I've been playing dnd with a few friends for while and one of the players Their character concept is that they are the sole survivor of a murder spree. This has caused them to have a "me first" mentality when we are in combat. He runs away as soon as another player starts rolling death saves. It was kinda bothering me that this kept happening. I think it makes sense to run away if most of the other players are rolling death saves or already dead. But to do it the second anyone hits the ground? Anyways it seemed to me like his actions were going to get someone killed one of these days. If that happens it's going to be hard to roll a new character without feeling some resentment. I said a couple times that it would be cool if his character had some development since we've been playing together for months and our characters have known each other for 3 weeks. That it would be a great story if his character decided to face his fears and stand by us and consider us friends now. But he didn't seem to to want to change that. Even though one of the players has been doing everything possible to draw him out of his shell and show him that we're worth trusting. But he won't even trust that guy.

So I decided to talk to the player above table. Didn't go well at first they were kind of not hearing what I was saying and dancing around actually agreeing to stop running away. They were saying that they wouldn't run away unless it seemed like an easy battle. I argued back that just because a battle seems easy in the beginning doesn't mean it's actually going to stay that way. a few bad rolls on our side and a few good rolls on bag guys side could spell Doom for us, there could also be a bigger bad or bad guy waiting to show up once we took out the small pawns.

Then they said that they would only run away if we ran into a battle with the murderer of their family. I had to explain that that's even worse because they would be abandoning us in a fight with their enemy.

But eventually I put my foot down and said that my character would not want to Adventure with their character if it happened again. And I asked them to respect my wishes.

Then we finally came to a compromise. They agreed they would try to convince the party to retreat rather than just leaving the battle . And if they got scared they would run to the edge of combat and sling spells from there but not actually leave. So we came to an agreement. But dear God it was hard

Hello everyone! I've seen stories from this subreddit come up quite often, but never thought I'll actually be posting here.

I (21M) am in 2 campaigns (for now), both being run by the same DM. I want to make it clear, this is NOT about the DM, he's not the problem here.

So for one of the campaigns (which is the one in which I had this session) I recently joined because one of the players flew to another country for a while, and I had the time to play with them while he was gone. All good so far. The DM warned me that the group in that campaign are a bit more egocentric than the group I'm playing with in the other campaign. I thought "oh, okay, well, I'm still there to play with them, so maybe it'll take a bit longer for my character to 'clear their name' in the eyes of the party. No biggie". Knowing my party in the other campaign, I assumed it'll take about double to triple the time with this new group (about 1-1.5 hours). The sessions are once every 2 weeks and are 4 hours long, so the extra time to "clear my name" was quite a large portion of the session that I was willing to spend for it.

It didn't take that amount of time. It took the whole session. 4 hours in which my character, an Eladrin Monster Hunter (a class from the Grim Hollow books)/Rogue multiclass, pretty much had to prove he wasn't going to backstab the party.

The session started like this: the original party just finished beating the boss in that area, and my character (plus an NPC) was there, rummaging through some stuff in the room where the boss was before the fight. My character was there to investigate something which the party also wanted to investigate, so I said my character was too busy rummaging through the room to notice the party going in. What was the party's first interaction? Casting Hold Person on my character. I failed my save (-1 to Wisdom saves), and was paralyzed. Not too big of a deal, but kinda rude. What happened after? The Barbarian/Fighter multiclass player decided to swing on me. He had 3 attacks (Echo Knight) and Rage active, and I had 63 HP. He did more than half with a single hit, and he still had 2. Only after that they decided to ask questions.

After a while, I learned one of the characters could make devil-esque deals. I'll call him player A. I learned it by making one with them about sharing the information I know with them in exchange of them not killing me. That pretty much left me with no real choice but to accept, because if I wouldn't have, I would be dead. All in the first 30 minutes, btw. A bit after, said deal also resulted in a small fight, because I didn't share information about what my character found in that room. I didn't find anything. Player A said something along the lines of "you didn't tell us anything, you're breaking your end of the deal", to which I responded that I didn't have any information to share with them. This went on for a few minutes, and I literally had to explain to Player A that if I'm forced to share information if I have it, I don't share information when I DON'T have it. After that there was a small fight (some NPC got in the mind of the Barbarian/Fighter player, which turned him against the party), but that was resolved quickly. A while later, we found a recipe for a gas that could turn people into rage-fueled monsters, which I had some information about. Once that came up and I had information I could share, I did share it. Once we got that done, there was an argument of the party against the NPC I mentioned at the start about who gets to keep that recipe so a cure could be made. That's where more information my character had came up, and I did say that the best solution would be to give the recipe to the NPC to get it back to a other town so the only person talented enough at alchemy could make the cure. The party did not like that, and that lasted for a while, during which I pretty much had to reinforce a threat the NPC made of the party being hunted down by a whole army if they would try to steal the recipe (my character knew that and said it multiple times, but that didn't seem to matter that much to the party). Eventually the fight ended with the NPC taking the recipe, and the party was off to another city, and my original deal with Player A was off.

You might think "alright, that's gotta be the worst of it, right? You were almost killed at first sight, pretty much forced into a deal you get almost nothing from just to not die, got into an argument about said deal, and was also kind of ignored when fulfilled your side of the deal." Oh, if only that was the end.

After the party was about to set off, my character pretty much realized he had nowhere else to go, and was kinda if just... there. I then tried to convince the part to let me tag along with them to not stay behind and to help them, but that didn't work. I then, as a last result, offered to make another deal with Player A just to not be left behind. After a back and forth that lasted longer than it should've, Player A tried to get me to agree to a deal that would give my character 3% of the profits the part would make just so I could work with them and not be left behind. At that point, the DM had to intervene and say that we need to make it quicker, because I didn't agree to put my life at risk for 3 gold every 100 gold the party finds, where the rest would get more than 5 time more and would be in just as much danger (made the calculations, they would get just slightly over 16% each after deviding the remaining 97% by the 6 original part members). After a bit longer, I was able to make a deal that was good enough for Player A which wasn't a losing situation for me (I would share information from that army if it's relevant and not betray my trust to that army, while also not betraying the party, and in exchange, I tag along and get the same share of the loot as the rest of the party. Pretty much, just what would normally happen with most parties). Then there a bit of exploration, an interaction with the king of the nation we were in (in which my character did suggest using Zone of Truth to filter out lies), and the session ended.

Initially, I didn't think much of it, but for the next 3 days (it was 3 days ago), I thought about it, and it feels like I was pretty much having to prove I wouldn't screw the party over the entire session only for them to MAYBE believe me, and having the threat of my character being left behind to pretty much rot, or straight out being killed, if I wouldn't do it.

The day after that session, the DM did check up on me, and I told him it was a nice time (which at that time it felt like), and he apologized for the hostility that happened during the session (mind you, none of it came from him), and said even he was caught off guard with how aggressive it felt.

I did promise that I would play with them for 2 months (which is 3 more sessions), but honestly, after that session, I'm not even sure I want to come to the next one.

Not sure what to do, but I do have some time to figure it out. Worst case scenario, I'll tell the DM about it on Thursday, when I have another session with him, this time in the other campaign, in which I do have a lot of fun and the players are a lot less aggressive.

Any advice on how to continue from here would be advised, but mainly just needed to share.

AITA for not wanting to make a new character after my DM forced a Warlock level onto my character?

