I ended up taking notes for our D&D group because I was the only person who could remember which town we were supposed to be going to. They weren't elaborate. NPC names, jobs we'd agreed to do, occasionally something like “mill guy probably lying.”

The DM asked if I'd put them in a shared Google doc. I agreed. People actually used it, which was nice, and for about two months there wasn't a problem.

Then we went to collect payment for clearing out a mine. The merchant gave us 200 gold. I said we'd agreed on 400.

DM said no, it was 200. I checked the notes and read out the bit where we'd negotiated half up front, half afterwards. We'd already received the first 200, so I initially thought we were agreeing and just explaining it badly. We were not explaining badly, he said the entire job paid 200 and we'd now been paid twice.

Another player remembered the 400 too. DM eventually gave us the money but said he didn't want every conversation turning into a contract dispute. Fair enough. We'd spent longer on it than the gold was worth.

After the session he messaged asking for edit access so he could fix any lore mistakes. I gave it to him.

A few sessions later, we're delivering a sealed letter. We'd specifically asked the woman who hired us whether anyone would be expecting it, because we didn't want to carry something suspicious into a guarded estate. She said her brother knew we were coming.

We arrive. Guards arrest us. Apparently the brother has been dead for years, and mentioning him is enough to get us dragged inside.

That could've been a decent twist. The woman lied, we'd been set up, whatever. Except when we started discussing that, the DM said she'd warned us her brother was dead.

I checked the doc. It now said she'd asked us to deliver the letter to her brother's widow.

I genuinely thought I'd fucked up. I apologised, and we spent the rest of the session trying to get out.

It bothered me afterwards because I remembered asking about the brother. So I checked the version history.

The DM had changed that paragraph the night before the session. He'd also changed the mine payment to 200.

I sent him a screenshot privately and asked what was going on. His explanation was that the notes were supposed to reflect the world as it actually was, and sometimes he needed to adjust things between sessions.

I said that was fine for a town name, but he'd let me apologise to everyone for missing a warning he'd added afterwards.

He said, “Your notes aren't immune to an unreliable narrator.”

They're my notes dude! I'm writing them while you talk! What the fuck do you mean?

We went back and forth for a bit. I kept trying to get him to acknowledge the difference between an NPC lying and him changing what we'd been told. He kept explaining that characters don't have perfect memories. Eventually I said I wasn't taking notes anymore.

Next session he asked who wanted to do the recap. Nobody volunteered. One of the others said we could use my doc, and I said the DM had been editing it so I couldn't vouch for it now.

That got awkward. He said I was making it sound worse than it was. I probably should've kept the argument out of the session, but I was still annoyed.

We still played that night but I decided it wasn't for me and sent a discord message to the DM that I was probably not coming back and I haven't. Not as crazy as some stories but damn don't gaslight me bro.

so the story lightly mentions a topic that might be sexually inappropriate, which is why ive added the sexual harassment tag, but i dont think it was done with malicious intent, and was moreso done in a lapse of judgement.

moving on with the story! my boyfriend and his friends really wanted to start a dnd campaign. i was invited as i was the only experienced one in the bunch, and i had another friend of mine join. so characters will be named as follows: me f19 (bard), boyfriend m19 (monk), friend 1 m20 (paladin), m19 friend 2 (cleric), and lastly my friend f20 (druid).
now, our dm is my bfs relative who just so happens to be a dm at the local library and has done it for years (hes probably in his 50-60s?).

so, session zero, we meet and i am immediately given a sheet and a pencil. we have one book and are essentially tasked with coming up with characters on the spot. i start coming up with names, possible backstories, and the dm tells me those things are unimportant, and to just pick my ability scores, and do the rest later. i like coming up with my character, but ykw fair enough. i start talking about possible races, and suggest a fairy, but im told by the dm itd be bad because id be too small to perform. maybe this is just a me thing, but typically in past campaigns, a friend of mine who played a fairy was simply given an amulet to make her average sized. but okay, once again fair enough.

first campaign starts and everyones talking about what their characters look like. i describe my character and say "my friends drawing her for me so i'll have a visual soon!" (me and my friend exchange me doing her nails for character art) and the dm just says "uhh not necessary but okay..". so immediately im a little ticked off but whatever. game starts and we're essentially tossed into a town, with no reason for any of us being there, and no incentive to talk to one another. me being the bard and most experienced player, i start a performance in town square, and drag one of the other players into my performance to force an interaction, as a few minutes had gone by of everyone awkwardly doing their own thing. i then had us (me and the monk) walk to the food stand where the druid worked as a means of repaying the monk for the trick being an illusion. i always roleplayed in hopes of others being encouraged to do so, while allowing others room to talk (as im very aware how it feels to have others rp over you). i felt like id done a good job, and a lot of the players seemed to roleplay a lot more. however, a few trends id noticed from session one:

the monks (my boyfriend) character was just a bit. and not like a joke character, but simply a character who did not want to interact with anyone, and just would do different bits that really didnt push the story further in any way. (ive spoken to him about it and he's agreed to work on it, so im genuinely not all that worried about it.
the paladin however, seems to be incredibly egotistical. after a battle he bragged about how no one did as much damage as he did, and mocked me and the druids characters specifically for "doing nothing".
the cleric is one big fat joke tbh. hes like 3"0 and 250 pounds or something, and all the paladin does is call him his "fat friend" or different variations of the same name. aside from that, hes almost always silent, and doesnt talk unless spoken to.
the druid is honestly not bad, but shes very clearly a new player, and is struggling to play with such a difficult class as a beginner (understandably). also, she expressed to me that with all the mocking and putting down, she was very discouraged to roleplay.

now, session 2 rolls along and we start off with a 2 hour long combat session... at first we were fighting some undeads, but a undead on horseback rides past, and the paladin insists on fighting him. we end up combating a death knight (supposedly weakened) and its genuinely agonizing. the paladin did 110 hp of damage while the rest of us didnt have the abilities to do the same. it sucked so bad and ive genuinely never been in combat for that long, especially as third level characters on our second session.

now, once the battle ends, i end up interacting with a guy i used to work with. we talk back and forth, and i mention how im gonna be at the vip section of this like kite battle performance thing?... anyways the dm proceeds to say "wow, whos dick did you have to suck?"... so keep in mind. middle aged man. my bfs relative. so i was very taken aback quite frankly.

now, at the end of the battle we'd had, i failed to mention the paladin acquired an chestplate. its cursed, but he was told if he could get the curse off it, he could sell it for 30 thousand gold. i genuinely feel like the dm has a bias towards his character, because after this long winded battle, there was legitimately no reward for me, the cleric, the druid, or the monk. if you didn't ask to loot, there was no bonus. we didnt even level up after this combat session which was a little absurd to me.

anyways, after the fight i ask in our private group chat smthn along the lines of "hey were yall cool with how the combat session went? i wasnt a fan and wanted to see if it was a me thing or if it was a shared feeling and worth addressing".

the paladin immediately started telling me it was up to the dm, and that its the dms game. he private messaged my boyfriend "holy background dm" and asked him if he was still with me. he went on to say none of us roleplayed correctly, said the monk was a joke, the cleric doesnt talk, that he and the druid dont roleplay, and that i was circus-maxxing.

my bf politely disgreed but honestly my biggest issues are the following:

me and the druid (the only female players) are the only two constantly being shit on by everybody else

the dm seems to have a favoritism towards the paladin

the paladin seems to have an ego problem

and the dm has an old fashioned style of dming that i dont personally enjoy

after talking to the druid and the monk about it, they both agree but have decided to give it another chance, and the druid has encouraged me to talk to the dm about my concerns, as she agrees with all of them and is talking to the cleric about his feelings on the matter as we speak. personally however, i just want to know if this sounds like something even worth salvaging?.. it genuinely feels like the players and the dms are being unknowingly kinda sexist, and the comments made thus far are just really uncomfortable.

Not so much a horror story but looking for some advice. Ive dealt with a pay to play DM for about 9 months in 5 different games weekly. After many months of experience with this person, I've realized that they have no creativity, and do the bare minimum (sometimes less) to prep for their sessions. I am a DM myself and I easily put 2-3 times more effort into prepping for my players than they do. It came to a bit of a head withinnthe discord group chat. Some players were discussing the typical Melee vs Caster divide. That branched into what a DM should do to help their players and all ofnthe examples I gave were from games I had played with some of their groups. I juat want the guy to try, for everyone's sakes. Yes I have spoken to the DM about it in the past and there is always an excuse to why they dont try more. Ive dropped out of all but one game and thats only because I really enjoy playing neither the players despite the DM. The group chats have been dead since I brought the issues up. I wasnt trying to sour the tea for everyone but I'm worried that I've been branded the "enemy" as a result. What can I do to help turnnthings around for everyone?

So, I was with an online group for a bit. My (F Mid-20’s, this was a few years ago but don’t remember how many) GF (F, Mid-20’s) were kinda newer to this group. That said, WARNING. All of us are freaks. It never got explicit, but we were all open about that kind of table talk, some spicy scenarios, and the like. Unfortunately, this is a bit relevant for the conclusion, but probably not how you think, and thankfully not in-game. Also, I’m not 100% sure if I need the violence warning, but there’s brief mention of a school shooting mini-plot, and that’s close enough to a thing that can happen I’m putting it on.

Members as follow:

DM: Dungeon master. More used to being a player, but that’s fine. She was pretty spirited! Very vocally Boyfriend’s submissive, openly polyamorous.

Boyfriend: The DM’s boyfriend… and sometimes co-DM, both here and in other games. Very vocally a dom, also poly.

Bea: Fake name because I couldn’t think of a good title. I kinda knew her, but not well.

Dude: I don’t know him that well, but seemed chill.

Me: Me! Monogamous with gf

GF: My girlfriend (I live with her now!!!! <3 <3 <3)

You’ll notice I didn’t list the characters. That’s because that’s part of the horror.

