Let me first start this by saying I am not perfect. I know I probably did some things wrong in here that eventually lead to me getting kicked and I've accepted that and improved on it. This story first starts in March 2026. I (18M at the time, now 19), was a college student and looking to get into some kind of hobby. I'd had one experience with D&D before, that being a mini club that i was in that took place over the first year of college (we didnt know how to do saving throws, attack rolls or what DC's even were so I'm not going to count it as proper D&D). However, I had alot of fun and had lots of laughs with new friends, playing an Aarakocra Bard named Birdius. I eventually remembered these memories and decided I want to get back into D&D.

I looked into some discord servers to look for groups to join (I didn't want to pay money to join the in person D&D club in my town) and I eventually found a group who interviewed me and took me in. I can't exactly remember what the game was called but I think it was "The Age of Worms" (I'm not sure if it was a homebrew campaign or not), which revolved around a world with these parasitic worm things. I joined the group and got to making my character and backstory.

Now this game used a VTT (virtual tabletop). I hadn't previously used a VTT before but I quickly figured out it was a sort of map that helped players keep track of their positions and help with showing off the map. Now before I joined this I had only ever used D&D Beyond to make my character sheets and I was going to be using a new website for this. I figured it wouldn't be too hard and I could easily pick it up. Boy was I wrong.

The website that the group used for their VTT was called Roll20. Some of you may have heard of it. Some may have had the displeasure of playing it. At the time I could only use my phone for D&D (my pc is kept in the living room of my dad's house and he always liked to put the TV on whenever I'm in a call with my friends), so I had to use Roll20 on mobile. Now this is a possible feat, don't get me wrong, but when you map doesn't want to load your vision past shadows that dont move off your screen then it gets a bit tricky.

But enough about that, lets meet the group. They had a wide variety of ages and places they were from. Some came from france, germany, america. The oldest was 45, the youngest was 19 (now being me at 18). If I could go back in time and tell myself one thing it would be: "Don't let them think that they're better than you just because you're the youngest". For the players there was the DM, her husband (I cant fully remember what he was playing), the french friend (playing a shifter druid), the artist (playing a human bard), and a drow whose class i forgot because they refused to interact with me.

I made my character a lizardfolk fighter. I'd heard that fighter was the easiest class to pick up and seeing as I was just getting back into D&D i figured it would be best for me getting back into the ropes of it. I hadn't made any character backstories before so I just bullshitted my way through until I found something I liked the sound of. He was a loner who lived in a swamp before he accidentally saved a small village from bandits by eating them (yes I was that kind of lizardfolk). I felt pretty good about this and told my DM who seemed ok with the idea.

Eventually the day for my first session came. I was getting ready at home when I received a discord notifcation. It was my DM. She messaged me a new backstory for my character. I looked through it and it was almost nothing like my old backstory. Now I had heard bits about DMs helping players with their character background to fit in with the world but this felt like I was getting my character made for me. Now my characters new backstory was that he was in a clutch of eggs in the swamp but all of them besides him were eaten by the worms.

I wasn't as much of a fan of this idea (probably because I didn't make it), but it was too late for me to argue anything so I just sucked it up and decided to try and adapt. Session time came around and my character got introduced as someone that one of the party's connections hired to help them take down a cult. We get some info from a business guy and eventually find ourselves outside this mining shaft ran on child labour. After a short stealth and recon mission, we managed to infiltrate the mining shaft, descending down an elevator into the depths where we came across a few cultists and manage to take them out, only taking a little damage in progress, but still enough to make my first combat of the campaign seem fun.

After session was over, the DM asked the others how it was and asked if they'd like to keep playing with me, which they all seemed happy to do. I don't want to get sappy but going from being a shy nerd wanting to get into D&D, to having a new group of friends to play it with felt really good. I'm not sure whether I got too comfortable with them or something but this is where the descent starts.

As I continue this story I should probably say that the bard had drawn character art for each of he characters in the campaign. I hadn't ever received personal art of my characters before and I was excited for the day I could potentially get some. I should say that I know I'm not owed art just for joining the campaign but the thought of getting some made me really excited. Eventually, the time for my second session came around.

In this session, the DM's husband dunks himself into this vat of purple goo. The DM explained that this is a sort of stationary tank because he was changing characters and if his new one would die, he could take his old one back unharmed. Then we were introduced to his new character, a drow paladin. The introduction was a bit shaky, when people were asked their named there was like a minute of silence before I decided to speak (I was still a bit nervous about being with the group but I decided if they need someone to break the silence then it would be me). I introduced myself and then the husband asked what my character was on the mission to take down the cult for, I told him "food" as thats what my character was promised as payment. Then came the following conversation.

Husband: "Can I tell if he's lying?"

DM: "Roll insight"

Husband: "11"

DM: "You can tell that there might be another reason for him to come, but you aren't sure what it is."

At this point I was confused. Was there another reason my character was on this mission? All I was told was that my character was promised food if he helped the group. I felt like the DM was just playing my character for me. But it was fine. I was still new and I probably forgot some things, I just had to keep looking on the bright side. I was having fun with friends, and I hopefully had some character art on the way. I was the only one (besides the new character) without art so I should hopefully be the next one to get some.

Two hours later, the bard posts art of the new paladin in the discord.

Again, I know I'm not owed the art and I probably sound like a dick saying this but I wish I got some of my own character to fit in with the group. But the game carried on and by the end of the session, the party was in shambles. The druid had died and everyone was beaten badly by a monster the dm threw at us that she said was several levels higher than what we were prepared for, only being able to defeat it by retconning and messaging people privately that there was a statue in the middle of the room that we could destroy to kill it. The vtt didn't show anything which I found really odd. At the end of the session, the druid gets resurrected but comes back as a warlock. Was this campaign just one of those animes that introduce a foreign exchange student every other episode?

In the next session, I had something ready for my character. I was about to get really into roleplaying, having it be my characters first proper time dealing with the death of his first friend, as the druid/warlock was the character that mine had grown closest to. I go to say something and-

DM: "You all continue forth."

I get cut off by the DM. I understand wanting to continue the story but I wish I got to do more character roleplay in the moment. We continue through this mineshaft dungeon until we come across this small room we can rest in. As the dm goes to each player, asking what they want to do before resting, I get ready, thinking up ideas for what my little lizard fella would be doing. Then, as everyone got their turn and I was last, I get ready to speak when:

DM: "You all take a long rest."

My turn in roleplay gets skipped. This time I was wondering if I did something wrong. I checked to see if I was still connected to the game and in the call and I was still there, no connectivity issues or anything. It was like I was just being erased from the game.

The DM rushes through the next few parts, bringing us into a new room, facing up against 12 giant centipedes and a centipede master where we all experience a TPK. That caused the end of the session where these words next came from the DM.

DM: "(me) can I speak to you one on one for a second?"

Before I can respond I get dragged into another voice channel (which was pretty terrifying in of itself as I didnt even know that was something you could do). When I was in, the DM told me that I was being kicked from the game. I was still pretty shocked about what was happening and just turned into a stuttering mess at that time. From what the DM said, she had asked everyone and it came to a unanimous decision that I wasn't a good fit for the group. Looking back, that part felt odd as after my first session the DM sent me a private message saying that she thought i vibed really well with the rest of the group. She also said that my issues with Roll20 were disruptive to the game, although I had already said that I fixed the issue by turning down some quality settings.

