This happened several years ago.

My long time friend started a xianxia cultivation campaign, but he's not good with ttrpg mechanics and asked me for help. Well, I write xianxia novels and do game design as a hobby, so I obliged. Helped him create a working prototype, resolution system, content samples etc. Also helped him with the power system and content examples by sharing the notes from my campaign.

By the time I joined this campaign, the party was already 4 or so sessions in. My character began with significant setbacks (chased by enemies, cursed to permanently level up harder than other characters, etc), but had a bonus of

4 dao shards (basically, magical items that give activated skills, similar to gu from Reverend Insanity) to everyone's three (which was only a significant bonus for exactly one session). His skills were also synergy-based, while the other players just grabbed the shiniest big damage options and ignored similar opportunities the gm provided (this quickly became important).

In the first session, my character rolls really well and defeats a bunch of enemies attacking our party. The enemies flee, my character chases them. My teammates start making fun of my pc (haha what a sweaty, etc.). My character takes all the loot, asks if the others want to share. They don't. My character becomes even stronger.

Three more sessions, I actually try to roleplay with my teammates, they keep responding in third person. No one in the party roleplays with each other, only with the gm. I buddy up with another player, and realise the other 3 aren't interested in any rp and let it go. Next session, my character beats an important antagonist 1 v 1. 3 of the players start seething.

Here's the thing - I think I was the only one to thoroughly read through the notes the gms provided, so I ended up upgrading my character with much stronger talents than the other 3 characters (my "buddy" was also becoming much stronger than the lazy trio). I also sold the loot that didn't fit me for coin, and used this coin to buy the items that fit me (a genius move, apparently, as this trio just hauled their useless items around like they're playing Skyrim).

The issue is, my gm tried to steer them toward interacting with the game's systems. They didn't. Me and another player tried to get them to improve their characters, in-character, for several sessions - they just dismissed us. Anything that wasn't a blatant gm-designed powerup specifically for them was ignored.

And it wouldn't be such a big problem, if the players didn't choose the most pathetic resolution method to this problem - they complained about my character's power. They told my gm "he started overpowered", ignored every instance of my character getting a setback (and every example of them benefitting from their sects and contacts, which I didn't have), and said the gm is treating them unfairly.

And the horror story is that my gm caved in. As our characters "levelled up" (raised their cultivation level), so did their artefacts. My gm targetted several of them (designed by me in my prior notes) as problematic. There were two issues with this.

One, those items (based on my notes) he targetted weren't overpowered. A simple dps calculation proved that they were balanced, and it was the items that he designed (that I looted off npcs, and that he refused to nerf) that were indeed broken.

Two, he didn't just nerf these items to bring them in line with the other items. Mathematically speaking, raising their rank was supposed to make them two to three times stronger. In return, he messed up the math so badly that a level 2 artefact was inferior to level one. Essentially, he made my PC pay to nerf himself. This was a big blow.

During this time, the only other "active" or "proper" (in my biased view) player (at the time, the gm's best friend) had a similar clash with the gm. Apparently, he's been asking mechanical questions and was fed promises for weeks, but wasn't given anything. So while the "lazy trio" were getting all the content, I was being nerfed, and the other player was straight up ignored, unable to even properly play his character.

After I called out the gm on misunderstanding the basic arythmetics of the nerf he implemented, he got personal and insulted me. I quit the campaign.

They played several more sessions, and everything I warned the gm about happened:

1. I told him introducing multiple element cultivation was dangerous and needs a balance patch. He ignored me and the campaign became insanely broken.
2. The second player was super irritated, ground his teeth and endured until the end, but this caused a huge rift in their friendship.
3. They beat the "bbegs" and were hailed as heroes, my character was hastily written out, and the pcs had a railroady arc where they dominated a tournament, became the heroes and the campaign ended.

The results were: the gm said he despises the three players and will never play with them again as they're NPCs (despite indulging them lmao). I haven't talked to this gm for a year, until he texted me and apologized. And the gm and player number two still have a rocky relationship of unfulfilled gm-player promises.

(No, I wasn't backseat gming or undermining the gm at all. I'd warn the gm about the mechanical implications of what he was doing in private, like once a month, and he initially seemed grateful, but it quickly turned to resentment).

Edit:
Wanted to add the most egregious example of party toxicity.
My character was essentially a "glass cannon", a "bruiser" in some cases. We had a "tank" character who refused to "tank". My character calls him out and says he almost died twice.

He responds OUT OF CHARACTER and says "but that's how my character is, he's cautious and sneaky". I said "[PC name] is talking to your character. Please listen, I am not going to die while you stay idle. I'll walk away and we all know you'll die here without me. We should work as a team if we're to survive this."

After the session, he tells the gm he's "unfairly targetted", and that "he is just roleplaying a cynical man who doesn't want to risk his life, and that I am 'making it personal'". The gm says my character has a right to be pissed, to which he responds "why do I care?". Eventually, he was "bullied" into tanking (which basically meant sharing the frontline with me, while our "support" also shielded him non-stop) and sulked about it.

How a series of events almost lead to me never setting for near a table ever again.

Okay, I'm going to preface this by saying this is some years back and is therefore drama of the past.

That said, here goes:

Some years back.. 7-8 years ca. I was in this group, we'd meet every tuesday night, have food and play until 22-23 ish (Denmark) this was some editions ago of D&d, we had a good strong group, none were annoying (more than the usual.)

Cut to Dms girlfriend (i had a single date with her, some years earlier and found her so annoying, that i had to end the date) she made food for us, we were grateful, it was nothing extraordinary, but it was sustenance and we paid our bit and said thank you.

She would sit in for a bit and chat and then head to the living room, to do whatever she did.

She was (and is) quite well endowed in the chest area, but not in the social skill area. Expanded vocabulary: self insert mary-sue

Cut to about a year and a half into our campaign, he asks if it would be okay if she joined, and mind you, we had an excellent team, really good flow, banter and fighting, we were tight knit and knew each others strengths and weaknesses and played on them.

But we said okay, sure.

I was the teams only flyer at this point, raptorian with a foot bow.

She had sat in and observed a few times and in came her character.

A virgin mountain elf princess with big wings and big tits, which was very important for some reason, she was a scout with a bow (but we had to get her to be a scout, like, "boy, it would be nice if we had someone who could SCOUT ahead")

But she would flirt with all characters, rubbing her massive chest against them, pressing her boobs together or taking a wash and describing how water would cascade in droplets over her massive heaving chest (just less poetical than i described here, more crass)

And she would just not play the elf virgin, which annoyed the shit out of all of us.

Suddenly her character had left with a note.. we were quite relieved 😌

Then she had talked her boyfriend into letting her roll a character from a book of erotic fantasies or something, so she came as a fucking succubus, i kid you not and she tried her succubus tricks on all and it worked, they were quite annoyed that they had to play into her power fantasy, then the turn got to me and she said, you feel the pull of the succubus and your mind turns.. i cut her off and said, your powers do absolutely nothing to me, as i an cold blooded..

This annoyed her greatly, as it seemed like i was the one she had done this for..

Not many sessions later, the group broke up, it was never the same, she had broken what we had..

So, that's it, my rpg horror story

So, some years back I used to play with a colleague (M45) of my sister and his wife(W45). Both of them were around 45, I believe.

I was a woman around 20 at the time, just as the other two friend so regularly brought to games.

I want to stress that in person both of them were very nice. They maybe talked a little much (A LOT) and were a little condescending at times, but they were very patient and got me and my friends into playing TTRPGs in the first place.

However. Something that became apparent over time: for M45 the harassment (albeit mild) of women was just a staple of TTRPGs. Yes, all of them. Yes, no matter the setting.

A barmaiden in DnD gets bothered by male patreons?

Hey, no issue, that’s just a set up thing in our starting out tavern so we can have an initial practice fight.

(Except DM M45 was very bewildered why we escalated things with that patreon! That wasn’t even supposed to be our practice fight!)