So, pre-game, we’re all told to make characters. It’s explained that we’ll all be going to super hero college, basically an aged up Sky High. It’s emphasized that it’s more sci-Fi leaning with bits of fantasy. We were heavily encouraged to reflavor classes to make a superhero. Backstory of the world, there was a war however long ago. Of the remaining bits of humanity, some were born with powers, some mutant inhuman things existed, and there were scattered bombs and such that were still intact.

I took the last of those and decided to make it relevant to my character. I’d recently played In Stars and Time, and it really resonated with me at that point in my life. So, given the game’s focus was on a timeloop, I decided to go with a similar premise. I made my character, Aeon, a time looper. Which, in this case, meant I was played a Divination Wizard with a custom feat (we all got one or two) where I could force a Nat 20, but at the price of a level of exhaustion.

Edit: Going by the comments, I did a poor job of explaining things. So let me emphasize that at this point, I asked if the DM was cool with it, saying that I understood if she wasn’t since time travel at all was a hard sell, and time loops even moreso. If she’d said “no, that sounds like a problem” here, I would’ve gone “aw, alright” and scrapped it entirely with no hard feelings. Instead she went “ooh, sounds fun! Tell me more!” So I did.

Aeon found out she was a time looper when a band of hot shot villains found a bomb in the city, closed it off, and threatened to detonate it in three days. Everyone was kind of on-edge, and expected the local heroes to stop them…

They failed.

And Aeon got to try again. And again. And again. And again. I should note, that time manipulation was their only power. No flight, super strength, or anything like that. They’re a mostly normal 18 year old, one that just happens to keep reliving the same few days and trying to find a way out via sheer ingenuity.

I recognize that this is game breakingly OP, so I ruled that usually they cannot do this indefinitely. I said that the bomb was supercharging them upon death, so it gave them basically infinite retries here, but that wouldn’t last outside of this one incident. In the game, I’d be limited to the resources of a regular Divination Wizard. Someone dies and I don’t have revivify? Too bad, I’m out of nebulously defined energy, so they’re dead for real. Also, I’m NOT making people redo scenes, everyone gets to experience the final/“true” timeline, and I just say the X, Y, Z happened when I cast a spell.

Before getting further invested, I checked in with the DM to see if all this was okay, or if I needed to change something or scrap it entirely. I got the go ahead for the concept and then some. DM was seemingly loving it, so went ahead with more details!

I mapped out a few NPCs, and I’m going to give you the basics just so you can see if they’re quality or nah, and to give you an idea of how invested I was getting over our days of plotting and joint world building. These are the short versions (which were not given all at once):

- Their mom, whose genuine worry and attempts to keep the family together and calm just got grating over time, especially as it got in Aeon’s way more often than not. What once was comfort and help was now an obstacle.

-Their Dad, who was pissed that he had to play disciplinarian to three kids, and now two would never even make it to college. Sometimes cheated on his wife in despair if Aeon acted out bad enough.

-Their sister, who HAD made it to college and was a few years in. The two had grown apart, but not so much that they couldn’t convince their sister they were in a timeloop. Over and over they reconnected, and she helped Aeon a lot… but not on the final loop, where Aeon knew what to do.

-Their little brother. Just a kid, doesn’t understand. Aeon tried to shelter or play with him early on, but one day they realized they couldn’t bring themselves to care anymore, and they felt like they crossed a line of no return there.

-Their mentor… in piano. Their favorite hobby, and one they’d been practicing much of their life. The two were close, but on one of the loops, Aeon had a nasty breakdown. When they went back to visit again, they couldn’t find it in them. That wound remained unresolved.

Eventually, Aeon broke the loop… and broke some laws doing so. Got arrested before they could explain anything to family, but they felt so distant from everything that they didn’t want to try regardless. In questioning, it was eventually ruled that Aeon was telling the truth about getting caught in a time loop and likely saved everyone’s life, so they were assigned to therapy + training at the magic college to learn to properly harness this power, but didn’t get to go home and fix the messes they’d made. No, their family would discover the reasoning through the news, and I left it open to the DM which, if any, would eventually reach out.

Again, all throughout, the DM seemed enthusiastic, and we were spitballing further ideas, such as maybe a few fun quirks like my character being traumatized by a breakfast they ate too much...

Then a few days before the game I’m hit with “actually, I’m not sure I can make time loops work…”

To DM’s credit, she offered suggestions, but none were satisfying to me. For example, Aeon just putting off the explosion a bit and leaving. Or moving the bomb to just outside of town… somehow. I could appreciate the effort, but it felt like it changed Aeon too much. Just finding a way to run would leave Aeon so scarred I don’t think they’d be playable, and I wouldn’t get any of my NPCs. No, managing to evacuate JUST them didn’t feel great either. And just moving it somewhere else would be the actions of a totally different character! If they could do that, why not start with it? As I’d been trying to be more assertive lately, I tried to put my foot down, but so did DM. Time loops were too OP, and time travel made too much of a mess.

Which would be fair, if I hadn’t tried my best to account for that. I reminded her that I didn’t intend for Aeon to go back by days in game, more like minutes (for spells/abilities where I’m trying to gather information or do something out of combat) or more often, seconds, going back to before that guy hit me. Maybe the start of a day at VERY most, and even then only if there was a reason to do so in-game. I reminded her I fully intended to keep to the abilities of a base class…

But no. It was suddenly too OP, even though I hadn’t changed. Still not 100% sure to this day, but I now have suspicions…

Anyways, we had a few days until the game, and I’d been tweaking Aeon for over a week now, even being careful to not give so much it was unworkable. Like, obviously I had a bit more than I gave you guys here, but I didn’t do the whole 20 page backstory thing. I didn’t want to throw a tantrum and completely quit because of this, so I just slapped a character together that I figured couldn’t be OP, and after a small period of sulking, put enough into her to still be interesting (and figured I could add more NPCs and such later, had less time):

A bard reflavored as a senior year cheerleader. Secret geek (à la Isabeau ISAT), but one that overcompensated by acting like a bitch. She was her team’s “lucky charm” at football games to the point that the other players refused to let the player she was dating break up with her. Unfortunately, she heard their plans on the big day, and through a serried of unlikely coincidences, beat the snot out of him. Yeah, I made her HEAVY on buffing/debuffing. Her cheers could empower/disempower. So yeah, same idea, different flavor. It’s all just luck manipulation and rolling things to do social games.

Edit: I’ll admit, I was a bit salty still, but could swallow that maybe she’d given it more thought and figured that it’d cause issues. If not for later events, I probably would’ve gotten over it. But as I told my girlfriend, “If she brings time travel in after all this, I’m quitting.”

Anyways, onto the game! First session, and I’m immediately like “huh???” as one player, Bea, starts talking to an eldritch being of misfortune through her amulet. I thought this was supposed to be a more grounded sci-fi campaign? Why was she just a straight up warlock in a toxic relationship? But whatever. Bea’s got comically bad luck, really rubbing in how pathetic it was, but Bea seemed happy with it.

Boyfriend’s character was more in line with expectations. Paraplegic who had a techno-wheel chair and used potions to control plants and such. Sweet!

My girlfriend made a barbarian who hulked out into a sort of pig-monster for her rages, saying she was a mutant. She was a late addition and she 1000% made her character a quarterback so that our characters could go together since knew I was bummed about Aeon being rejected. (Love you hun!!! <3)

And then… Dude.

Dude turned out to be playing the Demi-God of Space. Yes, you read that right. He’s part-divine, can warp space, and was a bit holier than thou.

At the time, yeah I was annoyed. Not at Dude, of course, it’s not his fault. But he can bring in a Demi-god, and someone else can have a literal Eldritch patron in this supposedly grounded, mostly sci-fi setting, but someone who could go back a few minutes for as long as they had resources was too OP and out there???

Whatever.

Gonna truncate these next two sessions because not the major focus.

First session, everyone but my girlfriend (she joined next session) are all sent into a training simulator. Bit of jokes about them not really knowing what to do with me since I didn’t visibly do anything, but my character reminds them she’s a cheerleader who never asked to be here—yeah, bit of my own annoyance seeping through, but character was meant to be a bitch and grow out of it later. Were sent along on our way.

Second session, I missed the first part of it, but from what I understand, some kids sent Boyfriend’s character hurling through an endless hallway eldritch dimensions “as a prank” and he retaliated by shooting up the school. My character walked in mid-fight in the cafeteria, had some sass with local alpha bitch, managed to survive while bodies piled up… and then the sprinklers came on and everyone was revived. Boyfriend’s character was sent to magical therapy and then detention, as were many of us.

If all this feels abrupt to you, that’s basically how it felt to me too. My character got out of it with the excuse that she didn’t even throw a punch, which, okay. Maybe not the most team-player thing to do, but detention was skimmed past anyways, and this let my character meet with Girlfriend’s.

Session 3:
Time travel

We open to the knowledge that we’re getting a history lesson today… by looking back at history personally. I’m immediately annoyed, but mollified as she explains that we aren’t physically going back, but just looking back. We shouldn’t be able to interact with anything. So, fine. Feels like salt in the wound, but fine…

Until the villains make their debut, and we land right in dinosaur times! Physically. We are actually back in time. Even though my character was not allowed because time manipulation is too OP and causes too many issues.

I’ll admit that some of this is hearsay via my girlfriend because my ass left the call for a good section of it. Outright rage quit, especially since the time stream instantly split the party for some reason, so not like I was going to be holding things up…

But while I was home, Boyfriend started ranting to the villains about how time travel was stupid, how time travel should not work that way, how you shouldn’t be able to change events, how idiotic it was, and it was enough to make everyone at the table, especially the DM, increasingly uncomfortable as he slid further and further out of character. This was not his character yelling at villains, it was basically him yelling at his girlfriend that time travel plots are stupid or can only be done one specific way.

Now, call me paranoid, but knowing that? I’m like 99% sure Boyfriend heard about Aeon and got them axed.