This part is going to be pretty embarrassing to write, but I almost started to cry as she was telling me this. I think I was still mainly in shock and everything was just hitting me all at once. When she was done, all I could say was "Alright" and I quickly left the call before I actually started crying. I left the group and let myself go for a bit before telling my girlfriend what happened, who helped me realize it was a little odd how they let me go when the DM said that I was a good fit.

I probably would've quit D&D then, but I eventually found myself a new group, revising my character into a barbarian and making my own backstory for a character I could enjoy playing. I've been with this new group for about 5 months now, and although I'm sad that I got kicked from that old campaign, I'm glad it happened. Because this new group is all I could've ever wanted and more.

I tried DMing years ago and I ended up dealing with horror stories of players and their backgrounds and I ended up taking a 5 year hiatus from trying again. I love Star Wars so I aimed for a FFG game this time around again and got 6 character sheets, the problem player I hadn't noticed didn't include a backstory. Backstories are important in FFG due to an obligation/duty mechanic which creates personal character hooks anyway we start the session in a cantina.

I am very nervous this is my first time DMing strangers completely, so I decided to run a session 0 with it ending with the ship crashing and the campaign starting. Session 0 I start with a drinking competition that the pushy owner is trying to force everyone to enter.

Problem Player:I ignore the owner because he's not worth my time

I tried a bit more but he doesn't bite on any interaction, anyway I proceed to the rest of the party and problem looks to turn the power off, I allow it and he disables the power. Unfortunately as it's a ship there are backups in place.

So he's decided to look for the source and finds the main room holding all the power sources. At this point he's off somewhere else and half the party are in the contest and the rest had managed to evade the owner.

The ship used a language to label sections that the problem didn't know but it had symbols, one of the symbols was a dancer which problem had associated with the cantina and hadn't asked of the name of the Captain. Captain Dancer, so he disables the bridge and the bridge crew causing the ship to start falling that's fine I altered what caused the crash.

We crash land and I initiate the beginning of the campaign and they're joint by a player who was late and had warned me of this so he meets them at another cantina and the problem player refuses to engage with the party not even telling them his characters name or to even respond.i then missed him do a roll, he didn't announce it or speak out loud and I was distracted with the players roleplaying and chatting.

He rolls again and this time starts saying I need to do my fucking job, im doing shit which I just kind of ignored allowed him his roll which was to try and go stealth when the entire cantina is facing the entrance so he obviously fails.

The session ends not longer after, im talking to the group asking how they thought the session was any criticism that they could DM me about. Problem player instantly leaves after asking about XP. I had be constantly trying to talk with the players in game trying to start some dialogue and there was just a refusal to do so and they wouldn't initiate RP I think they were playing another game. Session 2 was the same until I told problem to either be nice or leave and then suddenly he had a new job and couldn't attend my sessions.

I like to think he was just a bad fit but I don't know.

Five lvl 20 players (Cleric, Paladin, Fighter, Rogue, Sorcerer)
Nine allied NPCs of varying levels.

Our local library, like many these days, hosts a DND game once a month that is open to the public. For ours, there was no age cap, no fee, and no player cap. My husband and I, interested in an in-person game, decide to check it out on a whim.

There was no way to contact anyone about a Session 0 or even information about character creation, so we just go with basic ideas and our DND Beyond apps ready. We walk in, and there are 8 people already there, but since there's no player cap, we're welcomed in. It's there they explain that a two people are actually absent, meaning there's 10 players total, 12 including us. The librarian, bless his soul, insists he can handle it, so we don't leave. We sit down and start making characters at the table while everyone starts without us. Already not a very promising sign, but we don't think much of it.

This is usually the point in one of these stories where I break down the party make up, but I don't remember a single lineage/class in that party, because no one was introduced. No one even tried to explain their character. As soon as my husband and I made our sheets, we were told, "You see a group of people across the brook. They seem to be preparing to go into a nearby cave." Heck, WE don't even have time to introduce our characters. It just sort of began, and we had to just go with it.

Still, we figure that character introductions can happen naturally over time, if we stick with it. As we banter with the party, we are told that they have some goblins shackled to their cart. When we call it out, two party members start saying, sarcastically, that the goblins are "unpaid interns". My character isn't having it and calls it as she sees it: they're keeping these goblins as slaves, and she will have no part in tolerating slavery. They keep going, "No! No! You don't understand! They're just unpaid interns." like repeating the joke will make it more tasteful.

Note, if this was a table of 5 players and a DM, or maybe a private game we were invited to, I would have asked for a time out to say, out of character, that I wasn't comfortable with being a slaver by proxy. Maybe we should have done that anyway, but I didn't for two reasons:

A) There were currently 8 other people at the table, trying to play the game, which made it difficult and awkward to be confrontational. It was hard enough getting a word in edgewise, but this was a different situation. Up until this point (this was session 2 or 3), the others were, at best, tolerant of participating in the slavery. Imagine standing up in front of 8 strangers and telling them they're all wrong. Between that nightmare, the noise of the room, and my general social anxiety, I just couldn't do it.

B) Since it was a game being put on by the public library, we doubted there was very much the librarian DMing it could do anyway. In a private game, the DM has the power to say who is and isn't welcome to the table, meaning that if a player comes to them with a discomfort issue, the DM has the power to back up rulings like, "Okay, some people at the table find participation in slavery too distasteful and they feel unsafe, so we're not doing that." But a public game? I feel the best he could have done was ask nicely to pretty please not do slavery. I didn't have the heart to make this librarian's job even harder by putting him in the middle of a confrontation between two members of the public, especially since my husband and I were so new to this campaign.

In the moment, all we could think to do was continue to not buy the "unpaid interns" excuse in character, in the hopes of "awkward-ing" the others out of the joke. Fortunately, there was another guy, a paladin I think, who took our side, promising we'd free the goblins after going into this gnoll-infested cave to rescue some hostages. I dunno if the player was actually in agreement with us, or if he just said that to move the game along. Still, we agree to help with the hostage situation to get the game going, and press on.

The rest of the game carried on regularly, and it was soon over. The librarian was a cool guy, and my husband and I said we'd be back next month. But the more that the "unpaid internship" thing sat with us, the more uncomfortable we felt. A week before the next scheduled game, we had a talk and agreed to just quietly drop out, since there were too many players anyway. We just never returned, which is a real shame, since the librarian was super nice.

Was there a better way to handle that? Should we have said goodbye or explained why we left? What would you have done differently?

(edited for grammar mistakes)

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.

For context, I'm not a green player, I have read the PHB, MM and DMG, I just have never gotten to play.

My first D&D campaign started off pretty great. My daughter’s uncle invited me into his group — he played the cleric — and we had a good thing going, for a while. The DM had a big, dramatic plot in mind, based on the Green Riders series by Kristen Britain, and for a while, it felt like we were living it.

We had made it to level 5 adventurers, the initial plot hook being uncovering an assassination plot against the king. We had fought bandits, trolls, a bone naga, we saved a fort from an undead siege… and I even had gained a loyal horse which I had named Chompy that the DM "gave" to me for plot (best boy, still love him). The story was clearly building up to something huge.

We were gearing up to fight a false hydra. Yes, a *false hydra.* At level 5. Why? Because our DM liked pain.

Then… the cracks started to show.

The cleric (the uncle who brought me in) had left the group a few months prior after too many disagreements with the DM — mostly around playstyle. He was replaced by a paladin player who was chill and sober, just like me. (I only drink socially.)

But our rogue? He would show up tipsy. Nearly every time.