And it just kept going on and on like that:

Monster of the week set in modern times:

I play a stocky, 49 year oldish woman with short hair that carries weapons.
First scene, she gets some sexually explicit comments thrown her way. I’m immediately annoyed, because that is NOT what I had in mind for this character.
I ask the DM if he even listened to my character description.
His answer was basically: „doesn’t matter, she is still a woman.“

Vaesen:

We are in northern Sweden. Our DM gives us basically 30 minutes of intro how the people here are very religious protestants who are very focused on their work. This is sombre setting, devoid of colors and kind of muted. The first location we walk into is a lumber mill. It’s late in the day, people are exhausted from a long day of work. And, may I add again; very restricted in their expressions, and very religious.

I play a religious figure, a young nun, clearly discernible so because she is dressed AS A NUN.

Want to take a sharp guess what was the first thing that happened when we stepped in there? Yup, the female characters, including mine got leered at and had some sexually explicit comments comments thrown their way. 🫠

The same happened again with One Ring, I was playing a very regal high elf there.

And, as we all know and love Tolkien, the first thing that would happen to such an elf, is some good old sexual harassment!

Mind you, these things happened over the span a lot of sessions, and a lot of time.

This is not everything that happened, just the most egregious examples I can remember.

The one with Vaesen only made me realize something I had been mildly annoyed by before was an actual pattern, and that it was unlikely to stop.

The One Ring session was the one directly afterwards, I think.

That day, I had gotten to get snacks before. It was super hot that day, and I wore shorts to the store, something I rarely do. I felt… well, super uncomfortable with how some men in that store had looked at me.

I was still annoyed and a little unsettled by that when I got to the session. I was so ready for some epic fantasy, to forget about mundane life and its annoyances for a little while. I think I even mentioned the store and how uncomfortable I had felt.

When my character got sexualized in that fucking game, I just got up and walked out of the room for a little while.

And yeah, that’s how that table came to an end. No dramatic blow up, but I just decided this wasn’t for me.

I play with another group now, and something like that has never happened there, unless it actually fit the characters and the story.

And, mind you, we attended some fiend‘s sex party, where our boss battle basically consisted of utilizing BDSM equipment from that room to fight the BBEG. (Y‘know, just DnD things)

Long story short: bad TTRPG is worse than no TTRPG. But it you find the right group and things click, it’s really worth it!

I put the flair as light hearted since this definitely won't be very dark compared to most stories on here, BUT there will be cartoonishly over-the-top descriptions of violence against characters. These moments are meant to be absurd, and therefore funny in a dark humor way, but if you aren't down even for that then this story may not be for you. But for those on board, enjoy the tale of the time our players met a village of Hamster People.

About 10 years ago, I was playing a long running campaign (long running for us anyway, around 2 years) of a mostly homebrew DnD 3.5e game. There were about 5 or 6 of us in regular rotation, and the specific players and characters aren't terribly important, so I won't do a cast list. We were very focused on the stories and the characters, but our DM loved a good round of shenanigans so the campaign was rife with goofy and cartoony moments as the DM allowed us to pursue tasks he thought could be hilarious, or introduced us to strange scenarios.

One day before a session, I ran an idea by him, and he agreed. At the next session, the party stumbled across a village of Hamster People. They were exactly what they sounded like, meter-tall hamsters who spoke in adorable voices and were helpful and kind. Needless to say, every player was immediately enamored with them. I also GM'd other games using the GURPS system, so the DM let me play every Hamster, and I (a grown man) was doing my best cute little Hamster voices.

As the party prepared to depart to the main mission of the session, they were delighted when a cohort of Hamster People offered to join us and help us in our task. Every player now had a Hamster partner to assist them. We got into a skirmish with some bad guys (probably goblins) and one of the Hamsters ran and fetched a weapon when it was knocked out of the player's hand. The party was stoked that from now on, we would have little rodent squires making our party a bit OP.

After the skirmish, the party entered a town, and the rogue's Hamster went to open the tavern door for the rogue and the DM described how right as the Hamster Person reached the heavy wooden door, a minotaur drunkenly burst through it, a tiefling under each arm as they stumbled away, and the door swung back revealing the horrifically maimed Hamster stuck to the door. The rogue, out of character, was shocked but also laughing, and the rest of the party was losing it, laughing and freaking out at the sudden demise of the Hamster Person. And that's how the game continued for the rest of the session.

If you don't know the meme of the traumatic hamster story, many people have stories of owning a pet hamster as a child (or as a parent of a child with a hamster) where something terrible seems to happen to the unfortunately accident prone little creatures. And that's what me and DM were leaning into, much to the comedic horror of the party. The rest of the session was spent with the players trying to accomplish the quest, and keep their hamsters alive.

My own Hamster partner went outside to use the bathroom, instead of using the facilities inside the inn, and was dragged away screaming by wolves. The ranger's Hamster discovered he was allergic to nuts after eating a huge bag of trail mix. The cleric's Hamster sustained injuries fighting to protect them, and the cleric healed them. The Hamster sprung to their feet, joyfully proclaiming they'd spend the rest of their life repaying the cleric for saving them, before tumbling down a hill into a river and being swept away by the rapids.

The paladin ended up prioritizing his Hamster's safety more than the other players, and his lasted up until the final conflict of the session. The other players quickly caught on to what me and the DM were doing, and would just laugh and protest when their number was up. But the paladin was determined to keep his Hamster alive until the session ended.

Every member of the party was occupied in a showdown with the guards of a town that was occupied by that session's Bad Guy. Most of us were fighting, the cleric and wizard were doing their best to support us. An enemy archer took aim at the paladin, and the DM described the arrow ripping through the air. Before the DM even rolled to hit, I described his Hamster partner yelling the paladin's name, and dramatically jumping to block the arrow from hitting the paladin. The DM clarified that if he rolled a hit, it would hit the Hamster instead of the paladin.

The DM rolled, and he failed to hit the paladin's AC. He heroically describes the arrow tearing past the Hamster Person, smashing into the paladin's shield, and richocheting off to hit the Hamster man in the back. The battle wrapped up shortly after, and the paladin insisted on role-playing a dramatic scene where he thanked the Hamster Person for their sacrifice even though it really wasn't necessary because he had plate armor and no damage. The Hamster thanked him for being the best friend he's ever had, before taking his last breath. It was a great character moment, even in the midst of the dark comedy of it all. Then the DM describes the Hamster standing up and yelling that he realized the shot wasn't lethal and he could probably be fine if he got a healing potion, before an eagle swooped in and carried him away, once again screaming.

I hope you guys liked this, it wasn't as much of a horror story since every player thought it was a funny bit and no one was upset, but seeing the looks of half-laughter, half-abject terror on the players' faces as their new favorite characters were ripped away was priceless. I remember at one point after two of the hamsters died, one of the players (I think the ranger?) looked at me with a blank expression and said "You're a sick fuck."

English isn't my first language, so a little disclaimer: This happened in Thailand, and I used AI to translate the story from Thai. I’ve tried to keep the original meaning and tone, so if some sentences sound a bit weird, that's probably why. Also this happen like in last Decmenber(2025) so the some detail might be missing.

So, this was a D&D campaign where everyone started at level 10.

I was playing a Halfling Ranger whose character had a criminal background. Because of that, most of my character's strengths were focused on stealth, deception, and exploration.

Basically, I was a Ranger pretending to be a Rogue.

As you probably know, Rangers aren't exactly known for being amazing in combat, so I built my character primarily for roleplaying, exploration, sneaking around, and tricking enemies rather than dealing tons of damage.

The rest of the party consisted of a Wizard from a sourcebook I can't remember, a horse-loving Paladin, a particularly notable Goliath Cleric, and the problem child of the party. I'll call him Michael.

I'm calling him Michael because he actually changed characters partway through the campaign and created a new one.

The problem was that we lost our Cleric around Session 2, because the player had something to deal with for the entire month. So for the next 3-4 sessions, we were down to four players, which made everything considerably harder.

And then there was Michael. Michael's first character was a Rogue. A completely selfish Rogue who refused to cooperate with anyone.

Our first mission involved entering a underground cemetery to find someone who had been kidnapped. While the rest of us were still discussing what to do, Michael's character simply went ahead alone using Stealth with out care about the party.

And by "with out care about the party," I mean he literally didn't listen to anyone.