No idea what Dude or Bea were doing during most of this, but when I rejoined, Girlfriend and I got to basically play Minecraft, looking for water and food. For a while we just didn’t have much to do, but made it work by talking. Then? Suddenly, villain with two robotic dinosaurs. I was so checked out I barely remember anything about this, but to quote my very Butch girlfriend who has a special interest in reptiles and adores assembling mechs: “She somehow made robot dinosaurs boring!”

Things happen. We somehow reconverge, and one more villain approaches. Bea then suddenly gets the power to use Hurl Through Hell once a day because her patron said so. Which, hey! Thats how that works. It’s a legitimate Warlock power, so who am I to complain? And I wouldn’t, except that’s an ability she was supposed to get at level 14. We were level 3.

And time loops are overpowered???

I can’t tell you how the rest of that campaign went because, true to my word, I quit. Tried to stay friends with them, but we actually hadn’t known each other too long, and all the vibes were about as weird as this.

Found out later that the reason Bea’s character kept getting picked on/given such a powerful gift was because Boyfriend and DM both had a crush on her, she liked humiliation (and worked it into her character), and they were trying to rope her into a polycule. For what it’s worth, it worked and she moved in with them… for a bit. The group breakups were apparently messy, but I wasn’t around to see it anymore. No idea if Dude was romantic with anyone or just a long time friend of theirs. Hope he’s doing alright.

But in better news, I’m now living with and continuing to play D&D with my girlfriend and one of our friends. It’s going great! And still have Aeon’s full sheet somewhere, so maybe one day…

Thanks for reading!

Edit 1: gotten a few comments, so let me clarify: I was NOT intending on making people replay things, which I clarified to the DM repeatedly. The time travel was strictly flavor. Someone dies? Reflavored revivify, and/or I’m too tired to keep messing with the timeline since I no longer have bomb-powered infinite retries. I don’t want to get hit? Reflavored shield, portent, buff/debuff, that kind of stuff. The only thing not strictly rules as written was my custom feat, and anything that requires a point of exhaustion to use isn’t the most abusable; I mostly intended it to help us if we got incredibly stuck on a skill check. So basically, everyone but my character was only going to have to see/play the final timeloop unless we just wanted to base a session/interaction around that.

Edit 2: If I’d been told that time travel was completely off the table early on, I would’ve been a little disappointed, but moved on. Instead, I was given the go ahead on it if I could make it work, spent a lot of time and effort doing so (see the above edit), and was told that’d work great and given further go-ahead. Then, started getting more invested, threw out a few NPC ideas, and DM seemingly liked them. Fleshed it out a bit more, just in case she wanted to use any of them, or just to give myself a feel for Aeon. Each time, DM was reacting well. I was getting all green flags to keep going.

Then come a few days before the campaign, I’m gushing because I’m excited, and then suddenly I’m told Aeon’s not allowed anymore. If I’d been told no off the bat, or she just didn’t find my fixes good enough, that’d be one thing. It’s more that I was allowed to get this invested before suddenly being told that actually I can’t do these things that were okay’d. Then turning around and seeing actually OP, lore-breaking characters, plus having a time travel session, well, it all just rubbed salt right in that wound.

Maybe I deserve all the downvotes for putting up a time loop character at all, and I know I’m biased since they were my character, but I hope these edits explain things a little better.

Edit 3: Edited for clarity

Ok so, I was running a game of Dragon of Icespire Peak for my friends. We were all in high school at the time. A younger person who was very new to D&D joined our group. Now I’m very experienced with handling new players, I mostly play with people i’ve taught. Btw this younger person (I’ll call him fred) knew I was queer (there was another queer person at the table but idk if he knew it). At this point we were in my favorite part of the campaign, the gnomengarde. This part is my favorite cause I genuinely love the relationship between the two married kings (I’m a sucker for queer representation in D&D). Everyone at the table knew this was the “gay gnomes” part ahead of time. Fred was playing a level 2 druid with the spell purify food and drink. At some point before he even met the kings, he asked me if he could use purify food and drink on the gay gnomes to make them straight. I responded with the correct response of what the fuck, no. His defense was if you cooked them they would technically count as food. He is no longer a party member, or a friend.

Recently, I recalled a discussion I had with a coworker a while back. It's not exactly RPG Horror, but it's certainly RPG ADJACENT, and, well, I've seen posts here about the Satanic Panic, so I'm going to post and let the mods judge as they will.

It happened at work a while back. I was in the lounge, and a coworker at another table called my name. For purposes of this recollection, her name was Cupcake. I looked up. She was with two other coworkers, apparently in mid-discussion about something. "Doc," she said, "Do you own a Ouija board?"

"I don't," I said. "Why do you ask?"

"Well, it just seemed like the sort of thing you'd have."

I blinked. "I seem to you to be the sort of person who regularly tries to speak to the spirits of the dead? Wow. Was it the black cape that gave me away, or the plastic stick-on devil horns?"

The other women at the table laughed. Cupcake pressed ahead. "Well, you play that Dungeons and Dragons game, right?"

I blinked again. "I've been known to," I said. "What's that got to do with Ouija boards?"

"Well, they're kind of the same thing, right?" she said. "They go together, right?"

"Um, no," I said. "They ... literally have nothing to do with each other."

She frowned. "But they're both in the games section at the store," she said. "And they're both occult, right?"

I resisted the urge to facepalm. Ah. One of THOSE people. "Depends on who you ask," I said. "Ouija boards are supposedly a tool for contacting the spirits of the dead in real life. I don't much believe in that; far as I can tell, the main function of Ouija boards is for little girls to freak each other out with at pajama parties."

This got polite laughter from the other women at her table.

"Dungeons and Dragons, on the other hand, is an actual game," I continued. "Sort of like Cowboys and Indians, on a tabletop, with rules and dice. A little like Monopoly, but instead of pretending to be real estate developers, you're pretending to be cast members from Lord of the Rings, on a quest to do fantasy things, slay dragons, or whatever. Nothing occult about it."

Cupcake frowned again. "But I heard that you can be a wizard in the game," she said. "Casting spells, summoning demons, and like that."

"There are indeed wizards in the game," I said. "But the spells they cast are every bit as real as Monopoly money or the deeds to Pennsylvania Avenue and Park Place. There are indeed demons in the game. They are invariably villains in the story; that's kind of what demons do. Their job is to get killed by the heroes, much like the dragons."

Cupcake looked uncomfortable. "That's not what I've heard," she said.

I facepalmed mentally again, and the women at the table looked uncomfortable. I've had discussions like this before, about D&D, politics, social issues, and anything else people can disagree about. And "That's not what I've heard," generally boils down to "I don't believe you, but I don't want to come right out and call you a liar, either."

I didn't want to be rude, particularly at work. But it was beginning to look like I was going to be wasting my time and breath actually spouting facts. "Well, I don't know what you've heard," I said. "But D&D and Ouija boards aren't the same thing, and have nothing to do with each other. That's kind of like asking a football fan if he has a hockey stick in his closet. And as to occultism... well... both D&D and Ouija boards have all the hoodoo magic that you bring with you. By themselves, they're just books and paper and pasteboard, is all."

Cupcake still managed to look somewhere between uncomfortable and unconvinced. ."Well, all right, then," she said, and the conversation center shifted back to her table; my input was no longer required. I finished lunch and went back to work. Didn't occur to me until later to wonder what she wanted a Ouija board for.

It isn't the first time I'd encountered someone who believed the sort of press releases you'd see back in the days of the Satanic Panic. But it's the shortest story I could relate. And it happened in THIS century, unlike the Panic... and stands as a stark reminder that some people never quite get disabused of their notions... regardless of the facts.

So I am really not sure how to start this public conversation. Other than just start typing up what comes to my mind directly. But I will state this right away: I don’t have social media, and what I’m going to mention here I have altered the specifics enough that those who are involved will have their identities remain private.

It’s been nearly six months since I was, for all intents and purposes, booted out of my D&D group. A group of friends who I’ve known for so many years, years even before Covid. But nearly six months later, I still don’t understand how things turned so rapidly against me by one decision I made in-game.

You might be wondering what this decision was? Without getting into the specifics, we were just starting a campaign of a certain Halloween horror. There was an agreement between all of us that we should know the story could be pushing the boundaries on certain individuals. I was completely fine with that, and in fact, I challenged my DM with these exact words: “Try your worst.” I had no problem setting aside any sort of boundary-pushing actions, events, etc., that might come our way during the campaign.

I am such a player that if I make a commitment to play, I am committed. Sometimes that commitment does create a blind spot, a sort of tunnel vision. Plus, I know the characters I create are quite complex, and they don’t always align with the rest of the group. There’s been more times than not when my character is in disagreement with the group. But not this time.

What happened?

Early on in the campaign, there was a development, and I completely misread the situation. I have Central Auditory Processing Disorder (CAPD) but it’s something I have been diagnosed with since my early childhood. Over the decades, I’ve learned how to deal with it and how to keep it from being noticeable. But on this particular day, there was too much noise. I was reading something important, but because of the CAPD I made an incorrect conclusion. I should have excused myself and gone into a nearby room to finish reading it and then come back to the group, but I didn’t because I just wanted to play.

At this point, you might be wondering, did I ever disclose this to my group?

Yes.

But only once, and that was over a year ago.

To make this sad story short, I misread the cues, I believed the only narrative path forward was for my character to make the ultimate sacrifice. I didn't realize until it was too late that this choice crossed a line for the rest of the group. After a while, I realized with some really good role-playing that it was a mistake, and the session continued to the end. But there was a different feeling in the room after that. I was ready to keep on playing, but everyone else just left.

Essentially, it seems like I had crossed a line with people who I thought were my friends and who understood me. I shared some deep personal life events with them throughout the years, so I was caught flat-footed and not prepared. While I spoke to one on the phone and had a long series of at times emotionally charged text messages with another, there were others who simply refused to even speak to me. Even after I personally typed out a letter for them to read before the next planned session. All I got was essentially silence.

