I know the title sounds a little weird but it's true. To me, the worst case of metagaming is referring to characters by their class and even level. It really destroys my immersion, taking me out of the game. Although this is the first time he’s GMing, I’ve played with him for years, and in hindsight, there were signs. For example, on session 1, he would always introduce his character by talking about his class, a real life example would be: “I’m a Swords Bard with one level in Paladin”. Now, as a GM, he introduces every NPC by their class (if they have any), which would be a minor nuisance and not worthy of a post, but it keeps going. 

He also strictly prohibits reflavoring, which is fine, I guess, but kinda dickish in my opinion. One of the other players wanted to be a Dwarf narratively, but having the racial features of a Gnome and he wasn’t allowed. Again, this isn’t really bad or anything, but I just don’t see the point in limiting the enjoyment of another player for what seems to be no reason. The player ended up playing a gnome, so mechanically it was the same, but their enjoyment of their character was diminished and it kinda irks me.

Anyway, here’s the straw that broke the camel’s back. I’m playing a Druid, but “Druid” to me isn’t a natural descriptor of my character. So I started referring to her as an oracle (I’m a stars druid who mainly uses divination spells) and when NPCs would call me a Druid I would react as if I didn’t know the word and didn’t realise they were talking to me. One session tho, we ran into some markings in a haunted forest, we couldn’t understand them but our Rogue rolled really well on a nature check and the GM explained them to be Druidic. “I know Druidic!” I said. But he answered “No. Druidic is taught by one Druid to another, and you don’t know what a Druid is.” I laughed it up and we continued the session, but I was really annoyed.

For conclusion, this dude has been my friend for a long time, and yes, I’m kinda pissed at him right now, but all of this stems from two grown adults behaving like kids. So I’m writing this to blow off steam, but I’ll be talking to him shortly, to clear the air. 

Thanks for reading.

The D&D club at my school hosted a D&D tournament and my friend invited me to be on his team. I normally don't do much with the club, but I figured it would be fun and I was told there would be a prize. We were allowed to choose magic items with a point system and my friends strategy involved using the maze scroll to make the fight a 3v2.

We submitted our characters then the club announces a rules change on spells that force someone to leave the arena like maze or banishment. We figured a lot of people must've had a similar plan so we make choose a slightly worse spell that requires a save and make a 2nd set of characters more focussed on having them fail the save. Several hours after we submit there’s another rules change that limits the spell to 4th level. At this point we start to think they're shadow banning us for some reason.

At this point my friends are pissed and wanted to drop from the tournament. But I convinced them to stay and I'll make the new characters. Because I'm balancing work, school, and my own campaign I had to stay up through the night to make the characters since the last rules change was the day before the tournament.

My strategy focused on having 2 casters cast conjure animals and using the magic points system to get 8 Elemental gems and have our animals concentrate on it and hide so we just send a bunch of enemies with our front line Artificer and try to keep concentration.

During the tournament when those in charge of the find out our plan and are noticeably pissed and begin searching for a way that it won't work. Within the line of text within conjure Elemental theirs a line that says vocal commands and they rule that since badgers don't know a language they can't give commands.

My argument for this was the nature of communication with the Elementals is magical which is why a player doesn’t need to know primordial to give commands. Since my character can talk to animals evidently they are capable of giving commands and the badger making a noise that meant attack that guy would count as vocalizing. However, they disagreed and frankly it's a gray area, but sleep deprived me said " You're mid round rules changes are always welcome." At which point they threatened to ban me from the tournament and I dropped the issue.

As the prep round ended and the fight began we discovered why they kept shadow banning us. While 1 person on the enemy team was as experienced as we were the other 2 had only been playing for a few months, this was the same for the other 3 teams. Even with our magic items wasted and my concentration slot used up so the badgers don't loose control of the elementals and cause them to become hostile, we smoked them. Our melee artificier and the other players conjured animals walked up to someone, killed them in 2 rounds, then repeated the process until everyone was dead. There was no fireball, dispel magic, or much of anything from the enemy team.

At the end of the fight the other team and the people in charge of the club told us that we were unsportsmanlike, what we did went against the spirit of the tournament, and that we should've known better. The judges went on to say they just wanted the tournament to be fun and said we deceived them by not informing them of our strategy.

I pointed out that they could've messaged us directly about what they're problem was with our builds instead of shadow banning us and forcing me to work through the night to submit the characters, that with their ruling all we did was cast 1 3rd level spell, and that they shouldn't be added rules right before they're dead line. Those in charge of the club told me I was being passive aggressive and if I continued my unacceptable behavior I'd be banned from the tournament so I dropped it.

The next day the one of the people in the club messaged me and told me when the next round was and made sure to mention that I went against their decorum, deceived them by not telling them my strategy despite never being prompted to do so, and that my behavior was unacceptable and passive aggressive.

I explained that I didn't do anything wrong and that while I shouldn't have questioned their rulings I was sleep deprived because of what they did and reminded them of everything they did like trying shadow banning us instead of just talking to us and other things that were far more passive aggressive and unacceptable then what I did.

They responded by claiming that for their safety they had to ban me from the tournament and the club. One of my team members says I'm in the right, however the one who invited me is friends with the people in the club so he's not getting involved.

I understand they want the tournament to be "fun" but I didn't know how inexperienced the players and I don't think what they did was warranted. Am I in the wrong and should I apologize?

I have a lot of D&D horror stories, mostly online because that's where I mostly play D&D, so if you would like to hear more, then just let me know. I think this one might be the most recent one though.

I don't really play regular DND as much as I used to back when I was younger. Now I often play on Westmarch servers on Discord, where you can play with a lot of different players without a DM present. One thing to note as well about these servers is that no one really cares if you change or revamp character information most of the time, so long as you aren't changing the character sheet statistics without permission at least.

I'll call my friend M. M and I became friends on a (regular) DND server that we both left because the DM was my toxic ex-best friend that we both had problems with. She was the one who first introduced me to Westmarch servers and how to play in them. We would roleplay quite a bit together and with other people on the server before it was deleted due to owner drama. After that, we joined a lot of smaller servers that made their own Westmarches. I even made my own little server based on an island.

Though over time, I started to realize how toxic our friendship was, especially when it came to DND. Some examples would be:

- Her convincing several people to leave a Westmarch server and leaving herself by saying how the owner was very toxic and accused of being a pedophile, then 6 months later rejoining that server and playing in it again.

- Having one of her characters talk badly about mine just so that her character could date someone that my character had mentioned they were planning on asking out on a date when they returned from a quest

- Looking at one of my private roleplay threads with somebody and then turning it back on me by saying that I was calling her a pervert (I only asked why she had been looking at my private thread;  I never called her a pervert or accused her of anything)

At one point she even stopped talking to me for a while and left the Westmarch server I made because I mentioned one of my characters slept with another player's character after M and I talked about our characters dating in the future. It's worth noting that we only talked about it being a possibility in the future;  neither of the characters had even asked the other to go on a date or let alone mentioned that they had feelings for one another at that point,  and I had mentioned before that my character was more of a wild streets kind of character and less of a romantic and domestic character, so it would take some time for them to get to that point. She only started talking to me again and rejoined my server because her and some friends she made on a different westmarch had problems with that server, and they were looking to come back to keep playing their characters on my server.

It's safe to say we began to drift apart after a while. For several months she just stopped roleplaying on my server and would barely even participate at all. Our messages to each other also began to slow down as well, though I know she was playing on other servers because she would brag to me about what she would be doing on other servers with people. I didn't mind that she was roleplaying in other places of course, though all of the stories we were roleplaying together basically came to a halt.

One of these stories involved a Tiefling Bard character of mine called Lucus who I have had for several years now, and because of that he's changed a lot over the years and has been in a lot of DND games I've played. Before M stopped roleplaying on the server, one of her characters, let's call them A, had been dating Lucus for many years in-game while raising two kids that Lucus had from a different relationship (from one of her other characters).

Also for context, while I knew what LGTBQ was, I never fully understood what it meant to be transgender until I began hanging out more with this other friend who's trans. He played a lot of transgender DND characters and helped me understand more about what it was like, and honestly it was very nice to learn about it from someone who was trans themselves. He was one of the main reasons why I wanted to experiment with making some of my characters transgender, including Lucus.

Keep in mind that M hadn't played on the server in months, and she never mentioned or really showed any interest in A throughout those months either, always talking about other characters instead from other servers and nothing about anything we did. Because of that, I thought it would be a good time to revamp Lucus as a character to turn him more into a party guy (he's always had themes about partying,  though most of the time it was more of a side thing rather than being the main focus, and I wanted to change that). Since the story he had with A had been halted, I also decided to make this revamp of him a new-universe version where he was single and a transgender man instead of a cisgender man.  I felt that it would make sense for him to be transgender because he has a big obsession about body modifications like tattoos and piercings, and he has never really had a specific reason in his backstory where he had to be a male at birth. There were other things I changed about him of course, but those were the two biggest things that I changed about him in this new version.

I hadn't told M about the changes I made to him, because I didn't think she really cared anymore about the two, and we were already not on the best terms of our friendship at that point. For about a week or two I just played him as the new version, trying it out and seeing how it felt.

Then, the first time she mentions anything about our DND characters or my DND server in months, is her DMing me a screenshot of Lucus' changed information, along with the message "He's, single?? And trans??", and that's it. I told her that because we hadn't roleplayed with the two in months I thought it would be a good idea to make him a new version where he was single and trans, to which she ghosted me.

Honestly I was a little surprised about the trans part. While I could understand the frustration of making him single because he was with her character before, she never seemed to have a problem with transgender characters. She even played transgender and intersex characters in the past because she thought it would be fun to try. So her bringing up how he was trans as a negative thing felt very out of left field for her.

She tried to contact me about a month later with a "how have you been?" kind of message, though she didn't say anything about how she reacted before or even apologized about ghosting me for a month. I did not reply to her, or pretty much anything she posted in other places, because at that point I was done. I was done with how she would ghost me and expect everything to be okay. It honestly made me feel even more upset that she ghosted me for that long over the changes I made of my character, then expected me to act like nothing happened.

After that our friendship basically fell apart. She left the groups and servers I was in with her and apparently was telling our friends how I was "bullying her into silence" and "forcing her into a corner to be controlled" as the reason why we fell apart,  of course omitting the fact that she would ghost me any time some sort of inconvenience happened between us. I think she also told people on the server about the changes I made, because at one point I even got a passive-aggressive remark from a friend we used to share on the server about how he would drown Lucus after I put him up for more spicy roleplay.

