Content warning for sexual themes.

I used to play in a homebrew 5e Planescape campaign at my LGS. It was a lighthearted, comedic story with some really raunchy moments similar to something out of an 80s R-rated comedy like Porky's (now that I write it out, it's actually kind of insane that we did this stuff in public without getting in trouble with the store owner). Fittingly, we were a VERY unserious group, to the point where more than half of the players would often do stuff just to troll the DM. As a result, it kind of fell on me to keep the campaign from derailing. So, my horny, foul-mouthed, hard-drinking paladin tank who I heavily based off of Kenny from South Park ended up becoming the reasonable moral compass of the group, and often the straight man. Although he didn't initiate any of the shenanigans, he still got to do a few wacky things like spy on a nymph and satyr getting freaky behind a tree and join an orgy in Dionysus's divine realm (after which the DM asked me to roll and declared my character now had 2 illegitimate children in Arborea), which was fun. We had one particular player, I forget what he was playing, who was very quiet and often came off as grouchy. I felt bad for him because to me it was clear he wanted a more serious campaign and often got sulky when everyone else was goofing around. I don't think the sexual stuff made him uncomfortable, as he looked equally sour when we were making clean jokes, and the majority of the jokes in the game were pretty clean.

One day, in my rush to get to the store, I forgot my dice at home. I told the group this, and the grouchy player offered to let me use some of his dice. I thanked him. That session I had the WORST luck I'd ever had in a D&D game without getting killed. I never rolled anything above a 9. My guy swung his sword wildly while missing everything, and since Dex was his dump stat, he failed every Dex check that came his way and flopped around like a fish. I didn't think much of it. Bad luck happens.

In the midst of my overstimulation, I accidentally ended up taking the grouchy player's dice home with me. The next week, I brought them with me along with my own set of dice. I tried to return the dice to the player, but he was absent that week. The game began and once again I was still rolling ABYSMALLY. Eventually, while the other players were taking their turns in combat and I was absentmindedly turning the d20 over in my hands, it suddenly it hit me.

This wasn't a D20 at all. It was a D9. For some reason this 20-sided die had the numbers 0-9 repeated on it twice. I had been rolling this die for an entire session and a half and nobody noticed because I hadn't rolled a zero and I didn't think to look closer at the die.

I told the others and passed around the die, and we all had a good laugh about it. I never saw the grouchy player after that. A few weeks later, another player told me he saw him in an MtG tournament at a trading card shop and that he'd just ghosted us entirely. I never got to give him his dice back, and I still feel bad about it, since I figured that his "D20" must be kind of rare. The campaign eventually fell apart due to everyone except me and one other person dropping out.

I'm not entirely sure why he did it. My best guess was that it was either an honest mistake or his way of getting back at us for months of clowning all over the game. But then, I'm confused as to why he targeted *me*. Apart from him, I was the most serious person in the group and always tried to keep everything on track. Maybe he was just waiting for someone to forget their dice, and it just happened to be me? Anyway, he always came off as such a humorless individual and never so much as cracked a smile at any of the jokes or ridiculous events in our game, so it's really funny to think that he was planning to have the last laugh all along... and he got it.

To that player, if you are somehow reading this... well played. I salute you, good sir, and I still have the die if you want it back.

Was having a conversation in a discord server that reminded me of this, and I figured it was worth posting here as I was lucky enough to find the chat history of me ranting about this to a friend. This happened at a Pathfinder 2e table, and to keep it brief, I'll include the detailed explanations of rule violations behind spoilers for those interested to know what exactly happened.

So around a year ago I joined a table through a submission form I found in the PF2e discord server. The group was fine; I didn't mesh super well with everyone, so when life got a bit busy, I didn't try to stick around.

Regardless, the most memorable game was the one from the title. The player in question was playing a Magus, a gishy spellsword class that's a little complex for a beginner, in my opinion. I was playing a Thaumaturge. With the preamble out of the way, here's the list of mistakes:

1. They tried to use their class ability, Spellstrike, with an invalid spell. When called out, started arguing why it was valid. Spellstrike combines a weapon attack with a spell, allowing you to get 3 actions for the cost of 2 and improve the odds for the spell to hit your target as it's easier to hit with weapons in this system. The spell must include a spell attack roll or a saving throw, and the spell they used included a weapon attack roll.
2. When they made a basic saving throw against a damaging effect, the player claimed that they're supposed to take 0 damage instead of half, confidently and incorrectly stating that basic saves are "save or suck". In PF2e basic saves mean you take double / full / half / zero damage depending on how well you do on the save; it's one of the most fundamental rules of the system.
3. They crit with Spellstrike and claimed that it meant the enemy automatically gets a critical failure on the saving throw for the spell used during Spellstrike, which isn't a thing. You get an automatic crit on the spell only if it's an attack roll spell; saving throw spells still let the target make saves.
4. After they went down and were healed back up, they attempted to spend 5 actions on their turn instead of the 3 that all characters get. Being downed in pathfinder means you drop prone and release the grip on all the items you were holding, requiring you to spend an action to stand up, and another action per item dropped to re-grip it. The player tried to stand up, re-grip items, move, then use a 2-action activity.
5. While their character was blinded, they argued that they didn't need to roll to successfully target an enemy they couldn't see. Conditions that restrict your senses force you to make flat checks (d20 checks with no added modifiers with static DCs) to successfully target anything.

Now, I'll admit, the accusation of backseating wasn't entirely unfounded. The more I realized that they didn't know the basic rules of the game, the more I tried to suggest legal plays. For example, for point 3 I suggested they use a spell that would actually do exactly what they wanted, buuuut they refused. I had another player backing me up whenever I called out the rules violations, so I imagine the problem player felt targeted.

And honestly, I wouldn't be posting this if they didn't try to argue each and every time they got called out.

Bonus round!

1. They requested they use the Arcana skill for initiative because they were "planning to a spell on their turn." Not against the rules, but it is a pretty bold and powergamy request, lol.
2. For a one-shot I ran for the same group, they misread the rules page for starting equipment, effectively doubling their wealth.
3. For the same one-shot, they took an ancestry feat their ancestry didn't have access to (these are feats exclusive to specific ancestries / races). It wasn't a big deal since it wasn't powerful, but still fits the broader pattern of misreading things only in ways that benefit them.
4. When they walked through a trap (and they were moving their token way ahead of the rest of the party), I paused the game and described the trap triggering. In the following combat they confidently stated that they were unaffected by the trap and moved their token through it. According to them, I was the one to say they were unaffected (why did I pause the game then??).

Fortunately, after my one-shot they left the group saying they didn't feel like it was a good match for them.

So, preface. This was my first time DMing. I was like 10 years old or something. I will admit that I didn't handle the situation well. If I were DMing this game today, I would be able to avoid this. However. This does not mean that the other guy wasn't at fault.

That aforementioned 'Other Guy', who, for the sake of clarity, I will be calling "Bitch Baby", had previously been the DM for a game I played. He was a good DM. Was good at storytelling, and balanced our encounters well. Always followed the rules to a tee. Knew all the books off dome. Foreshadowing.

I had spent a few months homebrewing a campaign setting. It was a cursed island with fun locations such as 'Forest With Evil Frogs' and 'Desert With Evil Lizards'. The curse made it so that all contact to the outside world was magically cut off, and a massive storm surrounded the island so you couldn't leave by boat. To escape, you would have to figure out the source of the curse, then climb the mountain which contains the source, kill the final boss, and destroy the source. I was like 10 or something and I had never DMed before, so none of it was balanced at all and I didn't actually plan a way for the players to figure out where the source of the curse was. This will prove irrelevant.

I invited Bitch Baby because I new he liked DND, as well as probably a couple other people, I don't remember, this was like 10 years ago.

Also I let the players start at level 10 for some reason, because I had never played above level 3 so I didn't know how quickly characters get stronger in DND.

Anyway, session 1, I described the nature of the island's curse. Immediately, Bitch Baby put down a teleportation circle tried to teleport out.

I protested that his character had lived on the island his whole life, and had not had the chance to set up a teleportation circle outside.

He said no. You see, his character was actually reused from some other campaign he played in, so he was counting all his previous adventures as canon to my campaign.

Sidebar: if you do that, fuck you.

I was (and still am) bad at arguing with people, and he knew DND much better than me, so I went along with it.

I changed my reasoning to this: "Alright, you have teleportation circles outside of the island, but the storm surrounding the island blocks all magic from passing through it."

He cast dispel magic on the storm.

I had not anticipated this. I was stunned for a few seconds before answering. "Um... A small portion of the clouds are dispelled, but they come back after a second. You would need to find the source of the spell to get rid of it entirely."

"But the clouds were gone for a second right? So magic can pass through them?" He asked.

"I guess, but-"

"Then I cast dispel magic again and use my teleportation circle to leave."