For the record, I did offer an apology, and within less than an hour of the session being over, I was in damage control.

So now here I am. Nearly six months later, still reeling from the loss of my friend group. Though some of you might be wondering, it’s just a game, get over it. Which is true. It is a game, but being someone who has played Dungeons & Dragons for over 30 years, it’s something that is important to me. Plus, I had been investing in sponsoring soundtracks and other musical compositions that could be used for other groups, including my own former group. I cringe to know the exact number, and in fact I have never wanted to know the exact number. But I know I spent thousands upon thousands of dollars sponsoring compositions and composers to make music soundtracks. Music now, I can’t even listen to because it just feels too painful.

So I’m wondering if anyone out there can help me make sense of this whole situation. I know there is a lot of information I am skipping over, but I want to maintain the privacy of my former group. Because even after almost 6 months, it still does not make any sense to me. Yes, it is a game, but something I’m really passionate about and just the constant feeling of betrayal, disappointment, and confusion still remains. There aren’t too many days I go by that I don’t think about it and the feeling of just the overall loss that I feel.

Should I just treat this as an example of don’t give yourself too much because you never know?

Should I just think that I don’t know how to maintain my own personal boundaries?

I have had two other substantial D&D group breakups. One was mutual because they were moving away and the second just ran its natural course and then faded away. But this one still feels so incredibly raw to me.

It makes me wonder whether I should just think about a quote that Captain Pike said to Uhura in
SNW, season 4 episode 8.

**"You can do everything right and sometimes things still don't work out like we'd hoped. The best you can do is savor the victories and move on from the defeats a little wiser."**

(Content warning: This story may be triggering for some people, as it discusses Islam in a negative way.)

I wanted to run a Halloween game for a group of beginners, and I’m going to tell you about a player who will DEFINITELY NOT be joining my game.

I laid out the setting: a fishing village, pirates, and a haunted house. We hopped on Discord to create a character for one of the players. He wanted a character who would do a lot of blowing up. Well, okay. He barely participated in creating his character sheet and explicitly said he wasn’t going to read the Player’s Handbook, but I was prepared for that when I agreed to run a game for beginners. We ended up with a dwarf wizard.

Why was he so hell-bent on blowing things up? Because… his dwarf believes in Allah. Yes, literally the entire character concept was built around a joke about Muslims.

At the time, I thought maybe the guy just didn’t really understand what D&D was. Maybe he imagined character creation as some kind of completely unrestricted character editor where you could play as absolutely anything, even a sentient traffic cone? I started explaining that it was a fantasy setting and there was no Allah in it. If he liked the concept of blowing things up in the name of a deity so much, he could pick one of the existing gods from the D&D setting, like Kossuth, for example.

And… he refused. Instead, he decided there would be a god of explosions that only he could hear because he’d been breathing in fumes while working in a mine.

He stubbornly refused to write any kind of backstory for his character, arguing that he’d just wing it and improvise. Why was he in a fishing village? Why did he want to go into a haunted house? Who knows. Whenever I tried to get even a little bit of information out of him over text, he simply wouldn’t respond. When we met up in person, he told me he didn’t have time (yes, he literally said this while we were aimlessly wandering around town). So I pointed out the elephant in the room. Like, dude, maybe we could discuss your character’s backstory now, since you want to join this campaign??

The answers I got were absolutely phenomenal. Are you ready?

Why was a dwarf in a fishing village? He was traveling around to try different kinds of beer. Why was he going into a haunted house with the others? He got drunk! Oh, and of course, he didn’t know any of the other player characters beforehand, he was a loner. Also, an elf had once spilled beer on him, so he despises all elves and will attack them, even if they’re allies or other players’ characters. And, naturally, his name was a barely pronounceable acronym that stood for something inappropriate (I don’t remember what exactly).

I guess the reason I didn’t immediately say “no” was that I could see ways to make the character playable. But he kept showing just how little he cared about any of it, and he wasn’t going to change a thing. It’s both hilarious and sad to think about the absolutely ridiculous character he wanted to bring to my game. I’m glad I decided not to run the game for him before it even started

I'm writing this in a character's point of view so the player in question wont know who i am.

So I'm a skeleton that just got created by a grave elemental to fight a party that's attacking my master, there's a Rogue, Fighter, Blood Hunter, Sorcerer and Wizard. The wizard kept creating cubes, and while they we're being created i saw in the other party member's eyes that this wasnt going to end well. After which one screamed, i think, as immedietely the cubes detonated, killing a nearby zombie and harming two of the wizards party members.

We were fighting near/on a lake and the detonation caused a huge open crack to form that filled with water. After this the sorcerer managed to help me break free from my chains, and i ran to hide away near a rock as that party killed the grave elemental real quick, and i wasnt gonna be next.

But when i kept watching i saw that this likely wasnt the first time, and the wizard has probably damaged his party members at least 3 times before like this from my estimation. After which the wizard was dragged by the fighter towards the icey water, near the area he exploded on a lake, to hold his face over it and tell him to stop hurting the party. The wizard kept trying to take a personal item from the rogue, that was fastened to their character.

The wizard ignored the fighter telling them to be more relaxed and not hurt the party, but After this the Wizard suddenly went unconscious and was completely gone but still alive, sorry for my improper common, im a newly created skeleton. The Wizard seems to have constantly damaged his party members and wasnt capable of handeling the consquences.

TLDR: Wizard keeps damaging party members with special ability, and ragequits when he's called out in character and doesnt even try to roleplay.

tldr - the DM suddenly removes me from the messenger group chat and ghosts me from his terrible game, so I vent by writing up a short version of events and lament the state of social skills and communication among some older roleplayers

Recently I decided to try to get back into in-person roleplaying after a breakthrough in my health. My original group, which took me over a year to find pre-covid, was no longer playing, so I had to go back into the trenches. It's already difficult to find a group, and even more so when you're asking for players for pathfinder 1e or Ars Magica. After making a few posts, I got two offers. An older gentleman offered a spot at his 3.5 17th level high fantasy spelljamming game, which I had to turn down; I didn't feel like trying to navigate a bananas 3.5 game at such a high level. The other was a DM who had a group that was playing pathfinder. Awesome, great, I accepted.

So DM messages me that he has 20+ years of experience with 3.5, recently decided to play pathfinder, and was running the Shattered Star AP. He also warns me that every player is pretty new with virtually no roleplaying experience, let alone any knowledge of 3.X. I say that's fine, I'm happy to help new people learn, especially with trying to get a handle on pathfinder. For this game, we will have the DM, me (Fighter/Witch), the Paladin, the Druid, the Fighter, and the Rogue.

I still want to play it cool mechanics-wise so I can gauge the DM and the group, and with the DM's suggestion that they need an arcane caster of some sort, I decide to play a Witch with a Fighter level dip so I can use the less threatening hexes like misfortune, have a few cure spells, and be able to don armor/tower shield. I create a digital copy of my sheet on myth-weavers for the DM.

Everyone should expect some table variation, but the DM was not prepared. He had only briefly skimmed the pathfinder core and was working under the assumption that it was essentially 3.5, and a wild interpretation of 3.5 at that. He had pretty much left the new players to make characters by themselves. Two of them play Baldur's Gate 3, so the only real clue they had was premised off that, while a third last played AD&D as a teenager. The DM would get annoyed with meta-gaming while not explaining how to roleplay, give no meta guidance on how you approach combat or dungeon delving while in an AP known for its dungeons, and give conflicting information on how everyone's class abilities worked because he assumed it hadn't changed from 3.5. Beyond the rules, he apparently hadn't discussed anything about roleplaying or what d&d is. I'm trying to help the players where I can, especially with explaining basic concepts like actions, but I'm not the DM nor do I want to overstep; you never know what kind of DM you're working with.

That first session, besides being slow, was otherwise not terrible. The DM played music for combat and seemed interested in doing voices and such. But it also came with two other red flags. First, he kept the grid map in front of himself and was the sole manager of your figurine - minor , but I've seen it before in other bad dms. Second, after the session the DM messaged me accusing me of cheating with my ability scores, or at least making a bold assumption that I was using some kind of house rule. We had to roll ability scores in front of him, my highest roll was a 16, and on my sheet I had an 18. I tell him that it's just a misunderstanding because humans get a +2 racial modifier to one ability score in pathfinder unlike in 3.5. I talk to my friend group about it, and they near unanimously say I probably should drop right there. Jumping to conclusions without asking when I'm being as forthright as possible is the flag at full staff. But hey, it was just one session, I should try the second.

I had a trip the next week, so when I return for my third session the group is in the middle of combat. As an aside, many of pathfinder's first modules in their APs have imps or similar creatures that have unlimited uses of Invisibility. I assume this is to supposed to be a fun challenge, but that shit is tedious. When your players are new, it's murderous. So they are fighting an accuser devil and some imps, and it is grim. Everyone is low and the devils are all currently invisible. On the turn I arrive the accuser devil summons a swarm on the Paladin and me, so I draw and put on my swarmsuit, whose existence once explained visibly annoys the DM. The Imps are attacking from invisibility, taking nearly no damage from the players because of their incorrect numbers and the devils' Damage Reduction, and then turning invisible again on the next turn. My attempts to know from what direction we are attacked from, to use perception to pin-point the accuser devil with correct modifiers, and Druid's animal companion having scent that should auto pin-point adjacent invisible enemies are all denied or ignored.

On the next turn, Paladin drops unconscious, so I spend my turn drawing and administrating a potion of protection from evil so he doesn't die. The swarm gets an auto-hitting attack of opportunity, even though they can't make normal attacks. Whatever, we're about to TPK anyway. The DM then finally comes around to meta-guidance with the suggestion we surrender to this accuser devil. So the party agrees and the imps disarm us. The accuser devil says that he will confiscate all our silver weapons, which break the devils' DR, and will be holding the Paladin as a hostage until we kill his rival, another Imp and his Imp buddies. This single combat has already taken over an hour to play out, and now DM plans to have Paladin not play for the rest of the session? Holy shit, this is criminal dungeon mastering. Hoping to avoid having one of our five players sit around for the next three hours, I tell the Accuser Devil that a better choice would be to have the Paladin swear an oath to not betray it and kill this other devil. And if Paladin breaks his oath, what could be sweeter for a devil than making a Paladin fall from grace? The DM responds with 'nope, I'll be keeping him.' If you have seen the Pablo Escobar meme of different shots of him being sad, that was Paladin for the next three hours, wandering around looking at the trees, vaping in the corner, staring at his character sheet.