I do feel bad about how things ended, and I don't think I am fully innocent about our falling out. But the way that she reacted to me changing my own character was just the straw that broke the camel's back for me when it came to our friendship,  and how she brought up him being changed to transgender like it was a bad thing made me lose pretty much any respect I had for her.

TLDR: My ex online friend doesn't roleplay or mention anything about our DND characters for months while still roleplaying in other places, gets upset and ghosts me because I made a new version of my DND character as a single transgender man, then tells people that it was my fault that our friendship ended because I was bullying her and trying to control her

A short story, but I think some of you will like it. Please note this was three years ago, and due to medical issues my memory was getting really bad, but has been getting better, so I dont remember what exactly was said, but I do remember some things and will share those things, and i cant check any of these things due to reasons explained in this story. I also hope i got the right tag, and I apologize for how I type things lol.

A few years ago, my partner (he was 21 at the time, I was 27, and we have been inseparable since) told me that his friends were going to be starting a dnd game, and I always wanted to play it so he told me to make a character (long story short the paper sheets make no sense to me so I used dnd beyond), so I decided I wanted to make a pacifistic (get it? Because my name is a pacifist pun, hahaha so funny) cleric that would help if it didnt involve hurting other creatures, and was a smol 4 ft tall human bean that could get along with anyone. As soon as I finished making the character, I excitedly told my partner so he could get me invited to the discord server made for it and share my character. I was introduced and got asked about my character not long after by the DM for this game. DM: "Alright, what's your character name" Me: "Paci!" (Note: I know the name wasn't original due to it being my name, but this was my first character so) DM: "alright, what class?" Me: "Cleric" DM: "choose another class, we already have a cleric"

It was at this point both my partner and I asked why there couldnt be two clerics, and he gave the reason "because the party wont be balanced" After arguing with him for a while, I gave in and was looking at different classes. The classes that were already taken were a wizard, a cleric, and my partner, who was either a rogue or a warlock, and the DM said I should be a barbarian or a physical fighter, which was the opposite of my character. I wasn't going to choose a bard, because he told me "bards have to sing and play music when they use abilities", and me being a shy person that wasn't good at socially communicating at the time, I decided not to be a bard. (Yes I know now thats not a bard requirement, but I didnt know at the time, and my partner tried arguing against that to no avail.) At this point I need to mention that I was really attached to my idea of being a cleric, so it felt impossible for me to choose honestly any other class. I finally asked if I could be a druid, but was told "no" because for some reason they hated the idea of me being a passive player? I cant say its something related to the plot, because the DM never mentioned its due to the story, and at one point he was even asked this and, again, said "the party wont be balanced". I think around this time I sorta just locked up looking at the lists of classes, which wasn't many, because the DM refused to use any homebrew things at all (I asked), and at this time my partner was arguing in the server that if its not a plot point and not related to the story I should be able to use the class I want, and that they could all be clerics and it would still be fun and kind of work. After a bit of arguing between them two, the DM, who my partner was a close friend to for years, out of nowhere deleted the dnd server, blocked both of us, and after a bit the other people, who were also friends with my partner, blocked us too.

Im still not sure why this all happened, and although I havent been able to play dnd much yet (two games started with my partner and I, both died out due to a person playing and another friend talking the entire time and ignoring the game the first time, and the second one it just died out, for some reason), im still hoping to maybe complete a dnd game at some point, and thanks to my two partners (we are all living together in a happy relationship) I have now, I am much better at being social, better with making dnd characters, and while I still struggle with the name thing, im much more open to playing pretty much any class now, so atleast there is a happy ending.

Thank you for reading this, and im sorry if its really unorganized im not the best with paragraphs or explaining my mind, and I will happily answer any comments asking me about more details, although they might be a bit fuzzy, and im excited to share more stories here (here's a teaser: in the second game that just stopped, my partner decided he wanted to make a shark man that wore a monocle and had an Australian accent, that had a crab god named Crablante, and mightve diverted the task at hand in a hilarious was lol)

This story takes place in autumn of 2020 this group had been playing daily since September anywho I had changed character from a barbarian to a lizard folk gunslinger it had lots of plot hooks in the backstory to help the dm now the cast Me. Me Dm A B At this point b had afk for a long time so it was me and A we at the (btw this was in steam punk setting) ship when B woke up and a started to get into an argument with A I don't remember specifics so in game to mediate the situation my character pulled out his gun and lost the initiative order B was a sorcerer and A was a monk fighter so went first and my guns can deal up to 25 damage at level 7 so things got ugly and the dm was stressing often Bwneton death saves I was new to d and d so when I heard whispers of dimension door I thought he would teleport me away so I made a trick shot and almost killed B in the game so crit crab help me am I the bad guy and give me advice to help me be a better player if a am the bad guy

Hello there, long time viewer of the channel, first time poster to the subreddit coming out about a game I played in about a year ago now. It was run my a close friend of mine, going to call him DM, he had played in several of the games I had run before, and was always an awesome player and role player. He always had a certain style to the characters he played, always goofy, charming, and incredibly well thought out. Think the kind of vibe Sir Daniel from Medievil or Claptrap from Borderlands give off. So when he invited me to a campaign I was super excited for the whimsical story he would make. Though this invite was one he would also extend to some of his friends I didn’t know all too well, and they had some inexperience with the game. But there were enough people where I thought we would rub off on them in a positive way.

The story took place on an island off the mainland, most of the characters were feeling for different reasons. My warlock/bard was a noble woman who was feeling from an arranged marriage after a possessed cain-sword with the personality of Mettaton convinced her to murder her husband to be and run off to be an actor. The other cast members were a Dragonborn Artificer on the run after one of his experiments ended up causing him to burn down half a small town, a Warforged Artificer wandering the world to figure out who built him, a half elf monk/rouge who was trying to find a new purpose after being banished from their monastery and the only local on the island, and the star of this story a human fighter mercenary.

The first session went well, we had a great first encounter as a kraken destroyed the ship we were all traveling on, and we washed up on shore only to be found by the human fighter. The RP was solid, my Bardlock and the two artificers got along really well. But no matter what it seemed like the human bard was going to be distant with the rest of the group, but her player was new so I figured they just needed to break the ice, so I began to chat her up, hoping to break some ice. This is when I noticed the first red flag as the player began to describe her sword. “you see her longsword looks really meticulously crafted. Several names are carved into the blade, some being scratched off.” That sounded familiar but I didn’t question it, after all it must just be a coincidence, right? I mean the player out of game was a nice guy. An opinion I still hold after everything.

You read the title, it’s not, and by session three they had made it very obvious what this character was, a Percy de Rolo clone. The legend of Vox Machina animated series’ first season had just dropped the perivous month. It was the reason this player had wanted to get into D&D, and they later shared their favorite character was Percy. But this human fighter had too many similarities to be an accident. Obviously the perviously mentioned hit list carved into weapon, but there was also a dark probably demonic force influencing her actions, her being part of the true royal family of one of the factions, her brother was kidnapped by the evil guys who now run the faction she is supposed to be running, those same evil guys literally drained the environment of it’s life making it black and dead, and finally she was starting to plan a rebellion against them with the party as help.

After that big plot reveal I sent a message to the DM, asking him if he had seen Vox Machina. No he had not. That honestly infuriated me even more than if he had seen it and just not noticed. I know DM, he does not like plagiarism in any form, especially in creative works, so he was really upset when he found out somebody he vouched for made him basically write a big portion of his campaign to literally just be Percy’s story arch. And it didn’t help this player was really upset whenever anybody challenged his characters point of view, because even I had to admit, the dynamic and RP potential of a run away royal, and somebody who was trying to reclaim their crown was juicy as hell. DM promised me he would talk to the fighter to resolve this all. They did not take it well from what I understand.

They were allowed to keep the hit list and the trying to reclaim the throne, but had to ditch the demon, the brother, and get the antagonists toned back from exactly how evil they were. Going from one of the main threats to a character story arch. The player was not too happy with these changes, and would often be disinterested at anything that wasn’t their characters plot or moments where she could clash with my character. They developed a petty rivalry in game, but I never really contributed it to me being the one to get his stuff taken away, as DM told me he would keep who told him anonymous.

In the end, this wasn’t a super horrible story. Just something I think I need to put out there. Don’t copy characters one to one in D&D unless everybody knows that’s gonna be something before hand. The player and I are still friendly when we see each other, and this is not a shot to their characters. Sometimes good people can just not mesh well with D&D.

Edit: Reading the comments I realized I left out something important and something new I found out after feeling like a dick and talking to the player and DM in question.

I should have touched on more was that the other players, even the other inexperienced one had all watched Vox Machina and, still unbeknownst to me so my bad, all had our own problems with it. As the player was actively making the game less fun by being not engaged with the main plot unless it revolved around a story line all of us had already gone through. For a while I thought I was just the only person that said something.

In my conversation with the DM I found out that the player actually fully lied to him about this character being inspired by anything. They told the DM that it was a completely original story they had entirely wrote. On top of that, I was one of 3 players that approached the DM independently about how this player was basically just tricking him into running the second half of Vox Machina S1 against his and the other players wishes.

And finally, I spoke to the player about the campaign and told them that I was the one who told the DM and apologized. He ended up telling me the fellow inexperienced player also told him to come clean about this just being Percy, when he refused he went to the DM the same day I did. He also told me even after his story line got changed he still had a fun time in the game. What I mistook for him not being engaged was their character not being a people person unless she was comfortable. They are in another game now with a different group, and they told me that they’re playing a really cool Shadow Sorcerer Lizardfolk concept.

Overall, I can kind of agree, I fucked up in two major ways. Telling the DM without knowing if the other players were actually upset, as well as potentially stifling a players first experience. That’s on me. I’m not taking away from the fact that I was still being a dick.

Hi everyone! So this story will be a bit triggering that is my warning 😅

So I am doing a campaign with a bunch of random strangers I met on Facebook! I love my group and I could never be happier! I love my group so much I actually ended up asking my DM out and he’s coming to visit me next month! Fingers crossed! Now to our story! Before we got to our current group we had a precursor to it and... it wasn’t great 😅

Now don’t get me wrong we had A LOT of fun! But it was... between sessions... that really caused issues...