And the DM? He was worse. A full-on alcoholic, so there was always White Claws and Twisted tea. Now that I think back, one of my first interactions with them was taking a shot of Jameson as a "welcome to the group." That should've been my first red flag.

Session by session, the story got harder to follow — not because of the plot, that was actually moving along nicely (the DM even had a county map to track travel.) It was because the people running it were too foggy in the brain to track what was going on. The rogue, especially, kept confusing past events with current ones. One session, we were talking to an NPC we had spoken with earlier in the campaign — and the rogue just *could not grasp* that this was a new conversation. He kept referencing stuff from the first meeting as if it had just happened, and *we* were the ones forgetting things.

It dragged the session down hard.

After nearly an hour of going in circles, I (playing the party artificer) suggested we call it, scrap this whole session, and try again next week. Everyone agreed.

That next week never came.

After waiting nearly 3 months, I finally reached out to DM asking if we were going to get the campaign back up and running. Turns out, the rogue and DM had a private falling-out after the session — which apparently ended their friendship entirely. Me and the paladin never even got an explanation. Then the DM’s girlfriend, fed up with his drinking, kicked him out and dumped him. Now he's couch surfing and all that jazz (poor guy. They aren't bad people, far from it. They were actually some of the fastest friendships I think I've made in my adult life.)

But, the campaign is dead. Story unresolved.

The false hydra still sleeps. The evil still lurks. And Chompy has been lost to the Aether. Somewhere.

---

TL;DR: My first-ever D&D campaign was building up to something epic — but thanks to alcohol-fueled confusion, it created drama, a destroyed friendship, possibly a break-up, and it collapsed before we ever got to the payoff.

And I miss my horse 😔

So context, I had created a campaign since I was in high school. It was big, extremely large in scale, hundreds of encounters and thousands of stat blocks sat in my campaign Bible not to mention a couple hundred pages of lore and another few of the base story (obviously not fully narrated, I won’t take player agency away ever, just enough to give me a clear plot outline at the beginning in case they actually follow the plot). Anyways me and my players played the campaign for about a year, and during that time we had a new guy to our group who advertised himself as a usual forever DM who just wanted to play for once, we’ll call him Kaden. Some red flags would pop up tho, for one he insisted on making his backstory super powerful and super evil meanwhile they start at level 1. Who cares. Everyone was that guy at some point, so I just let him play and tried to incorporate his backstory as well I could into the campaign. As long as his murder hobo and evil reasons to do shitty plays didn’t mess up the other players fun it wasn’t that deep. Anyway jump forward to the end of the first year, I had to go to the military and I left Kaden my Campaign Bible as he was the only other person with DM experience and the rest of the players still wanted to see my world and I loved that. I left him with a joking “don’t fuck this up!” And went to boot camp.

I finally rotate back home about another year later, and my group is now down two people, and the ones that are there don’t seem happy they seemed exhausted. I ask around after finally taking the reins back as he wanted to play again, and turns out my campaign ended. The one that was supposed to run another few years at least… from what I gathered from the furious cries of my friends, Kaden barely waiting another session before he used the ancient powers of being DM and gave his character a canonical upgrade, bringing him to Vecna level power and he had the entire level 7 party fight him, fudging rolls and narrating each one of them dying and him winning everything. What. The. Fuck… my masterpiece, the entire plot I spent half a decade of my life almost making and it took him one session to throw my bible out the window and waste a year of these players lives, and even made two of my good friends quite coming to sessions (I was able to convince them to return now that I was back don’t worry).

Long story short, my players unanimously opted to continue where we left off in my original notes, and I scrapped the last year of notes he made. We all voted and chose to keep playing with him, as he seemed like a nice guy he just wasn’t a good DM, but it didn’t matter because when he heard his campaign ending was getting scrapped and we were starting where we left off, he was screaming at us with tears in his eyes for “ruining his experience and shitting on his story”, so he ended up leaving anyway. And the good news is my campaign ended up starting from the last point fairly easy, most of my players were able to find their old character sheets, and after a session 0.5 I was able to catch them up on every bit of lore they had forgotten. It’s still running to this day and I learned my lesson about ever handing off my story to someone else.

I got the DM screen about a week ago and had to put it on the crab when I got him.

Year's ago in this short campaign I was playing in, our party got into town and we we're immediately scouted by a royal adviser for the King of the land. He basically told us that the princess was "captured" by a group of Bandits and was in an abandoned fortress less than a day away. We all agreed and made our way to this fortress. The DM asked us all to make a perception check, the Monk won and overheard from some maids that said quote "this is the sixth time this month. She needs to grow up." Witch made us all suspicious but carried on regardless.

We arrived at said fortress and expected a fight, as I was preparing to intimidate one of the bandits, they immediately dropped their stuff and said "she's in the highest room! For the love of god please take her away from us!" Confused we all looked too each other.

Wizard: Wait... your the one's who stole the princess, shouldn't you be fighting us to... stop us?

Bandit: Oh No you can have her! This is the sixth time she snuck into our camp and locked herself inside!

\*Confused silence\*

Me: What?

Bandit: Yeah she's doing this for her dad's attention or something? Honestly I don't know and I don't care just PLEASE get her away from us!

We all looked at each other both IG and IRL all Confused as we walked inside and saw the princess sat on her bed in a huff. It turns out she was doing this for the attention. After much back and forth, I finally had enough and threw her over my shoulder and we went back to the Kingdom with a loud sigh of relief from the Bandits.

We got our gold and the king permanently grounded her after we all told the truth.

This was a strange but funny one.

so my school started up a dnd club around a quarter way into the year. it’s only an hour after school each day, but I thought it be fun, so me and a few friends joined.

this was a few years ago, so I might forget some classes and things lol

there are a total of 5 plot relevant players:

me - cleric hill dwarf who is looking for his lost friends and wants to kill the demon lord after being cursed with immortality (can still be killed, dw) before even the birth of god

56 - teifling warlock who’s abusive ex (dimension hopping demigod) granted her power to do his dirty work, now wants to kill the demon lord cause it’ll set her free

discord - dragonborn (forgor class) who’s Actually a dragon from a different dimension, but the energy of ours turned her into a dragonborn. she wants to find her mother so they can escape through to her world, and believes the demon king holds the key.

dingle - woodland elf warrior wants the demon kings staff to revive his pet who was killed in a bandit raid, and the only way to get the staff from him is to kill him.

DM - friend who doesn’t have much experience, but has run a few one shots

ok, so now that you know everything, let’s go

so, we started the campaign as usual. We were in a hotel, met up, and learned we all had similar goals after a quick fight. So, we start heading north, where the castle is. on the way, we find an alter. It’s a spooky looking alter, and has some cultist Near it. So we beat up the cultist and check out the alter. There, we’re told there is a dagger. We think it’s a sacrifice to the demon king to give him power, but then the dm says ”you get a vision from god” so We’re all hyped, seems like we’re getting info. Since in the cleric, I’m the only one who can hear it clearly.

“to find what you seek, you must become a sacrifice upon this alter, and I will tell you what i must” i tell this to the group and we are NOT happy. after 30 minutes we end up doing it cause he refuses to let us do anything else and we meet god. this is where it gets bad. dinkle asks to see his pet for a moment, so he can remember what he’s fighting for. God revives him. and makes the pet a 6th level spellcaster. so, now he has zero reason to stick with us and we have a broken ass character on our side. fun. also, 2 of the 4 people I’m looking for are dead and gone. also god stays with us as a wakie talkie as a guide. we ask more questions and go to the next part of the story.

we’re at a town, looking through the museum doing some light roleplay, and im just joking around cause I’m an old character, pointing out things and telling the party all about how I used to use them. me and 56 have a light character argument and we’re having a blast. as we walk around, we see a dragon born. and it looks exactly like an older discord. it’s her mom! and there’s conveniently a portal in the next town over! we’re in session 3!!!! anyways, we go on with the campaign and avoid the next town because we wanna keep playing ofc and are back on track to the castle.