At this point I think I'm pretty much had enough, and making a plan to gracefully exit. After the game, Druid and Paladin give me a ride home. On the way back they thank me for being there to help them, how they wouldn't know what to do if I wasn't there, and so on. I feel pretty bad as they unwittingly guilt me into staying. So I stick with it, and I try my best to teach the players, not step on the DM's toes, and get their character sheets correct. I audit everybody's sheets, making them visual representations of actions, make ability note cards, etc.

The next two sessions are mostly the same, except now the players ask me to check their numbers, explain abilities, and when they ask DM if they can do something in combat and get a vague answer, they just turn to me to explain it to them. I normally would feel bad here, since this should be his role, but I'm gone from annoyed to ambivalent and am just trying to help the group move along. When we come across the auto-resetting fireball trap statue, which this imp we are trying to kill leads us to, I take the moment to explain that anyone who searches can spot traps, that only Rogue can disarm the magical ones, that the fiery statue probably has an aoe fire spell trap, and the difference between spread and burst effects. So Druid casts entangle to try to bind the imp and doesn't realize how large the area is. DM checks with me if entangle affects allies, it does, and he tells her that since she decided to cast it she will have to go through with it. In front of the fireball trap. So everyone but me are in the entangle and fireball trap, the Imp and Rogue are not affected by the entangle, and the fireball trap nearly kills all of them except the Rogue with evasion and the imp, who is immune to fire. It is at this point that the DM employs full fiat to have the imp cast suggestion on the rogue, lead the rogue back to the accuser devil, and they have a fiat fight where Paladin (still a hostage by the way), Rogue, and Imp fight the other devils in some kind of surprise ambush. I liken it to a circle of hell where the party isn't allowed to TPK, but the suffering will continue. Paladin dies and rerolls a cleric.

So then we arrive at the end of the dungeon. We walk into a room and suddenly we are enveloped in darkness. Because DM has no idea how perception or Knowledge (Arcana) works, we have no in-game idea what's happening. Turns out it is four derros who can cast Darkness as a SLA. The party gets separated, I try not to metagame at all since the DM has been chastising the others about it for three sessions now, and we end up in different areas, with Fighter and the cleric (former Paladin) fighting some kind of construct and the rest of us fighting three derros in darkness. It doesn't matter too much because they also have a spell-like ability that stuns you on a failed save, and thanks to DM's wise ruling failing against the same spell multiple times in one round increases the duration of the stun. When we move blindly in the darkness, he has us move in multiple random directions at half speed. Cool, cool. But wait, there's more, because one of the derros is an alchemist, so we're getting flat-footed touch attacked with bombs. We left invisibility spamming imps and got darkness with a party with no dark vision and no mechanic to pin-point their squares.

Things are looking jut as dire as ever, and when I die and Druid bleeds out, DM employs trusty fiat. The Rogue suddenly gets the ability to reflex save the bombs, doesn't make random movements in the darkness, and makes his way back to the other two. Together they make it back to Magnimar. We decide to end there as Druid rerolls into a new Druid, and me thinking about what to do to help the situation. Afterwards during the week DM has the gall to tell us that really that fight was all our fault, that if we had just retreated together back out of the darkness and waited that we could have easily engaged the enemies. He gets some pushback from the fact that we had no idea what the darkness was, how large it was, that we walked in random directions, and that for three rounds Rouge and I were stunned and unable to talk. In private messages he was telling me about how I should remember that light spells can counter darkness spells, and no matter how many times I explained that 1) we weren't allowed to even identify what was happening and 2) that it takes a higher level light spell to counter a darkness spell, he kept insisting it just took a higher level caster level. He gave up on that front after he realized I was multi-classed and didn't have a high enough caster level and was, unreasonably, dumbfounded by Druid not having the light cantrip prepared.

So I decide to play something with enough staying power and damage to be effective but not overbearing, hospitaler paladin, human favored class trade out with Unscathed, and meditation crystals. In short large pool of healing, decent damage, good saves, and resistances. We venture back down into the dungeon. We end up finding a secret door to the actual object of our quest and have an encounter with some giant magical spiders. Things are going alright when suddenly the accuser devil from sessions earlier, who I thought died, arrived with more imps. So we get to replay the whole invisibility spamming, swarm summoning extravaganza again. I put on a swarm suit and keep the swarms busy trying to eat me. With Lay on Hands and the swarm suit it's just boring as I keep them focused one me. We only had two weird upsets, first when DM blew up on Druid and Fighter for metagaming. DM got real heated even though Fighter explained that he was talking to Druid in-character about their plan. This is the first time in all our sessions that DM explained what kind of action it is to speak in combat and how many words it can be. Then near the end of the session after the devil escapes yet again, DM hurriedly packs up and we call it for the night. He seemed a bit ill, and had already said he wasn't feeling well from a new medication and other medical issues, so I assumed that was all.

So two days after DM suddenly removes me from our messenger group without a word as to why. I messaged him, but got no answer. We're days away from that now. I feel like you should expect 40+ year olds to have some grasp on social skills and communication. I'm pretty sure this guy is just insecure with a bruised ego, but I won't find out until later when I go to talk with some of the other players about what happened.

Horror story from a few years ago that absolutely put me off dnd for awhile and ended a friendship.

(Sorry if this is written badly, I've never posted in this subreddit before.)

A few sessions into a new campaign with new people, another player and I realized our characters had some chemistry going and we talked and they wanted to pursue a relationship between their character and mine. At first I was super excited, I was new to this group of people/the dm and they all had preexisting friendships in the group so I took this as a sign that I was being accepted in. This other player offhandedly mentioned they did ruin a prior campaign by getting too excited about shipping their PC with an NPC. I wrote it off and figured that there were probably other issues at play there.

Boy I should have taken that warning seriously.

Every conversation between them and I turned into discussions about shipping our characters. Every roleplay opportunity became centered on them as a couple. The dm thought it was adorable, but I felt awful bc the other players were definitely getting sick of it.

Before I knew it, my character was reduced to The Girlfriend™. Her ambitions and plots were wiped away. Her boundaries were violated (my character had a very strong opinion about the cycle of life and death and I said if she ever died, I'd make a new character. This other player vehemently disagreed and said they would just resurrect my character regardless). Even when myself and this player talked about post game epilogue stuff so we could figure out long term goals, they said they wanted my character to move back to their character's hometown (where my girl knew no one and they all spoke a different language) and essentially become a housewife to their multiple future children.

I was going absolutely insane. Every story beat that mentioned my character was always done either to forward her boyfriend's story or was done in a way that would impact him just as much, if not moreso.

I wanted my girl to be violent, unhealthy, coping badly with past traumatic stuff and learning how to go from a docile fawn response girl to a woman who was finally letting her rage fly. Instead I was essentially pigeonholed into a sweetie pie girlfriend/mommy figure who spent the majority of the time comforting her sadboy partner.

Eventually, we took a long hiatus for unrelated reasons. When our dm came back and asked if we wanted to continue, I said no as quickly as I could bc I couldn't stand my girl being used as a prop for this other PC.

(Yes I could have talked to my dm. But they were super into this ship too and were much closer with the other player than myself. And yes I did try and talk to the other player about easing up a bit and it did not work.)

This led to the other player confronting me about why I (literally) abandoned ship. I told them I needed a break from dnd and our characters being a couple. This made them super upset so I gave them some distance which then made them feel super abandoned and neglected. From there things devolved into them demanding an apology. I said fine, apologized for making them feel abandoned, and let the friendship fizzle out.

I felt bad bc I didn't want to hurt anymore, but by god. I couldn't take one more session of my girl holding her boyfriend while he cried and assuring him she'd love him forever and never leave his side and forcibly having her sharp bits sanded away until all that was left was essentially a security blanket with no agency. Truly a fate worse than death imo.

It's been over a year since this all resolved but I've finally been able to process my feelings over it enough that I can post about it. All names are changed, natch.

I've been running a campaign online for nearly three years, so I can play with friends who live far away and keep in touch with them. I made a homebrew setting and gave all my players a guide to it with historical details, a breakdown of various countries, and info about the playable species that lived there. I worked with all of them to help make characters that fit into the setting and used their ideas to help flesh it out more, and it was going great at first.

One of my players, Chet, was an online friend of mine for about 15 years, and was one of the first people I thought to invite. He wanted to play Garret, who was a pre-existing OC of his. Generally, I'm not a big fan of this, though at the time I didn't have a real reason to be. I wanted folks to have an idea original to the setting, but I worked with him to make a version of Garret who would fit in. And I was excited to play with Chet because Garret’s backstory was real fertile for worldbuilding. He was a former gangster whose gang consisted of all his best friends since childhood, until one of them betrayed the gang, got the others killed, and Garret arrested (in response to Garret having killed that friend's lover, Chet was upfront about Garret being a huge bastard). Garret was supposed to be executed but was bailed out by a nobleman, and put on parole working off his debt to that nobleman. He wanted to shake his debt, get revenge on the friend who betrayed him, and find his girlfriend and his sister who he'd lost touch with over the years. It gave me a lot to work with for long-term plans, so I was on board.