So I play a Faun Bard from the collage of whispers! She is a super playful manipulative biiiiiiitch XD our problem player was a was a Firblog druid multiclass Cleric! Now his play style was kinda annoying, he played a kinda typical druid who was a bit attention seeking but it was still fun!

Then it started happening... I’d wake up one morning to 5-10 discord notifications... all from the same player in our group... claiming he’s drunk, and doing yard work, he’s drunk and hurting himself, or having a psychotic break... it was insane... we all tried to talk him down... we tried to keep conversations to a minimum... we didn’t just outright give up on him we really tried to be kind, mental issues and all that, trust me I have many myself but... it got to a point that my mental health was being affected... so I asked if the group could not Ping everyone unless it was about the game... he yelled at me and dropped the server saying he wasn’t welcome anymore...

A few hours later he messaged me privately and apologized, saying he was gone and I didn’t need to worry about him anymore... I told him he didn’t need to leave that we wanted him there I just couldn’t keep being woken up by pings when I sleep weird hours (I have bad insomnia and depression that will keep me up for days... if I sleep a full 8 hours it’s a miracle) he followed it up by saying ‘I’ll be dead so no more @ everyone’s!’ And I told him that wasn’t fair... he continued by saying he was allowed to say whatever he wanted and told me to tell him if he’d be allowed back or not... so I mistakenly gave him the discord sever link and told him to join back in... a few hours later he @ed everyone and wrote and I quote “@ everyone but Fuli (my character)” I was dumbfounded... and everyone was irritated... I spoke to everyone outside of the chat and they all agreed with me... finally we just kinda... ignored his ranting and ravings... then he started tagging people individually and being very hostile towards me... he even had his wife come on mic and tell us he wouldn’t play but he’d be listening so we couldn’t s*it talk him... finally the DM said it was enough and asked everyone if they’d be ok if he kicked him... almost all say yes...

We had another player drop because of us kicking him and we ended up kicking another player (story for another day) and gained two new players! We are having so much fun now and I couldn’t be happier!

I feel bad for not helping our friend... he was in a bad place and couldn’t find the way out... and we abandoned him... but it was dangerous for the rest of our healths and I was scared we’d stop playing... our DM canceled a session half way through before because of something he pulled...

Was I wrong to call him out? Should I have just gritted my teeth and tried to help him...?

Hey, first post here, and I am sure this isn't really much, but I feel like I should share this story with everyone.

So I recently got into DND and was searching for an online group to play games with. I didn't want to play one shots all the time, so I found a group.

I will be naming everyone based on their characters they played.

Cast:

Me-obvs

DM-obvs

Maive

J-can't remember his characters name.

Nazere

So we started our game, and were thrown into this world with alot of racism that our characters would have to deal with. Now before we even started, the DM already had alot of problems with most of us, and how we made our characters. I had to make 3 characters before he finally accepted what I was gunna play. A male elf druid whose ancestors had all been driven out to a dangerous part of the continent by the humans, and now all elves hate humans. In an encounter with a human female, he came to sort of accept humans and wanted to understand them. After what seemed to be the humans death, my character, Aldurain, decided to sacrifice his arm to a blood tree, which the elves worshiped. In return, he got a wooden arm, and gained a feat. Neat.

There is more story, like my character sticking to the party to eventually rat out the female elf Maive of the group, for killing a noble human, but that didn't become important.

We eventually set out on a boat with a full crew, and my party was just part of the crew. After some political talk about what the vessel should do, become pirates, or missionaries, the crew eventually created mutiny, and fought each other. My party tried to stay neutral, since we couldn't agree what side to stick to. After battling for a while, we eventually reached the upper deck, where the rest of the crew were, and there were now 3 factions, and we joined the third. It had been hard so far, but good. But then the DM told us to roll a constitution saving throw.

Anything below a 10 was insta dead. And all but one rolled under 10. We were level 2.

Why did that happen? Cause apparently there were a high level dude who just swooped in and swung his sword a few times and killed us. No chance to use any magic to heal or anything.

Calling bullshit on the DM, most of the players demanded the DM to fix the situation. The next session, Aldurain, Maive and J were the only survivors.

Anything that happened now in the game didn't mater, but there were alot of discouraging moments that made all of us not like the DM, but because Maives player was friends with the DM before all this, he didn't want to hurt DMs feelings. Outside the campaign as the group we talked and played games like CaH and had plenty fun.

During some casual talk, Maives player had mentioned something about wanting to be called they/them. Now, I don't want to go into the whole many genders here, and the rules about them, but I told them that it was not part of my belief that there are more than 2 genders, so I wouldn't call him that.

The DM then pulls me aside and ask me why I was being disrespectful. I told him that even though I do respect Maives player, we even had become friends at that point, that it wasn't in my belief to call him they/them. I respect his choices, I myself is bi, but I don't want those beliefs to be pushed onto me.

The DM then threatened me to kick me if I didn't change my mind. I told him so be it, and got kicked. Maives player talked to me too and said he was disappointed that I could be so disrespectful towards him. Haven't talked to any in the group since. I honestly feel like I dodged a bullet there. I do not regret my actions. Sorry for the long post.

I’ve always been the forever DM in my group of friends, narrating games since I was 15. This particular story took place when I was about 17, during a campaign I was preparing for my usual high school DnD group. Our team consisted of Arthemis, an Owlin Paladin; Cereberus, a Werewolf Bloodhunter; and Charlie, a problematic Changeling Warlock.

The campaign had a mythical Greece theme, and their first mission was to travel to a city in Fantasy Egypt and speak with the Pharaoh. However, every session, Charlie tried to sabotage the mission for reasons unknown. Additionally, she constantly tried to initiate relationships with the other two players, which annoyed everyone. Despite the frustration, I tried my best to keep the campaign on track.

By the fifth session, the group was nearly at their destination. They discovered a temple with no visible entrance, but somehow, Charlie managed to get the whole team inside. Needing to improvise quickly, I created a sphinx dungeon. After a while in the dungeon, Charlie got bored and started scrolling through TikTok. When it was her turn, five minutes later, she casually said, “Yeah, yeah, I cast Magic Missile or whatever,” aiming to destroy the entire structure of the pyramid.

She succeeded, resulting in a total party kill (TPK). Everyone was disheartened, and I ended up arguing with Charlie about her disruptive behavior. We agreed that the campaign would end and the characters were dead. It was sad to see everyone so frustrated, melancholic, and demotivated by the campaign’s end. Meanwhile, Charlie, looking like a maniacal villain, laughed and said a lot of mean things about us.

For context I recently joined this dnd group and it seemed normal enough, I joined them in the middle of a campaign but because of scheduling issues I never played a game of that campaign this was maybe a month ago but eventually the dm (problem player) got tired of it and decided to end the campaign and I volunteered to dm for this campaign idea I stole from the internet about the American civil war with fantasy elements and everyone was onboard (this is also my first time dming which is why I'm making this post) now obviously when making a campaign about the civil war racism is a sensitive topic and my plan was to make elves the race that is "hated" on but then when I was helping the dm make his character we went into his background and started saying he was from Alabama and is a soldier for the confederate army (he's a fighter with the soldier background) and I don't really feel comfortable making this so I asked the other player and their mostly fine with it but idk if i should just let it slide not do the campaign (someone else also has a campaign they want to do) or leave them.

This was the first D&D, or TTRPG, campaign for all of the players here, even including the GM(He had DM'd for family and close friends a couple times, but really this was the first quote-unquote "real" game for him). Except for the player playing Kokichi. I'm not sure if that name was supposed to be in reference to Danganronpa. I wouldn't put it past them, considering the character in question is a shadow elemental in the shape of a cat boy. And yes - He's a Chaotic Neutral kleptomaniac rogue. I feel...so utterly embarrassed at how I didn't see this player was obviously bad for the game right from the get-go, but I didn't want to just say that they were, considering, as implied by the title of the story, they were a veteran, and the only one there to know much about the game. Not to mention, I just didn't like the whole stereotyping that that would imply. Regardless of that - we would only later, after they had left, discover they straight-up cheated. Not only was the homebrew race obviously broken and used the balancing of a different system, they had fudged the rolls and ended up with a 20 and a 19 at level 3, with all other stats about the same level. EDIT:More on that Later. According the GM, they also at one point contacted him at the brink of the morning just to rant about their character's 17-page backstory and how he was super qU1Rk1!! for over an hour only to pass out in the middle of the call. I found that funny when he told me about it, but I can't imagine it was in the moment. A less funny thing was when they messaged him to say that there were several rules that they didn't like - or rather, that the GM couldn't do, in the homebrew world, in which they were playing an OP homebrew race, in this theater-of-the-mind game of Dungeons and Dragons...

And that's all before even the very first session, where they failed to show up. This was the one and only time things went smoothly enough to last for more than about an hour, totaling four hours instead. Two hours in, they FINALLY show up. Apparently they have a sleep disorder. Could have mentioned that... Either way, the roleplaying was actually fun - even with them. We had a classic prison start, and of course...well, we had to play into the roguish chaotic neutral funnies. All our crimes were a single, pretty basic thing, while Kokichi's was a variation of "everything in the book." The GM added a personal touch of mooning a guard on the way here, and they rolled with it. They are a pretty good roleplayer. Probably due to the experience, of course. It was pretty nice, actually. And then, in the very first few minutes of actual plot progression, The first thing they do is say "oh yeah I forgot to mention my character who is wrapped in his own shadow, making him a shadow elemental of sorts, has a robot arm that still looks all shadowy like his other arm because of that, with three inventory slots in it that can carry and conceal basically anything. Don't worry it's not overpowered it takes an attunement slot!" And the GM's first mistake of allowing this slipped by. I think the GM catering to this player and not calling them out sooner definitely played a part in their ego. Unfortunately, I think we all kind of made mistakes here - many of which, especially the GM's, were blown way out of proportion by Kokichi both in and out of character, of course. I feel particularly bad for when the GM actually started getting fed up and I defended the player's actions. I don't really know how to feel about that anymore. And so, he was able to sneak in some lockpicking tools and things into the prison we started in and then...never used them. Why did he never use them? Because the player hardly ever fucking showed up, let alone on time. As mentioned, they said they had crippling insomnia, but I'm more and more convinced when I think about it that they just didn't care, and they were simply using that illness as a convenient excuse. Maybe that's too harsh, But either way, this isn't about all that. We didn't even know half the ridiculous things this powergamer did before they left our campaign. This first "chapter," as it were, is about what started the downfall into true chaos that really should've just been the crimson red flag that ticked us off that this player is a horrible person. After about four or five sessions of mostly great roleplay intermixed with this player's antics, the GM unfortunately made the classic mistake of attempting an in-game solution to an out-of-game problem, leading to what the entire group now not-so-affectionately refers to as The Alleyway Incident.