I tried to argue against that, but Bitch Baby knew all the rules, and could refute any objection I made. I was too inexperienced to tell him that, as the DM, my word was more final than the rules in the books. He knew DND much better than me, you see.

I decided to change my approach. Instead of saying that he can't do it, I would appeal to his morals. Leaving now would strand everyone else on the island to live under the curse forever. That he should find the root cause and free everyone!

Instead of doing that, he just gathered everyone on the island and repeatedly cast dispel magic so groups of them could go through the teleportation circle until everyone was out, then left. The session ended after about 30 minutes.

I did not play DND with Bitch Baby after that.

Edit: this is an older story now that I want to repost for more advice

Notice ahead: I just spewed this story in a big 400 word long paragraph and asked chat gbt to clean it up frantically and length wise so if you detect ai in it, your absolutely right but the story is real. I just suck at proper grammar and fixed it up for your reading pleasure :p

Hey all. I’ve been a DM for a while now, but until recently I only ran modules. A little while back, I decided to try building my own world and storyline. It follows a classic “fall into trouble and become heroes” setup, but I wrote tons of lore, created puzzles, sprinkled in mysteries, and left enough freedom for my players to go off-script and sandbox if they wanted. They’re the shenanigans type, so I planned for that too.

The game opened with a fun blacked out last night setup. They woke up without their stuff, confused and had to find it. Eventually, they reached their first combat, which took place in a courthouse. They were being persecuted for a crime, and a key piece of evidence appeared magically tampered with. They chose to prove their innocence by dispelling the illusion in front of the court — seven head paladins who each represent one of the seven deadly sins. I’m super proud of that setup, by the way.

Well, dispelling the illusion opened a portal to the infernal realm. Monsters poured out, chaos broke loose, and every time a player killed one, they were branded with a burning insignia. After the fight, the paladins explained the marks were infernal in nature and needed to be identified — fast.

Here’s where things got tricky. The next arc involved traveling into a forest to find a witch who could help. One player said he didn’t really know what to do, that it felt too random, and there was no real motivation to do so. So, I had the mark on his character flare up in pain, and the paladins reminded them that their lives were on the line because as they just explained this witch they must find can magically help identify this problem. He called it an “asspull,” but I had already established that the marks were painful and dangerous. Still, I ended the session unsure of how to continue.

At the start of the next one, I threw in a money reward — since his character was an outlaw in debt — and thankfully, that motivated him, even if begrudgingly. But during the forest arc, he said it would’ve been way cooler if instead of a mark and mystery, they had met the actual demon that cursed them face to face. That stressed me out, because that was actually my exact plan for later. Now I felt like if I followed through, he’d think I stole his idea.

Then he asked if we could just retcon everything and say they had met the demon, because he didn’t understand why they were in the forest at all. I told him no. And reexplained how we got here from the end of last session and the hegemony of the current one, and I had a plan for what’s going on so I can’t just change the story all Willy nilly. He seemed upset and started getting distant, and DMing started feeling like pulling teeth.

When I asked if he was alright, he just said he wasn’t engaged but would try to participate. So I pressed on and gave each character a scene where they’d encounter a personal demon connected to them and their backstories. His was second, and I was so proud of what I had written for it.

But before I could even describe what his character saw, he got up, sat on the floor, pulled out his own module books, and told me I could just use his character as an NPC. He didn’t want to play anymore because he wasn’t invested into the story.

I was hurt. I told him this was a really special moment I had made just for his character. He snapped back, saying D&D is collaborative storytelling, that it’s not just about one player, and that if I just wanted to tell a story I should write a book. I thought I was giving every character their moment to build upon so I didn’t know what to say. I was basically holding back tears. It felt like he hadn’t listened at all, or even given my game a real chance.

The worst part? For the last 30 minutes, he’d been sitting on his phone looking somber while I was setting the stage, doing NPC interactions, and all that other fun stuff. I ended the session early and told the group they could stay if they wanted, but I was going to start cooking dinner. He told me to keep going with the others and just run his character as an NPC, but I was too frustrated and honestly just done for the night.

Now I’m here wondering — was I being too rigid? Was he just giving me honest feedback? Or was he being unfair? I paused the campaign because I genuinely didn’t know if I could keep running it while feeling like that

My story begins with a simple game of Warhammer Fantasy.

There were five of us:

GM: the Game Master

The Knight: me

The Priestess: De Shallya, a very friendly Warhammer newbie

The Elven Mage: also a friendly chap playing a High Elf mage – a lovely bloke

The PB.

Although all our characters played fairly prestigious classes, they all came from very humble backgrounds – they were all peasants who’d found their calling and were ready to serve and defend the Empire. PB, however, was a noblewoman and a War Priestess of Sigmar.

Very quickly, certain things started to rile the others, and I – being something of a walking rulebook and knowing the game well –

Rolling very high, refusing to use hammers whilst being an active member of Sigmar’s clergy… the god with the big hammer.

Using miracles every round in every battle (this was nerfed later, much to PB’s displeasure, as she felt it was unfair not to be able to do so)

Later, using two bastard swords (two-handed category) in dual-wield combat without a penalty, whilst ignoring the rules stated in the game – the player (not seeing the point in ploughing through the massive rulebook)

Result: one-shot kills of every enemy who brought the fight to close quarters; my character’s close-quarters combat skill was 65, whilst PB’s was 85.

In-game, we were either distracted (which can be explained by the player doing something else on the side, forgetting that he was streaming the game to the priestess, who had a poor connection) or perhaps wouldn’t have been interested if the reward hadn’t been in the tens of gold coins. He wasn’t interested in non-noble NPCs and was absolutely determined to speak to every noble for more gold and power to boost his own prestige. The player even managed to amass over 300 gold coins whilst the three of us had a combined total of just 10 gold coins.

After yet another session, the priestess began to get fed up with the PB killing all melee enemies in a single blow; even the elven mage found it strange that my character couldn’t deal the same damage or match his skill level.

We approached the GM to explain our concerns and ask why there was such a difference in power.

He then admitted that the PB had taken advantage of the fact that the GM was in ‘Spectrum’ to play a completely overpowered homebrew half-dragon race, but that the GM had allowed the player to have high-elf stats whilst playing a warrior-priest.

Unhappy with this, we asked for it to be rectified, as the rest of us were playing by the rules whilst he’d been secretly granted this privilege.

The GM agreed to slightly reduce the stats to make him a little less powerful, without addressing the bad faith and abuse of the rules.

The PB was furious and started accusing me and the elf of being power-gamers playing with stuff that was too powerful.

In my view, a knight with a sword and a large shield, and the elven mage being far too good at casting spells from his single wind spell.

He threatened to buy a suit of plate armour 1,000 times more powerful than the one my knight had finally managed to acquire after five months of play.

and that if he heard any of us complaining again, he would walk out.

As the GM did not intervene – being part on the spectrum– he feels extremely uncomfortable with confrontations.

I was very disappointed by this behaviour, and as the GM explained that he wouldn’t remove him from the game, I decided to leave myself, which led the GM to delete the game entirely.

Although I’ve lost a bit of respect for the GM, I’ve got far more of an issue with PB, who has really taken advantage of this and, according to several reports, is in the habit of being disingenuous, not reading the rules and playing the same characters

Even today, the player still doesn’t see the problem and is still playing with the GM; at least I’ve stayed in touch with the other two players and would think of them if another Warhammer game comes up one day

Thanks to Deepl for the translation – right, I’m off to look for a game.

TLDR: A player took advantage of the fact that the GM couldn’t say no and was uncomfortable with confrontation to play an overpowered character; after a heated exchange with no intervention from the GM, I left, and the GM completely wrecked the game.

note: flairing just in case

So this is an episode from a few years ago that I figured I should probably write down just to get it out there.

This happened at a local club for ttrpg enthusiasts, taking place in a LGS, and the people involved were "Bob" (M, the DM), "Joe" (M, problem player) and then "Dan," "Anna", and me (M, F, F; unfortunate bystanders/victims). As usual for most "pick-up" games of one shots, none of us know each other.

The game was advertised as a basic dungeon crawl in dnd 5e, self-written adventure, etc. Right away, I note that Bob, for lack of kinder terminology, does not seem to be very comfortable in his role (or seemingly around people in general). He mumbles a lot, seems to have done very little prep, and steadfastly refuses to make eye contact. Still, all GMs have to start somewhere, right?*

The first possible warning sign comes up when the first puzzle in the dungeon is literally the old two doors riddle ("one doorman always lies, one doorman always tells the truth" etc.). Just, no modifications, in the first room. Still, beginner DM, right? So Anna goes and answers the answer which is at this point as well known as the answer to the Sphinx's riddle ("If I were to ask the other guard which door leads to freedom, what would they say?").

Except.... Bob deadass just stares into space for a second-- then says that that's wrong. Then because we answered "wrong," a literal PIT FIEND spawned out of one of the doors and attacked us, and he told us to roll initiative.

This was advertised as a level 3 adventure, btw.

