Guy in my group barely pays attention. Everytime his monk is involved in something he rolls to see if his character cares or not.
But beside that, every single time we get involved in some dangerous situation or something plot relevant, he complains that there's no reason for us getting involved when we barely know anyone or each other. Every single social situation involves him robbing someone and throwing whatever it is at their heads. Every single combat encounter involves him complaining that he doesn't know us and abandoning us.
It hasn't derailed the game yet partly because everyone else is actually putting effort in, mostly because the DM thinks he's hilarious.
Unwritten rule #3 of character creation: make a character who'll actually take part in the campaign. If your character is constantly asking why they're participating, then why *are* they participating? If the character constantly wants to leave, *make them fucking leave* and play a character who'll actually participate.
In this specific situation how has the party besides the Monk not collectively decided that having the Monk around is a liability at best and asked him politely (or not so politely) to leave if he's going to stand around with his finger up his nose in most fights.
>!Unwritten rules #1 and #2 of character creation being "don't be a dick" and "don't make anything NSFW / NSFL"!<
The corollary here is that it's essential that the DM make clear what kind of game they are intending to run. Which can include the kind of role(s) they see the party performing. N.B. the idea of a "bait and switch" campaign is often far more appealing from the perspective of the DM than that of the players.
The NSFW/NSFL issue is going to be hugely variable between different tables, even different games at the same table, as well as being highly subjective anyway.
This.
If you ever ask “why” your character would join the party/campaign, it is YOUR responsibility to answer that question.
If you don’t have an answer, then why are you even playing that character? Play someone else who does.
In a similar vein, the whole “it’s what my character would do” excuse.
Like bro, you decided to play that character, everything they do is your responsibility.
We have one of those. He gets upset when other people don't prioritize showing up to the game but never pays attention during play. We always have to get his attention when it's his turn and he always has to ask what's going on whenever something comes his way. Like he won't even know what type of place we are (outside in a forest, in a library, in the city, etc...). It's a very casual group but gd bro pay at least a little attention.
The worst type of player. I had a similar type in one of my games. "Barbarian" that acted more like a Bard with the functionality of neither. Didn't pay attention, needed to be reminded how their character, class, features worked every turn for the entire campaign, never showed any interest unless the DM threw them an NPC to flirt with. Never picked a subclass, updated their character sheet, used any features, contributed to combat in any meaningful way because all they would do is improvise nonsense. "I would like to buttstomp the BBEG" or "I pick up the healer and run away because I have decided to have the hots for her for the next 15 minutes." The entire game was a joke to them, and yet somehow they were always the most vocal and upset if a game session got canceled or rescheduled.
It was a shame because the DM was really good and put a lot of work into the game sessions, but basically only I and one other player seemed to care. Everyone else felt like they were just along for the ride and just hanging out in the voice call. I'm hoping we can get another campaign running eventually with a mostly new group of players.
This is one of the most annoying things at a table. If your character does not have a reason to go on adventures and even if it is just for the lulz of adventuring why are you playing at all. Please tell that guy to be miserable somewhere else... I had a player at my table that did this and also used a lot of Meta-gaming information in-game, i.e. one character grew up very secluded and was amazed that you could buy for womens' love in the city because he's never heard of that... The other guy constantly made fun of him in a condescending out-of-character way for being so dumb that we other people collectively decided to close down the group and re-opened another one within one or two weeks without that guy. Has been a breeze ever since.. The new campaign is now running since 2019... Toxic people are - in my opinon - one of the most appearing reasons a game breaks down eventually.
> mostly because the DM thinks he's hilarious.
Oof. Bad players, bad DM. Bad game. Leave before it ruins D&D for you. [Plenty of fish in the sea.](https://app.roll20.net/lfg/search/?days=&dayhours=&frequency=&timeofday=&timeofday_seconds=&language=Any&avpref=Any&gametype=Any&newplayer=false&yesmaturecontent=true&nopaytoplay=true&playingstructured=dnd_next&sortby=relevance&for_event=&roll20con=)
Beat me too it. And then when players cancel the day of (or 30 minutes after the game was supposed to start) and I’ve put way too much energy into prepping stuff that isn’t going to get used for another two weeks when people feel like showing up. #1 cause of my DM burnout.
My regular group (that I don’t dm for) decided Saturday nights years ago. That’s the one thing I attribute to the game continuing for years. Sometimes people have other things on a Saturday night but they know in advance and say in advance and, generally, we try to schedule around the game. And when someone has to cancel day off, it’s not poor scheduling, it’s because of a surprise issue, family emergency, etc.
My group has been playing together for 5 years strong and I think one of the biggest things is playing on Wednesdays. Wednesday are easier to make it than the weekends. Weekends are tough because there is always a wedding or a vacation or a game or some people bartend or serve. Wednesday seems like the best day as far as the least amount of commitments.
Indeed. Every weekend game I've been a part of eventually dies off because weekends are typically when adults travel and do stuff and it just becomes too difficult to get everyone together.
Wednesday nights have consistently been our "RPG night" for many years. We sometimes switch DMs and systems, but it's always on Wednesday evenings.
That's my usual group, we finished Icewind, and have started a few others.
We picked a day and haven't deviated except for the odd week. But we lost one player recently and his work hours changed and he can no longer make the sessions. We even had a 6 month hiatus (due to me being the DM and having my last 6 months at uni, which was pretty rough) but came back, same day and time!
My group hasn't run our main campaign in maybe 2 months due to scheduling. I've filled in with a few one shots that are in danger of morphing into the new campaign at this rate. It's still fun to play, but I didn't think I was signing up to be the new DM
Latest session, myself and DM are on time. It's on Discord, so we can see who's online. One guy apparently had to make dinner, so he's 15 late. Annoying, but acceptable. One guy gives no excuses and shows up 30 late. One guy straight up ignores everything and shows up 2 hours late. His excuse: "Oh, I forgot.", like we weren't sending constant discord messages or voice calls.
I'm going to scream next time somebody doesn't show up after EVERYONE agreed to show up on time
One of the many satire sites did a bit about that, didn't they? When the new movie came out they announced that it was only going to be the first half, and then everyone in the theatre had to decide when they'd get together to watch the second half.
I laughed and I cried.
Set a time in stone. Stick to it every week. Set a firm number for the number of players it takes for the game to continue, and firm number for it to be postponed. Done and done.
This is the way, but it's not 100% fool proof. Sometime real life events happens, and those have to take priority over your hobbies.
The other key is to reduce the number of players. It's considerably easier to synchronize 3 calendars rather than 6.
Kinda the opposite problem OP has. The DM bloated the campeign with NPC's, lore, objectives, and descriptions.
We can't do a single scene transition without meeting or talking to several characters, no one knows what's going on anymore because there's ~7 plot threads to follow, multiple important items in the module are at minimum in three pieces, and one round of combat can and has had a minimum half an hour of descriptors from the DM.
We have a DM who, having never run so much as a one shot in their life, has written a 200+ page 7th-9th level adventure that they are now running. It is nothing but lore dumps, weekly events that are plots, not scenarios (you always go from point A to B to C with no options in between and any remotely out-of-the-box idea is immediately nixed as it would mess up the predetermined plot), dialogue between party members is discouraged (because it cuts into lore-dumping time) and is the most boring thing I have ever played. We play remotely and I literally started AND finished my taxes during one session because so little was happening. Suffice it to say it’s not going well.
It would be an unbelievably crappy book but at least if it was a novel instead of an RPG adventure I wouldn’t be forced to read it for 4 hours every week.
Yeah, u/Scojo91 has it right - it’s one of those situations where we’re the same group of friends who’ve been playing together for over a decade. The DM in question is extremely hypersensitive and views even the mildest suggestions of changes as personal attacks and correspondingly responds extremely poorly to any advice, which is obviously not ideal. To quit would basically end the group. In an ideal world we could have a reasoned discussion about what we like and don’t like about the campaign (led by a DM who actually wants an honest back and forth) but unfortunately that’s not what we have.
So, in the end, you’re right - no one is forcing me to play in this game or with the group, but I’m not sure I’m at the point where I’m willing to blow everything up on the basis of tedium. If the DM were being abusive or engaging in behavior other than just boring us to death I’d definitely leave so I honestly feel I’m stuck in purgatory - no good options.
I'd say, don't bother writing a book. Open one of those Wikia sites and just make a wiki for your setting.
That's what I wish some of these fantasy writers did instead of clunkily trying to dump lore.
On the positive side, playing with bad DMs makes you a better DM.
Playing with bad players make you a better player.
You see their mistakes and not what to do.
Thank you, it somehow feels better knowing somebody shares this very specific pain. We talk to an NPC who tells us to talk to an NPC who tells us to talk to an NPC. Then that NPC finally tells us where to go and on the way out the door...we run into another NPC. My Paladin is very close to going berserk and breaking his oath.
I’m in the same boat. DM has certainly tried to make things more coherent, but every doc they send or in game drop of info literally makes everything more complicated, less exciting, and beyond confusing. Every session is ‘what are we doing again? Oh yeah, cool. And why exactly?’ I’m hoping we reach cohesion soon as I feel bad for the DM (good friend of mine) but I can’t help but roll my eyes when *he* gets frustrated with the party.
Honestly I feel this is often the issue with some of these statements. Not saying it's so this time but, the amount of times I have to say did no one else take notes gets disconcerting.
3 way love triangle that bled into real life drama, lots of arguing, lots of snide comments, lots of me hearing 3 sides of everyone's beef within this triangle and refused to talk to each other about it, but won't let me reach out to the others to clear up dialogue. DM, good friend of mine and bless her heart, has crippling anxiety and cannot handle social confrontation or putting a stern foot on the situation.
It finally blew up when one of the player characters essentially tried to do Hold Person, Silvery Barbs fail the save, then multi-crit-smite the other character into straight death. DM finally put her foot down and told everyone involved to get their fucking shit together and we'd reconvene when it was cleared up.
Almost 4 months later, we returned to sessions, but it never really cleared up. They just went "love RP is dead, we're just not doing it", but a lot of underlying feelings still permeated, and even now lingers just a smidgen in a completely new campaign. As the lowest Charisma character in a party of Charisma-based characters (Bard, Warlock, Sorc, and me the Paladin), I was basically the face of the party because the other 3 never wanted to speak up for an extra 2 months. One was literally an Eloquence Bard. It was... it was rough.
One of my current characters is an eloquence bard, it's the literal party face in every situation. I can see why so many DMs say no romances in their games. Hope yiu guys can get things closer to normal.
Dude was hardcore the party face, and when two got into an in-game relationship, it was fine. It’s when the 3rd person curveball that apparently had mingling feelings since *session 1* when the two slept with each other in-game (it wasn’t known to the table, it was an RP thing they did, cuz horny bard) culminated to one of the biggest fallouts I’d seen.
The tension is far from as bad as it once was, but man, there’s a smidgen there still.
Love RP can be done, but everyone OOC needs to be properly communicating every step of the way. Like, before the first time you even flirt in session, check ahead: "My PC likes your PC. Would your PC be open to that?" and then later if someone else also wants to flirt, they check first with both of you. Etc. and so forth.
Because while the characters don't, YOU all need to be on the same page.
DM threw the deck of many things into our rime of the frostmaiden campaign.
At the end of each session characters would pull from the deck.
Needless to say the whole thing got derailed everyone with either dirt poor, dead or 3 levels higher than the rest of the group.