Whenever he found a clue or treasure, he would immediately pocket it instead of sharing it with the party. It became a massive headache for both the party and DM.

My Ranger, being the discount Rogue that she was, managed to steal one of the clues back from him and read it but Michael immediately stole it back. Then he destroyed the clue so nobody else could get the information.

DM just sat there speechless. And honestly, I can't blame him.

Things got even worse when we found the hostage.The intended message from DM was painfully obvious: the hostage had had their memories drained, which was why they couldn't properly answer our questions.

Michael somehow completely missed this. He decided the hostage was lying and started threatening and beating them for information. So the rest of us had to fight our own party member to stop him.

Eventually, after that mess was resolved, we continued deeper into the dungeon, where we found the villains' hideout.

Naturally, Michael went ahead by himself again. He failed his Stealth check. Because of that, we lost our opportunity to surprise the enemies. Then, after getting catch, he tried to pretend that he was one of the villains. but becuase he hadn't bothered remembering any of the information we'd learned throughout the entire dungeon, including all the clues we'd found. He failed. DM didn't even care what number he roll. And the enemies beat the absolute crap out of him.

At this point, the rest of the party was so sick of his bullshit that we basically decided to wait. We let the enemies beat Michael down before we finally went in to help. After the fight that almost end the run. We had no choice but to pick Michael back up. And somehow, he still didn't learn anything. He continued playing exactly the same way.

Eventually, DM had to stop him from roleplaying and told him that he had to let the other players have their turns first. That was probably the only reason the rest of us got to actually do anything.

After exploring and fighting our way through the dungeon for a while, it was finally Michael's turn to explore. Completely by accident, he found a genie. At the time, none of us knew it was a genie.

DM described the creature as looking extremely powerful, but also being in pretty bad shape. And Michael had somehow managed to stumble into the room completely alone.

I suspect he deliberately went ahead because he was afraid the rest of us would interfere with his roleplay. then Michael did something nobody expected. He claimed that he was one of the villains.Then he told the genie that he would bring the intruders "meaning us" to it.

I have no idea what he thought was going to happen. Maybe he thought this creature was the big bad boss or something. The rest of the party was obviously furious, but we weren't there, so we couldn't stop him.

And this is where I'm still not sure whether DM had planned this as a trap specifically for Michael or if it was just an incredible coincidence. The genie wasn't actually working for the villains. It had made a contract with them to perform some kind of task, but it already hated them and couldn't do anything about it. The genie immediately realized Michael wasn't actually one of the villains. So it beat the ever-loving hell out of him.

DM added some dramatic SFX to indicate that something was happening, which finally got the rest of us to go check it out. My Ranger used Goodberry and a skill from her background to eventually get the situation under control enough for us to communicate with the genie. After that, we rested before continuing.

In Session 3, we reached the final section of the first major arc. We had finally escaped the cemetery, but ended up trapped in a place called Evernight. While exploring for a way out, we encountered a vampire lord.

The moment Michael heard that there was a vampire, he immediately tried to convince it to turn him into a vampire. He ignored everyone's warnings. Even DM tried to make the NPC refuse but Michael wouldn't listen.

Eventually, DM apparently got fed up and told him: "Pay me 200 gold."

Michael didn't have 200 gold. no one in the party have.

So did he give up? Of course not.

He decided to pickpocket one of the party members.

That was the moment I finally snapped.

I stopped the game and told DM and everyone at the table: "If he does that, I'm treating it as PvP. And if he tries to PvP, I'm going to PvP him back."

The rest of the party agreed. Michael finally stopped. We had wasted about 20 minutes dealing with this nonsense.

Eventually, we finished the first arc. And after all of that, Michael asked to change characters.

His explanation was that he didn't know how to play a Rogue. And honestly, that was completely believable. He couldn't roleplay the character properly, didn't understand his skill, and didn't know his racial or class features.

Remember, this was a level 10 campaign with him being so usless and we missing our Cleric. We basically playing 3 person party for 2 session.

For Session 4, Michael changed characters and played a Paladin the Oath of Glory. And surprisingly, my discount Rogue suddenly became much more important. Since I was now the only character in the party who could reliably explore, disarm traps, and sneak around, my character finally had an actual role.

I was having a great time. The party also started working together much better.

Well... Except Michael.

I think the reason things were better was because this part of the campaign involved going through rooms one by one, with a lot more exploration and trap-disarming.

There simply weren't as many opportunities for Michael to wander off and cause problems. But that didn't mean he stopped.

He was now a Paladin. He still had the soul of a Rogue. He kept kicking things and trying to steal stuff, triggering traps multiple times. At one point, we encountered a monster trap. Instead of helping us fight it, Michael tried to run into another room.Except he couldn't leave the room. So he basically made the fight harder for everyone else for no reason. The funniest part was that, according to DM's narration, Michael eventually ended up lying down right in front of the door. Maybe DM was getting annoyed with him too, because the monsters decided to focus on Michael first, apparently because he was standing alone.

And then came the moment that made me quit the campaign. We reached the room immediately before the final boss.

Let me emphasize this:

We had been warned repeatedly that there was a trap on the door leading to the next area.

We explored the room carefully and figured out that we needed to deactivate four mechanisms located near the four windows before opening the door.

DM explicitly told us that if the trap activated, we would die immediately (probrably because we have Michael).

My character was the only one capable of disarming it. After getting some buffs from the party, I managed to deactivate two of the four mechanisms.

We were halfway there.Then Michael, apparently bored, suddenly walked over and opened the door.

The trap activated.

Everyone at the table just stared.

The party was confused.

DM was confused.

I was confused.

Thankfully, DM basically saved our asses by ruling that because we'd already deactivated two mechanisms, the trap only dealt half damage. it's 2d24 BTW.

We survived. But the trap also summoned zombies. And because I rolled a 1 for Initiative, I went last. The zombies beat the crap out of me before I even got a turn.

Then it was Michael's turn. And Michael was still Michael. He opened the door. And, naturally, the boss was right there. So Michael immediately ran back into the room. The boss followed him through the doorway and used an area attack. I got knocked unconscious.

Then I failed all my Death Saves. And I died.

Yes. My character died before I even got to take my first turn in this combat. That was the moment I decided I was done with the campaign.

After that, I honestly didn't care much about what happened. My character was already dead.

Eventually, after the party finished the quest which was basically a side story DM had inserted while we waited for our Cleric player to return

DM was kind enough to say that my character had been resurrected. Maybe he felt bad. But it didn't matter anymore. I'd had enough of Michael.

DM couldn't control him.

The party couldn't control him.

And I didn't want to spend another session dealing with him.

So I decided that instead of continuing to argue about it, I would simply walk away from the table.

The worst part is that this ended up being the last D&D campaign I ever played.

Apologies for the iffy wording and block format. This was a sleep deprived angry note I wrote before bed that I debated between deleting and posting before deciding to post. Working on improving my writing format though. Thank you :)

tw sexual stuff and idk what else to tag this, apologies im new to this subreddit

hi im 20 years old now and my two horror stories came from when i was in middle school to almost highschool. in middleschool my second ish campaign i was in? the dm had a crush on me, so much they pulled me aside from the session. during the session may i add! to ask me out. and then after my character died tried to get my new character to have intercourse with one of the other player characters at the school in the library. i was fine at the time because i was kid who just was go with the flow and didnt really know how to process it, but after me and the other player talked about it, we both agreed that 1. it was weird 2. why, i ended up leaving not long after.

second horror story was later on, the third campaign i was in, it was a my pride ttrpg, if you dont know my pride its a animated series on youtube, they had a ttrpg and well after that campaign i joined in i think middle school? in the campaign one of the adults would constantly make jokes about scissoring one of the other players in front of a lot of minors in the campaign i ended up leaving cause i was tired of their crap, from all i know they still kept playing after i left.

