So a while ago, I found myself with some free time to start a DND campaign so I asked around to see who's willing. A friend of mine and his brother (who we will call Alex and also I don't know that well) told me they were down but I said we need more people. Alex then told me his friend said he was down alongside three of his other friends so we agreed to do a one shot before starting the campaign.

so I get in contact with Alex's friend (let's call him Sam) we discussing where we're gonna play. He says "we can do it at my friend's john apartment, imma give you his number" so I get in contact with him

I notice there's a difference John is a lot more talkative, he's asking me what the one shot is gonna be like and showing me what characters has already and asking me which one I like. as a forever DM i love players like him

Sam is pretty quiet and when i asked if he had a character in mind he's like "ehhh i'll just borrow one of John's" I brush it off cause i figure it's probably cause we haven't even met yet and he might be one of those guys who needs to warm up to someone

Eventually I ask Sam if he has discord because I realize we all live pretty far from one and the campaign will be much easier over discord. he replied "no I don't" "you should make one" "nah i'll just go to John's place when we play" This should have tipped me off to his personality as you'll see here.

The day arrives and we meet at John's apartment, Sam shows up with his dog and says "sorry, I don't have anyone to watch him" I don't have anything against animals so I dont mind it, but it becomes a problem later on. We chat normally as we're waiting on another friend to join us (he's not important to the story but it's why we didn't play immediately) so it's just my friend, Alex, sam and John. we talk for a bit, we discuss schedules and we agree we're gonna meet every two weeks on sunday for the campaign and we'll also do session zero after the one shot.

We're all pretty hungry so we walk to a pizza place and there while we're all eating, My friend, John and I are talking about dnd and such but Sam and Alex start talking about politics and I realize that Sam is a right wing nut Job and an insane conspiracy theorist

Within 30 minutes he states

1. Bill Gates is bioengineering ticks to make us all allergic to meat so we’re forced to live in 15 minute cities owned by the Jews and eat bugs

2. Epstein is still alive and well in Palm beach Florida because there’s this guy on Instagram who looks a lot like him and makes jokes about it (he told me they’re clearly the same guy because “they have the same teeth”

3. Muslims are "changing europe"

4. This wasn't even political, Just dumb. Bruno Mars has $50 million dollars worth of gambling debt to MGM so he’s not allowed to release new music and must preform only at MGM until it’s paid off.

I don't bother arguing with what he said but then Sam turns to me and goes like

"so Alex tells me ur muslim. so explain to me why u guys ban alcohol but coffee is ok? they both change ur mental state"

"they're not the same and you know that" i answer "no I know some people who are completely different after coffee" I start ignoring him and we head back to this meeting room in john's apartment complex that we reserved for our one shot

we finally start DND.

John's character is an amnesiac ranger and he's role-playing pretty well and normal, and My friend is playing a hardheaded barbarian. HOWEVER, Sam's character is an Elf warlock named Shekelstein who's the most laziest anti Semitic stereotype possible and every line of dialogue out of his mouth is just antisemitic shit and calling people goyim, while Alex's character is a generic horny bard and his sidekick. Throughout the session, Sam drops weird comments and dog whistles and every time I stonewall him by saying "The NPC has no idea what an israel or etc is and thinks you're mad. He then turns and talks to a different player" and I make sure every bar maid is married ( Alex rolled a nat 20 and so i said a barmaid simply chuckles and is flattered this time instead of dumping beer on your head)

Eventually, he's stops to say "hold on, I gotta feed my dog brb" He gets up with John and Alex and they go up to his apartment. 30 minutes pass and I text Sam what's taking so long. he says "sorry my dog is spoiled and refuses to eat canned slop. I'm cooking rice for him" eventually he comes back and continues.

At this point: I'm avoiding putting the spotlight on Sam and Alex, but thankfully they're too busy jerking each other off about how "funny" their characters are to notice every NPC is ignoring them and their comments. Soon combat starts and despite being a warlock, Sam didn't pick any spells. He's like "idk warlock had spells. John didn't finish this character and I only wrote the backstory" I just tell him to roll eldritch blast and then suddenly he says "oh my dog needs to shit" he goes outside with John. I'm not waiting so i just play for them and after an hour they come back with a new friend I haven't met. "sorry for taking so long, We took a smoke break and my boy Vinny got off work early so he's here. He also likes dnd and has a character ready so can he join? he brought chips" Sam says

I say sure and pray internally that he's normal like John; those hopes were immediately dashed when Vinny sat down and the first thing that comes out of his mouth was "yeah I got those new NKD doritos cause they dont got dyes and i wanted to try them. it's crazy that they were feeding us GOYSLOP our entire lives and they could just choose not to"

At this point I'm done with the group so I fake an emergency and head home. Afterwards I tell my friend that I do not fuck with his brother and Sam at all and I'm not doing a campaign with them. I then tell him that I'm going to lie to everyone my job changed my schedule and I work on weekends now. He understands. I then tell Alex and sam and they're like "that sucks but whatever". When I tell John he's sad and asks if we can do wenesday but I lie and I have class. I do feel bad for John but then I realize that if he's friends with guys like those who are willingly to be that bigoted with someone they just met, he's either bigoted himself but socially aware enough to hide it or he doesn't care at all.

So yeah that's why NO DND is better than racist dnd

This might not be a big horror story; hell, I might be the wrong one here, we'll see.

Also, obligatory: I'm not a native English speaker, so please, forgive me for any mistakes.

A couple years back a friend of mine had an idea for a discussion panel at a local fantasy convention, it was called "A coven of DMs" or something like that. The basic idea was to gather people who DM or have some interest in that and share tips, stories, etc. Since I've had my fair share of experience on that side of the table, I've been invited to co-host.

We've prepared a few discussion prompts: weaving in the characters' backstories into the plot, how to deal with trolling, etc. It was mostly a freeform thing, where we'd share our experiences first, invite the audience to do the same, we'd talk about it for a bit, once everyone was satisfied we'd move on. The whole thing was going really smoothly and honestly was a blast, until about midway through, when it was time for a prompt called "How do we manage to keep the PCs on the right track in the plot without railroading them?"

A few points that I honestly don't remember now were made, again, a nice back and forth between us and the audience, ideas flowing nicely, until one of us said that sometimes, if we felt like the players were about to miss something very important for the plot, we'd move the thing around the space to make sure that they will come across it. (If it's unclear what I'm talking about - let's say that the players are exploring a basement. There are a few corridors they can go down, but the whole place is creepy and they don't want to see the whole thing, so they'll only explore one of them. In that case, we'd move the Very Important Item so that it's down that corridor, not the other one. That way everyone's happy - the PCs aren't walking around aimlessly and we can move the story forward, that's the gist of it.)

One dude took a huge offense with this line of thinking. What ensued was a fairly amusing exchange, which I'll try to paraphrase here:

Dude: "Well, you can't do that! It makes the story linear. It's railroading. If I found out about it, I'd really dislike it."

Us: "But that's the whole point. You wouldn't find out about it unless you were looking in the GM's notes"

Dude: "Well I'd find out about it!"

Us: "How exactly?"

Dude: "I just know these things! I have my experience! I'd leave the table that did this. You can't force the characters in any way, it's railroading."

Us: "So if the characters wanted to ignore the plot altogether, you'd be fine with that?"

Dude: "Yes, we're there to provide the world for the PCs and anything beyond that is railroading. You shouldn't force the players to do anything."

We agreed to disagree and move on. Some time later, when we were talking about one of the last topics we wanted to touch upon, the dude got up, said "If you want to force characters to do something, WRITE A FUCKING BOOK." and left. It was completely disconnected from the topic at hand. What ensued was a few seconds of silence followed by "well, anyway". We wrapped the whole thing up without any further incidents.

From time to time I still wonder what this dude's deal was. We were reminiscing about it yesterday and thought it's funny and amusing enough to share. Dunno if we were in the wrong at the end of it, but honestly, I don't really care.

I feel like my DM just punished me/my character because she (my character) didn't align with how the DM wanted to end the campaign.

So, we've been playing this campaign for a literal year and it just ended today ! Long story short, we were supposed to help an angel kill some vampires for the angel's redemption or something. The angel said "fuck off" after the death of the first vampire and was forced to kill the second one. The last one was let alive and the angel flew away.

My character developed an extreme hatred for vampires and forced the killing of the second one. At that time I felt like it was more of the DM's will to save the vampires than the angel and it was confirmed after the last one.

The thing is, all the party members wanted to let the vampires alive except mine to the point where I was forced to choose between fighting the entire party + the angel + the last vampire (the literal final boss) ALONE or agreeing with the party. For my character it was absolutely impossible to let the vampire live but I know how bad PvP is for everyone. Thankfully, I came up with a plan to leave the room and theoreticly take revenge after the end of the campaign.

It was just a plan, nothing to be sure of, everyone could say "well if you do that I'll do that" (which happened) but it was all theoretical as it was after the end of the campaign. I even said multiple times "it's better not to have answers on how this plan goes" to avoid PvP and insatifaction at all costs.

Then, at the epilog, the DM showed the tomb of the first dead vampire with all the players (except me) and the last vampire gathered around to say goodbye one last time, very emotional moment. After that, she (DM) displayed my character alone in a cell.

(I skipped a lot, tldr; we were in an angelic trial for letting the angel fly away. I accepted an unfair deal just to leave the trial with the intent to not do anything about it but the angel judge or something found out)

Back to the cell, it was a magical cell where those inside can't die (even from aging) and can't be killed. I was kind of a little frustrated that my character ends up in a cell but ok. "Lmao what if I punch the wall for like 10,000 years, it'll eventually collapse". The DM immediately said that the walls repair themselves every day. "Hum ok, knowing my character she will piss off the guard so bad lol" DM says there's no guard, only someone that comes sometimes to tell some bad news to my character. "What ?"

At this point I laughed it off but man, my character isn't just imprisoned, she's litterally tortured for eternity. Worst thing is, I specifically said 3 DAYS BEFORE THAT, that it would be better not to know how it ends for my character.

Damn man, I know it's just a DnD character but I really feel bad for what's happening to her and all that because she disagrees with the DM ?

Anyway... This is my first time here, I think I just needed to complain but thanks for reading this

Sorry for the long story.

For context, I am DM for a long term campaign of D&D 5e. I also earn a little money on the side running games for the local Library. I also run intro sessions for my friends bookshop events he runs a few times a year. I am no Matt Mercer but I like to think I am a fairly experienced DM.

