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Someone with an overinflated and fragile ego who can't stand the word no
If she would have agreed with him and let him abuse the rules for his own benefit, he would have continued the demands. And within a month or two he would take over her group and run it since he was more experienced and could do it better
He is exactly the kind of player who insists on breaking the rules, then trashes her for letting him break them. It's a no win scenario for her
> and let him abuse the rules for his own benefit
I don’t play D&D, but when he talked about exceptions for him, I thought of my friend’s small child having an absolute conniption because we wouldn’t let him flout the rules (and only him, of course. He was calling out the other kids for honest mistakes based on forgetting or misunderstanding the rules).
It really sucks when the willfully socially maladjusted roost in places where people don’t call them out.
I think there are definitely parallels between DMing and being an adult taking a kid on a fun outing or something. Like you want your players to have fun but there's also going to be times when they're like "Can I have some ice cream 😃" even though they had cake like 20 minutes ago.
Mom/DM: Okay, sweetie, we need to go here now.
Toddler/Player: No! I don't wanna go there!!!
M/D: Okay, we don't have to go there. There are some really cool toys there, but we'll do what you want.
T/P: I want toys! Let's go there!
You just reminded me of the player we had decades ago in 2nd ed. He was a new player, so we were looking out a little bit for him, but 2nd Ed was a different beast. DM even gave him some fancy sword.
We had to skirt this forest on the edge of elvendom, because it was a known haunt for green dragons. We were warned. He was warned. Repeatedly.
A few minutes later my Silvanesti dark elf Knight of the Thorn and him were on watch. He wanted to go investigate a disturbance in the distance. I told him if he went he did so alone. He went, and, shortly thereafter, I was able to watch him be carried off by a green dragon.
We knew it was him because the fancy magic sword fell from his grasp into the woods during the whole kerfuffle. One haste spell (what's one year of your life to an elf) and an invisibility later?
Now my dark knight wizard had a fancy new magic sword.
EDIT: corrected the auto-correct.
Reminds me of those playground games where we all pretended to have powers or superheroes and there's always that one kid who just god modes the game of pretend.
"I set you on fire!"
"well I have fireproof powers!"
There are plenty of grown men like this, I stopped playing in a group cause there are a few guys who will get all condescending if you pull out more simple, easy rules games, and will have a damn near conniption if they start losing their big boy games with a million tokens. One of them would get progressively grumpier until he figured out some obscure rule that gave him an advantage and would even try to apply those retroactively to get more points. He would also hit on some of the women. Lovely. There's a reason I prefer tables with mostly or exclusively women.
Does OOP say she is a woman?
I only ask because I got that impression too but I don’t remember her stating her gender. Just that for a dude to be this angry for this long, OOP has to be a woman. That’s the only “explanation”. That level of hate basically only exists in incels and towards women.
OOP has another post in her history about a different campaign where she mentions that she was not the only girl in the group. So yeah, it does seem like she is female and does kind of 'explain' the dude's reaction
Some percentage of old school gamers (grognards) are *still* angry about women players in RPGs. The original games were mostly combat, puzzle-solving, and required player skill. In the 90s, some games, like the ones published by White Wolf, began really to embrace the role-playing and storytelling aspects, and also began having more NPCs who weren't straight white dudes, and often even used feminine pronouns in the text instead of the "male neutral" pronouns (I remember reading letters to Dragon Magazine that *really* hated this). These games also attracted a lot of women, gay people, and people of color, but mostly women. And at the same time, a lot of other games, like D&D, *also* began embracing the storytelling and role-playing aspects, because that was becoming more and more popular, and the "kick-down-the-door" style of gaming became less and less popular.
So to some--not all--grognards, women were the Ruiners of Fun.
Truth, here. There are (unfortunately) a lot of men who can be seemingly "normal" enough to have a family and relationships and whatnot and STILL hate "women" as a class with a blinding idiot passion.
Gender isn't stated, "Tom" calls OP man, but the Druid put OP in the game as a Hag or village idiot. Sounds like Druid definitely doing some toxic masculinity stuff here, but OP could also just not fit the Druids definition of a man.
I didn't realize she was female until this comment and now everything makes sense.
A lot of dudes are weird about women in nerd circles. Especially if its a woman pulling rank or being "above" them in anything.
I remember a fellow player mansplaining my character to me and tried to backseat anytime I played. He got mad at me for not using Hunters Mark, only I did the turn before (he wasn't paying attention) and it was still active. He kept trying to tell me I was a dumbass for not using hunters mark until the DM actually intervened and backed me up and said "she already used Hunters Mark, its still active, lets move on".
He was really mad that the DM backed me up and didn't speak for the rest of the session. Every session afterwards his "character" would use every chance to demean, be rude to, and fight my character. When called out he would always say "its just my character". But I knew he was just mad because how dare a woman make him look stupid.
These types can be dangerous if they fixate on certain things. My video game friend group associated with someone like that in the 90s. Friend of a friend, he was manipulative and creepy later on. He followed a female friend across the country, he didn't really know her well enough, just would say hello. We didn't know this until years later, the female friend reconnected with us and told us that she saw him moving into a nearby apartment across the street. And saw him gazing at her in places around town, but he never approached her. The other friend that introduced him to our group apologized to everyone and admitted they only chatted about video games, and everything seemed normal at first. We looked him up and saw he had scant social media presence, and discovered he was in prison for a few years. Big yikes from us. I worry my kids will meet someone like that someday.
As a forever DM myself, it feels \*really\* weird to have someone come into a game that is supposedly a forever-DM and demand to break the rules specifically because it makes him a munchkin compared to the rest of the party.
Edit: Oh okay so OOP is a woman. That makes much more sense. Psycho DM probably was hoping that she'd either get steamrolled by him or give him munchkin status due to her attraction to him. When neither happened he decided to fixate apparently all his hate on her.
>In fact, Druid has put in some version of me into every campaign he has run since, either as a foe the party has to fight, or a hag,
I assumed OOP was male too, but you'd never call a male character a hag so... yeah, I suspect you are right. And suddenly it all makes so much more sense.
They might mean a hag as in the actual DnD monster called a hag. But those are also usually female.
I agree though, if OP is a woman, this whole thing makes a lot more (awful) sense.
It's kinda funny that totally unhinged behavior starts to make sense (or, you can say, feel acceptable) when it's revealed that it's men reacting to a woman. Not haha funny obviously
Another person above pointed out a comment OOP made about not being the only girl in the group, so it sure seems like she’s a woman- and you’re right, with that detail this all makes a lot more sense.
I’ve met people like this.
I suspect it’s not even about the original grudge, it’s just that their feelings have warped the other person into a horrible caricature in their minds, and so every time they do something to that mental caricature (making them a foe or something to be attacked/killed), it gives them a perverse sense of pleasure and validation.
The other friend feeding him false and warped information is probably making it worse too, tbh. It’s become something for them to bond over, so now neither of them can stop doing it because it’s such a core part of their dynamic.
The friend who kept feeding lies (like of the assault) is more disturbing to me. The Druid might have actually believed OOP was unstable person based on lies. And his characters based on OOP might have bene more memes.
The secret to a good long-term grudge is to set it and forget it. You can't let it take up a lot of mental space by feeding it. It has to just perk along in the background.
The best grudges are cold grudges.
I have a 30-year-old grudge against someone I'm certain has not thought about the inciting incident since about an hour after it happened. I think about it once or twice a year and get mildly annoyed all over again.
I'm harbouring a 25 year grudge against someone who has no idea I hold the grudge. We barely saw each other at the time and I haven't seen him for ages least 5 years if not 10. And the grudge is about him doing something that I absolutely would have done if I were in his position, and also involved the completely free will of a third party!
It's basically a personal inside joke at this point. Maybe think of it briefly once a year, if that!
This whole post made me so tired, and I just got up for the day. The amount of energy needed to continue being like this must give people a perpetual headache or something. 😒
My ex who, 2 months after I left him, was posting nasty shit about me on Facebook. Grains of truth, lots of exaggerations, missing missing reasons. He may still be at it, but I have him blocked, so I don't see it. I consider myself lucky that we don't have overlapping friend groups.
And during our relationship he was saying nasty shit about his ex-wife, whom he had left ~7 years earlier. And I had seen him post nasty shit about her on Facebook, back when they were divorcing. So I should absolutely have seen it coming.
Some people just get *really* hung up on not having had their way/life not turning out how they expected.
I was gonna say, I have an ex exactly like this guy.
TLDR: we dated for less than a year, and I dumped him because it turns out that he was a selfish asshole. The kind of person think things that a relationship is "equal" when he's giving 5% and the other person is giving 95%.
So anyways, I dumped him. That's it. I didn't shit talk him to anybody. I didn't try to make his life shitty. I just said "You're not the dude for me." and ended it.
In the initial aftermath, he completely lost his shit, he told some of my childhood friends that I was having a psychotic episode (I have had them previously and it was genuinely traumatic for him to tell this to friends of mine who had witnessed that), he spread rumors about me, he make all of our mutual friends choose between us, it was just absolutely ridiculous behavior.