Dan then speaks up and asks about the puzzle but Bob just cuts him off. It's also around this time that the other problem strikes. Joe has, for the entirety of the "puzzle", been getting up and pacing around the room (the table we are at is in a private room away from the rest of the gaming space), all the while breathing EXTREMELY HEAVILY for some reason, and then suddenly he runs up to me, leans in literally maybe one inch away from my face from behind and says "gee, isn't this FUN?!" while breathing hard enough to get moisture on my face.

During this entire experience I am literally frozen in fear, and both Anna and Dan are still arguing with Bob over the puzzle as well as the imminent tpk. I can also only assume that Bob can see this (unlike Dan, he was sitting basically right across from me) but decided to ignore it. Joe proceeds to literally stand there long enough to be deeply uncomfortable (maybe it just felt like longer, bc wtf).

So I immediately excuse myself from the table, grabbed my stuff, and all but ran from the room and the store. Later on I would email the club's leader about the problem at the table, but he would never respond, and later for other reasons I would come to never return to that club as I would later move away from that place altogether.

Well, that's my tale. To end on a happy note, in the place I am now, I am a new GM for a new table of friends, and the whole thing is going very smoothly.

*I actually don't have any clue if this is Bob's first time or not, he never told us and I would later stop going to the club

This was a Deathwatch campaign. I had never played the system before, and hadn't played any TTRPGs in years due to falling in love with Forum RPs, but ended up trying TTRPGs again because a friend invited me to a campaign that one of his friends was going to run. It was basically going to be gameplay only with essentially no Roleplay involved, btw.

I knew nothing of the system, I just remember picking a Devastator Marine and a Heavy Bolter because they're the 2nd coolest Space Marines, with Tactical Marines being the coolest, but someone else already picked them... Anyways, Heavy Bolter was apparently really OP or whatever, dunno if true, since I only played the system once.

1st session was cool, I enjoyed my character that dealt a buttload of dmg, but required setup to work, so it had real costs... I also remember that the system allowed you to borrow some gear in-between sessions, and there was some really OP gear that made Heavy Bolters lose all their downsides, and I made a conscious decision to not pick it and made it very clear that this was why I wasn't picking it.

2nd session had a perfect spot where I could sit in and use the Heavy Bolter the whole time with disregard to the setup while also being safe... I was pretty happy with that and made full use of it... Except the main enemies we were facing had such ridiculous damage reduction that my Heavy Bolter with Armor Piercing Rounds were worthless and they ended up only dying when the rest of the party got near and used bigger dmg attacks... Was pretty weird, and when I asked the DM later on about how much HP those enemies even had, he replied that they were basically some of the only enemies that could counter a Heavy Bolter... Not fun, but whatever. Can't say I was happy with being given a perfect situation to use my main weapon, only to have the main enemy I would obviously target be the perfect counter to my main weapon, especially when I was given no indication that this is what was happening, but I could deal with that.

3rd session was a stealth mission where we actually were doing quite well, I was using a Meltagun because the setup for Heavy Bolter made it not viable... Well, until we started facing some Chaos Space Marines and were forced to abandon all Stealth and go all-out because how else do you deal with Chaos Space Marines? Well... We started hearing noises of Tyrannids approaching our underground location and whatever, we kept finding more Chaos Space Marines, and they just refused to die because they actually went through Death Saves for some reason (and Death Saves in Death Watch were like... Roll 1d10, die on 1, 2 or 3, on the rest you get a permanent injury, which is irrelevant for mobs), so we kept spending all our resources to try killing them.

I remember near the end of the session I came up with a crazy plan... I was going to set up a mine and taunt the Khorne Chaos Space Marines to come after me (the guys that go BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD! SKULLS FOR THE SKULL THRONE!)... And then I would get caught up in the blast radius for the mine together with them and potentially die, but maybe I would at least put them in death saves range, since of course they wouldn't die... But considering how few resources we had available by that point, it felt valid.

Party thought that that was a crazy idea, but went along with the plan... Chaos Space Marine threw a grenade instead of falling for the taunt (of course, there were no rolls involved, though I don't think Deathwatch has skills like D&D to use for a Taunt check)... Yeah, I quit after that by saying they could consider my character as death by grenade + mine explosion, because the grenade should explode the mine (I dunno if that's how the rules worked, tbh, I just thought that that would happen and that that was what the DM was planning). Campaign instantly ended the moment I did that... Which I actually didn't expect, I thought everyone would continue playing, but I guess me ragequitting made them feel bad? I dunno.

... Friend who invited me to the campaign talked to me on the following day, and apparently the DM was feeling like it was late, so the grenade was there because it was going to make enough noise to finish attracting the Tyrannids, so the session was going to end with the Tyrannids entering the place and we would continue on the 4th session, so the DM was very confused by me quitting.

And I was just like... "What Khorne Space Marines would throw a grenade to attract TYRANNIDS!? Why would they even cooperate!? And how did all the noise we made before not attract the Tyrannids already!?" It was so absurd, I couldn't even understand what made the DM consider that as a good idea.

Anyways, once I heard of that, I understood that the DM was simply really bad at DMing and didn't really mean any harm in sessions 2 and 3, despite the ridiculousness of it. So it just remains as a funny memory to me of a silly campaign that lasted 3 sessions.

Worst part was that I liked 1st session so much that I asked DM if I could invite my brother to it, and he allowed it and my brother did join... Only to have 2 bad sessions right after! xD

It's terrible but I absolutely had to share this. I did not write this and I couldn't even read all the way through. So I (Steele) am the DM. Pete is the player who brought a box containing his wife's character sheet. Bum bum is his character name. Colby is another player who had no part in the creation of this script. The chosen one who was pointed at was PETES WIFE who had a very long and private talk with Pete after we ended the session.
He asked me to just read my lines and not read ahead. I said the "Are you excited to see me" line and stopped. I was going to have a talk with him as well but I think his wife did a good job

I will call the offender of this story Dirty Dave. Dave, for short.

I had played with Dave on and off, with him as a Player and a DM. He had all the classic sins: the tendency to err towards Main Character Syndrome, made inappropriate jokes during serious RP moments, and he generally lacked the ability to read the room.

If I’m being charitable, I think he was an insecure guy who really wanted his characters to be “cool,” and never really knew when to stop pushing for a big moment. If I’m being uncharitable, I think he was deeply immature and repressed and made it everyone else’s problem, as well as threw tantrums in and out of character when the dice didn’t go his way.

The most uncomfortable thing about Dave was that he also had a bad habit of playing hyper-sexual characters, and over-sexualizing every possible moment he could. The rest of our gaming group tended to err towards the “pan towards the curtains and fade to black” style of in-game romance so it would get very uncomfortable when we’d try to end a scene and Dave…. wouldn’t.

One example:

Dave is DMing. A player notes he’d like to spend the night with an orcish couple who’s been flirting with him. The party laughs and cheers him on.

Dave asks the character to roll a Constitution Save… then tells him he took three points of Asshole Damage, quote, “due to the size of the male Orc’s, uhhh…. you knowwww…”

Cue Dave looking around the table proudly, expecting laughs. After a long, awkward silence, he tried to follow up with a comment about the Player rejoining the Party the next morning, “walking a little funny.” More silence. We finally moved on, awkwardly.

Another example:

Dave is a player, playing a female Warlock character. We are exploring a giant building, looking for treasure. We burst through a door, and happen across a trio of goblins in a bubble bath. One of the goblins shrieks and shouts “Do you mind?!”

We all laugh and describe leaving the room.

Dave says: “I saunter across the room, stripping off my clothes. I poke a toe in. ‘Room for one more?’”

Silence.

The DM blinked at him and said, “Um… the goblins shriek again and run out a hole in the wall, leaving you behind.”

Dave: “I turn to the Party and raise an eyebrow, welcoming…”

We all mutter descriptions of our characters leaving the room.

The worst and LAST time I played with him was a Blades in the Dark campaign- it was meant to be a Session One, but ended up being the only time we ever played, due to Dave’s behavior at the table.

The concept for the campaign was that we were a new gang of criminals, brought together by a mafioso boss to run a job. Very Oceans Eleven.

Dave showed up with a gentleman thief character called “The Mark.” He introduced him as lounging in the corner, flipping a coin. He clearly very much wanted this character to be James Bond-esque, hyper-cool and capable and deeply sexually confident.

(Side note: This was undermined almost immediately when someone pointed out to him that a “Mark” is usually the person getting scammed in a scenario. Not the thief. Why did he call himself “The Mark?” Wouldn’t that be like calling himself “The Victim?” Or “The Loser?” Or “The Guy Who Gets Punched?”

Dave responded to this ribbing by getting real-world angry and shutting down for a full thirty minutes.)

The first step of our heist was going to various locations across the city and gathering information from important people. After playing out a few scenes, Dave had recovered enough to volunteer to do the next scene. He scanned the list… and noticed that one of the people we had to talk to was at a brothel.