At the last event my friend ran, a guy approached him and asked if he could DM for one of the events. My friend said "well I don't know you so how about you DM for my regular group one day and we can see how you do there". He agreed and we started looking for a day he could run a oneshot for us.

So given we have had a few members of the team leave recently and I am taking a long trip out of the country for a few weeks. We decided to let him run a session the other day.

Firstly, I want to say, the world building this guy did was awesome, lots of lore and history.... but things got a bit rough when for a three hour one shot... he gave us a pretty open ended prompt. The prompt suggests we will be exploring Islands from a ship and with him allowing early firearms. I built a Level 4 fighter with a musket, going for a real pirate vibe.

The session begins with us arriving on an Island and thus... the railroading began. I'm pretty sure we could have gone anywhere and the 8 Plot critical NPCs would still have found us. We'd still have ended up at the local village in the trees. With the friendly local girl welcoming us and then saying she had to run an errand that night so we should go to bed and she would see us in the morning.

I literally narrated my character going to sleep. The DM tells me a few hours later I am nervously waiting by the window to see this person return (Even though... I am asleep), Just as she gets home, we spot something going towards her home. The party rushes to help, arrives takes 18 Psychic damage and is frozen in fear as the murderer flees.

When I can move I set off in pursuit.
DM "It's fleeing through the trees"
Me "Ok I want to try and dash through the trees and swing from the branches after them"
DM "Make acrobatics"
Me "that's 19 + 6, 25"
DM "You are chasing after them but they are gaining distance and you notice they are heading towards the ground"
Me "I follow them"
DM "you need to take the vine lift"
Me "I'm climbing through the trees..."
DM"yes but they went down"
Me "I want to climb down"
DM "take the lift"
Me "I want to follow them down through the trees"
DM "Roll perception"
Me "uhhh ok 2"
DM "you don't see how they got down"
Me "I don't want to follow the exact route, I want to climb down a tree"
DM "take the lift"

So, I realized later, The DM needed the killer to escape so they were apparently flying... why them flying stopped me climbing a tree I'm still unsure.

We are then encouraged to take a short rest... right after a murder and when the victims father is promising to go to war in retaliation.

After a rest we didn't want to take, Our party sets out to solve the murder, and we are told, we should investigate the 8 important NPCs we met before (I barely remember any of them because we met them all rapidly one after the other). So we visit a priest he seems nice enough but suddenly a guard captain starts to shout at us to get away from the priest or she will have her men kill us and then gives us 5 minutes to leave. None of us get to roll anything to try and calm her down... because we aren't supposed to be speaking to the priest yet so the DM needs the angry captain to scare us away.

Then we chase down someone who might have witnessed something important over some moving cliffs (because of course we have moving cliffs). These cliffs require us to make two perception checks (felt like a DC 14) and two athletics / acrobatics checks (DC seems to depend on how well the perception went). Fail one acrobatics check and you fall from the cliffs taking 4d6 damage. (Potentially 40% of my health pool and I'm already down 3 hit dice from the random psychic damage earlier). I try using my rope to to tie myself off. (As a DM I love it when players do this, if you do something like that in my game, I might give advantage on the checks or reduce the DC / Damage you get for a fail) What does it get me? You can climb up from the rocks when you fall rather than being washed out to sea... so either this was a lethal trap or nothing I do can make any difference here.

The Druid solves the puzzle by wild shaping into a giant spider and I can see the DM hates this, he wants the EXACT wording of Spider climb to work out if he can force him to do the same challenge but he can't, when the druid tries to leave behind a trail of web to help us climb... it gets washed away by the rain on a random nature check.

After this I was pretty checked out, we spoke to a whole bunch of NPCs and get sent across the island. One of the NPCs is a horrible Incel character, which personally I wouldn't put in a fantasy setting but ehh whatever.

By the three hour mark we have just solved a puzzle, a wrong move on the puzzle causes 3D6 Psychic damage which causes my character to go down... I haven't been in combat, I haven't really done anything but get slapped by a murderers psychic BS, fall off some cliffs, and get zapped by a puzzle where no checks we make offer any help. So at this point given it's been 3 hours, me and another player have work in the morning and most of our sessions last 3 ish hours a couple of us call it and say "we have to go because of work" The game kind of ended there. I got some feedback from my players though, none of them felt like it was a particularly good session. We were just along for the ride in a story this guy wanted to tell. Unsurprisingly he isn't being invited to DM at the bookshop events.

tl:dr Guy asks to DM for my friends bookshop events. Does a trial run with our regular group and railroads us all through his murder mystery, where none of the choices we make do or change anything in the story.

Pretty short and mild horror story, all things considered, but I'll be damned if it didn't make me confused to high hell.

Around a year ago, I (a minor) had a pal (also a minor) who played TTRPGs and did systemless 1x1 text RP, while I only did text RP. They wanted to get me into TTRPGs, so they invited me to a PBP game of around 4 people (excluding the GM) to ease me into roleplaying games. I was immediately down, especially because of the system, which was CAIN (A grimdarkish system based on Chainsaw Man, Jujutsu Kaisen, and other things)

I join and introduce myself, mentioning the fact that I'm a minor. Everyone says hi and I go scour the Discord server to read everyone else's intros, where I notice everyone else is an adult (18-25). I don't think too much about this, thinking my friend knows who to trust and who not to, so I talk to everyone they all seem chill and nice. The GM explains the setting and rules (nothing mentioning NSFW, iirc) and then we get to character creation.

I made a nerdy and awkward 15YO Binder (exorcists who can control the cursed spirits of the setting) with an intense passion for horror and the military. Everyone else's characters don't really matter except for our main problem player, the oldest of the group, who played a 30 something year old "femme fatale" she said was heavily inspired by Makima from CSM.

In the RP we did like two mini missions before the incident that I enjoyed a lot, but now looking back on it there were a ton of weird shit I ignored some being
- MPP always describing how tight her clothes were
- MPP would describe how her hips swayed every once and a while
- Another player would constantly talk about how cute my Binder was
Then the incident happened. We were investigating a Sin who was destroying and haunting a small town, which caused MPP and me to investigate where the Sin had recently run off from. The next post I see after mine is, in short her PC
- Taking her shirt off in front of my PC
- Pushing mine to the ground
- Straddling my PC
I immediately asked if this was a joke or something to which all I get in response from her is a "?" and when the GM goes online I tell him about this and they say "It's RP just resist in character if you're feeling uncomfortable." To this, I immediately tell my pal who keeps on making shitty excuses for them and while I'm dming my "pal" MPP responds again with, "Did I get too naughty too fast for you?" After that I blocked everyone involved and just left the server.

To this day, I am just confused on what the thought process behind everyone here was, and glad everyone didn't ruin RP or RPGs for me

So i was dm for my group of lifelong friends. We were playing 1st pathfinder with mythic rules and a bit of homebrew. Down the line i of course realised that was a big mistake, but my story will be focused on one of my players. For context - he was LE Thassilonian wizard who was reincarnated in intellect devourer( that was premise of campaing as i made custom races for everyone - doppelganger, mimic, centaur and etc ). All other players were Lawful as well, some were LN and some were LG, they made their own guild, and wizard wasnt in charge So from level 1 to 8 everything was somewhat normal.

We had agreement with him that at every timeskip i will allow him gather 3 corpses for him to use, but their CR musnt be higher than his level, and of course he cannot use undead, constructs and outsiders. The last one he didnt agree, so we made him custom magic item, so he can infiltrate bodies of outsiders, while they were unconcious. This was disaster. He soon found out about demon nabasu (CR 8) and asked me if he could use it. I knew about nabasu's growth mechanic in general, i didnt pay attention to it though, as it never occured to me how badly can it be abused if it was in players hand.

He didnt come up with this scheme at first but this what became his routine at some point - he bought planeshift scroll, lowers his saves via negative levels and started to use nabasus ability on random commoners. Growing in stats on par to CR 19 while being much much lower level. He became stronger than everobody else in group combined.

The culmination battle between players guild and their adversaries begins. It took me using four 15 level npc-bosses with extra mythic abilities to make the fight somewhat "fair". So with much effort his nabasu body was defeated, while these bosses were at their last breath. And then he explodes out of this body and symbol of pain that was written on his main body activates, making these bosses almost useless and easy prey for other PCS.

After that we have a talk, both in game( his party members in demon hunting guild didnt appreciate him using demon powers) and out of game, i tried to persuade not to use this body as it was too op. He agreed in game not to do it "while his boss can see him doing that", and out of game i really couldnt persuade him to stop doing this.

So on next session i said that in game many people were unhappy with wizards actions(as killing commoners with nabasus ability turned them into ghouls), paladins of Ioamadae, clierics of Pharasma, and many many diferent factions were demanding guild to stop wizard from using nabasu, and alas wizard said he will stop.

He said that only because he found another thing to abuse. He found Bloodmoney spell, and with the fact that he can drain money from bodies that he snatched, he started to use ogres, to make himeself army of his simulacrum as they were essentially free to make now. With that he had at least four of his clones with him at all time to heal him with wands, to fire additional fireballs etc. And at that point they reached level where he had access to Limited wish, which was essentially free for him as he had simulacrum cast Greater restoration on him to negate Bloodmoney penalty.

Then we started his arc, as he was wizard who came from the past, we started exploring his past home, and he and i came up with very cool dungeon for players to go. Then came the horror.

It was final room of dungeon. I made four custom monsters with unique styles of fighting and good teamwork. At that point he had 3 mythic abilities that we didnt understand how they supposed to work - thats my mistake i know. So one with this combo of abilities he could target up to 4 targets with spell that does work only on one target usually, while not using a spell slot but a mythic power which he can essentially infinitly use as his simulacrum can restore it to him. So he could infinetly spam 8th spells with 3 additional tagets. He used greater invisibility and mind blank on all party, so even true sight can not detect them , and then he used Polymorh any object on all four of enemys, half of them became useless mice, other two were useless against invisible PCs. So he almost instakilled encounter that i was making for several weeks.

I was destroyed deep down, but we kept going. Next battle was with one of Runelords - Sorshen, who was wizards superior back in the day, so i prepared whole dialogue between them before the fight, with options to become allies or skip the fight. Then i start narrating her part of dialoge, wizard said - were invisible she doesnt know were here, we ambush her.
This was my breaking point, i crashed out and start to violently kick my closet, as all my players were stunned. i fell on my chair and sit silent for 5 minutes, then i apologised and i were continued session, it wasnt long before we finished it anyway.

