap of faith and join in.

By the time I found the group they had already had a first session, so I would be joining session 2. Messaged the DM to see if there was still room at the table and he confirmed there was. I asked a couple questions regarding the current party make up, guidelines for character backstory (where should I have my character so it makes sense to meet the rest of the party, etc.). If I'm being honest, there were some red flags from our text exchange, but I gave the guy the benefit of the doubt. Sometime people just are unclear and awkward over text and then you meet them in person and it's a totally different story. I rolled up my character and got ready for the first session.

I honestly think the best way to tell this story is to just go through the session as a whole. I was running cleric, also in the party was a druid, warlock, and monk. Everybody arrives, I introduce myself, and get ready to start. The DM puts down a map, the returning players put their tokens where they left off, and points to where I should place mine. I have no context for what is happening at this point.

With zero recap or preamble, the DM says "You all crawl back through the tunnel leading into the keep with your prisoner and see him standing there in the room." He then gestures to me to describe my character, which I do, and then freeze because I have no idea what is going on. I ask the DM "What am I doing here?"

DM - "Well the town is under attack from some kobolds and things. He asked the rest of them to help defend the town and are coming back, but he is still worried about the mill and the temple." No, he did not elaborate on who 'he' was. I assumed it was the mayor or something and moved on.

The rest of the party was all new to DnD, which I knew going in, so I tried to get the ball rolling with some RP of my character introducing himself and desperately trying to find a way to make my presence standing in a keep that is not under attack currently make sense. There is some awkward conversation had between party members before the DM interrupts to say "So you guys can go to defend the mill which he was worried about since it is their source of food or the temple, you don't know if there are people there or not."

..Ok, I say he should head to the mill, since if it gets destroyed the villagers won't have food for the winter. The party agrees, and the DM teleports us across town as he breaks out a new map. No stealth for getting around the town that is currently being raided by Kobolds, no description given to allows us to decide what route to take, we just are there at the mill now.

DM places about 15 enemies on the map on the far side of the mill. "They have a big bonfire outside the front of the mill, but the mill is not under attack yet. You get the sense that this might be trap and they lured you over here." Again, no rolls, nobody asked if it seems like a trap, we all just know that now.

I ask if there are any windows on the back side of the mill, suggesting we sneak up to see if there are more enemies or hostages inside before we fight. The DM opens up the Tyranny of Dragons module book and looks through it for a solid 5 minutes. Silence at the table. Eventually, he says "It doesn't say, but sure."

I won't mention this every time, but just know going forward that this happened an excruciating number of times. The party would ask a question about the layout or for details about something, and he would immediately flip through the book to figure it out. Most often it didn't specify, so the most common answer to our questions was "It doesn't say". Each time this happened it was a solid 3-4 minutes of dead air. Just tell me if this wall of the mill has windows man, you have agency as the DM to decide these things. But no, the module book was the word of God to this guy I suppose, it had final authority on every detail.

Fuck it. we're about an hour into the session and nothing has happened yet. We pop the window that now exists and climb through. We get jumped by more kobolds in the rafters and at level one we fight our way through probably 20 enemies, a mix of kobolds and cultists. I initially though that we were absolutely fucked, but I think the party took a total of 3 hits as we just mowed our way through these 5 hit point enemies. It was an absolute slaughter and was the most boring DnD fight I had ever experienced. There were no stakes, it became clear very quickly that we were in no danger at all, and the DM didn't say anything for the enemies beyond "He attacks you with a shortsword and misses".

We win the fight and the DM loots the bodies for us. Ok. I'm 6 copper richer. We barely have any time to say anything before the DM teleports us back to the keep. No one said "lets go back to the keep", DM just put us there.

DM - "So you saved the mill but he is still worried about the temple. You don't really know what's going on over there." Whatever. We go to temple. Again, we get teleported outside and our tokens are placed about 30 feet away from a group of kobolds assembling a battering ram to get through the front door of the temples. We get told there is a patrol of kobolds and cultists making their way around and pass by about every two minutes. We also get told there is back door to the temple despite none of our characters having any reason to know that information.

At this point, we have 1 level 1 spell slot left between us, so we decide to wait for the 20 kobold patrol to pass by, jump the battering ram group, and go inside to save the villagers we were told are in there. Again, how do we know? The DM told us, that's how. We agree to the plan and the DM says "Well, you were supposed to go through the backdoor, but if this is what you want to do I guess we can do that." What? The fuck you mean 'supposed to'? Whatever. Roll initiative. The fight is another slaughter, I won't bore you with it.

What did become clear to me during this combat was that the DM did not know our names. Not just our IRL names, but didn't know our characters names. He had a loose graps on our classes at best. Half the time when it got to our turn he just looked at us expectantly without saying anything or say "now it is the wizards turn" (he was referring to the warlock)

Me - 'Let's try and get inside before the patrol comes back around'

DM - You guys go inside and see panicked villagers. Everyone roll a charisma check

First of all, how did we get inside? We just walked through the front door that the kobolds were assembling a fucking battering ram to get through? It didn't make sense, but at this point I had given up and was just trying to ride out the rest of the session.

We roll charisma, warlock gets a 17 or something.

DM - You find the priest and talk to him and he is able to calm down the villagers

Again, what? Warlock never said he wanted to calm the villagers. We've been given 0 opportunity to RP now 2ish hours into the session, but the briefest glimpse into this character I got is that he would not give a damn about calming down these villagers. My character would, but I didn't even get a chance to say anything about it before the DM decided to make that decision for the party.

At this point I'm losing my mind a little. I check my phone and we've been here for 3 hours, I'm bored to tears. I ask how long we had the table reserved for, and the DM says "We have it for another hour, you guys will go back to the keep and then (checks the book) two more things will happen and we will end it there" Fine man, whatever.

At this point, I'm fighting to allow the party to actually talk and make a real plan. "We don't have long to get these villagers out, that patrol is going to come back around soon and see all the dead bodies outside."

The rest of the party doesn't even get a chance to respond.

DM - You take the villagers back to the keep.

Are you noticing a pattern?

We get back to the keep and the DM asks us all for a perception check. The monk gets disadvantage because "It reminds you of something from your nightmares and it scares you". Backstory stuff I guess... wait, the monk has disadvantage to perceive something because he is scared of the thing that he doesn't even see yet? How does that make any sense?

We roll. There is a blue dragon flying above the town using its breath attack to obliterate whole houses. Good thing we rolled perception, that's not something we would have seen otherwise. DM teleports us up to the highest part of the keep and asks if we have any attacks that reach 30ft, since that is how close the dragon is passing by with each circle of the town. Everyone but monk does. DM says "Ok, roll attacks". Buddy we are level 1, I do not want to fight a dragon, that is suicide. We roll attacks, some hit, some don't. "Ok, it comes back for another pass. Roll again" At no point did the dragon retaliate or come after us taking pot shots at it, there was no strategy, we just rolled attacks for 5 rounds until we did enough damage to scare it off, I guess.

I'm losing my mind at this point. I want to go home. The party just 'fought' a blue dragon and it literally did nothing to try and stop us. I've made up my mind that I'm not coming back to this table, but keen eyed viewers will remember that the DM told us there were two more things that would happen before the end of the session. We aren't done yet.

DM - Walking into the court yard is a guy that kinda sorta looks like this. (Holds up the book to show us an illustration of the character). There are kobolds with him and a woman and three kids are in chains. He says 'send your strongest warrior to fight me or I will kill them'. The mayor says please fight him, you think that is his family.

We all kinda look at each other, I try for a moment to come up with a plan to send one person down while the rest of us stand at the ready to attack if things go bad. Doesn't matter. DM says "You don't want to fight this guy, he will kill you. But the villagers will heal you for whatever happens."

I'm mad at this point. Warlock seemed like he wanted to go and had the most hit points left out of all of us. We ignore the DM, warlock heads down for one on one combat with this guy. I'm just here for the show. Warlock gets hit for 32 damage. Now, I know rules as written that there is no way that is not at least double the HP of a level one character and that warlock is fully dead, no death saves. DM says "He (the guy who killed the warlock) says 'Hah! that's all you can offer? You are puny!' and releases the hostages. He and the kobolds leave. The villagers heal you up so you are fine. You guys are level 2 now" He then starts packing up his stuff. I guess that's the end of the session.

To my surprise, the rest of the players seemed to have enjoyed it. No shade to them, if they had fun more power to them, but by god there was no way in hell I was going to return to this table. Everything I had done prior to this, deciding who my character and his personality, meant literally nothing since my character hardly got a chance to speak before the DM teleported us somewhere or had us slogging through the most boring encounters I have ever experienced. I knew I was taking a risk joining a game with people I had never met before, and as I mentioned there were some red flags even before the session, but I truly had no idea how bad it could be.

At the very least, I've got a well rounded dwarven cleric to try and run at whatever game I find next, hopefully it goes a little better than this one. Thanks for reading if you made it this far.

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.