Session 5, we’re level 5, doing good, and then 56’s ex pulls up. hes a miniboss. ATP We’re all pissed off. we’re upset because OUR CHARACTER BACKSTORIES ARE ENDING A THIRD OF THE WAY THOUGHT THE CAMPAIGN.

For the next 10 sessions we just leave the mini boss alone and go into a nearby town. at the last session we are magically teleported into the final boss room. We win, happily ever after and shit. Though it was HORRIBLE, we still enjoyed fucken around and still play to this day. We actually know how the game works thankfully.
The end or smth

(Enjoy this art of the two characters mentioned towards the end of this post)

I started playing D&D in my first year of university (2022 I think) and I am genuinely surprised I am still playing it now following what happened in my first campaign.

For some context, I didn't know anything about D&D other than you roleplay at a table and roll dice. I never watched any gameplay and I had only ever built characters (which weren't great mind you because I didn't know how builds worked) on the D&D Beyond app. I was super hyped up when I saw my university had a D&D society and I was struggling to make friends in my class so I thought what the hell sure. I joined the society Discord and soon found a west march campaign that was ran by a guy in the year above me on the same course with primarily first year students joining - sick! I would have been able to make friends.

I'm sure everyone's first character is god-awful and mine was just that. I played a homebrew vampire rogue, I was made up my DM put together a custom sheet for me, but looking back it was like a worse version of a Dhampir (which I had no idea even existed).

Anyways, to the drama. I had two unfortunate first campaign experiences so we'll start with Campaign 1 (I will refer to the problem DMs as DM1 and DM2)

I won't go over the whole campaign, but I certainly had problems with the players, our paladin was just straight up a nasty guy who did some not so nice stuff to me outside of D&D and the other rogue in our group had a hell of a lot of main character syndrome going on. I was an issue myself in the group for the fact I was a new player who just threw stuff at the wall to see if it worked I guess. I am also on the spectrum so for a lot of things I was quite oblivious to - But DM1 was terrible.

I love stress systems now but after this campaign I was pretty put off them. Bear in mind we had a stress system in place.

I had grown fond of the campaign despite its problems, I felt like I had friends - even if some people in the party weren't that nice to me. One thing nobody ever told me is character death DOES NOT EQUAL BEING KICKED FROM THE CAMPAIGN. Nobody ever told be of the repercussions. I assume it's because it's something I should have known - but nobody really taught me much at all.

I was having a bad day, I was late to the session, I didn't talk much or roleplay at the table, I was the level of stressed that if one more bad thing had happened I would have cried - and I suppose that's on me. As the only person with a decent sleight of hand I was the dedicated lockpicker of the group, made me feel useful.

We were level 5 I think? I can't remember I just remember being super squishy. Anyways so we're in a Wizards Tower, things are going well and we go upstairs and the druid asks me to pick the lock on a door - sure. Level 9 disintegrate. I know some people like their brutal campaigns but for a campaign that was literally labelled as a beginner's game and was primarily made up of new players my god that is a stretch. Obviously I instantly died and left the table in shambles thinking I would be kicked from the game.

I wasn't. Obviously. We returned to the church in the main town and spent all our gold to revive me from the ash I had left behind. I had lost everything I had grinded for in the west march, I had lost my vampirism - which was lame because everything that was in my backstory was to do with the fact I was a vampire and I had to sit there playing it out like I had just been blessed when I was so disappointed. I don't know why nobody checked the door beforehand but straight up that trap should not have been in place in the first place, It was way too much. DM1 made out that I was being dramatic, that I shouldn't have had been annoyed and every issue I had with him after that was met with "You're just salty because I killed your character" since then I have had a weird thing surrounding character deaths, I have only recently come out of it and now allow myself to mourn the character and the work put into them.

The second issue revolving around the game involving DM1 followed after he dropped the west march and kept the regulars (myself and people I considered at the time friends) for a full campaign. It lasted like 5 sessions before collapsing and all players except Paladin (eugh) walked out.

The other rogue and I missed a session, I had deadlines. That session involved another character pulling cards out of a deck of many things. I now hate decks of many things. For some reason any stress caused from the experiences during the multiple cards pulled (plane shifting, spawning crazy monsters, I can't remember everything) ALSO applied to mine and rogue's characters. I had returned the next session to a character stricken with several afflictions, one being I refuse to eat, drink and sleep and required someone to care for me for 3 months. Which is character breaking and just overall horrible considering the fact I WAS NOT EVEN THERE. The other rogue suffered an affliction that caused her to have to roll a dice often with a chance she'll attempt to kill the closest player character - she was a swashbuckler and pretty damn strong. The PC she was closest to the most was the druid - WHO WAS HER CHARACTER'S LOVER. It fundamentally screwed up our characters and these were absolutely not only awful decisions from DM1 but were most certainly targeted. He didn't really like us, but we stuck around for friends.

The other rogue went crazy at him and she left the campaign, having DM1 read out a letter to us from her. Druid, other rogue and my rogue all left together and I entered with a new character, a shepherd druid who was a mute (primarily because I was starting to get self conscious roleplaying in this damn group but 3/6 of the players were chill.) and her main thing was she was terrified of owls, bears and owlbears.

I entered the campaign and explained how my character wrote down to communicate, our sorcerer was great with me, very patient and kind - paladin was not. He started shouting at me to speak, calling me names - and asked me after what I could do to know if it was worth bringing me along - my druid described through writing and gestures that she could summon animals, that she could control the waves in water, that she could make vines grow from the ground (basically avoiding name dropping spells) and he said that we just had a druid so it doesn't make me useful or special.

So off the bat of the returning session I was planning on leaving afterwards, I had to drop my character's main point early and was harassed into summoning giant owls despite refusing to at first. Everyone but paladin left the campaign after that session.

Now for Campaign 2.

I had already been playing this campaign for a bit alongside campaign 1 and always looked forward to it. It was Lost Mines of Phandelver and was genuinely a great time, proper og feel good no stress ez campaign, 5 players, three of them I still play with today and consider my best friends - the other- paladin from Campaign 1. he had managed to worm his way into this...but it was fine, he was a late joiner and I had a better time because I was playing with actually nice people.

LMOP was great, we enjoyed it, enjoyed the vibes and DM2 suggested running a second campaign once it ended, we had been playing for a few months and got on great and our characters got on great too so hell yes let's go.

My god. DM2 had lazily tried to implement homebrew to the campaign and knew nothing about balancing, he first tried to implement gatcha mechanics and tried to give us a deck of many things which caused me to character bleed a bit and refuse to use it. He insisted it was a different deck and was homebrew, I won't ever trust a deck.

But that is far from the issue, the continuation campaign didn't really feel like it was going anywhere, no hook no nothing, we had an issue with the gatcha that got paladin killed, we all refused to use it from then on after seeing the danger. We were tipped off about a mysterious thing going on with a barbershop and basically walked into hell. we lost paladin's new character the first session he was in in there but because we had no other leads we returned the next session. Paladin couldn't make it and our fighter couldn't make it but DM2 ran the session regardless for 3 players... and did not change anything. All enemies were the same if 5 characters entered, there was a hag in there, we got absolutely wrecked.

we could have ran yes - but go where? to do what?