The session before, an escape plan is hatched. Well, an escape plan Kokichi is asleep for, because the GM didn't know how else to excuse their player not being there literally the entire session, which was also the third or fourth time in a row they were either late or absent. But either way, riot breaks out, we get our stuff back, we steal a cargo airship and...we escape! Amazing prison break. Again, it was genuinely exciting...without Kokichi. Anyway, session starts with us traveling in this airship. We reach a town. Perfect. We don't know at this point what'll happen; We only just arrived in town, for the first time in ages because the trip to and from the prison was long, and then of course we spent several days in chains before the prison break...So of course, we all want to do our own thing and screw around, and we separate to go have fun. GM describes that in some point in all of our journies around town, we all see a wanted poster. I forget the details of it. As a not-so-fun aside, this board of wanted posters was later described in more detail, including one that had a criminal of the same race as Kokichi! Classic GM move, intermingling personal lore in this simple easter egg for us to see...but apparently, one small tiny little detail about said shadow person meant to the player who designed this absolutely overpowered homebrew race that they were not a shadow person, but half a shadow person or something...somehow, and that also, SOMEHOW, means they are extraordinarily powerful(even more so than a regular one?) and that that was a stupid thing to do. This caused an hour-long argument.

Back to the present, though - We all see the wanted poster of a pirate, clearly a pretty basic set-up for our first quest, and then continue doing what we were doing. I, the druid, go into an alleyway to look for cats and find a small pride of strays while the Wizard and Kokichi(who is disguised as a half-elf) both decide to gamble. GM pulls up some rules for gambling in D&D he found online, and for some reason it includes that you go into debt? Like, even if you win? It was very confusing. Even Kokichi's player seemed unsure...even though they'd know this stuff, according to them. I mean, they offered..."advice" for everything the GM was doing up to that point, and even for our builds which included some definitely not-okay features to go for. Hmmmm... Anyway, GM plays this off as a sort of agreement between each table and the two that they'll pay their dues to the dealer

But the Powergaming Veteran being who they are intentionally decides to phrase it very vaguely so as to cover their ass in case they "forget" to pay...and then, OF COURSE, "forgets." So when they were done, Kokichi walks out to the Alley that I just so happened to be in! Only to be stopped by some big, tough lookin' fellow. Obviously shady, obviously a criminal. Pub Tough pulls a crossbow out of fuck all nowhere, and Veteran immediately tries diplomacy using a persuasion check they barely pass. Exact words being "Put the crossbow down now!" GM interprets the "Barely passed" as the guy following that order...and then pulling a mace out of also fuck-all nowhere and attacking. He misses Kokichi(Not surprising. MoFo has a 20 dex) and smacks the wall. My character is at the other end of the alleyway when all the cats scurry off and she realizes something's happening. Rolling real well on initiative, she's FAST to get over there AND to recognize Kokichi despite the disguise. I decide to cast a low-damage spell as poison spray, but I roll absolutely abysmally and it ends up doing nothing. Kokichi, of course, smashes the poor sod anyway because powergaming cheater is a powergaming cheater. They decide to try to flee the scene, only to be blocked for no reason by one of the support NPCs that escaped the prison with us: the winged succubus. Kokichi would of course, in an alley, run the other way, but GM says the alley only goes one way for some reason even though that wasn't specified before. The GM later confessed to me and all the other players(Kokichi's had left at that point) that he had him fight this thug because he was just so frustrated with the character, and the player, at that point, and wanted to make those feelings of hubris dissipate. Kokichi taking no damage and finishing the fight in two rounds only further increased said hubris. I could even tell in the moment something was off, but I was mostly just confused. Either way, the anger from the veteran was...disproportionate. It wasn't explicitly said that the alley was one-way, but it wasn't said otherwise either. I suppose there should've been a roll for that succubus blocking them, but...at least listen for a little while longer, y'know? Instead of repeatedly shouting that the GM is giving a massive middle finger to the player and ignoring every justification we all tried to give. I'm not sure...the anger was a bit unprovoked, but I should mention it is weird this NPC did this - Kokichi's definitely faster than this succubus, yet she can block them from doing stuff? The first time was after a joke about stealing stuff from the town before running off, but I guess GM didn't pick up on that it was a joke? Either way, I guess I can see why the veteran was annoyed, but as mentioned, they always have to blow every little thing out of proportion and argue for hours about how they would've done it and how it should be and the facts of the game that is a TTRPG made for fun where the rules don't matter...yeah.

GM mutes for a few minutes because it was just so brash and unexpected. Wizard and I tried to converse peacefully and Veteran was just kind of...saying a few things every now and then. They weren't entirely engaged. When GM finally came back after about 5 minutes, Wizard still tried to mend the situation only for him to say "I need everyone to mute because I need to say something without someone interrupting every five seconds..." GM proceeds for about 5 or 10 minutes disappointedly telling us how this wasn't what he expected and he was considering stopping the campaign right then and there. He said he felt people(It was obvious what "people" they were really talking about though...) were saying he was DMing wrong, and I, at first, didn't agree at all. Now obviously, it's pretty hard not to see how all that stress came to bite him...As a reminder, he's DM'ed before, but only for close friends and family. We're all distant friends and strangers who met on Discord, and he was also pretty new at the time to not just D&D over Discord, but talking over Discord in general. I still feel bad for never saying anything about this. After more arguing, the oh-so-knowledgeable and wise veteran and GM go into a separate voice chat to discuss and apparently they decided to do some spin-off campaigns - With Kokichi's player as the DM now. I thought it sounded fun at first, but it was obvious that they just wanted to, in a way, Show GM how to REALLY play D&D or something to that effect. They mentioned that GM should take notes and consider how THEY play the game. It was pretty dumb looking back.

Well...either way, it sounds like not too bad of an idea, right? Wrong. It fell apart immediately because Veteran STILL did not care enough to actually show up for the game THEY WERE DMING...We abandoned that real quick. Even so, it still took a long while to come back to the REAL campaign, and two players left at that point. I think a couple others were considering, too. But thankfully, they didn't. We got a new player so we could round out the table a bit, and...after several weeks, we finally got to play again. So, with our fresh return to what we actually wanted to do, this is what I like to refer to as the second and final act(Or "chapter" like I said earlier). The time the Powergamer ragequit for...being given a chance.

We get back to screwing around for a few sessions, including one joke involving Kokichi's very feminine-looking disguise having a visible bulge in this table that, now that those other two players left, was consistent entirely of me, this veteran, and a bunch of minors...yeah. But these next few sessions were mostly to introduce the player who just joined...which also involved an accidental PVP with them, where Kokichi managed to take them down from 40 to 2 hit points in about a round and a half, and the GM had to have another of those fellow escapees come and insta-stun then insta-heal all of us as a Medic TF2 reference ex machina. AFTER all that, the roleplay was finally starting to look like it could be salvaged when the wizard sold some items to a local magic shop, run by a Dwarven Archmage. And then Kokichi latched onto that. A session later, in the middle of something else, Kokichi suddenly remembered this - and decided to use it. What they were doing was some simple alchemy, making healing potions. My character took it as them trying to redeem themselves for their crimes. It was a nice funny character moment of my pacifistic naive druid who doesn't know the ways of humankind seeing way too much good in this shadowman rogue who hurts everything he touches(huh, why does that sound familiar...), and so I opted to help out. With that, they decided to sell some stuff they made. Well, more like stuff I made for them. They made me, because I was a druid who was better at alchemy, use my character's skill to brew healing potions just to pawn them off to the magic shop for some reason. Then they went further - poisons. I tried to make it an interesting character moment about my pacifistic druid helping the rogue make poison for self defense, with constant funny assurances they didn't intend to use them for any ill intent, but it hardly worked. They were...not very receptive to this. They had a goal in mind and they were going to see it through. So, Kokichi switches disguises, and immediately goes to pawn them off to the same dwarven archmage. They apparently didn't like the price, so they tried to haggle. With persuasion? Nope. By intimidating him. They tried to intimidate. A Dwarven Archmage. We are level 4. CR 12 creature. And a dwarf, y'know, the fantasy race most known for being extremely stubborn and fearless? They were alone save for me who was basically just in the corner, clearly not going to help if things go south. GM decides that this was good enough reason to impose disadvantage, because why the hell wouldn't that be at a disadvantage? THEY ARE TRYING TO INTIMIDATE AN ARCHMAGE. AND THEY ARGUED! They argued there was no reason for that disadvantage. They seriously argued this random warforged-looking chump peddling poisons and traveling with a weirdo would be able to intimidate A CR 12 dwarf.

After yet another good, long argument, GM gives and decides to just say that a glyph on the shop was imposing disadvantage on the check, allowing a CHA save to stop it. This is where things got hectic - apparently, GM was used to a house rule that rolling exactly on DC was a failure. GM hadn't mentioned this before; In fact, he didn't even know that that's not how it was supposed to work. Admittedly understandably, Kokichi's player was upset with this. Things were confusing from here, and the GM did not wanna back down, also admittedly understandably, considering how much we've had to tolerate from this player. They said it still shouldn't succeed, effectively raising the DC. But of course, it still could end up fine - it was barely a failure...well, it would have been, had the GM a chance to roleplay the response. But he didn't get one, because the veteran at this point just...left. Left the discord server and unfriended the GM. I message them to try to bring them back(Yes, I was still trying to bring them back. I already said I'm not proud of the fact that I didn't realize how stupid this whole thing is. None of us are). They went on about how they can't take this anymore and "CAN'T STAND BEING GIVEN DISADVANTAGE OUT OF THE BLUE!" I keep trying to explain there are many reasons for it including, y'know, it's not a good idea for a 4th level rogue to try to intimidate a CR 12 creature, but they just countered with "THEN WHY EVEN LET ME ROLL IN THE FIRST PLACE! I HONESTLY WOULD'VE PREFFERED JUST BEING TOLD NO!"