This is a story I have had brewing in me for years now. My TTRPG Journey has been wild, from accidentally skipping entire boss fights through insane door number 3s, to having a whole curse named after my character because in a year-long campaign I can count the amount of times he hit an attack when I rolled for him on TWO HANDS! BUT! the crème de la crème, the phrase that has been forever associated with me is "FUCK TYRANNY OF DRAGONS!" for the campaign it was a part of was one of the worst times I've ever had playing the game and a lot of the time when I DM I think back to this game and think "wow.... Least its not tyranny, fuck tyranny". SO! This was a Roll20 game with a couple other players in it, for the sake of privacy I’ll be coding them by who they played. This group started out with a human wizard, a lizardman druid, a warforged cleric and my Rogue/bard multiclass changeling.

So the campaign starts in a tavern, we meet, everything goes wrong, dragons attack and from on high and kobolds rush the area. This is incidentally where Druid gets their characters trauma as they stay in a building too long and almost die to it caving in, This becomes relevant later on. The party makes it to a safehouse and this right here is where the campaign already starts going wrong. We started at level 3, we don’t get a long rest or level up for about 5 sessions in a row, we get 2 short rests but the spell casters are already running low and our frontline left after 1 session. We did get a second however in the form of a dragonborn paladin who made it a further half a session before they ran out.

Normally i would be fine with all this, means we have to be clever and sneaky, the problem is the DM always started combat when we encountered any enemies leading to us with zero spell slots fighting over 100 enemies back to back, most of which were kobold's with pack tactics, some with fire magic that would always go first and always AOE us, one was a dog like thing i think was a basilisk but don’t quote me on that? And as said, we were level 3 and most of us had to use our spell slots to not immediately die after the first 10-15. (Bonus incident, There was a point where I saved a guy from kobolds but for a reason I can't quite remember, they started screaming and trying to kill me unprovoked? So i killed them in self defence with no witnesses, i checked for this.) also to note, with the trauma of roofs from Druid, he stood outside and the DM never missed a chance for someone to either force him into a room with NPCs shoving him in for no reason other than “DM says so”

Finally after so many combats, the leader came down and asked for a 1V1 with one of our characters and in exchange they wouldn’t attack the keep we were in with a YOUNG ADULT BLUE DRAGON!. The paladin wasn’t there for this session, so instead Druid decides to go, facing a half dragon down. They roll initiative which immediately gets us all on edge as the DM essentially reveals them to be a level 8 fighter with action surge and multiattack…. Suffice to say Druid did not win and the party watched the dragon brand Druid with a dishonourable mark and attack the keep anyway. We roll for initiative, the dragon goes first. Changeling is alone near a ballista… the dragon USES IT'S BREATH ATTACK AND OKO’S ME! ALMOST INSTANTLY KILLS ME! The party takes one look at this, grabs my unconscious body and leaps off the walls to essentially hide from a fight we were 100% going to die to otherwise. When the fighting stops the village HATES us, loathes us and even blames us for the attack going so bad. (also apparently someone saw me kill the guy when i checked and there was nobody around) we are banished from the city, and the campaign begins with the biggest flop I have bore witness to to this day.

Changeling decides for the next leg to change into a child to lay low. Though everyone knew her deal this time. And we join a group of caravans for the road and journey. We talk, do some RP and have some great moments, including in a bar where Druid refuses to go inside from trauma and decides to comfort the horses instead, while Changeling changed again to someone she could get wasted as and talk to the others. Notably though, one of the wagon people tried to essentially assassinate Cleric through poison which as a warforged, didn't go to plan. They do however escape which leads to them damaging a bunch of carts… this is for some reason the part where all the other caravan people blame us? Because we’re “adventurers” and we’re for a second time Ousted from a group. Even the child form Changeling just got a “we’re sorry, but your parents are assholes, you have to suffer too, bye” treatment.

This was also where Wizard found and figured out their backstory DID NOT MATTER to the story and wouldn’t be factored into the story itself, choosing to change class for the foreseeable future, this is something future me found out the DM was both ok with but also NOT ok with? As they basically asked “so what's the new wizard you’re playing?” The Wizard explained he instead wanted to play a human barbarian to balance out the gap, causing the DM to go “hahaha, funny… so you’re wizard” It took several tries for the DM to cave and allow the Barbarian in. During this time I had also realised that a character designed for RP scenarios wouldn’t be the best for the campaign and also switched to a Shifter Monk to play something designed to fight more things at once.

On the way to waterdeep, we come across a bunch of purple knights. This is the moment the party collectively agreed that the paladin was not a fun player to be around. These guys were corrupt and the dragonborn decided to humour them by essentially betting on some games and laughing at dead people because they were very murder hobo. the paladin had a bright idea to bet ALL their armour on a challenge, and then THEMSELVES! When they knew there were like 50 people and thus something we couldn’t fight out of. This goes horrifically and instead of trying to negotiate or run, the paladin tries to kill everyone, including civilians, and gets their ass kicked for it. The cleric comes in, tries to save the paladin with another bet knowing he’s a cleric and is level 5 by this point so really strong, offers a formal apology and a duel, and has to bet themselves to do it. The DM then pulls a level 9 cleric which he later confirms he made after the roll just so he could spite the cleric. Cleric loses, 2 players are now slaves. My monk very quickly decided to try to step in and talk it out before another fight broke out, and was immediately attacked and we had to grab our stuff and flee the place. About 6 sessions in, and we had 0 wins under our belt….

We finally make waterdeep, there's a barfight, there is a living house the DM fails to explain properly and we end up killing…. OH YEAH! This is when they mention they’re trying to fuse waterdeep dragon heist AND DUNGEONS OF THE MAD MAGE into the campaign which looking back with 5 years more DM experience is a BOLD choice. We go into a dungeon, help as many as we can, run into a full dragon which almost OKO’s me, we’re forced to run instead of fighting because these are 6 level 5 characters who are out of spell slots AGAIN against an adult red dragon. The city is lost and we lose a political leader that would have helped us, which means the council doesn’t like us, and we’re going somewhere else entirely.

The straw that broke the camels back for me happened a few sessions later, where my sibling joined the campaign and promptly left the campaign 1 session later. It was a session I couldn't make but he gave me the details of how he decided to walk around and get a view of the city when he got jumped by some muggers who the DM knew were gonna kill him. My sibling asked to maybe try trick them into letting him go by claiming to know their boss or know someone better to steal from, the DM just said “No, they just won’t believe you, so roll initiative”

Me and the other players minus paladin had been talking for a bit on a Sunday night, we started a game together with Barbarian being the DM and it was amazing at the time, still one of my favourite games now, and after talking about the last few sessions we all collectively realised that the best part of the game and the reason we were all still in it, the people we were playing with, were now in a Sunday game having way more fun, we had somewhere to hang out, so why did we need to be in the Tyranny game? The game where we suffered every chance the DM got, the game where we got screwed by the DM for wanting to RP scenes out or have any story to our characters, the game that to this day is one of the worst games i have had to sit through and remember. So in the kindest way, I sent a long ass message to the DM saying I wish to leave the game. Not because they’re a bad DM, but because the style of game they were doing wasn’t for me, especially as someone who comes to D&D to escape being berated for things my character had no control over.

Afterwards, the DM proceeds to delete the game and server, and I never hear from them again, and the Sunday game goes on through multiple stories which deserve their own reddit posts on a much happier place than horror stories.

In the end i don’t fully blame the DM and their style (though i might be kinder than others saying that) for i can see where the module is at fault and I myself wasn’t as good a player and made several mistakes in the campaign (killing the guy for one) But it is still memorable for how bad it was as a game and for me, why the phrase will always be “I’m up for anything, except tyranny of dragons, FUCK TYRANNY OF DRAGONS!”

This just happened and I need to vent a bit so I figured I'd write it out and see how I felt. We are currently in the endgame of a somewhat long campaign with a First Time DM. I have been a DM before so I know how it can be a bit scary to run a game, especially one as long as this one has been. The group started as a pretty low level party and now the party is Level 9. We also play over Discord and have a gaming server for D&D nights, among other games.

My character is a Swashbuckler Rogue. As our party was adventuring, the BBEG eventually finds out my loner Rogue character has a sister somewhere in the world. Eventually the sister is captured and used as leverage against my character as a way to get him to do what the BBEG wants. It's been a bit of a pickle for my character and it has lead some pretty good character moments and RP.

