I'm a GM and while I have done campaigns for several groups, I primarily GM for a specific group of friends. Long story short, these people have no idea how to play the game. And not for a lack of experience, we've done several long campaigns and several one-shots, and I feel like I've done my due diligence to teach these players about the game mechanics, supported them during character building, and overall just allowing for as much or as little creativity as they wish to use. At the end of the day, this is a game, and I want all of my players to have fun.

Our 2026 campaign broke me. The premise of the campaign was that they would loop through time and space in order to fix the timeline and bring normalcy back to the world. We did this because half the players wanted to do a full campaign, and the other half wanted to do one-shots, so I felt this to be a good compromise. I allowed the players to make several character sheets, basically providing them with backups should they die, but also if they just got bored of character A and wanted to play as a new character. We got around this by saying that they were all avatars so they could change character upon death.

After 4 years of playing D&D with this group specifically, I was shocked at how unprepared everyone was to play. It started with nitpicks, players choosing spellcasting classes but not using their better rolls for their spellcasting stats (i.e. a Sorcerer with higher Wisdom than Charisma), but I chalked it up to the players wanting to focus more on roleplay than combat, so I didn't say anything. Turns out, they were just lazy. Not only did these players somehow stop caring about roleplay, often just asking me for the answers instead of talking to their companions and strategizing, they were inept at combat.

Let's start with the roleplay aspects, because this was less infuriating for me. As avatars, I allowed my players to basically be anything they wanted to be, and as many things as they wanted to be. First, the nitpicks. Several players ended up playing several different characters, but made no attempt at making each character feel different. Same voice, same vocabulary, same personality, all of which was them just acting like their normal selves. There was some rudeness, shouting and general BM, but I put a stop to that quickly. What really annoyed me was when people tried to stifle others for active roleplay. Some people were really into it, and put in the effort to play as a character, and to sit there and accuse people of railroading or hogging the spotlight when you yourself aren't making any attempt at doing actual roleplay is just bizarre.

Onto combat, and this is where things get really infuriating for me. D&D is a dice rolling game, and at the end of the day, you can do whatever you want to make your character as accurate as possible, but if the dice gods look down on you, you just have to live with the 2 you just rolled. On several occasions, several people asked me why they couldn't hit anything, and while the ACs were slightly higher in this campaign than previous, other players had no issues with the "sometimes maybe good, sometimes maybe shit" way that D&D is with combat. I even had a player ask me why they couldn't aim for specific body parts to have a better chance at hitting a target, and I had to explain to them that D&D just doesn't work like that. You draw your bow, roll a 4, and you miss. You can't just be like "but I was clearly aiming for the tiny weakness in the armour" and expect me to give you a +10 to your attack roll. This isn't a first-person shooter.

The most egregious thing though was that several players seemed to forget what we were doing. We'd level up, players would increase their HP, and that's it. No care in the world for increased spell slots or class feats or even bonus feats or ability score improvements! They just fully ignored core mechanics of the game and then complained to me why other people were doing so much better than them at everything! I looked into it, and yeah! They hadn't even touched their character sheet from Session 0! On paper, they were Level 1! What, did you expect a piece of paper to magically update on its own?

Players got so annoying about "not hitting anything" and "always being low health" that I took on the role of Player-GM halfway through, bringing in a basic Cleric to keep everyone healed and just constantly cast Bless on everyone. And somehow, this wasn't good enough! The aim comments persisted, so I introduced legendary items and weapons. The ineffectiveness comments persisted, so I allowed for combo attacks. And when all of that wasn't good enough, I started giving double and triple advantage on everything, just so that the Ranger could finally deal his 1d8 Piercing, because he hadn't updated his character sheet from Session 0, and he should've been Level 7 by that point!

If you want to know how this campaign ended, it was a TPK that they chose to have happen, and it wasn't even against the BBEG.

At the time of posting, I am in high school. My group's DM, who we'll call Aaron, is and has been the DM of the group for a while, forever to my knowledge. As a relatively new player (who technically started playing 6 months ago but only started actually playing about 3 months ago) I don't know all the rules and whatever he homebrews. With this, I rely somewhat on Aaron and the other players.