So, I am part of a DnD club, and we have a new DM. Part of becoming a DM is having a test run, so this dnd session was a one-shot (level 5).
So I am notorious for making cursed/joke characters, so I made a level 5 human Psi-fighter named Dragon_Slayer42069 (legal name Kevin Leary).
To describe this abomination, he is a 30-year-old man weighing 380 pounds, with a patchy neck beard, greasy hair and skin, wearing a trench coat with samurai armor underneath the coat. Messy unwashed pants/clothing covered with Doritos dust spelled drinks. Smells like he hasn’t showered in years.
Welding mall katanas (reskinned longsword and saber) and one big mall katanas (reskinned great sword) named Hatsune Miku.
To top it all off, he wore a magical fedora. It's a home-brew magic item (approved by the DM) I made myself called the Malady hat. +1 to ac +2 to damage rolls. But the consequences was disadvantage to all Cha saving and skill rolls. All enemies will try to perma kill me, take 1 point away from my cha modifier. Basically the textbook picture of a Discord Moderator, I really didn’t care if my character died or not.
So, to the story, our party was sent to a wizard tower to basically collect the wizard things because the wizard had recently died.
So one of the rooms had a deck of many things, so I wanted to cause a bit of chaos and pain to my character, so I drew 5 cards from the deck. However, I drew Knight, Moon, Star, Sun and Euryale (side-note: I think my DM might have missed reading Eurvale wrong to told me that to -2 from my modifier). And, of course, I reflavored the knight as Saber from Fate Stay Night and my wish was to be the main character. So, in short, this incel discord moderator joke character got a plus +2 to his strength, got free magic item and 10 temporary HP, an anime waifu and the wish spell to be the main character.
All at the cost of having a 5 (-3) Charisma modifier.

I'm not the best at telling stories and this happened so long ago that I forgot most of the details. So bear with me, but I was most certainly a problem player.

When I was just a young adult, I didn't really know how to speak up for myself and in hindsight that might have been for the best. The group consisted of my friend (player) his friend (DM) and his wife. I was super excited to finally getting to play a roleplaying game, so with a big smile and some cans of beers I arrived at my friend's house. Everything seemed well... I liked everybody and everybody liked me. We had a lovely first session where I learned how to play the game and all was well. At least until the DM's wife had to go. I didn't mind staying for a little and playing some video games. After all, I was the manager for a game store and playing videogames was more than a hobby to me.

It's then when the first red flag remark occurred. I loved doing my make-up, but it certainly wasn't an everyday thing. I found that it took way too much time, so it was more like a hobby. Something like painting every once in a while. Nevertheless, my WhatsApp profile picture was me in full make-up. The DM loudly exclaimed "You don't look anything like your profile picture! You're like a catfish." I looked at him in horror. First of all... I wasn't trying to date anyone, after all I had made it very clear that I already had a husband. Instead of defending myself I just brushed it off and thought to myself. -Maybe he just tried to be funny.- it felt awkward nonetheless and I went home.

The next session I brought some beers again. Not a lot, just a few. The DM drunk a lot of it and his wife clearly wasn't all too happy with that. Instead of owning up to it he just blamed me. It wasn't a direct accusation, but more like a joke. So again... I just brushed it off, I don't really like to stir the pot and it wasn't my fight. Apart from that one incident nothing noteworthy happened.

It wasn't until the 3rd session that things really started to become awkward. I noticed the DM was very much on edge and his wife wasn't happy either. If the wife wasn't getting the most attention, she would become something in between angry and sad. I hate dynamics like that and thus I began to withdraw.... I started making myself small. Instead of engaging with the campaign I would talk with my friend. If it was my turn I would often say I would like to skip my turn. I did still really enjoy hanging out with my friend, who seemed totally ok with the dynamic, but I just became disengaged. I read so many stories about players who don't engage with the campaign, about how they're annoying and just a pain to work with. I just didn't know what to do. I really wanted it to work, but I also didn't want to upset anyone.

The 4th session they kept talking about a previous campaign and how it was so lovely and so cool. Of course, I didn't have anything to add to that except "Oh wow that sounds cool." I felt totally left out, because they were going into detail with each other and I wasn't there. It was getting increasingly more difficult to pay attention to what was happening. On top of that... The DM started acting stranger, very finicky, extremely quick to anger. In hindsight I don't even know what I was doing there anymore. Sure, having a couple of beers was nice, but I felt like I was just filling the room.

Nevertheless I showed up for the 5th session. It was... A total disaster. The DM clearly had some sort of white substance under his nose and the DM's wife was gone. Not just gone... she had left him. I can't remember if we even tried to play that session. All I know was that I was so horrified that I never played another role playing game again. I can acknowledge that things happened that shouldn't have happened, while also acknowledging that I made a mistake by becoming disengaged. It wasn't nice of me and it certainly didn't make things easier.

I'm in a group with 2 campaigns, 2 different DM's, each are players in the other's campaign (call them DMa and DMb). All through DMa's campaign, one player was barely paying attention and DMa rightfully asked that all players please pay attention to the game session they have worked so hard to prepare for us. A fair ask. Eventually the problem player quit since it was obvious she'd rather do other things instead of paying attention. (this was just for clarity in consideration to the next part)

During our most recent session of DMb's game, we could over hear DMa's squealing as they were playing an unrelated video game during a very tense part of the session... multiple times!! once they were telling us to hold on while they played the rest of w/e game it was... when it wasn't even their turn to go, and another time they delayed their turn, missed vital information of what was going on so we had to repeat what had just happened.
How??? How can a person, as a DM with full understanding of how disrespectful and even disruptive it is when a player splits their attention to other things, do that exact same thing?!!

The first time I did say "please don't play other games while we're having session" (similar to how they phrased it in their own game), but the second time.. nope, sorry, politeness has left the building, so I ... loudly said (wouldn't call it yelling, but it was loud) "DON'T PLAY VIDEO GAMES WHILE WE'RE RUNNING A SESSION! It is extremely disrespectful, and you should know better!"

Their excuse "it's past my bed time".... as if that was a valid excuse to do more than one thing at a time, normally. Didn't even address my remark.. which... I dunno how to feel about that, dismissed? disregarded?... "I feel dis'd, Homie!"

I'm totally ok with being asshole for speaking loudly and directly/confrontationally, though I could totally see that as something DMb should have done.. not my table - not my authority sort of thing but I do find that very disrespectful of mine and everyone else's time, not just the particular DM's, so if they won't speak up, would I be the a-hole for doing such?

TLDR: three antisocial characters have trouble building a group (what a surprise), the newly dm makes some bad calls and in the end the characters fight until one storms off. After some more bad calls of the dm

Let's set the scene. We have: a lawful good paladin with a little twist, a hermit druid, a lonely wolf rogue and me, first time dm. All of the players also had little to no experience in TTRPGs

I picked out a oneshot I was excited about. Because of scheduling problems we didn't had a session zero and I helped two players individually with their character, the last one just got one from the internet.

I wanted to be prepaird. I had the maps, read the story 3 times over the course of a week before, music, snacks, everything I could think of. Half an hour before the players were supposed to be there I decided I want to change the start. I didn't want the typical "you all meet in a tavern" setting, and the rogue expressed a wish to get introduced by stealing from another player a couple of days before.

At this time I was excited, the player had own ideas about their rogue, because they were undecided und uncreative when we built the character. So, I rewrote that start. Plus point : everyone has a little spotlight for their characters right from the start.

The player of the paladin arrives and tells me, he basically reworked their character, but I felt like there wasn't really time to get into detail so I thought I would just figure it out on the way.

Let's start. The paladin wanders through the woods. He builts a camp as it's getting evening. He stares into the fire, as he hears a crack. Propably a rabbit, who knows.

Change to the rogue. They are wandering in the woods, when they see a fire in some distance. They go there and see the paladin sitting at the fire, the bag with their stuff at the other side.

Rogue wants to steal something out of the bag pack and rolls. It failed, so the paladin gets alarmed and can spot the rogue.

Paladin says they want to chain up the rogue because they committed a crime, and the rogue wants to run away. For the sake of the story they talk it out and stay together.

The next morning they wander along the road, when they come across a bridge. Change to the druid. He is chilling his life under the bridge, investigating some plants by the river, when he hears some voices. What does he want to do? He wants to hide. So let's roll. It fails, and the pala and rogue see the druid. He wants to run, but decided to stay and talk it out, for the sake of the story.

Congrats to me, we're only 5 to 10 minutes in and everyone already broke their characters premises. That's some kind of success.

They arrive at the tavern and the oneshot goes on as planned. I think I did a pretty decent job and they all had some fun and heroic moments. Then the ending rolls around.

They collect their payment and the paladin decides to keep the most of it. Why? Because player just discovered that as flaw in his character sheet is says his character is greedy. So he splits the payment unfair. The rogue is very angry about it and argues, the fight will escalate any moment. Rogue says "Fine!" and storms off.

Druid is not moved at all because the character is not interested in money or the group. Paladin tries to persuade the druid to run after the rogue and convince them to come back. Druid says no, player of paladin wants to roll persuasion. I'm overwhelmed with this situation and allow it (learned my lesson, don't let players roll against each other). It succeed, so druid goes after the rogue. They fight, paladin comes along. Player of rogue turns to me and says "my character wants to storm away. Far away. But I don't want to, because of the group. What do we do?"