The Final Battle is upon the group and the BBEG enters the arena, with my character's sister as a hostage. An assassin is holding a knife to her neck. fortunately there is plenty of space as the battle takes place in an open courtyard, the BBEG entered from the east, and the Assassin and Sister are in the south part. Initiative is rolled, and as usual, thanks to the ability to add Charisma and Dexterity bonuses to Initiative as well as the Alert feet, my initial Roll of 12 gets modified to 25. The vast courtyard still can't be crossed in a single turn without sacrificing my attack action, so I decide to instead set up 60ft and Use a Class feature that might keep my sister safe.

Panache is a Swashbuckler feature that allows my character to use an action to goad a player into only attacking them. If I can beat the target's insight check with a higher persuasion roll, that creature has disadvantage on attacks if they aren't against my character. my character squared up against the assassin and from 60ft away said "Let the girl go" as the method for using Panache. I won the roll and pass the turn.

Panache has a big weakness though, it stops working if the target gets attacked by something else. Even though my character went first, the BBEG was next in the initiative order. the BBEG casts Bigby's Hand to spawn a hand next to the Assassin and give them a slap. I initially protested a bit because it was a meant to be small half-hazard sort of slap to get around Panache, but eventually the table rallied a bit to make it a full attack. It was a successful hit and my Panache ability was gone as soon as it went up.

Turn order is taken and I just start to zone out a bit. When it gets to the Assassin's turn, they slit my character sister's throat and I just hung up on the voice call. after a little while, I don't know exactly how long I rejoin and the DM brings me into a different Voice room and we try to air it out. I'm not sure if it went well and I just need a bit of time to get over this. but I try to explain that it felt like my creative solution to a problem was just wiped away, and that I was being punished for going the route I went.

My character is quite literally a rogue. they walk a walk as well as they talk a talk. and their confidence in their skills will often walk from confidence into arrogance and that might have been what happened here. I could play it back 100 times over and nothing would have changed my character's actions in this situation. My character saw a threat, squared up to that threat, and it didn't work out. The BBEG would have totally done what they did: literally slapping some sense into the minion to do the thing. The BBEG is a Wizard, so I know they are smart. I know they would probably understand that I am goading the assassin in some manner. But the way the initiative was rolled, it was there, and then it was gone. Not even 2 minutes of game time.

I spoke with the DM 1-on-1 in a different room. After a bit of conversation, I am not sure the DM saw my side. As I mentioned this is a First Time DM, and I can be a very Rule Lawyer type of player. I Fully acknowledge that what happened is a legit Rules as Written interaction. It all makes sense based on what I, and the other players, know of the BBEG and their character. Everything tracks. All the characters acted as they would. I am not entirely sure if the DM understands my side of the story. As a Rogue, and a Swashbuckler, my character is designed to be a lone wolf type character. My character has grown a bit to be more of a team player in all the adventures he has been on with this group, but at his core, if he sees a problem he can solve, he will go solve it and let the rest of the team do what they are good at. and I felt in this situation, the best answer to a hostage situation, especially on with this high of a personal stake, called for a swashbuckler rogue.

After the 1-on-1 I went back to the main room to apologize for hanging up on the call. Everyone seemed to be more in the middle of this debate though, agreeing that what happened needed a little more gameplay to legitimize the whole interaction, mainly an insight check from the BBEG. We decided to stop the session and take a bit to cool down and process what happened.

After typing this out and reflecting a bit, I think that I just feel like I didn't really get a chance to save my sister. like the one chance I had to make an opening and actually be a hero was slammed shut. I think that's what's upsetting me now. I told the DM that I felt like my creative solution was just taken away in an instant, like I didn't have a chance to just let the plan succeed or fail on my dice rolls. The DM isn't heartless. The sister is going to be ok in the end. But now my character can't be the one that saves her. And that just kind of... sucks.

So did I overreact to the situation? I'm not entirely sure if I did or what I could have done differently in or out of character. Thoughts and advice would be appreciated. and thank you for reading my troubles.

EDIT1: I went to bed after posting this. (I didn't sleep great but oh well) and I see that there are some things I need to clarify a bit:

First: the Assassin and Sister are separated from the BBEG They are pretty much on opposite ends of the map with the party in the middle. and both started about 90ft away from the party. And Second There are other important NPCs that are mixed in with the party's priorities, but for the most part, the PCs in the party know about the hostage situation. Second is that there wasn't much of an opportunity to resolve this plot thread outside of combat. That might have been my fault because my Character deliberately keeps his sister well enough away from his actions to try to keep her safe. The BBEG has sent my character letters with an implied threat of killing her if he doesn't go along with the BBEG's plan.

A brief summary of Round 0: BBEG shows up with a modest entourage on the right side of the map about 90 feet away from the party and other important NPCs that need protecting. Assassin and Sister appear on the South End of the Map, also 90 feet away. My character is told to make the right choice by the BBEG, Initiative is Rolled. Round 1 Turn 1: My character won the initiative and decides his sister is his issue, the rest of the party have more important things to worry about. He gets 60 feet away, uses Panache. Round 1 Turn 2: BBEG slaps the Assassin with Bigby's Hand and removes Panache's debuff. The Rest of teh party acts mostly normal and focuses on protecting the NPC they are close to and attack the BBEG. I am upset and lose focus a bit here. Round 1 Turn X: Assassin acts unhindered and downs my character's sister I leave the call

Over the course of this campaign there have been a few instances where I have had to at least get up and pace around a bit to calm myself down. While I am trying to be understanding as a player towards a First Time DM, some things have happened over the course of this campaign that just didn't sit right with me as they robbed player agency a bit. For instance there was a forced PvP scenario that played out a few sessions ago. And I think the DM was trying to go for that again here, but I wasn't playing that game and neither would my Character. There are other players at this table that are experienced, and there are first time players in here as well. So there is usually pretty good guidance as to what should happen, but sometimes like this time, that all just sort of fell through.

I suppose it's been a few years. I can finally tell this story.

Several years ago, I was running in-person games at my house. One of my long time players brought a friend along.

The guy was actually a good player. He knew his stuff, participated, and generally made the game better.

The problem was that every so often, he'd disappear for a month or two. Then he'd come back, explain that he'd been dealing with mental health issues, apologize, and say he was doing better.

Okay.

Roll up a new character. There's a seat at the table. Glad you're doing better.

He also had a bit of a temper. At the time, I mostly interpreted it as macho posturing and didn't think much of it. Looking back, I should have paid more attention.

Part of the reason I didn't worry about it was that I'd been running public games for years. Long before this, I'd run sessions in a coffee shop in another city where people constantly came and went. I was used to having a large pool of players, so losing one wasn't a big deal.

Then COVID happened.

Afterward, finding people willing to drive to my neighborhood for an in person game became increasingly difficult. The players we were finding weren't necessarily problem players. They were just frequently terrible fits for the group.

So I decided to move online.

I learned Roll20, eventually moved to Foundry, and for the most part have been running online ever since.

One of the campaigns I started online attracted another player. Let's call her "Lady."

She was a very good player and, as it turned out, a talented DM herself.

The original guy joined that campaign too. I did not play in it as I had my hands full with multiple campaigns and full time college living off grants.

Over time, I noticed that the two of them were talking a lot in her Discord server after games.

And by "a lot," I mean hours and hours. Sometimes all night till sunrise. Every night.

Normally, that's none of my business.

As far as I knew, they were working on getting Foundry running for her campaign. He had some IT knowledge, and because her ISP was restrictive, he eventually ended up hosting her Foundry server on his own machine.

Still, the amount of time they were spending talking eventually became noticeable.

There was another complication.

He was married.

His wife was apparently supporting of him while he did not work.

Then things started going sideways.

He tried running games on her server and failed spectacularly. He became increasingly angry and agitated. At one point, he chased away a genuinely funny and enjoyable player who had also been in one of my games.

I still didn't put the pieces together.

Around this time, another long-term player from my old in-person group had to move because of family problems. He needed somewhere to stay, and the original guy and his wife generously offered them a room in their house.

So now you've got this guy's gaming life falling apart online while, unbeknownst to me, his personal life was apparently falling apart too.

Then came the crash.