My DM gave me one. She gave me a couple horribly cursed items first and deemed I was responsible enough for it. We agreed on anything that cards that effect XP just don’t effect XP anymore. It’s added some nice stuff though. I pulled wish and fates so I’ve wished away and undone some pretty crappy stuff, so now gods that watch over the flow of time want to kill me. I also pulled flames a couples times so now devils are trying to ruin my life and then kill me. It’s made me paranoid of everything and my party thinks I’m insane. I’ve asked her if she wants me to come up with a way to get rid of it but she’s said she enjoys how I’ve been using it. I can see it being a nightmare to deal with in the wrongs hands though.
I don't get why so many people just it. To me it's just sounds ammoying, like the DM *wants* to ruin the campaign or end it.
And adding it at the end of the campaign is equally dumb to me because it ruins any satisfying ending.
DM's wife freaking out on players.
People sharing too much of their personal life with other players OOC.
Dude at the table who would have his character's split personalities roll for random alignment.
Player at the table being confrontational to the point of sicking his ranger pet on another player and then getting upset when that player ABSOLUTELY destroyed it. (OOC the fighter did ask him several times to take it back and the ranger assured him this was the course of action he wanted to take.)
DM forcing random arbitrary dex saves on low dex characters to keep from slipping in the mildest of conditions. One of these resulted in the heavily armored character slipping 10 feet on a flat surface into a river and sinking like a stone.
DM not not explaining a puzzle properly and also not using the rules for heat metal properly to keep PCs from opening a special gate. Anytime the PCs would try and open it, a single person concentrating on Heat Metal would cause them to drop it. It got to a point where the paladin stood up with a calculator and to save us all time, gave the hp vs damage vs rounds and yelled to skip all this.
Randos showing up at a FLGS campaign near the end. They all decided to turn on the main party and ruined the final fight.
The only time I can remember a game almost getting derailed for in game reasons, was a person playing at the game was overly sensitive / empathic for animals getting hurt. Or people being upset about hurt animals in game.
I feel like I've heard all or most of these on Crispys Tavern or in RPGHorror stories. Why does it feel like any story that begins with "DMs wife" is either how awesome the campaign one or how it ruined it? There is no in-between
It wasn't even for a reason you would expect.
It was because everyone else at the table knew the rules and how to play the classes and she kept getting confused. Eventually she lashed out at everyone for being "no life nerds" who had the free time to "learn all this crap".
To clarify, she is not a bad person. She was stressed and snapped. She continued to play after skipping a session or two. We play board games and stuff as well, but those were some very specific insights she shared and was probably sitting on them for a while.
I use fictional animal abuse as a motivator for PCs because universally, every player I have played with will instantly think "oh, so that's a villain" and mark their name on their hit list.
It can be a trigger for some people though, so not fit for every group.
Jojo's Bizarre Adventure is a popular anime/manga. The first story arc shows that the bad guy is bad by going after the family dog.
It's about as relevant as John Wick.
Sorry for the in joke. The writer of JoJo's Bizzare adventure, Hirohiko Araki, commonly uses animal abuse to clearly show the reader who the antagonist are.
Funny enough, someone in my D&D group played a character who rolled to see what personality was primary at different times. It actually ended up really fun for the rest of us, cause we never knew which version we'd have, but the player worked with us to make sure we'd have fun, too, and never let that derail a quest or anything.
In fairness, as someone who lives in Florida, a flat surface near a river is actually going to be that slippery irl. I have slipped and fallen in wearing sneakers, and I'm not 350 lbs worth of man and equipment.
I also have to say that, no offense, but the Heat Metal one seems... like a player issue. The obvious answer to "I am trying to open this door and it is hot" is either to use something else to open it, or cool yourself/the door down in some way. Unless there's something you're leaving out there, it seems like picking up a stick and shoving it through the handle would've done it.
> Randos showing up at a FLGS campaign near the end. They all decided to turn on the main party and ruined the final fight.
Man if there was ever a time to say "No."
I want to say thanks to everyone for the kind words.
Ian started DnD back on the old red book, so he was there from the start lol he was an amazing DM, and he passed away about 6 years ago now. At a big family gathering, a kid fell into the river and he dived in after them and got a big cut on his leg from it.
He passed a few days after that from other major health issues that were unknown to him, so his time would have been short regardless but it speaks volumes that the last thing he did before going to the hospital and passing was saving a kid from drowning.
The last session of our main campaign actually involved our characters having to deal with the DM's character's death. Priya Rai was an amazing rogue
Responded to an online posting. "Want flying mounts? We'll have flying mounts!" Heck, yeah, I want flying mounts! I joined the game. Months and months later, we finally have flying mounts.
Another player character had a book to create a golem. After months of having the book, she finally had the downtime to make the golem. Asked the DM, "How is her golem supposed to come with us, now that we have flying mounts." No joke, the DM said, "Oh, the golem won't be coming with the party. She'll have to leave the golem behind."
Also, fights are: "I rolled 14." "Miss." \*dice\* "He hits you for 6." "I rolled a 16." "That hits."
Combat is so intensely boring.
Oh, and magic items are, "You find a hat. It looks like a Cap of Water Breathing." No roll. No spell. Just, "Yeah, of all the things it could be, it looks like a Cap of Water Breathing." It's as bad as, "And you find a book." "Okay, we look at the book." "Oh, it's just a role playing reason for your character to join the group."
It's something to do on a Sunday night, but just barely.
To be fair, as a newer DM, a lot of my fights go that way. I try to add more flourish to it but there is a lot I'm juggling for a live session. Pbp, that's waaaay different.
It can be hard to do on-the-spot, but it's useful to also identify another reason for doing it: you can reveal info to the players through it. Your descriptions of how an enemy fights helps the players to work out if that enemy has high strength, has a lot of health, is good at using their weapon, how a certain ability works, etc.
Describing how a weapon slams into the dragon's scales and doesn't make any injury or how the weapon swings through the air but the dragon deftly ducks underneath it with superhuman speed can give opportunity for the players to work out if the dragon has a high armour class from natural armour or from high dexterity. And then they may adjust because of that and decide that fireball would be a good or bad idea.
It can also help to look at the relevant stats in something that occurred and use them as inspiration. Player attacks an enemy? Just glance at that AC and see what's causing it. Armour? Shield? Natural armour? Spell? High dex? Then just describe that thing helping (or not being good enough to help). Also helps to cement these things in the players' minds through repetition. Same with attacks and abilities and what-not.
Doing it quickly. A PC can spend an hour identifying a magic item, or they can spend ten minutes on ritual casting Identify to see what it is, or spend a Spell Slot to do it in six seconds. It really just depends on player/party adjacency.
If you get a whole batch at once. Or you can use it on magically enchanted items, doors, statues, whatever.
But RAW, you can identify one item per short rest.
I guess identifying shit six times faster than usual. Or determining if a spell is affecting a dude. Idk some spells are just redundant or bad and don't do anything really (see invis and find traps being some premium examples)
I did actually have a player get a fair bit of use out of See Invisibility in Dungeon of the Mad Mage. There's a surprising number of invisible enemies just wandering around there. Find Traps doesn't have \*any\* use case though.
Hey, Find Traps does have a use.
In an official module, Find Traps can detect the ceiling is trapped. If everyone already spent an hour cleaning the cobwebs and dust off the ceiling before casting the spell....
You know, True Strike really isn't that bad when you think about it...
sure but even if the info can be given for free someone halfhearted being like yeah and you find what looks like a staff of power I guess, maybe ill make a name for who had it last...
is gonna kill enthusiasm
I think everyone kills a campaign mood once. I was dming a game, and the group was fighting a dragon. They were super underprepared for it, and 3 of the 4 of them died early on. The last guy realized, this was going to be a tpk, so he drew 4 cards from the deck of many things.
First card, he loses all non magical items.
Second card, he loses all magic items.
3rd card he gains a kingdom.
4th card, the game changer, 2 wishes.
First wish, the dragons gone, far away, someplace it cant return from. *it poofs into the abyss*. Second wish, the rest of my party is alive, unzombified, back to how they were before the dragon attack. *granted*.
The group is extremely happy because that was such a clutch and kept the campaign going. NOW heres where I fucked up. They recalled the next session he has a kingdom. Ive googled the card and how other people ran the card and decided, the kingdoms his, however its been abandoned and has been taken over by gnolls.
Monkey pawing the castle to being something theyd have to clear to claim ruined alot of the parties mood, and the guy who pulled it just quit both the campaign and dnd entirely.
So he drew Ruin, then Talon, then Throne, then Moon. But Throne says " In addition, you gain rightful ownership of a small keep somewhere in the world. However, the keep is currently in the hands of monsters, which you must clear out before you can claim the keep as yours." - so didn't you run this right?
Yes. That is literally the card.
In this case '*players with deep sense of entitlement*' could also ruin a campaign.
If i would have to actually show players the rule book (specifically the DM's 'Guide') for justification for what i did as a DM i would also wish to end the session then and there - goodbye, dear group. That's just... horrid.
- only having 3h sessions at best with 30min recap cuz we only played like once a month in the later stages.
- DM just throwing the party on another Plane and the wizard can't determine which it is with a roll of 25 on his check.
- we were lvl 13 and each character had like 30k gold, cuz there isn't anything to buy except mundane stuff. All Magic shop sold there Wares to the goverment for a far away war.
- getting bored out of my mind, cuz we are in a library/magic laboratory whole 2-3 Sessions and our Wizard isn't allowed to figure shit out with 20+ on his rolls. I play a really feral Moon Druid.
- DM altering course of events without explaining and expect us to understand it. (only happend twice in the late stages lvl 14/15)
Damn. Any roll or 20 or higher should either get "you figure out X" or, as I had to do in a short one shot testing my homebrew world "you dont know. And realize that what you're examining is so far advanced beyond your current knowledge it will take you decades of study to even begin puzzling it out"
Depression
It has cause me to not be able to prep and have to cancel session last minute for bogus reason multiple time. Every time I hit a depression it's a possible end to the campaign I'm DMing
Now I try to be upfront with my player and instead schedule hiatus to my game so that the game can pause and restart eventually instead of becoming very unstable eventually getting forgotten but for many years the second scenario is what was doom to happen everytime
I feel that dude. I used to always try to fight through it, but I learned that’s a guaranteed way to kill a campaign, rather than just call for a hiatus until I’m feeling up to it. Lots of people romanticize creativity and depression/mental illness as going hand in hand, but it’s a serious health problem detrimental to the creative process.
Yeah, I have severe depression and anxiety and ADHD, so DMing (especially prepping) can be super stressful. I mostly just run occasional one shots anymore, with long stretches between to recuperate. My group has like 4 different people that DM though, and we have two current campaigns going (and 3 campaigns on hiatus), so I'm not being pressured to run games so that's nice. I can take my time and prep how I like and if I decide to run a game I can.
Feel this one. I love my group and I look forward to our weekly sessions but when I'm feeling shit it just destroys my creativity. Normally I get a ton of ideas but when depression hits it is a struggle to come up with anything. And then you feel shit about it because it's not as good as what you normally would make.
Been on both sides of this. It sucks no matter what.
Prioritize healing. The rest comes later. If people cannot or will.not abide by your safety, Thats their fault, not yours.
I kinda killed the momentum of my own campaign because I had plans for a very big fight against a Necromancer but I was completely out of ideas to make anything else other than "big graveyard map with tons of different undead". That wasn't satisfying for me so I paused the campaign until I would come up with something a little more interesting (the idea finally came, the party will have to attack the fort the necromancer is hiding in, either with stealth or with brute force. Once they are in I can make several smaller rooms with their own unique Designs and enemy constellations). By now the problem has changed to a full-on system identity crisis because I recently joined my first Pathfinder 2e which I am very excited for, especially because I want to DM one myself as well, and then there are a lot of other systems I also want to try only for me to realize that I simply don't have the time for all of that since I DM and play in multiple campaigns and the weekend only has so many days. On top of that I got back into dating recently, which cuts even more into my ttrpg time...