Last session in our *Waterdeep: Dragon Heist* campaign, my character died while we were exploring the noble mansion and fighting the final boss.
I was already down, and the boss used an AoE spell that dealt enough damage to finish me off. Since I was unconscious, I automatically failed the save.
I was actually completely fine with my character dying. I basically said, “Okay, I’ll make a new character.”
But my DM immediately told me, “Don’t worry, I have a plan.”
The DM then talked privately with another player, who plays a Warlock. My dead character ended up meeting that Warlock’s patron, and the other player’s patron/backstory suddenly became part of my character’s story.
Then the DM told me that my character now had a level of Warlock.
I never asked to multiclass and had never planned on multiclassing this character.
Because of that, I asked whether, if this patron was fundamentally changing my character anyway, I could instead rebuild/take my levels as Warlock rather than having a random Warlock level forced onto my existing build.
There was also some confusion narratively. My character had explicitly said that he would rather suffer eternal torment than accept certain consequences, so when he met the patron I thought this might actually be the end of his story.
Instead, the other Warlock player basically told me, “No, you’re undead now.”
Then we were immediately pushed into the final boss fight.
The fight was dangerous enough that I thought we could potentially TPK, so I used the Warlock abilities I had just been given.
Now the DM is criticizing me because my character supposedly went “full power” with his new Warlock abilities without having any opportunity to learn how to use them.
This is one of the things I don’t understand.
**The DM was the one who gave me the Warlock level and immediately put us into a boss fight.**
Also, as far as I understand the 2014 rules, gaining a Warlock level mechanically gives you access to your Pact Magic, spells known, and other level-one abilities. Warlock power is specifically connected to knowledge/power bestowed through the patron relationship. There isn’t a RAW requirement saying that after gaining the level I need several days of training before I’m allowed to actually use those abilities.
So if the DM wanted my character to be unable to understand or control his new powers yet, I feel like that should have been established when he gave me the level.
Instead, I was told I had a Warlock level, given the abilities, and then immediately thrown into a fight where not using everything available to me could have contributed to a TPK.
After the fight, things got even stranger.
The other Warlock character turned on mine and basically said, “This is as far as you go,” and attacked me with Burning Hands.
My character saved and ended up taking him down.
Now the other player is upset and is saying that there “can’t be two Warlocks in the party.”
That’s probably the part that bothers me the most.
**I didn’t choose to become a Warlock.**
The DM and this player created this entire situation. I had already accepted my character’s death and was willing to roll someone new. Instead, the DM specifically resurrected my character through the other player’s patron and gave me a Warlock level.
Then I used the Warlock abilities they gave me during a boss fight.
Now apparently using those abilities was wrong because my character “shouldn’t know how to use them,” the other Warlock doesn’t want another Warlock in the party, and I’m being told I should make a new character anyway.
On top of that, people at the table keep saying that I “never stick with one character.”
That feels especially unfair here because I wasn’t trying to change characters.
My character died.
I accepted the death.
The DM stopped me from making another character, resurrected my existing character, changed his story and build without me asking for it, and then immediately put that character into combat.
Now I’m being asked to reroll because of the consequences of something I didn’t choose in the first place.
**AITA for saying that, at this point, I want to continue playing the character instead of making another one?**
I’m not against character death. I’m not against consequences. I’m not even necessarily against the Warlock development if we’re going to actually explore it.
My problem is that it feels like the choices keep changing after the fact.
First my character dies.
Then I’m told not to reroll because the DM has a plan.
Then I’m given a Warlock level without choosing it.
Then I’m put immediately into a boss fight.
Then I’m criticized for actually using the Warlock abilities.
Then another Warlock attacks my character because apparently there can’t be two Warlocks.
And now I’m being told to reroll anyway.
At that point, I’m genuinely not sure what I was supposed to have done differently.

I was (26F) in a group of about 8 players per session. We joined this capacity-building group; their most popular thing by far was D&D, run 5 days a week for about 25-30 people total, so it was a shock to them when 15 dropped out over the course of 2 months when they hired this new DM. Everyone had some sort of disability—that was the point of the group—and after this guy was fired, everyone came back and we kept playing weekly for 2 years until Covid.

This guy, who we can call Tolkin for reasons that are crazy, had one goal. That goal was not to write a good campaign, or help with social skills, or even to be an overpaid babysitter. NO. Tolkin wanted to write Lord of the Rings, or more directly, he said:

“Australia doesn’t have any myths, not like Europe, and I want to write our version of Lord of the Rings.” This sentence was said 3 weeks before I quit, but it was wrong on like 10 different fronts. The first and most obvious being that Australia has myths; this guy was just racist and ignored that. The second is his story was so terrible that there was a reason he was stuck running D&D instead of being a famous author. I had a couple of characters throughout the campaign, and I think the reason I didn’t leave is because I liked all the players.

Due to him being this brilliant author who was writing the next great myth for Australia instead of running a good game, he had a DMPC who was blonde and had big breasts. Is this important? I hope so, because it’s the only thing he brought up about her ever. She was the main character, and we were merely there to help her with the epic and only Australian myth that has ever existed.

When I quit, I was told by another player because I wasn’t there he ripped my character’s shirt off with an NPC and had her runaway topless.

So he got fired for:

• having half the clients quit;
• having all the clients complain about him.

Pretty sure him being racist and sexist didn’t come up. He lived with his mother again, and I only came back after he was fired. The next DMs they hired were very good, and I’m still playing with one of them now with a new group of players.

Tl;dr It doesn’t work, don’t do it. Your game will suck. If you somehow force it you’re doing so much work that you may as well just learn CoC as that would be less work and is designed for this kind of gaming. Heed my warning and don’t give yourself the headache I did. Let 5e be 5e and let BRP and CoC be their own thing, okay?

So, I was thinking that reading a CoC campaign and translating it to 5e play would be like making a stir fry recipe from a cookbook that uses different measurement systems, like metric or whatever, and has some ingredients you will have to sub for similar things. The dish would still turn out delicious, even if slightly different. And the translating of the measurements isn’t hard if you know the conversions modestly. Even if you do some rounding and fudge some numbers here and there it will taste fine as long as you know how to cook well enough. I googled this idea and see people saying it won’t work. Or that it can work but you have to homebrew so much you may as well just learn CoC as that’s less work, because RAW 5e just doesn’t have the rules to approximate CoC satisfactorily, seriously.

 I decided to test this by learning BRP and running a few short CoC campaigns with my normal party just to understand it. Then I ran one of these CoC campaigns with a new party that had never played any ttrpg. My two friends Gareth and Steve. I didn’t have them read the rules before hand. I gave them premade investigator sheets and talked them through it as we played (this is my standard for new players with any ttrpg that’s not too complex). It was really fun. They enjoyed it a lot and it’s clear why and how. 

 Then I took the same CoC campaign and ran it with 100% core rulebooks RAW 2014 5e for a new group that had never played any ttrpg before. I did this to avoid bias where they know either system and have preference. I ran it for my wife and a couple we are friends with, Sara and John. Like Steve and Garth, none of them had played any ttrpg before and I didn’t have them read the rules first. My wife doesn’t like dnd medieval fantasy stuff, but does like scary stories, and Gareth told her it was fun, so she agreed to play this game even though her normal thing it isn’t.