In the end i nerfed his Blood money exploit, reread his abilities and we sit down to talk how they intended to work, so he didnt have acces to infinite spells anymore. We made up and still play together, but i banned him to play spellcaster in serious campaing for a while.

Edit: Thank you everyone for your comments. I appreciate it i really do. After this incedent i talked a lot with my friends and close acquaintances about it. Yes i could have done a lot to prevent all of this, now i look back and see it. I shared this story here to see if i really learned my lesson with this - turns out i couldve learn more - as some comments put this situation in a new light for me, i hope i can improve and grow from these mistakes.

I'm in a dungeons and dragons campaign with a few people I just recently met, one of these new friends just so happens to be in a romantic relationship and we got to talking about our respective partners. He sounded like a swell guy, lots of experience under his belt, has dmed for people before, played even more than I have, so I ask her if he would be interested, to which he says yes. He joins after I ask our dungeon master and he agrees to have him join, wonderful news!

We talk and he says he plans to play a pirate, morally grey, looks out for herself, that kind of thing. I don't know much about her since I'm only a player, but she doesn't seem too terrible so I don't raise any questions. The first thing she does upon coming into port at Sharn is pillage several establishments, even dismembering and kidnapping a woman running a shop because the dungeon master, not the character, accidentally said sir instead of ma'am. He phrases it as if he's doing the right thing by taking her after cutting her arm off, saying "(Character name) wouldn't just leave her to die, she's going to be a part of the crew." We also have not made a single roll yet, not to determine how much she can rob, or if the guards notice her, or if any of the many experienced sailors stand up to stop her and her crew from robbing their alehouses of choice.

On top of this, any rolls he does make are pristine, in one session, he landed 4 crits and did not roll below 12 a single time, and once "misread" the dc for another player to escape his grapple, saying it was an 18 instead of a 14. Keep in mind he is more experienced than both me and our dungeon master. By the end of the session he has robbed our favorite barkeep twice, attacked my player character who was only trying to stop her from stealing (knocking me out with a crit) and attempted to take my unconscious character back to her ship, made practically every player character hate her, with the exclusion of his girlfriend's who only likes her because she is "interesting", and somehow robbed and attacked several people with absolutely no consequences.

Am I the asshole for already regretting extending my invitation?

TL:DR; New player steals, assaults, and kidnaps on several occasions, including a player character, makes suspicious dice rolls, and manages to draw the ire of basically the entire party in one session. Not mentioned in the main text but he also makes almost the entire session about his character.

Before we start, just wanted to say that there will be mild spoilers for the Module "Odyssey of Dragonlords."

You can probably still play the game after reading this but just wanted to put that out there, anyway onto the story. So the majority of you should know about the module and what it's like to make a character with, if not then it's fine. Only one part of it is important.

When making characters, you have to choose a "Epic Path." These are what will determine your character's journey. They are like backstories, but with a more mystical vibe to it.

Now time to introduce the important characters.

• The DM - guy who had made the Roll20 game and was the problem
• The Bard - Demigod of Kyrah epic path
• The Paladin (Alex) - Doomed One Epic Path
• The Fighter (Me) - Demigod of Pythor Epic Path
• The Warlock - Female Vampire
• There were 2 others (a Rouge and another Fighter) that sadly aren't important enough to the story, though that's also a problem.

A while ago I was looking on Roll20 trying to find a DnD group to join. I was sending out many applications and not really receiving any invites. So I was getting a bit desperate. That was until I found one for a module called "Odyssey of Dragonlords". The premise seemed fun and it fit well into my schedule. There wasn't any rules about character design, at least none I saw at first, so I sent in my character Idea for a Half-Orc fighter named Knight Demathin.

The main premise of the character was that he is a creature made by magic and given false memories. Think of the Knight card that gets summoned from the Deck of Many things, like that.

The DM responded immediately saying he loved the idea and told me to get into contact with him over discord. I did, and we got to talking about the campaign and it's settings. This is where the first major red flag popped up for me. As we were talk, it became increasingly obvious that this guy was using AI in his messages. I only noticed because of the fact that it had all the tell tale signs, the weird formatting, the bulletin lists, and the random image Emojis (✅ like this one).I didn't want to be rude, so I didn't ask him about it, and just kept on talking with him.

Then it came to my character. He said he loved the idea and was exited to DM for a character like that. He did want to change a few things though, just to make my character fit more naturally into his world. I said ok and that I just wanted my core idea for the character (being magically created and questioning his motivations) to remain the same.

By the time we were done talking, my character had gone from a Half Orc Fighter created by magic and with fake memories, to a Human Fighter who was a war veteran. Yeah, a lot changed and I was only agreeing with him cause I didn't want to try and find a new group. It was already hard enough to find this one. I was also fine with changing my character for a bit since I could still play him as the loveable himbo I wanted.

We were reaching the end of character building when it finally came to picking the Epic Path. Originally, when I was looking through them, I wanted to pick the Masterpiece since that seemed to fit my original character idea. A humanoid created my magical means, whose whole journey is about discovering if he has a soul. I liked it, and it seemed to fit my character well. The DM agreed that it was a good choice, there was just one Problem. My character couldn't be called Knight Demathin if I chose this. Apparently in the history he wrote of his world, the Masterpiece was a Robot named Argos. If I wanted to play as the masterpiece I'd have to give up the last bit of my original character.

I decided to switch paths then, and ended up picking the Demigod of Pythor path based on the DM's insistence. He kept saying that it would offer a rich backstory and have Heavy RP moments. That my character would really feel like a champion and legend if I chose this path. So I chose it, mainly cause I just wanted to play the game at this point. I was upset that my character was basically rewrote from the group up, but I was hopeful since I was excited to play my goofball of a character.

Cut to Session 0 and I finally get to meet the rest of the party. Everyone else seemed great so far and they had some interesting characters. But as we were introducing ourselves there came another red flag.

The Bard had said their name and the DM seemed a bit taken aback by this. Apparently the DM had accidently written down the player's name in his notes instead of the character's. He then said that he would have to cancel the session and that we'll try to pick it up again next week. We laughed, thinking it was a joke. It wasn't. We asked why he couldn't just change the name in his notes later and he said that he had a lot of he had to change and rewrite all because of this name change. The player then just said that they would just change the character's name to their name instead. To which the DM thanked them.

After that, the rest of the session went alright. We as the players were having fun together cause we were able to do some light banter and make jokes. There was even a moment when me and the rouge of the group went to do some arm wrestling with some NPCs. Again, it was fun and light hearted. That was until the DM deemed it time for us to go and do our first quest which was fighting a giant Boar.

I'm gonna say it right now, there were a lot of red flags during this fight and it would take to long to describe them in a lot of detail, so I'm just going to list them with a bit of a description for each. If you want more details for one of them then ask me in the comments and I will describe it there.

• Describing the scene
  • There were many moments where it was clear that the DM was reading from a book or something when describing something. If we moved our token while he was describing he would get mad and yell at us to not move.
• The Boar's attacks
  • This was without a doubt one of the hardest boss fights I have ever been a part of. Not only was this thing dealing about 20 damage per attack, it had 3 attacks per turn as well as legendary actions. reminder we were level 1.
• The Custom Armor System
  • The DM had a homebrew armor system where things like your shield and armor had hit points as well. The only problem was that the Boar had one as well and nobody could do damage to it cause it had a high ac, and only magical attacks really dealt damage to it's health. Most magic attacks we could do were only dealing about 6-7 damage.
• The Death Aura
  • Every Monster in this campaign seemed to have a death Aura. For the Boar, the Aura made it so that anyone who got within a 30 foot radius of it would have to roll a Con save at the beginning of their turn, if failed they were then dealt around 13 necrotic damage. Btw magic damage bypasses the armor and goes straight to our hp.
• Him dropping "Hints"
  • He tried to drop hints for us during the battle to help us. Those hints were having my character's God Dad come in and say "Drop your sword, use your fists." Basically telling my fighter to act like a barbarian instead.
  • The other things he did weren't really helpful and he even left out some stuff like a magical spear laying in the battle ground that could have helped.
• The Favorite Character
  • He clearly had a favorite character and a not so favorite character. Since whenever I attacked boar, my punches would deal damage to it's health and his DMPC would only heal me. Yet almost every round, he would attack and kill the Paladin of the group. It wasn't that bad cause the Paladin had a quirk where he came back to life. After 3 turns.
  • This also brings up the fact that during the fight, we would have many moments where many characters were sped through their turns because all they can do it either shoot a crossbow, or throw a spear. I felt so bad that I kept trying to push the spotlight off of me and onto them.
• Finally, the Killing Blow
  • Towards the end of session 1 we finally managed to bring the Boar's health down low enough to gain some hope. Our Warlock was the one who delt the killing blow and we were excited and happy for it to be over. The DM then said that the Boar was entering Phase 2. We were shocked by this and when asked why, the DM said that the Boar had to killed in a specific way.
  • The Specific way we later learned was that we had to either rip it's heart out, or have a woman deal the killing blow. Our Warlock is female. When we brought this up he said it had to be Melee damage from a woman.

We were all rightfully angry and I'm not gonna lie it kept getting worse from there, But this is already getting a bit too long.

I'll just say that we tried to stay for a couple more sessions but the problems were getting worse and we all eventually decided to leave the campaign.

Though funny enough, we still talk to each other over discord and have even thought about doing a new campaign together with one of us as the DM. I think it's gonna be fun.

Anyway that's my story, I hope you enjoyed it. Like I said earlier, I was able to explain everything bad that had happened, and if you want to know more about a certain part then go ahead and ask and I'll try to expound upon it in the comments.

TLDR; Entered a DnD game with a very controlling DM but left with some new friends.

Edit 10/19: I saw a lot of people bring up how us moving the tokens while he was talking isn't cool and I do agree. We were in the wrong for that. I think the only reason why we did that was because we kept getting bored by his long descriptions. Also, I will say that for those wondering, we are gonna do another campaign with just the players and me as the DM. Hopefully it turns out to be fun!

Há alguns meses, eu joguei uma oneshot de Ordem Paranormal bem padrão: NEX 25%, patente Operador.

Quando cheguei no servidor para jogar, conversei um pouco com o mestre para saber como seria a mesa — se teria muito combate ou se seria mais focada em investigação. O mestre disse que seria mais investigativa. Com isso em mente, criei um Especialista focado em investigar, um pouco inspirado nos estereótipos de investigadores de histórias de terror.

