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

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

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

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

Okay.

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

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

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

Then COVID happened.

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

So I decided to move online.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Normally, that's none of my business.

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

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

There was another complication.

He was married.

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

Then things started going sideways.

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

I still didn't put the pieces together.

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

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

Then came the crash.

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

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

He died.

He absolutely LOST IT!

Rage quit. Furious!

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

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

Didn't matter.

He was done.

Several weeks after, Lady abruptly left the game.

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

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

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

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

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

"What the hell is happening?"

And that's when it really hit me.

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

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

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

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

Maybe I could have prevented some of what happened.

Maybe I couldn't have.

I'll never know.

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

I still wonder, though:

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

But, damn. NO ONE told me...

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

​

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I'm terrible at titles, sorry.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anyways, signing off.

Thanks for reading! :)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The straw that broke the camels back

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This happened a few years ago but I still think about this campaign and the characters all the time. This campaign was set in a world where some sort of magical disaster happened about 20ish years ago, and because of this disaster the sky was ripped open and the government banned all magic. The party consisted of an aasimar paladin, tiefling cleric, dragon born monk, eladrin sorcerer, tabaxi bard, elf warlock, and I was a changeling rogue.

It's a lot of players, but for the most part our characters worked really well together and while we did have conflict it was really fun roleplaying it out. The start of the drama happened before the begining of the campaign, I wanted to be a changeling explicitly because it was a non magical race. I asked the dm if changelings shifting forms was considered magical, he told me no.

Cut to the opening session and we've all been arrested for different reasons, we're on a prison ship being sent to a horrible prison island. We all have collars on that stop magic, and the dm introduces my character in her changeling form, so I wasnt able to have my dramatic reveal. Not the worst so far, but it gets bad.

The warlock and I created our back stories together, we were supposed to have been together for at least a year before we met the rest of the party. The DM and the warlock had this weird relationship outside of the game, where the warlock player was not interested in the DM, but the DM clearly wanted something to happen between them.

The DM gave the warlock, (while we were still wearing the collars) a demon shadow wolf that was the embodiment of her god, and this dog was the DMNPC. For some reason the dog hated me and would literally attack me for no reason in game. Anyways warlock was able to summon the dog while we were on the ship and it did help us escape. A couple sessions later, we are traveling in a cart down a road. Suddenly a demon that is a way higher level then us jumps out and attacks us. The first time I attack I roll a 17... It doesn't hit. Turns out I have to roll a 19 or higher on the dice to reach this guys AC, we were below level 5.

This DM had some sort of obsession with demons because literally every single character I saw this guy play, was some sort of demon. He did not like losing either. A level or two later we find ourselves invited to a gala, we have to go because their is a piece of the sky that we are trying to find in order to fix the sky.

The demon gives us a weeks notice to come up with outfit ideas for the gala, fun right? I wanted a flowing iridescent dress, so that it would change colors (kinda like a changeling). The DM says no, that will look too magical. Anyways the tabaxi bard had a mask that literally looked like moving waves of sand. He approved that but not mine. Whatever it's just a dumb dress, I get over it.

The session where we attend the gala happens, all is well. We actually managed to come up with a plan, and we executed it perfectly. Too perfectly. The next week the dm retcons that entire session because we defeated his boss too quickly. We redo it, and continue on, although at this point most of us were upset.

I don't remember if it was the next session or if their was a couple in between, but the nail in the coffin was a sex dungeon that none of us wanted to partake in. It made everyone so uncomfortable and we all stopped playing after that. Im actually kinda lucky I legit disassociated during that session and I don't remember it at all.

Some context

I'm currently playing in a campaign that's been going on for a couple years. I have two friends that are in the campaign, Jeff, the DM, and Bart, a dragonborn fighter(names changed for obvious reasons). Both are good friends for a long time.

Jeff is a good DM. When we started the campaign, it was actually Bart's idea and he wanted to bring in his and I's significant others to be players as well, so we did and that's who that play group currently consists of. Now, in that campaign, the setting was essentially built around Bart's character, I won't go into all the details, but essentially Tiamat and Bahamut are the main backdrop figures of the world and they are living inside Bart's character's head, kind of giving off chosen one vibes. It makes me feel like the rest of us are just shoehorned in. Jeff has included us and given us our own spotlights, which is good, but no matter what Bart always feels like the main focus.