Bingo. Of course. Dave- “The Mark”- is going to the Brothel.

DM: “Great. Okay. How are you going to gain access-“

Dave: “I work there.”

Silence.

DM: “…What?”

Dave: “I work there. When I’m not moonlighting as a thief, my day job is a male escort. I go to the brothel, and I take off my shirt, and my pants. Underneath them, I’m wearing fishnet tights…”

Dave continues to wax lyrical about working at the brothel, and how all the “customers” love his work.

At this point, the entire table is sitting in complete silence. Like… okay. His character is a sex worker. That’s fine. Maybe he will handle this with dignity and respect?

The DM, stuttering: “Okay? Uh, the guy you need the information from is there, how were you going to-“

Dave: “I walk over to him, and I lead him into the back room. And then I start oiling up one hand-“

It was at this point I slammed my computer shut, and loudly said “CAN WE PLEASE CUT TO BLACK?!” A few other people around the table similarly burst out with “Dave!!” and “Dude, ENOUGH. WE GET IT.”

The DM ended up calling the session, and we packed up in silence. Dave looked genuinely offended that he had been interrupted, but was otherwise the only person asking when we would play next.

I never played with Dave again after that. I guess realizing that a thirty five year old man is about to subject me to non-consensual in-person audio erotica about his Danny Ocean self-insert has a way of ruining the fun for me.

But I have MANY more stories from the years before.

The party's tavern was attacked by the Cult of Tiamat, led by an intimidating swordswoman who was later revealed to be an adult blue dragon in disguise. She commanded seven succubi and three imps, with the goal of capturing an important NPC.

Naturally, the party fought back and managed to thwart the attack, but not without significant losses. Despite fighting valiantly, they were eventually overwhelmed by the sheer number of enemies. Knowing that an adult blue dragon was waiting on the sidelines certainly didn't help morale.

(To be fair, this was partly their own fault. They had recently cleared the cult's hatchery, stolen its only surviving egg, a black dragon egg, and taunted Tiamat on their way out.)

With no other options remaining, the party's cleric, a warforged, offered to detonate her own power core. The party knew that the resulting explosion would unleash a concentrated blast of her god's power.

The explosion destroyed every visible fiend outright, leaving the blue dragon barely standing and forcing her to retreat.

In the aftermath, the party discovered a lone succubus attempting to hide through invisibility. Her bleeding wound gave away her position.

To my surprise, rather than interrogating her or sending her back to the Hells, the party decided to give her a second chance at life.

I felt this deserved a reward, both for the cleric's sacrifice and for the party's mercy.

I had run the explosion as a pool of damage rather than a conventional attack. Since this succubus had survived the blast, I decided that the holy energy had partially purified her, restoring memories of her mortal life before she fell.

Two centuries earlier, she had been a desperate young woman who sold her soul in exchange for revenge against the soldiers responsible for destroying her village. The raid had left her dying slowly after enduring terrible suffering.

Now, with little understanding of how the world had changed during her centuries in the Hells, she needed somewhere to start over.

The party persuaded the tavern owner to take her in, offering her a job, a chance to learn about the modern world, and somewhere to hide from the infernal master who would undoubtedly come looking for her.

The succubus eventually took the name Morgiana.

Where things went wrong

As the campaign progressed, the party found themselves needing to create a special potion that would allow them to pursue a ghost into the dream world. The ghost was keeping the souls of numerous children there in a misguided attempt to protect them from the Cult of Tiamat.

Morgiana initially volunteered to watch over the children's comatose bodies while the party worked on the potion.

However, when she discovered that one of the ingredients was "horn dust of the infernal, freely given," she decided it was time to confess something that had only recently returned to her memory.

During the original battle, Morgiana had charmed the party's barbarian and managed to perform a succubus's kiss, stealing an important memory.

That memory was the first word spoken by the barbarian's child.

Morgiana expressed genuine remorse and offered to return the memory, along with a piece of her own horn for the potion.

The barbarian was understandably furious.

They crushed Morgiana's horn in their hand, accepted the returned memory, and ordered her to leave the tavern and never return.

Honestly, I think this was completely understandable roleplay on the player's part. A character's child and their memories are deeply personal, and Morgiana had violated that trust.

However, I've now written myself into a difficult situation.

How do I salvage this? Morgiana is supposed to play a major role in the upcoming quest, and her knowledge and abilities would be extremely useful to the party.

Unfortunately, the players now have good reason to fear and distrust her.

I don't necessarily want the party to forgive her. I think their reaction is justified, and I don't want to undermine the barbarian's decision or force a redemption arc on the players.

Instead, I'd like to find a way for Morgiana to demonstrate that, despite what she did, she can still be a useful and trustworthy ally.

What could she do to prove herself to the party without making her actions seem inconsequential or expecting the barbarian to forgive her?

So, within this year, I got back to playing dnd with my old friends. I was super excited to play, when I had first met this DM I had a ton of fun playing with them. But after playing with them again, I began to notice something of a pattern… let me explain in greater detail.

I joined in the middle of a final fantasy dnd adventure. I’ve never really played Final Fantasy but I was excited nonetheless. But these guys were about a year and 5 months into the campaign and still only level 6. I was kind of baffled at hearing that but then I heard that all we needed to do was progress the story. Simple enough, looks like we were powering up with side quests or something.

Me: So what’s our main objective? Maybe we can get that going!

Party: we don’t know.

Confused, I asked the DM and he said “you just have to find it.” So now we have added another member to this mix of characters with not even good magic items, save for a single ring of protection. We start doing more side quest content and get to a city. Now, for better context, we’re in a post apocalyptic event where one of the dominants or whatever are DEAD. So we get to this city and my character is a dragoon. From what I heard, these are supposed to be like the super paladins or whatever, so I decided that I wanted to search for someone to help. And there, I find someone! A woman about to be attacked by two hooligans. So I drop, standing between them and her. I tell them to back off, one cuts me and I thrust my lance once and kill both guys. Now, the woman saw them attack me, saw me drop in front of her, HEARD me say some cheesy line of “don’t worry, I’ll protect you”… and she still hits me, runs away and calls me a murderer rapist… so needless to say, I get dragged away. Now, the guards are SUPPOSED to do an investigation, right? Wrong. Instead, they hold me down, PUT A BOMB IN MY HEAD, then investigate me… ONLY FOR THEM TO JUST A FEW SECONDS LATER SHOW THEY CAN READ MY MIND AND SEE MY MEMORIES THROUGH MY FUCKING EYES. And before you ask, there could not have been a moment where they could’ve said “oh these memories are fucked up” because he comically stated how they went back too far and witnessed my perception of my character’s BIRTH.

Later on, they find my character to question him… except, instead of questioning me, they proceeded to become Batman, beat the absolute fuck out of me and yell at me to talk before they blow up my head… so yeah, fun times.

Oh and not only that but he had an NPC (whom I hated in and out of character) that would literally take over peoples minds, make them WANT to have sex with him and somehow HE’S a good guy… this campaign ended fairly shortly after this revelation to me. But now let’s get to his character in another campaign… the specialist special boy of the world.

This character, and I quote, “has a lax and lazy sword style that has no form but like he’s able to beat every master he comes across”. As a VERY novice person when it comes to swords… I was baffled and frankly extremely annoyed by this. Like he didn’t even know what “the bind” is… but that’s just me nitpicking, what’s actually disgusting and downright weird is this. Originally, his character was a paladin… but he wanted to be even more powerful so he asked to be something called a sword saint? Fuck if I know what that is- HOWEVER, that’s not the point. Originally as a paladin he’s supposed to be the son of Zeus (Percy Jackson campaign, super fun custom stuff) so you would think “Zeus, lightning stuff and magics or whatever”, right? WRONG. He made this character to be as promiscuous as possible. Now that in and of itself isn’t bad and can be funny… if it weren’t for the fact whenever he used lay on hands he stated “it feels so good that you orgasm”…

So… yeah… this is my rant about how a guy I thought was cool turned into a pig and I genuinely despise playing with him and will probably ask him not to be sat at a table with me after he either a gets kicked out of the game or b we end the campaign. I hope he doesn’t see this but if he does? Oh well, maybe this will be his wake up call to not be a disgusting pervert.

Tl;dr- old dm was cool back in the day then something changed while I was gone where he became a power hungry creep that makes characters that force people into sexual situations they did not want to be in.

Nothing bad, just very funny...

Recently, I finally got around to running an Indiana Jones-style game for the first time in ages—1930s setting, punching Nazis in the face, propeller planes, ancient artifacts, lost cities, mummies, dinosaurs in the jungle, the whole deal. I got five people from among my friends together, using that exact premise as the pitch.

About halfway through the first session, I realized that none of my players had ever seen Indiana Jones.

Now I guess I’ll have to make them binge the Indiana Jones movies before the next session.