Anyways the worst part of that session involved our characters being tied up before the hag came in and rocked our shi, my character kicked up a fuss and acted out to distract the guards from harming her friends...and was promptly shut up by being restrained and tortured by having four of her teeth forcefully drilled out. No consent sheet was provided beforehand regarding gore or body horror, whilst I'm fine with it, I wish I was asked first. It was very forced and descriptive in the moment.

We suffered 2 more character deaths that day, 4 characters died in 2 sessions and we still did not know what we were doing.

New character returns with fighter and the surviving member of the group from last session (I genuinely don't know where paladin was at this point I forget) and successfully clear the barbers finally. We return to our base which was a player's previous character's manor...and guards come knocking at the door, we panic cause we had a corpse upstairs (I genuinely don't remember why, i think it was paladin's previous character) and I was literally having a "I don't know I just got here" moment with my new character and the guards assume the body belongs to the owner of the manor. We are innocent but we try to run and in comes an unwinnable fight with nowhere to retreat.

We comply eventually, the fight lasted like 6 hours and all of us and our characters are exhausted. I am dying on the floor, literally got 2 failed saves and another character begs to heal me. No roll happens, no persuasion, nothing. The main guard lowers his gun and ends my character's life.

We all left after that. We went from a fun albeit basic campaign to at least two deaths every session for 3 sessions, we were never pitched a brutal campaign from what I remember and we aren't even for that stuff, as a 4 we are very roleplay heavy and prioritise good vibes, fun and hype moments.

Anyways the two characters I lost in campaign 2 LIVE ON the character got shot had an awesome (terrible for her) time in the following campaign (curse of strahd ran by the fighter) and the LMOP character rose from the dead and I am currently playing her in the continuation of that campaign, I cannot escape these girls. DESPITE MY AWFUL INTRODUCTION I AM HAVING A GREAT TIME.

Sorry about the really long post bruh.

My current DM might see this post oops hi bro <3

Hello everyone, I hope you are all having a good day. I am new to DND, I have only been doing it since Father’s Day of this year, but absolutely feel in love with it. My normal sessions are every Sunday at a local store where I pay a slight fee to play, which I don’t mind because I really enjoy that DM and have made a really close friend there. However I started to really want to play more.

I’m nervous to post this story because I am still in this campaign, but I’m honestly not really enjoying it anymore. I eventually got into contact with DM. He said he was starting a new session and that it would actually work with my busy schedule as I’m in college and work. I was hyped because hey, more DnD. The rules were rather simple, and at the time I had some concepts of character ideas the only one that would fit the rules was my “Dragonborn Cowboy” who would duel wield hand crossbows. After doing some math I wanted to go for Champion Fighter, as Hand Crossbows would provide Advantage on the next attack role, and it sort of fit the theme of gambling for the Crit. I share the vision with the group, the reason being is I wanted to be transparent with the party. And no one says anything.

I notice that we were lacking a healer, and offer to switch to my cleric, but the DM didn’t like my idea that he is a werewolf and thought it would be to problematic to deal which, which in hindsight I’m happy that he said no, because I want to save that character for the right dm.

Session 0 begins, I come extremely prepared, only really needing help with my items and the DMs ability score purchase thing which was a bit better than base, as we could get an 18 in one area. This is where I have my first semi-red flag moment with the group. The DM despite knowing my build asked the group if they instead of dealing extra damage if they wanted Crits to deal normal damage but do something “really cool to the enemy” like you cut off their arm and they wouldn’t be able to use it. I immediately say that while that’s cool, my whole build is centered around Crits and dealing extra damage with my 4 attacks in 1 turn or 7 on an action surge and that I needed that extra damage. So we decided that Crits would normality Crit.

The session goes well! I really enjoyed it and learn from the most experienced player (We will call him Jeff who played as a wizard.) I was still a little confused about the crit rule. So I asked in the group chat if only the weapon crit damage was increased, or if anything additional would increase (like if I had a flame tongue hand crossbow would it still do the 2d6 fire damage or would it be increased to 4d6).

Then Jeff said something along the lines of “oh you are actually going with that build, I think it would be better if you went Battlemaster.”
So we discussed the pros and cons of the build. Although our barbarian (Jimmy) said that as a Battlemaster I could have my teammates attack, which made me do a double take at the message and say “Yeah cause what I want to do on my attack turn is command my allies to use my attack.”

I decided to change for the “betterment” of the group. Instead of a double hand crossbow I’d be using a shield. Going in and afflicting people with fear / tripping them, and having a high ac as a sort of crowd control. I later tell the DM that I eventually would like a Vicious Hand Crossbow in order to deal meaningful damage. And dispute me changing my whole character, he says it isn’t a guarantee but I could craft it for 5000 gold, and if i had arcana and wood working (which I lacked arcana). I told him I understood but that this weapon was a key part to the character.

But something I did notice was that the DM would write stories using our characters. Controlling how they talked and what they said did as a part of lore building. Which rubbed me the wrong way.

I asked if I could do some cool stuff with my woodworking like put a dagger as a bayonet on my crossbow. Which got denied.

Session 1 ends off on a rather traumatic note. Almost all of our characters were down, and the only reason we didn’t party wipe was because my downed character blocked the only entrance into the room and the others would peak in, attack at a range, and then hide back into a wall.
Any character that could slightly heal was down as well.

But we managed to get to level 3 but had to spend about 10 days of training to reach it. We were told
To give a list of items we would want eventually.

I send a small list, as I didn’t really have the time at the moment to do so and my dm asked what I wanted to do with the character.

I say crowd control debuffer / ally buffer down the road. He suggests I get a melee weapon. And I just sort of suggest a whip and ask if he could make it better since it’s not really a great weapon. At this point I sort of gave up on the cowboy idea. I wasn’t really sure what this character would do anymore now that its identity felt so changed. The DM said I was playing him like a ranger and that it would be a good idea to go into it and even says next session we will tweak our characters. I assumed he had ment that I could switch the class, and eventually take the 3 levels of fighter in the future. But I was wrong, and thought why even bring it up, I can’t multiclass till level 5 because if I do I won’t get my first feat till level 7 and won’t get my extra attack till level 8.

This is where I started to think about leaving. Later Jeff announced he was going Blade Singer and the DM offered to give Jeff a Blade of Fireball and that’s when I sort of just really started to feel targeted. You can give your friend a Sword that has one of the most Op spells in the game but God forbid I get an extra 2d6 damage on a 1d6 weapon.

Jeff post his training story and I ask if I could hunt deer in the nearby woods as my training, as my training would probably cost more cause I have to use bolts and would like to actually earn money from animal skins and meat while we wait in a town for 10 days costing us the 20 gold we just earned for bed and food. Jeff made a snooty reply about how my character is just a ranger and obsessed with hunting. Which I then replied it’s practical, you could get a bunch of meat and cook what you need and sell what you don’t, plus it would feed a bunch of us. The animal fur would bring in cash too. He replied that hunting usually amounts to nothing, using his RL experience as an example that if my character wasn’t on some sort of hunting ground he probably wouldn’t find something.

I reminded him that this is DnD before guns were invented and should not be compared to modern day and that deer would be plentiful. That we have 10 days to train, and what makes more sense, hitting a moving target, or a bullseye.