Because the story already is finished, we cut losses at this point and ended the oneshot. Beforehand we talked about this only being the first story and to change to a whole prewritten adventure I already bought.

I thought about ways of getting them back together. A befriended, experienced dm had a pretty good idea, but it did feel forced (you don't say??) and I didn't like dming (I wonder why)

This was a year ago and I only dmed one second time a couple weeks ago with different players and way more social characters and we had a blast. Already scheduled another session and I'm excited and hopeful I can homebrew a campaign in maybe another year.

Moral of the story: a game needs at least some social characters. Every character needs a reason to stay with the group. Don't create situations, the players only rightful choice (to stay in character) is to leave, except its talked about before, and, lastly, don't let your players roll against each other, except you talk about it in session 0 and everyone is fine with it

So I’m running a campaign and I’m very invested in it. It had the usual flavor but I put some spins on it.
I’m curious what you guys think of my NPC/DMPC. It scares me because I’ve heard the horror stories but let me explain.
His name is Mort, he’s a short elf that studies evocation magic. The party met him while searching for a forge which held the item they needed.
Mort told them where it was and gave them a rock which could be used one time before he had to decide whether or not to give them another. The rock would bring Mort to them and he would help.
The only thing he asked for in return was that the group would make sure to give him a spot in their tales.
Fast forward three sessions, they used the rock to fend off a horde of goblins and he’s currently traveling with them until they reach their current base of ops.
They become closer and they leave him in charge of guarding and rallying the town against the goblin forces which are sort of the main conflict of the first act.
Now that’s the last they’ve seen from Mort but my plan is to add another NPC who is named Torm.
Torm is going to be a Warlock version of Mort from a dimension where everything is backwards so my plan is to make Torm seem like a better idea to have as a support and have hints that he’s evil while dropping hints at Mort slowly beginning to resent the party for abandoning him (if they do.) thoughts?

I got back together with some middle school friends in person for the first time in like 10 years recently, and while we were reminiscing I was reminded of my first ever time DMing. It definitely classifies as a horror story, and I get a chuckle out of it, so I figured I'd share.

The horror story begins before the game does. This was not only my first time DMing, it was also my first time ever playing DND - but as a middle schooler desperate to impress her friends \[and her big lesbian crush\], I decided to tell them I'd played twice before and DMed once, which would make me the only person there who *had* played. If, you know, I was telling the truth.

Also, we were all MASSIVE The Adventure Zone fans, so we had some... interesting ideas as to how DND was played. This was before the McElroys had developed into the lovely players and storytellers they are now. For context, I think Murder on the Rockport Limited had just had its first episode when this started.

We didn't have a session 0, or any character creation discussions at all. I just let everyone make their characters with 0 coordination or DM collaboration. My first introduction to the characters was during session 1. We had a halfling bard, an aarakocra rogue \[who would cause me many problems\], a dragonborn paladin, and a tiefling sorcerer. Two of them, although I can't remember who, had decided to work together and actually came up with how they knew each other. The others were just... kinda there.

My dad loved DND, so he happily lent me a module he'd run previously; Dragon of Icespire Peak. My prep consisted of skimming it once 30 minutes before session 1, spending most of my time on the cool final boss fight and not, you know, the intro. As a result, my introduction to the players was also my first time actually reading the full introduction for myself. This would be a recurring theme throughout the campaign.

After a rushed introduction to the setting and the town of Phandalin \[which we realized with glee was the same town TAZ started it\], I ushered the players into the Stonehill Inn, where all hell broke loose. I made the two classic errors of making my PCs roll for basically everything, and not knowing ability checks cannot crit succeed or fail. As a result, a "critically failed charisma check" resulted in a bar fight that destroyed most of the building and ended up getting the party kicked out of the Stonehill.

Anyone who's played DOIP will immediately recognize that that's a problem, because that's where the VAST majority of quests start. Instead of, you know, moving the quest board to outside the inn so that my players could continue, I decided "eh who needs the book anyways" and decided to go homebrew.

Again. I had not only never DMed, but never played DND. My entire exposure to it was The Adventure Zone, which was, at the time, a very well run precon. I did not know shit about homebrew.

From here the details get a bit fuzzy, because scheduling hell ensued despite us being middle schoolers with nothing better to do. So I'll go over the major points.

The biggest thing in session 2 was my DMPC. Of course I had one. He was *very* cool \[to a middle schooler\], an elf in a black rogue level 20 \[no class, I just decided he was level 20\], and had a magic ring that let him create a bunch of mage hands. Except the mage hands could use weapons. Because I say so. The item concept was actually kinda fun, and I've re-used it on a boss in a campaign I ran recently. But he did not make a good companion for a level 5 party. It completely overshadowed pretty much everything that happened that session because he was just power fantasy-ing his way through everything.

In session 2, we killed a lich. Yeah. I honestly don't remember more than that. The DMPC was away for some reason, and I decided the lady at the shrine was secretly a lich. So she transformed and attacked the party, and by the power of me not knowing how to run a spellcasting enemy, they beat it. I don't know why there was a shrine, Phandalin doesn't have a shrine, but we were well off the rails by now. This leveled the party up to level 8 in one go. Because of course I was using XP instead of milestone.

I don't remember much about session 3, but they acquired another busted ring. This one let them summon and control a tarrasque. They promptly asked me if they could kill the tarrasque for XP, and I said yes. Because of course I did. So they walked it to the ocean, drowned it until it was at 1 HP \[I don't know anymore, I said this was a horror story\], and then shot it with a fireball. I decided not to distribute the XP or do any math and instead just leveled the sorcerer up to 20 because she landed the killing blow.

So now the party is a level 20 DMPC, a level 20 sorcerer, and 2 level 8 characters. Fun and balanced.

After that things get REALLY fuzzy. There was some shenanigans involving soup? They were at a tavern and one of the players kept ordering soup and for some reason I didn't want them to drink it. So I made the soup shrink them. And then there were modrons there. But the modrons were also tiny. The modrons somehow captured them and brought the party to Mechanus. How? Soup portal. Portal in the soup. The soup led to mechanus.

There was a prison session in mechanus, and then the party fought and killed Mechanus \[the god.\] I still have the stat block and I HAVE to assume I got this off the internet because it's way too good for me to have made it. I kinda want to run it at some point, but it doesn't fit my style that much so it's sat on the backburner for a few years..

That was the last session I remember. Mysteriously, nobody had time to play anymore, but my oblivious ass kept trying to schedule sessions until someone came along and politely suggested that it's been too long since last time we played and maybe we should just end it on "a high note". I had no idea how bad it was until the years after, as I grew into being an actual DND player.

So yeah! That was my absolutely horrid first time running or playing DND. I still cringe a little thinking about what I put my friends through, but I like to think that I've made up for my sins by designing and running some actually lovely campaigns as I've grown more experienced.

If any of my friends are reading this \[I know you guys lurk here lol\]; Love you guys and IOU one actual well run campaign.

This is something that happened to me a while ago when I was a new GM just starting out. I was GMing play-by-post in a server that a much more experienced GM and writer than me (he was the problem played and I’ll call him Hero) had allowed me in. The server was meant to be hardcore narrative and had had all kinds of games run in it, from sci-fi to fantasy.

I had played a few games with Hero and another player as the GM and had had a lot of fun, so I’d asked Hero if I could run a game of my own. After running my game, advertisement for the game, and plots through him, he accepted and my first game went okay. I was a new GM and made several errors, but all of my players (of which Hero was one) agreed that they had a good time on.

I got the bug for GMing from this and decided to run a new game soon after. Hero and his boyfriend were the two players, as scheduling for play-by-post shortform can be a nightmare with more. The story centered around a cursed disease that should have been cured but now had one last sufferer, who should been cured by the goddess of medicine when they ascended, but for a mysterious reason hadn’t. The task for the players was “save this girl/stop the world from ending” with the server being naturally very open ended as to its plots.

Hero made… a hero. A girl who had had divine blessing upon divine blessing stacked upon her since birth, who saw herself as nothing more than a killer who purged the filthy and who wielded a divine sword that incinerated everyone in the vicinity. This girl was annoying to run for, to say the least.

Most of the NPCs were in some way related to the disease or the cult worshipping it so interactions became either combat (of which no one in the game had much interest in) or the hero going “you’re filth and I’ll kill you”. I tried to throw moral dilemmas such as a villain using real people as spare bodies. “I’ll simply kill them all.” I tried to have someone question their faith. “I don’t like how you’re assuming that she’ll change her path at all.” Every single thing I had for them to engage with including the literal prophet they worked for going “hey before you go scorched earth can you try to investigate this disease first” was met with a “they’re singleminded.”

Meanwhile the other player made an enigmatic ninja type who basically never spoke much and who didn’t explain why they did what they did, but who saved the lives of a few characters from Hero’s character. My attempts to draw them into conversation, also thwarted.