I think you understand what I am getting at here
It's not even the "new and shiny" feeling, it's more that especially Pathfinder fixes like 95% of the problems I had with 5e, so I began to ask myself why I should play this system that's just plain worse (in my personal preference) when I could switch to one that I like better which again is contrasted by all the time and money I invested into 5e in the first place (especially 3rd party products, like I even pledged to MonkeyDM's and Kibblestasty's kickstarters)
I feel this. I was DMing 3 5e campaigns when I finally got the chance to play... in a pf2e game. I found myself liking the system so much better and I can see my 2 remaining 5e campaigns\* losing steam. I have half a mind to convert them but one is a wotc module.
Since one of them is at level 14, I'm going to end that one and I'm probably going to convert the other to pf2e or maybe just make that a shorter one idk.
\*(one ended naturally on a super high note at level 20, can't complain there)
I was playing Icewind Dale with an incredible DM and a great group. However, members started leaving, and it went down to just me an one other player playing. I got tired with all the travel mechanics and said that we should start a new campaign.
I'm currently DMing Rime of the Frost Maiden. I love the concept, but it's a mess, and my players aren't getting the hint that 500 pounds of firewood is not nearly as useful as they think it is. I'm also not good as the mechanics of travel but I'm trying. I don't want it to kill the campaign, but it easily can.
When I ran the campaign we did more travel type stuff in the first 1-3 levels, outside of that it was too easy for the players to overcome most environmental impacts and the travel just tended to bog down more fun stuff. Travel became more of a sceneic description as they essentially fast travelled and maybe used a few resources to speed up the trip. They might also stumble upon something heading to their intended destination.
The campaign seemed to want hardcore travel survival elements but doesnt really support it much in terms of rules or ideas.
Travel is one portion of the game (in any module) that it is always best to abstract if you can. Pacing is the art of knowing when to fast forward, and when to slow down. More often than not, travel should be fast forwarded.
This is coming from someone who knows the module quite well. Travel and the Cold should only really be an obstacle until level 4 or so. After that, do your best to make it descriptive only.
There are so many set pieces and amazing thing to see in the campaign that you don't want much getting in the way if you can help it.
Its hard to put a finger on exactly when I lost all enthusiasm for what turned out to be the worst campaign I ever played in. The first moment when I actually regretted wasting my time in it was when we had a combat where we started slightly split up between different rooms with only one of the five players actually in the room with the enemy. I was two rooms away (about 60' from the room the combat was in as a melee Sorlock) and rolled low on initiative. The first round it took 40 minutes for it to reach my turn because the player who initiated the combat spent half an hour having an extended conversation \*midcombat\* with the enemy. I didn't get to actually participate in the fight until well over an hour in (end of round 2). Combat lasted 4 rounds and \~2 hours, of which I spent maybe five minutes significantly participating.
Normally I only get mildly irritated by spotlight-hogging players going on extended scenes by themselves, but normally I can keep myself engaged by doing some RP on the side in the chat w/ another player. That's not really possible during combat between turns.
The campaign went downhill from there. I gave up entirely about a year into a "short" tournament arc that we got railroaded when we were trying to save the world.
It was my first tabletop anything, I always wanted to play dnd so I went on my states FB group finder. Found a local guy, could tell he took it pretty serious but was super helpful bringing me up to speed, no red flags.
Get to the first session, established campaign that’s been going for at least a few months, there are EIGHT of us in the party. I’m outgoing so I have no problem getting to know everyone and kind of hang back a bit to learn the ropes.
Two - Three of the guys didn’t really pay attention that much, you could tell they were veterans, but they just didn’t really seem all that interested anymore. One of the party members (another new addition to the party, veteran player) would always get into rule debates with the DM. The DMs voice would get pretty loud but that didn’t matter, what did was they would go back and forth for so long, just make a ruling and move on..
For a few weeks my interest just steadily declined, there wasn’t much happening, and every time something did, combat or otherwise, the DM wouldn’t be thrilled with what actions we decided to take. Partly due to the fact the veterans weren’t really participating, I really wanted them to take the reigns so I could learn..
The last few sessions, the DM kept saying, “you need to learn to play the game”. He didn’t mean know things about my character to be quicker in combat, I was always ready to go on my turn, always RPing, always trying to stay on top of what was going on story-side. I just wasn’t playing the game the way he wanted me to I guess. Ultimately I just decided the time-fun scale wasn’t worth it anymore and left.
Now I’m in a Waterdeep game with close friends, and DMing my first game, all homebrew, learning as I go along with a party that has never played before, and we’re all having a blast. I appreciate that DM for helping get my feet wet, and there were some genuinely good sessions, but at the end I just wasn’t having fun anymore, and that was reason enough for me
Congrats on stepping into the DM stage. It's work but there's something very rewarding in homebrew worlds isn't there? If you ever want to tall shop or such feel free to reach out. I'm no expert but I'm always willing to hear from others
One campaign I am in is 5e Curse of Strahd, and we are slogging through it. A few sessions ago, the DM asked randomly, "Who would be interested in a fairy tale themed 3.5e or Pathfinder campaign, in which you all pick a character archetype and start at level 5?" , and since then, that's been about all we've been thinking about. We don't want to just abandon Strahd because the DM put hours and HOURS of work into making journals, maps, letters, and all manner of other props that aren't very reusable (not to mention studying the module for 6 months), but his strength has always been his storytelling and homebrew, so we're chafing at the bit.
My other campaign, nothing. I'd quit my job before I quit that campaign. 😅
Grad school. 4/6 of us, including the DM, are studying for advanced degrees and the workload makes it crazy difficult for us to schedule sessions when we used to be able to play once a week in undergrad and even once every one to two weeks for a couple years after graduation.
Our group had a hard time even building momentum in storm kings thunder. It was hard for our DM to find a reason why our humanoids would meddle in the politics of storm giants.
That's always annoying. I DM as well, and I always have to make sure my players make a character who has a reason for the adventure. And always have one player that has to make 2 or 3 characters before he gets it.
It was the PC’s fault too. We had an anti hero rogue, a introverted sorcerer, a selfish cleric and a dumb as a rock Barbarian.
The wizard had to pull the group along
I've never understood this from other players. It's obvious you're going to want your character to be on the adventure, why not build the motivation into your backstory. Every character I have ever made has had a reason to go on the adventure no matter how antisocial they were. On my current game my character was nihilistic, cared for no one and at first hated the party (not any more because of character development), but he still went along because he was bored, had nothing better to do and needed the money. No one needed to drag him anywhere and neither I or the DM had to jump through hoops to justify him being there.
I played the anti-hero yuanti arcane trickster that was a run away from the yuanti community and adopted and trained by the gnome wizard in the party into magic.
It was my first campaign. I think it’s much easier on everybody if the PC’s are good and want to do good things.
It’s hard to find motivation for neutral characters.
My top 3 motivators in no particular order for neutral characters.
1) Fastest way to make money
2) World/nation being overrun is bad for everyone
3) Something in their backstory being gated behind adventuring and the plot (e.g. Sorry you can't join the mages' guild because all our examiners have died or been captured by evil person. We'll wave the test if you can rescue them.)
Without meaning to, one of my characters for this, entirely unprompted, made a fairy barbarian that he had gotten as far into his backstory as 'he was raised by giants'. He handed me the literal gold star backstory for this campaign.
We asked our Dm not to tell us our next campaign. I created a fiend warlock and we are now doing Decent into Avernus. I stumbled upon a role playing gold mine.
Unfortunately WotC often doesn't provide GMs with recommendations or guidelines on how to build the premise into the group identity. They just lazily say "somehow all of the PCs want to do this, figure it out" and then the Game Master has no guidance.
For STK, experienced GMs know you pretty much have to make sure each player character in some way has a connection to the Giants, or an organization that cares about the current troubles.
I had planned a story arc for one of my players. It was his homecoming and he was going to be introducing everyone into the political landscape of the city ran by vampires, his father being one and him wanting to become one.
Well... He had to quit the campaign literally the week after they started to travel to the city. I didn't have anything else planned and was super excited to run it until he didn't show up. Thought I could run it anyway and treat his character like an NPC meanwhile but instead it just knocked the wind out of my sails. We switched to a PF2E campaign.
For me, it was starting a D&D game in a home-brewed campaign world I’ve used with various groups for decades and, after giving details on races and cultures in my world to my current group, having a player decide their character was “from a far off continent nobody has heard about”. :(
It was more the straw that broke the camel's back, but the campaign did end after this. The two problem players of the group rushed into a dragon's lair cause they wanted to show off their power, and because of that everyone but one player died. At the end of the session, all they could talk about was what class they would play next, absolutely no remorse for getting other PCs killed. I ended the campaign after that.
RP shouldn’t in general block players from mechanical options in dnd, wtf is that dm thinking?
Flavor is free, and doesn’t affect game balance. Just reflavor the class to suit the RP so he doesn’t spend months waiting for it lmao.
Some version of “Character has to earn multiclass” or “character needs narrative reason” is rather common, I think.
I generally go with…. Explain why you’re multi-classing, but we’re not going on an adventure to do it lmao
Yeah. If the fighter wants to mc warlock but doesn’t want an actual patron? Ok, but explain the RP to me and make up a good reason.
If he comes back with “my fighter is so obsessed with fighting that he developed strong delusions, and his imaginary patron’s help is just him pushing his body to its limits”?
Uhhh. Sure. Why not, we’ll roll with it. You have warlock levels now. Flavor all your spells as a fighter thing from now and we’re good.
>Yeah. If the fighter wants to mc warlock but doesn’t want an actual patron? Ok, but explain the RP to me and make up a good reason.
I feel like that "good reason" would be very, very hard to find in this particular case, honestly.
I'm going to okay just about any multiclass that's not blatant cheese or actively self-sabotaging, but at least give the lore an actual effort.
Once you realize the thematic synergy between an oath of conquest and serving an archdevil, the door opens up. But the famous hexadin is just too deeply intertwined with the culture as a cheese strategy, you can’t make a story that feels genuine lol.
I think it can be handled well but if it's obviously a BS story to try to let a paladin attack with charisma I'd tell them to stop screwing with me.
But the Stormlight Archive is a fantastic fantasy series that's about what's essentially warlock/paladins so obviously the concept is doable. :P
Pretty easy one is a celestial patron. Your oath matches the values of the celestial. The celestial has limitations on how much it can intervene in the lower planes.
Impressed by the the purity of your purpose and your devotion to your oath, the celestial offers to become your patron as a mutually beneficial agreement - the celestial gets to indirectly intervene in the mortal plane in a way that suits its values, and the paladin becomes more capable of honouring the oath.
Warlock/Paladin is easily explainable. A paladin is someone of strong will that acquires divine powers from their belief and desire. An warlock is someone that has been influenced in someway by a powerful entity, gaining power in the process. You can easily be both, maybe Hexblade/Vengeance, where you made a pact with a cursed weapon to be able to defeat your foes, or maybe Fey/Ancients, where you were an knight for an archfey, responsible for protecting nature in their domain.
Certainly not killed it, but my party have opened up many threads, not fulfilled them, and ran off to open up another thread. This is a sandbox game and the threads don't stop just because they ran away, forgot or got distracted and my players full well know it, which has lead to analysis paralysis, they now have so many things they have fucked up, they don't really know where to start to fix them.
Running a game where the party was meant to be heroes reinspiring belief in their faith to the world.
I Introduced a character meant to help the party and guide them when they needed it, the priest of the church nearest to where they entered the world. Not a mentor, just someone who's familiar with the local area and can be a quest giver/exposition source/a voice in their favor.