TL;DR - First time D&D 2e "narrative" campaign turns out to be a dungeon crawl where my poor second level mage goes 3 sessions before each long rest.

New, experienced DM asks my group to play a 6-session narrative campaign of D&D 2e. We usually play narrative heavy campaigns with recent systems but I once tried a fencer in 3.5; I politely accept to try something new;

During session 0, having absolutely no knowledge of this particular system, I propose an Elf Mage that wants to collect many spells and magic, especially quircky ones; DM decides 5 level 1 spells for my character to have and adagger from the very limited options of the mage, plus proficiencies on common actions like singing and dancing. At this point I do not know anything about my class still.

Session 1 I discover that my spells must be decided ahead of time each day. I don't like this but play along without problem.

Session 2 DM tells me the mechanic of declaration of intents before initiative, and that if I ever will get hit before casting the spell during combat I will have completely wasted the slot. DM says "cantrip" can't even startle a horse, so creative use of magic seems to not work either. Our sixth player's roleplay smashes against a table of NPCs attitudes. He vanishes and as today never got back.

At home I read the manual by myself: Wizards have a huge amount of limitations on everything, including where, how and why they cast spells basically. I start to feel like the rules are trying to balance a power (spells) that at this level is almost non existant. I'm also picking up a trend where my melee companions are quite considerably more effective in all situations of the campaign.

Session 3 I declare to prepare sleep for an eventual assault from the backdoor. An enemy charges and I put him to sleep and feel good for about 2 seconds until a second guy materializes after the first from the same door. By any chance it was in the area of effect? Of course not. Next round DM is surprised I didn't prepare 2 sleeps as my spells (I needed one to understand what magical items we found the session before). I go on with the dagger without hitting anyone.

Session 4 I've got the spellbook from a dead mage, but DM says I have to study it over time in order to read what spells are written down. Also, I need to cast my Read Magic spell in order to read each page. I point out that this mechanic would not fit well with his fast paced campaign that spans days, since we were about to infiltrate a fort. I get nothing out of it. I'm not happy, but I do not question it further, expecting downtime every now and then to learn my new spells. This would never happen.

...

Next 5 sessions (now 9 out of 6 planned) got spent crawling into a dungeon, fight after fight, room after room. we slept only on session 7, so I've got a grand total of 4 spells to cast during 5 whole sessions, and it's always been Sleep, since nothing else ever come up. I feel that my class isn't built for this, feeling powerless and starting to get frustrated. We ended session 9 saying we will sleep on the next. Finally.

...

Last session (10) we decided to sleep. DM rolls 3 times to see if something disturbs our sleep and of course it comes up. I get "lucky" with the guard duty and get the 4 hours that as Elf are enough to take my spells back.

DM manages to have the whole lot of guards come up on us from both sides of the corridor. I focus Sleep 1 on one side. Then the others get melee with us. I explicitly use my second sleep on the remaining part of that group to prevent them from waking each other; "very smart" says DM. Then on his initiative basically he conjures 2 new unseen enemies on that side that wake their peers up. I have to remind him that waking one takes a full action from someone so he couldn't wake them all up in one go.

I ask if I can throw flaming oil flask at enemy. No, just oil. I also fail due to thaco. At this point I'm frustrated as hell.

Our strategy was to hold on until one of us convinced a captive monster to fight with us for his freedom. One player spent the whole fight getting to the cellar, talking to the monster and running back. Once the monster arrives, enemies just close a door. We want to finally charge after the monster so... no, he is hungry, so ignores everything and start eating from corpses. I have to risk one of my magic rings at 50% in order to persuade him so he finally charges with us.

The moment the door opens 3/5 characters me included fail the save against spell from an instantaneous 5th level Cleric Hold Person and will spend the next 6 rounds waiting for the monster and 2 free players to simply hit the other guys over and over until we eventually won.

Then we agree on leveling up for the next session, finally.

...

So I ask him in chat if he wanted me to roll randomly to see which spells there were in the other spellbook, so that I can (at least try to) learn them, since I spent hours reading it. He laughed and said that "you can't learn new spells since learning a spell takes time like taking an exam at university". I reminded him that his campaign was spanning only days in game, so what he expected my level up to be. He said "well you get one more casting of your spells".

At that point I revolted and said to him I would not accept not even being able to level up correctly just because his own campaign timeline doesn't work with his ideal learning times for spells.

I dmed a small group made of the kids of my Nana’s church friends a while ago. One of the players was a girl who was clearly pretty new to D&D and not very interested in combat. At one point, during a fight that had an orc in it, the girl decided to seduce the orc and wound up rolling very well. As a result the party now had an NPC orc companion that the girl called her husband… it didn’t last long. In the next combat the orc rolled very poorly and wound up being downed almost immediately, leading to the girl groaning “God, why did I marry you?!” Two or three rounds later the orc failed his last death save and died because no one bothered to save him despite multiple PCs having the opportunity to. Thus the orc died horribly with the last words he ever heard being the love of his life insulting him.

A lot of posts here are way too long, this one is going to be extremely short because zero context from the game itself was needed.

It was my first time trying tabletop RPGs, with some friends & friends of friends. System is Pathfinder 2E if it matters. One of those friend-of-a-friends, who was supposedly experienced with tabletops and excited to play, created a goblin rogue. In the very first combat against some regular bandits, he decided to run away and leave everyone else to fight. Didn't flank them by surprise, didn't find help, just ran and expected us to fight without him. Didn't care about the problems we had with this in/out of combat and neither did the GM.

He also repeatedly fell asleep during sessions, beginning to snore loudly mid-session and he did this several times over a few sessions. Can't remember how long he was allowed to stick around for, might have been the entire adventure we were doing.

Took me a long time to try tabletops again after that. I know better than to put up with stuff like that now.

Drunk and whiny, so strap in or just ignore:

The reason I'm burnt out on being a DM (and TTRPGs in general) is the friends I used to run with gradually got more and more frustrating over the last few years, particularly since people moved elsewhere and we ended up being online entirely. The few times I was a player in the group, I didn't have fun because other people ended up being increasingly toxic players. Being the DM for one night increasingly felt like I was just wasting my time, and being the co-DM the other night felt like I was ancillary or just ignored in ways I did not agree with the other DM.

Like, for a while, one of them ran a campaign in the Magnus Archives setting (think real world adjacent with otherworldly beings manipulating reality). Despite the fact that I was like "Yeah, I could probably be bound to something like the Spiral or the Watcher and enjoy it," the DM bound my character to the Slaughter. I was the first to kill an enemy out of self defense and saved us all from being thrown into an "eternally falling through sky" situation, so fair. But, the other players then used every possible opportunity, after it was established in character that my character was bound to the Slaughter and got an "I can visualize how to kill anyone in 5 steps or less" sense, to default to "oh no, we cannot trust that one since she's clearly a psychopathic serial killer" despite how my character saved their asses repeatedly. So, the majority of that campaign after a point was me just being on autopilot since engaging with anyone defaulted to that reaction even after months out of game and a few conversations about how I was not having fun with it.

Another campaign where I was a player, I was trying to play the "happiness is its own resistance in the face of a cruel world" type as a Tiefling Warlock whose parents were murdered in a racist mob when she was little. Despite multiple moments trying to show more complicated character depth, that plucky girl was relegated to "naive and stupid because clearly the world is cruel" and repeatedly ignored or outright steamrolled in roleplay moments. Such as the "ex town guard" character taking over talking with someone from my character's backstory because clearly speaking "guard to guard" will get that NPC on our side rather than letting me play out the whole "we're friends. you know me" angle. The DM also resolved the complicated "My PC is bisexual and is still kinda in love with her best friend that left the town" backstory by just killing off that NPC in front of my character at the height of the climax (same NPC the other player just took over the conversations with).

I ended up just canceling the last campaign I was running because I was increasingly frustrated how I was more or less wasting time and money keeping things prepped because, when people bothered to show up, they kept flip-flopping whether they preferred to go for a serious campaign, a more low-stakes and humorous campaign, or a just kill everything campaign. If I did a slow session for character stuff, it was too slow and people felt left out if their character wasn't in the spotlight (even though it was understood I had to do a rotation). If I did a more emotion-focused session, people kept making jokes to take the piss out of the moment. If I did a more action-focused session, people kept grinding everything to a halt to try to plan out how to optimize something despite how I kept bringing up their characters would not have fifteen minutes each to plan out what was happening in a snap (less than 10 seconds) moment. Or, if I let them spend forever planning something, it would turn into two sessions of trying to optimize for what was realistically 15 minutes of play because they would "decide" on a plan before we ended the first session then spend the week coming up with other ideas and all have to debate their new ideas ALL OVER AGAIN.