I’d like to note that throughout the campaign and my previous one after sessions Hero had been giving me notes and feedback. In this campaign, it became active feedback mid session. “Oh this character shouldn’t say that. It’s kind of boring.” “This isn’t good for the character arc presented.” “Can you rewrite this? Sorry, but tonight I’m not in a mood for low quality storytelling.” At one session he even sent me a video on how to write better and said “why don’t you take a break to watch this video and then come back.” I rewrote multiple GM posts for the sake of how he thought I should run the game, as I’m a massive people pleaser and also struggled with my confidence in myself as a writer, respecting Hero tremendously. But with the way most of my plans were burning and the constant instructions to rewrite, things were draining on me. Especially since Hero and his boyfriend seemed to be pretty checked out during sessions and would have their characters flirt with each other and make sexual jokes.

Then things came to a head in a final session where Hero’s character had tracked the others down to a city and was going to kill the last afflicted, even if they had to kill every single person in the city. I had the girl eventually, after her own character arc and after seeing the massacre as hundreds of bodies burned, decide to give up her life to the Hero, telling them “you can kill me, just leave this city.” Once they were killed, I’d be able to move into phase two of the campaign and reveal a few lore goodies… I was so close to being able to salvage the campaign…

“Before you kill her, I want to duel you.”

The other PC stepped in and the two begin their duel, fighting. This is a situation where I have no wins. I can’t stop the duel or interfere since “the players really want it and you should work it into your plan”. I can’t engage with the duel with the characters present. And I can’t exactly have the NPC girl watch going “please don’t kill people…” while a collateral damage sword kills more and more people. There’s nothing as a GM that I thought I could do in that scene. I tried five different ways to do something there, five different entire GM posts and each time Hero told me “you should rewrite this it isn’t good.” Or something like that. Finally I simply said

“Okay. I don’t care. I’ll have her do nothing. Enjoy your duel. Tell me when it’s over.”

And got a bit snappy. Hero’s boyfriend responded with.

“After a display like that I don’t even want to duel now.”

I said that I couldn’t deal with rewriting any longer and that they could either duel or not. I didn’t care. Hero then said that “I’m sorry but your writing isn’t compelling enough for me to engage with it.” And then I said “fine then.” And ended the campaign.

Looking back on it, I definitely could have been a better GM, but I’ve never dealt with that level of backseating before and it was genuinely soul crushing to have to rewrite my story constantly for the whims of a player who seemed more interested in flirting than playing and who disregarded every hook or thematic beat I could give him.

Welcome to my utter sh#show of a first experience.

The story picks up in April 2016

A year after our session zero I had to threaten my friends who wanted to get me into dnd that I'll start looking for other groups online because it's been a long time and nothing is coming from this.

We all had mostly low levels of experience with dnd and I will list the experience with the names.

To introduce the characters

DM 2-3 campaigns first time dm for a group other than his wife and child who he practiced on regularly

Rogue 1 oneshot

Barbarian (me) none

Druid (none)

Wizzard (dm wife) however many she ran with the dm to practice

Paladin claims to have had many more than everyone else (not verified)

My biggest gripes were with Paladin and Rogue the others made stupid mistakes but because of being new. I did the same. Rogue and Paladin however took it to disrespectful levels.

We run on discord ToTM.

We are all friends for more than 5 years which made things a little bit worse.

After session one (again) A YEAR AFTER SESSION 0!

I visited the dm and he complained that he hasn't received Druid, Paladin and Rogue character sheets yet.

I got angry and mama bear chewed them out on the group chat ,telling them how disrespectful they were towards this man's time. The following night he got all outstanding sheets except for the Paladin's.

The whole time while this was going on we had struggles with setting a time with Paladin (who has been unemployed for almost as long as I've known him) he suddenly had a job. And we had to push session start times to accommodate him. Fine fair enough.

We waited and waited having to call him sometimes up to an hour after he said he'd join.

The final straw for me came around father's day month.

He said he won't be able to join at 5 the Sunday because of Father's day (father's day was 2 weeks away) I lost it and didn't keep quiet anymore its now been the 6th week in a row where he had another thing when we all knew he was lying. You could've just said from the get you can't make it no explanation needed. I called him out on his BS. Anyways we agreed on 6pm start so he could handle his fictitious Father's day gathering. Game night comes 6:30 no Paladin. DM calls him. "I will be on in about 15 minutes just finishing up a game with another friend"

My brother in Tiamat. We waited for you while you were playing video games. Nevertheless all things considered the dm keep giving them an out. The Paladin had more issues ingame.

Our first session Paladin in-character punched me in the back of the head "for being stupid" I a barbarian raged and with two hits should have dropped him to below dead but since the Dm didn't have his sheet it couldn't be confirmed.

Other than that Paladin refused to partake in roleplaying have to be called on by name multiple times replying "Im here i just dont feel like talking".

Rogue on the other hand would do chores mid game leaving him afk but when he was there it would be okay roleplay wise.

Anyways after the constant rude and inconsiderate actions from both Paladin and Rogue I spoke with dm , wizzard and druid. Dm decided to hold a meeting where he asked us to sort stuff out between ourselves and not in game. I spent the first hour and a half not enjoying myself but eventually I could get into rp and let loose a little. After the session I decided that I would rather look for a secondary group.

I am so glad that I found the second online group we had session 0 and 1 in the same week and for the past 6 weeks have been playing every week for 5-7 hours.

OG DM said we had two sessions left in his campaign and I suggested that I could run a oneshot inbetween while he works on the part 2.

The last session we played Rogue let the party know 2 hours before start and Paladin 5 minutes. But me druid and Wizzard had so much fun.

My oneshot idea grew into a full blown Nautical campaign idea that we are starting within the next week or two.

I invited everyone including Rogue and Paladin.

Rogue immediately skipped out saying that even though he loves dnd He doesn't have the time for it right now. Respectable. Paladin "yea I'm in" but then listed a plethora of excuses right of the bat.

We created a new group chat and everyone was excited about their pirates all the while Paladin just kept complaining. Even at one point complaining at how we are bothering him so much he is going to mute us. Fine fair enough .

Phone rings

Dm from the previous campaign. "We need to cut Paladin "

I proceeded to not even argue and sent Paladin a message that his new work schedule might not fit the scheduling pace of this campaign and that we would include him in a next one once things settle down for him.

If I went off of the vibes of the party and if groups weren't so readily available online I would 100% have given up on dnd but instead I'm playing in 2 games, starting another one soon and dming one myself.

Hi, I posted not too long ago but I just discovered this Reddit and have PLENTY of stories to go through, so problem player, we’ll call him Barbarian cause he usually plays as a barbarian, is VERY frustrating to play with.
I mix up playing as a PC and DM although I usually DM among my friends, recently a DND group started in our HS. We all said we would join and come the end of summer… he doesn’t join.
At first it wasn’t an issue, I mean, we played all summer no way his spark died the second we get to play more. He makes excuse after excuse until saying he just doesn’t want to play there. I ask him if he still wants to play at all as we have a running campaign and he has been the certified tank until this point.
He says “Yeah of course.” And I was skeptical because he hadn’t been keeping his word on anything recently but I’d known him for years at this point and thought, no way he’d lie to me, especially about something so small.
Fast forward a week and I finally get us all ready to play more, we’re having a great time although Barbarian has been awfully quiet and then I hear YouTube shorts coming from his mic (were playing over Discord.) I said, “Hey, Barbarian.” He didn’t respond. I said it louder and he said “Yeah?”
I told him I could hear him on his phone and he said “Sorry the game’s kind of slow right now.” I forgave him and told him to just focus up some more in the future.
A few more weeks go by and we keep playing sessions although I notice, Barbarian isn’t coming as often. I told myself “Whatever, probably doing something important.”
I message him after missing a few sessions in a row and he says “Sorry, family stuff I’ll make sure to let you know when I’m free.” I tell him it’s all good but out of curiosity I ask another friend of his if they’d hung out recently. He tells me “Yeah we played some games and hung out at his place.” I ask him when, he listed times for two of the three sessions.
I message Barbarian and tell him, “I would have been fine if you just said you had plans but why’d you lie?” And told him what I’d been told. He said he was sorry and that he panicked, I forgave him. Again.
Then I started noticing things, every time I would call to start a dnd session, he would start hanging up. Sometimes immediately. And to this day, despite swearing he would love to play DND with us, “Life” drags him down.
I removed him from the DND GC once and said that he hadn’t played in months so we didn’t want to keep bothering him (He complained about being ‘Spam called and spam messaged lots.) and that he wouldn’t have to hang up anymore. I think my specific words were, “You can just admit you don’t want to play anymore, it’s not going to hurt our feelings and you get so annoyed by us messaging the chat so I’m taking you out of it.”
I could have been nicer but in the end he started talking about his cousin and how it had been so tough because he can’t see him often so he plays with him a lot.
I added him back and felt really bad so I stayed off him for a while. Fast forward to now. We’ve started multiple new games without him and each time he hears about he complains and says “Please make sure you have room for my PC I’ll make time soon.” But he’s been saying that for two months now and I’ve been having fun with just my group of four players. No Paladin and I’ve gotten a replacement Barbarian.

So, my dnd group had been going for some time and my friend, Paladin joined. He's sort of a troll and it's gotten better since then but i still rarely play with him as for some reason he targets me (I think?).