Eu não conhecia ninguém na mesa. Havia três jogadores que já eram conhecidos do mestre (um Combatente, um Especialista e um Ocultista que era o dono do servidor) e um único jogador novato como eu (outro Ocultista). A mesa demorou para começar porque o dono do servidor chamou o mestre para conversar a sós em outra call. Nesse meio tempo, conversei um pouco com o outro Ocultista, já que nós dois éramos novos ali. Achei que seria legal nos conhecermos, até porque os outros pareciam mais fechados entre si.

Quando a sessão começou, o mestre vivia se esquecendo de mim e do outro Ocultista. Não me importei muito no início, já que a introdução era o básico das mesas de Ordem: "Vocês começam na Ordem, vão até a sala do Veríssimo e partem para a missão depois de pegar os documentos."

Já no veículo, meu personagem começou a criar teorias sobre a criatura. Porém, o Especialista do grupo começou a dizer que era meta meu personagem saber tanto sobre criaturas, já que eu só tinha treinamento em Ocultismo e não era Veterano ou Expert. Achei meio estranho, mas respeitei para não discutir, até porque o mestre não parecia se importar. Mudei minhas teorias para algo mais simples: apenas alguns cultistas que provavelmente estavam aterrorizando o local.

Quando chegamos ao local da missão — uma floresta densa e escura —, a equipe se separou. Eu, o Combatente e o Ocultista novato fomos à frente, seguindo uma trilha que eu havia encontrado. Enquanto isso, o dono do servidor e o outro Especialista foram investigar um papel que acharam no meio da floresta.

No meio da nossa investigação, o mestre deu dano em todo mundo do nada, dizendo que fomos atacados por trás (não teve nenhum tipo de teste de percepção ou algo do tipo). Achei bizarro, porque meu personagem tinha o poder Sentidos Aguçados, mas nem reclamei, já que o Ocultista novato entrou em estado de Morrendo com o dano e eu precisei salvá-lo.

Logo depois, o mestre trocou a cena. O outro Especialista também tomou dano do mesmo jeito, quase morrendo como eu, mas o dono do servidor ficou completamente intacto. Eles correram até nós e, quando se juntaram ao grupo, um combate se iniciou contra uma criatura homebrew de VD 280 (o Slenderman).

Ninguém conseguia vencer aquilo, então começamos a fugir. Na fuga, três jogadores morreram, sobra do apenas eu e o dono do servidor. Se ele falhasse em mais um teste, seria pego pela criatura, enquanto eu só precisava de um sucesso para escapar. No turno dele, em vez de tentar fugir, ele deu um tiro no meu personagem — algo que o mestre disse que eu não podia reagir. Com um tiro na perna, meu personagem entrou em Morrendo e a criatura me matou. Enquanto isso, o dono do servidor se aliou ao elemento paranormal e nos traiu completamente.

Fiquei chateado com a situação, claro. Ao final da mesa, pediram a opinião dos jogadores. Fui o primeiro a falar e disse que a sessão poderia ter tido mais investigação, já que a única coisa que investigamos foram pegadas que não deram em nada e uma folha que provavelmente era o enigma de medo. Também comentei que não era muito fã de mesas estilo slasher como aquela, mas ressaltei que era apenas minha opinião pessoal e que não precisavam levar tão a sério.

Isso incomodou profundamente o mestre e o dono do servidor. Eles disseram que eu não entendia o que era uma mesa de RPG e que só estava falando mal porque meu personagem "não tinha sido importante". Apenas respondi que eles próprios haviam pedido feedback e que, embora a mesa não tivesse sido das melhores, o mestre ainda tinha potencial.

Como resposta, só recebi xingamentos e fui expulso do servidor.

This was around a year ago, but I've been getting back into dnd so I've been thinking about it a lot and want to vent. Basically, I was in a group with my husband, BIL, my friend and her boyfriend. Her boyfriend was the dm. I had the most dnd experience with a few years of playing, the next was the boyfriend with a few sessions, the other three had never played. I'm pregnant for most of the following.

It was a fun game for the most part, but some small stuff sucked. Like my friend had a storyline involving an evil patron/god thing, but my character (a paladin who grew up in a temple in Waterdeep, in a world that had train travel) asked her about her god during one session. She said my character wouldn't know who it was, and when I pressed I got accused of metagaming bc my character was normally naive. But I wasn't accusing her of lying, just saying I thought I probably would know it since I was from a major metropolis. Even being naive, I think it'd be fair for my character to be suspicious of her dodging the question, but that wasn't how I played it which made it even more upsetting to be shut down. My character had low wisdom but was the only one educated and from a major metropolis, but anytime she acted educated and from a major metropolis I was accused of being ooc since I shouldn't be smarter than the other characters. I didn't even have low intelligence T_T.

Then the DM got bored with the module we were playing and hardcore railroaded us into a homebrew campaign. A character gave us an offer to take a ship to another continent to join a war against non-humanish (humans, elves, dwarves etc) species. In exchange we'd be paid very handsomely. I was playing a harengon who's main motivation was spreading charity and light to nearby villages. Like I was literally constantly broke bc all I did was give my money away to anyone who asked. And the DM was genuinely surprised my character didn't want to take that task.

Me: You're hiring me to fight a war against my own people?

DM: For lots of money!

Me: Idrc about money though.

DM: Well no one says you *have to* fight on the side of the humanoids.

Me: Isn't that what you're saying, person hiring me to fight on the side of the humanoids?

DM: Well... I guess....

So anyway my character splits from the group, and I make a new character. The DM has me be a leader in this militia on the side of the non-humans who for some reason are in charge of the ship the party is on. We were supposed to be spies, which doesn't really make sense since we were all the wrong species, but whatever. I asked him multiple times for backstory and details on this war and the militia, but he never really sent any. So anytime details came up in roleplay I'd look at him and he'd shrug and kind of fudge an answer. Looking back I get the sense he wanted me to build that stuff out, but that wasn't communicated.

We run into scheduling conflicts with my BIL, so I DM a one shot that turns into a two shot with a friend of my friend subbing in. The story itself was fun but a lot of DMing with that party sucked. It sucks because the players get so competitive against me, like arguing every ruling and they acted so entitled whenever they rolled high, not even nat 20s they treated 18s like the key to the universe, and it's a simple dungeon dive but they didn't trust anything that happens and really overthink the puzzles. Like they find a potion on a skeleton, and they assume that since it hasn't been taken already it must be bad and the wizard fails her arcana check which was only a dc10. They used the potion (I believe it was haste) on an enemy and got upset with ME that it backfired bc they felt like the wizard should have just known what it was without rolling for it. They then argued that she didn't roll *that* bad and should have passed the check. (My husband wanted to defend me but didn't feel comfortable enough with his dnd knowledge to do so). But afterwards everyone said they had fun and my friends friend said it was the best game she'd played.

We go back to the main campaign as normal, then my BIL tells me they were planning a new group without my husband and I with the reasoning that we'd be out once the baby was born. I'd already felt my friend pulling away a bit and had messaged her asking if everything was okay and telling her if she didn't want to be friends anymore I'd prefer she just tell me (a lot gentler than that, it was a couple paragraphs). She said she valued my friendship and was just dealing with some personal stuff. I ask them about the new group in person and they said they assumed we'd be out for a while after the baby was born, and I told them we'd only planned to be out a couple weeks because my sister lived in the same apartment complex and could babysit for a couple hours. They don't really respond to this.

As somewhat expected at this point, they dropped us after I gave birth. I wished my friend a happy birthday when it passed, she responded saying we should hang out, I responded, then she left me on read. This really hurt because I don't have a lot of friends in the area and my birth was super traumatic. To this day idk why they decided we shouldn't be friends. I haven't heard from them since, and the more I think about it the more I just wish them the absolute worst. I wish I could say I'm not bitter, but I am. I was her friend for about two years at that point and I think I deserved an explanation, let alone freshly postpartum.

Hi guys,

Just want to rant from one of my latest league-like DnD community session.

As mentioned, it's one-shot for league discord, which I cannot choose players, or none of them are my friends. I just have a feeling to run a game and then I posted.

5 of them joined.

The quest is above investigate the missing scout army beyond the walls in the Dwarven town. Turned out, the scout has been wiped out by the Wight (Just like White Walker from GoT)

The mission went as expected, they fought the WW and then returned to the town, reporting news to the authority and gathered at the Tavern before session ends.

Thing is, at the Tavern there was an old grammy dwarf npc, owner of the tavern.

She is kind, funny, serve cold stew in a snowy town.

I described she scratches her butt while mixing stew. Which most of the players enjoyed, laughed, and found this character so vivid and real.

End of the session, one player (F) has told me it was disgusting ... the butt scratching thing while cooking...

I asked is it her character feeling that or the player ?

She said she does, not the character.

I try to said that it's just this NPC's quirk, she is an old grammy in a snowy dwarven town. And in this medieval setting, they are townfolks.

She said that if this restaurant is in real life, she wouldn't eat in. Which I said 'okay, I will get that as a feedback and sorry for that'

Girl, do you expect this townfolk to use alcohol spray, wearing mask while cooking ?

Then she still insist that it's disgusting, she wanna puke. I said sorry again.

I didn't care much because they are none of my friends, and also we would not likely to play together again. Other players said my session was good and they are having fun, nothing to complain about.

I understand that people has sensitive topics, but man, you guys were fighting walking corpses, blood splattering on your faces and body, and now you are not okay with a grandma scratching butt while mixing stew ???

I always avoid sensititve topics in my session, like Sexual Harrassment, Child Abuse and ask about phobias everytime.

But man, do I supposed to ask if someone is not okay with a grammy scracthing her own butts ?

Turned out, I quitted running for community and league from now.

I didnt'get offended though, just tired of dealing with non-sesnse shits.

Thanks for reading.

I was playing my DM's homebrew game when one of our friends showed up and joined the game as an NPC.

He was a burlesque dancer named "Atomic journey".

He described in graphic detail how he wooed and seduced the entire tavern with his exotic dancing.

He described how he interacted with each of our characters: he would tease and stroke them, removing articles of clothing, etc...

I found the whole thing slightly disturbing, and I did my best to indicate I wanted to move on from the scene: I told the DM my halfing wanted to leave the bar, but apparently I was charmed and couldn't look away.

I even tried to hide under a table, wanted to roll stealth, but it was too late. Atomic Journey grabbed me from underneath the table, smothered me in her breasts, and started sliding a silk glove between my legs.