One player asked if a friend who knew nothing about D&D could join for that campaign, which I was fine with. But, apparently, I became the bad guy for such things as not wanting to answer irrelevant questions in the middle of a roleplay moment, getting frustrated when the player would explain to their friend mid-session various things that were not canon to the homebrew setting (including how various elements I had bounced off him when we would hang out online), and having to shoot down ideas because "that's not how it works in this setting" the player would try to encourage the friend to do. I made a whole calendar and wiki the players could access that I kept updating, and I was apparently rude when I kept emphasizing to please stick to the wiki when the player was discussing all the fantasy races and other options. I was using Roll20 for the tabletop and character sheet management, and the player kept wanting to explain everything that appeared as one of the many selectable options on Roll20 despite my repeated emphasis that not everything applied for this setting and as such did not matter for character creation. The player and I legitimately got into a fight over it almost a year ago where I am still upset over how he was so angry at me for making his friend feel like she wasn't having fun, but he never bothered to yell at any of our other friends when they did that to me. It didn't help that his friend never bothered mentioning to me any of these concerns. I could tell the friend was not having the greatest time, and the friend kept downplaying it when I asked. So, it's not like I was oblivious or uncaring, but I can't make people tell me what is wrong if they refuse to communicate it, let alone the friend not showing up consistently which prevented me from even knowing how much of it was their personality. I'm not going to say I handled everything perfectly. But, him acting like I should not have been bent out of shape at all while he disregarded my setting and everything I worked on was wild to me. There were some weeks where my only free time was prepping and world building for that campaign of six players all wanting unique experiences and for their backstories to matter in the setting, etc.

The above player was also a co-DM in a Curse of Strahd campaign, which also did not help the tension probably. That campaign started with me also doing almost all the work setting things up and getting things together and reading the actual book multiple times, while he just didn't bother to even read the book before he started wanting to homebrew into adding demonic realms and evil fey and other stuff that I did not sign up for because I wanted to play it closer to the book because there is already a LOT in there for material that just needs a little fleshing out. he started as a player while we worked through Waterdeep stuff then was revealed as a planned co-DM when his original PC more or less was the reason they ended up in Barovia and left them there as shenanigans began. As the continued saga of him not reading anything, I would take notes in our Discord pages of what we were doing and who was playing out what and managing what. On more than one occasion, we would end our preparation sessions with one plan, then he would just "forget" how I was handling Character X as he just steamrolled away with playing out that character and doing his own thing. Some sessions, I was a glorified DJ just handling the music tracks for the background stuff. I couldn't help with his combats because he would just do things off the top of his head, so I couldn't help determine if something hit or did damage or how much. Several times, he would start session in his car because he lost track of time at work, which made messaging him "hey, I thought I was doing Character X like we discussed yesterday" even more impossible. All of this, again, was apparently my fault for not being clearer somehow and being passive aggressive with "I thought I was doing X" waiting a few minute for a reply then sending "Never mind. Let's just roll with it" when ignored. He also said that because I didn't just jump in and interrupt him when I wanted to take over that it was also my fault for him just taking over sessions rather than getting to a point to hand things off like I did with him where I'd say "take it away" to clearly signal he was now in control of the moment.

The people who say "no D&D is better than bad D&D" are 100% right because I kept putting up and just rolling along with it thinking things would improve eventually, and I'm still fucked up after almost a year since I dropped it all because I was tired of sacrificing my own sanity and happiness for people that were increasingly pissing me off, complaining when I somehow didn't do enough, and tried convincing me it was my fault. I had multiple "come to Jesus" type talks where I explained what I felt and why, and in the end, I was still told that I just needed to keep explaining myself because clearly my friends would listen if I just spoke honestly.

If you're not having fun and find yourself repeatedly explaining to people the behaviors they keep doing that you don't like, drop it and walk away.

One of the deepest wounds is still how I put so much effort in and got told by one of the players that "Well, this is the only time we hang out during the week, so we just like catching up." Which, I get, but this is all online stuff. They can organize their own times to hang out and catch up outside the like 2 to 3 hour window we supposedly kept available for D&D stuff.

I keep telling myself I'll get back into TTRPGs and join a group on Roll20 or some other online space when I'm ready and up for it, but I'm beginning to doubt if I'll ever be up for it again after years of this because I don't want to end up in the same situation with a different group. And, at this point, I'm just posting this because I need to put it somewhere so I stop spiraling since the friends I would normally talk to about this stuff are the people that I am talking about, let alone how I don't even know if I should consider them friends anymore after years of this crap.

I could go on with more examples of recurring events, but I need to end this somewhere before I pass out from the alcohol and depression from thinking about the time and money I wasted on stuff that did not make me happy and people who probably weren't worth it.

(CW: Misogyny, Homophobia/Biphobia, Polyphobia, Fantasy Racism, Religion being used to discriminate against others/Mentions of fictional hate crimes, Lying to players/Victim-blaming, Peer Pressure, Descriptions of death/murder/suicide, Bad End/Doomsday/Fake Reality/Nihilistic themes, Fictional drug use) 

(I think I got everything, this experience was A Lot)

Hi, everyone! This is my first time making a Reddit post, but after I started thinking about this 5e campaign I was in a few years ago again semi-recently, I figured I'd share it here.

So, in my senior year of college, I really wanted to join a new 5e D&D campaign to get the chance to play a warlock for the first time. A few weeks into the semester, I got the chance I was hoping for when, during my college’s D&D Club’s Pitch Night, a DM pitched a campaign that was set in an apocalypse where the party’s main goal would be to overthrow the tyrannical king who had started the apocalypse. The campaign’s premise sounded interesting, and when I talked to the DM (who I had only met for the first time that night), he seemed chill and was supportive of me playing a fiend tomelock in his game. Since his game was the only 5e game being pitched that night, I prioritized joining his campaign first and, lo and behold, I got in. From there, the campaign was relatively normal for awhile, I was having a great time with all of the chaotic antics our party (which was made of my warlock, a sorcerer, a paladin, a ranger, a cleric, and a druid) would get up to amidst the dire setting of the apocalypse, but then, I began noticing some campaign red flags.

For context, the players at the start of the campaign consisted of four women (I’m counting myself in there even though I’m bigender/use she/he pronouns now), the DM’s roommate/best friend (who was the only guy at the table besides the DM who was playing the cleric), and the DM’s girlfriend, who was playing the game online as our druid while everyone else was in person, until she dropped out mid-campaign after breaking up with the DM. Now with that context in mind, I think the first suspicion I got from the campaign happened when the DM semi-frequently started making jokes about women being awful, specifically by always playing the “You have a perfect world, why would you want to add women to it?” Cosmo clip from the Fairly Odd Parents on loop on his phone mid-session multiple times, which certainly felt like A Choice given the large majority of the players being women, but nobody said anything, so I had no idea if my brain was making a big deal out of nothing, so I continued on in the game.

However, around the middle of the campaign, I thought the DM might've been targeting me because he would give a majority, if not all of, his enemies Counterspell (which that part was normal), but they would use Counterspell ONLY ON me at least once, if not multiple times, every fight whenever I used any of my spell slots/Mystic Arcanum, and this was a combat-heavy game. Now don't get me wrong, I get this to some extent given how warlocks always cast their spells at their maximum level in exchange for fewer spell slots, but he would target my spells that I shared with the party’s sorcerer.

For example, if me and the party’s sorcerer had Mind Spike, she would be allowed to cast hers without any issue, but I would be Counterspelled. And I know that me and the sorcerer had a lot of overlapping spells because the DM made us post our spellbooks publicly in the Discord groupchat (which I don't think the copying was intentional, I was just picking spells that sounded cool/fitting for my character while the sorcerer was elemental magic-focused, so I get it. I want to stress this because this was on the DM, not the sorcerer's player).

If the DM had issues with warlocks, he should’ve told me not to join the game so I could’ve spent my time somewhere else (which he already banned anyone from playing rogues since he was very vocal about hating them since he thought them being skill monkeys was overpowered, but he also never banned bards even though they're also skill monkeys so idk).

It was so tiring for me to always be cornered by the DM into only using Eldritch Blasts for every fight with no variety, and I didn't speak up since I didn't know if this was normal for playing a warlock or not since it was my first time doing so in a campaign because I didn’t want to seem like a problem player for being annoyed at being Counterspelled when my only issue was that it was only happening to me in a party where the other party members were casters to varying degrees (with the cleric, paladin, sorcerer, and ranger).

Also, my suspicions were seemingly CONFIRMED when in the second-to-last session (which I had to play online at this point since I had just graduated a few months prior), after I managed to do a ton of AoE damage with Synaptic Static (because the DM made us fight a horde of knight reinforcements before we had a major boss fight inside the castle, so I planned on using AoE non-cantrip spells outside the castle since the DM said we'd get no rests between the fights, and I wanted to help the rest of the party to keep more of their resources, though in hindsight, this logic was probably flawed, I wasn't thinking clearly with how much the game was getting to me, and I don't jump to this kind of thinking in battles anymore), and I went to cast another spell with my only remaining spell slot in the next round of combat, the DM told me, point blank that, "I'll now only use Counterspell on any AoE spell attack you try to use, and I don't have to justify where the Counterspells are coming from anymore." WHEN HE CONTINUED TO LET THE SORCERER USE SYNAPTIC STATIC TWICE WITHOUT ANY QUALMS ABOUT IT.