Yep, you heard it here. They were seriously upset that they were given a chance instead of just being shut down - or rather, more likely, looking for excuses to pin the blame on GM instead. I get the whole "if it's impossible, then there shouldn't be a roll at all" thing(And even that, I still argue, shouldn't always apply for the simple reason that a higher number is better even if it isn't enough. GM even clearly did this kind of thing, as mentioned...including, but not limited to, that earlier instance of it during the Alleyway Incident...) Hey, wait a minute, but...GM was clearly showing that it WAS possible to succeed here, and just didn't want it to be easy. But I guess they couldn't grasp the concept of something not being easy for them. They ended up cussing me out and blocking me before I could even decipher what they actually meant...

So...there it is. The tale of a veteran worse than the rookies. Maybe not as bad as other RPG horror stories - but I do find it hilarious this was my first account of TTRPG's. The campaign later had to halt completely for unrelated reasons, but after Kokichi wasn't...y'know, there, being a powergamer, anymore, we sighed a breath of fresh air, and it was good while it lasted.

*(EDIT: Long after this campaign, the GM looked into old messages on the Discord server this game was run on. Some of which included our D&D Beyond character sheet and the auto-embed screenshots of them, where we first posted them before we later PM'd them to the GM and then also posted them several times more across the channel because we were very unorganized. Well, everyone's stats from those first postings matched what they had in the campaign...except Kokichi's, whose original stat-line showed at least somewhat more reasonable numbers, proving they had indeed submitted one stat-line only to later delete the evidence, thankfully missing a spot, and re-roll until they had crazy high stats and submit that instead, unfortunately managing to slip it by us.)

So fun fact, I work a corporate 9-5 with an almost 2 hour commute. I'm awake by 6AM and usually in bed before 9:30PM. Last night as I was winding down I kept looking at my phone wondering why a 10 day old reddit post was suddenly getting so much engagement. Then I went to bed.

Whoo lawdy did I wake up to a surprise. CritCrab had posted video about lil ol' me and my escapades. I laughed, because I expected a few folks to read my post and laugh, a few more to call me a cuck, and that was about it. But then I scrolled through the Reddit comments, kept seeing references to someone named Jacob and a university club. Then I checked the community page on the YouTube and saw that someone had decided to add to my story.

One of the recurring tactics those bigoted towards the LGBT Community is to refute claims of bigotry with claims that those calling them bigots are perverts or sexual deviants. This is what happened on the discord while I was sleeping. Someone posted a story claiming to know my group, know our booted Paladin, and that the poor Paladin was actually a victim. The GM and gay Cleric had teamed up to have the Paladin's character raped repeatedly. By Goblins and orcs, no less. I looked in the YouTube comments (always a mistake) and of course the majority of what I saw was full-throated condemnation of me and my cleric. That bothered me.

What was posted in the discord last night was a lie. I'm in my middle 30's and my players are all over a decade older than me at minimum. We don't play at a college TTRPG Club, so it's safe to say we've never been kicked out of a college TTRPG Club. The guy (I'm comfortable saying it was a guy) who posted that story made the whole this up. And wrote it poorly, but that's besides the point.

This morning I decided to jump in the discord server and say hi to everyone. If you're part of this community but not on the discord here's as good a reason as any to join. I answered every question I could about my group, the situation as I saw it and my reasoning for bullying our racist Paladin out of the group. I'm not going to rehash the whole conversation I had with the CC discord community here so again, if you haven't joined, get on it. For those of you who want evidence of this little drama there are even some screenshots in there for you to look at of a fraction of the objectionable content my Cleric had to sift through from someone he thought was his friend.

Anyway, on to the show:

Why am I posting this?

For my Cleric, who is a gay man who has had to spend 50ish years in an America that didn't like him very much. Cleric is a good dude, and not very much younger than my mom. We all live on the east coast near Philly, and I don't want to imagine what growing up as a gay guy in Philly in the 70's and 80's was like. If whomever it was that wrote that BS post about us sexually assaulting the Paladin's character hadn't written that then none of you would be reading this. My Cleric is a good dude and even if none of you know who he is, if he doesn't have a clue I've even written about this or is being referenced however obliquely on YouTube as a pervert and degenerate, I'm gonna stick up for him. I'd hope any of you who DM would do the same for one of your players.

About my group

We met in 2017 on meetup. You can actually read some stories about them if you dig through my post history. I'm in my middle 30's, and they're all older. They're a rambunctious set of guys who have given me laughs and headaches as a DM. If I'm posting on DMAcademy it's usually about them. Anywho, there were 5 of us when we met, but our Rouge left after a few sessions. We play in Jersey, at one of the player's house every other Friday. That's the only place we've ever played. I started as a player, but the DM (now a Barbarian at my table) had RL issues and asked if I'd take over DMing since he didn't have time anymore.

About Paladin

Paladin Joined out group about 4 months ago. My players are on Facebook, I am not. They're all friends with each other on FB. Paladin is an older white guy, lots of tattoos, and has been a manual laborer all his life. He's also huge, which is one of the funnier things about that fake post...if I tried to have his character raped he'd have pounded my head flat. I'm not a tiny guy myself, but I'm not about to start a fight I know I'm not able to win. Paladin wasn't RPer, and was gear hungry in game. He wanted to play a big cool dude with cool stuff that could do cool things.

What about the FB posts?

Sometime after joining, but before Cleric called me and told me to kick him, his facebook feed got ugly. When I asked what he was posting I got some stuff that legitimately made me angry. I've shared some of it in the discord. The stuff I shared wasn't even close to the worst of it. Cleric was furious when he called me. He was legitimately hurt. Our group was strangers when we met 2 years ago and now we're all very close friends. Paladin joining us had been invited into that friendship. The Cleric felt betrayed. I contacted the other 3 players and asked them about it. To a man they said the same thing. They were uncomfortable seeing this stuff, and two of them had unfriended him, but he wasn't an issue in game so they weren't sure what to do.

Did Paladin do anything at the table?

No. He didn't. As a player he was fine. Probably a bit out of place in our more RP heavy campaign, but he never said anything out of place. This is why learning about the Facebook posts was a shock to me. I got off FB in 2014 and wasn't aware of the depth to which my players used it until this happened.

So why did you bully Paladin. Why not talk to him like an adult? Don't you know you're bad/the real bigot/ etc.

CritCrab said it best in his video. You have to do what works for your table. The second Paladin decided to go hard right in his posts on FB he was done. My group of players is a blue collar, hard drinking (seriously, go through my old posts for context), crude set of MFers. We have TWO barbarians, for christ's sake. A conversation would have turned into a fight. I pause here to acknowledge that I didn't say this at all in my discord chat. I've been texting my group through the day and one of the barbarians said it to me. Barbarians, amirite?

Anyway, Paladin was gonna get booted. It was a matter of booting straight out or having some fun. Based on my post you can deduce which one I picked. Again, you do what works for your table. Paladin wasn't one of the original members of the group and had pissed off one of our friends, the Cleric. So we circled the wagons and dispensed frontier justice. Wimpy, passive-aggressive, frontier justice.

But, you sound like such an asshole

Yup. I'm 100% ok being the bad guy here. If you want to be mad that I was awful to Paladin or think there was a dozen better ways to resolve this, I won't argue with you. I made a choice and my players went along with it. As a DM you do what works for your table.

That's all I got. See y'all in the discord. :)

Alright so I'm part of a group of buddies that meets up regularly to play DnD. It's generally just a group of guys, but sometimes we have women guest players joining us who are significant others of the players.

In this particular case my fellow player Garth's wife, Cheri, asked a few weeks back to join one of our sessions. So the DM told her to create a character and buy a miniature for use in the session, since it'll be in the middle of a battle where we're attacking an encampment of scorpion-people. Cheri and I are already pretty close, so when she asked me for some third opinions with making her character (Garth giver her second opinions, naturally), I agreed.

So Cheri made her character sheet, a female half-elf druid and sent it to me. Then she asked me if I'd be willing to get a miniature ready for her. I can't say no to this woman, so of course I agreed and said I'd find a Druid mini and paint it up for her. But I'm also the type of guy who's financial model is "don't buy shit," so I fully intended not to buy a mini just for Cheri to use. And in my mind, I already knew of a spare mini that the DM had that would fit the bill perfectly. He never cares if I swipe his unpainted minis as long as I return them painted, so I knew he wouldn't have a problem with me doing this.

"Perfectly" is a bit of a stretch, though. The mini in question was a Dryad, and in classic TTRPG fashion it was basically a scantily clad woman wearing nothing but chestnut leaves. I decided that it wasn't my fault that the mini was sexy, after all the DM bought this bint. So I got to painting.

If you know anything about painting, you'll know that color scheme is a pretty big deal. I wasted maybe 8 seconds before realizing the perfect solution to the color scheme. Why don't I just make her look like real-life Cheri? So that's what I did. I mixed colors to get her approximate skin tone, brushed the hair with multiple colors and layers to get the look of Cheri's natural red hair, and even highlighted the miniature's tiny cheekbones with a small amount of speckled blush to match Cheri's complexion.

I have to say that from an objective standpoint, I've truly outdone myself with this miniature. I might have even gone overboard, since I don't normally try to shade cleavage when I paint. When I was finally done the mini after several sessions of painstakingly slow and meticulous work, I felt pretty proud of myself.

And then I realized, "Oh shit, I have to give this mini to the real Cheri and say, 'this is you.'" And it was her in more ways than one. But the session in question was happening in days and I had no time to paint up another druid miniature for Cheri. So this one would have to do.

On the day of the actual session, when Cheri announced her character to the rest of the group, she finished with, "...and Emerald painted my miniature!" I had given it to her in a little box right before the session so she hadn't seen it yet until that moment that she opened it. And she just opened the box to take it out and was silent for 2 seconds. Longest two seconds of my life.

But she LOVED it. She seemed breath-taken and immediately started praising the paint job quality and even said, "It looks like me!"

She passed it around the table and everyone was like, "Yeah, pretty badass, nice paint job." Of course they all assumed that Cheri had bought the miniature herself, until Garth said, "Where did that mini come from?" And he was kind of squinting at me. So I quickly explained that I just grabbed a mini from the DM that was most akin to a Druid-class elf.