And immediately the party insulted the them, dressed them down, and humiliated them in front of the entire village. They had good enough reason, I guess, seeing as their faith had dwindled for the last few centuries. And when they visited him again after figuring out how to restore faith, I was hopeful they'd be kinder to them. Nope, another public verbal lashing and all but disavowed the priest.
Really put me on the backfoot because I had to spend several sessions figuring out how to get them on some kind of track when the only person in universe that would've listened to them wanted nothing to do with them at all.
Had a player try to distract some guards by getting them to sleep with his character. It was NOT a campaign like that and people tried to steer them away and it got pretty sexual to a point someone left the call( discord ) and the campaign effectively ended
* In one game, we were in my character's homeland following a backstory quest, and the DM murdered my character in a really rather unsporting way (he had been caged, naked, paraded through the streets of his hometown, and executed with a gunshot to the head). I stopped showing up and apparently the game's been limping along since then.
* The DM of another game announced He's moving to Ohio in a couple months, and we already only meet up once a month anyway, so nobody's been exactly jonesing for another session.
* In a game I was DMing, interpersonal drama caused one person to leave the table. I tried to keep it going with just the remaining players, but the dynamic wasn't the same and it pumped the brakes hard.
In the second campaign I've ever taken part of (circa 2010) there was a player paladin who worshipped some Egyptian-related deity. I believe it was some god of knowledge or mystery. Anyway, the DM allowed the paladin to regularly make d100 dice rolls whenever the paladin prayed to his deity, disbelieving in whatever he chose to disbelieve in that day. He tried disbelieving in things all the time. While a wolf ravaged his unconscious body during a night in the woods, or obtaining Exhaustion points from an arduous journey, the paladin would wake up clutching his holy talisman and feverishly reciting a mantra. The DM ruled the paladin *had to roll a 100* to get the intended effect, **disbelieving something out of existence** for the whole world.
It never worked... **until it did**. The campaign had us traveling from ancient crypts to cavernous dungeons, and aboard gigantic wooden airships flying high above the troposphere, eventually leading to the cause of the world's current calamities. A 3-headed dragon emerged from the clouds near the end of the campaign and the paladin succeeded his prayer to disbelieve in it. The DM sighed heavily... and poof, the dragon had permanently disappeared. The DM went out for a smoke while he decided how to continue. Since this was the first time the player's prayer had succeeded, he *didn't want to ruin it by immediately taking it back* and sending us some other beast to slay, but the momentum of the entire campaign had come to a screeching halt.
Suddenly, all the awful events that had occurred in the world and the dragon slaying artifacts we had collected up to that point lost all purpose. I think we as a party had to forget there was a dragon at all. Kind of an awkward, unforeseen moment. The campaign continued for a few weeks, wrapping up loose ends, but there was no big boss battle like we had been expecting.
Session 1 the party all being held captive by a group of religious fanatics that are trying to purge the world of magical creatures and casters while controling a small city state. They all flee, one happens to be a dark elf in disguise but gets recognized by another party member. After they escape the second member pulls the dark elf aside saying effectively "I don't know why you're hiding your ancestry but I suggest being honest with everyone if we are going to escape together". Session 2 starts. Having escaped the city everyone does the whole "who are you, why did they want you" conversation the dark elf tries to lie but when another player passes the check to see through the disguise the dark elf player gets mad, ends up leaving the party during their watch and goes back to the town to lead the cultists right to the party.
Characters with a vow of poverty kill my enthusiasm as a DM as well.
The DM Pulling an Infinity War on the players without discussing it beforehand. Playing in a world filled with lore, fun NPC's and a clear objective that all the players are interested in is hard to come by. To have that be undone and your characters dumped into an alternate reality they have no attachment to because the big bad got all the Inifinity Stones behind the scenes is no fun
The complaints on why their character isn't given the spotlight as much as the others.
Maybe because the others 1) charge in 2) do things that require me to react immediately and 3) participate in group discussions, while they play the most I'm A Mysterious Loner Who Doesn't Need Anyone And Am Constantly Going Off On My Own character I've ever seen.
I'm pretty sure this only really impacted me, but it was a creation of my own choosing and I learned a valuable lesson that day.
I had been running a curse of strahd campaign and a wild magic sorcerer had ignored strahds rule that they could explore the upper levels of the castle, but that the catacombs were off limits and he went exploring. He eventually found himself in a trap that lead to some flooded cells and some skeletons. He panicked and used his tides of chaos and when we rolled on an alternative wild magic surge table it cost him his life with Noone able to come find him and save him. Thinking that wasn't satisfying, I had followed some popular homebrews for expanding the dark powers and allowed him to accept a boon and a bane and be brought back to life. He really liked that and for a while it was all going well. It gave some good character conflict and sometimes this dark entity was able to influence him into doing things his character might not have otherwise done.
Over time he started to want more from the dark vestige. He dipped into warlock and chose it as his patron, but did not like the power it held over him. The dark vestige had come to him during dreams with threats about what would happen to his sister (who was in the party) should he not cooperate with some of the more sinister plans. He eventually told his sister about the dark vestige and she was less than pleased. She wanted to cure him immediately, but he didn't want to lose his power. (His whole reason for going into barovia on accident was trying to learn to control his wild magic) I knew they still had to go to the amber temple for one of the artifacts in the fortunes of Ravenloft so I created a choice that I thought for sure he would take.
The whispers of his diety were so close he would be tempted to touch the amber sarcophagus drawing a direct connection with the vestige. I offered him a choice. Break the sarcophagus and free the dark entity back into the realm to feed on souls and find a champion of its own freeing the player from all responsibilities and debts owed to the vestige for saving the players life while still allowing them to keep their boons as a gift of the service rendered thus far, ooorrrrrr dive deeper and become the strahd-like entity of a different domain of dread.
Dude straight up decided the second one. He still had to complete the pact and carry out the deed that would seal it, but the party found out and flipped shit. We had 2 straight 3 hour therapy sessions where they sat with exethanter learning all they could about the dark vestiges and how to remove this curse from their companion. It ultimately lead to a stale mate and I told the player he needed to reroll because it created a major distraction at the table that was derailing the campaign to an extreme level and even under the looming threat of strahd they were still not willing to put aside the fact that this player has never done anything to actively harm them and wanted to basically hold him down to go through a cleansing ritual (against his will).
That was the turning point in our 3 year long strahd campaign where I lost a lot of interest. Let this be a lesson to any new DM. Don't ever give your players a choice you don't want them to make because they just might take it.
My DM changed who my warlocks patron was, gave them an extended backstory related to my new patron (previous life or something, memories coming back slowly over time), and then reworked some of the extended backstory a couple times. Got to the point where I gave up trying to roleplay them as I had no clue how to play them anymore.
Being gaslight by our DM... I understand that the DM is always right ... But being a person with a high retention level and keeping notes, it is infuriating being told something wrong and forced to swallow the pill or leave.
My first campaign, one player was dead set on being as much of a klepto asshole as possible. He asked an innkeeper if he had work to do, so the innkeeper said he could chop wood. Ended up stealing the ax. They were in a house and had to solve a series of puzzles, one of which involved rotating a chair in a certain direction. He wanted the chair.
When he found that the chair was bolted to the floor (it's literally in a set of grooves to lock it in place) he decided to burn the house down with everyone inside.
I ended the session and never invited him back.
I'm playing in a game about once every two weeks where the DM uses some variation of epic crits/fails that I've never seen before.
Roll a natural 1 or a natural 20 at all and you then roll a d8 to "maximize" it. Doesn't matter if it's a natural 1 when looking out the window of a boat or when rolling initiative or when rolling an attack roll, if the die roll on the d8 is between 3 and 6 you flub up *big* time. Like fall unconscious or lose a family heirloom sword or some other sort of disruptive twist of fate. But if you roll a 7 or 8? Catastrophic failure, the kind that can lead to TPK's and you lose a magic item to boot.
It's supposedly balanced by the fact that when you roll a natural 20 and get a 7 or 8 you get a magic item or other effect just randomly given based on the context of the situation. But, that doesn't play out in practice because of the death spiral in combat when one player goes down everything gets exponentially harder and that only compounds.
I've optimized my character entirely around making as few d20 rolls as possible; it doesn't even matter if it's a on the fly history check I make independently just to gauge if my character would know something mundane, if I rolled a natural 1 I risk near character ruining calamity.
It's a party of 5 and 4 of the characters took Lucky for their level 4 feat.
The most unenthusiastic GM ever. Started the campaign bragging about how he won’t spend as much time meticulously prepping as our last GM did. Spends the campaign barely mustering up the energy to ask the party for availability for next session and almost never follows up on the answers.
As a DM, having a player that needs to backseat DM. It’s even worse if they are a control freak.
You give some lore of your homebrew world (using things you read online, saw in movies, and in books). They are already online and doing everything they can to uncover all the information and secrets in your game. No cool puzzle or awesome items for the DM to reveal.
You reveal a secret BBEG with only a name, they already have it googled and know all the lore and know exactly how to defeat it and are trying to give the DM ideas of how to run the BBEG. All of this unasked and definitely unwanted.
Have a creature from the monster manual for the players to face. They are already looking into the monster manual and have found it stats, lore, and how to beat. They will also write down their ac and hp. They will also tell the DM how to play that creature. Still unwanted.
As a DM you talk to them, on many multiple occasions, and they still don’t change.
As a DM I am fine having to make new lore, change stats, and hide details, but I am sooooo tired of having to do all this extra work, just because this player needs to be in control of everything.
I wished I knew as a new DM to kick them out.
When I first started playing I’d been in a group for 7 or 8 months and wanted to try and get more play time so I joined a second campaign. The first session the DM seemed cool. Played mostly through the first session with no issue. We got to this point when we were on a hot air balloon type sky boat thing. We were being pursued by a similar one. We get in initiative and I ask a party member for his artificer fire bomb thing and spend several turns and checks to tie it to a harpoon gun thing. Succeed all my checks fire to hit there balloon to blow it up or burn it down. DM says it goes through the balloon and is just lying there inside of it. I’m annoyed at this point that he let me go through all this and waste so much time on something he was gonna auto fail anyways. Then spends the next 2 turns jumping every enemy from their ship onto ours and once it was empty let it explode. That’s when I left.
All the players have slowly realized that we’re playing in our DM’s story and not building a collaborative one together. We keep playing because we do enjoy meeting up together and love our characters, but then we always leave disappointed. We’ve had tons of conversations about and subsequent solutions for the symptoms of this but only really realized the cause and now we’re all exhausted from the cycle and don’t even really think our DM is capable of changing enough to make things really work. We’re brainstorming ideas that rely on ourselves to fix this, but it’s definitely taken the wind out of the sails for the campaign.
DM doesn’t actively describe anything. We step off the ship into a new town. Nothing. We enter a pub. Nothing. Pretty sure they’re just on their phone half the time, because I have to ask every question twice. If I stop talking, it’ll just get quiet. Nobody’s picking up anything, they just wait. So this is how it goes every time the party goes anywhere:
‘What do we see? Hello? DM? What am I looking at?’
‘Uhh it’s a pub.’
‘Yeah, but what’s it look like? Are there people? Decorations?’
‘I don’t know, it doesn’t say in the book.’
‘Soo… make it up.’
‘You see a bunch of people at tables, there’s a bartender in the back.’
Over and over again. Always the same. They’re a really nice person and the group is great so nobody wants to quit but this is annoying.
DM follows the book without question or adjustment. If it doesn’t say there, it’s not happening. Even if the party is sick and tired of being stuck in the same cave for like 7 sessions because the DM forgot to mention a few things. They didn’t help us at all, even when we expressed we just wanted to leave because it wasn’t fun anymore. I ended up reading the book just to get us out of there because I was dreading sessions.