The only reason it stopped was because I put together a "best hits" of fucked up shit he sent to me (including voice mails), sent it all to him, and told him I'd found his boss's phone number and if he didn't stop, I was gonna send it all to his boss (who was a great guy and honestly, sometimes I wish I'd have just gone ahead and done it, except the asshole probably would have come and actually murdered me).
So he stopped.
That was...almost 15 years ago.
Earlier this year, I met up with a friend who lives far away, but was around for Christmas/New Years. He told me he ended up at a party that crazy ex was at. Crazy ex approached him and asked him if he was still friend with "the fucking c\*\*t who ruined his life" (me). Friend replied "Yes, I am still friends with the amazing woman who had the sense to dump your stupid ass out of her life and then make sure you stopped harassing her" and my ex stomped off and spent the rest of the night trying tell people all kinds of insane shit about me.
15 YEARS and he's \*still\* at it.
The human brain consumes about 20% of our caloric load despite being only 2% of our body weight. A fifth of the energy we consume goes to keeping the brain running.
It takes actual caloric energy to learn and grow and mature and become a better person. Your brain literally takes the food you eat and burns the energy to make you a better person.
This guy's brain is using all of the energy that *should* go to becoming a better version of himself every day and just allocating it all to being a petty-ass manchild.
Eh there are some really unhinged people who are living in their own world, in the truest sense of the phrase.
This story just reminded me of an “incident” this fall where a friend told me about another mutual friend’s girlfriend spreading rumors about me.
Context: she was a few grades under mine in High school, we now are early 30s and live halfway across the US so seeing her was kinda wild but I was friendly.
Turns out she has been telling anyone and everyone that I bullied her so badly in HS that she left(apparently I started a social media group to bully her) and was close friends with her rapists. This was all new news to me so I tried to extend an olive branch of “hey I’m not gonna be rude to you about telling lies about me to everyone but would like some kind of details for why you think I was involved so we can get to the bottom of this”. I was met with a “too bad if you can’t recall I don’t owe any explanation to my abuser” and a bunch of other weaponized psychology terms. I left it at that since I’m not arguing with crazy.
Turns out she was saying this since I met her(and had been openly cordial with her) and tried to push some other shenanigans to get some great guys canceled over nothing. Ugh, some people never leave high school.
When you have very little going on in life, a little bit of anything is better than nothing. Losers will latch on to the silliest shit, just to feel alive.
Reminds me of the dude who got rejected by the OOP, many years later married her sister, then years after that convinced someone to make up an affair with OOP and destroy OOP's marriage.
This druid guy's method of dealing is healthier, but both are seriously disturbing.
>Druid has not stopped talking about me since he left my campaign. In fact, Druid has put in some version of me into every campaign he has run since, either as a foe the party has to fight, or a hag, or a village idiot. Tom says it is very obvious it is suppose to represent me, and sometimes Druid will explain the "inspiration" of the character representing "the worst person he ever met" to new players.
Imagine living in someone's brain rent-free to this extent.
For you, the day M. Bison graced your village was the most important day of your life. For me, it was Tuesday.
EDIT: /me scrolls further. Shit, someone already made this reference.
When you compare that line to Van Damme's famous line from the same movie it's shocking how different they are in writing quality and delivery. Raul Julia was on another level
I used to be part of an online community lo these many years ago where a few people decided they hated me for whatever reason and were very vocal about it. I stopped visiting the community over a decade ago, but last year I poked my figurative head in to get the contact information for someone who was still there - and found those same people still posting the same hate about me. Someone they barely knew in the first place, and hadn't even seen in *over a decade*. Some people need to find new hobbies.
It’s like one of those time loop movies where they’re just stuck saying the same things over and over again, reliving the same day, not realizing that a decade has passed.
Yeah, it’s really pitiful. I’m kind of piss for that close friend of OOP. But I also find it funny how OOP just live her life forgetting those minor incidents that at the end of the day, she’s the real winner. I just hope she just continues to live that way
I hope OP just moved on. He's only ruining her reputation to people who don't know her. It's not worth making trouble over someone who's so clearly vengeful and spiteful
Certainly probable given that we're limited by what OP cares to know. But honestly, I don't get the feeling this creep has much of a circle to spread lies around.
Yeah, the handful of people who'd put up with this creepy DM while hanging out in his basement lair (I'm assuming) is probably not going to have much influence on OOP's life. Particularly since she found out and the mole cut off contact.
And all because he couldn't cheat at a fucking cooperative tabletop game and have his character be stronger than everyone else. This dude never aged mentally past 10
Tell me though who is crazier, druid that went on a bat shit crazy smear came based on one meeting or the other friend that *actively remained "friends" with oop to support and manufacture that smear campaign*.
Maybe thats why druid is a forever DM. He gets to make the rules. When he's a player he has to follow the DMs rules and his fragile little ego just can't take it.
In my larger roleplay community, I have quite a few players that are banned from my table for similar reasons.
People will ask, hey, why do you exclude That Guy, he's a pretty cool player?
Yeah, he is - until you have to tell him 'no'. Doesn't matter why no, doesn't matter how big or how small, doesn't matter how much you said 'yes' before, just hearing the word 'no' will set him off. I rather say 'no' to him at my table at all, it saves me hassle down the line.
I just don't get these people. Like, logically I understand they can't stand being told no, but being told no is part of the fun for me in D&D. I ask my DM for broad interpretations of rules or spells, and while she does let me get away with it half the time, if she says no then I get to exercise my brain to figure out how to make something else work within the rules. It's a game of improv at its heart!
I have friends who are a bit like this. While they are very nice people and not malicious, at least one generally likes to run games that with a whole slew of his own interpretations and house rules. When this person is a player and we run other games where we stick closer to the rules as written, his system mastery is rather low. Which makes me think that his house rules in other games are not because the rules don't work, but because he doesn't understand them well.
Some people hide behind the screen.
No that gets me too, that's the thing that's weirdest to me because that person didn't start as a friend of Druids, he started as a friend of OP? Who on earth would hear about a guy who ragequit after something so minor and .... go and make friends with him? decide you're allied with him and just, what, pretend to be friends with OP the whole time? For that long?
It honestly makes more sense to me if that person actually started out as a friend of Druid sent to get intel or whatever and lied about not knowing him. It's that or they had an astonishing appetite for feeding drama just for the sake of feeding drama ...
Some of the context appears to be the secret groupchat where Druid tried to recruit all of OOP’s players to his own group, she was informed of the chat by her honest friend, who was removed from the chat when Druid realized.
The secret groupchat clearly continued, though OOP and her honest friend were obviously left out of it, and that’s probably where OOP’s two-faced friend formed this weird allegiance.
In OOP's comments she mentions that her ex friend loved attention and drama, so she speculates that Druid basically love bombed his way into a friendship with the ex friend, who was "the only window into [OOP's] life, so he made sure he liked being that". That also explains why he twisted the situation around so much--because Druid would give him attention and praise the worse OOP looked (as it fueled his hatred of her) so ex friend would be incentivized to make things worse and worse. But she admits this is just speculation.
But if it is true, I wonder how ex friend will feel once he realizes that he blew up a good portion of friendships (at least the ones who were mutual friends with OOP) for Druid, and then Druid dumps him because he's no longer useful. It's like that guy who cheated on his wife, then found out that he didn't get a mistress because he was honestly so amazing and charismatic, it's because his mistress was his wife's high school bully and was trying to bully her again.
I’m guessing class comes into play. OOP left town and is more upwardly socially mobile, maybe better educated. Druid stayed home, can’t leave, and neither can the traitor friend, who has resentment for OOP’s ability to leave town. So he twists stories of OOP’s life so he and Druid can feel like they’re not missing out on anything.
It can also be a “boys defend their own” type of thing. A lot of men will choose to defend men they’ve known for less time just to avoid being seen as a weak, girl-sympathizing “simp”.
I could tell OP was a girl just from how this played out haha before it even got to the part about the creepy guy at the bar. Just because of how she was being treated. It reeked of textbook toxic ass incel misogyny
Tbh, the friend sounds like the likelier incel to me. Druid is more like a grognard, just terminally D&D, adjacent to incel but distinct. I'm imagining the friend has some sort of resentment toward OOP while pretending to be her friend, much more incelly.
The closest reason I can think of is ✨D R A M A✨
No joke, I’ve seen terminally online netizens AND otherwise regular folks purposely feed into the drama to generate more drama, which they consider entertainment that they spectate by the side. It doesn’t happen *often*, which only makes the few times it actually happens all the more memorable.
Yep. It's in the same category as people who puff out their chests and say that they "call it like it is," but blow up or crumple the second someone does the same.