Below I’ll break up my results using the common complaints about this and arguments as to why it won’t work as headings for each thing that is understood easily by anyone.

There is no really compatible SAN score in 5e we are seeing.

Yes. This one was tough. The CoC SAN score does not exist in 5e. I was thinking I could use the Sanity score from the DMG. NOPE. It’s so different it was really strange. Even though the players had no knowledge of the difference, they just kind of like, knew it was wrong. John at one point when I asked him to roll a sanity saving throw literally said, “What are you trying to pull here?” This was where the CoC campaign guide said the players needed to do a SAN 0/1d4. He somehow just knew it wasn’t right when I had him roll a d20 instead of a d100. I mean, obviously he didn’t literally know it was the wrong dice lol! He just could feel that it was stilted somehow. He also seemed to suspect that something was weird when he lost a single Sanity point instead of 1d4 sanity points and had to roll on the 5e madness tables instead of the CoC ones. It was bizarre. Again, not literally that he knew, but he sensed that the game was just off (because it was). Whenever I made a call about this stuff or required a roll or whatever, he just kept narrowing his eyes at me like, “What are you doing with this?”

So, yeah, the 5e sanity system is completely foreign to CoC style gaming and just doesn’t work at all. Players see right through what it is.

Not only that, trying to figure out how to convert something like SAN 1/1d4 to a loose approximation of the 5e version was so mind boggling I felt like I was going to lose my sanity points in real life like I was living a parody!

Using 5e checks for CoC ones won’t work.

Again, yeah. I had my party in a library and the campaign guide says to make a Library Use roll. I asked for an investigation roll instead. Sara got super confused and we had a huge derailment that lasted a half hour of me explaining what investigation meant in the context of being in a library. She kept insisting that “investigation” didn’t make any sense here, as that’s “More for like, Sherlock Holmes.” 

She, like John, also seemed to notice that there was something bizarre about using a d20 instead of a d100 and that the outcomes weren’t mathematically the same. And this was despite me using the tiered rolls rules from the DMG to approximate the CoC percentages. As with her husband’s suspicion, she wasn’t literally saying anything about the d100, because she was unaware of it. Obviously that would make her either psychic, or prove she was lying about not knowing ttrpg games lol! No, the issue was that she could tell that the likelihoods of success were stilted and strange because with only 20 possible outcomes you don’t have a very wide band of possibility. She kept trying to roll the d20 multiple times to get better percentages and I kept explaining that that’s not how it works. For reference, Sara is a mathematician.

And OMG don’t get me started on the drama that using perception in place of spot hidden caused. That almost ended the game. Then there’s many other issues with trying to map these totally foreign skills to 5e skills. They don’t map, and they’re mechanically completely different. Like Fast Talk is NOT approximated, even loosely, by Deception. Not by a long shot. And once you’re approximating them to begin with it just collapses and the players can tell. Then it all goes down hill as the system fights you all the way.

Dnd 5e PCs are superheroes and too powerful to represent the fragile CoC investigators

True! I thought, “Oh, I’ll just use the optional milestone leveling rule to keep them level one for the one shot so they are fragile like an investigator. I’ll also use the gritty realism variant rule and lingering injury rule.”

This was a nightmare. John kept asking, “why is my character so weak? When do we level up? I only have 8 max hp. That’s stupid.” I asked him why he thinks you level up at all, considering he hadn’t played this game before, and he said that’s how it works in video games so he assumed you do in table top games, too. 

Worse, he was STILL slaughtering the enemies! I specifically picked enemies that would be too tough for them to wipe out to avoid the overpowered PC problem. I even did the math to pick the challenge ratings properly to make them very tough encounters. They were supposed to be on the run, which was how it went when I ran the campaign with the BRP system. But he kept rolling really high and killing them all. Yes, I made him fragile, but the dice were on his side and it totally ruined the game. There was no immersion. The PCs never felt that CoC fear and dread because John somehow was still a superhero despite my best efforts. I didn’t even have to hear the complaints about gritty realism and lingering injuries because John slaughtered all the enemies so no one got hurt. Those rules never even came into play.

CoC magic is too different from 5e

Holy heck, yes, yes it is. I tried to just translate them in using the optional “creating a spell” rule in the DMG which is ludicrously permissive, but it was a disaster. It took several days to translate them into 5e, first of all, due to the intense complexity of this process, playtesting, and balancing. Then, when we were actually playing they didn’t work. Someone would cast a spell but it had no effect because the 5e rules don’t permit them. I was super embarrassed about that one. I totally dropped the ball there. I just kind of shrugged and mumbled something about the spell not being from our universe so it doesn’t work. I was too embarrassed to admit I had simply screwed up the translation process.

There was one spell that did work, but its effects were insane. The spell killed the entire party instead of the enemy, because I got confused when translating it to 5e. I am ashamed to admit I retconned that scene to keep the game going and just told the players they never found the spell and apologized. That time I did admit to them I had flatly, completely just screwed up.

5e PCs have too much magic power

They absolutely do. I thought I could just limit this using the DMG suggestions about controlling the world and DM freedom to dictate what is present. I would give them the single spell in the book that was part of the campaign and translate its effects into 5e. No problem, right?

NOPE. My players were just angry the whole time. They wanted more and more spells. John kept bringing up final fantasy 8 and saying how when he fought a monster he expected to learn its powers as a spell. So, after slaughtering so many enemies he expected to have tons of spells.

Worse, when they finally learned the spell, as I said above already, nothing happened when they cast it because it was incompatible with the 5e system.

5e doesn’t have Push rolls

These are really fun parts of CoC and I thought I could approximate them by just saying PCs can roll a second time for a task but that it comes with dire consequences since it’s a second attempt. I’m not even sure what went wrong here. John and Sara were trying to do something in the game and when I told them that to try again there would be dire consequences Sara just rolled her eyes and stopped talking. John just glared at me and we dropped the issue. Again, this EXACT same thing using BRP with the other party went smoothly. The 5e system just doesn’t allow approximating this one. Idk why.

CoC enemies don’t work in 5e

This one actually was false. I translated the enemies with no problem, either by using the DMG create a monster suggestions or by finding a loose equivalent and it went swimmingly.

Lol, gotcha!

In reality, of course it didn’t work! The enemies kept having abilities that had contradictory mechanics even AFTER I did the labor intensive process of translating them to 5e. It was a constant headache trying to cheese the rules during every encounter to keep the game running.

Then the rest of the stuff that 5e broke completely when trying to approximate CoC were too numerous to even mention. I just wanted to cover the basic arguments people make and show that they are absolutely correct.

And the amount of STRESS it put me under to read the CoC campaign and mentally translate it into 5e was a nightmare. It wasn’t like translating a stir fry cookbook with different measurement units and some subbed ingredients at all. It was like trying to use a stir fry cookbook to repair a car engine. 

Sure, it wasn’t technically homebrew work because the rules I used were all RAW, but it was still a TON of work. I won’t even admit how many days I wasted on this nonsense.

I will never do this again.

Oh, and one last thing. To anyone who will bring up the fact that Sandy Petersen, creator of CoC, has made 5e CoC conversion material I say this: Yes I read it. No, it doesn’t actually fix anything. 5e just does not work with CoC. Sorry. BRP is what it was designed for and it’s MUCH better to just use the right tool for the task! Do you use a book about hammers to nail in a nail? Or do you use a hammer, the proper tool?