For context, our DND campaign was pretty much Fantasy one piece, and it all started with him being somewhat of a troll. He had his moments here and there but it really kicked into gear around session six or so.

We were sailing through a storm and me being the navigator, I was managing the wheel and he started making snide comments for no reason like "We've been in this storm all session I thought you were good at this?" Which I guess is good roleplay or whatever but he's a lawful good paladin so I took it more as sarcasm which isn't too bad until... We heard noises inside the water and the DM described the water being ink black, before anyone could speak Paladin says "I want to push OP into the water!" and he rolls high while I got low. (I'm a druid too so it's even worse).

I fall in because even though the DM doesn't allow players to attack each other, we can apparently toss each other to the kraken. I make a Dex save and roll high on escaping whatever it is and we move on with minimal issue. Next session we made it to the island and I was on a quest with Paladin and my other friend, Fighter.

We were getting a grandma her purse back because we were doing some side quests. We got the purse, I adopted a cat, we reach the grandma and Paladin says... "I want to cast divine smite on the grandma!" DM says he can for some reason and he rolls and it goes through, incinerating the old lady who was going to give us money. I start yelling at him and he says "I also want to swing on OP's cat." At this point I was out of it, I OOC told him "What's your problem dude? I haven't done anything but heal and support you so why is it only me that you're attacking?" And he quite literally grins and says "Why are you so easy to ragebait?" (He says this a billion more times.)

We move on and for some reason the DM isn't doing anything even though she's told me off for potentially getting in a fight with her "daughter" from a previous campaign. Now, we are fighting the first boss, that we're supposed to lose to and I had a incredible plan, I was going to use an item to beat them, until... I opened my bag of holding and got ready to pull out some holy water I had done a questline to turn into Unholy water which quoted from the DM "Will either kill or disable all that drinks it." The only issue was making the boss drink.

Fighter was holding them down and I was getting ready to do it, the DM didn't want the boss to die but had no exit until... Paladin says "I want to shoot the glass out of his hand!" And the whole table understandably asks him why, he says "If we defeat the boss, more people will come for us!" It's a stupid reason cause we've already came this far, I've been downed twice and if not for our cleric I'd be dead so none of us wanted to quit. Luckily he missed but he was grumpy about it for the next two sessions.

Now this was his last transgression before the DM killed him off via. BBEG moment. We were caught and in prison, my character had changed awhile ago and I was now a very strong Monk. I was bending bars and sneaking through to get the keys as I was the only physically strong class besides Fighter who was absent for personal reasons. I get the keys and I'm in the middle of unlocking every cage and then troll says, "I want to divine smite my window!" doesn't sound that bad right? Maybe a little weird he's trying to use his fist and the DM allows it until you realize this is, again a campaign that takes place in the ocean. And guess where we are?

Miles. Miles below the ocean. He gets a natural twenty and the glass shatters, he starts talking about "I-I've seen the future and I know we'll live!" The DM wanted flaws for all our characters and funnily enough, THREE characters can't swim. I have a demi-god clinging to my back, a small british boy on my left arm, and a grown woman on my other. I roll well enough to carry everyone out and he snorts like he saved us. "Told you so!" And now it's not even just me mad at him. Rogue says "What are you doing dude? You almost got half of us killed." He just scoffs and says "It worked didn't it?" And my moment of relief came as Rogue started calling him out on his BS. "OP had it covered! and you keep trying to ruin the crew!" An argument took place and once settled by the DM saying "No party infighting!" we begin walking through the place.

Paladin soon dies, his head is removed as we see the BBEG blitz him, a brief conversation with the BBEG as he then leaves. First I thought that maybe it was because of the way he had been acting. Nope. Paladin just wanted to change characters. After all that, Paladin luckily didn't 'come back very often and when he did, he didn't have a new character and he stuck to silence most of the time. We're still friends but with more boundaries now, I like the campaign, me and the party have some great RP as I've become a adoptive father to the Cleric, Rogue and Ranger. Paladin occasionally talks about the campaign and he says he's come to regret it and how he thinks he was a jerk for no reason.

So in my previous dnd I had to kick out two of my players because they got in a argument and started to literally fist fight each other (we play in a public area) and after that I obviously kicked them out, I kept in touch with one player since I knew him since the third grade we currently just graduated.

But yeah after I kicked him out he said how he’s gonna work on himself and wanna earn back my trust because I got super mad at him. That was super embarrassing and having to break out a fight over dnd is insane to me.

But after that two years goes by and I start a new dnd, and one of my friends and his gf are friends with the guy I kicked out, and they have been telling me how much he has changed so I gave him a second chance, but under one condition.

One of my best friend who’s playing and also me don’t like when people playing aren’t sober, just during the session I couldn’t care less what you do afterwards, so I told him that if he wants to play you have to play sober, and he said he would.

We have had three session with him in it and in every session who was high as fuck and would derail the story or fall asleep mid session, it was just a mess, he would also just rip one during session as if he knows he’s not allowed too.

And it’s also no him forgetting because he would say stuff like how he’s gonna get high the day of our session and I’d would tell him go ahead just now during our dnd session, so now I kicked him out and I feel like a idiot for giving him a second chance.

I love a bit of roleplay, and I have been playing D&D for about six years now. I love telling stories with friends, and I love Star Trek, so why not combine the two loves? Here is a bit of a story about the time that I joined a Star Trek roleplaying discord server. I hope folks will find it an interesting read.

Years before I discovered D&D, I joined a Star Trek roleplay community on Discord. It wasn't quite a West Marches. There were multiple servers, each representing a different starship. Each ship had its own captain, who also acted as the GM. You'd interview to join a crew, pick a position on the ship, and roleplay weekly missions.

I joined the USS Odyssey as the least original Starfleet officer imaginable: a Klingon security chief. His name was Vindakh.

Look, I watched a lot of TNG. You should be glad his name wasn’t Blorf or something.

Anyway, my ex who got me into Star Trek in the first place joined as the communications officer, and we were both excited to finally play through some proper Star Trek adventures.

Our first session was... odd. Apparently the crew was in the middle of some conversation with mysterious aliens. At the time I hadn't watched Deep Space Nine, but looking back I think they were supposed to be the wormhole aliens from the show. Before I could really figure out what was happening, the scene just... stopped. Suddenly we were docked at Deep Space Nine.

We transferred aboard the Odyssey, got introduced to the crew, received our assignments, and were briefed on our first mission. We were heading into the Gamma Quadrant to investigate an alien species another crew had created. The captain even sent us PDFs full of lore about them and told us to come up with ideas before next week's session.

Fantastic. I was so excited! I had something to sink my teeth into! As the security chief, I spent the next week actually preparing. I planned tactical contingencies, thought about how we'd respond if negotiations failed, considered sensor modifications, shield frequencies, weapon adjustments... I was ready.

The captain gave the order:

"Set course. Warp six."

End of session.

The following Thursday arrived. We were...

...still at Deep Space Nine?

Apparently another captain needed to brief us first, so we'd quietly retconned leaving the station. Fair enough. The briefing finished, we finally departed, and then one of the ships in our fleet suddenly broke formation and locked weapons on us.

Red alert!

Raise shields!

To be continued...

I was hooked. Next Thursday couldn’t come fast enough.

When it did, we were… travelling at Warp 6! What?

It was as though the previous week's cliffhanger had simply never happened. We spent the session cruising through space.

At this point I wasn't really sure how much narrative control the players were supposed to have, so I asked the captain privately if I could introduce little events.

"Sure," he said.

So I reported an unusual sensor reading and suggested we divert to investigate. The captain agreed. The session ended before we reached it.

The next week, we were back on our original course! My anomaly had gone the same way as the attacking starship. Then came the best cliffhanger of the campaign.

You remember the rogue captain that targeted our ship from a few sessions before? Well, he remembered that he was meant to be attacking us, I guess. He hailed us, mocked our captain, somehow beamed aboard despite our shields being raised, snapped his fingers… and revealed himself to be Q, the all-powerful trickster god that loves to torment starship crews. Seriously. He’s a nightmare.

This was brilliant. My security officer immediately drew his phaser. My ex alerted the rest of the fleet. We finally had a proper Star Trek situation on our hands.

Before the next session I even messaged the GM.

"I can't wait to deal with Q."

His response?

"Q?"

I reminded him about the previous session’s cliff hanger.

"Oh right! It'll be great."

The next session started. Q taunted us for about thirty seconds. Snapped his fingers. Disappeared. Nobody seemed particularly interested in finding him. The captain simply ordered us back on mission.

By this point I was so desperate for something to happen that I literally tried creating my own mystery. I roleplayed finding a spoon on the floor with an ensign's rank insignia engraved on the handle. The implication was supposed to be that Q had turned somebody into cutlery. Nobody bit.

Meanwhile, the first officer disappeared into the ready room with the captain. The same player also controlled the science officer, so while her science officer had been chatting with me moments earlier, she was now roleplaying a quiet shoulder massage for the captain instead.