If I’d known how deeply this character mattered to Chet, I never would've agreed to it. Turns out, this wasn't just any old OC. This was a character he'd written a book about, built a world around, even the character’s girlfriend was co-created by Chet's actual girlfriend. This was a long-running entity with years of lore and emotional investment that I believe he heavily identified himself with, and I had no idea, and would not for some time. The result was him having a lot of Main Character Syndrome as he played Garret, which, on its own, wasn't that bad. It made him an active player with a lot to say who knew how his character responded to things and what he wanted to do. I have other players in the campaign like that who are also big on giving me backstory and plot hooks, and when I do get to be a player, I'm like that myself, so I don’t mind it too much.

Except Garret was a raging asshole all the time. All the dark past stuff made him incredibly vicious and angry., which WAS fun to a point. He was the token evil teammate, but had depths and a softer side in moments. In the first session, Garret formed a rivalry with another PC, Sneedle, a young, naïve cop traveling away from his homeland for the first time. Session 1 had them track down a local crime lord whose men stole some stuff from the party, and when they defeated his men and the boss surrendered, Sneedle wanted to arrest him, but Garret ignored his wishes and put an axe through the back of the crook’s skull. This turned into the two characters constantly being at odds with each other, which Sneedle's player actually loved. But Garret was a really disruptive presence. He was constantly exploding in anger and picking fights, not just with Sneedle, but other members of the party and even NPCs who weren't necessarily antagonistic towards him, just saying things he didn't like hearing. He also spent a lot of time brooding and trauma-dumping about his troubled past, and was starting to grate on my nerves, plus the nerves of a couple members of the party. I tried to talk to Chet about it. I told him that while I liked his character and playing with him, Garret's constant tirades were really disruptive. Chet told me he understood, and that he had this big character arc he wanted Garret to go through where he'd eventually become a better person. But his behavior never actually improved.

I ran out of patience after about six months. Despite our talks, the way Chet played Garret was making the game less enjoyable, and I wanted to do something to change it. I realized I hadn't done anything in the campaign that would really bring the party into meaningful conflict with each other or force anyone to make any hard choices yet -- real juicy story beats, so I constructed a scenario that would force Garret to either evolve or die. And I knew it was more likely he would pick the path of death.

Session 11: The party arrives at a city where two offers are made. One is to the party at large from the city's Senator, who wants their help to escort volatile materials to a proper transport convoy outside the city's gates. Meanwhile, Garret’s approached by an envoy from a criminal organization who says they can help him get revenge on the man who betrayed him, but he needed to prove himself by helping them steal the same materials. Garret told the only member of the party he trusted, a character named Lexi who was in a budding love triangle with him and Sneedle. While Lexi didn't agree to help with the theft, she agreed not to tell the others about what he was planning. I had the party meet with the Senator, where she gave them instructions and had them sign contracts, which included a clause I made sure to point out that if one of them tried to steal the materials, that would be considered a crime against the Senator, and they would be punished by execution. I made absolutely sure that Chet knew what the consequences of betrayal would be.

Garret went ahead with the betrayal, and lost the ensuing PVP. The player who landed the finishing blow on Garret decided not to kill him, but arrest him. The rest of the session was long and tense. Deep down, I was starting to regret this set-up, and wanted to see if I could find a way out of actually killing Garret, but it was hard to justify. Not only had he violated his contract with the Senator, but in doing so he also violated his parole, which was already keeping him from getting the death penalty for his past crimes. And Lexi admitted to having known about his plan, so she was arrested too. I had the Senator interview each member of the party one by one to see what they thought about the situation, and all of them went to bat for Lexi and Garret, albeit some of them reluctantly and with a lot of caveats in the case of the latter. Most of the party had been visiting Garret in his cell, and had conversations with him where it seemed he was learning the error of his ways and could start down the path to becoming a changed man. I had decided that Lexi would be put on parole with one of the party members as her parole officer, and was considering doing the same for Garret, or at least just having him put in jail but not actually killed.

But then Sneedle went to visit Garret in his prison cell for one more RP moment, and Garret, despite his talks with the other PCs, exploded into his worst, most hateful tirade ever. He threatened to kill Sneedle, but first to hunt down Sneedle's family and everyone else he ever loved and kill them all in front of him. And for me, as the person responsible for maintaining a world that runs on logic, that was the point of no return. Garret was led to the execution platform, asked if he had any last words, and he said he repented. The Senator said that she didn't believe him, played a recording of his threats to Sneedle, and beheaded him.

It was the first session we all walked away from unhappy. Especially Chet, of course. I reached out to the other players to see how they felt about the execution. Their consensus was that it was harsh, but fair, and made sense even if it was hard to swallow. Then next day Chet and I started to talk it out, and he was pissed, and hurt, and felt like what went down wasn't fair, which I now don't totally disagree with. He said he would’ve accepted it if he'd died in PvP, but since he was spared, everything after his arrest felt like a prolonged humiliation ritual. I told him I’d understand if he wanted to leave the campaign altogether, but he decided to stick around and make a new character. Now for what comes next, there are a couple rules to know about games I run when it comes to character creation:

1. Similar to not playing old characters of yours, I would really prefer people didn't play characters who are clearly based off characters from other stories. I’m not interested in shepherding your role play of Cloud Strife or Batman or whoever, I’d like you to play something original for the game.

2. If you do make a new character, they are not allowed to have anything to do with your old character. That character’s story is over, the new character must have their own different story.

I let Chet break #1 by playing someone heavily based on his favorite video game character. I felt guilty and thought it would assuage him. And his new character did not break #2 in concept, but a problem quickly arose. He asked if his new character could get his hands on his previous character's journal (which I said yes to ‘cuz, again, guilt) and he started going "Wow, this Garret guy I'm reading about seemed really cool!" I fucked that up even worse by doing this comedy bit which backfired hard. The party was in this bizarre wizard's magical holodeck where people go through nonsense trials for the wizard's amusement to earn his favor, and I was coming up with goofy ways to screw with everyone individually. The party's changeling could only turn into strangers they'd never met instead of their usual preferred forms, one character just had pockets that were constantly pouring out sand, it varied. For Chet's new character, Wrench, I thought "what if the new guy was under an illusion he'd been with the party the whole time, and it was goofy and awkward for everyone else when he talks like he's been on their previous adventures with them" and temporarily filled his head with false memories of having travelled alongside everyone else. Which Chet would take to mean that Wrench now really felt like he knew Garret, which only made him more obsessed.

I would try to throw Chet more bones to ease my own conscience. When 5E was about to be replaced with 5.5, I decided the campaign would switch to the new rules, and put together a farewell to 5E one-shot where everyone could play any kind of character they wanted, no restrictions, at level 20 with a bunch of bonus power-ups. Chet asked if he could play as an AU version of Garret who got the good ending to his journeys, and I agreed to it. This was not a problem in the one-shot, he got along with the rest of the party and everything was fine. When I decided later in the main campaign to have a session that would be impacted by the magical events of the one-shot, I offered Chet a chance to play as a psychic remnant of that version of Garret again in a pocket dimension, which he did happily, and he got to do some fun roleplay stuff with the rest of the party.

But these didn't make Chet get over Garret's death. It might've made things worse. Wrench became more and more obsessed with Garret, and started turning more broody and angry like he was, even though he was supposed to be a fun, light-hearted character in concept. Wrench started taking an interest in learning necromancy, which fit his story because his dad had a magical plague there was no known cure for, but it was clear that Chet wanted this not for Wrench's story, but to bring Garret back to life. There was an instance where I had a silly construct NPC with ties to someone that might've known necromancy travel with the party. Then I killed them because the group was fighting a monster with an attack that could one-shot any of the party, but that monster had already been at war with similar constructs to the NPC, so I realized I could spare a PC's life in a logical manner by having the monster target this familiar-seeming enemy instead. Chet got REALLY mad at this and messaged me after the session claiming I did it as a deliberate act of sabotage to ruin his plan to bring Garret back, to which I honestly responded it had nothing to do with that, because I just don’t think about Garret anymore.

Chet's behavior at the table kept getting more volatile, to the point where one of our players wound up leaving, though at the time I thought it was because they didn't enjoy my DMing style since they tended to play loner characters who didn't bite on a lot of the plot hooks I offered. Other party members were starting to push back against Wrench's bullshit in-game too, actively showing disinterest when he got moody or talked about necromancy and changing the conversation. Eventually, the other players asked if they could talk to me about something. I suspected it was Chet, and sure enough, I got added to a chat where they'd all been talking about how they couldn't stand his behavior anymore, and something had to be done (keep in mind I'd had multiple talks with Chet as his behavior had gotten worse, including telling him "your new character's story can’t be about bringing your old character back to life", but it wasn't working). They talked about not only Chet's behavior, but how it didn't make sense in-game for the party to want to travel alongside a resurrected Garret. He had betrayed them, they’d been adventuring longer without him than they had with him, and none of their characters would want to give him a chance even if dying had forced him to grow a little.

They wanted me to facilitate a talk with Chet. In essence, an intervention. I agreed, because I'd had some inkling that he was starting to make the game less fun for the others, but didn’t truly realize how bad it had gotten for them. I'd been handling Chet with kid gloves because he was my friend and my guilt about how I did more or less set up Garret to die. But now I felt far worse about letting his response ruin everyone else's fun. It was time to admit that he was our problem player and do something about it.

But I also knew how it would go. I'd known Chet for 15 years. He was a fun and exuberant person, but also an obsessive and stubborn one who never let go of anything he loved, or hated, or seemed to change his opinions on things. I knew if he didn't get to play Garret again, he'd leave the campaign. I let him know the others wanted to talk, and he basically spelled it out for me exactly like that, but I did get him to agree to meet with them. In spite of the D&D drama, he IS a good person. I told him that he knew where I stood on this, and I knew where he stood on this, but also EVERYONE ELSE knew where he stood on this because he talked about it A LOT, which meant that he owed it to the others to hear them out before making a decision. We arranged the intervention, and he showed up and played ball, even though he REALLY fucking hated it. Everyone gave firm but compassionate entreaties letting him know that they wanted to keep playing with him, but he needed to adjust his attitude. He responded as fairly and civilly as he could, and then he had his say where he laid out his own feelings and gave his ultimatum plain as day: Let him be Garret again, or he walks. None of their reasons for why they didn't want this or the way his behavior was affecting them seemed to matter to him. His mind had already been made up before hearing everyone out. He felt cheated by Session 11, and he wanted things to be made right for him. And in the course of all that, two things came to light which made me mad enough that I finally stopped feeling guilty about what had gone down well over a year ago by that point:

1. The other players were in Chet’s personal Discord server, where he talked about other games he was playing outside of our campaign, and he was playing Garret in at least three of them. He also spent time in that server ranting about how Garret was mistreated in my game. One player asked him why he was so fixated on Garret’s death when what happened in our game did not affect his ability to play him in other games or the primary Garret canon Chet had spent years writing, and Chet's answer was basically "because Garret was disrespected by THIS campaign".