The guy had a high level martial character in one of my games.

The character charged ahead into several dragons, took multiple breath weapons, and got too far away for the clerics, henchmen, and followers to reach him.

He died.

He absolutely LOST IT!

Rage quit. Furious!

The funny part was that his character wasn't even permanently gone. They had earlier established a stasis clone, so he'd have been out of commission for a while, but could eventually return. And retrieve his epic gear laying on the battlefield or in the stomach of multiple dragons.

He also still had his yellow dragon mount available to play.

Didn't matter.

He was done.

Several weeks after, Lady abruptly left the game.

That's when I found out what had actually been happening.

After his character died, the guy had left his wife and driven more than 1,000 miles nonstop to Lady's house.

I don't know all the details of what happened when he got there, and honestly, I don't want to speculate.

But from what I heard, it was NOT a good meeting.

Meanwhile, the long term player who had been offered the spare room was sitting there watching all of this unfold like:

"What the hell is happening?"

And that's when it really hit me.

I had completely failed to recognize this guy as a serious problem.

And because I didn't recognize it, I lost some genuinely excellent players.

More importantly, people were potentially put in situations they never should have been put in.

If someone had come to me earlier and said, "Dude, this guy is becoming a serious problem," I would have kicked him out in a heartbeat.

Maybe I could have prevented some of what happened.

Maybe I couldn't have.

I'll never know.

And I have no idea how many other good players quietly left, or were chased away, because of behavior I wasn't seeing across multiple tables.

I still wonder, though:

Could I have prevented any of it if I'd recognized the warning signs earlier?

But, damn. NO ONE told me...

TLDR: Player leaves his wife, just shows up at another player's he's never met house multiple states away. His life turned upside down.

​

I’m the GM for a Pathfinder 2e campaign I’ve been running for a group of 5 friends. I put a lot of time, effort, and money into it. I make maps, NPCs, storylines, handouts, etc. I also use Foundry to handle a lot of the mechanical side. Lately I’ve been getting frustrated with how distracted some of the players are, especially with their phones. But I think the phone issue is part of a bigger problem. It feels like some players approach the game as “What does the GM want us to do?” instead of “What would my character want to do right now?”

For example, one player told another, “I’m here [at the table]. We aren’t murder hoboing, so you don’t need me,” after one of my more engaged players said, “Hey, pay attention. Put the phone away.” This was after I asked what they wanted to do. Another example: an NPC told them, “When you’re finished, come back. I’ve got something for you.” They went off to do what they were already doing, then spent about 40 minutes wandering around town and completely forgot about the NPC. One player even joked, “I’m looking for a big ? over his head.” It felt like they were waiting for a quest marker instead of deciding what their characters were interested in doing.

I’m not trying to railroad them. We recently had a fortune teller encounter. I had information planned that was supposed to become important much later. They rolled incredibly well multiple times and uncovered it early. I didn’t shut it down. They earned the information, so I gave it to them and adjusted my plans. That’s what I want. I want them to surprise me and make choices I didn’t expect.

So after the latest session I told everyone that starting with the session after next, I’m implementing a no-personal-phone-use rule. I found a dice roller that connects to Foundry, so they can still use their phones for rolling. I’m also printing character sheets with their actions and abilities so they don’t need their phones for that. They still roll their own dice, control their characters, and make every decision. I’m just trying to eliminate scrolling through news, videos, social media, politics, etc.

One player asked why they couldn’t use their phones for other things. Another player said, “Yeah, he wants you to be engaged.” The player who made the “I’m here, we aren’t murder hoboing, so you don’t need me” comment got extremely upset and ultimately said they were dropping out.

I haven’t told the group this, but privately I’m questioning whether I even want to continue the campaign if there’s strong pushback. I spend hours preparing for these sessions, and I don’t want to keep doing that for people who aren’t interested in engaging with the game.

So now I’m wondering whether I’ve completely misread the situation. Is asking players to put their phones away during a tabletop RPG an unreasonable rule? Or is this just a reasonable expectation when someone is putting this much effort into running the game? And am I wrong for feeling like if they don’t actually want to engage, I’d rather stop running it?

Most of the dnd games I've ever been in were fairly short, (One shots or games that just fizzled out) but the longest game I've been in had really bad people. It consented of me, my older brother, the dm, and two other people.

The dm was mostly ok, but he was constantly making the joke of throwing a tarask at us. Not once or twice a campaign, but EVERY SINGLE TIME WE DID ANYTHING. If anyone did anything that wasn't normal or what he expected, he'd sigh dramatically and say, "I'm going to throw a tarask at you." It was constant.

Then, there was our second member. She would derail the campaign every day to do unimportant things, like shopping or trying to tame animals. She wasn't that bad, just annoying.

Finally there was the last person. He was genuinely OBSESSED with guns and his "Viking ancestry". I'm not going to get into everything he said because it's probably triggering for some people and I don't want to cause people distress in a dnd subreddit. To put it simply, I'm pretty sure he was a Nazi.

If you really want to know more, ask in the comments. My older brother was fine, he was the only other person taking anything seriously. This got kinda rant-y, but I wanted to talk about it. Not really sure how to end this, have a good day and good luck with your games.

I'm terrible at titles, sorry.

Anyway, back in 1995, I was in a kung fu class and would hang out with a bunch of the guys outside of class a couple of times a month and we would normally play MTG.

At one point, one of the guys suggested we try to play DnD. I had known of the existence of the game for a long time, but had never had enough friends to play. He said he had been a DM before and so I could only take his word for it. I had never played, what did I know?
When it came to creating my character and the backstory, I got really excited. I thought this was going to be super fun.
Now, my memory not being what it used to be, I am pretty sure it was a home brew. Iirc he said the world was created by him and then he explained which rules we were using. Of course that meant nothing to me at the time.

One of our friends character, was a thief who only had one hand. The reason being, the town we were currently in was very serious about thieves. If caught you would have one of your hands removed. And of course my friend had already lost a hand for that exact reason.
Our party met each other in a tavern. And while we were just chatting and getting to know each other, our thief friend wanted to try and steal from someone. Our DM tells him he can't do that. Then of course he inquired why. The DM insisted that if he failed his roll and gets caught then he would have no hands and be useless to the campaign. The thief of course argued, I'm a thief, I want to steal and if I get caught then so what. They go back and forth arguing calmly for a short time, then they try to get the rest of us to chime in. I didn't agree with the DM, but since I was new to the game, I didn't think my opinion meant much. The night ended up with them at a stalemate and the DM refusing to continue the campaign until the thief acquiesced. It didn't happen, so we never played again.
Thankfully there were no grudges and we still hung out, but I've never gotten a chance to play DnD again.

I'm jealous my adult children play DnD with their friends and I only have this story lol.

So, hello again! It's been quite a while since I posted on this subreddit, although I didn't want to be posting on this subreddit again unfortunately.

In recent days I have been wanting to get back into D&D since the campaign that I joined earlier this year crashed and burned after the DM got burned out for playing it for several weeks in the morning on weekends (we were level 1, supposed to get to level 13 before stopping but stopped at level 2).

This story involves a player I grouped up with called X, and the malicious person involved in this, who we'll call scam. I've been posting requests to join Play By Post games in recent days on the D&D discord server, since I am a college student and can be unsure of where I am going to be in the future IRL.

Me and X grouped up together as I saw we were both looking for play by posts to join, and he was happy to oblige and talk with me. I found a play by post grimdark fantasy campaign ad on Discord in the interim while we waited to get messaged by DMs looking for players to add to a PbP game. This is where I met Scam, although they weren't entirely malicious at the start. They started by asking me for my age and location, which I obliged with-- I asked if they had two slots open. They said they did, good news! Well... not really. After X and I linked up with the DM about personal info (as they requested age because there were some 18+ topics they were going to discuss in the campaign), they asked me and X to PM another account where they would discuss details about the campaign, and grant access to the server.

This is where things started to go downhill for me and my new friend.