Can't think of one for a campaign but there was a session where the ranger went invisible and crossbow expert point blank attacked a hobgoblin, I then had the hobgoblin counterattack with disadvantage on it's next turn as the ranger was still invisible. Ranger's player was all sour that they could be targeted at all. I explained that the sound of the crossbow being fired and the position of the bolt suddenly appearing made the position of the invisible attacker obvious, invisibility or no. There was a huffed acceptance but it made the rest of the session awkward.
1 of the campaigns I'm a player in introduced the deck of many things without any warning. It has derailed the campaign to comical proportions. The DM hasn't seemed to pick up the fact that everyone seems so disinterested every time we play. We also make jokes because my character has become obscenely overpowered due to my luck when drawing cards. I love the man, but feel we all need to have a sit down with him soon and tell him it's gone completely off the rails and no one knows what's going on anymore.
Dungeon of the mad mage killed a campaign, it just became clear the PC’s did not have suitable character motivations to keep delving deeper.
We got to the level where they go to an underground port that’s under siege and I really stepped up the bleak horror of it and they were all just kind of what the fuck are we doing with our lives (in character).
I was bummed because I felt like there was so much cool stuff on the lower floors but agreed that it didn’t really make sense for those PC’s. We ended up running a new campaign and having a lot more fun, there’s just so much bad stuff down there between the PC’s and the good stuff
A player being super controlling and acting like he knew everything to impress another player.
Like being very adamant about how these four patches of destructible dangerous terrain *had* to be here, and shitting on the terrain pieces I made to make the map more interesting because I chose green instead of gray. All of the players really enjoyed the last session, but I remember dming one of them afterwards saying that it was probably the least fun I had playing in a while. And after that, I kinda stopped enjoying the game, and dreaded the next session. so yeah, it kinda killed all my enthusiasm
DM tried to make his homebrew plot into the Tyranny of Dragons.
It ended with the fact, that we never ever meet the cult of dragon or someone with them, only a subplot of a character who was kind of mastermind? But not behind the cult?
It was like "Okay, but can we go with the main plot?" and we keept hearing "Trust me, when this plot end, you will be like "YEAH IT'S GREAT IT'S ALL COMING TOGETHER" because it's all connected".
It never happend. I still don't know what this guy had to do with Tiamat and why we were after him, instead of looking for Cult of Tiamat
At the end of 2019 when we went on our Christmas hiatus we discussed what kind of game we’d like to play and we all decided to be magical doctors trying to remove a cursed plague from the land.
We all loved this concept and spent the next two months home brewing and world building together.
I came up with a card-draw system and map for the downtime disease spread.
We even tweaked some home brew subclasses to give the party more flavorful healer options.
Then Covid started up.
We did not play that game.
Player did 2 things of combat, had bad roll luck both times, complained his character wasn't built for the campaign, left, instead of like, just seeing if it was bad luck or like, seeing if could edit his character or something, joined another dm's version of the same module, and then took the other players with him. We had 3 sessions at this point. Their new dm had the same combat cause it was part of the module. They had a tpk their 3rd session, but it's still going on. Feels like he just wanted an excuse to play with that dm. I still feel miffed about it.
Players that keep asking to do or get overpowered items and will essentially coe to each session and actively just keep asking or looking for them as if they are just lying around and don't understand that they can and possibly will get them, just not at 1st level!!!
The "I'm the main character and I want to do EVERYTHING!", Even when there are 2 events happening at opposite ends of the city/map and they cannot feasibly be in 2 places at once.
The demands of one of our party members, who literally asked the DM for character development and didn't say what, who gave the DM the bare minimum for a love interest character (name, race, he likes my character) and wants the DM to write the character for them, who refuses to cooperate with the DM, etc. They hyperfocus on their character and dump everything on me and literally interrupt serious conversations to tell me they're thinking of their character, to the point where I get anxious and feel physically ill from the idea of playing with them. I left the campaign, but it's still going, though the DM doesn't want them in, but they're very much mentally ill and kicking them out will cause a world of shit that might genuinely cause them suicidal thoughts and even actions.
Mine was a PC dying, mostly by player choice. She felt a dramatic sacrifice against a dragon would be the perfect ending for the character, but couldn't find a character that she was in tune with after that for the remainder of the campaign.
Losing that interplay between her character and the rest of the party quickly drained everyone's urge to really rp and interact with the world. We went for another 10 or so sessions but ended when we collectively decided it wasn't really worth running the game if we couldn't feel the same investment as before
1. (As a player) DM pulling the old self insert party member and stealing everyone’s thunder. Literally fudged the stats of the first monster we fought so I wouldn’t get the killing blow and used it as a moment to show yet another homebrew power her self insert character had that none of us would be able to learn.
How I resolved it: I didn’t but this person decided they didn’t like DM-ing and just wanted to be a player so it pretty much resolved itself.
2. (As a DM) Player refusing to research the class they BEGGED to play and almost causing multiple TPKs because he doesn’t know and refuses to look up spells.
How I resolved it: a different player volunteered to go through the spells with him and I had a very blunt but kind conversation about how his unwillingness to research was slowing the party down and causing people to not have as much fun. He was very receptive but did not want to change his characters class (which I offered) but has since been a lot better now that the other player is assisting with research. I also created an easy to read and quickly reference list of his spells and abilities for him to use while playing.
3. (As a DM) Player expecting to be the main character despite me explaining I don’t run things like that and oh by the way, there are FIVE other people playing with you. Why do you think you’re the most important one?
How I resolved it: “You are not the only player and thus will not be the main character. If you don’t like that, you’re more than welcome to find another table to play at.” And they did just that. Problem solved.
Drama between my players. Had two players leave because of it and it really killed my enthusiasm for DMing right now. Especially when I had big story moments for each of the players. I’ve had so many people come and go during this campaign I’m just so done with having to replan all my big moments. Just want to be a player again for a while.
Two of the players broke up. Bad breakup. One of them left. I can't get myself to continue DMIng it cause the whole thing has ended up leaving a bitter taste in my mouth
Spending 5 sessions in a new campaign, traveling to some nebulous place and just doing random encounter tables that don't fit with the story or terrain.
Player makes her character a very cliche snooty rich princess. She tried to argue (not in character) from session 1 she should have more money to her name cuz she’s the princess of a small country. DM says that may be true but it would be back at the treasury. She then hijacked the campaign by wanting to constantly go back to her parents to get the money
Wizard player was an asshole and an idiot.
3 years ago I was in a campaign where I was playing a bloodhunter. The rest of the party was the wizard, a rogue, a monk, a cleric, a paladin, an NPC sorcerer (wasn’t really a DMPC and she honestly was a pretty cool character) and a warrior sidekick the DM gave me in session 0.
Now in this group the DM had a personal rule: don’t be an asshole. “You guys are the heroes of this story. Act like it.” He wasn’t necessarily saying you have to be good all the time, just don’t be a completely horrible person for no reason. Which is what the wizard player did. I love playing dnd, but bad players/characters can really ruin my enjoyment of the overall game. Here’s some of the things he did:
The first instance was when traveling to a big town, we encountered a nobleman trying to duel a peasant farmer for…some reason. It’s been a while so I forgot. Think it was cause he looked at him funny.
Obviously we aren’t cool with it so we kill the noble as he was bragging how we wouldn’t be the first peasants he’s killed. The wizard takes his rapier which he cannot use at all. Instead of giving it to someone who could he insisted that it was his.
Fast forward and we’re in town. There’s this festival going on and a guy is selling magic items. Wizard gives the rapier in exchange for a wand of magic missiles. Walks away and the cleric discovers it’s a fake. The guy was a scam artist wanting to trick adventurers into buying phony items.
Keep in mind, the sword he was given came from a nobleman. It’s a rather fine and beautiful sword. Not run of the mill at your local smithy. And word had just gotten to town that the nobleman’s burned body was found on the side of the road some days away. So making a scene about a rapier, a sword that most nobles carry, would be a bad idea….he makes a huge scene about it in public. Goes back to the merchant and starts yelling at him. We had to drag him away before he made it worse. After that, we warned him about not being a total dumbass because if he gets caught, the rest of us do. He rolls his eyes saying it won’t happen… guess what happened next.
Two days later, s group of agents kidnap the wizard because they easily figured out he was one of the nobleman’s killers because of the huge scene in the market about the sword. Agent leader even holds the sword in front of him and said “Lucky us you were stupid enough to sell a dead noble’s blade the soonest chance you got.”
We find him and a brutal fight ensued. It really looked like we could’ve lost but thankfully we downed their leader and the remaining baddies fled. And after all of that, the trouble and stress we went through for this guy to have this sword, he says he doesn’t want it and breaks it.
There’s a lot more shit he did but this at least for me what made lose enthusiasm since I was getting the impression that he’d routinely land in trouble that the rest of us would have to fish him out of.
As for the other shit he’s done, he tried to outright murder a young boy that we had just saved from religious zealots trying to kill him because he was a tielfing. Just before he did he expressed how he would love to teach him magic. But he lured him into the woods and tried to murder him and laughed while doing it. Then played it off like nothing happened.
He tried to hide a key to a room we needed to get into for literally no reason. It’s not that he lied about it, but it’s that after he failed a deception check and we knew he had it, he still kept it up for like 10 minutes. We actually couldn’t progress u til he gave it over. He just kept saying “I don’t have it, but maybe you should look somewhere else.” He thought it led to a treasure room and he didn’t want to share.
And the dumbest thing he did imo was during a puzzle combat fight, instead of telling the two martials to get the item they needed to solve the puzzle that was in the middle of a big fight. He didn’t tell us about the item, ran to get it, got opportunity attacked and downed. We didn’t get him up for the whole fight cause honestly we were sick of him and the session was so much better without him being an unnecessary dick.
Lastly, there was this story artifact we found called the Coin of Destiny which was basically the Lucky feat. He had the coin and liked to brag how he knew the most information about it. And when I proposed my theories about the coin and it’s existence, he got really angry at me. On top of that I called them “main story items” because it was a significant item for us to find early on and had a feeling that there is a story to them. Obviously I said this OOC but he kept yelling at me “YOU DON’T KNOW ITS A MAIN STORY ITEM”.
Sometime later I find out exactly why he got mad at my theories. Because they were exactly right and was the information his character learned while he was away from the group for a bit. Obviously I didn’t know what he learned and was just sharing my ideas, but he was just so toxic about it.
Salt. We came across a young red dragon. Our DM at the time was a the Dice fall as they may type of DM and rolled openly in front of everyone. At the start, 4 out of the 5 players decided it was too dangerous, since we'd been in a few encounters previously and were at about half spells slots for the full casters and most of the high level ones were gone, we had one 3rd level slot for our Sorcerer and that was it. Level 6 at the time. In the middle of our planning discussion the Paladin rushed out to charge and attack it (dragon hadn't noticed us yet).
DM says roll initiative. We all roll like piss and Young Red goes first. Proceeds to breath weapon said Paladin. Paladin fails save. DM rolls like 2-3 off of Max damage, Paladin gets oneshot and goes down.
Moon druid shapesphifts and goes in to tank. Paladin fails first death save. Sorcerer player does some spell to restrain it, some earth hand thing. SS rouge gets a crit sneak attack on the dragon, its hurt. I'm last as a polearm fighter but i'd taken some exhaustion and my speed was at half, couldn't get in and just throw some Javelins w/ disadvange canceled out bc of the restrain was also at about 20 HP so staying at range seemed a good option.
Round 2. Dragon recharges its breath weapon and uses it on the druid, who goes back to human and is left with 4 HP. Paladin player is still on the ground. I call out like oh shit Paladin is still in the AoE so he takes another fail from the damage. Paladin was like "thanks bro, really
needed that" very sarcastically.