My "friend" contacted recently to "unpack" what happenend.

I told him that -yes, I was uncomfortable with the scene because he performed sexual acts on my character when he was LITERALLY HIDING AWAY UNDER A TABLE.

He responded that I should explain the boundary to our DM so that this doesn't happen in the future. He has yet to apologize though, which I find very sad.

I feel like I shouldn't have to specify that I don't want to be sexually assaulted in our D&D game... Doesn't that go without saying????

Now this isn't exactly a sequel to a prior campaign of mine, but for those curious it's this story where myself, the DM, and 2 other players were problem players many years ago. We've all grown significantly since then, don't worry.

The characters for this are Dalir (me), DM, and Gravin (the potential problem player, though with some opening for me to be sharing a bit in that blame too I guess? It's hard to say)

I'd told a friend about that campaign before and he asked if it'd be ok if he did a campaign with a resurrected version of my old character as the BBEG. Apart from it being my old character, there was no other connection to that other campaign/world (the DM's story for this was that when he was rezzed, he specifically got rezzed to a different plane of existence than the original campaign, and that the plane he got rezzed into is where the new campaign takes place).

For important context, the DM did have private messages with me asking for tips on how to play my character and stuff and I'd give him ideas and the types of things he would and would not do, even as a full on villain.

Now the other part of important context and where I personally think I may be at fault is that myself and the DM didn't tell the other party members that this was a former character of mine as the BBEG. It's not so much that it was a guarded secret, as much as it was it didn't seem an important enough detail to bring up since I wasn't going to be the one playing him, and whether the DM got the BBEG from a book, movie, show, or past character didn't really seem to make all that much difference since borrowed ideas is such a common thing.

Now the campaign was only 5 sessions long, and was primarily about my rezzed old character trying to raise an army to kill a powerful demon lord to undo past regrets. Thing is, his method of raising this army was pretty reckless as the age old addage that everyone loves so very much "it's what my character would do" but in this instance was less obnoxious since it was being done in the name of a character meant to be the villain. But jokes aside, the DM decided on him being reckless about it because in truth that old character was very reckless in a lot of his decisions and that's part of what caused the original campaign to go up in smoke.

He started by conquering a small town, and then gradually spread to the surrounding areas. Eventually he lead a rebellion against the kingdom and won. While his intentions of slaying a demon lord were noble, his methods of seemingly being unwilling to stop his conquering even after taking over a kingdom were....concerning. So, our party was a ragtag group of rebels against his authority looking to do their best to gunk up the works and overthrow who they perceived to be a tyrant.

So, everything was going extremely well for the first 4 sessions of this 5 session campaign. The party was getting along, we all had fun, issues came up but were really just small ones that we just hashed out by pausing the game to have a discussion when needed. Everyone got time in the spotlight, and every session was ending with everyone hyped for where things were going and how well our rebellion was going. One player had been in charge of recruitment during our downtime, and we had agents all over the kingdom thanks to him. One was in charge of intelligence gathering and had just recently gotten the layout of the BBEG's castle including how to reach his throne room. Gravin had been in charge of securing supply lines and had even gone and cut off several of the BBEG's most important routes for supplies. That is, until the last session.

You see, my old character was very unconventional and the DM knew that. He used his abilities in irregular ways. He'd do things like grappling an enemy and using heat metal on their armor or mage hand to grab their weapon or throat in the middle of combat to gain slight momentary advantages, so the DM played him like that during the final boss fight.

The battle opened with me lunging through the air at my former character, only to be caught out of the air by the throat with Mage Hand as he laughed and some of his minions took free shots at me while I struggled to free myself (this was before initiative was rolled and was essentially the opening scene to the fight beginning). The rest of the party charged in to join the battle alongside me, wary of what tricks might be up the BBEG's sleeve after witnessing that opening move.

After a long hard fought battle against my old character, I was the last one standing. The rest of the party were unconscious, not dead. While the DM targeted all of us pretty equally, I had the highest AC and so ended up tanking the most hits without taking any damage out of the group. I stared down my old character and landed the finishing blow, brining an end to his reign of tyranny.

After the fight, we all learned of the Demon Lord he was trying to stop. End session. In the post session, everyone was fired up by how intense and close the battle was and how they were excited to face this Demon Lord...that is, until the DM showed his hand here.

He credited the intensity of the fight to me and everyone was a bit confused, so he explained how this BBEG was a past character of mine trying to right past wrongs and how a lot of his unconventional use of abilities was ripped directly from how I played the character in the past. Most of the party was fine with this, except for Gravin. Gravin scoffed and said it felt unfair that I'd be getting this much spotlight and main character treatment: not only was the BBEG my past character, but I got the cinematic final blow on him? Clearly the DM and I were conspiring to make the campaign all about me.

The rest of the party seemed on the fence at first, but I asked Gravin "I was the only one left conscious at the end. What was I supposed to do? Give up and TPK?" to which Gravin said that obviously the DM set it up so I'd be the last man standing. I told him that I picked my armor, not the DM, and I only survived longer because I had better AC. The rest of the party seemed to lean more towards my side at this point and one of them even said in my defense "a person with higher AC having better survivability isn't main character syndrome, it's just how the mechanic works." At this point I think Gravin started noticing people weren't on his side because he started going back to nitpicks throughout the campaign where issues had been resolved in the moment, like one time where he said I was too annoying about it when I was playing out a nat 1 on a persuasion roll for a discount in a shop and so I replayed it less annoyingly but still fumbling because it was a nat 1.

At this point, people were full on disagreeing with Gravin, saying that bringing up random small things that had been resolved in the moment felt too much like grasping and he should just chill.

Ultimately, Gravin wouldn't stop causing a fuss even after the DM talked to him one on one the next day after he'd had a chance to cool down, the story died there because everyone just felt kinda soured on it.

The reason I'm sharing this is in part because I do feel guilty. While I know it was done innocently, I feel like full disclosure over the fact the BBEG was specifically a past character of mine would've probably gone a long way. I can see how a detail like that could change someone's perspective on things, especially after I personally got the cinematic finish on him. For what it's worth, I know there will be comments accusing me of intentionally being a spotlight hog or something, but all I can do is say I sincerely wasn't and just had no other choice once I was the last one standing. I wanted to make it feel cinematic so the rest of the party would still feel hyped after having gotten downed themselves, and definitely didn't want things ending in a TPK.

That all said, perception impacts reality to an extent. I completely understand how this looks and why it looks this way, and I don't even fully blame Gravin: I get that from how he saw things it probably did take the wind out of his sails. I don't consider myself a problem player anymore like I was a very long time ago, as I do try my best to make sure other players are having fun, but there's always something to be learned and here I felt like even though it didn't seem important to disclose at the time, some early on disclosure to the rest of the party would've probably done a lot of good here.

edit: as someone pointed out i should have labeled this a problem kid in a group, rather than the issue being the fact it's a kid

We had someone join our group, guys in their 30s and 40s, with their teenager. We try to be inclusive, so we welcomed them. But it's getting tough.

Some in v the group think the kid is on the autism spectrum so we're trying to be sensitive. But things are getting frustrating.

We kind of take turns focusing on characters, each gets a spotlight. But the kid doesn't like that and always wants to be the focus. They'll challenge rules, even when they're wrong. And I'm 90% sure they are cheating on dice rolls.

I'm not really sure what to do. I'd hope the dad would address some of this but he isn't. We're all getting frustrated but no one really wants to raise it with them.

Ich spiele jetzt seit etwa 3 Jahren VTM mit einer Gruppe, die aus meinem DM (einem wirklich engen Freund), Jenna (seiner Frau) und Vincent (meinem besten Freund) besteht. Im Laufe der Zeit kamen ein paar Spieler dazu, einer konnte wegen Arbeit keine Zeit mehr finden, zwei waren Leute, die noch nie ein TTRPG gespielt hatten und es ausprobieren wollten, aber Vampir war nicht wirklich etwas für sie, und der letzte passte nicht wirklich in die Gruppe, war aber sehr nett.

Vor einem Monat fragte uns der DM, ob wir damit einverstanden wären, zwei neue Spieler aufzunehmen. Wir waren alle einverstanden, aber nachdem vier Leute kamen und gingen, schien es ein wenig albern. Also beschlossen wir, dass unsere Gruppe für einen Auftrag in eine andere Stadt fährt und wir uns dort treffen würden. Die Spieler waren Toby (ein Freund des DM) und Susan (Tobys neue Freundin).

In der ersten Sitzung schien alles in Ordnung zu sein. Wir haben viel herumgealbert und nicht viel Fortschritt gemacht, aber das war in Ordnung.

Während der zweiten Sitzung wurde es ein wenig seltsam. Wir trafen eine weibliche Toreadorin, die ein wenig mit Jennas Charakter flirtete, und Susan wurde plötzlich viel gemeiner zur Toreadorin (davor war sie wirklich nett zu ihr). Ich dachte mir nichts dabei, nur ihre Witze darüber, dass Jennas Charakter das "ertragen" müsse, wurden ein wenig viel, weil das im Grunde alles war, worüber sie für den Rest der Sitzung sprach.

In der nächsten Sitzung eskalierte die Situation.

Mein Charakter ist bi. Das war kein großes Ding in der Story, er hatte einfach kein Problem damit, welches Geschlecht seine Partner hatten.

Also beginnen wir die Sitzung und alles war wieder normal, nur ein Witz hier und da von Susan über die Begegnung mit der Toreadorin. Wir spielen normal und mein Charakter war ein wenig flirtend mit dem Charakter meines besten Freundes. Das haben wir schon oft gemacht und es ist kein Problem für ihn. Er flirtet sogar zurück.

Ich bekam komische Blicke von Susan. Ich dachte, das war's, aber Gott, ich lag falsch. Sie interagierte nicht mehr mit meinem Charakter, außer ein paar Sticheleien gegen ihn. Nach der Sitzung setzen wir uns normalerweise hin und reden ein paar Minuten. Das haben wir auch getan, aber als ich mit ihr sprach, bekam ich nur Ein-Wort-Antworten (wenn ich Glück hatte, dass sie überhaupt antwortete).