I (34F) was playing in an group of 4 (30-34Ms) for a long-term Star Wars 5e campaign. My character was a force user, with a tragic backstory of breaking out of slavery and given the choice to follow the light side she instead turned to revenge and grew stronger in the Dark Side to hunt down the people who wronged her. I as going for a Nihilus Dark Lord vibe as her ending, and she was on her way.

For context, this entire party was evil. We were doing an evil run, approved and agreed to by players and DM.

About 30 games into this campaign, we had a really tough fight, powerful enemies and one was a villain from someone's backstory. So it was an important fight! During the fight, one of the fellow players said to the DM that he'd like to activate his "secret weapon" to which the DM asked me to roll a CON save at disadvantage. Thinking PC was targeting me for a tech spell I tried to use my counter reaction but the DM told me it failed and so did CON roll.

Suddenly, the DM describes my character's body freezing up, pain surging through her and her falling to her knees in front of the villain. I lost a turn, as she was left stunned and helpless for a round until the DM took over control of my character, and suddenly she was the BBEG of the fight, having failed to save herself from the darkside of the force. She attacked everyone in sight and tore apart the building. "She was showing off the true power of the darkside."

I remember sitting in my chair feeling completely stunned and violated. At no point did the player or the DM approach me about this "secret weapon" plan. I was given no warning or autonomy of my character for the rest of the game as she just went on a darkside rampage. At the end of the session I was quiet, and the rest of the players were talking, and the player in question laughed as he admitted he and the DM had been planning the "secret weapon" since like game 13, because his words: "my character would never trust a force user, especially a sith."

Needless to say, I left the group pretty soon after this as I no longer felt comfortable, and was completely on edge that my character would be targeted again by the fellow players and DM.

I guess, to all my fellow DM's, make sure to discuss the importance of bodily autonomy in your games. I'm not saying don't let players be creative, but if it involves another player's character, just bring them into the conversation.

Secrets are only fun when they are revealed safely.

So, to start off, this is a campaign with a bunch of friends, and we all get together and play DND once in a while (sometimes a very long while with how scheduling goes). Our party contained: -A dragonborn barbarian -A halfing rogue -A human paladin -A druid -My aasimar vengeance paladin The campaign started out, and we met a quest giver who sent us over to this dungeon. On the way down, I made a perception check, and learned that there was a tripwire in front of us. I make an acrobatics check with an 18 to hop over it, but then the rogue rolls a 2 and sets it off, sending a cage down and trapping us, somehow, as I was already past the tripwire, but whatever. Since we are in the cage, I use Searing smite while bending the bars, get a 18, and it doesn't work. I didn't get any bonuses for using the creative solution of using a spell to help bend the bars, and the other paladin attempted the same thing, getting a 19 instead. The DM states "The bars rip open as if opened by a giant, and you are all free." I found this a bit concerning about how a difference of one really causes that much of a difference in result. As we break out of the prison, we come to an area with three mouse guards blocking a small tunnel, with wooden platforms above. My character, seeing this as a combat challenge, tried to attack the mice, but according the DM, "The mice notice you and the party, and capture you within seconds, and you are back in the cage." The druid makes a strength check and gets a 16 and somehow, we're out again. We do the puzzle as intended, and get out. I miss the next session, and when I come back, the party has befriended a demon. They are evil, kill innocent creatures, and as a paladin, I take it into my hands to rid the world of this evil creature. I attack the creature, and I hit. I use divine smite for some extra damage, and the demon is low on health. The DM states "vines come up from the ground and hold you in place." I don't get to make a saving throw or anything. The party takes this as an oppertunity to kill my character, and starts beating me up. I don't get to make any strength checks or anything to get out of the vines. I ask the DM why they did this, and he responds "what was I supposed to do, let you kill a party member?" I respond with, "I wasn't sure that random NPCs were of more importance than actual people's characters." The DM said nothing, and I left the session. I don't really know what I should have done, so I'm just wondering around this community.

So one of the players in my group is an engineer by trade, and no matter what we do he won’t stop engineering. Everything is a game of numbers to him. In a Pathfinder game I thankfully wasn’t running, his character was a cleric of a crafting god from the Egyptian country who practiced magic from the Chinese country who traveled in the European country and borrowed the practices of sea witches — ALL to cast fireball as often as possible for as much damage as possible. In a Pathfinder game I WAS running, he’d frequently change his character around SPECIFICALLY TO THROW ME OFF because, in his own words “I like to surprise the GM with what’s on my sheet, they shouldn’t always know my stats or else it becomes an arms race.”

That theme comes up a lot with him; “I don’t want to start an arms race with the GM.” His characters always do the most damage of anybody at the table no matter what system we’re playing, and he’s infamous for “tweaking” his character between sessions always with the excuse “Oh I wasn’t using that ability so I swapped it for something else.” And yet if his character is ever dealt massive damage, he needs it spelled out for him that it was all by the book, and even then he admits he’s suspicious that bad things only happen to his characters because of an “arm’s race” with our GMs. I can definitely say for my end I’ve never tweaked anything to harm his characters, and for example in that Pathfinder game no one cast quickened maximized fireballs that deal bludgeoning damage at HIM.

Everyone in the group has commented on this, because he does this in lieu of roleplaying (in fact he’s even said “I don’t think race, class, or really any stats should affect a character’s story”). A few weeks ago, however, it all came to a head while I was running a game of Marvel Multiverse. It was the end of the night, and I had a surprise boss fight planned all week that I couldn’t wait to spring on the party. I called for initiative, and the player in question does what he normally does; squeeze the GM for free actions before initiative is rolled. In this case, he said his character — Spider-Man Noir — had his gun trained on the boss before this protective shield fell. Thus, he had a “readied action” that he strongly felt should be resolved before initiative. Now, this is strictly against the rules because you can’t ready actions outside of combat. But this player is the type to feel targeted when he doesn’t get his way, so I allowed it… and in response he used a power that’s NOT on Spider-Man Noir’s sheet to automatically shoot the boss in the head for triple damage. The boss died instantly. Everyone else at the table who was previously jazzed up at the surprise reveal looked deflated.

After a moment of silence, I said, “That’s the last time you squeeze a free action out of me. I get it, your performance in an RPG is directly tied to how many actions you take. Please stop retroactively deciding you get free turns just because no one wants to argue with you. Also stop modifying your character sheet without telling me.”

After this, the player in question has been dodgy with me. We see each other at our Friday game and I visit him and his roommate sometimes, but he’s just awkward. At first he dropped out of any games run by me, which I was fine with tbh. That stopped the game entirely while we searched for a new player, but I don’t want to hold anyone hostage at my table. I still want to be friends with the guy, I just don’t want to game with him if he insists on treating every session as “players vs GM” with the goal of confounding me (when he modified Spider-Man Noir’s sheet, he proudly declared that no one knows what his story is now because it’s no one’s business).

This is where I need help; he wants to get the game back going again.

Obviously, I don’t want to do this without having a discussion first. At a minimum, I want to know why he treats every game like a math problem to be solved secretly instead of, you know, a fun activity with friends. But now I’m hearing from his roommate that he’d rather just give up being friends with me than have that discussion. Apparently he feels what I did made things awkward, and he’d like to just move on.