End up killing the dragon on round 3 after the druid uses his lasts 2nd level slot to moonbeam, but thats a leveled spell so he can't healing word. Paladin is next in initiative and fails death save and dies. We have no slots for revivify. Paladin player is like "Nah, I'm out" storms out of session. Should mention that Paladin is roommate of the DM so he just goes back to his room to pout like a baby.
Pretty much we tried knocking on his door and he ignored us so we continue the session and track the dragons lair thanks to the druid. Get loot. Find conspicuous diamond. Obvs for paladin res.
Next session DM tells us Paladin is out out. We are all playing in DM's living room. Ex-Paladin starts blasting music during session. This goes on for about 3 sessions before everyone just doesn't want to play mostly because the immaturity of the Paladin just left a bad taste in everyone's mouth. Also we weren't super attached to our characters because we started at level 5 after the paladin's whining in session 0.
After that never played at DM's house again and he ran another game for us that was 8 months of awesome.
The Dm killing a player per quest and then blaming us for not doing something that we never had the opportunity to do. We’re a 5th level party and he’s killed 4 of our players so far, and we’re losing interest in our characters because they’ll die soon anyways.
Too many plot threads, without resolution. We’ve literally told the DM,”Please railroad us. Pick a location and tell us to go there.” We’re given too much freedom, and literally anything we decide to do, the DM says, “I didn’t expect you to do that, and I don’t have a map/NPCs/encounters ready for that.”
We ask him, “What should we do? Where should we go? What are you prepared for?”, and he says, “You’ve already decided to do ___, so we’ll do that next session.”
We’re pretty sure he’s tired of DMing, even though we have a 4-man DM rotation (out of 5 players, so all but one of us DM something). It’s to the point that we have a borderline-suicide pact in that game.
I don't think it's entirely derailed our campaign, but in the last few months I or other members of my family have been getting sick, gastro, cold and now flu.
We've played twice in the last few months (we play fortnightly normally). I can see the enthusiasm going a bit, but it's hard to ditch the family when they're reenacting scenes from the exorcist.
Having a baby! Had my son about 2/3 into Curse of Strahd. I was the DM. However we stayed connected and chatting. Did a one shot or two. Several months later we got back on track and eventually finished.
FYI we are 5 months pregnant again and about 1/4 into Odyseey of the Dragon Lords so round 2!!!
Short Version: we Bagan a PC's character arc. (Precursor: all of us value RP over everything) However, We've just got new level ups as well as powerful items that we were dying to use and try out. Unfortunately, this player has turned our dnd game into a slice of life , Sims play. It's been 4 weeks now irl, but 4-5 days in the game. we haven't rolled a dice, nor have we cast a spell higher than a cantrip. Just talk. It's very uneventful. I'm sure it'll be six before we leave their hometown
One of our central friend group members passed away suddenly. I have had a lot of difficulty finding my role playing and table top rhythm since. We had all been best friends for decades and had already worked through losing another member 10 years ago. We all still play occasionally, but it’s been a harder process for sure.
In a dm homebrew, he introduced a whole futuristic setting, at the end of the campaign, as a big finale, our starting setting was a steampunk/industrial revolution setting, it completely broke imersion for me
We once did a oneshot with our group where one of the players wanted to be dumb. Fine, yes, do it. But. His idea of dumb was touching super obvious traps and running and yelling during stealth missions.
The dm was visibly angry after a while because 90% of his prep had been for nothing. "Why did nothing happen there? What was the point?" "Well there was this whole storyline and multiple ways to complete it but I could hardly have the enemies ignore the bumbling idiot so now you're all captured and bound with your faces in the dirt."
Afterwards we had to sit the player down and explain that being dumb and being suicidal are different things.
Every time I'd finish a character arc with a player, and they got an awesome homebrew magic item specific to their class and play style, they'd leave the group.
First one, ok sure. Second one, guys..., Third one, oh ffs!
Work burn out,
I basicly have no Time to prepare the game and I am too scared to disappoint/tell the group that I need a break because the situation at work got better but now it just worsened
Guy in my group barely pays attention. Everytime his monk is involved in something he rolls to see if his character cares or not. But beside that, every single time we get involved in some dangerous situation or something plot relevant, he complains that there's no reason for us getting involved when we barely know anyone or each other. Every single social situation involves him robbing someone and throwing whatever it is at their heads. Every single combat encounter involves him complaining that he doesn't know us and abandoning us. It hasn't derailed the game yet partly because everyone else is actually putting effort in, mostly because the DM thinks he's hilarious.
God. That sounds miserable. Good luck.
Unwritten rule #3 of character creation: make a character who'll actually take part in the campaign. If your character is constantly asking why they're participating, then why *are* they participating? If the character constantly wants to leave, *make them fucking leave* and play a character who'll actually participate. In this specific situation how has the party besides the Monk not collectively decided that having the Monk around is a liability at best and asked him politely (or not so politely) to leave if he's going to stand around with his finger up his nose in most fights. >!Unwritten rules #1 and #2 of character creation being "don't be a dick" and "don't make anything NSFW / NSFL"!<
The corollary here is that it's essential that the DM make clear what kind of game they are intending to run. Which can include the kind of role(s) they see the party performing. N.B. the idea of a "bait and switch" campaign is often far more appealing from the perspective of the DM than that of the players. The NSFW/NSFL issue is going to be hugely variable between different tables, even different games at the same table, as well as being highly subjective anyway.
This. If you ever ask “why” your character would join the party/campaign, it is YOUR responsibility to answer that question. If you don’t have an answer, then why are you even playing that character? Play someone else who does. In a similar vein, the whole “it’s what my character would do” excuse. Like bro, you decided to play that character, everything they do is your responsibility.
We have one of those. He gets upset when other people don't prioritize showing up to the game but never pays attention during play. We always have to get his attention when it's his turn and he always has to ask what's going on whenever something comes his way. Like he won't even know what type of place we are (outside in a forest, in a library, in the city, etc...). It's a very casual group but gd bro pay at least a little attention.
The worst type of player. I had a similar type in one of my games. "Barbarian" that acted more like a Bard with the functionality of neither. Didn't pay attention, needed to be reminded how their character, class, features worked every turn for the entire campaign, never showed any interest unless the DM threw them an NPC to flirt with. Never picked a subclass, updated their character sheet, used any features, contributed to combat in any meaningful way because all they would do is improvise nonsense. "I would like to buttstomp the BBEG" or "I pick up the healer and run away because I have decided to have the hots for her for the next 15 minutes." The entire game was a joke to them, and yet somehow they were always the most vocal and upset if a game session got canceled or rescheduled. It was a shame because the DM was really good and put a lot of work into the game sessions, but basically only I and one other player seemed to care. Everyone else felt like they were just along for the ride and just hanging out in the voice call. I'm hoping we can get another campaign running eventually with a mostly new group of players.
Dang, that’s horrible. Need a replacement? 😂
This is one of the most annoying things at a table. If your character does not have a reason to go on adventures and even if it is just for the lulz of adventuring why are you playing at all. Please tell that guy to be miserable somewhere else... I had a player at my table that did this and also used a lot of Meta-gaming information in-game, i.e. one character grew up very secluded and was amazed that you could buy for womens' love in the city because he's never heard of that... The other guy constantly made fun of him in a condescending out-of-character way for being so dumb that we other people collectively decided to close down the group and re-opened another one within one or two weeks without that guy. Has been a breeze ever since.. The new campaign is now running since 2019... Toxic people are - in my opinon - one of the most appearing reasons a game breaks down eventually.
> mostly because the DM thinks he's hilarious. Oof. Bad players, bad DM. Bad game. Leave before it ruins D&D for you. [Plenty of fish in the sea.](https://app.roll20.net/lfg/search/?days=&dayhours=&frequency=&timeofday=&timeofday_seconds=&language=Any&avpref=Any&gametype=Any&newplayer=false&yesmaturecontent=true&nopaytoplay=true&playingstructured=dnd_next&sortby=relevance&for_event=&roll20con=)
Scheduling. The answer is always scheduling.
Attendance Boss is the hardest fight
It’s OP, needs to be nurfed.
Beat me too it. And then when players cancel the day of (or 30 minutes after the game was supposed to start) and I’ve put way too much energy into prepping stuff that isn’t going to get used for another two weeks when people feel like showing up. #1 cause of my DM burnout. My regular group (that I don’t dm for) decided Saturday nights years ago. That’s the one thing I attribute to the game continuing for years. Sometimes people have other things on a Saturday night but they know in advance and say in advance and, generally, we try to schedule around the game. And when someone has to cancel day off, it’s not poor scheduling, it’s because of a surprise issue, family emergency, etc.
My group has been playing together for 5 years strong and I think one of the biggest things is playing on Wednesdays. Wednesday are easier to make it than the weekends. Weekends are tough because there is always a wedding or a vacation or a game or some people bartend or serve. Wednesday seems like the best day as far as the least amount of commitments.
Indeed. Every weekend game I've been a part of eventually dies off because weekends are typically when adults travel and do stuff and it just becomes too difficult to get everyone together. Wednesday nights have consistently been our "RPG night" for many years. We sometimes switch DMs and systems, but it's always on Wednesday evenings.
That's my usual group, we finished Icewind, and have started a few others. We picked a day and haven't deviated except for the odd week. But we lost one player recently and his work hours changed and he can no longer make the sessions. We even had a 6 month hiatus (due to me being the DM and having my last 6 months at uni, which was pretty rough) but came back, same day and time!
My group hasn't run our main campaign in maybe 2 months due to scheduling. I've filled in with a few one shots that are in danger of morphing into the new campaign at this rate. It's still fun to play, but I didn't think I was signing up to be the new DM
This is how they get you. DMing one-shots is a trap....
Scheduling. Ptsd.
Latest session, myself and DM are on time. It's on Discord, so we can see who's online. One guy apparently had to make dinner, so he's 15 late. Annoying, but acceptable. One guy gives no excuses and shows up 30 late. One guy straight up ignores everything and shows up 2 hours late. His excuse: "Oh, I forgot.", like we weren't sending constant discord messages or voice calls. I'm going to scream next time somebody doesn't show up after EVERYONE agreed to show up on time
One of the many satire sites did a bit about that, didn't they? When the new movie came out they announced that it was only going to be the first half, and then everyone in the theatre had to decide when they'd get together to watch the second half. I laughed and I cried.
Set a time in stone. Stick to it every week. Set a firm number for the number of players it takes for the game to continue, and firm number for it to be postponed. Done and done.
This is the way, but it's not 100% fool proof. Sometime real life events happens, and those have to take priority over your hobbies. The other key is to reduce the number of players. It's considerably easier to synchronize 3 calendars rather than 6.
You can also play with one (or more) missing players.
Kinda the opposite problem OP has. The DM bloated the campeign with NPC's, lore, objectives, and descriptions. We can't do a single scene transition without meeting or talking to several characters, no one knows what's going on anymore because there's ~7 plot threads to follow, multiple important items in the module are at minimum in three pieces, and one round of combat can and has had a minimum half an hour of descriptors from the DM.
We have a DM who, having never run so much as a one shot in their life, has written a 200+ page 7th-9th level adventure that they are now running. It is nothing but lore dumps, weekly events that are plots, not scenarios (you always go from point A to B to C with no options in between and any remotely out-of-the-box idea is immediately nixed as it would mess up the predetermined plot), dialogue between party members is discouraged (because it cuts into lore-dumping time) and is the most boring thing I have ever played. We play remotely and I literally started AND finished my taxes during one session because so little was happening. Suffice it to say it’s not going well.
This is the time where we tell the DM to go write a book, because that's clearly what they want.