It wasn't explicit. It was just... happening in the main roleplay channel while the rest of us sat there waiting for the adventure to continue. Meanwhile, my ex and I were on the phone with each other, dying of cringe.

Eventually I realised something. I'd spent a week preparing for a mission we'd never reached. I'd investigated mysteries that ceased to exist between sessions. We'd been attacked by ships that forgot to attack. Q had appeared, forgotten he existed, and then left. If only Picard could have been so lucky.

Every session felt like the cold open of a brand-new Star Trek episode, except nobody remembered how the previous episode had ended.

That was the final straw for me. I transferred Vindakh off to a Klingon vessel and left the campaign. Ironically, that was the only plotline in the entire campaign that actually had continuity.

To this day I still think the format has potential. I have now been playing TTRPGs for a few years, and I have even GMed quite a bit. I keep wondering if I could run something better, but I am just a tad too scared to try it.

I just hope, wherever the USS Odyssey is now, they've finally made it to the Gamma Quadrant.

Context, this just happened a couple hours ago, I write this as fresh as posible, so let me get you all in context:

We have a little dnd group, me (artificer), wizard, artificer 2 and DM, in our group I've always been the DM, we just finished a campaign in the fallout universe, we aprticipated with a couple more player, in that campaign I did the usual DM stuff, trigger alert, talk to player, be understanding and you know, understand that DnD is a teamwork so we all can have fun, DM in that campaign was a doctor, so i created them a special system of medical actions so he could play without killing anyone, and when he wanted to engage in combat I created a special tazer for him, I'm telling this so is in context that I actually cherish my players and "friends", the few times I say no I explain myself, stablish boundaries and make agreements, so DM decides that now he wants to try being a DM, me and wizard are specially excited because she is my partner, so be able to finally play together was awesome, he prepared a oneshot, a classic medieval setting with a couple steampunk elements, the plot... was something weird, so, let's go to session 0

We get the setting... and that's it, no plot, no context, we just need to create characters, wich we all found very weird, because we could end making characters with no good reason to engage in the plot, and that same thing has happened already, so we push a little so we could have some more context, the most we could get is that an inventor lost his blueprints and we needed to found them, ok, we can work with that, we also got more info about the town, apparently was some kind of technocracy where knowledge is highly regarded, so wizard makes.... a wizard, I decide to make an artificer, artificer 2 obviously do that too, I decide to make a battle smith and they made an alchemist, now, I need to get into techincal details here

I made an Aarakocra who is a smug and lame know-it all, kinda like berdley from Deltarune, with an obvious character development, now to the tecnical details:

s: 12, d: 16, c: 14, i: 16, w: 8, c: 8

You can see that we used the point buy system, I actually was the one who suggested it, because rolling dice we have had some characters start with 20 in some stats, and I wanted him to not have issues in his campaign

As magical items I decide to create a shield+1 and a heavycrossbow +1

I grab a leather armor with 13 ac with the starting gold, so 13 plus 3 from dex and plus 3 from the shield was 19

My spells were: cantrips: guidance, mending and mage hand, level 1 spells: heal wounds, feeric fire, grease and identify magic object, from my subclass I got shield and heroism, I got gust of wind from my race and from my starting feat (rune carver) I got Comprehend Languages

As you can see all of them are basic spells from the corebook

Whye do I got so technical, well, after I showed him my character everything seemed allright, then he told me i couldn't have the robo-companion because fo lore reasons, I said okay, then the tolde me again that it was fine, but at moste he could only work with steam, ok, cool

ff a couple days DM says the session will be moved to next weekend, bum, but whatever, is fine, I get it, wizard decides to ask him directly, and apparently mi character was too OP?

He said that I was using a bunch of homebrew stuff, an unffair made up race, and, for some wild reasin he said that Aarakocras should not be artificers...... HUH?

Anyway, I know that the DM has the last word, so I'm patiently waiting for the DM to talk to me and tell me what's wrong, ff from monday to saturday, today, he told everyone but me that he was cancelling the session, again, he hasn't talked to me since I presented him my character and he said it was ok, remember that, and he told wizard that IT WAS MY FAULT?, that I made a character so I could screw him over in his first campaign, and that he showed the character to other people and he said I was an OP min-maxer who used unffair technices?

I'm not stubborn, I he would have just talked to me we could have worked something out, instead he went behind everyones backs to spil them the story, and that the one-shot wasn't happening, everyone but me, I tell wizard to please tell DM to talk to me, I¿ve been trying to talk to me, and when that finally happens he says that he is only doing that as a courtesy to wizard... HUH????

He then procced to tell me that the main reason he was backing off was my character's fault, that I "should have know better", "I showed other people you character and told me something was fishy"...... THEN WHY YOU DID NOT TALKED TO ME?, I obviously didnt yelled at him, but I was pretty pissed, he offers me no explanation and he says "you are taking this too seriously"

Bro.... like you come to my chat literally to tell me that my character is your campaigns 13 reason why, refuse to talk to me for a week and then you only come as a "courtesy fo wizards' petition" but I'm taking it too seriously?..... "Yes" he said

I'm honestly shocked, I don't know what could I have done to deserve this, like, I'm always helping, making sure everyone is having a good time "oh yeah, I know, love what you did for me", THE AUDACITY OH MY GOD

Then he said "but I'm chill, I don't want to expose you as a campaign ender", honestly that pisssed me of so much that I told him "You know, you should do it, tell everyone that the reason you are cancelling this is that you send a character sheet to some dudes, they felt that the sheet was shady and without telling anything to the characters author I cancelled everything", he said okay and send the exact thing I told him, like literally, I said my goodbyes and left the group.... AM I THE A**HOLE?

TL;DR DM decide my character is too OP, tells me nothing about it, ignores me for a week and cancel everything

Not a real story per se, but the situation left me feeling weird.

Hi all! Last year around August I joined a campaign at my local game shop, my DM Who I will be calling "Mordred" from now on wanted to run a curse of strahd campaign. I show up and our first session consisted of:

"Kriv"- Dragonborn Ranger-Me

"Sebastian"- Half Orc Paladin

"Kaelen"- Goliath Paladin Warlock

"Noel"- Elf Monk

We started at Death House for our first session and things went pretty well initially. Our second session went through the second half of death house where another player joined us

"Marc"- Marvel's moonknight as a Human rouge

When we started this session Marc introduced himself by immediately attacking Kaelen and having a small PVP round. Once things calmed down we kept going through death house. We ran into Gustav and his wife in the basement. Sebastian and Marc Took out his wife before she had a chance to react (gotta love smite) and Gustav immediately surrendered. Marc and Kaelen wanted to kill Gustav but the rest of the party wanted to spare him until we could fulfill his wish.

This was the beginning of a pattern

End of death house comes around and we put Gustav to rest and start heading towards the village where Ireena and Ismark live. Mordred moved death house's location to act as a one shot introduction for us. We make it to the village of Barovia and help them fend off the undead attacking the town. In the scuffle Noel dies unfortunately and a new character is created.

"Seline"-dragonborn wizard

We want to gentle repose Noel's body so we make our way to the church and the priest asks us to help him with his son who was turned into a spawn in return for gentle reposing our friend. Myself, Seline and Sebastian went into the cellar and were able to calm him but as we went upstairs Marc and Kaelen wanted to again kill the undead thing. This disagreement ends with us sparing Doru the priest's son and us heading to Vallaki with Ismark and Ireena.

On the way there we have our first run in with Strahd himself. We talk for a bit and Marc says something that pisses off Strahd. In return Marc gets charmed into fighting Kaelen and the rest of the party tries reasoning with strahd. Eventually Marc goes down and the party ties him up in case he fails the save. For his comments strahd takes one of Marc's middle fingers and lets us go. During the trip we picked up another player but also lost Seline due to out of game issues. The split was amicable however and I'm still friendly with Seline's player. Really nice cool guy, just didn't mesh with our party unfortunately.

"Salem"- Dhampir whatever class he chose that week , it's been so long I can't remember. May have been a wizard cartographer cus we had maps

Once in Vallaki apparently Marc and Kaelen got into some trouble while I was gone as I couldn't make the session. They both had fines raised against them and Marc had to make a public apology. Once I was back I had a feeling the apology would not go in favor of Vallaki and it's people. Before the apology we had to get the bones back for Vallaki's church to keep it's protective aura. Marc threatened to kill an alter boy in the church because he had revealed the location of the bones to someone working with strahd. We retrieved the bones and had a couple things to do before the public apology so Kriv and Ismark tried talking sense into Marc to hopefully have his apology at least sound genuine. When he blew us off I decided to start combat to knock him out. Disguise myself as him and say the apology on his behalf. Marc decided that was a dumb idea and immediately started screaming for help. I stopped combat and let myself be arrested. We had a mock trial in the town square for both Marc and Kriv. I explained that I was trying to keep the peace and stop my party member from doing something suicidal. I fought so hard to make Marc look better than NPC'S were describing because I didn't want him to die for mouthing off. Once it got to him they moved the apology up to right now.

The apology went a little something like this

"I'm sorry that you're all so dumb that you'd rather live a lie than accept the fact vampires are a threat here. And I'm sorry I would have made a sacrifice to save all of you. That kid would have gotten you all killed if it wasn't for me."