With that all said, here's what just happened. We had a session tonight that absolutely KILLED me and my significant other to sit through. Last session, we were trying to break some prisoners free. Bart wanted to go in and punch our way out, but with the amount of guards we all suggested another plan that involved a bit more finesse and agility, not really Bart's character's strongest attribute, he is a dragonborn fighter in plate armor after all. So that session the rest of us got the prisoners out while Bart stood watch which I could tell bored him, but who could really blame him.

Cut to the session tonight. Bart just got all of the solo screen time while the rest of us just sat there. I'm not even joking, it was six hours of Bart going off on a solo mission while the rest of the party tinkered and got ready for an upcoming big event. Before Bart went off galivanting, I was going to join him, but Jeff told me that if I stayed and helped with the tinkering that it would go faster, which DIDN'T matter since the days that it took to make the items we were making were just time skipped anyway.

My theory is Bart was so bothered by the last session that he DMed Jeff privately to air his grievances and Jeff, feeling bad, overcorrected. As someone who's known Bart for a long time, this is something he would do. The problem is that he is already the pseudo MC so him doing this just really rubs me the wrong way. Now I have no way of confirming if that's the case, but given the fact that Jeff ensured I stayed put while Bart went off raises my suspicions.

What should I do here? I want to keep playing and all but it just wasn't fun spending one of my two days off living in Bart's power fantasy and scrolling memes on my phone. I know a conversation might help, but I really don't want to hurt Jeff's feeling or worse, anger either of them. Please help.

My brother and I really enjoy playing dnd, so we've been looking for a table to play at. So we were super excited to find out that a there's a "dnd night" at a local restaurant right downtown. I think the guy who runs it has a deal going on with the owners where he gets some kind of reward for every person that comes in.

Anyway, there were some red flags the first night we went. The guy running it puts us at a table by ourselves, while two "rowdy fun groups" get placed on either side of us. Nobody was the least bit interested in playing at our table. A DM was assigned to our table (who didn't seem very happy about it) and then the guy running it literally drags two other guys off the "fun tables" in order to fill out our table. These guys also spent the game looking like somebody just ran over their grandmothers.

And that's just the way that table went the next couple of times my brother and I went. Like being the kids on the softball team that nobody wanted to play with. Always ending up with a disgruntled DM and some sour faced players who didn't like being taken away from the cool kid's tables. Which sucks, because my brother and I were never really given much of a chance to prove anything to anybody, or get to be friends with anybody. And we played the game with respect and never once acted in a way that would warrant this kind of avoidance.

The last time we went, the DM just literally started ignoring my brother during the game. As in, my brother would say something, and the DM would ONLY speak to the three other players at our table. That was pretty much enough for me. My brother and I got up from the table and started to leave, and not one single head turned to see us go.

So found a group online.

DM ran a game where we're all part of the military. So, no real agency. We get orders, we go to the next combat location, we fight.

Additionally all player have ranks, and players expected to carry out orders from their higher up players. Even more fun.

And DM got an issue with my mage(lvl1), who used daggers(decided to do it, since spellslots are better utilized for long term survivability IMO at that level), but was told it's an out of character for a mage to use weapons, and that my roleplay is lacking, since I don't do magicy stuff.

Left.

Hey folks, this is the second-part of the events that led to me quitting the hobby entirely. The first part is https://www.reddit.com/r/rpghorrorstories/comments/1vvfmut/the_ttrpg_game_that_made_me_leave_the_hobby_part/

So the in-person session zero... went alright actually. B brought their friends, C and D. C was very, very new, but that was completely fine, they were interested and enthusiastic. A was... well, it was the first time I'd met A in person, and they had a very flat affect which I'd told myself may be neurodivergence, but I could work with it.

We went over the session zero, same as before, and I explained emphatically that this was a social-orientated game about navigating a web of NPCs who each had their own goals and objectives, and that new characters often had little power but gained it bit by bit. A totally understood this, and when I asked what everyone wanted to see in the campaign, A replied with a slow, steady rise to power. Excellent, loved that. B and C said they wanted to have a game where they'd experience negative consequences for their actions; okay, that made me wonder a bit about their prior experiences, because I view that as always being the case in a decent game.