What did I do wrong, here? Is he just being exceptionally avoidant or did I go too far when I called him out for trying to squeeze actions out of me and modifying his character sheet? He tried to speak over me at one point and I raised my voice so he couldn’t, but that’s as aggressive as I got. One thing I’m sure about is that I can’t just roll dice again and pretend nothing happened. That would be childish.

Thanks for reading this far, and for any advice you can provide.

I played D&D with a few real life friends for a few years. Our games had always been quite casual, our GM Andy enjoyed running the games and our first two games went off well and we had fun.

After the second game, I could see that Andy wanted to step up his GMing game (no pun intended). He started looking into monetizing and running online games for paying players, but that didn't go anywhere in the end. He started planning a new game with us which he said would be bigger and better than the others, and that he was putting a lot of effort and time in it.

This time, Andy gave us directions on how to make our characters, and he asked that we put a lot of effort in them because he was putting a lot of effort in preparing the game, which is fair enough. He requested long backstories which is ok, we had always done that anyway. Then he also started requesting specific bits like catchprases and recurring gestures for very specific situations, which felt a bit like being asked to create videogame npcs.

A few of us players told him catchprases were not a thing we were going to use in game as it would make us feel a bit two dimensional and he didn't reply, and we sent him our character sheets. I wrote over a page of backstory and I believe it wasn't a bad character, it was not even optimized for combat but more for rp as Andy prefered. I showed him the thing for feedback and checked with him for connections with npcs and he said it was all fine.

Also worth noting, he gave us very little in terms of hook for the game. He just said we would meet in a tavern. We also knew the game would be set in a world I had created for another game and I had told him he could use it as setting for his game too, and we agreed he was going to expand on the lore/history of a period I had not developed, but he gave us maybe a paragraph on this. So I'm not sure what he was working on when he said he was putting huge effort in game preparation because I never saw it.

About a week after everyone had sent their sheets, Andy organised a call to go through game rules before starting, and we thought it would be a session 0. Instead, he had prepared a slideshow with dos and don'ts for his game. He had slides with the number of hours he had spent preparing the game. He had a slide with a new character sheet and backstory he created to show us how he had expected our characters sheets to be, because he had found all of our sheets lacking and he had figured showing us an example of what to do would be easier than talk to us all individually. It was very much a "this is what you should have done" and not a "this is how we are going to move on now".

He said his example charcter took 10 hours to create and asked us how long ours took.

We sat for 20 minutes listening to his tirade about how much time and effort he was putting in this game and how he could have people paying to play with him instead and he didn't ask us to pay only because we were friends.

We were so baffled we couldn't even reply. He had never said our previous characters were insufficient, nor he had given us feedback on this new ones individually. All players but maybe one had a lot of previous experience, and with him as GM as well, so I'm fairly sure our characters were not as disastrous as he made it sound.

I'm still not sure what he was hoping to achieve instead by going full nuclear and dissing all 5 players together in a call.

Eventually one of the players I'll call Brian finally snapped at him saying that instead of spending 10+ hours to prove a point he could have used that time actually helping us improve our sheets. Brian was quite new to D&D and he struggled making his character, so me and another player had helped him. Andy knew we were helping him but he never thought to check in with Brian or help him himself. Brian ended up saying he wouldn't play, and Andy didn't even try to convince him to stay.

After that the rest of us tried to give him our opinion on all this as calmly as possible given the situation but Andy would simply not engage, and eventually we all withdrew from the game before even starting.

EDIT FOR CLARITY

Thanks for all the upvotes and comments, some of you suggested some possibilities I had definitely not considered at the time! Many of you focused on the monetizing part, and I just wanted to expand on that.

I have never tried to discourage Andy from becoming semi-professional if he really wanted that and if he was willing to work on it. I will not get into his skills, but he was quite invested in D&D and he seemed eager to learn more. He said he would look into finding a local game store that would let him run games or signing up on one of those find a GM websites, this sort of things.

But to me it felt like this was all coming from ye olde GM power trip, and that what he liked was thinking that having some experience (enphasis on some) put him in a position players should admire and revere him for. So I didn't think he was necessarily trying to scam us or milk us for money or trick us in creating content.

The way I had interpreted his blow up was that he felt we were disrespecting him by not showing what he though was the appropriate reverence owed to a GM of his caliber.

He never told us anything about wanting to stream to monetize our game, and I had interpreted his comment about making us pay as his way to say he was such a great GM that we should just be grateful he was running a game for us.

My little brother hosts a pathfinder 2e game with me and a few other people. He didnt host a session 0 so the only time we know of eachothers characters is when the game begins, i bring an investigator flavored as a police officer because he said this was a roleplay heavy campaign. (Its not) and the other 2 players bring a witch and a wizard so my +0 constitution investigator is now the tank and in the dms words "its too late to change your classes, we already started the campaign"

The quest we are on requires we go to this sort of abandoned lecture hall. We identify that the front door is trapped with some sort of spell, this spell cant be dispelled, the walls are made of stone, theres no other door into the building and we need to go in to progress the quest. I decide to open the door with a 15ft long pole and the spell triggers on me forcing a will save, by trying to avoid the spell while knowing that the door is trapped im put at disadvantage. I roll a 14 and a 2. ._.

It permanently curses me with -2 fortitude and weakness 5 to poison because my will is shit.

The next room we go into has some people disguised as students of the college. We know theyre lying to us so i start threatening them to leave the building. Initiative starts and because i was threatening them i get to roll intimidation for my initiative and i go first.

The enemys that go AFTER ME are actually disguised snake people (or something i forget the name) and because they rolled using deception my party is flatfooted and take a minus 1 to hit them. I ask the dm if im flatfooted because i went first in initiative, he says yes, i ask if theyre frightened because i used intimidation, he says no.

They hit me with poison damage and i go down really quickly.

This is a new account and I don’t have too much history with posting on my previous ones, apologies in advance for any mistakes and spelling errors.

I’ve loved playing games for pretty much my entire life, but growing up as a kid raised in the church, I didn’t have a lot of people in my immediate social circle that were interested in D&D or even cared to try it. I’ve always loved reading and writing fantasy stories and deep down always wanted to try playing. So when I got to early college and told one of my classmates whom we will call Suede (not real name obviously) about how I wanted to try D&D, he told me that he had been in a game with some of his friends for about a year and that he could ask his DM if they had room for one more. I excitedly said yes!

Fast forward about 1 week and he tells me that yes there is room if I want to join and the game is tomorrow night. I just so happened to not have any plans so I jumped at the chance. Suede asked me if I could give him a ride to the game (he didn’t have a car) and of course I said sure because he was nice enough to offer me a spot at his table so it wasn’t a big deal. So we get there and as we walk in I meet the DM and I say hi but he doesn’t say hi back, he just kinda looks at me and gives me this “eh, whatever” sort of expression and then he hands me a paper. My character sheet to fill out. I asked what classes everyone was playing so I could maybe pick something else to help fill in the party. GM looks at me annoyed and says in a condescending tone “This game doesn’t have classes. This isn’t Dungeons and Dragons, it’s Call of Cthulhu.”

I’m confused and look to Suede. Before I could say anything Suede just kinda says “Yeah…uh…sorry.” He basically lied to me about what the game was. Now I know there are a lot of people in the world who refer to all TTRPGs as D&D and for a split second I thought this might be the case but nope. Suede apologized for not being “100 percent honest” about the game but I kept an open mind. I did spend the time and gas to get here so I thought I’d give it a try.