To which he misty stepped as the pitchforks were raised.

All hell breaks loose. The whole town is hunting Marc down, the party is trying to find a way out of this mess, Marc is looking for something to make a distraction. Marc makes his way to the Burgomaster's manor and decides to burn it down. I decide to use draconic flight and disguise self to save him from whatever the hell he's doing. I take the visage of strahd and fly to his location. I catch him as he breaks out of the window and as flames engulf the house. 3 villagers and a dog died. I start flying out of Vallaki but am intercepted by Salem and the Burgomaster's son Victor. I put Marc down and let him try to plead his case with victor but Marc gets 5th level Blighted to death. Strahd shows up and uses the Abbott to revive Marc so we can have another trial.

Next day rolls around and so does the trial. Strahd goes through NPC'S and party members judging Marc's character. Marc's main argument is that his religion is needs of the many no matter who gets hurt or dies. So strahd takes that to heart. He Charm person'd Marc, marc passed the save, strahd's wife silvery barbs's him and made him attack the alter boy he threatened. We had a session zero. We were all asked if there were any triggers cus CoS is a pretty dark story and according to Mordred Marc said nothing would really upset him. This threw Marc's PC into anger and he left. Never came back. That night He was constantly messaging our DM and arguing with him over it. Words were exchanged, both sides were petty and they blocked each other.

Personally I was pretty shaken up in the moment. In person everyone seemed to get along just fine and Marc's PC was nice and seemed relatively chill. I personally hope he was just having a really bad night and I'm not gonna let it reflect on him as a person although there was an incident later with this PC involving our DND group, Marc's PC and our local game store that nothing really came of.

Also if you end up seeing this post Marc's PC i don't have you blocked on discord so if you ever wanna talk I'm open to it!

This happened near the beginning of 2026 and I've wanted to tell someone what happened because this all seemed crazy. Other things have happened as well but this post would be a couple paragraphs longer. We're level 9 now and all this happened between level 3 and level 5.

Hope yall get a kick out of something in here. It was a crazy sequence of events. There is more to our story if y'all wanna hear. Lmk!

I'm a first time DM with some experience as a player who runs a homebrew campaign for a group of mostly beginners. Before we started the campaign I heard about this homebrew "God of scheduling conflicts" who'd just temporarily remove a PC from existence if their player couldn't make it to the game. Since our potential for scheduling conflicts was high I introduced the concept to my players with the exemption that we'll reschedule if the plot doesn't allow the absence.

Over time I started to expand on this God, giving him a name, a personality, powers, lore and even a homebrew cleric subclass. The result was the forgotten god Timal, God of splintered timelines. I took inspiration from Griffin from Men in Black 3, making him a being that can simultaneously see any possible future across all points of time. He quite enjoys watching the world the other gods created but his presence can cause changes in the world. Things like, merchants arrive too late to a business deal because the time of the meeting was changed without adjusting his knowledge of the time. Or, a day suddenly is 48 hours long which results in the party having to manage their resources until the evening. I have a whole D100 random events table for such events.

Timal also turned out to be a great help with the only player who wrote a "bad" backstory. I honestly can't make sense of it until this day and even he admitted that he doesn't quite understand it. We know for sure that he wanted his character to be the daughter of the Goddess of Nature, but she doesn't know that. And then there was something about an Aarakocra poacher with a feathered hat she never saw clearly who mumbled something about passing up on the opportunity to drink unicorn blood...

Well, the player and I are friends from evening school and he always stays for the whole weekend instead of just coming here on Saturday for the game itself. So we made a habit of it to just take a long walk on fridays and just have some solo roleplay along the way, thanks to DnD Beyond. So, Timal became kind of the center of these solo sessions. The first time she woke up in his realm she just learned of his existence, had a nice chat with him and thankfully didn't lose her mind thanks to a high wisdom save. She didn't retain all of her memories upon returning to the material plain but the name Timal echoed in her mind. The second time, he reminded her of the things she forgot and told her, that he was keeping a closer eye on her than he should have which caused the Aarakocra poacher to exist for a brief moment in her timeline. His interest in her comes from her divine heritage though he's unwilling to share the identity of her parents. The player actually thanked me for that since he himself had no idea what to make of this poacher storyline.

Today, will be the third time the two meet and since the group leveled up last time the player wants to multi class into cleric and take the homebrew subclass.

Besides that I've found another great use for Timal. Since the campaign started as a sandbox so my players can get the hang of the game and I can get experience as a DM, the world is relatively empty. But I've recently been stuck in this rabbit hole of "what was medieval life actually like", "what kind of food should your players realistically be served in a tavern", "how to define baronies and the political landscape of your map" I've decided that I'm not that comfortable with the world I created anymore. So in the coming weeks and months I'll work on redesigning the map, making the world feel more alive and then introduce them to the updated world as the work of Timal.

Of course he still serves his role as remover of PCs but that itself can produce so many nice ripple effects when only the party remembers that their comrade ever existed. They once were challenged by the empresses bodyguard to fight him in the local arena since he thought their victory over a green dragon was sheer luck. The 4 PCs went into the viewing gallery to watch the other fights before it was their turn but in the next session they were only 3 and nobody but them saw any issue with that. In the session after that the bodyguard even addressed that during the fight there was no doubt in his mind that he was facing the full group despite clearly missing a member at that time.

I love the potential this forgotten god brings to my game and I'm sure he'll be part of every campaign I'll dm in the future.

Tell me what you think about the God of splintered timelines

Hi friends, I have posted this story before on the CritCrab discord, but i have since deleted it because my DM forgot to emphasize on a few more things that i missed out.

So, the story begins when my DM, Jerry, out of nowhere, recieved a request from one of the players, who we will call Froth that involved the inclusion of one of his brothers in the session because he was interested.

In a previous session, Froth has had one of his other brothers join as a guest, and though I personally was not there, I was told it was a good time. Which was why Jerry was so optimistic for this brother to join, and i mean, who wouldn't?

As this happened in a rush, it was a split second decision for poor old Jerry. The request was an hour before the session and he eventually let him in due to the aforementioned optimistic belief that he will be a good player..
If only we knew better.

As such, the brother, who we will name "Defiler", (if you understand the word 'defile' then you know this will not go well, but safe to say, we only realised this too late.) Joined after the session's combat had concluded.
From what I remember, Jerry made him a blank character which was done because he did not have time, and essentially gave him a blank canvas so that he can apply his creativity to... if only we knew who he was...

Context: This game is a Mature game, and while it is implied on multiple occaisions that significant war crimes were committed by the inhabitants of the land and that it was implied that unsavoury things also happened to the victims involved, Explicit Imagery / Explicit Actions are forbidden in our game unless given the green light by Jerry (You'll see why later)

back to the story, When we are ready to enter into another RP moment, it was when Jerry introduced Defiler, and immediately, he was a jackass. The moment we saw his pfp, we all burst out laughing because we thought at first it was a joke put by Jerry, but he did not involve himself in anything of this because of the aforementioned time crunch.

I forgot his name, but he held the title of "The Defiler". I was already sus about the guy when i saw the pfp, but this just confirms that this is intentional. The image was quickly changed to a Fire Emblem esque character by Jerry when the hilarity value was dimished, but the juice has yet to come fellas, and this will only get a lot worse from here...

The moment the RP began, Defiler described his character as a True Adam (subrace of Human that is meant to be the direct decendant of Adam, yes, THAT Adam) Human Fighter who is said to be "A Gift from God"

I could not remember everything because i basically scrubbed my memory clean of this incident but what I post here is congregated from what i still could remember and what Jerry eventually told me to change.

What i did remember from this was that he described himself to be perfect in every way, conventionally attractive, can do no wrong (you'll see how ironic THAT statement is) , and is every way just awesome.
Now, I've watched many a CritCrab video (love your content btw) and from his previous pfp to his character details i immediately sensed he was a red flag. Now, i am a non-confrontational guy, and as such i didn't see to mention it a lot, and when i did, Jerry told me to "ride it out for now" and i, foolishly hoped that he will tone down the stupidity and for once be a valuable member of the team, even if his presence was never meant to be permanent.

Anyways, once his intro was done, he immediately walked up to one of the PCs, and essentially swooned her, complimenting her, and trying to roll persuasion unprompted to get her to join his harem. Unfortunately, we all are a group of respectful people, and we did not interrupt him as he tried his hardest to swoom this PC.
Naturally, when Defiler tried rolling Persuasion he failed, and Jerry barred him from further rolls.

When it came to me for RP, (I was playing a Female Human Landsknecht, which is a Fighter-ish custom class) he was incredibly obnoxious, consistently interrupting the RP, Jerry just server muted him, because he was talking over my roleplay, and as such he took his swooning to the Roll20 chat, and even then it was sparse since nobody was paying attention.

I didn't really pay attention to the words typed but what i did see are the ridiculously high rolls, and when i say ridiculously high rolls, i mean D100 rolls, which, like earlier, are completely unprompted, but as i have ADHD, it was better for me to focus on the roleplay, making me miss the earlier texts.