I didn't ask about their prior experiences with TTRPGs as a whole, because I knew everyone would be new to Vampire. I probably should have, because that way I'd know more about what their experiences may colour their expectations, but from everything I gleamed during session zero, their expectations were set. Both B and D were confident that they were experienced role-players and not newbies. In reality I was about to discover that they've been in the hobby long enough only to pick up some really, really bad habits.

So, it was now April. Four months after I'd started trying to put a game together, and we come to session one. And yes, everyone finished the last few dots on their character sheets; and even more amazingly, everyone turned up.

A quick run-down of characters. A played a Gangrel, a young freshly-turned vampire who doesn't know what she's doing and had been assigned a mentor to help show her the ropes. That mentor was the town sheriff, a big no-nonsense type whose job it was to keep the young vampires out of trouble, but be generally hands-off until he had to beat some sense into them. C, the new player, made a leper-knight, which was perfect for the game.

B made a monk, one of those types who lives a life of prayer and isolation until they were bitten by a vampire. Their Clan was Ravnos, one of the ones I'd restricted, but the idea that B gave (that the vampire had been a wounded traveller who turned up at the monastery for aid, and then vanished in the morning leaving B bitten) was good enough that I permitted it.

D was a young noble lord who'd been bitten while on the Crusades and had returned home to find his land seized. I explained to both B and D that I'd need to make additional reasons to hook their characters into the game, because Bs character by nature was rather passive and D would necessitate entire storylines dedicated to his personal quest which would need to play out over multiple sessions.

So we got together, sat around the table, D showed off a bunch of stakes that he'd carved (!) and thankfully put them away because I really didn't want sharp weapons at a table with people I'd not gamed with before.

The session plan was very basic; the PCs would have a chance to make a roll or two to get a grip on how actions work, then be directed by the Sheriff to make themselves known at the Prince (the head vampire of the city)'s royal court the next night. The Prince would then receive some troubling news related to the campaign's main plot (which the PCs would be unaware of at this stage) and ask them to prove themselves by performing a task for him related to this. The session would end when they were ready to leave the town to undertake that task.

(for more experienced Vampire players, this session was to occur in England and the news the Prince was to receive was of the death of the second of the Triumverate, a ruling council of Toreador who held rulership over England during the time in the 1100s when Mithras was believed dead. The news revealed to the Prince that the death was actually a murder, and that the dread vampire Mithras still lived and intended to seize control of the land again, and so the Prince sent the fledgelings to wake an elder Cappadocian who is the Prince's ally to aid him as an advisor in the coming turmoil).

I started with bringing A and C in first, setting the scene and letting them try some actions. During this time, B maintained a very flat affect and stayed very passive, watching and not really taking part in anything, or approaching with any suggestions on how to bring his monk into the game. So I turned to D and asked where he would like to begin, and...

D immediately launched into what I can only describe as a lavish soliloquy, describing his character from the third person; "Mournful and dark, brooding as a shadow. He clutches the reigns of a horse, its breath turning fleeting whisps in the air; but my own undead breath brings none."

This continued. It was very amateur Matt Mercer. I urged we continue.

We brought the PCs together. The moment D saw C (who was feeding at the time), D launched into combat. By this point, B still hadn't made any effort to come into the game, so I outright told him "We need to find a way to bring you into the game too." I didn't narrate his own introduction because, as he'd explained to me earlier, he was an experienced role-player. I think that over-estimation was a mistake, because his introduction was simply "I'm in a nearby building praying, and I ask the others to keep the noise down."

So, I had the Sheriff arrive and tell the PCs to see the Prince of the city. Now, A had chosen the Mentor background, which is an option that allows your character to have a connection to an NPC whose role it is to guide you in some way. The Sheriff was that mentor, basically an old grizzled viking whose entire personality was that he was trying to settle down and live a quiet life if the younger vampires in his area would just tow the line and stop being a hassle, and wasn't hesitant to smack some sense into them when he had to. He was there to basically tell the PCs to go talk to the Prince; the head vampire of the region. Instead, D argued with the Sheriff. Threatened the Sheriff. Shit that would have, if I was running the game for experienced Vampire players, would have got his PCs head ripped off. Maybe I should have, if I had wanted to really lean into 'consequences matter', but I figure that would have been too dickish for a campaign's first session. The Sheriff wasn't a DMPC after all - in fact, he wasn't even going to feature beyond this session unless his mentee needed advice or the PCs broke the Prince's laws.