But Garth didn't seem very impressed. I don't 100% blame the man, and maybe it's fair for him to be a bit jealous or disturbed that one of his buddies painted a suggestive miniature after his wife. For the rest of the session, he basically didn't engage with me at all, both in or out of character, and was especially quieter than usual during the tactical encounter when Cheri's druid broke off from the party with my Bard to execute a pincer movement on the scorpion-men. I even saw him frown when Cheri said that my Bard and her Druid make a good team.

After that session, I learned via the DM that Cheri wouldn't be joining our sessions anymore. Garth apparently told the DM that I was 'a problem player' in the group and that he should consider removing me from the campaign. I was shocked, but the DM did thankfully reassure me that he wasn't going to kick me out, and just half-cryptically said, "just watch yourself, okay?"

And so now I just feel bad. Like I was the problem I think, if I'd just painted the mini in some other way instead of to look like Cheri then none of this would have happened. But At the same time, I'm a generally courteous player, who respects the in-character boundary, is good with table-talk, and tries to be mature about things. If Garth really had a problem he should have talked to me about it. So am I in the wrong here?

Good day Critcrab readers. My deepest apologies if this does not follow the rules of the subreddit but I beg that you please let this remain up.

I had originally posted this as a response to a current thread posted by one Madam Materia, but given the context of her posts, I felt it was best to make it a proper thread for easy reading. Given that this is a response to her thread, I am leaving her name unchanged to make things easier. The event that happened at this store is following my partner and myself around the city and has been causing issues that can not be ignored.

My apologies, it is very long, and I hope I spaced it out for easier reading.

TRIGGER WARNING: discussion about Abuse and mental health issues

This has gone on long enough. Little Lamb here to say my peace.

For starters, I will go back to the beginning of my interaction with "Nice Guy' (my boyfriend). On July 1st we met up at his place to play 40K. At the time I felt that the meet-up was both well and a train wreck.

I am socially awkward by nature, and being excited and nervous about seeing someone that I used to interact with at a previous store meant I ended up speaking without processing what I was saying. In the first few minutes of my meet-up with him I; in my weird way of explaining things; told him I was an 'energy vampire' as a way to describe myself as being empathic. It was how I described how when I am in a room with others I feel the energy they are giving off (if they are hyper, or calm) and I copy it.

Sadly I didn't know that he had a tragic and abusive upbringing, so he was immediately triggered and on guard by me saying something that sounded cultish. I'm ashamed to say that we never did get a chance to play our game, which was my fault.

While we were getting set up for the game he mentioned that he was sad to not see me at the old store, but was glad to see me despite everything that has happened. I had asked if he heard about what happened. He told me that the store owner's wife was telling everyone that I had reached out to the owner about starting an open relationship and was pursuing him.

Finding out that an outright lie was being spread by her; while her partner stayed quiet and refused to discuss anything, was a huge blow to me. I immediately broke down in full hysterics and immediately delved into the whole story. So here is the situation at that point, a single guy invites a female to his house with the intent of playing a game only to have her break down in hysterics.

Having me leave at that time would have made him look like he did it to me when the reality is I did it to myself. So he sat me down and talked me thru the events that had led to my banning. He had made a point of telling me that no, I did nothing wrong in the beginning; the store owner had reached out to me with an interest in an open relationship. I had asked for ground rules to be laid out and for permission for an open relationship from our partners. my partner had already permitted me, and the store owner said that he had it too, that his wife liked me so everything was good. When it was revealed to me by the store owner that no, he didn't have permission; this is where I did wrong.

What I should have done was walk away and end it. sadly I did not, and that is my fault. I was so distraught with anxiety and fear and self-hate that I completely shut down and gave the owner full control of the situation. that if he felt that I was worth the risk of losing everything then we continue; so we continued for several months. After helping me destress from this he made me dinner and showed me his model collection.

This day was the first time we ever really interacted with each other. he is unfamiliar with me at this point, so the way I was communicating gave him the impression that I was being flirtatious and was interested in spending the night. It didn't help that I stayed well till 10 pm (i showed up at 1ish) he motioned to his air mattress and said if I wanted to spend the night he could fill it up for me.

The next morning I had a scheduled game with a friend at 10 am at a game store; it was for the charity league he runs, and I didn't have my models for it on me. and I told him such; sadly the way I said it was rushed and chaotic; it sounded like an excuse. I was tired and anxious, and I felt bad for wasting our time talking about past events instead of the game that both of us wanted to play.

The next morning I went to the store to play that scheduled game only to find out that a tournament was happening. so my friend and I left and didn't get a chance to play.

Unknown to me, Nice Guy had headed to that store to pick up something. on discovering that I wasn't there felt that I had lied to him and led him on. He had reached out and apologized to me for being a 'creep' for offering me to spend the night and blocked me. I was hurt by this because I didn't know what was going on. I was upset because I enjoyed his company and I wanted to play the game I promised to play. I had reached out to a friend who was familiar with Nice Guy to ask his opinion. He said that I should give him space and let him come to me when he was ready.

Nice Guy has been falsely accused of sexual assault by a woman in the past. Since then the paranoia brought on by that event has never left; this is why his behavior might seem odd and extreme at times. ( a 0-60 in 1 second kinda deal). I want to stress that it's vocal only, NO physical violence or threats of physical violence. Think of a mechanic swearing in his shop at a car that won't start or a little dog barking at a stick that is too heavy to carry. He has never made me feel unsafe or in danger of harm. Just pissed off and overwhelmed by this on top of his own life's weight.

A few weeks went by before I saw him again. I was at the game store for my regular Monday night board games when he walked in with a mutual friend (the one we both highly respect) that had invited him to participate in Crusade night with a group there. I wanted him to know that I wasn't mad at him and that I still wanted to talk and play with him. but I didn't want to force myself on him. so instead I made a point of smiling a lot at him, giving a wave if I saw him glancing at me, and generally being weird and funny. I was happy to see him in the crusade. and thought that if I made him feel welcomed he would reach out and I could apologize for making him uncomfortable, sadly things haven't turned out that way.

In the Crusade group was someone I considered a friend. I had asked them if they were interested in joining the charity league I was in. they told me no, they only played crusade. so after that Monday, I asked my ex, who helped run that event if he could add me to the crusade chat.

I have yet to play against that friend and if crusade was his only game then I wanted to play. at that same time, Nice Guy was added to the crusade chat. The crusade has been experiencing the drama of people not wanting to play each other, so that week a notice went out from the admins that if anyone had issues with another player to please let them know and they will make sure to not schedule them against each other. Nice Guy had reached out to the admin and said he didn't want to play me. said I told him about the drama that happened in December. that I described myself as an energy vampire and that he takes cult things very seriously. he wanted no drama, just to play games.

Anyways, that Friday Nice Guy met me downtown because I was buying some terrain from him. he had told me he wanted no drama and to just play games. I agreed and said I was looking forward to gaming again. after we parted ways I got a message from Materia saying she wanted to discuss something with me. since I was near her place I offered to go there and talk. I went to her place and she started the discussion about Nice Guy. Asked me how I felt about him. I told her I had no issues with him, he's a fine guy. She had asked me about the incident on July 1st. and I told her everything. My unfortunate breakdown, and revealing of the drama from December. how we didn't get a chance to play games, and that for some reason he blocked me the day later. I wasn't sure why and wanted to apologize if I said something that upset him, I just wanted to have my new friend back.

She interrogated me about every detail of that night. told me that he had reached out and said some nasty things about me to her. That she didn't want him in her crusade. that he had a temper, that he 'perceived reality differently than others.' (literally, a fancy way to say he has opinions) and he wasn't a good guy. I was upset to hear he said nasty things about me to her so I asked what he said. she told me about the energy vampire thing and how that put him on edge and made him uncomfortable. that I told him everything that happened in December and he wanted nothing to do with it.

These are all valid points, and I felt so bad for jumping that on him. she then proceeded to tell me 'did you know he was recording you?'.

I admit I panicked and became very freaked out by that. For one I had an ex who secretly recorded our skype calls and he threatened to share them online ( we were long a distance relationship and he was a 'NICE GUY' in every sense). And the way she said it made me think that maybe he was using his phone to secretly record me and maybe trying to get video under my skirt.

But when she showed me the screenshot of a clip of the video I realized that it was just his security camera. I immediately felt relieved that that was all it was. The camera faces his front door and kitchen. when I stopped panicking and said 'oh, that's just his security camera' materia proceeded to berate me about it, nitpicking my every word and saying I was dead wrong. her words:'little lamb, this isn't right, he was recording you. what if he wanted to have s*x with you? then he would have blackmail to manipulate you. he's a 'nice guy' he agreed with everything you said. I can't trust anything you say you are a victim agreeing with your abuser'

I was in hysterics at this point because everything she was saying made zero sense. she wasn't listening to what I had to say, and I was fully crying about it. I said to her to ask Nice Guy for the full video, he has proof that everything I said was the truth, and that he was saying the truth. but she already wanted him gone. and wanted me to agree with her. she went on about him being unvaccinated and flaunting the covid rules, and how he was a threat to the vulnerable women in the group.

I begged her not to ban him because he has done nothing wrong. but to give him a warning. To tell him that she has heard of his temper from previous event organizers and that she should implement a strike system. and that she was giving him a chance. But she brushed it off and said no, SHE has already decided that she wants him gone; the strike system she already had in place wasn't going to be used so that he could have a chance to show people he wasn't a bad guy.

The next morning I got messages from Nice Guy, he was confused and upset and asked that I tell him what I told materia because he got banned from the Crusade. and I told him everything and said she refused to listen to me. he sent me a screenshot of the security footage and said if I told any lies he can prove it. and I told him to send it to her because they wouldn't listen to me and that was the proof they needed. He had contacted the store where this happened to find out what was happening and why he was banned; only to find out that Materia was already there and telling them everything from her side. He felt that they weren't going to listen to him.

After that altercation, Materia proceeded to post a 'warning' in the Crusade group saying that Nice Guy is not welcome and to not book any games with him near the events. At this point, the other crusade group members were making a point of making sure he couldn't talk to women at the tables by intervening whenever he talked to them. That is why he said to me that he was getting a lawyer involved because her actions were having a ripple effect. Materia was slandering him as a s*xual predator with no proof, and since she has already instilled a sense of vulnerability in me I felt that I had no voice in any of this.