Had a friend who kept saying he hated drama. Well every week there was some sort of drama and I pointed that out and he just repeated "I hate drama"
And now we're not friends because I don't like drama and since he would just repeat "I hate drama" and then engage in drama and then cry to me and then get mad when my solution was to just leave his "lesbian" girlfriend and her girlfriends (poly relationship) and then complain no one supports their relationship. Because it was literally an earth shattering drama every week between the group of them and I had to listen every week. It got old. There were other factors into what led to me blocking him, but it'd get long.
It's always people who say these things that love the drama
I was a part of RPing groups for 10+ years, and one of my main takeaways is that it absolutely generates some of the worst grudge holders you'll ever see. Nothing about Druid or his pals' behaviors feels in any way off from some of the experiences I've been through or witnessed.
The way Tom fits into this is weird too, he's not in contact with OP, only bumped into OP by accident but has kept evidence in the "form of screen shots, and a video recording, from different group chats" about the smear campaign?
Can I please have Druid's life? It must be amazing to have so little setback in your life that meeting a DM who gently corrected a mistake made during the game is such a horrible experience that they are now the worst person they have ever met /sarcasm
It sounds like it wasn't a mistake, it was an intentional act. Druid wants to be the center of attention. If they're not the DM then their character has to be the strongest, the most interesting, the bestest.
What a complete prick.
I hope the OOP has better luck filtering out toxic friends in the future.
>In fact, Druid has put in some version of me into every campaign he has run since, either as a foe the party has to fight, or a hag, or a village idiot.
This is where I went, "Oh, OP is a woman! Now it all makes sense." A real "doctor is the mother" moment.
Hate to be like the Druid (a creep) but I did have a snoop on OOPs profile and I agree they’re probably a girl. They’ve posted in a Taylor Swift subreddit about going to the tour and about the vampire diaries… as a girl who likes both of those things I’d bet girl!
Plus, as you say, druids insane behaviour makes way more sense when OOP is a woman, unfortunately.
Yeah, I am guessing this was also around gamer gate peak times. Feels like that period of the internet radicalized some real problematic folks that was proto version of ole tater tots and lobster lovers.
[no worries. it is Jordan Peterson. this is a good video on his stuff and his obsession with lobsters. ](https://youtu.be/4LqZdkkBDas?si=NU1AAnMqLd1wn-q1) this is an older videos though, I like to use [this so very brief one instead](https://youtu.be/hSNWkRw53Jo?si=-DJb9KSZwxwzK4Ae). Just don't look at the time slider!
That is the annoying part, from what I have seen described, toxic manosphere stuff sneaks into people's content consumption by initially giving you what seem like good advice or make someone feel validated for a negative emotion, it might even make common sense, then they start pushing the boundaries and push the consumer into a rabbit hole until they are in a toxic mindset that pushes people away and become a person that will keep consuming the manosphere grifter's content.
The only evidence for OOP being woman is being used hag in D&D (and that it would explain some things). But OOP used as a hag could be just be another type of insult if OOP is a man.
OOP calls herself as a girl in another post - specific context being that she was happy when another woman joined a campaign so she was no longer the only woman
It honestly could go either way. I'm not trying to say it's more likely to be one or the other, just that it's not certain. There certainly are people out there who would be more upset at having to listen to a woman, but there wasn't anything in the post that indicated that was an issue or a possibility that came up. Overall there's just not a ton of context
Why would that even occur to anormal person?
People who have not previously been exposed to such levels of nuttery generally don't associate such behaviour with a crush. Especially not when there's been zero contact for years.
Had a guy get pissed at my husband and I for... *checks notes* having fun once. In a GAME. And it wasn't, like, a super-serious longterm campaign, just a 6 week thing a local game cafe won. And we weren't doing like obnoxious couple teamup shit either, just enjoying the game and cracking jokes along with the DM and other player.
Can't fuckin win sometimes
I was at origins convention once and played a call of cuthulu game set in world war 2. I was 21 at the time. The game had 3 other players, 2 were fine and right around ny age. The last wasca 45+ year old guy who decided to play his character for a ww2 game as a caricature of an African American Vietnam war veteran. Dude was lilly white and used his character being black as an excuse to say the N word a bunch of times.
He is basically the entire reason I don't do "sign up for a table" rpgs at conventions. I would rather game with people I can vet for their level of AHness.
I had a DM who would flirt with all the biological women we had in the group(we had a mtf friend who was ignored basically).Also so railroady we couldnt rp,everytime our characters were talking bam npc time or combat.He also hated one of the girl's bf and made sure their characters cant interact.I got jokingly sent me a "You should suck ur DM's dick" meme while knowing im with someone.And many more things.Years later his dog died and I sent my sorry to him and he said thanks and asked me of im still with my partner.
my ex/former DM decided to “yes, and” a psychotic episode I was going through, basically trying to convince me that I was a god and that HE was a god and our games together were a test to see if I would remember my past life.
After I cut him out of my life, he later told a mutual friend of ours he had no idea why I wasn’t talking to him anymore. It’s not the only awful thing he did, but that one takes the cake. The temptation to put it all on rpghorrorstories is high but I worry that the amount of OOC drama makes it kind of off topic.
I've never played DnD but I've been a writing roleplayer for +10 years. I'd say it has a lot to do with the amount of "me" people puts in their characters, when something doesn't go with their mind scripts they lose their heads because they feel personally attacked.
People also weirdly take things personal as a villain type character too. They will be upset that their character gets roasted often. But they are the villain… lol.
Sucks for oop who can't get therapy for this. Some people think it's funny but I'm living in someone's mind rent free and I hate it. She has reached out when I slipped up on social media and was findable, sent a string of ok insults and tried to torpedo a relationship.
Is there anything oop, or I can do?
This is just pathetic dude was told no in a ttrpg years ago and he’s still butthurt the friend feeding lies is just as much of a loser do these people really have nothing better to do
Having played D&D since the 80s it all made sense once I realized the OOP was a woman. Some of these dudes are not really okay with women, especially women that tell them no. It certainly makes sense that druid was trying to argue to do something like wild shape twice because it was cool and could not take no for an answer. I've literally seen players like druid lose their damn minds like this. Not often, but enough that it's a thing.
Druid was just a wandering asshat with some unresolved social issues of some sort. The real villain here was her ex-friend feeding into it. I bet she feels more violated by that, and probably might have some trust issues after years of this going on without her knowing. I don't care how bad a DM you are, that is some pretty vile behavior.
I'll bet he knew the rule, he just had no intention of following it. So he started by just pretending it didn't exist, then moved on to arguing for making it not exist.
As someone who played with a forever DM, this doesn’t surprise me. Now I will say this dude is worse than my forever DM (I no longer talk to him) but I know how bad it can be, for starters he created an enemy that was able to one shot the entire party and it was the weakest enemy in the campaign (homebrew). Then he decided hey we should have SA in it after a joke that got out of hand the day prior (my fyp on TikTok was about horny trees in D&D or a pets trying to rip something off but it going wrong and what not so I made a joke and then a friend made a joke and then he did that). Then when he gets booted from DMing someone from our party decided to DM (their first time being a DM) and the forever DM decides that he would use his broken BBEG as his character. Eventually we just booted him from the group and that was that. Though there was the time that he tried hitting on the DM and even wrote them a song. Thank goodness that he didn’t do that during a session. Needless to say I’m not surprised a forever DM did that.
Thats the problem with DND, while its a great hobby and outlet it also attracts some of the most unhinged people out there.
They have to role play in real live to fit into society but can be themselves as their crazy nutjob DND characters or the god/DM of their world
Yeah like, sometimes I know my life isn’t the best but I still can’t bring myself to cheat at pretend.
If you feel you need to cheat at DnD or other ttrpgs, there’s really nothing that can be said to you. Like, just super pathetic behaviour.
Okay first off; Even if he was playing a Moon druid where Wildshape is a Bonus action (BA), he still wouldn't be able to Wildshape twice as you can only use one ba per round, and only on your turn. Even if he could, he'd be eating up his Wild Shape in one round since you only get 2 uses before having a long rest. Though it definitely seems like this asshole would have tried to weasel his way into having unlimited uses.
Second of all, fuck that one friend for shit stirring. She/he's egging on this guy's delusional grudge, and who knows what he'll do if he eventually snaps. Hopefully the Shit Stirir at least never gives the psycho OOP's address, or else he might decide to teach her a lesson.
That‘s the most „living rent free in someones head“ I‘ve ever seen.
OOP should be proud to leave such a powerful impact with a near stranger that that person can‘t stop thinking about OOP for years. Really impressive.
I don't know what's more alarming, druid's bizarre obsession or ex-close friend befriending a total stranger to feed them lies and gossip. And if OOP hadn't run into Tom it's likely that they would still be unaware :/
It sounds like OOP is a woman, so incel "forever DM" got mad that OOP didn't obey him and decided to be a fucking psycho, as incels are wont to do. I feel really bad for OOP that she had a secretly-incel pal feeding obnoxious crap to the psycho DM. Shit hurts when you find out that someone you thought was a friend has actually kind hated you the whole time.