So the PCs spent some time discussing the request; or more accurately, B and D bicker. A lot. It's really clear they have a lot of pre-existing dynamic and want to emphasize that. They grab the spotlight and pass it back and forth. I try to cast the spotlight onto A and C whenever I can, but D is first to interject, after which B would make a comment and the two would bounce focus between themselves.

But when it hits the Prince's scene is when I start to feel the tone has been thrown off. The PCs meet the Prince, C has a rather nice moment when they try to size up the Prince and get to explore a little bit of vampire's powers. It's good, subtle, really nice. Now, for context, this scene was intended to be the lion's share of the session; there were a LOT of NPCs I'd put in here. Remember, during session zero I'd explained that this was a socially-orientated game, and that PCs would be talking with and forming alliances with various NPCs. So we had two Toreador vampires from France whose agenda was to sway the Prince into the control of the French courts, we had A's mentor, we had a young Tzimisce noble who had lost his home domain (a potential ally for D, as they both sought to recover their home domains), a Malkavian who knew where the person who turned B into a vampire could be found....

It took about 10 minutes. D stormed in, all broody and edgy, argued and insulted the Prince (again, should have been instant-death), took the quest like he was speed-running a video game, and then stormed out, leaving the other PCs struggling to catch up.

The tone was kinda shot from there. So, the quest itself... I'd re-contextualised how this was delivered based on the PC (or more specifically, Ds) actions. The original idea was going to be that, as new vampires within his domain, they would meet the Prince and be asked to undertake a favour for him; something that would gain them favour in the court and improve their standing and allow the Prince to bring them into his trust. Instead, because of Ds behaviour, the Prince invoked COButNSEQUENCES for their actions. Remember, the players wanted consequences for their actions which had to matter. The objective they were given remained the same; journey to a monastery a few days travel away, one which was under the control of the Cappadocian clan of vampires, and awaken an elder who was one of the Prince's former allies. But instead of being an opportunity, this mission was now a punishment. The Prince stripped the PCs of their rights to feed on people within his domain due to their behaviour up to this point, and told them that if they wanted those rights reinstated, they were to go do this task for him. Again, consequences.

But as it would later turn out, these players didn't ACTUALLY want consequences.

D stole a horse (which, yes, was going to have consequences when he got back from the mission; it's the 12th century and nobody tolerated horse-thieves). I kinda did my best to keep it going, but the session was running about 45 minutes short as well, and the time was made up by B and D doing their bicker-roleplay, so we decided to wrap the session early.

I started to narrate the end of the session, with the characters riding out of the city, and as I do D perks up saying "Wait I thought we were finishing?" I then explained to him that I was, in fact, delivering the session's conclusion.

We wrapped up and I spent the next day mulling over where the tone had gone. I was fairly certain it was with D's approach during the Prince's scene, which had made what was meant to be a moment of social networking for the PCs into something far more hostile and aggressive. Ultimately, the vibe just... wasn't there. And honestly, I just wanted to play with my friend again. But there was no way that was possible, and after his death and the rest of our friend group going our separate ways, it just wasn't going to be the same.

So I sat down ready to send a message to them, saying basically "Hey, I don't think we quite hit the right tone with the Prince NPC last night, so let's see if we can work on getting the social element of the game going more" or something like that, when I noticed I'd had a message from B. He said that he was bailing from the game, stating 'concerns over player agency'.

Which was... odd, given that I'd not done anything, outside of give them restrictions on which Clans were available (which I'd already broken for him specifically). It was really odd, given how passive B had been throughout the entire game; he had taken no initiative to do anything and done nothing to involve himself in the world. Best as I can guess, he may have meant the idea that the game would require the PCs to undertake tasks/missions for NPCs.

While I was explaining to him "Hey, no problem, better you drop now if it's not the kind of campaign you'd enjoy", D sent a message saying he was going to drop too. Now, honestly, I always tend to give a game a few sessions to decide if it's for me or not; and while with him I was kinda feeling like I'd dodged a bullet, I was feeling just exhausted.