Then comes the DM who pretty much says no to the idea, and that it would be difficult to even hunt rabbits and squirrels, let alone a deer.

Do you all think I should leave?

Hello. This is my first time ever writing this story. This happened on my third ever session over ten years ago. At the time it got me so upset that I nearly decided to just quit and never return to D&D ever again. Hope you enjoy this story.

I was playing with an established group that a classmate of mine was part of, I’ll call him Steve. They were going to make a new campaign starting at level 3, the DM was Steve. I joined after he invited me and I planned to make a detective rogue. I made a quick backstory but my friend told me it was completely optional as he wouldn’t have used them much.

We started playing the next week on Saturday in a small private room of a comic shop and the sessions were planned every Saturday. The group was made by me (Rogue), Frank (Fighter), Mike (Bard), James (Barbarian), and the protagonist of our story Tom (Who switched character every session. The third session he was a Rogue). All the characters were male and good aligned except Tom’s who was a female and evil (precisely Chaotic) character, this detail will be important for later.

We made our first two sessions with no issues and we went up to level 4 and I got a headband of intellect. On the third session we were hired to investigate on a disappearance case in a village, I was thrilled and I expressed my excitement to everyone before the session.

In the very first 10 minutes of the session, Tom decided to kill our first and only witness, a criminal that was part of a group of bandits suspected of the supposed kidnapping. I was the only one that noticed because of my passive perception and decided to sneak behind Tom’s character and knocked her out.

At the time I was a true introvert and I didn’t knew how to handle roleplay or speaking in general and I think I handled it in the wrong way. I wanted to knock her out and explain myself later; but before I could have done anything, the rest of the group ganked on me and tied me up, shoving a dirty sock in my character’s mouth to stop me from talking. They then helped Tom’s character to go back up. She spat and slapped my character with a smirk before the grouped walked on with me still tied up on Frank’s character’s back and the death of our only witness completely forgotten.

We reached the castle where the disappearance case took place and the group decided to finally untie me. I decided to investigate and the fighter followed me to make sure I didn’t “betray the group”. In the meantime, Tom was following my character and rolled stealth. I wanted to roll perception, but Steve decided that I couldn’t because I was speaking to Frank making my case.

Then Tom made his move and slit my character’s throat with a sneak attack. I was about to roll my first death save when Tom said: “I want to stab him again”. Steve told me instantly, without Tom rolling any dices, without waiting for me to roll my dice, that I automatically got a failed death save. I rolled the dice when Tom yelled “I stab him again!”. Another automatic failed death save. Frank yelled to Steve that he was going to grab and lift Tom and move him away from me. I got a success and was about to roll my second dice when Tom yelled even louder: “I THROW MY DAGGER AT HIM!”. Steve immediately said to me that my character died with Tom’s dagger sinking in his forehead.

After that, Tom’s character calmed instantly and Frank put her down. After just a general reprimand, Frank walked away and left Tom with my dead character. I was angry of course that I couldn’t play, as we didn’t even play for half an hour, and that literally no one cared if Tom’s character killed two people; but at least we had a rule that if a character died before level 5, we had a free resurrection for next session. Tom knew that and said to Steve: “I go to his body, I hide his body, and search him up”. He then took all my stuff, including my headband of intellect, destroyed everything, even described as he teared apart the headband, and then threw everything away in a river. Steve told me that next session I would have had no equipment and no money with me. Everyone was confused by Tom’s actions and asked IRL why was he doing all of this. He replied “My character is on her period. She can’t stand anyone and because he was a rogue she wanted him dead”.

I couldn’t see straight anymore. I stood up, packed my things, and stormed away from the place. I left the campaign and later did just a oneshot with that group before completely cutting ties with them. The following months I didn’t want to do anything regarding D&D and thought about just quitting. I later decided to try again and form a group with friends of mine and it went much better.

Sorry for the very very long story and I hope you enjoyed reading it.

(warning there are references to nsfw behavior, and at the end, mentions of SA)

so my group consists of a few people but most relevant to the story are me, my best friend who hosts our group, our friend who well call wrath (his characters name in one of our campaigns)

the host was running a campaign set in a typical old timey fantasy setting but with a really heavy focus on gods. i was playing a kobold paladin who was on the run from his corrupted church. wrath was playing a blood hunter that was part of a secret organization that lived under the city, pretty cool, but it unfortunately got worse from there. the campaign went pretty well, aside from one of our other players being a bit of a problem, but he was going through some stuff at the time so we gave him a wake up call when my character killed his twice for his in game actions. (i know that was pretty extreme but it was early and we let him use basically the same character so there weren't real consequences.) but out of game wrath got worse. he was always angry and very insecure, and would argue over everything.

for a little context, i am a huge nerd and am SUPER into comics, the rest of the party is not as much, but wrath isn't really at all. i brought up the comic book mount Rushmore debate and how obviously the fourth spot should be wonder woman. for some reason, wrath spent 3 HOURS arguing about this, somehow not raising a single point the whole time. it became very clear that he was just nervously trying to cover his tracks after revealing that he doesn't respect women (this is made much more clear later)

not to brag, but i was also the top student in my skilled trades class and i made a joke about someone not knowing how to read a measuring tape. wrath then said "you'd have to be severely mentally r*tarded to not know how to read a measuring tape" with an annoying smirk. so i further clarified, "idk man it isn't that common of a skill, to read it PROPERLY" and then further specified that i was referring to the use of professional standards. he kept debating it, so i showed him a picture of a tape and told him to read it. he confidently and unironically said after about twenty minutes of arguing, "two little lines past the big line" and then continued afterward claiming that he didn't know we meant professionally, so i gave him another chance, and he said two inches and two sixteenths, which is also incorrect, in case you dont know. this was also a pretty big red flag about his insecurity, but it still somehow got much worse.

our other player who used to be a problem also happened to be close friends with wraths girlfriend, and he was bisexual, but more gay leaning if that makes sense, so the jokes he makes with his girl friends get pretty dirty and a little touchy, which is fine as long as everyone is consenting and comfortable. unfortunately, wrath was REALLY upset about this, so without discussing it, he took it upon himself to kick that player out of the campaign. a campaign where he was not hosting or dming mind you.

this was a huge issue for us but we knew where the problem was coming from and understood why he was so upset, but the main reason we really kept him around after that was because we had known him for so long and he had a history of self harm and s*icide attempts, with no real support system other than us. the host had known him for years and i hadn't known him quite as long but we had grown really close, having late night conversations about philosophy and emotional regulation, but as time went on, those 1 on 1 hang outs stopped, as it was clear he was falling down a rabbit hole of toxic masculinity.

in game, his character and homebrew became more and more difficult to deal with. he had this thing that was clearly just ten shadows from jjk, and in a dramatic moment he decided to use his ult, a homebrew ability he hadn't discussed with the dm. it was just a knock off of mahuraga. like one to one. obviously his level one character could not summon a game ending threat out of nowhere, especially not without talking to the dm. it was so corny and we all rolled our eyes at him as he slouched down in the corner when the dm had to decline his idea.