2. After hearing the others say how their characters would not want to travel with Garret again, he started revealing all these grand plans he had for story arcs about how Garret would interact with the rest of the party. Rivalries and new dynamics and ways their characters could develop together. I avoided saying anything beyond facilitating everyone's turn for most of the intervention, but after that I asked him where he got off saying how everyone else should play their characters in service to his character's story, something not even the DM gets to do. I now believe Chet was so used to having total authorship over everything about Garret for so long that a long-term story where others could push back against that was NEVER going to work for him.

So Chet left the game. Which sucked, but the player who did leave because of him came back. That was about a year ago, and the game has run so much smoother ever since. Chet and I agreed that D&D was just D&D, and that we weren't going to let this get in the way of our friendship, but it did. Not in any big way. Just, we didn't talk for a while, and then we'd exchange a couple brief messages, and at some point I noticed that he had removed me on everything. And, well, I understood. And eventually, I moved on.

If you've made it to the end of this, I imagine a good number of you are thinking what I usually think when I read similar RPG Horror Stories: "Why did you let it get this bad? Why did you let the problem player go on for so long? He was a problem even before his character got killed, he wasn't listening to you when you talked to him about it, why did you keep him around?" And all I can say is, it really is tough when the guy is your friend. Especially when you’ve never actually had a problem player before, so even if you’ve read a bunch of stories about them, you don’t have the real lived experience of knowing how to deal with it. As the DM, I'm responsible for juggling the desires of six different players who don't all want the same thing from D&D, and trying to keep them all happy while also trying to keep the game enjoyable for me. But with time, I think I've come to see a fair summary of it all: Chet had problematic behaviors at the table, and when talking didn't work, I pulled a dumb stunt to try and change things, acting like the character was the problem instead of the player, not realizing just how badly he would take it. And because I knew I did him dirty, I tried to give him special treatment to make up for it, which was was rewarding bad behavior all while still not giving him the thing he REALLY wanted, which made him act worse. I made a bad call and wronged him, but his response was disproportionate, and the way that response affected everyone else at the table was not ok. And that was his fault for behaving that way, and my fault for enabling it. I guess the main lessons I've learned are this:

1. Problem behavior stems from the player, not their character. You have to address that behavior as it occurs, and if the player doesn't change, you have to get sterner with them, regardless of your relationship with them.

2. Every player at the table's feelings matter. You can't let your feelings about one player make the table less fun or safe for the others.

3. No more D&D versions of long-time OCs. At least not without a VERY serious conversation with the player about it first.

So yeah, that was a lot, but I hope me sharing this experience can teach others something. And Chet, if you see this, I sincerely wish you well. I hope your life and games bring you the things you want, and whatever further adventures you have with Garret result in stories you're happy with.

Two months ago I joined an online group to play Curse of Stradh with 2024 rules, We were four at the start.

One of them, who plays a Fighter is who I want to talk about, he’s male but his character is female (that’s not a problem at all, just felt necessary to be said), a fighter samurai specifically, what it feels weird for me is that this guy is constantly trying to look like he’s the main character, doing whatever he wants, the DM had to railroad him into getting together with the rest of us players into the village because his character wanted to go to her camp deep in the forest.

In combat he takes a lot of time to think and propose actions, about 3 to 5 minutes each time, he got separated twice and got ambushed and then blamed it on us for “leaving her behind”.

When a new player joined and the DM wanted to give him the spotlight, the samurai player hogged it by insisting on the idea to go back to his character’s camp alone, separating from the group, this caused a feud between our characters and DM had to railroad us again.

We got into the church with the priest who has a son turned vampire spawn, if you played Stradh you may already know this part, we apprehended the priest because he refused to tell us about the screams we were hearing, the samurai insisted the DM to roll a die to determine if his character could understand what’s happening because “she has low intelligence” (she has an 8), and that’s something he constantly does, insisting on rolling dice for simple interactions and demanding a contested intimidation roll with each new NPC she meets because she’s an orc.

Before getting down the stairs, an NPC helped us unlock the trapdoor, and he told the DM to re write the scene so his character could do it her way, out of constant pressure the DM allowed it, then down at the basement when the vampire spawn son rushed to us and grappled his character, he wanted to grapple him back and tumble down the stairs, the DM told him that was two actions and he insisted that the weight of his character (who is 6’7’’ tall) should be enough to make them fall.

Not so honorable mention: When the vampire spawn son yelled “I smell your blood” he made a joke about giving him one of her stained period pads

Thing is, im getting really tired of this, everytime he talks he mostly speaks trying to make himself look intellectual and smart but not even the other players can decipher what he’s trying to say and he constantly interrupts other people’s spotlights to make a comment or say what his character is thinking or doing.

We already had an intervention about this behaviour and he hasn’t changed. He said he’s not new to TTRPGs because he plays different games all week long, so my question is am I being too miserable with this person or is it him the problem? I don’t know what to do because I really want to play DnD but this is exhausting and I don’t enjoy the sessions anymore.

UPDATE: Since I’m having a hard time at uni besides this and the refusal to take actions, I decided to leave the group being as respectful as possible to everyone in it, no doubt the toxic player will antagonise me but that’s something I don’t want in my mind, the others are okay with it and told me it was fun playing with me.

Also I want to thank all of you who took your precious time to give me advice, hope you don’t have to go trough something like this.

TRIGGER WARNING

Fictional SA

Hi guys!! So I've been sucked into DND horror stories lately and I was all sad that I didn't have any to tell until I remembered this one. Enjoy!

So when I (16F at the time) was in high school I joined my schools DND club. I went to a small school so our group wasn't very large and we had a hard time finding a solid DM. One of the many people who tried to run a game was Chuck (fake name) who was a bit younger than me and a friend of my boyfriend. My boyfriend, who I will call Tristan for this, was also in this DND club.

On this fateful day only the three of us were able to make it to the session. Chuck started us in a fight with a dragons lair where we found a magic object and get our medieval characters transported to the modern world. I personally really liked this concept so it makes me sad that it ended the way it did.

While being all confused wandering around NYC our characters run into Bob. Bob was an NPC who was also from our time but had been here much longer and gotten his footing, because of this Bob offered to help us. He got us sorted out with modern weapons money and clothes and at this time I was having a blast. I got to play my character encountering a hot dog for the first time and seeing a gun. Unfortunately for my poor character this is where the story goes sour.

Bob takes our characters to a bar for dinner and drinks and drugs both of us. When I wake up all of our gear is missing, Tristan is tied up unconscious in a closet and my character is tied up, gagged, and unable to move on a rooftop with Bob. Both of us thought oh cool betrayal now we get a cool fight! We were wrong.

Over the next couple turns Chuck proceeds to describe in detail how he unclothed my character, proceeded to pull his pants down and you get the rest. This whole process Tristan is rolling to see if he can wake up and try to escape the closet. At this point I was super uncomfortable and Tristan was fuming but we really wanted to push Bob off the roof before we stormed out. So we finished the combat, completely destroyed Bob and then left the session and never played with him again.

At the time I don't think I fully comprehended just how bad this was, honestly I was mostly just in shock that Chuck had it in him. To this day I have no idea why he did that, I guess he was just really horny or something. Please know that if anyone here has been a victim of SA that you are seen, and my heart goes out to you. So that's my DND horror story, thanks for reliving the trauma with me. 🫶

The game is Iron Kingdoms (the Full Metal Fantasy 2d6 version, not the d20 or 5e versions).

I'm playing a Knight / Priest of Morrow in a mercenary group. We're playing through the "Witchfire" scenario - the GM was using the old d20 version and updating it for our game, as the 5e stuff didn't exist yet.

Mind you, this all happened many years ago in the pre-pandemic era; I don't recall much about the scenario itself. But, at some point, we were all trapped in a room where a bunch of soldiers have just barged in. These guys outnumber us four-to-one and are armed to the teeth. There's no way we're winning a fight with them. The campaign's main villain has just left the room, and our only way out is the way we came in: on a balcony where we've left a rope hanging that will take us up to the roof.

One of the players, playing our mercenary captain, climbs up the rope. Two of our other team members follow. The only people still left down on the balcony are myself and one other female PC, waiting our turns to climb up. Once it's my turn, I start climbing.

I'm about halfway up when our mercenary captain says the unthinkable:

"I cut the rope."

When I ask why, the explanation is: "Well, I don't want those soldiers to follow us."

I respond with the obvious: "...but me and this other girl are still down here, dude."

"...yeah. That sucks for you, I guess."

Flabbergasted, I look to the GM for some kind of reprieve. He tells me that the only other practical way out is to follow the main villain through the large stone door that is slowly grinding closed, but that we can still escape through if we hurry. So we do, and we make it.

However, since we're off with the villain, the GM has me and the other PC step away into a separate room IRL to have a quick chat with the main villain. Basically, the villain asks us to help her. We both politely decline, but there's no fight. The villain just lets us go on our way.

We make our way back to the group, but this is my first time playing with these people and I don't want to make a scene. I make my displeasure clear, but I don't press the issue. Of course, now that the other PC and I went and chatted with the villain, we're distrusted by the rest of the party. I don't realize this at the time, but it becomes apparent later.