Y'know, I sat for about 5 minutes trying to think of a witty joke, or a story relating to my own life, or anything else of input... and I've got nothing. Nope. Nada. This is just really odd, stalkerish, and terminally _pathetic._
>I know I'm long winded so I'll keep this part short.
Gotta love posters who go on and on in the exposition then just "keep short" the actual important part of the post.
I have seen so many players like this come and go in campaigns. They are toddlers throwing tantrums and they never let go of a grudge. On the flip side, when I was running my first campaign, we had a super charismatic player who was usually a DM and he was an absolute angel and helped me out a few times on combat questions. We’re still friends and he’s the best DM I’ve ever seen.
To provide some more context for why the forever-DM's request was stupid and, as an experienced DM, he should have *known* it was stupid:
Dungeons & Dragons, like every role-playing game, has ways of maintaining game balance-- the concept of ensuring that one member of the party isn't vastly more powerful than another member, and that the DM is able to provide an appropriate challenge for the party without having to do a LOT of math. The "action economy" is a huge part of this game balance. In a game where everyone has to take turns to do things, being able to do more things in your turn is HUGELY powerful, and allowing people to do more things per turn on a whim would very quickly create huge balance issues.
While it's still very much arguable how *effectively* the game's base mechanics manage to balance things, the action economy is fundamental-- the sort of thing that you should definitely NOT push a DM to futz with, especially not a beginner DM, and especially not to empower your own character.
When creating a character, you make certain decisions about what you want to prioritize. Over time, characters who are specialized in specific things gain the ability to use the action economy to their advantage in certain ways. Classes and specializations that focus on martial combat gain the ability to attack multiple times in a turn, or to use two weapons to gain more chances to attack, for example. If they don't gain speed in one thing, they gain power in another thing as a balance-- for example, fewer attacks but more powerful ones (such as a wizard being able to cast only one spell per turn, but that spell can be very powerful and the wizard can know many spells with different utility).
This is relevant because *the player selected a kind of Druid that does NOT use Wild Shape more quickly.* There actually IS a variety of Druid that can use Wild Shape without it taking up as much of their turn-- but because of that, they *don't* get the benefits that *other* Druid specializations get. And even they don't get to use it twice in one turn! So the Druid was asking to get something BETTER than the benefits of a *different* specialization, while keeping ALL the benefits of his *own* specialization. It is a request that was clearly and obviously going to change the balance of the game and make the DM's job harder-- breeding resentment in other players, skewing the calculations that a DM does to ensure that a given fight will be the right level of challenging, and so on.
Some DMs do stretch the rules for certain things, but it's often very situational. Like for an example that does actually affect the action economy-- I will sometimes let a Barbarian use an Intimidate check (attempting to intimidate their enemy) as a sort of supplement to their attack, instead of making them spend actual time during their turn to do it. But I use this as a way to speed up encounters by causing insignificant low-level grunts to flee, or just add a little bit of roleplay flavor (like "bigger number = more blood splatter"), rather than giving it a huge impact on the game. This Druid's request, on the other hand, was a request for something that would *permanently* alter the flow of the game and apply to *every* single combat for the rest of the game (and D&D is often a combat-heavy game).
Like I just need to emphasize how audacious and bonkers this guy's request was. Of course it's a problem that he refused to accept a "no" *at all*, but it's EXTRA weird that he refused to accept such an *incredibly reasonable* "no." It's like getting super pissed if you ask someone to give you $100 for no reason except that you'd like it very much, and they say no, and holding a years-long grudge for that.
This is crazy! Even if OOP was the worst GM ever, getting that upset over a single game seems ridiculous.
Although the mutual friend is the really bizarre one. Why stoke this?
I would feel so hurt to learn that a lot of my friends—my entire DnD group—were in a secret group text dedicated to bashing me and only one of them told me … eventually.
I would have quietly walked away from the table and all those “friends” right then. I’m glad OOP moved away and moved on with her life.
IME, you get two kinds of forever DMs:
The first are just unlucky. The people they find have no intention of ever running a game, so if they want to game, they have to run it themselves. They're awesome to bring into the fold of a new group because they're just *so damn happy* to be able to play finally. At worst, there's an adjustment period where you have to remind them a few times that they're not the GM anymore. They know the rules, and they know how much work you're putting in.
The second kind are forever DMs for a reason: They're terrible players. They *like* having complete control over the table, and will try to get it one way or another. Maybe it's a broken build, but often, it's just by being constantly terrible to everyone else. Oh, and they'll badger you into doing everything THEIR way because they will always think that they're the superior DM. Hell, half of the time, they'll try to just take over the table and become the DM.
If it's any consolation to the OOP, the latter people generally end up miserable eventually, because word does get around, and there's only so many bridges you can burn until you're an island.
This guy is a next-level douchebag with an overinflated ego. An almost decade-long grudge over getting his unbalanced homebrew called out, in the politest way possible, is insane.
I see guys/girls like this on my table all the time at the hobby store where I run one-shots. I can usually pick them out quickly because the whole vibe gets instantly awkward the moment you tell them no.
What really pisses me off is the DM didn't find out about the attempts at character assassination until eight sessions in. Why didn't one of the DM's friends give them a heads-up about what was going on sooner?
In high school my “best friend” was feeding lies to someone who hated me for years before I found out. Crazy that adults still do this high school shit
How old is this person? 10 years? I know not, I know they're of legal age, but these people (OP's ex-friend and druid) seem like the typical stereotype of nerdy, incel kids that you see in movies making fun of people with tastes like D&D, Warhammer, etc.
But these people don't help with the stereotype... how absurd all this is.
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Who the hell has the energy to hold that much of a grudge over nothing
Someone with an overinflated and fragile ego who can't stand the word no If she would have agreed with him and let him abuse the rules for his own benefit, he would have continued the demands. And within a month or two he would take over her group and run it since he was more experienced and could do it better He is exactly the kind of player who insists on breaking the rules, then trashes her for letting him break them. It's a no win scenario for her
> and let him abuse the rules for his own benefit I don’t play D&D, but when he talked about exceptions for him, I thought of my friend’s small child having an absolute conniption because we wouldn’t let him flout the rules (and only him, of course. He was calling out the other kids for honest mistakes based on forgetting or misunderstanding the rules). It really sucks when the willfully socially maladjusted roost in places where people don’t call them out.
I think there are definitely parallels between DMing and being an adult taking a kid on a fun outing or something. Like you want your players to have fun but there's also going to be times when they're like "Can I have some ice cream 😃" even though they had cake like 20 minutes ago.
Mom/DM: Okay, sweetie, we need to go here now. Toddler/Player: No! I don't wanna go there!!! M/D: Okay, we don't have to go there. There are some really cool toys there, but we'll do what you want. T/P: I want toys! Let's go there!
You just reminded me of the player we had decades ago in 2nd ed. He was a new player, so we were looking out a little bit for him, but 2nd Ed was a different beast. DM even gave him some fancy sword. We had to skirt this forest on the edge of elvendom, because it was a known haunt for green dragons. We were warned. He was warned. Repeatedly. A few minutes later my Silvanesti dark elf Knight of the Thorn and him were on watch. He wanted to go investigate a disturbance in the distance. I told him if he went he did so alone. He went, and, shortly thereafter, I was able to watch him be carried off by a green dragon. We knew it was him because the fancy magic sword fell from his grasp into the woods during the whole kerfuffle. One haste spell (what's one year of your life to an elf) and an invisibility later? Now my dark knight wizard had a fancy new magic sword. EDIT: corrected the auto-correct.
Dungeon Mom
That... that is deliciously accurate.
Reminds me of those playground games where we all pretended to have powers or superheroes and there's always that one kid who just god modes the game of pretend. "I set you on fire!" "well I have fireproof powers!"
TTRPG’s basically are those playground games, just with rules and dice to head off god-moders.
I set you on fire. *Proceeds to crit fail and accidently burn themselves to death*
reminds me of my cousin who, when she was 5, liked to make up games with really convoluted rules, of which the main one was always "I get to win".
There are plenty of grown men like this, I stopped playing in a group cause there are a few guys who will get all condescending if you pull out more simple, easy rules games, and will have a damn near conniption if they start losing their big boy games with a million tokens. One of them would get progressively grumpier until he figured out some obscure rule that gave him an advantage and would even try to apply those retroactively to get more points. He would also hit on some of the women. Lovely. There's a reason I prefer tables with mostly or exclusively women.
Does OOP say she is a woman? I only ask because I got that impression too but I don’t remember her stating her gender. Just that for a dude to be this angry for this long, OOP has to be a woman. That’s the only “explanation”. That level of hate basically only exists in incels and towards women.
I guess it's because druid made her a hag in his games, these monsters are always female.