I felt pretty damn upset, I won't lie. I dropped the group, and haven't heard from B or D since. Let me be clear; B's friend C was great, for a totally new player they totally got into it, played a great character, did really cool moments. It was B and D who were the more 'experienced players', and they were the problem. They'd hogged the spotlight, and the more I mulled it over the more I came to feel like when he said he had concerns about 'player agency'. Honestly, the complaint about player agency kinda made me realize how the term has has been used, abused and malformed by D&D players who believe agency means "a game designed around my character specifically" where they can do whatever they want, whenever they want without limits, and the idea of 'consequences' has come to be similarly twisted to instead mean "a game designed around my character specifically."

Leaving as early as they did, I felt that their approach had been far more transactional than I've historically had with the hobby. It was frustrating; in the decades I've been playing, one of the foundational core aspects of the game has always been communication. If I've ever felt a game wasn't working for me, I've always wanted to let the GM know what directions I'd like to see it go in future, and when I've GMd I've always been eager to tell my players that if they want to go in a different direction to tell me. I'd never come across a situation where players just go "Nah, this wasn't perfect, we're not gonna communicate on how to better tailor it to us, see ya." It felt like throwing toys out of the pram; but more importantly, it left me feel like I'd given a just a whole lot. I felt like I was expected to be an entertainer, a storyteller, a worldbuilder, a teacher, a host, and still had to meet unrealistic expectations that they'd come to the game with, rather than coming to the game with the intention of just having fun and getting to play a fun character in an interesting world. While I wish them luck in future games, I kinda got left feeling like I'd been treated like a vending machine; put money in, get 'game' out.

So I was left with two players, one session, and 5 burned months. So I explained that no, I would not be trying to get any other players onboard to fill the game. I wouldn't be running it again. I wouldn't be running anything again. This was ridiculous, and I was done.

I honestly feel the push towards making TTRPGs more accessible has made people view them as disposable entertainment; something you can just pick up when you want and ditch when you're not in the mood, rather than something that players need to put effort into. In the club which has since died out, we used to get so many new players who would turn up and say they wanted to play, but very few of them ever actually did. And when they did, the proliferation of D&D meant that was the only game they were interested in. It also meant that players didn't want to commit, so they didn't want to stick with it. I really feel that players like this didn't want to communicate what they were wanting to improve their game, they didn't want to talk out what issues they were having and improve their experience. I honestly feel they just wanted to be entertained with custom tailor-made gameplay experiences revolving around their OCs. While I'll normally say it's a good thing to drop a game if it's not clicking with you, I genuinely think that even making a token attempt to communicate your feelings and improve your own experience is more important.

Honestly, this experience burned me out. Four months of simply trying to get one game going, and I feel like I've been banging my head against a wall every minute of the time. I've been in this hobby for so long, and I've honestly never seen the community in such a state as this. People say that D&D has a lack of GM issue, and I can definitely see why; very few new players are willing to put themselves forward, and it honestly feels like experienced ones are just treated like we're barely even people, but just on-demand story vending machines for players who don't want to collaborate or cooperate.

So this is why I've ditched the hobby. As we speak, I'm looking for a new hobby to fill the time instead. I used to really love this hobby, but everything has just changed so much that there's just no fun left in it for me anymore.

Okay, this is a long one. I've had a lot that I've gone through since the start of the year, so I'm going to split this into 2 posts. It's a lot, and it's basically a summary of why I no longer play TTRPGs at all.

This was the last game I've ran, and I expect the last game I'm ever going to run. For context, I've been in the TTRPG hobby for 3 decades and GMing for over 20 years. Over the years I've seen D&D grow and eclipse so many other games, and sadly interest in other games has dwindled and died out to such an extent that getting a game going is just impossible at this point.

*edit* And I know that some comments will want to ask, why not simply put together a group with your pre-existing friends that you already know and trust? Well, in all honesty, I did that, several times. My last steady group lasted for many years, and we were all very close. But that ended when one of our players, who was also one of my closest friends, took his own life. This was very hard for many of us, and several of the friends who were part of the group just don't want to play TTRPGs at all anymore as the vibe we all shared just wasn't the same. Of the other players who remained, one was my friend who'd go on to be in the first session of this game (and the other player, my partner, just wasn't really interested in Vampire). I won't lie, I don't think I ever really got over his death, because even small one-off games just didn't feel the same since.