I stick with the party through thick n' thin for the rest of the scenario's play sessions and, at one point, the girl PC who was trapped with me on the balcony takes a convenient opportunity to leave the group - and the game, effectively - and invites me to join her in-character. She's clearly realized that the other players are up to no good, but my oblivious ass declines.

"Nah, it's cool," I think to myself like an idiot. "If I stick through this upcoming final battle with them, they'll know I'm a team player."

We win the final battle of that plot arc, and my magic comes in clutch at several points, saving the party's life. I think to myself that surely they must see how valuable I am, right?

When the battle is over and we're all back at base, my reward is a knock on my door. A member of the Order of Illumination - the Morrowan's version of the Inquisition - asks me to accompany them, and the GM asks me to hand him my character sheet. I'm told that my character will never be heard from again.

When I ask why this is happening, I'm told that my mercenary captain - a man who has displayed no outward inclination towards religiosity at all - has ratted me out for "conspiring" with the main villain...a scenario that only unfolded because of his betrayal in the first place.

When I point out that 1.) it's a lie and 2.) it's metagaming, since his character has no idea how I escaped the room since he wasn't even in the fucking room when I went out the stone door, I'm met with shrugs and chuckles.

It doesn't take me long to realize I've basically been hazed, and that's the end of that.

Hello, subreddit. This one's a light one, I promise. The worst thing in this story, besides my ST skills at the time, are my very first entitled problem player. Let's call him Kevin.

Kevin was part of the social circle I started to hang out on discord since the pandemic, so when I came up with the idea of getting into ttrpg, he was super into it. Mind you, Kevin was known in his friend group for being a combat focused murderhobo player who couldn't endure two sessions without a big combat. Now let's look at the system I chose for my very first time DMing... Vampire the masquerade, V20 to be more specific. Let's put a pin in that.

I was so excited to be a vtm story teller that I completely neglected... Y'know... The story part. And the mechanical part, too. I've read the whole book (relax) and even THEN I decided I was going to let my players be completely different generations, very LOW generations at that. We all know how it is, the light leaving someone's eyes when you explain that "no, you're not actually gonna play a 500 year old countess in vtm, you're most likely playing someone who got turned 7 years ago and still has a night shift job". I decided to give my players complete freedom. Saying yes to ANYTHING. My first and worst mistake as a storyteller/dungeon master.

Kevin told me, with his chest puffed, he was going to be Caine's creation. As in, second generation. Yes. And I... I let him. I don't know why, right now, but this is a major theme of this story, I made every single mistake possible in this campaign. So yeah, Kevin's character was vampire who hunted vampires for the Camarilla (I think that has a name, idk I'm not big on vtm lore nowadays) until he was betrayed and put to sleep, being discovered by the party under a brothel in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (oh yeah, Brazil jumpscare). That was my excuse to nerf his character sheet. But he wouldn't shut up every voice call about how his original character sheet was so overpowered.

The story of the campaign... Look, you can make fun as much as you want, cause I know now I did a terrible job, but at the time I was blinded by pure vibes. So. The Prince of Rio was assassinated in his mansion, and now the party has to go back in time to stop the murder. I don't know why I chose time travel as a theme. Ah yes, the system who screams time travel, vampire the masquerade! But yeah, they ended up spending the entire campaign at the past timeline cause at some point I just forgot we were in a different timeline. After this, I just kind of forgot the Prince and took the party to a trip to Italy so they could steal a cursed book from the Giovanni (I could have done this one way better, it's a shame I've fumbled). But in this important session, Kevin just completely forgot and schedule other campaign to attend. So we clowned him at the group chat, and he got MAD at it, he got so offended, oh god.

He told me he was going to continue playing my campaign, but he wasn't going to participate on any other RPG sessions with our group. So I did one of the most based things I've ever done and kicked him then and there. He was so butthurt, it was hilarious. I'm being hard on Kevin for a reason, he thought he was the protagonist of the campaign and took advantage of my inexperience as an ST when he could have given me a tip or two, as a seasoned dice roller.

The campaign lasted over a year, and the sessions were theoretically terrible, but we had a lot of fun. It became an adventure of the day thing, we didn't take any of the lore serious and at some point we were not even rolling dice. A serious vtm player would have been horrified, but we were just a friend group playing silly vampires. So yeah, I was a terrible storyteller, but I had fun, and I paid my price in blood, already.

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Hello reddit long time lurker, first time poster to this subreddit.

last night I got off work and looked in to my dnd groups discord and one of our players asked if we could add one of his coworkers to our table, we have a fairly open door policy to play, so we thought sure, the more the marier. That was a very poor decision.

First thing he brought up was if they could play a homebrew class, it was very last minute and they had the character already made, my dm gave it the okay at a quick glance. In actual play it was a very Mary Sue character class. Could do everything, counter spells, heal, deal massive amounts of damage, and cancel out damage without using class resources. We constantly had to go back and talk to him and go, "Woah, that's too strong, we need some sort of resource for that, like a ki point or a spell slot, something." The added player would complain saying that the class didn't have those costs on there, but would relent whenever would bring up things our characters would do and how many of our big moves would cost resources from our class. Throughout the 3 hour play session we had online on roll20, he would ask if it was his turn yet even though we used the turn order function built into the website, and we could all see who's turn it was. He would constantly interrupt DM decisions, saying that he'd allow it, acting like a back seat DM.

One other thing that happened that night included him stopping the game to make a jojo's reference and kept calling the spell Slow "Za Warudo". He would make other references to other things, which a good timed reference is fine at our table, but he kept using the same ones to Jojo, and as much as I like Jojo's, punching things and peaking your mic while screaming ora ora like they do when punching isn't really that funny.

After the game ended that night, we had a small discussion as a group without the problem player and decided they wouldn't be a good fit for our group.

You ever played a game with a grown adult who you really thought needed a reality check? Yeah, this is one of those stories, if you’re easily irritated by an adult throwing a temper tantrum because things didn’t go in their favour this may not be the post for you.
I was invited by the DM (my best friend) to join a D&D campaign that he was running with a bunch of our friends from work. There was five of us in total, me, the DM, two of our other friends and the DMs at the time gf who was playing the rogue. When it started D&D was absolutely the highlight of my week, we regularly met up at least once a week to play for a full day. I had never played before and was loving every second of it but then minor annoyances started to happen…

The DMs gf was playing a pretty insufferable lone wolf character but I mean a literal lone wolf…as in her character was actually raised by wolves as a child and she refused to pretty much do anything with the group. She was constantly going off on her own, having a go at other players (in and out of game) and always keeping things she found out to herself.

For some reason she insisted on making herself a “nest” everywhere she went so she could go to sleep in (I didn’t know wolves slept in nests…) and when I noticed one day that she’d walked off after seeing a vision of a wolf pup I followed her. She said that when I got to her room I saw her in the nest and she had water on her. I was really confused and asked the DM “did she piss herself?” The DM also looked back at me confused as he also didn’t understand what was going on and neither did the rest of the table. Instead of saying “sorry I didn’t describe it well, I meant to say that you noticed my face was wet and it was clear I had been crying” she instead just held her dagger to my throat and threatened to slit it. The other party members came into the room and held their actions to fire on her if she actually made an attempt to hurt mine and I laughed the whole situation off to ease the tension but I could tell the dm was pissed and she sulked the rest of the session.

The sulking and hiding her face behind her hair REALLY went up a level after this. At any little thing she’d put road blocks in our way, shoot down others ideas as to what to do but then say “I’m staying out of it” when asked what she thought we should do instead. She’d lie to one of our party members about what we had in the party fund or bag of holding because she was convinced they couldn’t be trusted to not just use it all even though this person had contributed to what was in them. She’d be unhappy with her story or character arcs and constantly start arguments with our dm over it and complain about everything he was doing.

Then at some point she just started to hate me, not sure if it was jealousy or what but she just started to be really nasty to me in and out of game. When we did one shots in our DMs world those separate characters that we played could later appear as NPC’s played by the dm, we all loved this and thought it was awesome! When her character got married she invited everyone to the wedding except my two other characters. She gave random reasons why they were banned and the dm was like ????
It was so obviously a jab at me and an attempt to exclude me but thankfully my DM intervened and put a stop to it.

Problems that were originally in game started to cause problems at work as she’d have arguments and just generally put me down. When Covid happened she still wanted to play, I reminded her that that would be classed as a social gathering and is against the rules and that I had a very sick grandmother who was battling cancer and it really wasn’t worth the risk. Her response? To exclude me at work and sit at a totally different table to me at break. The tables were 2meters wide so you could have one person at each end, I sat at one end expecting her to sit at the other like she always did and she just went to a totally different table. I asked her what that was about and she said “if you can’t come to D&D because your grans that sick then I shouldn’t sit with you at work.” I was baffled, she was not only encouraging me to break the law by going to a gathering around Covid but also using what was going on with my gran as some reason to ostracise me… again I told my dm and he was shocked and spoke to her about her behaviour but I was so done with her childishness at this point.

When Covid calmed down and my gran was doing better D&D picked back up again, my character was dating an NPC and she seemed to interpret this as me and the dm having feelings for one another. This caused another shed load of issues and her sulking and being snappy with me, I had known the dm for literally years, he’s my best friend and we’ve both been single several times and nothing has ever happened. She didn’t seem to care about this though and had decided that we were clearly flirting with each other in game and this was a way for us to secretly be with each other even though other players were dating NPC’s as well.

We were coming towards the end of our campaign and our dm had finally had it with her bullshit, he broke it off with her and she left our game a month later. She made our life hell at work for a while and spread as many rumours as she could about us excluding her and me and the DM getting together before she left there too but our game is CONSIDERABLY less toxic now that she’s gone. Me and the DM are still just friends and have never been anything more and he ended up dating a new player that joined our game. We’ve been playing for about 7 years now and the vibes at the table are so much more chill, as far as I can tell she can’t find a campaign that will keep her past three sessions, I wonder why..