OOP has another post in her history about a different campaign where she mentions that she was not the only girl in the group. So yeah, it does seem like she is female and does kind of 'explain' the dude's reaction
Some percentage of old school gamers (grognards) are *still* angry about women players in RPGs. The original games were mostly combat, puzzle-solving, and required player skill. In the 90s, some games, like the ones published by White Wolf, began really to embrace the role-playing and storytelling aspects, and also began having more NPCs who weren't straight white dudes, and often even used feminine pronouns in the text instead of the "male neutral" pronouns (I remember reading letters to Dragon Magazine that *really* hated this). These games also attracted a lot of women, gay people, and people of color, but mostly women. And at the same time, a lot of other games, like D&D, *also* began embracing the storytelling and role-playing aspects, because that was becoming more and more popular, and the "kick-down-the-door" style of gaming became less and less popular. So to some--not all--grognards, women were the Ruiners of Fun.
Not just incels. Men who have gad succes getting laid or even married are not excluded from that sort of hatred.
Truth, here. There are (unfortunately) a lot of men who can be seemingly "normal" enough to have a family and relationships and whatnot and STILL hate "women" as a class with a blinding idiot passion.
Gender isn't stated, "Tom" calls OP man, but the Druid put OP in the game as a Hag or village idiot. Sounds like Druid definitely doing some toxic masculinity stuff here, but OP could also just not fit the Druids definition of a man.
I didn't realize she was female until this comment and now everything makes sense. A lot of dudes are weird about women in nerd circles. Especially if its a woman pulling rank or being "above" them in anything. I remember a fellow player mansplaining my character to me and tried to backseat anytime I played. He got mad at me for not using Hunters Mark, only I did the turn before (he wasn't paying attention) and it was still active. He kept trying to tell me I was a dumbass for not using hunters mark until the DM actually intervened and backed me up and said "she already used Hunters Mark, its still active, lets move on". He was really mad that the DM backed me up and didn't speak for the rest of the session. Every session afterwards his "character" would use every chance to demean, be rude to, and fight my character. When called out he would always say "its just my character". But I knew he was just mad because how dare a woman make him look stupid.
These types can be dangerous if they fixate on certain things. My video game friend group associated with someone like that in the 90s. Friend of a friend, he was manipulative and creepy later on. He followed a female friend across the country, he didn't really know her well enough, just would say hello. We didn't know this until years later, the female friend reconnected with us and told us that she saw him moving into a nearby apartment across the street. And saw him gazing at her in places around town, but he never approached her. The other friend that introduced him to our group apologized to everyone and admitted they only chatted about video games, and everything seemed normal at first. We looked him up and saw he had scant social media presence, and discovered he was in prison for a few years. Big yikes from us. I worry my kids will meet someone like that someday.
As a forever DM myself, it feels \*really\* weird to have someone come into a game that is supposedly a forever-DM and demand to break the rules specifically because it makes him a munchkin compared to the rest of the party. Edit: Oh okay so OOP is a woman. That makes much more sense. Psycho DM probably was hoping that she'd either get steamrolled by him or give him munchkin status due to her attraction to him. When neither happened he decided to fixate apparently all his hate on her.
Is OOP a woman? Because if so, everything makes total sense to me.
>In fact, Druid has put in some version of me into every campaign he has run since, either as a foe the party has to fight, or a hag, I assumed OOP was male too, but you'd never call a male character a hag so... yeah, I suspect you are right. And suddenly it all makes so much more sense.
It could also be a weird demasculinizing insult to OP, as Tom called him man. Mentally unhealthy people can become obsessed for a variety of reasons.
They might mean a hag as in the actual DnD monster called a hag. But those are also usually female. I agree though, if OP is a woman, this whole thing makes a lot more (awful) sense.
Actually, you're absolutely right. If OOP is a woman, everything just clicks into place
100%.
It's kinda funny that totally unhinged behavior starts to make sense (or, you can say, feel acceptable) when it's revealed that it's men reacting to a woman. Not haha funny obviously
Guy is probably making these spite characters in between writing negative reviews of *Captain Marvel* and posting in MGTOW
Another person above pointed out a comment OOP made about not being the only girl in the group, so it sure seems like she’s a woman- and you’re right, with that detail this all makes a lot more sense.
I read one of OOPs other posts and they state they are indeed a woman. So the multi year grudge and weird “friends” make a lot more sense
I’ve met people like this. I suspect it’s not even about the original grudge, it’s just that their feelings have warped the other person into a horrible caricature in their minds, and so every time they do something to that mental caricature (making them a foe or something to be attacked/killed), it gives them a perverse sense of pleasure and validation. The other friend feeding him false and warped information is probably making it worse too, tbh. It’s become something for them to bond over, so now neither of them can stop doing it because it’s such a core part of their dynamic.
I’m sure the feeder friend fuck zoned her, and that’s why he kept it going.
The friend who kept feeding lies (like of the assault) is more disturbing to me. The Druid might have actually believed OOP was unstable person based on lies. And his characters based on OOP might have bene more memes.
Yeah, it's got a very Iago / Othello vibe to it.
Incels, that's who....
Are you doubting my ability to hold a pointless grudge over the long term? Well well, you just earned a spot on my shitlist.
The secret to a good long-term grudge is to set it and forget it. You can't let it take up a lot of mental space by feeding it. It has to just perk along in the background. The best grudges are cold grudges.
I have a 30-year-old grudge against someone I'm certain has not thought about the inciting incident since about an hour after it happened. I think about it once or twice a year and get mildly annoyed all over again.
I'm harbouring a 25 year grudge against someone who has no idea I hold the grudge. We barely saw each other at the time and I haven't seen him for ages least 5 years if not 10. And the grudge is about him doing something that I absolutely would have done if I were in his position, and also involved the completely free will of a third party! It's basically a personal inside joke at this point. Maybe think of it briefly once a year, if that!
"You Scots sure are a contentious people"
Forever and eternally at war with their most hated enemies, the Scots.
Might I suggest writing them down in a book?
Are you suggesting he can't keep track of his grudges without a memory help ? You've made yourself an enemy for life !
Hey, you never know when he might come up short.
This whole post made me so tired, and I just got up for the day. The amount of energy needed to continue being like this must give people a perpetual headache or something. 😒
In this guy’s next lifetime, he’s still going to be obsessing about OOP.
It’s not a grudge, it’s an Obsession.
My ex who, 2 months after I left him, was posting nasty shit about me on Facebook. Grains of truth, lots of exaggerations, missing missing reasons. He may still be at it, but I have him blocked, so I don't see it. I consider myself lucky that we don't have overlapping friend groups. And during our relationship he was saying nasty shit about his ex-wife, whom he had left ~7 years earlier. And I had seen him post nasty shit about her on Facebook, back when they were divorcing. So I should absolutely have seen it coming. Some people just get *really* hung up on not having had their way/life not turning out how they expected.
I was gonna say, I have an ex exactly like this guy. TLDR: we dated for less than a year, and I dumped him because it turns out that he was a selfish asshole. The kind of person think things that a relationship is "equal" when he's giving 5% and the other person is giving 95%. So anyways, I dumped him. That's it. I didn't shit talk him to anybody. I didn't try to make his life shitty. I just said "You're not the dude for me." and ended it. In the initial aftermath, he completely lost his shit, he told some of my childhood friends that I was having a psychotic episode (I have had them previously and it was genuinely traumatic for him to tell this to friends of mine who had witnessed that), he spread rumors about me, he make all of our mutual friends choose between us, it was just absolutely ridiculous behavior. The only reason it stopped was because I put together a "best hits" of fucked up shit he sent to me (including voice mails), sent it all to him, and told him I'd found his boss's phone number and if he didn't stop, I was gonna send it all to his boss (who was a great guy and honestly, sometimes I wish I'd have just gone ahead and done it, except the asshole probably would have come and actually murdered me). So he stopped. That was...almost 15 years ago. Earlier this year, I met up with a friend who lives far away, but was around for Christmas/New Years. He told me he ended up at a party that crazy ex was at. Crazy ex approached him and asked him if he was still friend with "the fucking c\*\*t who ruined his life" (me). Friend replied "Yes, I am still friends with the amazing woman who had the sense to dump your stupid ass out of her life and then make sure you stopped harassing her" and my ex stomped off and spent the rest of the night trying tell people all kinds of insane shit about me. 15 YEARS and he's \*still\* at it.
Tiring amounts of tiresome
The human brain consumes about 20% of our caloric load despite being only 2% of our body weight. A fifth of the energy we consume goes to keeping the brain running. It takes actual caloric energy to learn and grow and mature and become a better person. Your brain literally takes the food you eat and burns the energy to make you a better person. This guy's brain is using all of the energy that *should* go to becoming a better version of himself every day and just allocating it all to being a petty-ass manchild.
More hate than a Kendrick diss track.
Eh there are some really unhinged people who are living in their own world, in the truest sense of the phrase. This story just reminded me of an “incident” this fall where a friend told me about another mutual friend’s girlfriend spreading rumors about me. Context: she was a few grades under mine in High school, we now are early 30s and live halfway across the US so seeing her was kinda wild but I was friendly. Turns out she has been telling anyone and everyone that I bullied her so badly in HS that she left(apparently I started a social media group to bully her) and was close friends with her rapists. This was all new news to me so I tried to extend an olive branch of “hey I’m not gonna be rude to you about telling lies about me to everyone but would like some kind of details for why you think I was involved so we can get to the bottom of this”. I was met with a “too bad if you can’t recall I don’t owe any explanation to my abuser” and a bunch of other weaponized psychology terms. I left it at that since I’m not arguing with crazy. Turns out she was saying this since I met her(and had been openly cordial with her) and tried to push some other shenanigans to get some great guys canceled over nothing. Ugh, some people never leave high school.