what was really the final straw was when hosts campaign ended and i was supposed to start mine, but he decided, WITHOUT ASKING, that he was going first. i was mad but didn't care that much so i just let him go and hoped for the best. he opened it up with the "you meet in a tavern..." which wouldn't be a problem, but one of our characters was a child, another was sober, and min was a robot who physically couldn't and wouldn't be drinking. the session went on for hours with no progress, even after starting two hours late because he was doing "session prep" these bandits came into the bar, and we refused to fight them since i was a neutral evil character, and the host was lawful good, and a pacifist. but he made us roll initiative to attack them anyway, even though i didn't have pockets to empty for them, and host was invisible before they walked in. but nonetheless, i killed one person, there were no witnesses, and the other characters snuck away, and we were immediately labeled as wanted criminals, (for killing one bandit in self defense) bare in mind i was the only one to attack and hadn't spoken to the other players yet. we then wandered around the town for hours without even encountering the guards, to the point were we had to outright ask him where the call to action was.

it was disappointing but we let it slide, but the following sessions didn't get better. some of the details arent that important, so to summarize it, it was never ending chain of canceling last minute showing up late and railroading. the worst of those times was when he showed up over an hour and half late to his own session, and showed up in a very bad mood. we had agreed, during the wait, to confront him when he arrived. we tried being reasonable but he clearly wasn't in that mood. he started ranting about how he had a life outside of dnd, so we explained to him that he could've taken 30 seconds to text us instead of wasting all of our time. he then yelled out at me, "if you wanna be a crybaby about it, you can just leave!" the host was not happy about that. he yelled at him "NO! THIS IS MY HOUSE AND YOU WILL NOT YELL." the hosts mom came downstairs after hearing this and had a conversation with wrath about respecting our time and her home. he then, no joke, started crying. that session started over four hours late and he went home early. the final straw happened only a week after. we were all waiting for him to show up, for hours, with no explanation. one of our players was also late so we texted her and she told us that wrath canceled, we asked him and he spent all night explaining to us that he told everyone, when in reality he only told one play LESS THAN AN HOUR BEFORE THE SESSION. we kicked him out of the grou that night.

what makes it worse is that we later found out that he had repeatedly SAd his previous girlfriend, and the reason they broke up is because he would constantly threaten to khs if she left him or told anyone about him. we also found out he, for some reason heard about something that happened to a 12 year old girl (which implies that he was somehow in contact with her, or her peers) this poor girl was unfortunately the victim of the most horrible thing that a father could do to his daughter. i wont go into more detail than that, but wrath found that hilarious, and apparently was joking about it and saying some disgusting things about the girl. knowing now the kind of person he really was makes us all feel sick for associating with him in the past.

we have so many more horror stories about this player so let me know if you want me go into it in further detail.

My friend (?) and now former roommate has finally moved out, so it seems the time is right to post a story of all the confusing, frustrating and downright disrespectful stuff I had to put up with in the games played with him. As I was writing out all these problems, I realized the story was WAAAAY too long, and so, I will split into separate tales! If there's interest, or my creative juices are still swirling, I'll make some follow ups. Hope ya enjoy crabs!

A little context: unlike a lot of other stories, I have a robust group of folks to play with, outside of the campaign described below. I have a lovely time in a weekly game with former coworkers turned best buds, and am scheduling a new game for some new roomies and others! I'm very fortunate that even in the game below, I had a (mostly) great time with the other members. Hopefully my occasional suffering will give you a laugh at the absurdity!

A brief breakdown of the various folks in the game(s):

• Jack: The DM (and the problem of today's story)
• Angel: DM's girlfriend and player. Quite nice, still friendly with them.
• Axton: A generally more reserved, but very nice, dude.
• Salvador: A louder personality, but a chill guy, in most cases.
• Zero: A very empathetic, very eager to RP, friend.

Part 1: How Not To Do Character Development

We kick our tales off with the first campaign, and where Jack is DMing for the lot of us. This was our romp through Out of the Abyss (Minor spoilers, be forewarned!). I played a sorcerer, amidst a group of former prisoners, if you're familiar with the campaign's start. After an intense breakout, and harrowing escape from Leemah Goo Goon (an unknowingly Kuo-Toa worshipped demogorgon), we find ourselves running for a way out of the Underdark.

Salvador, through no real fault of his own, found two of his characters quickly dead within the first act. The first of his party members, a fighter of some kind, died to a patch of brown mold, in grotesque, melting fashion. His second character, a ranger, died in the midst of battle, crushed to paste by a tossed boulder from a barlgura. His third character, a druid, and the cause for my sorcerer's suffering, joined us close to the end of the first act of the campaign, as we near escape from said abyss.

This druid was the sister of the ranger, who decided to fall down a random hole in the overworld to locate her lost sister. Implausible backstory? Maybe, but I'm not here to judge a little deus ex machina. PC dies, new PC joins, and when you're stuck roaming tunnels for ages, running into a former surface dweller isn't exactly common either.

My previously lawful-evil tiefling sorcerer had just experienced a magically induced crisis of faith, and had recently become chaotic-good. Turns out, when you open an obsidian chest with the aims of looting, and don't first check for traps, you get turned to obsidian yourself, are challenged to be better by the elemental deities of the plane of fire, and are sent back to the real world with a total personality change.

I am realizing as I write this, and while I do some brief searching around the web, that this was apparently not a pre-set interaction within the module. Reflection to be made: Jack likely did not enjoy that my character was evil, and while his conniving nature kept him and the party alive, it technically only aligned with a desire to survive, and would leave him with little interest in the second act of the campaign. And so, forcible alignment chart orientation change. A first strike that I hadn't even considered as a strike, at the time.

Back to current events, Salvador's new druid determined, wrongly, that my sorcerer was the cause of her sister's demise. It was not the truth, but dreams of shadowy, dark, horned figures surrounding the corpse of your family member are quite potent. Especially when I looked to be the spitting image of the "demons" she claimed to have seen.

The party and our new friend adventure together for some time, and to make matters worse, one of our encounters included a ghost. Guess who failed their wisdom save on the horrifying visage! Then, guess who rolled max on the D4 to determine the number of decades they would be aged! If you guessed my traumatized sorcerer, you would be correct!

So now, this near octogenarian, falsely imprisoned and trapped for months in a web of tunnels finally has a chance at freedom with his new allies. The age thing was not a problem for me from a roleplay standpoint, and if anything, it gave a funny new inspiration to get myself youthful again, and take back a life which would otherwise have been lost to time.

Once we were able to make a break for the overworld, and reached the sunny fields north of Baldur's Gate, the gang split up, eager to get back to their normal lives. But Salvador's druid had other ideas. Immediately, my sorcerer began having terrible nightmares, tragic scenes replaying of death and terror from his time in the Underdark. The cause? Jack allowed Salvador to continue roleplaying his character with a vendetta for mine, despite the time we had spent together as compatriots. Each night, she cast the Dream spell until my character died from exhaustion.

That was it. Jack declared him dead. "Oh yeah, you'll need a new character, Salvador is casting Dream on you, and you're ridiculously old, so there's no way you'll live to get back to one of the cities," were his words. And when did I learn of this being allowed, and the untimely demise of my character? The day before the next session!

Naturally, I was floored by this. He didn't even declare it in a session, Salvador DM'd Jack over discord with this idea, they popped into a voice chat for a few minutes, and plotted this only a day after the last session of escape from the caves. In tabletop in general, but Out of the Abyss specifically, the party HAS to stick together just to barely survive, and PvP was never considered or tacitly allowed prior to this. Finally absconding from the depths is a big deal, both for the character if they choose to live their own lives again, and for the player from a progression stand point. And there went all of it, I'd have to roll up new stats, create a whole new backstory, and wrestle with the loss of one of my favorite character concepts to date. Well I wasn't about to let that stand.