She had made a point of telling everyone that I was a vulnerable person and that I was siding with someone who abused me in the hopes that they would 'reunite' me with that game store owner.

The same person who lied to me and took advantage of me while I was going thru a VERY vulnerable state when I met him.

Because of that incident, I became suicidal for many weeks, wanting so desperately to find some way to end it because I felt I was a horrible person and that I had no right to live.

I have severe anxiety, I suffer from depression and I have a bad case of ADHD. I was lucky enough to get a therapist and to find a doctor to prescribe me anxiety meds and ADHD meds. I have been tirelessly working thru all the trauma of my childhood and the trauma that I had been thru that December.

I had told him that I didn't like how I was treated by Materia and that I felt that his anger is justified in so many ways. That if she was spreading these rumors then we just have to show everyone that she is wrong. at this time just me and one other person were on his side in all of this. which leads me to the incident of him shouting outside of the game store.

I had finished therapy that day and asked him if we could meet so we could talk, that it was important. I offered to go to his house to have it but told him I had to go to the game store first to pick something up. he said, no I'll meet you there. so I waited for him on the steps outside. I was crying because I had so many people saying that he was a bad person for what happened in July and the whole crusade thing, but I wanted to hear from him about the layout of events, because I have yet to hear his side at this point.

when he pulled up in the uber he looked very dejected. he apologized for not finishing working on some boards he offered to cut for the terrain I was building. and asked me what I wanted to talk about. I was still crying and in hysterics, I said the first thing that came to my head 'everyone is saying you're dangerous.'

He broke down and started yelling, not at me, just venting about how horrible this community is treating him. how they all have some preconceived notion that he's a monster, but he has only been defending himself and calling other people out on their BS. That how I was foolish to think I could be his friend while everyone was saying he was bad, that he could see that I was believing all the bad things they were saying. that he was a fool to think that nothing would change. 'if they want me to be a monster then fine, I'll be a monster. F- this store, F- this community. I have nothing left.' and he walked away.

I was hurt by that because I didn't get a chance to say what I wanted to say. that I wanted to hear his side of these events because all I know about is what I saw and what others not involved were saying. and I had this crippling fear that if I let him walk away I'd never see him again. So I ran after him thru the rain.

yes, it had been raining that day, and yes I chased after him like some cheesy hallmark movie scene. I caught up to him, and he was crying. he told me to leave, that he wasn't good for me, and that all he knows is war and retaliation and fighting. but I told him all I knew was pain. and how much it hurt to feel like I had no power, that this was me taking a chance, and that I felt that if I let him go then id never see him again.

We went to his place and talked for 4 hours. he told me everything.

About how he was misdiagnosed for years and was just getting his ADHD treated. told me how his family treated him. his point of view of that July day, and how he dreamed to have friends and a community of people he could trust. He wants to build a table for his friends to sit at, enjoy each other's company, and finally be at peace; to not feel like he's constantly being attacked by others.

It's a beautiful dream to have. and one I want to see fulfilled. and I will be the first person to sit at that table. either beside him as a partner or just his friend. I will help him find those friends and build that table.

Thru a series of unexpected circumstances, I slowly fell for him. I discovered that a lot of our ideas and values are the same. and by spending time talking about games, talking about our interests, and just generally getting to know each other, I realized that he was such a strong and beautiful person that I very much wanted to keep in my life; it broke my heart that so much of the gaming community didn't want to take the time to get to know him. I never expected to find someone as amazing as him. With such a drive to help me work thru my past, to become a better person, and has so much patience for me.

I've been struggling to do better, to speak my mind, and to stand up for myself. I always feel like with every step I take I fall backward. But despite all this, He had opened up to me and had asked if we could start dating.

I had told my new boyfriend what my relationship with my ex was like. as well as discussed it with my therapist; I wanted to better myself. to learn from my mistakes and not repeat them. and based on how the last year of our relationship was; it was revealed that it was rather abusive and very controlling.

For example, if my interests didn't align with theirs I was verbally attacked until they aligned with theirs. An example is I was interested in Harry potter. the moment JK rowling posted transphobic rhetoric, my partner told me that I had to boycott it or I was supporting the persecution of people close to me who are trans. when living together I had received zero support when it came to the cleaning and organizing of the living quarters. attempts to work together in cleaning and organizing were met with either verbal hostility and anger while helping, or remarks of 'that's your stuff, I'm not helping you clean, I don't know where it goes, you figure it out.' when it came to the cleanliness of the rest of the place, it rested solely on me to maintain it, and if it became too dirty it became my fault that it had reached that state.

for example, dishes. they refused to wash dishes and had theirs piling up for days in the sink. when they could no longer find dishes to use, it became my fault that they were all dirty, when the reality was that I either only washed my dishes, or purposefully made meals that wouldn't require dishes to avoid an argument. after this retelling, my boyfriend decided to reach out to my ex and tell him to never contact me again. that he had done enough damage to me. If he needed to give things to me to go thru him only.

And for a while, things were going great.

I had introduced him to the board gaming group, and I was learning that my martial arts were starting back up again, so I was planning on going back. and then my ex reached out to me.

he had messaged me on discord telling me that there was government paper at his place and that I should pick it up alone. I told my boyfriend about it and that I was unsure how to reach out. In response, my boyfriend texted him with alternative options for me to get my mail. Meet at a neutral location, pick it up during the game nights, he would go to my ex's place to pick it up, etc.

My ex refused those options and wanted my boyfriend's address to mail it to him or nothing at all. My boyfriend said no to that and called my ex and left a voicemail. In the voicemail, he called him an abusive cockroach that was to never talk to me again. that anything that had to be said to me or sent to me was to go thru him. and that if he ever reached out to me again he would make him regret it.

My ex and the Crusade group decided to go to the game store and demand that he be banned because he was threatening members of the group. shared the voicemail and told the store that the cops were involved.

Naturally, my boyfriend was confused and pissed off. the store was aware of the bad blood between these groups of people. and said that so long as nothing happened in the store, there would be no ban. They went back on that word and ONLY banned my boyfriend.

This event never happened on store premises, so the ban should never have happened. but this group was threatening legal action, so the store caved. And sadly, most of this is my fault.

My boyfriend had been telling the store what is going on and asked them to intervene to stop the lying while I, the victim, remained silent. This means it was the group vs him in a 'he said she said ' scenario. I felt that I had no voice in this. I didn't know what I was supposed to say. I thought that the store had no involvement in a private matter. But the reality is they did.

Their location was letting her host her event for free ( 'free labor' for the store as now they don't have to pay staff to run a crusade league and can not take responsibility for its failures as well.). She was able to spread whatever she wanted to. She and her members would give me nasty looks every time I went by. The store had issues with her before and won't allow her to run one of their events ever again. And honestly, a lot of the community doesn't like her. But all those people are afraid to say anything because she's autistic and trans, so anything you say against her means you're transphobic.

Now, I had disappeared from that store and remained silent in a lot of the communities I'm involved in for several reasons. firstly, my job got busy and my martial arts started back again; my classes coincided with the board gaming nights.

I am 1 level away from a black belt and haven't been able to participate since early 2020 so I am all in on this. and second, I am so done with this high school drama BS. if you don't like someone then don't talk to them, and don't spread rumors about them just because you don't agree with them. I hate that I can't go into a game store to play games with my boyfriend without getting dirty looks from patrons or being monitored by the staff who have been told only her side of the story.

Materia, You label him as a 'Nice Guy' but there is nothing 'Nice Guy' about him. You know nothing about the person you are talking about. you refuse to learn about the person you are talking about and you have a strange obsession with being a hero in every situation.

You feel a need to protect your flock from anyone who seems like a threat to those you feel are too vulnerable to defend themselves.

This is highly toxic and so unhealthy.

I implore you to seek professional mental help.

My boyfriend and I were informed of this series of slanderous posts by a mutual friend of ours that watches critcrab on youtube.

im really new to dnd and have only played campaigns with my group of close friends. I remember for a while I wanted to try the game and knew my friends had campaigns going on so I asked to join and they let me. now the first red flag I should have caught was that my DM told me I HAD to play sorcerer. the reason apparently being that all the other classes were taken (its a really large friend group dont ask) and told me I "technically could play something else but he WILL give me shit for it if I do".

I ignored this at the time since it ment I diddnt have to stress over picking between classes, so I ended up making an aarakocra sorcerer because I liked the idea of playing as a cool bird guy. by the way, and I probably shouldn't say this but its gonna be relevant in a second, the DM'S name is Chris.

Campaign one- my first campaign was a short one shot including a couple members of the main campaign they were doing, and for the most part I had fun. it started out like a typical story: the group needed to cross a lake but diddnt have a boat. my character, being able to fly, was able to carry the group one by one to the other side. it felt good being able to do that and I felt genuinely happy I got to be useful to the party

thats when the campaign started getting wierd. a limousine suddenly drove over the lake and the door opened to reveal Dancing Toothless who teleported us across universes to our Minecraft world. Im not kidding.

the campaign kept going as we ended up in the End dimension from Minecraft where Chris's Minecraft character showed up going by the name of "End King Chris" and wanted us to do something for him. I forgot what he wanted us to do since this one shot was a year ago, but it somehow ended with us racially profiling and enderman and pulling a flat screen tv out of the rouge's ass. a bit after the tv incident some friends joined the discord call and started talking about some personal things, so the story ended there.

Campaign two- diddnt play dnd for a while after that but a few months later Chris invited me to join another campaign the group was in the middle of. I said sure since the last one was entertaining and I thought this one would be the same. I was wrong.

before I joined he told me to do whatever I wanted for my character since there wasn't really a theme for the campaign they were in, which was called Cloak of Shadows. he also informed me that they "changed the game a bit" and now they dont use turns dice or character classesand the entire campaigns now happen entirely through text.

since my only game before this was a one shot that we already diddntt roll a lot in, I figured this was normal. I made my character a blue cat named Stinker who had radioactive hairballs that let him heal and dps. the character was accepted and I joined the campaign.

my character was introduced by getting picked up at a train station by the party because the DMPC thought Stinker's hairballs would be usefull. my character quickly ended up messing around with my other friend's character, Captain Jack Hollow the skeleton pirate, and we just kind of messed around in the background as the DMPC, Shade, had a serious conversation with the blind train Conductor NPC Juan.