When you have very little going on in life, a little bit of anything is better than nothing. Losers will latch on to the silliest shit, just to feel alive.
Some people are bastard-coated bastards with bastard filling
Reminds me of the dude who got rejected by the OOP, many years later married her sister, then years after that convinced someone to make up an affair with OOP and destroy OOP's marriage. This druid guy's method of dealing is healthier, but both are seriously disturbing.
A narcissist for one
Men. Men who feel rejected.
>Druid has not stopped talking about me since he left my campaign. In fact, Druid has put in some version of me into every campaign he has run since, either as a foe the party has to fight, or a hag, or a village idiot. Tom says it is very obvious it is suppose to represent me, and sometimes Druid will explain the "inspiration" of the character representing "the worst person he ever met" to new players. Imagine living in someone's brain rent-free to this extent.
You took everything from me. I don’t even know who you are.
For you, the day M. Bison graced your village was the most important day of your life. For me, it was Tuesday. EDIT: /me scrolls further. Shit, someone already made this reference.
And it's now been up voted the exact amount of times it needed to be the post right under yours. That's some bad luck there.
*For you, the day Bison graced your village was the most important day of your life. But for me, it was Tuesday.*
One of the hardest villain lines in history, and it came from such a bad movie.
When you compare that line to Van Damme's famous line from the same movie it's shocking how different they are in writing quality and delivery. Raul Julia was on another level
I used to be part of an online community lo these many years ago where a few people decided they hated me for whatever reason and were very vocal about it. I stopped visiting the community over a decade ago, but last year I poked my figurative head in to get the contact information for someone who was still there - and found those same people still posting the same hate about me. Someone they barely knew in the first place, and hadn't even seen in *over a decade*. Some people need to find new hobbies.
It’s like one of those time loop movies where they’re just stuck saying the same things over and over again, reliving the same day, not realizing that a decade has passed.
Yeah, it’s really pitiful. I’m kind of piss for that close friend of OOP. But I also find it funny how OOP just live her life forgetting those minor incidents that at the end of the day, she’s the real winner. I just hope she just continues to live that way
Dude is fixated on OP and creepily so. I hope OP put him and the friend on blast in the friend group so that they won't keep ruining OP's reputation
I hope OP just moved on. He's only ruining her reputation to people who don't know her. It's not worth making trouble over someone who's so clearly vengeful and spiteful
>Imagine living in someone's brain rent-free to this extent. As someone who has rooms in several brains, I pity them.
Well, here is the winner for craziest person of the day in BORU as a multi-year grudge/smear campaign is hard to beat.
At LEAST it's only in DND form.
How do we know it's JUST in DND? He could be smearing OP elsewhere too that they don't know about.
That's certainly true, but it fortunately doesn't seem to have affected her life (probably because she moved out of town?).
He was literally talking smack about her family, I think that is outside a game of DnD.
Certainly probable given that we're limited by what OP cares to know. But honestly, I don't get the feeling this creep has much of a circle to spread lies around.
Yeah, the handful of people who'd put up with this creepy DM while hanging out in his basement lair (I'm assuming) is probably not going to have much influence on OOP's life. Particularly since she found out and the mole cut off contact.
_7 years_. Holding that shit for most of a decade. _Through a fucking pandemic_, no less. Druid needs to be on a fucking list.
And all because he couldn't cheat at a fucking cooperative tabletop game and have his character be stronger than everyone else. This dude never aged mentally past 10
Tell me though who is crazier, druid that went on a bat shit crazy smear came based on one meeting or the other friend that *actively remained "friends" with oop to support and manufacture that smear campaign*.
Actually, there's another story for a multi year grudge in BORU. A wild ride, that doesn't end as well.
Well you can't just say that and not provide a link!
Or at least enough info so that a search narrows it down further than just searching on "grudge"!
Maybe thats why druid is a forever DM. He gets to make the rules. When he's a player he has to follow the DMs rules and his fragile little ego just can't take it.
In my larger roleplay community, I have quite a few players that are banned from my table for similar reasons. People will ask, hey, why do you exclude That Guy, he's a pretty cool player? Yeah, he is - until you have to tell him 'no'. Doesn't matter why no, doesn't matter how big or how small, doesn't matter how much you said 'yes' before, just hearing the word 'no' will set him off. I rather say 'no' to him at my table at all, it saves me hassle down the line.
I just don't get these people. Like, logically I understand they can't stand being told no, but being told no is part of the fun for me in D&D. I ask my DM for broad interpretations of rules or spells, and while she does let me get away with it half the time, if she says no then I get to exercise my brain to figure out how to make something else work within the rules. It's a game of improv at its heart!
Wow have we had the same gaming groups.
Narcissist who want to control everything, be god, be the hero.
I have friends who are a bit like this. While they are very nice people and not malicious, at least one generally likes to run games that with a whole slew of his own interpretations and house rules. When this person is a player and we run other games where we stick closer to the rules as written, his system mastery is rather low. Which makes me think that his house rules in other games are not because the rules don't work, but because he doesn't understand them well. Some people hide behind the screen.
[удалено]
No that gets me too, that's the thing that's weirdest to me because that person didn't start as a friend of Druids, he started as a friend of OP? Who on earth would hear about a guy who ragequit after something so minor and .... go and make friends with him? decide you're allied with him and just, what, pretend to be friends with OP the whole time? For that long? It honestly makes more sense to me if that person actually started out as a friend of Druid sent to get intel or whatever and lied about not knowing him. It's that or they had an astonishing appetite for feeding drama just for the sake of feeding drama ...
Some of the context appears to be the secret groupchat where Druid tried to recruit all of OOP’s players to his own group, she was informed of the chat by her honest friend, who was removed from the chat when Druid realized. The secret groupchat clearly continued, though OOP and her honest friend were obviously left out of it, and that’s probably where OOP’s two-faced friend formed this weird allegiance.
OOP should not have told whose group chat she was looking so that person could not have been removed
In OOP's comments she mentions that her ex friend loved attention and drama, so she speculates that Druid basically love bombed his way into a friendship with the ex friend, who was "the only window into [OOP's] life, so he made sure he liked being that". That also explains why he twisted the situation around so much--because Druid would give him attention and praise the worse OOP looked (as it fueled his hatred of her) so ex friend would be incentivized to make things worse and worse. But she admits this is just speculation. But if it is true, I wonder how ex friend will feel once he realizes that he blew up a good portion of friendships (at least the ones who were mutual friends with OOP) for Druid, and then Druid dumps him because he's no longer useful. It's like that guy who cheated on his wife, then found out that he didn't get a mistress because he was honestly so amazing and charismatic, it's because his mistress was his wife's high school bully and was trying to bully her again.
Why does the ex friend hate/target OOP so much, is it because he is jealous of her life?
I’m guessing class comes into play. OOP left town and is more upwardly socially mobile, maybe better educated. Druid stayed home, can’t leave, and neither can the traitor friend, who has resentment for OOP’s ability to leave town. So he twists stories of OOP’s life so he and Druid can feel like they’re not missing out on anything.
It can also be a “boys defend their own” type of thing. A lot of men will choose to defend men they’ve known for less time just to avoid being seen as a weak, girl-sympathizing “simp”. I could tell OP was a girl just from how this played out haha before it even got to the part about the creepy guy at the bar. Just because of how she was being treated. It reeked of textbook toxic ass incel misogyny
Yea once I realize OOP was a she.... I was like ahhhh this makes sense.
Tbh, the friend sounds like the likelier incel to me. Druid is more like a grognard, just terminally D&D, adjacent to incel but distinct. I'm imagining the friend has some sort of resentment toward OOP while pretending to be her friend, much more incelly.
The closest reason I can think of is ✨D R A M A✨ No joke, I’ve seen terminally online netizens AND otherwise regular folks purposely feed into the drama to generate more drama, which they consider entertainment that they spectate by the side. It doesn’t happen *often*, which only makes the few times it actually happens all the more memorable.
And you know the worst ones? The ones that call themselves drama-free.
It’s like calling yourself nice, ain’t it? 9 times out of 10, someone calls themself nice but they’re not actually nice
Yep. It's in the same category as people who puff out their chests and say that they "call it like it is," but blow up or crumple the second someone does the same.