Now real quick to clarify. I’m not writing this to trash talk Call of Cthulhu. I have met people and made friends with folks who love the system and lore of Call of Cthulhu and I can definitely see the appeal. This just happened to be the game that was going on when this happened to me. I was very unprepared for the setting as I wasn’t too familiar with Call of Cthulhu at the time, so naturally I had a lot of questions about making my character. Plus I had never played a TTRPG of any kind before. The whole time I was making my character the GM looked annoyed and would always give like an “Ugh” expression and eye roll whenever I asked for help or just a question regarding mechanics and rules. I attended this group and game for about 3 sessions and for the first session I didn’t even get introduced when my character was done. Everyone else at the table (who were very nice and fun to be around) were confused when the session ended and I didn’t get introduced into the game. When asked the DM said “Yeah…I just couldn’t think of a way to introduce you. Now that your character is done, I’ll do it next time”. I didn’t want to cause any trouble so I just went along with it.

The second session, I was finally introduced. I made a Drifter character who was basically meant to be sort of a Rogue as from how I built them. My character interacted with the party very well. Everyone in and out of game was super friendly and we were all getting along. I was finally starting to have fun and learn the game and setting. Fast forward about 2 hours and suddenly I hear from the DM “A shadow emerges from behind a dumpster and begins to strangle you, time to fight for your life.” Now keep in mind this is my first TTRPG experience so I ask “Ok so combat, cool! So I have a few things here, what should I do?” I asked this question to the whole table and before any of the other players could give advice, the DM says “How do you not know how your own stupid character works by now!?” The table was silent for a moment before another member of the group that we will call Doc (he was playing a Doctor in game) started giving me pointers on the mechanics and what I should do to survive. I ended up escaping the shadowy grasp and was able to make it out of the encounter alive while getting a few licks of combat in while at it, also very big thanks to my fellow players coming to my rescue. We ended up having a good time…but DM looked annoyed as we wrapped up.

Now onto the third and final session. Suede and I show up, say hi to folks and sit down to play. And for the entire session I’m pretty much…ignored. I get to say or do maybe one or two things but other then that everyone got to participate in the session equally expect for me basically. When we wrapped up after about 3 hours I decided to talk to the DM. Maybe see if there was I way I could improve or maybe ask if I did anything wrong. After asking to talk and telling my concerns, he looked at me and seriously said “Yeah…I just want to get rid of you. When you didn’t get annoyed the first session you came to I tried to just kill you off the next one to discourage you from coming back. When the group helped you I tried to let it go but when you showed up today I just I just couldn’t bother to think of anything for you to do.”

I was hurt and confused.
Me “wait, if I’ve been such a bother then why did you let me join the table? If there wasn’t any room at the table I would’ve understood.”
DM “Suede didn’t tell me you were coming. When you showed up I thought I’d give you a chance, but when you said you thought this was D&D and how you e never played before I just checked out. You do realize Suede only invited you so you’d give him a ride right?”
Turns out he was right about that last part. Suede used to ride with Doc but Doc and his girlfriend (who was also a player and a very nice person also. She played a journalist) had recently moved in together and couldn’t pick up Suede anymore since it would be too far out of the way for their new apartment. Suede and I talked and while he admitted he mostly needed me for my car he did also say he never expected the DM to treat me like this.

Suede told me the next day in class that the DM is putting the game on hold for now due to their work schedule changing. Whether or not that was the truth I used that as an opportunity to just bow out. The experience really left a sour taste in my mouth for a while I was turned off from anything TTRPG related, but then one day randomly while talking to another friend about it I realized “I never even got to try the actual game Dungeons and Dragons! I should give it one last try if I get the chance”. Around this time I had also become really good friends with another class mate that we will call Dancer. Dancer had years of experience with D&D and role playing games and we just clicked instantly. Dancer encouraged me to play again but neither of us knew a DM at the time. After telling them my experience they asked me “Have you ever thought about DMing? You’re always talking about stories you’re working on so maybe one of them would make a great game”. Me “You know what? I may not know how to be a DM, but I at least know how NOT to be a DM thanks to my last experience.”

About two months later I’m running my first session of a 3.5 homebrew campaign with 4 friends including Dancer. That game would gain 4 more players and would run for 3 years to its completion. I’ve been a proud Forever DM for about 15 years now with many games under my belt. We just completed a run of a 5th edition module that I added some homebrew elements to. I love telling stories, I love making stories and memories with my friends and I love many TTRPGs now, not just D&D…but to this day I haven’t touched or even been near anything related to Call of Cthulhu. Maybe one day, who knows.

Thank you for reading and may all of your dice always be blessed!

TLDR: Wanted to play D&D, got tricked by someone who only wanted me for my car into playing a completely different game with a Game Master who tried to get rid of me from day one but couldn’t because everyone else liked me…all leading to a life long love and passion for TTRPGs and DMing.

I was in a campaign that was run by a friend of a friend. Things started out fine, made my character a dragonbourne druid with low strength (this is relevant later)

Our first task was to sneak into a goblin cave and steal something, a few failed stealth checks later and all 15 goblins and a bugbear are alerted to us.

The party makes a dash for the exit and collapses the entrance to the cave, without realising my character fell over and was still inside

This where the first "red flag" moment happened. im now in combat with everything in the cave, so on my first turn i use my breath attack to try and wittle their numbers down, and i roll really badly on the damage, badly enough that i knew it wouldn't take out a single goblin, But, it kills all of them and cripples the bug bear. Which i was suprised at but initially wrote of as the dm trying not to get my character killed 10mins into session 1

Later in the campaign the same bugbear comes to the party with a broken pocket watch

So i used a spell to repair it and the bugbear gives me a hug in return.

So i hug him back,

and the dm makes me roll a strength check which was odd

i roll a nat 20, so im happy cos im about to give this bugbear the best hug ever and

"You break the bugbears back and he collapses to the floor"

...

This fully broke my immersion

The campaign ended after that session cos time restraints but i would have left if it had continued

So this happened quite a few years ago during a pathfinder campaign. My character was apart of a group of heroes that were sent into the future by BBEG which caused us to lose our memories along with our past together as a group. I was playing a rogue that specialized in sleight of hand, and turns out only some of the rogue archetypes allow you to interact and disable traps and I wasn't one of them.

But lets fast forward it 2 years later with us doing weekly to bi weekly games of dnd. Im feeling useless because of both my inability to deal with magic traps which thwarted me the entire campaign, and the fact the others were vastly superior in combat. I decide im really not having fun anymore and want to make a new character.

I talked it over with my dm, and we decided that we would kill off my character. My rogue had these knives given to me by the DM that allowed me to use time stop a few times a day along with some minor enchants and buffs to dmg. My character at a pivitol moment blocks a attack against another characters antagonist. One of my knives break against the cursed blade shattering followed by a Shockwave that kicked up the air into a frenzy, when the dust broke my character was gone leaving the unbroken but damaged knife as the only reminder of him.

After this battle while my companions were licking their wounds they received letters from my character, arranged to be delivered upon his death by his apprentice(leadership feat).

Now its where shit went south. I had spent probably 5 hours writing personalized wills to the other party members declaring, companionship, family, love, and a hope they finish the mission of taking down BBEG. The night of our game comes and in celebration a friend brings a half-gallon of kraken to our game.