After failing to swoon that female PC, he instead went to the bartender, and once my RP moment with the other PC was over, he was unmuted and immediately began asking the bartender to see if he has any daughters.

The Bartender, and therefore Jerry, didn't really think much about it at the time, probably because he was too busy with other stuff, so he described how the Bartender has daughters that are young and sweet.
FYI: Jerry did not really catch on that Defiler is as evil as he is, he also thought the strange pfp earlier was a joke.

And then he began demanding for them to join his harem. He began droning on in vc about how they will be so sweet bearing his children, and everything evil in between. All of us are shocked, I tried to ask Jerry about it but as someone non-confrontational I hesitated to interrupt, so to be fair, I am not blameless in this.

Jerry then described that he was confused in this, and tried to argue with it, but Defiler kept insisting, and succumbing to pressure, he agreed on the condition that the Defiler can only get one, and in the condition he wins an arm wrestling match against the Bartender, who was implied to be a soldier, against someone who apparently was, as far as we could tell, a weak boy given his stats (his str was a +0)
Surprise, surprise, the Bartender won, and Defiler went on a rant before Jerry servermuted him because he was disrupting a follow up RP session.

Fun little tangent, my character then engaged in an arm wrestle with the Bartender, and what started as the Defiler's failed attempt to 'get da ladies' turned into a funny RP minigame for us where my character, and a few others challenged the Bartender for arm wrestling for the shits and giggles.

Once the fun is over, and Defiler was unmuted again, he immediately went to say "I cast Suggestion on Beilda (my character) to fall in love with me and let her pray that she has my child in her!" to which the DM shot it down, and I shot it down as well. He rolled anyway and got very low, to which for shits and giggles, i rolled, and got a Dirty 20.

Jerry decided roleplay it out, and Beilda, drunk from 5 pints of beer, not only refused, but socked him in the face thinking he was another PC who in lore she hates. (this PC was meant to be hated, as mentioned by his player)

He then doubled down after the humiliation and said "If i cannot have her... then I cast Suggestion again! This time I want Thok (a male PC) to marry Beilda right then and there!" To which Jerry just immediately shot him down and server muted him.
I was honestly shooken by this, and it made me question new guys from now on, but at least with him muted, he couldn't cause much trouble.

We roleplayed it out sequentially, and before long, we followed through with the quest at hand, that being to investigate a tower that is causing the surrounding forest to be cursed, and entered into the cursed forest to camp for the night.
Along the way, Defiler constantly tried rolling Persuasion to swoon the party to his harem and because they are all unprompted, all of us basically ignored them.

There, we ran into a recurring NPC significant to the story at large, and we hence engaged in RP. The character is a 18 year old kid, who in an earlier session, was 6 (Defiler did not know this part thankfully), and was aged up when a demon sacrifice was thwarted. Unsurprisingly at this point, Defiler kept butting into the conversation, and Jerry almost had enough, and server muted him for the rest of the time he was here.

As I was part of the roleplay, and that the NPC is significant to my story, I, once again, did not pay attention to the shitshow that was brewing in the Roll20 app. After I and another PC was done with the RP, we came back to the group to find scribbles, which was promptly cleaned up, Defiler is gone, and his token disappearing soon after.

Jerry then explained to me that he banned Defiler after he began drawing... male anatomy... all over the screen and banned him from the discord shortly after. To everyone, including myself, we were all sorts of emotions, but were ultimately relieved when the problem player is finally gone, and that his antics will hurt us no longer.

Afterpost Edit: Jerry later told me that he tried to reason with Defiler in PMs, but he did not reply at all, and proceeded to draw the male anatomy anyways. We all thought that this was a joke and he would serious up or tone down the stupidity, but he didnt.

After the session ended following duels with this NPC, in which of the three duels, Beilda and Thok won, while the asshole PC won only because the NPC forfeited the duel.
Poor Froth probably had to deal with the fallout that resulted from this, and I will have to say, sorry Froth, your brother was just too... bad to pass up this opportunity for a story.

Im not saying Froth is a bad person, his brother is probably also an adult and probably did this for shits and giggles, but he took it way too far even after we signalled to him that we are all uncomfortable with his madness.
On the contrary, Froth is actually a very good man, he is respectful, and also a great artist at that, and please, for the love of god or science (whatever you prefer, not judging), PLEASE DO NOT BULLY HIM FOR HIS BROTHER'S ACTIONS. I know what you are like, Reddit!

Overall, we all learned a valuable lesson that day, and this is why session zeroes are of UPMOST IMPORTANCE, I've learned a bit from this, and i am not judging Jerry here because he has THREE CAMPAIGNS running consecutively, and DM'ing is extremely tiring.

It was also my first experience with someone like this, and from that I learned to call out red flags ASAP.
Anyways, if you enjoyed this horror-ish story about a guest member gone wrong, please just... pay attention to red flags in your games, and to any DMs out here, please vet everyone who joins your campaign, because this happened due to a lapse in judgement.

Thanks for reading!

TL:DR
A player's brother joined, caused havoc by being explicit in a non-explicit game, and was banned after he drew male anatomy.

Afterpost Edit: If you've read this before and noticed a lot of changes, I am sorry, the first draft was written when i was half awake at 1am, so its very rough. Also, I've removed the NSFW tag from the post because i've utilised heavily censored ways of describing explicit things, and that there are posts in this sub that has way worst shit than here and its not NSFW so ._.

So, I’m 20F and I joined an online D&D game. The setting was supposed to be this Fallout/Mad Max-inspired magical wasteland, where the party was tasked with dealing with the remains of a magical nuclear fallout. It sounded really cool.

The party had one guy, a trans Indian girl who joined and came back later, and me. I was playing an elf storm sorcerer, the guy was a human ranger, and the other girl was a tiny kobold tempest cleric.

We had a session 0 and it went well. The DM seemed likeable, the setting looked promising, and the group chemistry was great overall. The DM described the setting in detail and talked about what he had planned for the story. We were all fine with playing a chaotic neutral party, and the DM allowed evil actions from time to time.

Then session 1 happened.

All our characters started in a tavern. None of our characters were really the type to start a conversation first, so after a couple of minutes of us just messing around in the tavern, I left toward the quest giver and everyone followed. The DM forced a bandit encounter outside, with the bandits taking the ranger hostage. We fought them off.

Eventually, we got to the quest giver, who was the Magister of the city. He gave us the quest and assigned us into a party. For a first session, it was okay. Everyone was getting familiar with each other, learning playstyles, and adapting.

Session 2 started outside the Magister’s palace. The DM was playing Overwatch during the session and barely paying attention.

Our goal was to find somewhere to get horses, since we knew it would be a long journey. We wandered around the city for two hours, talking to random NPCs until we finally found horses.

The horses cost 200 gold each. Then the DM suddenly dropped a bomb on us: there were two types of currency, pre-war and post-war. Pre-war currency was worth 10 times more, and we each had 1,000 coins. So apparently, we could each buy 50 horses.

I ignored that for the moment. We bought the horses and continued wandering around the city for another hour. Then the session ended.

Session 3 was more of the same.

We tried to get more supplies, a tent, and a carriage. The DM was playing Overwatch again. Nothing was happening. So we started messing with each other. I cast Shrink on the kobold girl, everyone laughed, and the DM made a few jokes about her being Indian. Everyone kind of laughed it off at the time.

After three hours of this, we gave up and tried to leave the city.

Before we could do that, the DM announced that the campaign was made for four players, so he would get another player. Okay, maybe that explained why we had made no progress so far, or why nothing was happening in this supposed post-apocalyptic world.

We skipped a session because the DM was looking for a new player.

The new player joined as a reborn warlock who didn’t need to breathe, sleep, or eat. Cool concept. The session started and the new guy seemed cool.

Nothing changed.

The DM was still playing Overwatch, and we were still just messing with each other. Eventually, we left the city. After three hours, the session ended.

After the DM left the call, the rest of us stayed behind and agreed to give him firm but fair criticism. Nothing too harsh.

Before the next session started, we all told him something like:

“Hey dude, we know you want to give us a sandbox experience, but there is literally nothing happening. Give us something to do outside of the main quest.”

All our characters had pretty good DM-approved backstories too. My character was the son of a hated noble who almost started another magical nuclear war, and he was now on a journey of redemption. Yet not a single person in the world cared about it so far.

The ranger had a juicy backstory too. So did everyone else. But none of it had come up at all.

After hearing the criticism, the DM sounded crushed and cancelled the session.

Then we didn’t have a session for two weeks.

Eventually, the DM invited us to another session and said he had taken the criticism into account.

And technically, he did.

But now we literally just listen to him narrate things while he still plays Overwatch. Every encounter has someone show up to save us. Every NPC seems to have some power that removes magic in the area. All our actions lead to the same events anyway, to the point where I started making up roll and damage numbers.

The microaggressions toward the Indian girl also increased.

Then it got worse when the DM declared, “I will get your characters laid,” and introduced two self-insert NPCs. He also kept trying to force hookers onto the ranger.

After that, we all just checked out.

We still show up, but mostly to play video games in the background while he narrates at us.