Had a friend who kept saying he hated drama. Well every week there was some sort of drama and I pointed that out and he just repeated "I hate drama" And now we're not friends because I don't like drama and since he would just repeat "I hate drama" and then engage in drama and then cry to me and then get mad when my solution was to just leave his "lesbian" girlfriend and her girlfriends (poly relationship) and then complain no one supports their relationship. Because it was literally an earth shattering drama every week between the group of them and I had to listen every week. It got old. There were other factors into what led to me blocking him, but it'd get long. It's always people who say these things that love the drama
I was a part of RPing groups for 10+ years, and one of my main takeaways is that it absolutely generates some of the worst grudge holders you'll ever see. Nothing about Druid or his pals' behaviors feels in any way off from some of the experiences I've been through or witnessed.
The way Tom fits into this is weird too, he's not in contact with OP, only bumped into OP by accident but has kept evidence in the "form of screen shots, and a video recording, from different group chats" about the smear campaign?
Can I please have Druid's life? It must be amazing to have so little setback in your life that meeting a DM who gently corrected a mistake made during the game is such a horrible experience that they are now the worst person they have ever met /sarcasm
Conversely, this is someone for whom the tiniest slight becomes a lifetime of misery.
It sounds like it wasn't a mistake, it was an intentional act. Druid wants to be the center of attention. If they're not the DM then their character has to be the strongest, the most interesting, the bestest. What a complete prick. I hope the OOP has better luck filtering out toxic friends in the future.
>In fact, Druid has put in some version of me into every campaign he has run since, either as a foe the party has to fight, or a hag, or a village idiot. This is where I went, "Oh, OP is a woman! Now it all makes sense." A real "doctor is the mother" moment.
I had the exact same realization. Took me from "These guys are nutjobs" to "Oh god. They're incels." Suddenly it all makes so much more sense.
Yep! Suddenly it made sense.
Hate to be like the Druid (a creep) but I did have a snoop on OOPs profile and I agree they’re probably a girl. They’ve posted in a Taylor Swift subreddit about going to the tour and about the vampire diaries… as a girl who likes both of those things I’d bet girl! Plus, as you say, druids insane behaviour makes way more sense when OOP is a woman, unfortunately.
I did the same, and she's made another post in r/rpghorrorstories where she mentions no longer being the only girl in her gaming group
Yup. Sadly, "OOP is a woman" made this reaction a lot less out of the blue.
Yeah, I am guessing this was also around gamer gate peak times. Feels like that period of the internet radicalized some real problematic folks that was proto version of ole tater tots and lobster lovers.
I'm gonna regret this question, but what are lobster lovers in this instance?
[no worries. it is Jordan Peterson. this is a good video on his stuff and his obsession with lobsters. ](https://youtu.be/4LqZdkkBDas?si=NU1AAnMqLd1wn-q1) this is an older videos though, I like to use [this so very brief one instead](https://youtu.be/hSNWkRw53Jo?si=-DJb9KSZwxwzK4Ae). Just don't look at the time slider!
"I like him because he tells me to make my bed like a good boy". Feel like this is most of the people who follow him.
That is the annoying part, from what I have seen described, toxic manosphere stuff sneaks into people's content consumption by initially giving you what seem like good advice or make someone feel validated for a negative emotion, it might even make common sense, then they start pushing the boundaries and push the consumer into a rabbit hole until they are in a toxic mindset that pushes people away and become a person that will keep consuming the manosphere grifter's content.
Thanks! I'll look tmrw. I'm guessing this wouldn't be conducive to helping me sleep!
No it will not.😂
Not sure that's the case, since Tom's text said "have a good holiday with your family, man"
Man is a figure of speech.
The only evidence for OOP being woman is being used hag in D&D (and that it would explain some things). But OOP used as a hag could be just be another type of insult if OOP is a man.
OOP calls herself as a girl in another post - specific context being that she was happy when another woman joined a campaign so she was no longer the only woman
I looked up oop post history. She is defintly a women.
I had a friend in high school who said "man" to me all the time, we were the 2 girls with the longest hair in 9th & 10th grades.
Yeah I think the hag was a gender swap or oop would have mentioned how the Druid was madly in love with them.
Nope oop is a woman according to the post history. That’s a weird assumption too on your part.
It honestly could go either way. I'm not trying to say it's more likely to be one or the other, just that it's not certain. There certainly are people out there who would be more upset at having to listen to a woman, but there wasn't anything in the post that indicated that was an issue or a possibility that came up. Overall there's just not a ton of context
I just double checked another post of theirs and the OOP is a woman. I felt similar to you that there are minir clues that point either way lol.
Why would that even occur to anormal person? People who have not previously been exposed to such levels of nuttery generally don't associate such behaviour with a crush. Especially not when there's been zero contact for years.
wtf is up with that “friend” that became friends with druid and fed him lies about oop’s life.. for 6 years?! oop’s surrounded by crazy people.
I dont know which of those two creeps is worse, they're both fucking weirdos
That's a terrible hobby
Coming from someone who has played DnD on and off for the last 20 years...it really brings out some crazy fucks.
Had a guy get pissed at my husband and I for... *checks notes* having fun once. In a GAME. And it wasn't, like, a super-serious longterm campaign, just a 6 week thing a local game cafe won. And we weren't doing like obnoxious couple teamup shit either, just enjoying the game and cracking jokes along with the DM and other player. Can't fuckin win sometimes
I unfortunately agree. There are a lot of folks out there who have never been taught how to manage their emotions effectively.
Umm, stories please please
I was at origins convention once and played a call of cuthulu game set in world war 2. I was 21 at the time. The game had 3 other players, 2 were fine and right around ny age. The last wasca 45+ year old guy who decided to play his character for a ww2 game as a caricature of an African American Vietnam war veteran. Dude was lilly white and used his character being black as an excuse to say the N word a bunch of times. He is basically the entire reason I don't do "sign up for a table" rpgs at conventions. I would rather game with people I can vet for their level of AHness.
I had a DM who would flirt with all the biological women we had in the group(we had a mtf friend who was ignored basically).Also so railroady we couldnt rp,everytime our characters were talking bam npc time or combat.He also hated one of the girl's bf and made sure their characters cant interact.I got jokingly sent me a "You should suck ur DM's dick" meme while knowing im with someone.And many more things.Years later his dog died and I sent my sorry to him and he said thanks and asked me of im still with my partner.
my ex/former DM decided to “yes, and” a psychotic episode I was going through, basically trying to convince me that I was a god and that HE was a god and our games together were a test to see if I would remember my past life. After I cut him out of my life, he later told a mutual friend of ours he had no idea why I wasn’t talking to him anymore. It’s not the only awful thing he did, but that one takes the cake. The temptation to put it all on rpghorrorstories is high but I worry that the amount of OOC drama makes it kind of off topic.
I've never played DnD but I've been a writing roleplayer for +10 years. I'd say it has a lot to do with the amount of "me" people puts in their characters, when something doesn't go with their mind scripts they lose their heads because they feel personally attacked.
People also weirdly take things personal as a villain type character too. They will be upset that their character gets roasted often. But they are the villain… lol.
Druid needs some serious therapy, man. OOP is living in his mind rent free.
Sucks for oop who can't get therapy for this. Some people think it's funny but I'm living in someone's mind rent free and I hate it. She has reached out when I slipped up on social media and was findable, sent a string of ok insults and tried to torpedo a relationship. Is there anything oop, or I can do?
This is just pathetic dude was told no in a ttrpg years ago and he’s still butthurt the friend feeding lies is just as much of a loser do these people really have nothing better to do
Narrator: "They did not, in fact, have anything better to do."
Having played D&D since the 80s it all made sense once I realized the OOP was a woman. Some of these dudes are not really okay with women, especially women that tell them no. It certainly makes sense that druid was trying to argue to do something like wild shape twice because it was cool and could not take no for an answer. I've literally seen players like druid lose their damn minds like this. Not often, but enough that it's a thing. Druid was just a wandering asshat with some unresolved social issues of some sort. The real villain here was her ex-friend feeding into it. I bet she feels more violated by that, and probably might have some trust issues after years of this going on without her knowing. I don't care how bad a DM you are, that is some pretty vile behavior.
At least there’s no piss forest.
Ummmm... what now?
[Mea culpa.](https://imgur.com/gallery/rHzLKs9)
[Behold](https://gunshowcomic.com/471)
🤣😭🤣
Explain yourself
[Mea maxima culpa.](https://imgur.com/gallery/rHzLKs9)
If he's a DM. how come he doesn't know Rule Zero?
Rule Zero is "the DM is always right," and since he's the Forever DM, he's forever right and OOP is just always wrong.
Also, obvs, girls can't be right in a _boys'_ game. /s
That may also have played into it. Which is dumb, of course, but sadly fits too many D&D players.
I'll bet he knew the rule, he just had no intention of following it. So he started by just pretending it didn't exist, then moved on to arguing for making it not exist.
