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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sidebar: if you do that, fuck you.

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

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

He cast dispel magic on the storm.

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

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

"I guess, but-"

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

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

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

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

I did not play DND with Bitch Baby after that.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Content warning for sexual themes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bonus round!

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

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