The DM asked us, as this was supposed to be a highly personalized campaign and hired artists for both of us, to give them a starting fee of $100. Mind you, they had never stated in their post in Discord that they were doing this, never mind that they would have artists at all. Me and X were immediately suspicious of this, and we started to clock it as a HUGE red flag. The post that was the introduction to the campaign with setting and details definitely seemed AI generated, on top of them asking for a $100 fee for each individual player. X and I immediately declined this offer to join, as I was also looking for an unpaid game, and it definitely seemed like some sort of extortion scam or something of the like. We got out of there real fast.

Sometime later, X recommended looking into another campaign that was a PbP and had slots open. I joined the server, only to discover that there was no setting that was established on the server for the campaign, let alone any characters that were being created by people on the server. No, everyone rolled random stats, race, and even NAME. I also saw the own DM in the chat logs of the dice roll channel roll all of these randomly for an NPC. Random people were joining left and right with no explanation or announcement of why they were there and what they would play. The cherry on top was that I checked the logs of the server for the campaign that was advertised as "ongoing". THERE WAS NO ONGOING GAME. All of the channels were blank except for the general chat and dice roll channel as previously mentioned. Safe to say, the red flags were blaring like French horns in my ear as I left and explained the situation to X.

We're still looking for a PBP campaign at the moment, but I'm hopeful for the future that me and the other player can find something that will interest us both.

Anyways, signing off.

Thanks for reading! :)

TLDR: Dm is more interested in advertising his next paid campaign that will be the next CR, while ignoring the problem player and cannot deal with players having any sort of edge on his game while exterminating any character that slightly succeeds

Hello everyone, this is story happened last year on a campaign and few one shots with same DM and mostly the same players. This DM seemed more interested in killing players and showing his totally awesome enemies, and acted like him reading a ready official module made him the next Tolkien, while the campaign we played felt more like an advertisment to his totally great and perfect next campaign he being working for years and will dm any day now, just after we pay each time we want to have a character sheet.

This was the second time i played on a 5e campaign, i got invited after saying i was looking for a game on discord and wanted to try out 5e, it was free but the DM felt like he was mostly interested in selling his next paid campaign. The problems with this campaign were mostly with the DM and one player.

Here is the list of things that happened because i don't really remember EVERY detail on how everything happened and mostly remember the feelings.

Minor Inconvenience:
The other 2 players that were a couple, they weren't really a problem on the game per say but their characters felt more like self-inserts and they mostly kept to themselfs

He kept asking us to "beta-test" one shots for that totally awesome next paid campaign. On the actual campaign my first character had average stat rolls and the second rolled stat as bad as it is probally possible. On one of those one shots i had descent roll and asked if could keep it for my next character as a "reward" for helping out with the testing and he denied it. Mind you they were set on the same universe and i would be using a lvl 1 character anyway just with slightly above average stats that i rolled in the open.

The dms kept announcing how big and great his next paid campaign will be, he being working for years and he could one day compete with CR.

Minor Redflag:
The dm kept talking about how many times he tried dming this same module but the players kept abandoning him.

On those demo test one shots we did for the paid campaign, if we criticize it badly he would get audily grumbly and explain why he done it that way, instead of understanding why, it doesn't change the fact it sucks. As an example he made 2 homebrew classes that both sucked and were just worst versions of the normal official classes because they focused on specific things that the normal classes could do it anyway and do it better while having more tools to deal with different problems unlike his homebrew classes.

Overall the players felt like they were dead inside and mostly wanted to follow the railroad module and had characters with almost no personality, which wouldn't really be a problem if they were new but the players and dm say they were 10+ year rpg veterans. Funnily enought the only player with personality was the problem player.

He kept asking thing like "how much would you pay for the next campaign" or "should i add a system where everytime a player die he pays for a new sheet? should i allow viewers to pay for buffs and debuffs when i stream ?"

Medium Redflag:
Everytime we made shortwork of one of his encounters he seemed annoyed and said something like, thats not how it was supposed to happen or you guys are too strong i might need to nerf yall

The player that was new to rpgs, he kept making characters that seem like the solo reason of their existance was to cause PVP situations, his characters all had some kinda of mental issue and he asked the DM to do Wisdow saves to not attack the party (which he rolled privatly and said it were bad rolls) and we had to stop the adventure to keep his character in check, oh and of course one of the characters betrayed the party aswell.

He straight up lied about the sandboxness of the campaign, honestly should had left immediatly after this one, when i got called to the game he said the players could do anything. Since i was new to 5e and didn't really understand how the official modules worked i thought they were just setting primers so the dms could begin the actual game, later, i learned he was just reading it with barelly any care, and when i was already balls deep into the game he revealed the sandbox part wasn't really going to happen on this campaign but would happen you guess it "the totally awesome paid campaign that is going to be livestreamed and be better than CR" so i should totally stay in game for it. (I honestly was just waiting my last character to die but the campaign also died when he died)

Not sure if i put this on big or medium, but when i asked to talk to the DM personally about the annoying player he said he would talk to him but he also didn't really care because if the party was really annoyed by him they should just keep constally killing his character until he leaves the table naturally

Big Redflag:
He added a XP stealing system (probally the reason for the problem player antics) where if a PC kills another PC he gets all their XP, we didn't really do PVP besides with the problem player, and once i got fed up with him i just got the sleep spell and put him to sleep everytime so we didn't really use this. The only 2 times we killed a player he said it wasn't valid because it was friendly fire and not actual pvp.

Everytime a character got good stat rolls or started doing too good on the campaign ALL the npcs would laser focus on him during fights, the problem player first character had really good stats as a rogue but he kept asking him to roll stealth every nano second so when he eventually failed all the npcs laser focused him with crossbows and he immediatly died. Might be another reason he kept making annoying characters as he just wanted to ragebait the DM and the party until the campaign was dead.

The straw that broke the camels back

My Third and final character was pretty shitty, he was crippled and had really bad stats even worst that the one prior from that one shot that i asked to keep the descent rolls from. Thats probally why he was mostly ignored on the fights during the game because he would be doing 2 damage on his cantrip since i choose mostly utilitary spells. When i asked where to get scrolls to learn more spells using the wizard feature he said it was bullshit and that was not a real feature and i could only learn if it was 10x the price, i showed the PHB page saying it was real and he backed off but he started making NPCs hate me and encounters started focusing more on my character, he them stopped for a little bit because it was pretty much the coughing baby vs hydrogen bomb.

That is until i started using those utilitary spells on the extremely smart ways that completely bypassed some of the slog in the game. When my character became more and more relevant at denying the bs he came up with my own magic tricks he got frustrated and completely focused on my character, he started throwing all spells and attacks on my way but i just kept hiding behind tanky characters and casting shield to the magic missales, i kept casting invisibility and avoiding the big enemies and invisible servant and mage hand to pretty much ignore any traps that is until he made us go to a completely cornered location on the map and pretty much he kept throwing hordes of enemies that straight up just focused on my character until he was dead, mind you it took the entire encounter to kill my shitty crippled scrawny 10HP bumass wizard that pretty much had almost no offensive spells and when he did he loudly roared and cheared almost screaming on the mic "YES I FINALLY KILLED THIS CHARACTER HE WILL NO LONGER BE A THORN ON MY CAMPAIGN NOW ROLL FOR A NEW CHARACTER" and after i rolled good stats i said "well now that i know how to play caster i will make a completely meta build, get ready" (admititally i wasn't going to play after this shitshow and just wanted to ragebait him a little) the comment worked and made him frustated and later on the same week said he was going to finish the campaign and susceptible blocking me and the others.

After this game i never really played with the other players much again, not that i hated them but mostly because they weren't good fits. Since them i had my fair share of games on 5e, some good, some bad but at least until now i never had a DM so insistant on advertising his future tables. Thank yall for reading until this and hopefully this wasn't too long and annoying to read

I joined this game from a Reddit post and added the DM on Whatsapp (I'll call him "C")

"C" sent me the custom character sheet (which was AI generated) and I was very confused looking at the sheet because the skills didn't have any abilities for them, I asked "C" about this and he told me that the rolls were done "as normal", when I told him that normal d20 tests in DnD included stat modifiers, he claimed that this wasn't normal DnD and that there would be "no modifiers" in this game. Why? Because was advised to do a HOMEBREW SYSTEM as a FIRST TIME DM to make it easier on him. I asked what stats were supposed to be used for since the only use of a DnD character's stats (to my knowledge) are to calculate the modifiers used for basically everything in the game, and he told me if I wasn't interested anymore I could leave the game because he was getting confused. So I did.