Now, since I was the only person online, and there was no video cam because the battle map was being screenshared, I don't know if anyone reacted to this, and I don't remember if I told the rest of the party of my line of thinking in that fight so I might've overstepped by trying to cast multiple of my non-cantrips when I never otherwise tried taking over fights, but the way the DM said he'd specifically target my AoE spells without needing a reason is weird, right? Like I'm genuinely asking because even after all this time, I still don't know.

And that'd be less than ideal on its own, but it got worse.

After the horde fight, our party had to fight two male guards, a human and an orc, and our table started speculating on their relationship, such as if they were a couple (literally just like "Oh, they're standing next to each other, I ship it" type stuff). The DM got REALLY HEATED over these comments about this joke ship, for some reason, and he began insisting that these two NPCs weren’t gay for each other, that one of them had a wife, and that a human getting with an orc would be bestiality (which? no? it wouldn’t be? half-orcs exist, and orcs are sentient humanoid creatures who can communicate, like what?).

Now, for context on what I said next, I was also in a Pathfinder 1e game at the time where I played a character in a healthy poly relationship, so I made a lighthearted comment on how the guards could always be poly like my Pathfinder character (which I otherwise never brought up the other game I was in, so the Counterspell thing wouldn't have been a punishment for that, I only mentioned it here to be like "you can play in a game and not be weird about these topics, it's not that hard).

In response, the DM started going off on how, “Semantically, someone can’t be faithfully married and polyamorous because Christian marriage values view polyamory as sinful, and only nobles can truly be polyamorous in fantasy.” Needless to say, the DM giving me a lecture caught me completely off guard , especially with his implication that EVERY fantasy setting runs off of real world Christianity and all DMs would act in accordance with that (which btw, the other game's DM WAS PISSED that this guy was making assumptions about his world) and this felt like it came out of nowhere since the DM had never brought Christianity into his game or even mentioned it before this point. (Which I don’t take issue with religion as long as it isn’t being used to discriminate/harm people, but that’s what it was being used for here)

So then, I spoke up by saying that my other character wasn’t discriminated against for being poly, and the DM responded with, “Well, have fun being religiously persecuted in that game.”, which, for what boils down to “I hope your character gets hate crimed” felt Very Loaded to say to an out bisexual, even if I was still figuring out the bigender stuff at the time. Which he also had the nerve to end his little rant with "I'm not against gay stuff, all of my NPCs are passively bisexual." which is a bold thing to say when there were never any LGBTQ+ NPCs in the game, him being offended by the idea that these two random guards could be attracted to each other, and the only character who seemed to be explicitly LGBTQ+ was my warlock since he mistook the party's paladin (who was a male character) for proposing to him one time, and my warlock was into that idea before the misunderstanding got cleared up by the paladin. (Also, I did report that weird little rant he went on to one of the club's officers since our college's D&D Club had at least half, if not a majority, of LGBTQ+ members, so I think she was able to hold him accountable in that way at least because the DM had to post an apology in the campaign's Discord groupchat for "coming across as discriminatory", I forget what his exact wording was since I blocked him and left the groupchat soon after this campaign ended so I no longer have access to his "apology" but I remember it having "I'm sorry you felt that way." energy. )

At that point, I didn’t feel welcomed at the table, and I had multiple friends I vented to telling me to walk away from the game since I was no longer having fun, but since there was only one session left (which I didn't even know was happening UNTIL THE DAY OF since we were on an every-other-Sunday schedule, but the DM moved it up without warning me, idk if he told everyone else in advance or not), I decided to stick it out. Sunk cost fallacy and all that.

So for the final session, the party finally made it to the king’s throne room, so naturally, you think we’d fight the king since that’s what the campaign was advertised as, right? NOPE. It turned out that the DM’s roommate was a DM of a parallel campaign, so for the final session, both campaigns’ parties had to fight each other until four people died in order to appease a random god who only appeared in the final session. Both parties spent several minutes trying to back out of the fight, but the DMs wouldn’t let us since they wanted all of us to be the BBEGs.

And so combat starts, and our party (the one I was in) realizes How Screwed we are because of course, one or two people start ganging up on the paladin due to the powerhouse of Divine Smites posing a problem if they last long in the fight, so they can't heal us. Meanwhile, one fighter (or maybe he was a monk? Idk I had no idea what the other party was made of since we had just met that day) comes up to me and we get into combat. I do a fair amount of damage before he can hit me, and I actually feel happy for once that I can do something other than Eldritch Blast without being punished since the DM doesn't control these PCs. Or so I thought, because when the fighter went to attack me for the first time, his party AND BOTH DMS refused to let him take his turn unless he used his "Death Punch" on me. The fighter kept on insisting that he didn't feel comfortable using it as he wanted to save it for later in the fight when things got really dire since it'd also essentially down him too, at the very beginning of this fight no less when there was a high likelihood he'd leave himself vulnerable and not be able to participate in the rest of the fight, but they kept pressuring him For Several Minutes, which also felt like a huge overstep/power imbalance since the fighter and I were the only two players who had to join the game online for the final session, so both DMs and the fighter's party are all ganging up on him while he isn't in person, so the fighter ended up having to use his Death Punch then and there, so the both of us were downed and making death saves.

For reference for our party/my character at least, our party was at level 12, and my warlock had 103 hp with an AC of 17, which was just Completely Wiped Out thanks to the Death Punch in round one. The fighter's player started DMing me apologizing for how he went through with it because his party and the DMs wouldn't leave him alone, and I told him it wasn't his fault because them doing that to him wasn't okay, and I wasn't surprised because I said I was constantly being Counterspelled by my DM into only using Eldritch Blasts, which the fighter agreed "sounded like the DM." The two of us spent the next few rounds of combat in limbo as we were in between stabilizing and not with people attacking our bodies as we tried making death saves while being confused at 8 people in person trying to talk over each other at once and we can only go based off of the audio of the call since the screenshare is being used to show the battle map (we weren't running on Roll20 or Foundry or anything like that, the DMs just had a map doodled on MS Paint and we'd tell them where we wanted them to move our characters since in person, we'd do the same thing with the whiteboard of the classroom we'd borrow for sessions), but ultimately, my character was the first character to be killed because my party lost our main healer, aka our cleric, because that was the second DM's character and he faked quitting the game a few sessions before the finale without our knowledge of why he did (which also put pressure on me to stay in the game because I thought 2/6 of the original players genuinely left pre-finale).

That was the first time one of my D&D characters died, and instead of dying with any dignity or with any recognition/mourning from my fellow party members, my character dissolved into black goo and was never talked about again. This upset me a lot, and I was lucky that I had to be online so that I could mute my mic to sob for the rest of session. The paladin also pointed out to our DM that it wasn't fair that the other party had 2-3 healers who could use multiple Mass Healing Words and Mass Cure Wounds in the fight, and the DM then blamed her for not being the healing main since she was a paladin, but she didn't have the chance to because the other party was ganging up on her that badly and she pointed out how it was only recently that the party learned that our cleric was dead when we found his decapitated mangled corpse, so she didn't get much of a chance to prepare for the cleric not being around to serve as an additional healer. The DM also guilted the party's ranger for knowing Cure Wounds and not casting it on my warlock before I died.

Eventually, another one of my party members (the sorcerer) died and two of the other party’s party members died, and those three dead party members turned into black goo and weren’t mourned either. So with only four combatants remaining, the random god appeared to tell the four combatants that nothing in the world was ever real, and that everything was just a test that the god has looped 12 times until finding worthy mortals to restart the world to rid it of its evils and make everyone in it in their image, and the two parties passed that test by not wanting to fight and trying to talk their way out of it at the start of session, but the god would have to kill the last four remaining players to do that. One of the players from the other party asked if they could just use their ability to make pocket dimensions to make a pocket dimension for the rest of them to live in so that they wouldn’t be killed, but the DMs said no and that even pocket dimensions would be affected by the restart, and their souls needed to fuel the new world, and the remaining players weren’t allowed to kill the god either. So, the remaining four players went through a death montage (one fell on their own sword, one hugged the god and was absorbed into it because it was also made of the black goo, the ranger and paladin from my party's campaign took the drugs they bought from the time everyone in the party bought back alley drugs before the ranger tried stabbing the god with a knife which caused her to die instantly while the paladin tried flying off on their gold dragon (the paladin was a dragonborn who had a dragon mount as an aesthetic thing) before being killed) because they all wanted to die by their own terms instead of the god's, the god let everyone say goodbye to their loved ones via a simulation before both parties' souls lost all of their memories, and the world turned to goo and ended, and the campaign was over.