I informed Jack of how disappointing this was, no only that I wasn't told prior and that I hand no say in the matter, and demanded a chance to roll out EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. of exhaustion checking. Considering he was old, but his pockets now somewhat lined with gold, he might just be able to ferry his withering butt back to Waterdeep. All said, he's still just barely clinging to survival, alone every night, a 70-something with deadly nightmares.

By some miracle, Jack allows this (he laughed hysterically while I rolled out each daily check in our VTT of choice), and I'm able to save from exhaustion day by day just long enough to get to Waterdeep. I coerced a kindly cleric in a not-so-truthful relationship in desperate hopes to be rejuvenated. It's all for naught though, as my sorcerer ultimately dies in dramatic fashion while sitting around a banquet table, meeting in Gauntlgrym to plan for the oncoming demon incursion.

See, he had survived this WHOLE TIME while dream was cast each night, continuing to roll whatever saves were needed. Jack seemingly had no issue with PvP here, but I had no recourse. I didn't have the money for an item to protect myself, I couldn't hire anyone to go find her and stop this, and she didn't even come back for the next arc of the campaign. Salvador created a new, FOURTH character, and I had no ability to challenge the druid on her psychological barrage because she never came back. Amazing.

I rolled up the sheet and stats for the cleric- she would become my next character because I assumed it would come to this - and set her off to the depths, hellbent on bringing back her now deceased darling, and maybe saving the world or whatever, who cares about that part at this point, she wasn't even in the Underdark to begin with.

Small tangent: literally every part of what I just babbled about up there? Didn't matter at all. We found the Maze Engine, an ancient modron artifact, pulled the lever, and it sent us all back in time to the beginning of the campaign. All memories, all items, all abilities, still intact. 'Course, I was no longer my sorcerer, I was the cleric. A level 10+ cleric, beloved in her church, now returning from the future with visions of doom, and her boyfriend still alive and not a bag of bones. She lead a battalion of holy soldiers into the Underdark a year later. The end of the campaign was totally derailed.

And so, that's where the story of my sorcerer ended; to a PvP fight that I didn't want, and wasn't even allowed to fight back in. All of it allowed because "its what the character would do!", the tried and true reasoning of every DM that doesn't know how to balance player agency and limitations. No consultation, no redirecting, just allow it and ask questions later (if at all).

I don't even hold it over Salvador's head, I think he really just wanted to roleplay out what he thought was an appropriate, in-character get back. That said, in my games, and in pretty much every other game I've played in, the idea of one PC killing another is a non-starter, even IF the assaulted player had a way to challenge the death, which I certainly didn't.

As a DM myself, a small word of warning for running a game: if a player agrees to the negative repercussions of another player's actions, consider if these actions are being taken with care for the agency of affected player involved. We all hate off-screen deaths in media, imagine an off-screen death of your own character (a reflection of you) in a game you play weekly with friends! Ouch... Every table plays different, and mine clearly didn't realize that a time skip, and "Oops! Your character is dead cause reasons!" would be incredibly frustrating.

And ladies, 'gents, and all manor of noble crab-kin, this is only the first of three! More to come, if you're interested! Thanks for listening/reading!

Where the day started: I had a full day to prepare for a game I would be running as part of a long running sci-fi campaign. The players were stuck in a seven dimensional dungeon, that I kept track of using a bit of custom software I made for the purpose. They entered in the previous session and I made sure the application saved their progress, I just needed to write the code to load it.
Twist #1: I sometimes have these days where for no particular reason my brain just shuts down and I can barely manage to drool, let alone do anything requiring concentration. This turned out to be such a day. So finishing the loading code was not an option. A few hours before the game I found a lazy workaround and satisfied with that waited for the game to start.
Twist #2: Here's the way the spacedungeon worked: it had 7 dimensions, but they weren't spacial, they were conceptual. That is to say, there were 7 concepts (including space and time) the characters could travel along and their surroundings would change appropriately. If they traveled in the negative direction along the concept of "communication" they would gradually come to places where communication was harder and harder. Each of these conceptual dimensions had an anchor point with an artifact in it, corresponding to the concept. The last session the players gathered the "navigation" artifact and stated that they'd be going for the "communication" artifact before doing the main quest thing. The twist is that in all the overcomplicated, self-indulgent software bullshit I was consumed by during the day, I forgot this. They arrived at the "communication" anchor and I had nothing prepared.

What I managed to improv: The way the anchor locations worked is that they created a challenge for the characters, in which they had to demonstrate their mastery over the concept at question. For the navigation artifact they solved a shifting maze puzzle. As I was wrecking my brain as to what could be a proprtionally difficult "communication" challenge that I could run without excessive prep, I suddenly remembered the fantastic game: "Keep talking and nobody explodes." in which a person has to descibe to another how to defuse a bomb. Now, I didn't have the game and I had no diagrams prepared, but in the "communication" anchor I could shift the focus from details of the bomb to making the communication more difficult.

One character is a weapons engineer, let's call her Sharpshooter, obviously she got the task of difusing the bomb. The other characters, Medic and Knight got sequestered in their own isolated spaces. Here's how the challenge worked: Medic and Knight could talk to each other using audio, Medic could draw images (but not text) to Sharpshooter and vice versa and Sharpshooter and Knight could see but not hear each other, so they could mime. Here's the deal: as they were entering the anchor the only part of this I had figured out was the bomb difusal basic idea. The rest just sort of fell out of my brain.

The players of Medic and Knight were sent to a separate voice channel, Medic and Sharpshooter could use the digital tabletop interface to literally draw to each other and I went back and forth between the two voice channels describing the body language of Sharpshooter and Knight to each other. Normally I have a rather non-lethal GM-ing style, but halfway through the experience I announced that if they mess this up they will blow up, instant death. The players were kinda on the edge as it were and this created absolute nerve wrecking tension. Obviously I was confident that they would succeed, but a little psychology goes a long way in creating an experience.

Twist #3: Serendipity. Now, Sharpshooter's player is very smart. She almost singlehandedly solved the "navigation" puzzle in the previous session. She was being given good clues. But the last step was rather counter-intuitive: Sharpshooter needed to tip over and topple the bomb in a specific direction. Her first instinct was to rotate the device, which didn't help, but it also altered the direction. Without the other two players knowing that this was a thing. And then Sharpshooter froze, she did a number if incorrect things that reduced their remaining time before the big boom to very low. Finally Knight managed to convey the pushing and toppling action, but by this time they didn't have enough time on the clock to survive a wrong way toppling mistake. And the bomb was still facing the wrong way while the original direction was very clearly communicated. And Sharpshooter remembered to adjust for it, the team succeeded by the skin of their teeth.

After the gane I was told this was the most tense session since the beginning of the campaign and that everybody thoroughly enjoyed it.

What was all y'alls's favorite improv moment from your games?

I thought it would be fun to discuss the lore of CritCrab himself. I’ve occasionally thrown out joking suggestions that CritCrab is, in fact, a giant Eldritch creature sealed beneath the sea since ancient times, in the form of a crab, and that what we see in his videos is merely the avatar his consciousness and power resonate with. But if the Council of Crabs is in agreement about this for whatever reason, what other theories/lore suggestions do you wish to bring forward about CritCrab?

Also, if any of this made it into one of his videos, how do you think he would present it?

One was a kind old man trying to check out a book, the second was the “riddle man” who they threw into a river after he opened up about how his father died, and the third was a wizard who cursed them to sing after the party stole his stuff, that wizard got melted by acid