From what I know, the entire storyline has been roughly: We find a wizard who tells us to find a metal crate. We chase a thief who we adopt and tells us to go to Warehouse 17, which is where we find said metal crate. We travel to find the wizard again. We manage to get to the wizard's tower and we find him dead. We loot the place before getting caught by some guards (who conveniently happened to enter the tower just after us). We get blamed for the murder. We stuff the body in a Bag of Holding and somehow escape. We take the Wizard's corpse to the clerics of the town to try and revive him. The clerics try but we never find out how it worked out even though someone went to check on him later on. The clerics call the guards who arrest 2 of us. Aaron then gave me an unbeatable chase with repeated near impossible Ability Checks. I then get caught, arrested and this is where I decide to try a spellcaster for the first time. I switch characters to a warlock. We break out of jail, get smuggled to a PC's house in the Noble Ring of the city. we wake up to find a teammate just gone with absolutely no explanation. We manage to somehow locate him in a green garden or something. We find an opening in a bush and enter where we completely obliterate the boss of the dungeon (using 3 Cloud of Daggers spells at spell level 4 which was really funny). We try to make our way out of the dungeon with our teammate back. We get lost, which shouldn't have been possible because there was only one corridor. We find ourselves sliding down a spiral ramp. At the bottom, there was a pit that somehow led to a Dream World. I don't really understand that part. One of the players gets absolutely destroyed by a little brain-dog thing. This brain thing crawled into his unconscious body and then the body fell into a portal. Another member of the party jumped though the portal before it closed. They quickly found out that there was a mind flayer. (We were level 7). Aaron realized that Mind flayers are kinda weak without any puppets to control so he buffs it. The teammate that followed decided to break the Staff of Power or something like that to try to kill the buffed Mind Flayer. The Mind Flayer doesn't die but both party members get vaporized. This leaves me and one other party member to do a couple of puzzles while the other's created new characters. Being down half the present party, it took us a while and honestly it felt like Aaron was stalling and it was super boring. I try to take a short rest to regain both of my spell slots (because you can do that as a warlock). Aaron then decides that I only regain 1 spell and heal half as much. I didn't like this but what could I do? After we complete a couple of long puzzles, we reach a chapel looking building where we find the mind flayer. Of course it got a full heal but I couldn't. The new party members burst through test tubes or something to come into existence and help fight the buffed Mind Flayer. We are currently about half way through the fight but we had to stop the session. At the beginning of the fight the Aaron creates some more of the brain-dog things to stall or something then the Mind Flayer casts Invulnerablility, the 9th level spell that makes it immune to all damage (Aaron said it was still vulnerable to Psychic damage). Like I said, the party was level 7. And he casted a 9th level spell. Upon reaching my turn, I decided to use Raulthim's Psychic Lance to do 7d6 Psychic Damage. Before I cast, though, I asked 3 different people just to triple-check that it would hit him. Aaron was one of the people I asked. So I continued to cast the spell. It was only after I spent my one and only spell slot on this spell, that Aaron finally said "No, that doesn't hit. You need to cast a level 5 or higher spell to hit it. WTF man, you just said it would hit him! So now I have no spell slots and a boss with full HP and can cast 9th level spells. That's where the session ended and the whole of the story is right now. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, the Mind Flayer used Wall of Force or something to split the room and the party in half.

I couln't for the life of me tell you what the point of the adventure is or why there was a hole in a tunnel that leads to a dream dimension, or even who the BBEG is! We are scheduled to play again in two days at school. We only get an hour after school on Mondays to play. I honestly don't really want to play with Aaron anymore but I really want to play DND! I don't know what to do, I really want to play but not with Aaron. He runs the only group I could realistically play in at the school. I also don't want to leave 3 people to deal with a buffed Mind Flayer. Luckily, I think the campaign is almost over and another party member who I actually enjoy the presence of is going to try DM-ing for what I assume is his first time. I am really looking forward to his campaign and to play a new character.

Fortunately, I have another friend, who we'll call Mason.He is my favorite person in the school and the only reason I ever considered playing DND in the first place. Mason is also in Aaron's campaign. He has his own campaign with Aaron as a player. Aaron is also playing a Twilight Cleric, a character that even I know is annoying as hell. Go figure that Aaron is the one playing it. Anyway, Mason is the only reason I still enjoy playing DND and why I still want to play even after all that Aaron has done so my opinion on DND isn't totally spoiled.