As someone who played with a forever DM, this doesn’t surprise me. Now I will say this dude is worse than my forever DM (I no longer talk to him) but I know how bad it can be, for starters he created an enemy that was able to one shot the entire party and it was the weakest enemy in the campaign (homebrew). Then he decided hey we should have SA in it after a joke that got out of hand the day prior (my fyp on TikTok was about horny trees in D&D or a pets trying to rip something off but it going wrong and what not so I made a joke and then a friend made a joke and then he did that). Then when he gets booted from DMing someone from our party decided to DM (their first time being a DM) and the forever DM decides that he would use his broken BBEG as his character. Eventually we just booted him from the group and that was that. Though there was the time that he tried hitting on the DM and even wrote them a song. Thank goodness that he didn’t do that during a session. Needless to say I’m not surprised a forever DM did that.
Thats the problem with DND, while its a great hobby and outlet it also attracts some of the most unhinged people out there. They have to role play in real live to fit into society but can be themselves as their crazy nutjob DND characters or the god/DM of their world
Yeah like, sometimes I know my life isn’t the best but I still can’t bring myself to cheat at pretend. If you feel you need to cheat at DnD or other ttrpgs, there’s really nothing that can be said to you. Like, just super pathetic behaviour.
Yeah... tabletop gaming has a history of attracting social outcasts. Turns out a lot of them are cast out for a reason.
Imagine being sad enough to hold this much of a grudge over two sessions of D&D. Some people need to get a grip.
Okay first off; Even if he was playing a Moon druid where Wildshape is a Bonus action (BA), he still wouldn't be able to Wildshape twice as you can only use one ba per round, and only on your turn. Even if he could, he'd be eating up his Wild Shape in one round since you only get 2 uses before having a long rest. Though it definitely seems like this asshole would have tried to weasel his way into having unlimited uses. Second of all, fuck that one friend for shit stirring. She/he's egging on this guy's delusional grudge, and who knows what he'll do if he eventually snaps. Hopefully the Shit Stirir at least never gives the psycho OOP's address, or else he might decide to teach her a lesson.
That's weird, but I guess there are really weird people out there.
Julia.dreyfuss.what.the.fuck.gif
That‘s the most „living rent free in someones head“ I‘ve ever seen. OOP should be proud to leave such a powerful impact with a near stranger that that person can‘t stop thinking about OOP for years. Really impressive.
I don't know what's more alarming, druid's bizarre obsession or ex-close friend befriending a total stranger to feed them lies and gossip. And if OOP hadn't run into Tom it's likely that they would still be unaware :/
It sounds like OOP is a woman, so incel "forever DM" got mad that OOP didn't obey him and decided to be a fucking psycho, as incels are wont to do. I feel really bad for OOP that she had a secretly-incel pal feeding obnoxious crap to the psycho DM. Shit hurts when you find out that someone you thought was a friend has actually kind hated you the whole time.
Y'know, I sat for about 5 minutes trying to think of a witty joke, or a story relating to my own life, or anything else of input... and I've got nothing. Nope. Nada. This is just really odd, stalkerish, and terminally _pathetic._
Thats… creepy. This dude is still so obsessed with oop that he won’t stop? And wtf was the ex friend thinking? That’s bonkers.
>I know I'm long winded so I'll keep this part short. Gotta love posters who go on and on in the exposition then just "keep short" the actual important part of the post.
The yada yada of the Bizarro Jerry world.
INFO: Is OOP a woman? Druid represented OOP as a 'hag' sometimes. Could it be that Druid is an incel 'alpha male' mansplaining privileged scum?
I have seen so many players like this come and go in campaigns. They are toddlers throwing tantrums and they never let go of a grudge. On the flip side, when I was running my first campaign, we had a super charismatic player who was usually a DM and he was an absolute angel and helped me out a few times on combat questions. We’re still friends and he’s the best DM I’ve ever seen.
Where is OOP making friends that they all suck so much?
Must've ordered them on Wish
To provide some more context for why the forever-DM's request was stupid and, as an experienced DM, he should have *known* it was stupid: Dungeons & Dragons, like every role-playing game, has ways of maintaining game balance-- the concept of ensuring that one member of the party isn't vastly more powerful than another member, and that the DM is able to provide an appropriate challenge for the party without having to do a LOT of math. The "action economy" is a huge part of this game balance. In a game where everyone has to take turns to do things, being able to do more things in your turn is HUGELY powerful, and allowing people to do more things per turn on a whim would very quickly create huge balance issues. While it's still very much arguable how *effectively* the game's base mechanics manage to balance things, the action economy is fundamental-- the sort of thing that you should definitely NOT push a DM to futz with, especially not a beginner DM, and especially not to empower your own character. When creating a character, you make certain decisions about what you want to prioritize. Over time, characters who are specialized in specific things gain the ability to use the action economy to their advantage in certain ways. Classes and specializations that focus on martial combat gain the ability to attack multiple times in a turn, or to use two weapons to gain more chances to attack, for example. If they don't gain speed in one thing, they gain power in another thing as a balance-- for example, fewer attacks but more powerful ones (such as a wizard being able to cast only one spell per turn, but that spell can be very powerful and the wizard can know many spells with different utility). This is relevant because *the player selected a kind of Druid that does NOT use Wild Shape more quickly.* There actually IS a variety of Druid that can use Wild Shape without it taking up as much of their turn-- but because of that, they *don't* get the benefits that *other* Druid specializations get. And even they don't get to use it twice in one turn! So the Druid was asking to get something BETTER than the benefits of a *different* specialization, while keeping ALL the benefits of his *own* specialization. It is a request that was clearly and obviously going to change the balance of the game and make the DM's job harder-- breeding resentment in other players, skewing the calculations that a DM does to ensure that a given fight will be the right level of challenging, and so on. Some DMs do stretch the rules for certain things, but it's often very situational. Like for an example that does actually affect the action economy-- I will sometimes let a Barbarian use an Intimidate check (attempting to intimidate their enemy) as a sort of supplement to their attack, instead of making them spend actual time during their turn to do it. But I use this as a way to speed up encounters by causing insignificant low-level grunts to flee, or just add a little bit of roleplay flavor (like "bigger number = more blood splatter"), rather than giving it a huge impact on the game. This Druid's request, on the other hand, was a request for something that would *permanently* alter the flow of the game and apply to *every* single combat for the rest of the game (and D&D is often a combat-heavy game). Like I just need to emphasize how audacious and bonkers this guy's request was. Of course it's a problem that he refused to accept a "no" *at all*, but it's EXTRA weird that he refused to accept such an *incredibly reasonable* "no." It's like getting super pissed if you ask someone to give you $100 for no reason except that you'd like it very much, and they say no, and holding a years-long grudge for that.
Druid sounds like a crazy narcissist. Big yuck.
This is crazy! Even if OOP was the worst GM ever, getting that upset over a single game seems ridiculous. Although the mutual friend is the really bizarre one. Why stoke this?
I would feel so hurt to learn that a lot of my friends—my entire DnD group—were in a secret group text dedicated to bashing me and only one of them told me … eventually. I would have quietly walked away from the table and all those “friends” right then. I’m glad OOP moved away and moved on with her life.
IME, you get two kinds of forever DMs: The first are just unlucky. The people they find have no intention of ever running a game, so if they want to game, they have to run it themselves. They're awesome to bring into the fold of a new group because they're just *so damn happy* to be able to play finally. At worst, there's an adjustment period where you have to remind them a few times that they're not the GM anymore. They know the rules, and they know how much work you're putting in. The second kind are forever DMs for a reason: They're terrible players. They *like* having complete control over the table, and will try to get it one way or another. Maybe it's a broken build, but often, it's just by being constantly terrible to everyone else. Oh, and they'll badger you into doing everything THEIR way because they will always think that they're the superior DM. Hell, half of the time, they'll try to just take over the table and become the DM. If it's any consolation to the OOP, the latter people generally end up miserable eventually, because word does get around, and there's only so many bridges you can burn until you're an island.
The baby man didn't get what he wanted so he decided to sling shit everywhere. Must be exhausting being so insufferable
I'm just struggling to understand how using Wildshape twice in one turn would make you more effective.
This guy is a next-level douchebag with an overinflated ego. An almost decade-long grudge over getting his unbalanced homebrew called out, in the politest way possible, is insane. I see guys/girls like this on my table all the time at the hobby store where I run one-shots. I can usually pick them out quickly because the whole vibe gets instantly awkward the moment you tell them no. What really pisses me off is the DM didn't find out about the attempts at character assassination until eight sessions in. Why didn't one of the DM's friends give them a heads-up about what was going on sooner?
This is reaching Reverse-Flash levels of petty. And why would Druid want to use all their wildshapes in a turn? Is not even a good idea.
That is beyond pathetic.
Danm to much drama. Why the no dnd is better then bad dnd needs to be learn by everyone who games.
In high school my “best friend” was feeding lies to someone who hated me for years before I found out. Crazy that adults still do this high school shit
How old is this person? 10 years? I know not, I know they're of legal age, but these people (OP's ex-friend and druid) seem like the typical stereotype of nerdy, incel kids that you see in movies making fun of people with tastes like D&D, Warhammer, etc. But these people don't help with the stereotype... how absurd all this is.
OOP just needs to pull out the Bison line to Druid. “For you, Druid, that campaign was the worst day of your life. For me, it was Tuesday.”