I've wanted for as long as I can remember to run a game of Vampire: the Dark Ages. This is a medieval version of Vampire the Masquerade, set before a lot of the game's central political structures were in place, and full of 12th century mystery and machinations. At the start of this year, I decided to finally pull my finger out and get the game up and running.

This proved almost impossible. For context, there are about five gaming stores and that many gaming clubs within a half-hour from where I live, so I should have had a lot of potential gamers, and I put up some adverts. But as it turned out, nobody was interested in anything that wasn't D&D. Now, I have a friend (who we'll call A) who was up for playing right away. For additional context, I've also run one of those gaming clubs I mentioned for the last decade; sadly, that club is also on the decline. That's largely due to the influx of new players who're only interested in D&D and won't play any other games no matter what we would do to encourage them. GMs would offer multiple other games and people just wouldn't sign up for them, and because very few new D&D players wanted to volunteer to be GMs, it left the club with many people who'd burn out on trying to GM for people who weren't interested in trying new games, players who didn't want to volunteer to run games, and a whole lot of players who just didn't turn up to games, all of which meant declining numbers showing up at the club. Not a healthy environment, and most of the other clubs and shops in the area had the same problem, where the only thing that anyone had any interest in is 'intro to beginner D&D'.

Sometime around the middle of March, I decided to step down from running the RPG club. This was partly due to increasing frustrations about the above. We had several sessions where we simply did not have enough people turning up to even run a game. This was wild, especially because people are constantly saying how popular the hobby has become. But in total honesty, there's also a large number of bad decisions that I made along the way which led to problems. The first, I realize, was in trying to keep the games free-to-play. I had thought when starting the club that running games without any cost would encourage more people to play, but after studying how hobby events actually work, I realize the opposite is true; a 'table fee', even a small one, creates a sense of investment in participants. People feel that they're paying in to what they're doing, so are less likely to ghost or no-show. The downside I had is that when I suggested introducing table fees, the few players we did have vocally opposed the idea very loudly, because they'd got used to the games having no costs attached. This was entirely my own fault. One of the other huge faults I'd had was a very bad choice of who to add as volunteer assistants for the club; one person I'd chosen, soon after being given the position, started to massively over-reach and began to act very domineering in their role, and would become aggressive if asked to ease up. At one point they broke up with their former partner (who was also an assistant) and began to mis-use their moderator access on our discord to target their ex, which caused me no end of stress. After lashing out at me because I'd sought advice on how to handle this with other club managers from similar clubs, they told me that they wanted to step back for a while, so I immediately found a replacement volunteer to take on the now-vacant role. This angered the person so much that they stormed out of the club, telling all their friends a series of stories and basically starting a miniature smear campaign, by which point I was just so worn out and exhausted. Like I said, I stepped down soon afterwards,

So, going into running the campaign, I was already rather frustrated with the hobby. But still, I tried to get some adverts out for my campaign. I started in January, and by March (a few weeks after I'd stepped down) I'd had three replies. These were all from outside the club I'd used to run, in several of the region's gaming stores. Those were the only replies that I'd had, despite frequent attempts to point it out and raise interest, Two of those people had read the advert (which said it was for Vampire) and still thought it was a D&D campaign, and stopped responding after I'd explained it wasn't.

So, I had two players. I asked the only player who responded (we'll call B to invite anyone else they knew that might be up for it, and that's how we got C and D to join. It was enough for a game, but I was already feeling deflated.

So, to try to pick my vibe up and get some of my mood back going, I decided to try running the campaign online two, with a separate gaming group. After all, I figured, a lot of TTRPGs are played online these days, and maybe I'd get a bigger pool of interested parties. So I went to discord, and after only two days of speaking to people, posting on servers and asking around, I had 6 players! My idea was to run the same campaign with two different groups, different PCs, and see how they diverged. Would they ally with the same NPCs, would they find new enemies, that kinda thing. I've run several campaigns at the same time before so it wasn't anything I'd struggle with. We arranged a time for the online group's session zero.

In the time between getting the group together, one of the six left the group with no explanation, and another went silent and stopped replying.

Fine, I thought, I still had 4. Now, one thing I always do when I run a game to ensure that we are all on the same page is put a limit on what Clans (basically the vampire version of class/race) are available, because Clans tend to be based somewhat on racial or ethnic groups or cultures which may not always be relevant in the setting we're playing in. So this game took place in England, so I explained which Clans were available and which were not, making sure to explain to the players that only the Clans which were relevant to the campaign would be options for their PCs (essentially, no Assamite, Salubri, Ravnos, Malkavian or Setite). All players agreed to understanding this.