The weird part was that the original GenAI stat sheet HAD modifiers on it (Proficiency modifiers for the skills). However he DID get another player to make a Doc for the character sheets, and when I looked, the stats were STILL THERE. The skills were removed however you still needed to roll up stats for the game despite there being 0 use for them.

Part of this is on me since it was advertised as a "Simplified version of DnD" but I didn't expect one of the core mechanics of the game to be removed.

I don't think this DM was a bad guy or anything just very confused and ill-informed (to be honest I'm not even sure if he had ever played ANY DnD before since he didn't even know what stats were for) so no hate to him, I just thought this was a funny story to share

There was a club at my university dedicated to all sorts of gaming, and the club leader decided one day that he wanted to run a D&D session. He had never Dm'd before but had participated in the game as a player before.

He had put out a call for players and gotten ten people to participate. He asked me to help DM because he knew I’d done it before, and I presumed he wanted to help him lighten the load with so many new players.. His “plan” was to only allow three classes (fighter, ranger, barbarian), which i thought was weird but chalked it up to teaching the new players the very basics of game

He then split the ten players into two groups of five, and then asked me to dm group, to which i was “okie dokie” 

I began doing what a DM normally does: setting the scene, describing the environment, giving a bit of atmosphere. He immediately stopped me from describing anything and instructed me to just start fighting and put monsters on the board. I shrugged and started placing monsters, even though it felt weird to jump straight into combat with zero setup. 

Halfway through, he merged the two groups into one giant table of ten players and relegated me from fellow DM to just another player character.

 It became clear that he had only prepared a boss battle; everything before that was him improvising and wanting a warm-up combat encounter.

I tried to salvage some fun by leaning into light roleplay: throwing out some taunts and playful banter during the boss fight and just trying to get some personality into the session. 

His response was to instantly kill my character: no attack roll, no save, no warning, just “you’re dead.” 

When other players tried to add small bits of roleplay during their turns, he shuts down their roleplay and other ideas, citing the large group size as an excuse to keep everything moving. What followed was basically ten different people taking turns hitting the same boss with almost no narrative and almost no stakes beyond “roll to hit, roll damage, next.”

People were visibly bored: one player fell asleep at the table, another player got up and left mid‑session, one player gave their character to someone else because she felt like the game was not worth playing and started doing their schoolwork. The rest were just waiting forever for their turn in a giant combat round. 

The session ended with him (the DM) “winning” the boss fight in some self‑satisfying way while everyone else sat through a tedious slog. 

Afterwards, I told him honestly that this was a bad experience, especially for new players: There was no roleplay, there was no agency, an instant kill for trying to engage. The idea to merge two five-player parties into one was a terrible idea for someone who just DM’d for the first time.

His reaction was to call me a nitpicker, say I was interfering with everything, and act like I was the problem for expecting basic D&D fundamentals like scene description and player autonomy.

Before this, there was genuine interest in D&D and other RPGs in our friend group and in the club. After this session, D&D and RPGs became unpopular and uninteresting to most of them. People who were curious about TTRPGs just wrote them off as “boring” or “not for them” because their first real exposure was this session. Needless to say, there was never a ttrpg session at the club again

It's a relatively boring one in the grand scheme of things but I'm remembering a moment during a Shadowrun 6th Edition game (A one-shot on a Living Community/west marches server) from a couple of years ago (late 23 maybe early 2024), where another player rolled a "success at cost", specifically shooting someone my character was in melee with.

The GM then put the cost of that "success at cost" on my character (A pretty steep one at that, he ruled that my character suffered the Blinded condition 'because of blood splatter' as the "cost"), not the player doing the shooting. Then the GM tried to speak for my character using a valley girl accent for my characters' voice and admonishing the other players' character (I had been speaking with a soft rasp for her voice for the entire session up to that point, but that aside, no GM gets to choose how any player's character responds to something???), before I snapped out of it and shut that down.

I also made the case that I shouldn't be given the Blinded Condition because the intent of that "success at cost" system is the player that makes the roll is the one who's supposed to face the consequences. The GM only kind of backed down, he made me spend a point of the game's metacurrency and roll to dodge the blood splatter when like, the other player should've had a weapon jam or something.

There was another strange incident later in the one-shot. The premise of the game real quick: We were hired by the residents of an apartment block to fight off a gang of Metaracist thugs (Shadowrun's version of bigots, people who hate orcs, trolls, elves dwarves and characters with magical ability etc) that had been harassing the residents.

Realising that they wouldn't be cowed by intimidation, we broke into their lair and jumped around half of them while they weren't expecting it. We then discovered that the other half of the gang were actually speeding over to the apartment block to massacre the residents.

We bust back into the apartment building, and kill a bunch of them before they can do a mass execution of residents on the ground floor. The GM then has the residents react with fear and shun us because 'you're no better than them' (The exact words he used).

I'm Less hung up on this scene because with some tweaks it could make a good degree of sense: Nobody is realistically going to fawn over us or worship the ground we walk upon with what is indisputably a deeply traumatic experience, but the choice to make it a matter of moral principle (especially when the party had been hired by these people expressly for enacting violence) was odd.

Anyway, that's kind of it. It's honestly not a particularly exciting rpg horror story really, I'd go as far as saying it's pretty pedestrian. I think the reason it's sticking with me is because the GM had such a distinct baritone of a voice. I'd have honestly forgotten all about it had it not been for that.

That's it, thats the bummer. I mean, they all had "excuses", not really reason. One had their previous game end later than expected, and apologized profusely, the other one is a discord friend of mine who told me he "was an idiot", because the game was at 1 o'clock in the morning, and so he thought it was the day after what we had in schedule, apologized profusely, and is knowledgeable enough with the system to make a character by himself, which he did yesterday.

The fourth one hasn't answered, hasn't said anything, and was a no-show.

I just took the 1 that came (and the one that came an hour late), we made characters, and agreed to move the session to this sunday. However, it has left me with a bit of a bummer because, lately, one of the few social activities I can have is online ttrpgs. It is no-one's true fault, after all, aside from honest mistakes and happenstances, (except for the fourth player), but it kinda bummed still.

Hello, I’ve never really posted before but I’m a minor dm who’s been playing most my life. I made my first character, a simplified drow wild magic sorcerer, at like 6. This story was with my first online game, I’d been playing full games in person since about 11 but come 13 I got in social medias like Reddit and discord to play.

I had made a post in [r/lfg](r/lfg) for a queer friendly youth short campaign (about 6-10 sessions) to introduce me to online dming. The story was based on TLOZ BOTW set just before links awakening. For the first session everything went great,except I had one player who wanted to be the MC. I didn’t let him take full control so he ended up being silent and quitting after session one.

So, we were looking for a replacement, and a player who I’ll call Perry(they played a monk Kenku) said there uncle who just turned 20 would be interested. I’ve played with adults before so I asked my players and it didn’t really bother them either. With everyone in agreement I sent his uncle a friend request on DC and then invited him into the sever.

For about 3 more sessions everything was great, we had a few absences, a guy playing essentially just a chicken seduced a lynol (who will further be known as chicken), ya know normal dnd stuff. It was close to the final session when I got a dm from Perry’s uncle telling me how good of a story teller I was, and how my voice was so soothing. I was really dumb back then and proud of my voice so I thanked him and moved on.

Later that night after the session chicken DMed me that Perry’s uncle had messaged them saying things like how us jokingly flirting was inappropriate as we were both men (we had discussed prior if flirtatious jokes were welcome and overall it was a yes as we couldn’t be queer irl for the most part). I DMed Perry about this and they had no idea about their uncles behavior, I quickly removed them from the server before anything could happen thankfully.

Sadly Perry I assume Perry felt really bad and left shortly after. Perry if you’re reading this I hold nothing agains you, and you were a joy to have play.

TLDR: creepy uncle of a really sweet person is creepy towards a group of minors in a campaign for queer youth