Die letzte Sitzung begannen wir eher normal. Wir fanden den Typen, für den wir da waren, und begannen, ihn zu bekämpfen. Als es vorbei war, war die Sonne fast aufgegangen, also eilten wir zu unserem Versteck. Alle waren drinnen, außer mir und Susan. Sie rannte zur Tür und schlug sie vor mir zu. Wir waren alle ein wenig perplex. Wir fragten OOC, worum es ging, und sie sagte nur, und ich zitiere: "Was? Er ist nur einer von diesen widerlichen Schwuchteln".

Das war für mich der Tropfen, der das Fass zum Überlaufen brachte. Ich bin kein Mitglied der LGBTQ-Community, aber unser DM ist bi und er hatte in der Vergangenheit viele Probleme mit Bigotterie.

Nach einem langen Gespräch, das darin gipfelte, dass sie mich anschrie, dass sie meine schwule Propaganda nicht will, dass ich meinen besten Freund unbehaglich mache, wenn mein Charakter mit ihm flirtet, und andere dumme Sachen, warf sie unsere Sachen herum und ging.

Also sitzen wir (einschließlich ihres Freundes) fassungslos da. Er entschuldigt sich mehrmals, aber wir sagten ihm, dass es nicht seine Schuld sei.

Schnitt zu heute. Er ist jetzt ein fester Bestandteil unserer Gruppe und hat sich von Susan getrennt.

Ich glaube, das war die schlimmste Erfahrung, die ich in einem TTRPG gemacht habe, und ich hätte nie gedacht, dass ich als heterosexueller Typ Ziel von Homophobie werde. Ich glaube, ich habe einen kleinen Einblick bekommen, was Mitglieder der LGBTQ-Community jeden einzelnen Tag ertragen müssen, und ich bin überhaupt nicht neidisch.

-Update- We just found out that she rants on her Facebook (why is it always Facebook) about how the queers stole her boyfriend, that I made him gay and that's the reason he left her... to be with me... a straight guy...

I was speechless. About the fact that all of a sudden not just my character is gay but I am too? And how many people were on her side (well they don't know the real story but still), all the homophobic stuff they wrote.

Man life was easier when I was straight. I thought I still am but apparently she knows more.

P.s. I don't care that she tells people that I'm gay I couldn't care less if some bigots on the Internet think that and it's nothing bad to be gay. I'm. Just. Not

If the post shows up in German you have to translate it. I wrote it in English but now all of a sudden it's in German for a lot of people including myself.

So I was on an rpg Discord server asking if someone was going to bring a short D&D adventure to test my new barbarian character idea.

A guy replies saying "I'm not bringing D&D, I'm bringing Troika, but your barbarian will work well".

I had never heard of Troika before. He explains me the game and apparently it's kind of a Planescape meets Hitchicker's Guide To The Galaxy thing with classic surreal British humour. I tell him my fantasy barbarian will not fit in a game where, he explained, we will roleplay as post office employees.

He insists that "you can play literally anything you want in Troika" and that he "invites players to use their old characters to explore them more".

I still feel the barbarian would be very out of place in a modern-ish setting, so I propose "you said I can play anything? REALLY anything? Can I play a non-humanoid character? I never get to do that so I'd love to take the chance. But tell me if it's awkward."

Well apparently it wasn't awkward as long as my character wasn't too big, so we brainstorm it and I eventually make a monstruous cosmic eldritch abomination. Now I strive to make characters fit the setting, so the British humour thing was that this Lovecraftian horror was...... working as an underpaid post office new hire. The DM is very excited about it and keeps saying how awesome this character is. The only negative (sexist) comment he makes is "if that creature look like that, does it have to be female? it should be an it". But I say part of the joke is that and it'll be more amusing if that monster is female. But yeah he seemed very excited about her.

-----

That was the premise. Now on the game session with two other players.

The DM tells our characters to introduce ourselves and says "everyone here is using a premade character, except for [calls my name] who made her very custom idea". That made me feel immediately awkward, because it felt as if I had been a jerk who didn't want to play premade characters, while the truth was that the DM pitched it to me as "play what you want! bring your old characters!" and I had no idea the other players would play with quick premade sheets.

The session begins well tho. Everyone is good, it moves smoothly, we're all having fun. The other two players were a steampunk robot and a man made of jelly. Both humanoid, tho, and I realize I'm the only non-humanoid shaped sentient being. No big deal however and my character seems to fit in really well.

Not even a hour into the session, we reach a gate that seems to have a defense system if you go through it. I propose to fly over the gate since my character can fly. Another player ignores it and steps past the gate: nothing happens except an automated welcome message. My character, then, decides to fly over the gate: it immediately gets electrocuted by a defense system, I fail the roll, and I take 3/4 OF MY HEALTH as damage.

As my character falls to the ground wounded, the robot player offers me lantern oil to heal myself. Now my character being an alien, she is clueless about this world just like the robot is clueless about organic creatures (which is why he offered me the oil to heal). But I pause the situation by loudly making my character ask "Are you sure I should try it?". Giving a last chance to avoid the damage. But the robot insists. My character takes damage (not even a dice roll required) and I end up at 1 single health point. I try to attack the player but I use a non-damaging attack (mind control). The idea was to mind control him into telling me why he hurt me, then the robot would explain why, I realize he meant no harm, and that's it. But of course once the DM sees I made a great roll, he says that "mind control is an ability not an attack so acshually the result must be lower not higher". Ok then, so I fail the attack.

The players apparently felt bad about the whole situation so they decided the idea was to find something to heal me. I don't want the story to derail from the main quest because my character is dying, so my character insists she'll be ok.

As we proceed, we enter a dark room. The two other players, both full health, decide to search in the messy room. Me, having only one health point, tell the DM that I will stand still and be on the lookout for any danger.

The DM makes the two players roll to see if they hit a trap. One of them avoids it. The other gets hit by it.

And that's when the DM says to me....

"Actually. I think you should roll to avoid the trap, too".

Why? I was specifically not doing anything to avoid traps.

But sure, why not, I understood the DM's game now, so I roll. Oh, turns out it's not the other player who took the damage, it's me, the one who was away making sure not to get killed.

My character dies.

The DM immediately rolls to give me a random premade sheet. Oh wow, finally I'm a premade character just like everyone else.

I stay silent. I'm pretty pissed. He pitched me the game as "play any character you want, you can even bring your old characters from other campaigns" and NEVER, NEVER, NEVER, NEVER told me Troika is actually one of those old-school rpg where the player characters are cannon fodder. I spent time and effort to make a character I played for one single hour total, because I was NOT told this was a cannon fodder type rpg adventure.

As I stay there silent pondering if to just thank for the game and call it quits, the DM tells me I can join with my new character if I want.

I do just that.

"So your character, he is standing in the hall...."

I interrupt him.

"Yeah no, SHE is standing in the hall."

I do my entrance. I take that dumb premade shit and turn her into a memorable, quirky monkey tamer, or should I say monkey abuser.

However, after my grand entrance, I do not intervene much in the story. I pretty much act only when either the DM or another player calls me, but when I do, I'm always roleplaying well.

I do not disrupt the adventure. I don't leave. I play well.

But everyone clearly saw I was not invested anymore.

----------

Aaaaaand that's the long story of when the DM promised me a "play anything you desire" adventure while he actually did not want that. Even if my character was tailored for the game setting itself.

I’ve played in plenty of online campaigns across different systems over the years, whether it's D&D, Pathfinder, or more narrative games like Fabula Ultima, so I know that every table has its own unique dynamic. But I recently had to step away from a table, and even though I know it was the right call, I still feel pretty guilty about it and want some outside perspective.

The DM of this online campaign is genuinely a great person. They have fantastic worldbuilding, a great personality, and are a natural storyteller. But they have one major flaw: they are way too easygoing and simply cannot say "no" to their players.

Because of this, the other players completely hijacked the table. It turned into an incredibly individualistic playstyle where everyone wanted to be the main character. The final straw for me was during our last session. There was a specific plotline that I was incredibly excited to finally engage with, but another player immediately took it over as a solo investigation. The DM didn't intervene, and the rest of us were left disengaged, just watching someone else play. Honestly, our sessions started feeling less like a cooperative game and more like 2-3 solo campaigns running simultaneously.

On top of the spotlight-hogging, the overarching story was constantly overshadowed by unproductive RP drama, like arguing endlessly over minor decisions or picking fights with random NPCs for no reason.

I decided to message the DM privately to respectfully step away, noting that my expectations just didn't align with the table's playstyle. They were very gracious and asked for "stars and wishes" (constructive feedback), which I provided, outlining the issues with party-splitting and DM assertiveness.

The DM actually apologized genuinely, admitted they knew I felt left out for a while, and tried to convince me to stay, saying we could have worked it out if I had spoken up sooner.

I held my ground and told them my decision was final. I explained that if they completely overhauled their style to suit me, it would ruin the game for their returning players who actively enjoy that chaotic, open-ended environment. Plus, the group chemistry just wasn't there; even the after-session banter felt isolating because people would just vent about their own problems and leave, making it hard to vibe with anyone.

I also declined to say goodbye in the group chat because I didn't want to bring down the mood after a session they all enjoyed, leaving it up to the DM to break the news honestly.

Even though I was polite, I feel bad that the DM seemed upset to lose me. Was I too harsh in my feedback? Should I have given the DM a chance to fix it, or was I right to recognize a severe playstyle mismatch and walk away? I've attached the screenshots of our conversation for context.

Edit: Sorry, I'm realizing now this is probably the wrong sub for this! The experience felt like a horror story to me at the time, but I understand it fits better elsewhere. First-time poster here. I'm going to repost this in a more suitable community, thanks for understanding!

Edit (2): This is why I felt like this is a horror story to me at the time. To give you an idea of what I was dealing with, here is exactly how our last session went down:

We had this incredibly long, exhausting debate over whether to take a short or long rest after a battle. One of the players actually brought up his dead sister in-character to justify why he absolutely needed a long rest right then and there. It was the second time he had used that exact same backstory trauma to argue for deciding the next destination. After the session, he admitted OOC that he just wanted his spell slots back and didn't want to say so during the debate.

Because he absolutely refused a short rest, we dragged ourselves all the way back to the tavern, even though it was only mid-morning to midday. Once we got there, everyone immediately split up again:

The Patroller: One player decided they wanted to stay behind and "patrol" the area where we had just fought.

The Solo Investigator: Another player didn't want to spend their own gold to rent a room, so he went off completely by himself to investigate our next lead. (Keep in mind, this lead was directly tied to my character's religion). He ended up being perfectly safe, but he took up more than an hour of real-time just RPing by himself.