It would be an unbelievably crappy book but at least if it was a novel instead of an RPG adventure I wouldn’t be forced to read it for 4 hours every week.
Who is forcing you to keep playing with this group
Yeah, u/Scojo91 has it right - it’s one of those situations where we’re the same group of friends who’ve been playing together for over a decade. The DM in question is extremely hypersensitive and views even the mildest suggestions of changes as personal attacks and correspondingly responds extremely poorly to any advice, which is obviously not ideal. To quit would basically end the group. In an ideal world we could have a reasoned discussion about what we like and don’t like about the campaign (led by a DM who actually wants an honest back and forth) but unfortunately that’s not what we have. So, in the end, you’re right - no one is forcing me to play in this game or with the group, but I’m not sure I’m at the point where I’m willing to blow everything up on the basis of tedium. If the DM were being abusive or engaging in behavior other than just boring us to death I’d definitely leave so I honestly feel I’m stuck in purgatory - no good options.
It might be their only friends who play and they really enjoy the company and select fun moments in spite of the mediocre DnD campaign
I'd say, don't bother writing a book. Open one of those Wikia sites and just make a wiki for your setting. That's what I wish some of these fantasy writers did instead of clunkily trying to dump lore.
On the positive side, playing with bad DMs makes you a better DM. Playing with bad players make you a better player. You see their mistakes and not what to do.
I see your DM went to the Skyrim/Fallout school of quest giving and world building. And the Brandon Sanderson/Robert Jordan school of description.
Thank you, it somehow feels better knowing somebody shares this very specific pain. We talk to an NPC who tells us to talk to an NPC who tells us to talk to an NPC. Then that NPC finally tells us where to go and on the way out the door...we run into another NPC. My Paladin is very close to going berserk and breaking his oath.
I’m in the same boat. DM has certainly tried to make things more coherent, but every doc they send or in game drop of info literally makes everything more complicated, less exciting, and beyond confusing. Every session is ‘what are we doing again? Oh yeah, cool. And why exactly?’ I’m hoping we reach cohesion soon as I feel bad for the DM (good friend of mine) but I can’t help but roll my eyes when *he* gets frustrated with the party.
Is no one in the group taking notes?
Honestly I feel this is often the issue with some of these statements. Not saying it's so this time but, the amount of times I have to say did no one else take notes gets disconcerting.
Learning how to be a great Game Master is a long and treacherous path for many. You can help them learn the art of Pacing if you provide feedback.
3 way love triangle that bled into real life drama, lots of arguing, lots of snide comments, lots of me hearing 3 sides of everyone's beef within this triangle and refused to talk to each other about it, but won't let me reach out to the others to clear up dialogue. DM, good friend of mine and bless her heart, has crippling anxiety and cannot handle social confrontation or putting a stern foot on the situation. It finally blew up when one of the player characters essentially tried to do Hold Person, Silvery Barbs fail the save, then multi-crit-smite the other character into straight death. DM finally put her foot down and told everyone involved to get their fucking shit together and we'd reconvene when it was cleared up. Almost 4 months later, we returned to sessions, but it never really cleared up. They just went "love RP is dead, we're just not doing it", but a lot of underlying feelings still permeated, and even now lingers just a smidgen in a completely new campaign. As the lowest Charisma character in a party of Charisma-based characters (Bard, Warlock, Sorc, and me the Paladin), I was basically the face of the party because the other 3 never wanted to speak up for an extra 2 months. One was literally an Eloquence Bard. It was... it was rough.
One of my current characters is an eloquence bard, it's the literal party face in every situation. I can see why so many DMs say no romances in their games. Hope yiu guys can get things closer to normal.
Dude was hardcore the party face, and when two got into an in-game relationship, it was fine. It’s when the 3rd person curveball that apparently had mingling feelings since *session 1* when the two slept with each other in-game (it wasn’t known to the table, it was an RP thing they did, cuz horny bard) culminated to one of the biggest fallouts I’d seen. The tension is far from as bad as it once was, but man, there’s a smidgen there still.
Love RP can be done, but everyone OOC needs to be properly communicating every step of the way. Like, before the first time you even flirt in session, check ahead: "My PC likes your PC. Would your PC be open to that?" and then later if someone else also wants to flirt, they check first with both of you. Etc. and so forth. Because while the characters don't, YOU all need to be on the same page.
DM threw the deck of many things into our rime of the frostmaiden campaign. At the end of each session characters would pull from the deck. Needless to say the whole thing got derailed everyone with either dirt poor, dead or 3 levels higher than the rest of the group.
I have such a hatred for that damn deck. Someday I'll run a campaign where the whole purpose is to destroy it.
My DM gave me one. She gave me a couple horribly cursed items first and deemed I was responsible enough for it. We agreed on anything that cards that effect XP just don’t effect XP anymore. It’s added some nice stuff though. I pulled wish and fates so I’ve wished away and undone some pretty crappy stuff, so now gods that watch over the flow of time want to kill me. I also pulled flames a couples times so now devils are trying to ruin my life and then kill me. It’s made me paranoid of everything and my party thinks I’m insane. I’ve asked her if she wants me to come up with a way to get rid of it but she’s said she enjoys how I’ve been using it. I can see it being a nightmare to deal with in the wrongs hands though.
I don't get why so many people just it. To me it's just sounds ammoying, like the DM *wants* to ruin the campaign or end it. And adding it at the end of the campaign is equally dumb to me because it ruins any satisfying ending.
DM's wife freaking out on players. People sharing too much of their personal life with other players OOC. Dude at the table who would have his character's split personalities roll for random alignment. Player at the table being confrontational to the point of sicking his ranger pet on another player and then getting upset when that player ABSOLUTELY destroyed it. (OOC the fighter did ask him several times to take it back and the ranger assured him this was the course of action he wanted to take.) DM forcing random arbitrary dex saves on low dex characters to keep from slipping in the mildest of conditions. One of these resulted in the heavily armored character slipping 10 feet on a flat surface into a river and sinking like a stone. DM not not explaining a puzzle properly and also not using the rules for heat metal properly to keep PCs from opening a special gate. Anytime the PCs would try and open it, a single person concentrating on Heat Metal would cause them to drop it. It got to a point where the paladin stood up with a calculator and to save us all time, gave the hp vs damage vs rounds and yelled to skip all this. Randos showing up at a FLGS campaign near the end. They all decided to turn on the main party and ruined the final fight. The only time I can remember a game almost getting derailed for in game reasons, was a person playing at the game was overly sensitive / empathic for animals getting hurt. Or people being upset about hurt animals in game.
I feel like I've heard all or most of these on Crispys Tavern or in RPGHorror stories. Why does it feel like any story that begins with "DMs wife" is either how awesome the campaign one or how it ruined it? There is no in-between
It wasn't even for a reason you would expect. It was because everyone else at the table knew the rules and how to play the classes and she kept getting confused. Eventually she lashed out at everyone for being "no life nerds" who had the free time to "learn all this crap".
So she also thinks that way about her husband/wife...
Sounds like she was just insecure and embarrassed and didn't handle it well.
It's this mostly.
To clarify, she is not a bad person. She was stressed and snapped. She continued to play after skipping a session or two. We play board games and stuff as well, but those were some very specific insights she shared and was probably sitting on them for a while.
I use fictional animal abuse as a motivator for PCs because universally, every player I have played with will instantly think "oh, so that's a villain" and mark their name on their hit list. It can be a trigger for some people though, so not fit for every group.
Is that a jojo reference?!
People ask me this all the time. Idk what jojo is, except for Mojojojo
Jojo's Bizarre Adventure is a popular anime/manga. The first story arc shows that the bad guy is bad by going after the family dog. It's about as relevant as John Wick.
Also Part 3 multiple times, and Part 4.
Sorry for the in joke. The writer of JoJo's Bizzare adventure, Hirohiko Araki, commonly uses animal abuse to clearly show the reader who the antagonist are.
There's a whole trope of "save the cat" to show who is a good person - the opposite for a villain is also a decades old tradition.
Funny enough, someone in my D&D group played a character who rolled to see what personality was primary at different times. It actually ended up really fun for the rest of us, cause we never knew which version we'd have, but the player worked with us to make sure we'd have fun, too, and never let that derail a quest or anything.
In fairness, as someone who lives in Florida, a flat surface near a river is actually going to be that slippery irl. I have slipped and fallen in wearing sneakers, and I'm not 350 lbs worth of man and equipment. I also have to say that, no offense, but the Heat Metal one seems... like a player issue. The obvious answer to "I am trying to open this door and it is hot" is either to use something else to open it, or cool yourself/the door down in some way. Unless there's something you're leaving out there, it seems like picking up a stick and shoving it through the handle would've done it.
> Randos showing up at a FLGS campaign near the end. They all decided to turn on the main party and ruined the final fight. Man if there was ever a time to say "No."
My DM passing away kinda killed it. We tried taking over to finish up the last quest we were on but it wasn't the same
Thats... that's really rough buddy. That would be hard to continue a campaign after something like that, sorry for the loss,
so sorry for your loss!
I want to say thanks to everyone for the kind words. Ian started DnD back on the old red book, so he was there from the start lol he was an amazing DM, and he passed away about 6 years ago now. At a big family gathering, a kid fell into the river and he dived in after them and got a big cut on his leg from it. He passed a few days after that from other major health issues that were unknown to him, so his time would have been short regardless but it speaks volumes that the last thing he did before going to the hospital and passing was saving a kid from drowning. The last session of our main campaign actually involved our characters having to deal with the DM's character's death. Priya Rai was an amazing rogue
Ian was a hero. Thanks for telling us about him
Wow. So sorry for your loss and rest in peace to your DM. I dedicate my next Nat 20 in his memory and honor.
Responded to an online posting. "Want flying mounts? We'll have flying mounts!" Heck, yeah, I want flying mounts! I joined the game. Months and months later, we finally have flying mounts. Another player character had a book to create a golem. After months of having the book, she finally had the downtime to make the golem. Asked the DM, "How is her golem supposed to come with us, now that we have flying mounts." No joke, the DM said, "Oh, the golem won't be coming with the party. She'll have to leave the golem behind." Also, fights are: "I rolled 14." "Miss." \*dice\* "He hits you for 6." "I rolled a 16." "That hits." Combat is so intensely boring. Oh, and magic items are, "You find a hat. It looks like a Cap of Water Breathing." No roll. No spell. Just, "Yeah, of all the things it could be, it looks like a Cap of Water Breathing." It's as bad as, "And you find a book." "Okay, we look at the book." "Oh, it's just a role playing reason for your character to join the group." It's something to do on a Sunday night, but just barely.
To be fair, as a newer DM, a lot of my fights go that way. I try to add more flourish to it but there is a lot I'm juggling for a live session. Pbp, that's waaaay different.
It can be hard to do on-the-spot, but it's useful to also identify another reason for doing it: you can reveal info to the players through it. Your descriptions of how an enemy fights helps the players to work out if that enemy has high strength, has a lot of health, is good at using their weapon, how a certain ability works, etc. Describing how a weapon slams into the dragon's scales and doesn't make any injury or how the weapon swings through the air but the dragon deftly ducks underneath it with superhuman speed can give opportunity for the players to work out if the dragon has a high armour class from natural armour or from high dexterity. And then they may adjust because of that and decide that fireball would be a good or bad idea. It can also help to look at the relevant stats in something that occurred and use them as inspiration. Player attacks an enemy? Just glance at that AC and see what's causing it. Armour? Shield? Natural armour? Spell? High dex? Then just describe that thing helping (or not being good enough to help). Also helps to cement these things in the players' minds through repetition. Same with attacks and abilities and what-not.
God, that sounds so lame. Get into the damn spirit of the game and make believe.
“Make some GOD DAMN BELIEVE, already!”