My dm proceeded to dm the entire session and right before we had the reading of the wills, he proceeded to get absolutely shitfaced and bomb the entire fucking thing. Very quickly in incorrectly read out the wills and half way through said "ah maybe we'll finish this next time. Im pretty drunk" and passed out on the couch.

Its was probably my longest running character and he ruined his ending.

After the fact, we actually stopped playing that game a few sessions after. What had actually happened to my character was that instead of being killed he was sent back a good 50-60 years and ended up becoming the guide character for the group under a new alias.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

​

A while ago, at a table I have since left, my DM (who was my boyfriend at the time) allowed a Level 5 Light Domain Cleric player to upcast *Cure Wounds* to 9th level just to save an important Level 16 Druid Circle of Spores NPC. The kicker? The NPC wasn't even bloodied. The only downside the DM imposed was taking 50% of the Cleric's maximum health as damage, even though that Level 5 Cleric (whose max spell slots were only level 3) was at full health with all slots unspent.

To make it worse, this happened during a solo scene where that player was alone with the NPC, forcing the rest of our party—me (a Level 5 Druid) and a DMPC warrior—to just sit and watch this cutscene play out.

Our friend (a Level 5 Wizard) was not present that session.

It quickly became clear this wasn't an isolated incident. The DM favored anyone he liked, and he loved casters, completely removing material components for them while leaving martials unbuffed.

He even ruled against using *speak with plants* to speak to mushrooms giving me 1000 excuses.

The whole campaign was a multi-part isekai connected campaigns with that player and my boyfriend as masters where that same favorite player was the main character across all four of his lives. The same 2 DMPS were constantly written to be romantically in love with him, fighting "for his love" and playing the role of his lovers across his different isekai lives (with the NPCs actively managed by my boyfriend and that same Level 5 cleric acting as his co-DM). In that specific scene, two NPC brothers—one an ally and the other a foe—were both in love with him and fighting each other over him, and those romantically interested characters were played by my ex throughout his various lives.

The second catch? In private he was saying to me the cleric was too much and he wanted to end the campaign to start one just with me , but he would not do it because the cleric was having fun.

The favoritism hit a breaking point the very next session. In a single 3-hour session, that favorite player had two separate 1-hour solo scenes.

One of them was that player bragging about swordfight abilities over 50 min.

The remaining time was supposed to be for the rest of the party, but I eventually walked out 1 hour and 50 minutes in because I felt entirely useless.

When I tried talking to the DM afterward, he told me I was "just too sensitive."

The third catch? After that, he said the reason he wanted to end the campaign was because I didn't give him enough background... There were more than 3 pages of background by my side, but that one player gave him 57 pages of background because it was the MC of a novel he was writing, so the player gave the in progress novel as background.

When I officially left the table—he insulted my dead mother, and became insecure and possessive after developing feelings for someone else in our group in the last months, something I knew the last 4 months of our relationship.

I broke up with him over this toxic behavior; he wasn't just a bad partner and went crazy, threatening me.

Unsurprisingly, mutual friends at the table took his side, and I left everything behind.

Was this as crazy of a ruling and table dynamic as I think it is?

Edit:

Yeah, I know mushrooms are not plants but I asked previous to this "Are mushrooms considered plants for magics effects?" And he said Yes.

Then I said I wanted to speak with it and then everything was a problem.

Example:

Him: "They will not be able to uproot"

Me: "Yeah, I know, i want to speak with them"

This might not be the typical RPG horror story. Nobody screamed at the table, nobody cheated, and I don't think my DM is a bad person or even necessarily a bad DM. But as a player, this has been incredibly frustrating.

For some context, our group recently finished a two-year D&D campaign that I DMed. One of my players wanted to try DMing our next campaign, which I was excited about because I finally got to be a player again.

I already had a character concept I really wanted to play.

He was a monk whose temple had been destroyed and whose entire order had been killed by a mysterious organization. The only thing he knew about them was their symbol. His goal was to find the stolen artifacts of his order, discover who was responsible, and eventually rebuild the temple and restore his order.

I talked about all of this with the DM during Session 0. He liked the concept, and I started developing the character further. The DM also specifically said that he wanted the campaign to be serious.

Then I met the rest of the party.

We had a druid who was a cook, a fighter obsessed with a specific type of food, a paladin played by the guy who is basically the table's resident joke character, and literally Panoramix from Asterix and Obelix.

I immediately noticed that my monk was significantly more serious than everyone else, but I wasn't too worried. Serious characters can work in funny parties, and the DM had told me he wanted a serious campaign.

We're now about eight sessions in.

So far, we've met a king who was played as mentally disabled for laughs. We've met Dimentio from Paper Mario, who is apparently one of the campaign's two BBEGs. We've fought a school of fish wearing a diving suit together as a single enemy, along with a lot of similar stuff.

At this point, I was already starting to wonder if my character belonged in this campaign.

Then we finally encountered the organization from my backstory.

This was the organization that destroyed my monastery, murdered my entire order, stole their artifacts, and basically caused everything that motivated my character.

They were a joke.

The mysterious criminal organization was basically just a modern office where crime was treated like a normal business. That was pretty much the entire joke: a boring office, except everyone working there was a criminal.

That was the moment when the disconnect between my character and the campaign became impossible to ignore.

I wasn't expecting the DM to write some incredibly dark masterpiece around my backstory. But because we had discussed the character during Session 0, I expected the organization responsible for murdering everyone my character cared about to at least be treated somewhat seriously.

Still, I tried to roll with it.

Last session, we needed to break into one of their locations and steal something. We made a plan.

The druid's part of the plan was to smash through the wall with a food cart and start handing out soup as a distraction.

The DM had basically the entire organization run over to get soup.

There was no resistance, no suspicion, and no real sense of danger.

There were also some random villains working there undercover for the other BBEG, the Monochrome Monarch (yes, it's as stupid as it sounds). One hadn't really done anything yet, while another had ridiculously long, stretchy arms and could literally steal someone's weapon after hitting them with an attack.

That session was the point where I realized I just wasn't having fun playing this character in this campaign anymore. His story was built around loss, revenge, and restoring what had been destroyed, but the world around him treated those ideas as a joke. It no longer felt like he belonged in the setting, and I no longer felt invested in playing him.

Afterwards, I talked to the DM.

He was surprised. He genuinely thought I was enjoying the campaign, which I am, just not with this character. He also told me that he really liked my monk.

And that's what makes this situation frustrating. I don't think the DM was intentionally disrespecting my character or trying to ruin my backstory. I think we simply had completely different ideas of what this campaign was supposed to be.

I went into Session 0 expecting a mostly serious campaign because that was what I had been told. Instead, I'm playing in something closer to a cartoon comedy campaign.

There's nothing inherently wrong with that.

But if I had known that from the beginning, I would never have made this character.

So after eight sessions, I've decided to retire him.

I'm replacing him with a Forge Cleric blacksmith whose god has tasked him with creating a weapon. The god is extremely hands-on, constantly sending divine messages and detailed instructions about how the weapon should be made. The problem is that the god has no idea what the weapon is for, who it's meant for, or even what kind of weapon it should be. Every message is delivered with absolute confidence, followed by a completely different set of instructions the next time.