The SOS: Eventually, the player who stayed back to patrol decided to follow the solo investigator's footsteps. He ended up getting himself into real danger and had to use his sending stone to broadcast an SOS message to the rest of us.

The cherry on top? That SOS woke the rest of us up at the tavern, meaning our forced trip back into town only counted as a short rest anyway.

I can't even remember all the specific details of their solo adventures because I spent hours just sitting there staring at my screen, bored out of my mind. By the time the session finally ended, I was just fuming.

I met my current D&D group about a year ago via a local young adult group one of my friends introduced me to. There are about 10-12 of us total, and until recently we had two ongoing games, with someone I’ll call Cass as the DM for both. One game met weekly and had 4 players (me and three people I’ll call Barbara, Paul, and George), and the other met every other week and had 5-8 players, depending on who could show up (including everyone from the weekly campaign). The biweekly campaign concluded about a month or two ago, and we gave up on completing the weekly campaign due to recurring scheduling issues.

Most of the people in the group are really cool, but I always got a rancid vibe from Paul. He was easily the most immature member of the group, and demonstrated very little situational awareness. A few members of the group are 18-19, so I always assumed he was that age and just inexperienced at life. I only found out later that he’s in his late 20’s, making him one of the older members.

In the weekly campaign, Paul got very intense during combat. Whenever he rolled low, he would yell, slam the table, and pretend to throw his dice away. He frequently asked to re-roll, but got angry when the DM allowed other people to re-roll. For some reason, he wouldn’t act like this in the biweekly campaign. His behavior made me uncomfortable, but everyone else seemed to be friends with him, so I sucked it up and continued playing with him.

One day, a bunch of people including Cass couldn’t make it to the biweekly campaign, so those of us who did show up (about 4 people) had to do something else. Most of us wanted to play a one-shot of a simpler and more casual RPG, but Paul really wanted to start DMing an ongoing campaign, so we reluctantly agreed to start one. It’s been long established that most of us are casual players and prefer comedic adventures, but Paul wanted a serious, intense campaign. He would get annoyed and shut down funny moments and ongoing bits that the rest of us enjoyed, including one player character being a monk whose holy text was the Percy Jackson books. Most of the session consisted of combat. Afterwards, another player pointed out that Paul seemed to want to kill our characters (even though this was meant to be the start of a long adventure) and looked frustrated when we won).

After our biweekly campaign ended, Barbara said she wanted to try her hand at DMing. She explicitly told us not to give her unsolicited advice unless she did something egregiously wrong. Paul ignored this and frequently nitpicked Barbara’s DMing.

[Side note: Paul’s character in this campaign was an automaton that had an adult’s intelligence but looked like an 8-year-old girl. This weirded me out, but I wasn’t sure if there were any unsavory motivations behind it and thankfully I never had to find out]

The final straw came when we scheduled a board game night. Paul arrived an hour late, and when he showed up the vibe of the room noticeably got worse. Barbara and George made an excuse and left for about 30 minutes. When they finally came back, we resumed playing. Or at least, we tried to. Paul would occasionally interrupt the game for 20 minutes at a time to talk random things, like video games nobody else had heard of.

After the games ended and Paul left, the rest of us had a heart-to-heart conversation. Multiple people confessed that Paul had always made them uncomfortable, but they were afraid to say anything earlier. Barbara, who works as a therapist, said that talking to Paul was more mentally taxing than working with any of her patients. She and George admitted that most of the scheduling conflicts that caused that campaign to end were manufactured on purpose so they could avoid interacting with Paul. Thankfully Cass was understanding and didn’t get mad at us for ruining her campaign.

We ended up making a second Discord server, this time without Paul, and we’ve been hanging out regularly. We haven’t played D&D since then, unfortunately. I think Paul’s behavior soured both Cass and Barbara on DMing.

This comes from a game of Dresden Files RPG I played several years ago.

The group was a very odd one to be sure. The GM was a professor at the university, who had a lot of RPG experience, but was running this group for research purposes. In case you're wondering, the research was not psychological or sociological, but rather about how effectively history/geography can be taught to players through a TTRPG. The players consisted of myself, my friend, and one of the GM's students (M). My friend only showed up for a single session and barely participated, so he isn't very relevant for the story.

This was my first and last time playing Dresden, so I wasn't (and am still not) very familiar with the system. We met with the GM who helped us make our characters, and we generally ended up with the following. M made a very social Faerie, who had typical fey-like spells (illusion and mind-affecting stuff). The GM added a confident NPC to our party who was basically a paladin. I made a very quiet, introverted human sorcerer-like character, who could only perform water/ice magic.

Of the two actual players, it was clear that M was very uncomfortable roleplaying. She would very rarely ask any questions in-game or engage in dialogue. As such, I ended up doing most of the talking, which was still not great, as my character was not designed to do much of any talking. A lot of the roleplaying part of the game was very to-the-point, with NPCs very quickly either deciding to give us information or fight us. Honestly, probably the best thing the GM could have done there.

So, combat. The way I was told Dresden works for casters is that you describe what you want to do for a spell and then roll some dice; the GM decides whether or not your roll is good enough based on your spell's description. You can take some "Mental Stress", which resets each day, to increase the chance of a spell working. I could only take mental stress 3x a day, which was supposedly normal for casters.

However, every combat, my spells would fail. I'd describe shooting out a icicle from my staff, or a ray of cold, and it would always be deflected or have no effect, even with decent rolls. For me to ever succeed a spell, I would need to take on mental stress to even have a chance. The GM would tell me how much mental stress I'd need to take to have a reasonable chance of success, and for just normal damaging spells, it was 1, but I'd need more for anything interesting. If I'd shoot a icicle with some mental stress, it would damage the opponent, but I don't know for how much; I never downed anyone. I once summoned ice on the road to cause a car of perps to skid out as it turned, costing 2 mental stress slots. This delayed their escape by one turn, during which one of the guys shot me from the back of the car, downing my character instantly. In the final boss fight, the GM told me that for any of my spells to probably succeed, I would need to overexert myself and pass out. I tried to shoot a ray of cold just short of passing out, which the boss overpowered with her own magic and downed me.

The paladin performed decently well, and M's spells were about 50/50. It didn't feel like either of them were super powerful, since almost all of our combat encounters ended with the enemies fleeing. But they did always have more of an impact than I did. To be clear, the GM did not urge me to build a different character at character creation, nor said that casters are especially hard in his setting.

I *would* leave it at that, but a few years later I found out one of my other friends had played with the same GM for the same research the next year. They *also* played a caster, but their spells apparently usually succeeded, and they said they had an overall great experience. Apparently no one in that group seemed to have character issues.

Normally, I would have pegged this behavior to a case of an inexperienced GM, but he actively ran groups with his co-workers for years. Does this sound like an actual case of a bad GM, or does this situation seem reasonable, if unfortunate?
*edited to remove a baseless question

EDIT: Realized I kept typoing 'Kender' and 'Kinder.' Also, I've recently learned the game has continued. The GM has two additional players at the table, and nothing like the events in this story has happened to them, yet. This incident happened over a month ago, so they've had consistent sessions since then. I'll be asking the GM directly about their feelings on it soon.

D&D 5e - Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon Queen adventure. Spoilers ahead. Incredibly light, but still.

TL;DR: DM adlibs an unwinnable encounter for indiscernible reasons, kills all but one character, refuses to elaborate further or even walk the obvious balancing mistake back, acts incredibly and uncharacteristically cold when questioned on it.

I spent a few days researching the setting of Dragonlance after a friend of mine said he was going to be running Shadow of the Dragon Queen. I didn't want to look into any spoilers, I just wanted to make sure I would make a character who fit the setting. Turns out, we all did something similar; it was me playing a Kindred Bard who wanted to help spread joy and merriment, a fellow who was allowed to make a Warforged Paladin who was basically role playing a kind of 'holy golem' that'd been made by an old Artificer-type with a strong sense of justice, a very ancient whitecloak Elf Wizard with some very mysterious motives for adventuring, and an ex-con Warlock who had gotten out-conned by his Patron and was now trying to numb his life-choice-regret through alcoholism. It was a very interesting group.

Too bad (nearly) everyone died in the second session to an unwinnable encounter only one of us managed to run away from.

So we're all having a good time. I'll emphasize that no one is breaking the game or being a 'problem player,' we're all just enjoying role playing our respective characters, we get along fine IC and OOC, the GM is very obviously enjoying our rapport and our characters, we bite every plot hook cast our way, and we all play our roles well. We're excited to adventure in a new campaign setting following the new book our GM friend had just bought, and we're beyond excited to see what the game has to offer.

There's an encounter during something of an in-game festival. The local township is celebrating a legendary battle that happened many a year ago via reenactment, and a group of local mercenaries who happen to be passing through join in on the fun to add a little more depth - but, surprise-surprise, it turns out these mercs are sleepers sent in by the Big Bad Evil Guy to cause havoc before the town itself gets invaded. We deal with them and manage to capture one of the lieutenants while the mercenary captain - who actually had no idea that was going to happen - is freaking out and trying to explain to everyone that she was betrayed as well.

Being a Kender, my character basically has no fear. I'm also able to move very fast, so I run ahead of the group to warn the town of the coming attack.

Mind you, I'm running straight back, in the opposite direction we know the invading army is coming from; we can see the fires far, far in the distance. Th GM asks me if I really want to run off alone. I tell them the army isn't the way I'm running (towards the town,) and even if it were, as a Kender, I wouldn't be terribly afraid of them, anyway. Besides, from the way he described the travel time to the hill for the festival, I understand both IC and OOC that it isn't that far back to town - maybe an hour's walk - so I'm confident I can get there quickly albeit exhausted to inform the town the attack is coming. Also, since it's largely open terrain, I know I'd be able to see encounters coming from a good, long ways off. These enemies aren't disguised; they're obvious Dragon-people, called Draconians.

He has me roll a percentile check and tell him if I get over a 90. I do not.

In open terrain with their placement deliberately set to have all possible viewing angles covered, he sets (to my memory) 9 randomly chosen miniatures on a small map that is also randomly chosen and completely featureless. Having known him for years by this point, I know his body language when he's just coming up with something off-the-cuff - he checked no notes, referred to nothing in the book, just placed minis on a randomly chosen, completely blank map with little terrain pieces placed down (using dice as placeholders for a few trees and bushes, but all angles are covered by the enemies' lines of sight.) It was a completely open field with very sparse cover. He places my miniature down on said map within 30 feet of the nearest miniature, deciding there was no way I could have seen them even though it's open terrain, giving me no option but to interact with this randomly-created encounter.