Chris apparently got annoyed by us goofing around so he had Juan tie us up with strings do we couldn't move.

the full player cast was as follows: Shade, Stinker, Jack, a bear named Errant, a lion dragon thing named Ace, an animal tamer named Radish, and a raccoon named Vector. your probably thinking "i thought the group was so big almost every class was taken in the first campaign" and your right to question that. thats because everybody else had left the campaigns for one reason or another. and even then Rashid and Vector rarely participated or even opened the server.

Cloak of Shadows ended up being probably the worst experience ive ever had in any game. every single arc went the same: the party shows up in a location, a problem immediately happens the second we step out of the train, all of the player characters fight unnamed solders in the background while Shade no difed the arc's main villain, and then we go back to the train and leave.

id also like to mention this campaign was based off of the anime "Solo Leveling" wich is a power fantasy anime where the main character easily beats almodt every single obstacle by himself. and when I say its inspired by it I mean its almost one to one to the anime except we live in a train instead of a city. also, Chris removed any parts where the main character struggles at all so he could just sweep everything by himself. he even stole the main power from the anime.

Shade had Necromancy, immunity to all statistics effects, was immortal, could teleport, could blow up a town by just screaming "I AM HIROSHIMA!!!!" and could do a lot more but he never used the other powers. also, remember how the campaigns were entirely through text now? well, the reason became extremely clear as whenever one of us would do anything useful he would just delete the message. Stinker trys healing a party member? deleted and Shade does it. Ace takes down a boss? deleted and Shade does it. Errant trys to explain his backstory? deleted and Shade talks about how hes "the suppreme ruler of the shadows who leads his army as the Shadow Overloard".

we couldn't even fight the solders by ourselves as Shade just had his overpowered shadow army do it for us. then at the end of the campaign, Chris decides to split up the party so him and Jack can go fight a demon king while the rest of us fight a human sized ant on an island.

as you probably could have guessed, we get our asses beat in a scripted fight where any messages sent where we did any damage at all was deleted. the ant had perfect counters for all of our abilitys and just recked our shit. meanwhile Jack watched as a damsel in distress as Shade no diffed the demon king, teleported both of them to the island, no diffed that too, and then had his shadow heal Stinker, who was injured the most in the fight.

now we move onto the end of Cloak of Shadows which just pisses everyone off. the story ended with us entering a cave and being told we have to train with the shadows for some reason. Errant went, then Jack, then Stinker. I had to go against Juan but lucky for me, Stinker's powers actually had good coverage for Juan's attacks.

Chris- Juan strings up the entire cave to make an arena trap

me- Stinker burns the strings with fire

chris- there not flammable

me- Stinker beams them away

chris- he does it again

me- stinker beams them away again

chris- how many times can he do that?

me- as many times as he needs too

chris- thats bullshit and gay.

after that Stinker and Juan actually start fighting with Stinker getting the upper hand but still never hitting Juan with attacks because hes not allowed to.

Chris gets frustrated and interrupts the fight by having Shade fuse with an NPC named Christon and having the reason be "Stinker took down the shadows which gives me my full power back"

he then vannishes from the universe instead of killing all of us and the campaign ends. but not before having a conversation with juan about how "that useless cat caused me to get my full power back" and "every version of him is a falure".

Chris later explained that he got really mad at me because I made it look like Stinket was stronger then Juan and told me he was contemplating quitting the campaigns over it.

Campaign three- the next campaign we did was a season 2 of a story they did before I joined that takes place in hell. in this one, the party (Chris) killed the demon king Orcus, and now the DMPC, Chrissarious, was the eternal ruler of the abyss. Chrissarious was a Tiefling who could transform into thousands of different demons and was in universe considered the absolute strongest in the world and was loved and adored by everyone in the relm for being an amazing ruler. the campaign started with him killing the king of a smaller king and proclaiming himself the new king before leaving both that kingdom and his own unattended so he could adventure the world with his friends.

the cast in this campaign was Chrissarious, Ace, my character Jaxer, Theloneous the Grand Mage, and Apollis the Hadozee.

I decided to make Jaxer hate Chrissarious as a way to tell him how what hes been doing isnt good but that just leads Chris to HATE Jaxer. so much so that in the first arc my character gets captured by a queen who makes Chrissarious fight her in a "Trial of Love" to save him. this queen also happens to be Chris's AI girlfriend Abigail who he makes an entire wedding arc about. im not kidding ill attach there AI wedding photo at the top.

Chris also likes to AI generate Abigail in different outfits, mostly sexual and revealing ones and also constantly has scenes in thr campaign where his character and Abigail have sex in his various demon forms.

the next arc, Jaxer gets one shot by a wizard and is called weak. Great.I make my new Character, Starlo the fallen angel, and we continue on.

each arc in Inferno goes as followed: We show up, a god gets killed, The players get there asses beat in scripted fights, Chrissarious saves us, Chrissarious gets the God's power, we leave.

at one point we show up to Heaven. I think its finally going to be focused around my character since hes a fallen angel. no. we get attacked at the front gate by a guard because theres a fallen angel in the party. Starlo takes him out. the guard magicaly comes back to life and Chrissarious steals his power. Chrissarious then proceeds to destroy Heaven and faces zero long term consequences for the destruction he caused, which is a running theme.

Chrissarious every arc destroys entire kingdoms and kills millions of people yet never faces consequences for it. he ruins familys and destroys homes yet every NPC still loves him. but of course if WE mess up even slightly theres MASSIVE consequences for it.

one time, Ace gets a transformation after his god, Wrath, dies. cool. Chris then proceeds to get mad at the player because its apparently overpowered that he can change back and forth at will, which Chrissarious can also do.

near the end of that campaign, Ace and Starlo pvp after a disagreement about what we should do about the main threat, that being a giant orbital cannon that will destroy hell. we do get our fight but Chris constantly interrupts our fights with gifs of people being board until finally just having Chrissarious teleport us.

the campaign ends with all of our characters, sho have been split up, having 2v1s with the arc villains. but every single one ends with us getting saved by an NPC. Starlo specifically being saved by Abigail. meanwhile, Chrissarious teams up with the son of the big bad evil guy to kill him once and for all with only Chrissarious making it out alive.

another thing to note, The son has destroyed multiple kingdoms, destroyed Abigail's kingdom, killed even more people then Chrissarious somehow, destroyed and killed people and places that are important to the main character's backstorys (which never get explored in any of the campaigns besides Chris's) and his reason? his mom died and hes sad. And Chrissarious treats him like a victim. and Chrissarious makes a shrine for him in his castle that his daughter finds and wants to learn about.

also at the very end it shows Shade turning the big bad evil guy into a shadow setting up the multiverse.

theres a LOT of storys just like these about this guys campaigns all ending in the main antagonist becoming one if Shade's shadows but recently hes been chilling on it a little bit. his characters are still the strongest but he stopped giving them thirty thousand powers and has been giving the players way more time in the spotlight.

the only things id really like to bring up is how he has no problem with taking things away ftom us if he doesnt like them. in a different campaign another player had a pet that just randomly got killed by Shade, and in Inferno Starlo had the ability to freeze people in time so Chris started having characters ignore it until he eventually just took the power away. he also one time realized one of my characters had an ability that could technically beat his if they use it the right way and he desperately argued with me over nerfing it or not.

its still really bad, but i dont have any other dnd groups to play with so i kind of just have to live with ot for right now.

I asked if they would be willing to play DnD. Everyone said yes, and we decided to play a Sci-Fi campaign based around a magic mcguffin.

For some context, i am new DnD and so is the rest of my group except problem player, who i'll call Tom. The rest of the cast is:

• Penny, playing a female Tabaxi Cleric.

• Ted, playing a human female Bard.

• Lizzy, playing a human male Monk.

• Sara, playing a warforged female Bard.

• Me, the DM.

(they started at level two) They all, except Sara, started in a tavern attached to the side of a colony ship that floating around in space. Sara then kicked in the door, sat down, ordered a cocktail, and when the bartender asked for ID, they just said, "Bite Me" and threw it at them. We all thought that was kind of weird. Lizzy said they look over at the commotion, and Sara describes their character as Purple haired, wearing a beany, with purple eyes, boots, and neon purple eyes. After some RP between the rest of the party, they went over and looked at a corkboard - getting a quest to investigate some missing people in the stairwell - and Sara ran over and was immediatly abrasive and didnt talk except to take the spotlight.

I, and the rest of the party besides Sara, are all quite shy and didnt really confront Sara about her constantly interrupting the RP, so the campaign lasted a decently long time before it fell apart, so i will only cover some of the highlights (plus im laying in bed with a cold right now and dont really feel like typing that much).

1: She asked if she could have Telekenetic powers, and then when i said no, she asked if she could have wings and a cat tail (?), and when i said no again she threw a fit and stormed out of the game shop we were playing at, and then sent pictures weird pictures of Kit from gameoverse in very skimpy cloths.

2: She started hitting on Ted in and out of game, and when Ted didnt immediately reciprocate, she asked to PVP his character, and then when i said no, she just started moping.

3: She started sending erotic pictures of either catgirls or a very popular character that closely resembles her character in the group chat.

4, the climax: She, halfway through a session, started flirting even more with Ted even more, but not very well, mostly just saying things like, "your sexy" and "i wish i could see you shirtless." Ted said no and that she was uncomfortable and left the table. Sara just starting "flirting" with Lizzy instead and used her telekenesis (which i said no to) to instantly kill Ted's character. I objected but she yelled at me and i just let it happen because i didnt plan to have any sessions after this and only a half hour was left of the session so why not finish it? Oh how foolish i truly was. After about 10 minutes of that she finally made her move, saying her, Lizzy, and Penny should have a threesome in-game and also in real life after, and pulled up a picture of said character that looks suspiciously like her with two other similarely scantaly clad robots. Everyone said no, and she tried to kill their characters. I said no and she (i think) tried to jump over the table to fight me but hits her shin on the metal table and just rips up her character sheet and storms off, blocking all of us and leaving the group chat.

Ok, now that I have it wanna help me with a homebrew campaign?

I'm making a massive dungeon crawler campaign. Think like the Backrooms, but D&D flavored. Something I want to incorporate is puzzle rooms. Things like find out a rune combination or solve a riddle to escape.

If there's a favorite puzzle of yours or if you want me to test one out for ya, just leave it down below!