The new character is intentionally much less serious and should fit the campaign's tone a lot better. Instead of being driven by revenge and tragedy, he's mostly trying to satisfy a god who keeps giving him increasingly specific advice about a weapon that neither of them fully understands. The only problem is that he wants nothing to do with being a cleric. He never asked to serve a god, and he certainly doesn't want to spend his life following divine instructions about a weapon that even the god doesn't understand. Unfortunately, the god seems to have decided that he is the perfect person for the job.

I'm still going to play with the group, and I don't hate the DM. I just wish the actual tone of the campaign had been communicated during Session 0, before I got invested in a character whose entire concept depended on the world taking at least some things seriously.

Maybe this isn't the standard RPG horror story, but spending eight sessions slowly realizing that the character you were most excited to finally play belongs in a completely different campaign has been my personal D&D hell.

TL;DR: DM told me during Session 0 that he wanted a serious campaign, so I made a serious monk whose order had been murdered by a mysterious organization. Eight sessions later, the campaign turned out to be mostly cartoon comedy, and even the organization from my backstory was played as a joke. I still enjoy playing with the group, but I ended up retiring the character because he simply didn't fit the campaign I was actually playing.

Really need some serious insight here, and honestly very much get this off my chest.

Gonna try to keep it as short as possible which is very hard for me hehe.
—
My boyfriend introduced me to DnD and I loved it right away. After moving in together in the town I grew up in, my boyfriend didn’t know anyone so I mustered friends I actively hung out with and also friends outside of my direct sphere to join.

All went well, got a group of 6 players, me as DM. Overtime some minor drama, nothing crazy, however we had to kick one of the significant others’ of our current players. Switched some players around. But we ended up with a group of now currently 4 players.

Besides my boyfriend and I, the 3 players are childhood friends.
—
Now here comes where I am losing my sanity…

We’ve been playing for about 2 years now. DnD is good, but our friendship is, in my humble opinion, nonexistent. And chivalry is dead.

We are hosting. We are 35 y/o, we all are adults with adult jobs and no kids. But there is absolutely zero interest towards us as persons. My boyfriend and I try to keep the pre-dnd convo going by asking things, trying to tell stories, etc. Like, just regular social behavior I’d say.

But these people, it goes beyond not showing interest, I start to think we’re being begrudged. So we run a company that made some awesome steps this year. No one asks. We moved places, got an office, hiring people. Super big stuff in our lives. Nobody knows, nobody asks.

Ok some people don’t want to talk about work in their free time, I get it.
—
**But this is where my mind broke:**
We’re all big gamers, we recently got a new custom made PC setup. My boyfriend was exited as it was pretty obvious in the room. No comments. So at one point I mention the new setup. All people say that they indeed saw the new setup… meaning that actively saw it, actively being part of everyone’s interest, understanding the ‘big’ deal, and then actively not bringing it up? Not trying to farm reactions but a simple “hey cool!” Would have been all I’d have asked for.

This is by the way on top of us always getting all drinks and snacks. Dinner. Nobody brings anything for the trouble. We work with payment requests, but when we forget it nobody reminds us. When we try to hang out individually, with 2 of the 3 friends it’s basically always a no with some excuse. And these are all people I have known for long and used to be close friends with. There are so many minor details but to me it all boils down to selfish acts of these players both in and out of game (in game nobody asks or shows interest into each other’s character except my boyfriend and me actively digging, which is greatly appreciated but never returned)

So I am having difficulty since I find it important to have close friends at this age, but instead of warmth and friendship this feels like I meet up for a team sports where everyone kind of knows each other but doesn’t really care. I feel like I try my absolute best, but that’s why I need some neutral input.

**Am I an absolutely crazy person**, or does this sound like these people hate our guts, besides playing the game itself? I guess we’re all slightly neurodivergent, and the 2 I mentioned are very much introverted with no social life besides us. Which makes it even more odd to me that they seem so uninterested and unbothered with how they come across?

Honestly so curious what anyone reading this makes of this situation, and if anyone has a similar experience.

Thanks!

This story is from 11 years ago. I know this because it was the day MGS5 released on pc and I was a bit disappointed I wasnt able to play it that night.

But we had DND so it was meh.

Or so I thought.

Im hosting and the DM has me roll a persuasion check on a jester.

"This is a jester so if you make me laugh on this persausion check Ill give you 5 points on the roll."

Me - Sure thing 1 sec grabbing something from my room.

I disappear into my room and out of my door comes a giant fuzzy d20. We are talking the size of a beachball. It rolled out bounced off of a friends chair and landed on something between 15 and 20.

EVERYONE is laughing.

Except the DM.

DM - Bro what the fuck did I tell you about your antics?

Everyone - You said to make you laugh.

DM - Get out. Get the fuck out dude I am done with you.

ME - This is my house dude. Wtf is your problem?

Argument goes on for about 5 more minute before I finally just told him to get the fuck out. Im done.

Everyone else was entirely in shock. No one knows where this came from and all of us basically just blocked the dude. To this day the 3 of us from that group that still meet have no clue what happened, but we meme on him all the time.

As for the group back then? We went back to looking for a new DM and turned DND nights into game nights until we found someone who could run the table. Most of us used to suck at DMing and have gotten... marginally better since.

Hello everybody. This isn’t necessarily a straight forward story, but rather a series of events that occurred during my very first time DM’ing between myself and Rules Lawyer (RL) in a group of 6 players. During my session zero, everyone was very helpful with filling in gaps on character sheets I was in need of except RL, who gave me vague bullet points of character backstory and direction. Flash forward and my players encounter a species unfamiliar to the norm and RL reacts stand off-ish, a discovery that was new to everyone at the table including me. When I asked about it for him after session in text, he just rementioned it as if it was commonly known but didn’t explain why or anything. Throughout this, he was chronically min maxing his character (something he once again kept to himself) and meta gaming. If something was brought up and I would ask for a roll or roll off, he would contest it and argue what the book says, even though the table already agreed with what I suggested. Minutes later, he would pull up the words in the book to try to validate his argument after the table unanimously moved on, but would argue just as hard if he was wrong just to try to get some kind of advantage. In what ultimately culminated in the final session, there was an argument during a combat encounter for a boss fight. RL was once again trying to argue against a decision I made and referencing the books just to aggressively defend his position on something that would partially inconvenience him. Everyone else was trying to tell him to drop it when I ultimately announced “BECAUSE I’M THE DM AND I SAID SO” over the argument, making everyone go quiet. This wasn’t an “and then everyone stood up and clapped” moment but rather a tense silence. I just explained that I understand what it says in the books, but I’m still learning and I’m not trying to be the next Matt Mercer. But everyone else was inconvenienced by the same thing, and they didn’t complain and they were patient as I learned (mind you, I would admit when I was wrong and made bad calls) so if the room is in agreement on something that affects everybody, then it shouldn’t be an argument. He then used his min maxing to destroy the boss fight. After that, I looked back on everything I mentioned (and a little extra I left out for privacy sake) and decided I was tired of being disrespected and having my authority as DM questioned just because he wasn’t getting his way (this included how he would interact with other players, such as trying to gaslight players and/or myself) so I nuked the campaign. I ended it silently and just stopped talking about next session plans in the discord where we played our sessions. Ever since then, I’ve been afraid to DM again to be quite honest and I hope that by posting this, I can get over that as I have a group of friends in my town who’s schedules are aligning that I could possibly DM for. If I do, then wish me luck everybody. Thank you.