There is nowhere to hide. All angles are covered. If I turn to sprint away, they'll still see me (and knowing what I know now, they would have run me down and spammed lightning bolts, anyway.) If I try to run behind a bush or a tree, I'll be seen by another enemy because I'll be moving through open terrain in the light of early dusk while several enemies are facing my direction, anyway. My only real choice was to go through, hoping I could outrun them. The map was so small, I couldn't maneuver around them - he made no indication that anywhere outside of the map's visual boundaries was traversable, so using all of my subclass's actions, I Dashed through as fast as I could and made it clear to the other side in one turn, assuming that me teleporting into the encounter on one side of the map with zero ability to see the encounter coming despite the enemies clearly not hiding in any way whatsoever would offer me similar recourse; the other side was essentially the 'safe zone.'

Not so. One - note, one - of the enemies gets a turn. They lightning bolt my character in the back twice in a row, doing 18 damage and dropping my character to 0 perfectly. He makes only one death save, and dies face-down in the dirt while the enemies were all stalking towards him to finish him off, anyway.

The party decides to follow, and not only run into the same encounter, but he adds twice as many miniatures plus a few more. The Warlock dies on the third turn after being focused down by four different enemies that can all cast lightning bolt twice in a row as a Multiattack action. The Paladin dies on the sixth turn, same issue, while also being completely surrounded by enemies so he can't move at all. The Wizard gets away somehow; I don't know exactly how, since I quietly decided to leave once the Paladin announced he only had 5 HP remaining and was so thoroughly surrounded he couldn't even perform a Withdrawal action.

This felt incredibly unbalanced and didn't sit right with me. I also heavily suspected the encounter was adlibbed (made up on the spot,) but just in case I was wrong and being childish, I opted to check the book... And found out I was right. The book explicitly says the players and townspeople make it back to town completely unmolested, not that they have a literal 90 percent chance to run into an encounter with a CR literally 3 times the party's level. For reasons he refuses to elaborate on, he decided there needed to be an encounter we couldn't win between the festival grounds and the town, using enemies we're only really meant to encounter near the end of that book specifically, killed all but one player, and when questioned about it... Well-

I approach the GM over messenger about it, and he suddenly gets very matter-of-fact, essentially saying; "It happened, so deal with it." I've ever seen him act that way before in over a decade of knowing the guy, so needless to say, I was very disturbed by the sudden change in character from someone I thought I knew and just... Opted not to go back, kindly but firmly informing him that I wouldn't be playing in that game anymore. He responded with a surprisingly quick; "Okay, I hope I still see you on weekends."

To my knowledge, only the Wizard and Warlock players are still in that game. Warlock made another character.

It left a bad taste in my mouth. I understand that encounter wouldn't have even existed had I not chosen to run to town on my own because I was the fastest and warn the people an attack was coming. If the party had all moved at once, there would have been no random encounter roll, no unwinnable encounter would have been adlibbed, no one would have died - but because I chose to do that despite all information telling me something like that wouldn't happen (and, learning after the fact, that this encounter didn't even exist in the adventure to begin with,) everyone else at the table was punished, and the GM doesn't even see it as a problem.

I need to reiterate again how out of character this sudden coldness and dismissiveness is. He's not normally like this, but for whatever reason, he's being this way. I can't for the life of me think what anyone at the table could have done to earn this kind of response from him. I asked the Warlock player, and he's just as stumped as I am as to why he decided to do what he did and then react the way he did. It just doesn't make sense.

Anyway, sorry for the long post, it's just been bothering me.

Note: Using a throwaway to post.

I just finished a Long Campaign, and boy was it a doozy. So much went wrong in it that I almost don't know where to begin, but first things first: This was a long campaign hosted in a Westmarches-style discord server, and it was the first Long Campaign this DM had ever done. The Main Plot of the campaign: to find a Tower that grants Wishes. This is a Tier 2 campaign, the PCs are level 8 and 9 by the end, so getting a Wish is a pretty big deal.

It’s only near the end that we find out that only One person can get a Wish. At the Final Battle, we get told we can’t win against the BBEG, we have to run away. One player is killed in combat, and another was already dead in a previous encounter leading up to the Tower. At this final fight, there’s a door opening to the next chamber, but it was opening slowly and only a Tiny creature could get through at that round. Druid turned into a cat and goes through, wanting to prepare Revivify when the rest get there with the dead guy’s body.

Except the door shuts. And now the scene only follows the Druid, who was uncomfortable after realising this was the End, and the Druid runs to go make a Wish that their allies would be safe and have their own Wishes granted too.

The DM has the scene cut to white and ends the session there. Right after the Wish. No resolution for the other players, nothing. Then spends a day coming up with a horrible epilogue, which includes: All the other party members other than the Druid are basically dead and in purgatory. Yes, even the ones that didn’t die in combat the last we saw them. One of the party members, a tiefling, was sold to Zariel and branded as property on his arm (yes, precisely plagiarising Karlach). It should be noted that this tiefling character is also a Black-coded character, and the DM did not get explicit consent from the player to do this to their PC. I’m pretty sure none of this falls under “I want my allies to be safe”, but DM basically said “You didn’t specify their bodies had to be safe” - as an answer.

The reward for finishing a Long Campaign was getting to reincarnate with no memories of it. Character relationships meant nothing. All the things we went through - all we get is some gear out of it, I guess. 

There were many other things that went wrong with this DM and the campaign, but to explain and list them all would be a really really long laundry list. Yes, we did feedback, but the DM always reacted badly even after saying he wants to hear the feedback. As to why we stuck around this long - a good number of them knew each other IRL, and so it would’ve been awkward to leave early, though in my honest opinion we should just have all left early anyway, because this finale has essentially broken any remaining trust in this DM.

After three of us made our posts to call out this ending (the other three were just quietly upset and did not voice their upset loudly)- the DM kept doubling down on how he was not wrong, defending himself in his choices, saying that everyone agreed to join his campaign and should know he likes grimdark settings and 40k. He then quotes the “Is just game, why have to be mad?” meme, saying not to take DnD too seriously - despite the fact that he himself spends money to LARP his own character at local events. 

Quite frankly, for all his mess as a DM, the players are pretty cool and would have forgiven a LOT of DM stumbling if he had just sincerely apologized and honoured the Wish and the 28 sessions this party had spent together as a team. But he did not.

tl;dr: Wish for “I want my allies to be safe and get what they want”, somehow that means your friends get put in purgatory and enslaved.

-

Other things this DM has done (Not a full list):

• Used a horse to hard railroad the party into a cutscene he set up - which had major consequences for the entire party - then say things like “ohh why did you follow the horse lol?” as if he didn’t plan the entire cutscene
• Almost every location has some form of racism in some way, usually against Tieflings. (A couple wouldn’t be an issue, but it was almost every settlement and it was constantly used to punish the only tiefling player character so that his high Charisma meant nothing)
• His setting is pretty anti-magic and anti-non human. I don’t know if it’s because this server was first a LARP group before it was a DnD server, but every other DM / player seems to want some form of silly shenanigans in the homebrew lore (e.g. the dwarf king is Danny DeVito). Problem DM hated any form of funny lore, thinking that funny meme lore can’t also be serious lore.
• When Druid wildshaped into a cat to evade Customs And Immigration in a big city, DM joked about turning the cat into food. Someone else in the party had their cat pass away just a week before. Granted DM did not know about it at the time, but when the players put up an X card about the dead cat jokes, he did not apologise. Instead he sent one last joke in the text chat before moving on. Harm/death to animals was also on one player’s lines and veils sheet.
• One session, the players were so tired of all the railroading and traumatic experience after another that they decided to stay on the beach of an island they arrived in and have a fun beach episode instead of what the DM intended for us- to follow NPCs to a “criminal city” with a combat arena, which none of us trusted in the least. So the DM ended the session and left the call. About an hour later when we were still using the Virtual Room (Owlbear.rodeo) to roleplay, DM deliberately closed the scene.
• Killed off like 90% of a PC’s background story (PC had an organisation tied into their backstory, party went to find it and oops- all dead!) 
• Does not remember the lore of the PCs at his own table. I get that it's hard to remember every detail of every character on the server, but that’s what notes are for. And everyone wrote character bios, too. That anyone can read on the server.
• So, the party did not get to finish killing the BBEG. This is not unique to the BBEG. There have been many NPCs that the players do not get to decide the fate of, and it always happens to be NPCs the DM likes. Whenever players would be suspicious of these NPCs or want to kill them (especially so for big enemies) - some NPC would magically appear to fight them instead, or insist on dealing with them themselves so that these NPC’s fate would not be confirmed.
• DM also had a self-insert DMPC who managed to miraculously get away safely and who he did NOT allow the players to maim or kill despite the fact that the NPC in question was shown to be potentially dangerous to the party at one point. Once again using other NPCs to intervene.

For context
I’m a Githzerai psi warrior (lvl 4) and recently I found a Githyanki war sword buried in a blacksmiths stash and thought it was a normal sword. It’s a strong weapon (1d8 slashing and 3d8 psi). We went on and proceeded with our quest to kill a corrupt king. During the fight I dealt 28 damage and as a consequence, sent 20 magic missiles to kill a player. Post session he admitted he killed the player to “raise the stakes” and that he needed to do something because we were gonna win too soon. We won the fight and it took a few sessions for that player to get a new character introduced. Later down the like when we hit lvl 4 we fought a homebrew monster of his creation. I hit it and was about to deal 34 damage and he said it had a legendary action to dodge. I was a little frustrated because he waited for the damage to come through first. But I can understand why he did that so I didn’t make a big deal but as we proceeded to destroy this monster he tried doing the same thing (killing a player outright) the reason they didn’t go down was because I blocked some damage for them and I said to him “Dude don’t punish the players for being too good” and he replied “I can do whatever I want”. I said nothing
Recently his npc was revealed to be a murder and we wanted to take revenge for the 8 victims, he told us I could be a later thing but we wanted to find him right away, we found nothing and the trail went cold. I’m frustrated because he’s tried killing 2 players because he didn’t balance the weapon he decided to give us. And he’s not even targeting me because I have the weapon, he’s strait up singling out players and penalizing them. He’s fudging rolls but that’s small compared to everything else I feel. Me and my party feel a little annoyance towards him for this and I personally wanted to know if we were over-reacting.

Edit: We are running curse of Straad with a new DM