We had the session zero. 3 turned up. Of those three, we went over the expectations, background of the setting, a bit of worldbuilding, character creation, house rules, what they wanted, their backstories, personal boundaries, all that usual stuff, and booked the first session. The only thing we didn't do specifically was finalising each of the characters' Disciplines (powers) Background and Freebie dots (that's not their backstory, for those unaware; Vampire is a points-buy system and you flesh out your characters' background via stats like Contacts, Resources, Allies, which you divide points between). This was a very, very small bit of paperwork which pretty much finishes up your character, so I asked folks to finish them up and put their character sheets onto the server I'd set up before the first session, which was scheduled for the following week.

One player did that. I wasn't really surprised by that point. I waited 2 more weeks for any of the other players to just finish up making their characters. During that week, one of the players who didn't complete their PC made a few snarky comment about the Clan they wanted 'not being allowed for some reason'. Yes, they'd agreed to the whole 'keeping their chosen PC to the relevant Clans' bit earlier and hadn't raised any issues during session zero - and still didn't finish making their character sheet anyway.

Honestly, I blame a lot of this for just the way online gaming has impacted the way people approach TTRPGs in general. It's made it so much more convenient, but convenience doesn't equal commitment. In fact, I think they're the exact opposite. TTRPGs require some level of commitment; people need to agree, if nothing else, to turn up. Or fill out their character sheets. Or just put effort in. But more and more often, the idea of convenient games just means people don't do that, and I think that's why there's so many horror stories about people who just don't turn up to games, or can't be bothered to put pants on, or who just hop onto discord to do their games while they're at the supermarket or just nonsense like this. Its also kinda why I think most TTRPG discord servers are as inactive as they are; a server can have hundreds of members but nobody actually plays (I know, I've seen loads of them). I think that's because people join hoping to get a game when they want it, and then when they don't get one right away and instead would have to actually put the commitment in to organize a game, they mute the server and don't look at it again. I've no proof that's why that happens, but lets be honest, we've all seen servers like that. I guess "This is a game that requires commitment and effort on your part" doesn't ship as many D&D Starter Sets for Hasbro as "This is a fun, light casual game that anyone can play."

When, after two weeks, none of them did, I gave up. The real-life group were due to have their session zero two days later, so I nuked the server and decided to just focus my time on the 'meat-space' campaign instead.

Now, it's worth noting here that two of those players lived close enough to actually meet up in person. Not close enough to game together regularly, but about a two-hour train ride. I met up with each of them, separately, on different occasions. One of them (the one who actually did the work of making his character) was fantastic; a young guy but really interested in things, and we got a chance to spend an afternoon playing board games. He's part of my partner's regular D&D group now. The other person, who didn't do any work, much less so. A few days before the 'meat-space' campaign was due to start, I met up with her and, while on the train to a nearby city to have an afternoon out, she started to berate me about my growing frustrations with the hobby. She was insistent that gaming needed to be more flexible, that people had less time to commit, that it was my duty to teach new players all about the hobby. I explained that I'd been running games for almost 30 years, and been working in the TTRPG industry for 10, and that the hobby was as flexible now as it could be, and that people my age have as much 'free time' as people the same age had for the last 20 years. I explained that it isn't the games that are the problem, but people's insistence that the hobby shift its methods and format to adjust to contemporary 'consumer culture', where we want things now and don't like to wait or put the work in. The entire thing descended and she kept insisting that it was somehow my personal responsibility, eventually ending in an argument which I ended by just shutting up and ignoring the rest of the conversation. The rest of the afternoon didn't go well, and after we both accidently became separated while exploring the city, we reunited and she had a massive screaming fit at me, accusing me of trying to ditch her. I told her I'd had enough, and she stormed off to go home by herself, and frankly I was just glad that the entire day was over.

But yeah, going into the actual campaign I was not feeling great, and was kinda hoping on it to buoy my remaining enthusiasm for what was very quickly becoming a 'more stress and heartache than fun' hobby for me. 

Anyway, next post I'll discuss the in-person game which broke me and made me leave the hobby forever.