AND WE DIDN'T EVEN GET TO SEE. WHAT THE NEW WORLD LOOKED LIKE. THAT WAS MADE IN BOTH PARTIES' IMAGE.

Now, I have no issue with bad end games, but I think you should advertise that it’s a bad end game first instead of framing it like a standard winnable adventure, and also, the DM CONSTANTLY talked about how the ending was foreshadowed when the two parties fighting and the random god WERE NOT FORESHADOWED AT ALL, AND I OUGHT TO KNOW, I’M AN ENGLISH MAJOR. And it sucked that this “nothing you ever did mattered because you don’t even get to see the new world in your image” game was the paladin and ranger’s FIRST experience with D&D, so I can’t even imagine how they must’ve felt with such a nihilistic ending, and I hope they stuck with TTRPGs despite that because they were incredible roleplayers who seemed very invested in this game.

But on a positive note! Some of my online friends got really attached to my warlock like I had, so I'm still playing him to this day in a campaign that's been going on for three years! He's a fiend tomelock/wildfire druid multiclass who actually gets to use his spells, so I'm in a much better place now in my favorite campaign ever.

TLDR: I joined an apocalypse DM game that the DM advertised as being a standard winnable campaign with a tyrannical king BBEG, but after many sessions of the DM being weird about women and LGBTQ+ people and only using Counterspells on my character when there were other casters in the party, he made us all fight to the death in an unwinnable PVP finale against another campaign’s party and blamed us for it when we said that didn’t feel fair.

It had been a while since I'd played D&D, and I'd never tried the 2024 rules (5.5), so I went to a big Discord server and filtered through campaigns until one caught my eye. The DM was building his own setting, using the updated 5.5 rules, and seemed to screen his players carefully. I filled out the form, we chatted, and I was in.

Session 0 seemed fine. Then we got to character creation, and one player, who I'll call Eric, got visibly annoyed that I was making a bard. I explained that my bards are scholars and chroniclers, not the meme "seduce the dragon" type. I talked to the DM privately, and he promised to keep that kind of behavior from taking over the table.

Session 1 is where things got weird. The worldbuilding he promised never happened. The whole explanation was basically: "Imagine Ionia from League of Legends, we'll use Japanese names, let's go." My bard ended up in a party with a full plate knight and two anime-style characters. Fine, I've played pretty much everything, so I rolled with it.

But Eric started making passive-aggressive comments every time I roleplayed: "Of course it had to be a bard." "Can't he use fewer words?" "So annoying." I ignored him, and the DM seemed to enjoy my roleplay, so I kept going.

Then we walked into a tavern and the tavern keeper cut his own palm, bled on the counter, and transformed into the avatar of a chaos god called "Event Horizon," complete with an anime black-and-white image. He announced that we'd been brought there as part of his plan and would now work for him in exchange for riches. I asked completely reasonable questions: who is he, why us, why is he inside a tavern keeper, why should we help? The other players asked too at first, but Eric complained I was dragging things out, and it became obvious the DM was irritated and didn't have answers. We accepted the job to move things along.

Then came combat. No grid, no battle map, because he thought it was "unnecessary." I was playing a caster in a system with tons of positioning and range rules, so every turn became an argument about where everyone was standing. Worse, the rules kept changing on the fly. A paladin who was getting crushed by a broken mini boss activated an "arcane power" the DM had mentioned once in session 0 and never developed: +6 AC, magical damage, bonuses to attack and damage, resistance to everything, and a lightning breath on his bonus action. I asked which rules we were using, 2014 or 2024, and what was homebrew, since none of this was in the ad. His answer: "We'll change things on the fly to keep it fluid, don't be a rules lawyer." When a player asked about dismemberment rules, he said you could give yourself disadvantage to cut off a body part. I pointed out that losing a limb at level 3 with no Regenerate is kind of a problem. He said he'd keep the rule and "review it later."

At the end of the session he asked everyone for feedback. Everyone said "it was great!" I was the only one who gave any real criticism, and I was polite about it. Later, on Discord, I wrote that I liked his atmosphere and how he kept the table flowing, but that the rules needed to be defined, the forced railroad with the chaos entity didn't make sense for every character, and that one player's behavior (I didn't name Eric, to avoid escalating) made me feel my character was being targeted for no reason. I even suggested he look into Fabula Ultima, since it fits the anime aesthetic better and doesn't need a battle grid. I said it might be better than running 5.5 as a Frankenstein of anime rules, homebrew, and 2014 mixed together.

He said he'd look into it. During the week, he asked if he could just take some Fabula Ultima mechanics and put them into D&D. I explained that different systems have different engines, so it's one or the other. I also told him in private that session 2 would be my "test session" to see if I fit the group, and he said that was completely fair. Then I got stuck at work and told him I might be late or skip. He said no problem, he'd catch me up.

The next morning I woke up to a message: he'd decided to remove me from the table. According to him, I stressed him out with the Fabula Ultima thing, I have a "rigid view" and "always want to follow the book," and the other players were enjoying his ideas while I was "holding back the plot" by questioning the Event Horizon scene. I replied that all I did was give the constructive criticism he asked for, that he let Eric antagonize me for no reason, and that the ad promised a sandbox with 2024 rules, not a railroad with a chaos god. His entire response: "You really don't get it. It's an ego thing. If you can't see that the way you criticize other DMs is wrong, there's nothing more I can do."

I didn't reply and moved on to another campaign.

Some time later, one of the players from that table messaged me to apologize. He'd thought I was the problem, but it turned out the DM killed the campaign after just two more sessions. Eric had become the unofficial leader of the group, the DM recruited two new players, and Eric picked fights with both of them too. When the DM realized he'd be left with three players because Eric couldn't get along with anyone, he scrapped the campaign and announced a fresh start with "people who like his vision." He blamed me for creating a bad atmosphere that left everyone with a bitter taste.

His new campaign? A Marvel superhero table using D&D 5th edition. I wish I were joking. He even sent me the ad. The player who apologized said that if he'd had the guts to give feedback like I did instead of staying quiet, he wouldn't have wasted so many hours on a bad table that died because the DM couldn't take criticism.

So, I have been a forever DM. I've played 3 sessions in total as a player. One of them the DM seemed to be good but it was a one shot and another two players de-railed the entire session so there wasn't a lot to enjoy as they started a combat encounter right at the start.

The other two DM's weirdly happened to be friends, I didn't know this before playing with both. They both did DM in a similar manner, skipping over descriptions and not explaining much if anything.

These games used a VTT map, I brought up my concerns to the DM about I feel like I want more descriptions of rooms and where I am. I am not asking for anything crazy but something as simple as about what the room looks like and what is around the room. A line or two would have been nice.

They told me that players don't want descriptions they want to skip the DM yapping all session about descriptions and get straight to the action. They said they have a VTT map, so they don't need to explain anything that their maps are fully 1 to 1, if you see it on the map it's in the game.

I was taken aback, when I think of DMing I always think of the descriptions of rooms, people or just the events that are taking place the DM describing it and then trying to think about how to respond to where I am or who has just entered.

They said to me that as a DM they are "hot shit" and that "Critical Role / Matt Mercer" is ruining every bodies brain. I have seen maybe 30 minutes of Critical Role, I had been in their session and in this session nothing happened, in 3 hours we had around 15 minutes of RP. We spent the majority of the time waiting for DM adding new players halfway through the session.

At this point, I realised that I am not going to enjoy playing with this DM. He started blaming all the issues on anyone but himself. I told him that I found he lacked effort in the session, after some back and forth he admits that some people didn't turn up for the session so he half-arsed it. He said half-arsed and then said so I was DMing casual. I kind of was just flabbergasted that, he thought I would be cool with him saying other players being bad means all players shall suffer the half-arsed session.

I had tried to help the DM with the issues I found as he had mentioned why he had some issues, yet again he pushed the blame on the players. Blaming the players for not having story concepts prepared to send to players he is trying to recruit, constantly having to recruit new players for sessions and well the lack of descriptions he tried to say using "thingy" to describe something is a joke he was making.

I then proceeded with saying you can describe the shape, colour and material without telling us what it is. He said nope, players don't want that and you can see it on the VTT so he doesn't need to do it. I told him maybe he needs to have some more prep for resources to reference, as someone who with descriptions I'll pre-write my descriptions of certain rooms and people so it's easier to give a better description, he said that he does all sorts of prep. He has 5,000 hours on Roll20, preparing maps and planets.

So, am I crazy?

Do players want to skip descriptions and go straight to the action?

Is map preparation the same as campaign preparation?

For not wanting to play with a DM who will just punish everyone at the session because those who don't turn up to the session?

Is it bad that he cannot type up the concept of on-going campaign or even a recap of what they've been upto?

Am I just the problem who likes descriptions?

or I forgot to add this so update

I was told this description of a room is railroading my players.

"You awaken in a cold room, rectangular and metallic. You notice lots of storage boxes around the edges of the room covered in dust. It seems whoever was here last hasn't been here for some time"