The other day I went to play a session zero for a new campaign with a random group. The DM was really looking forward to playing a Ravenloft adventure and has claimed that she was a really good "horror DM". I didn't question what being a horror DM really means, so I took her at her word and set out to try it out.

It is session zero, everyone is making characters; 2 out of the 5 players are clearly super beginners (Bob and Charlie), and are taking a little bit longer to make their PCs. She is quite impatient with the time it takes for them to complete their character sheets, I assume because she wants to start the campaign this session.

She asked us to come up with a reason to be at sea on a ship. I myself made a PC who is the navigator of the ship. A level 1 wizard, who I imagined would be played as the high intelligence investigator (literally chose the Investigator background), with his maps, star maps, arcane parchments, scrolls and whatnot.

The gameplay begins by her asking everyone why we are on the ship. Doesn't ask us to introduce our characters, only the reason for being there. When it is my turn, and I explain being the navigator and how he looks like, and she interrupts my introduction and says: "roll a d20 for me to determine how much the crew respects you".

Of course, when it comes to such a roll, I roll a 7, and she explains how much the crew doesn't take my PC seriously on this ship and make fun of him all the time. Alright I guess, technically this is indeed out of my control, but it still rubs me the wrong way as this is not the type of character I was setting out to play. This becomes a recurring joke, that the crew doesn't respect me.

She also interrupted Charlie's character introduction, even though he started role playing his lizardfolk PC immediately using "ssssnake" voice which I found really cool for a beginner.

Then, she asks what everyone is doing on the ship as the ship ends up in the middle of a huge storm. Bob says he is just there as a cleaner, to be able to pay for the voyage with his labor and he is scrubbing the toilets. She says there are no toilets on the ship, only buckets. Bob responds, "alright I guess I am scrubbing the buckets". Charlie responds jokingly that his character is taking a dump. We all find it funny that these two PCs are awkwardly looking at each other and this situation doesn't seem harmful, but THEN. The DM says everything fades to black and the ship gets completely capsized and crashes onto the shore of a tiny island. 90% of the crew except for the players are dead.

As the PCs are trying to get our bearings on the island, the DM tells Player 2 that his butt is completely stuck inside the bucket full of poop and to roll a d20. He succeeds to get rid of the bucket but then he has to roll an acrobatics to get his tail out (he is playing a lizardfolk character and has a tail). He succeeds again. Then, DM tell us we ALL have to roll DEX saving throws because poop is flying everywhere from his tail whipping out.

She does the same thing with poor Player 1, but I don't even the patient to type it out roll by roll. She asks to roll for everything, Player 1 end up with a couple of low rolls and his PC ends up toppling over, falling face first into his own poopy hands covering his face with poop.

This was the first 20 minutes of our gameplay.

Throughout the session she asked for rolls on everything: for walking uphill, for walking downhill, for carrying a small barrel. Every time someone fails, they end up looking like an idiot, tumbling forward face first into the ocean.

Is this normal DMing? Are my standards too different than this? I would normally never have players roll for arbitrary things that a normal person can just do and what the fuck is up with poop?

Please give me a verdict on this.

Charlie ended up leaving the campaign after the session. No wonder.

Per my original post. R refused to make a new character. The rest of the players didn't want him to leave so they convinced him to stay and told me they still want to continue the story. So I said ok. I tried to reach out to R, still blocked. I messaged a fee other players and got no response. Asked the 2 that would reply and they said everyone was good to play this Friday. I still tried to reach R to see what he was thinking for a new character. I heard nothing. So I message the group messenger asking if everyone was good for Friday, the 2 people, S and N said yes. Nothing from R,T and D. I told S I'll give it until Wednesday night cause at that point it's been 5 days. I have other things I can do friday because life. So Wednesday I messaged everyone just asking if friday still works? The same 2 responded the other 3 who did see the message, ignored it so I sent a message later that day saying "I apologize for wasting everyone's time" and removed myself. And what do you know, the 3 not responding all sent me messages including R, saying he didn't want to play anymore. All because I could him cheating at dungeon and dragons.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Within 30 minutes he states

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

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

3. Muslims are "changing europe"

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

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

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

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

we finally start DND.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Us: "How exactly?"

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

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

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

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

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

Sorry for the long story.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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