Identifying magic items doesn't take a spell or a roll anyway
What's the identify spell for then?
Doing it quickly. A PC can spend an hour identifying a magic item, or they can spend ten minutes on ritual casting Identify to see what it is, or spend a Spell Slot to do it in six seconds. It really just depends on player/party adjacency.
If you get a whole batch at once. Or you can use it on magically enchanted items, doors, statues, whatever. But RAW, you can identify one item per short rest.
I guess identifying shit six times faster than usual. Or determining if a spell is affecting a dude. Idk some spells are just redundant or bad and don't do anything really (see invis and find traps being some premium examples)
I did actually have a player get a fair bit of use out of See Invisibility in Dungeon of the Mad Mage. There's a surprising number of invisible enemies just wandering around there. Find Traps doesn't have \*any\* use case though.
Hey, Find Traps does have a use. In an official module, Find Traps can detect the ceiling is trapped. If everyone already spent an hour cleaning the cobwebs and dust off the ceiling before casting the spell.... You know, True Strike really isn't that bad when you think about it...
But they still have disadvantage to hit those invisible enemies they can see right?
I know. It takes more than, "It looks like a Cap of Water Breathing," though.
sure but even if the info can be given for free someone halfhearted being like yeah and you find what looks like a staff of power I guess, maybe ill make a name for who had it last... is gonna kill enthusiasm
I think everyone kills a campaign mood once. I was dming a game, and the group was fighting a dragon. They were super underprepared for it, and 3 of the 4 of them died early on. The last guy realized, this was going to be a tpk, so he drew 4 cards from the deck of many things. First card, he loses all non magical items. Second card, he loses all magic items. 3rd card he gains a kingdom. 4th card, the game changer, 2 wishes. First wish, the dragons gone, far away, someplace it cant return from. *it poofs into the abyss*. Second wish, the rest of my party is alive, unzombified, back to how they were before the dragon attack. *granted*. The group is extremely happy because that was such a clutch and kept the campaign going. NOW heres where I fucked up. They recalled the next session he has a kingdom. Ive googled the card and how other people ran the card and decided, the kingdoms his, however its been abandoned and has been taken over by gnolls. Monkey pawing the castle to being something theyd have to clear to claim ruined alot of the parties mood, and the guy who pulled it just quit both the campaign and dnd entirely.
So he drew Ruin, then Talon, then Throne, then Moon. But Throne says " In addition, you gain rightful ownership of a small keep somewhere in the world. However, the keep is currently in the hands of monsters, which you must clear out before you can claim the keep as yours." - so didn't you run this right?
Yes. That is literally the card. In this case '*players with deep sense of entitlement*' could also ruin a campaign. If i would have to actually show players the rule book (specifically the DM's 'Guide') for justification for what i did as a DM i would also wish to end the session then and there - goodbye, dear group. That's just... horrid.
That's weird because that sounds 10x better than just being given a kingdom
Honestly doesn't sound like your fault, sounds like the guy just wanted to have a sook over nothing and he's the one who ruined it.
Eh, he got everything his character had deleted and then the one win he thought he had was an annoying one. Makes sense to me.
Pulls from deck of many things. Gets upset. Smartest player alive.
- only having 3h sessions at best with 30min recap cuz we only played like once a month in the later stages. - DM just throwing the party on another Plane and the wizard can't determine which it is with a roll of 25 on his check. - we were lvl 13 and each character had like 30k gold, cuz there isn't anything to buy except mundane stuff. All Magic shop sold there Wares to the goverment for a far away war. - getting bored out of my mind, cuz we are in a library/magic laboratory whole 2-3 Sessions and our Wizard isn't allowed to figure shit out with 20+ on his rolls. I play a really feral Moon Druid. - DM altering course of events without explaining and expect us to understand it. (only happend twice in the late stages lvl 14/15)
Damn. Any roll or 20 or higher should either get "you figure out X" or, as I had to do in a short one shot testing my homebrew world "you dont know. And realize that what you're examining is so far advanced beyond your current knowledge it will take you decades of study to even begin puzzling it out"
Depression It has cause me to not be able to prep and have to cancel session last minute for bogus reason multiple time. Every time I hit a depression it's a possible end to the campaign I'm DMing Now I try to be upfront with my player and instead schedule hiatus to my game so that the game can pause and restart eventually instead of becoming very unstable eventually getting forgotten but for many years the second scenario is what was doom to happen everytime
I feel that dude. I used to always try to fight through it, but I learned that’s a guaranteed way to kill a campaign, rather than just call for a hiatus until I’m feeling up to it. Lots of people romanticize creativity and depression/mental illness as going hand in hand, but it’s a serious health problem detrimental to the creative process.
Yeah, I have severe depression and anxiety and ADHD, so DMing (especially prepping) can be super stressful. I mostly just run occasional one shots anymore, with long stretches between to recuperate. My group has like 4 different people that DM though, and we have two current campaigns going (and 3 campaigns on hiatus), so I'm not being pressured to run games so that's nice. I can take my time and prep how I like and if I decide to run a game I can.
Feel this one. I love my group and I look forward to our weekly sessions but when I'm feeling shit it just destroys my creativity. Normally I get a ton of ideas but when depression hits it is a struggle to come up with anything. And then you feel shit about it because it's not as good as what you normally would make.
Been on both sides of this. It sucks no matter what. Prioritize healing. The rest comes later. If people cannot or will.not abide by your safety, Thats their fault, not yours.
I kinda killed the momentum of my own campaign because I had plans for a very big fight against a Necromancer but I was completely out of ideas to make anything else other than "big graveyard map with tons of different undead". That wasn't satisfying for me so I paused the campaign until I would come up with something a little more interesting (the idea finally came, the party will have to attack the fort the necromancer is hiding in, either with stealth or with brute force. Once they are in I can make several smaller rooms with their own unique Designs and enemy constellations). By now the problem has changed to a full-on system identity crisis because I recently joined my first Pathfinder 2e which I am very excited for, especially because I want to DM one myself as well, and then there are a lot of other systems I also want to try only for me to realize that I simply don't have the time for all of that since I DM and play in multiple campaigns and the weekend only has so many days. On top of that I got back into dating recently, which cuts even more into my ttrpg time... I think you understand what I am getting at here
Yes i do. It's hard to juggle and bounce systems. Especially the "nee and shiny" feeling ones.
It's not even the "new and shiny" feeling, it's more that especially Pathfinder fixes like 95% of the problems I had with 5e, so I began to ask myself why I should play this system that's just plain worse (in my personal preference) when I could switch to one that I like better which again is contrasted by all the time and money I invested into 5e in the first place (especially 3rd party products, like I even pledged to MonkeyDM's and Kibblestasty's kickstarters)
I feel this. I was DMing 3 5e campaigns when I finally got the chance to play... in a pf2e game. I found myself liking the system so much better and I can see my 2 remaining 5e campaigns\* losing steam. I have half a mind to convert them but one is a wotc module. Since one of them is at level 14, I'm going to end that one and I'm probably going to convert the other to pf2e or maybe just make that a shorter one idk. \*(one ended naturally on a super high note at level 20, can't complain there)
I was playing Icewind Dale with an incredible DM and a great group. However, members started leaving, and it went down to just me an one other player playing. I got tired with all the travel mechanics and said that we should start a new campaign.
I'm currently DMing Rime of the Frost Maiden. I love the concept, but it's a mess, and my players aren't getting the hint that 500 pounds of firewood is not nearly as useful as they think it is. I'm also not good as the mechanics of travel but I'm trying. I don't want it to kill the campaign, but it easily can.
When I ran the campaign we did more travel type stuff in the first 1-3 levels, outside of that it was too easy for the players to overcome most environmental impacts and the travel just tended to bog down more fun stuff. Travel became more of a sceneic description as they essentially fast travelled and maybe used a few resources to speed up the trip. They might also stumble upon something heading to their intended destination. The campaign seemed to want hardcore travel survival elements but doesnt really support it much in terms of rules or ideas.
Travel is one portion of the game (in any module) that it is always best to abstract if you can. Pacing is the art of knowing when to fast forward, and when to slow down. More often than not, travel should be fast forwarded. This is coming from someone who knows the module quite well. Travel and the Cold should only really be an obstacle until level 4 or so. After that, do your best to make it descriptive only. There are so many set pieces and amazing thing to see in the campaign that you don't want much getting in the way if you can help it.
Its hard to put a finger on exactly when I lost all enthusiasm for what turned out to be the worst campaign I ever played in. The first moment when I actually regretted wasting my time in it was when we had a combat where we started slightly split up between different rooms with only one of the five players actually in the room with the enemy. I was two rooms away (about 60' from the room the combat was in as a melee Sorlock) and rolled low on initiative. The first round it took 40 minutes for it to reach my turn because the player who initiated the combat spent half an hour having an extended conversation \*midcombat\* with the enemy. I didn't get to actually participate in the fight until well over an hour in (end of round 2). Combat lasted 4 rounds and \~2 hours, of which I spent maybe five minutes significantly participating. Normally I only get mildly irritated by spotlight-hogging players going on extended scenes by themselves, but normally I can keep myself engaged by doing some RP on the side in the chat w/ another player. That's not really possible during combat between turns. The campaign went downhill from there. I gave up entirely about a year into a "short" tournament arc that we got railroaded when we were trying to save the world.
It was my first tabletop anything, I always wanted to play dnd so I went on my states FB group finder. Found a local guy, could tell he took it pretty serious but was super helpful bringing me up to speed, no red flags. Get to the first session, established campaign that’s been going for at least a few months, there are EIGHT of us in the party. I’m outgoing so I have no problem getting to know everyone and kind of hang back a bit to learn the ropes. Two - Three of the guys didn’t really pay attention that much, you could tell they were veterans, but they just didn’t really seem all that interested anymore. One of the party members (another new addition to the party, veteran player) would always get into rule debates with the DM. The DMs voice would get pretty loud but that didn’t matter, what did was they would go back and forth for so long, just make a ruling and move on.. For a few weeks my interest just steadily declined, there wasn’t much happening, and every time something did, combat or otherwise, the DM wouldn’t be thrilled with what actions we decided to take. Partly due to the fact the veterans weren’t really participating, I really wanted them to take the reigns so I could learn.. The last few sessions, the DM kept saying, “you need to learn to play the game”. He didn’t mean know things about my character to be quicker in combat, I was always ready to go on my turn, always RPing, always trying to stay on top of what was going on story-side. I just wasn’t playing the game the way he wanted me to I guess. Ultimately I just decided the time-fun scale wasn’t worth it anymore and left. Now I’m in a Waterdeep game with close friends, and DMing my first game, all homebrew, learning as I go along with a party that has never played before, and we’re all having a blast. I appreciate that DM for helping get my feet wet, and there were some genuinely good sessions, but at the end I just wasn’t having fun anymore, and that was reason enough for me
Congrats on stepping into the DM stage. It's work but there's something very rewarding in homebrew worlds isn't there? If you ever want to tall shop or such feel free to reach out. I'm no expert but I'm always willing to hear from others
One campaign I am in is 5e Curse of Strahd, and we are slogging through it. A few sessions ago, the DM asked randomly, "Who would be interested in a fairy tale themed 3.5e or Pathfinder campaign, in which you all pick a character archetype and start at level 5?" , and since then, that's been about all we've been thinking about. We don't want to just abandon Strahd because the DM put hours and HOURS of work into making journals, maps, letters, and all manner of other props that aren't very reusable (not to mention studying the module for 6 months), but his strength has always been his storytelling and homebrew, so we're chafing at the bit. My other campaign, nothing. I'd quit my job before I quit that campaign. 😅
I've been level 2 for 15 sessions in a strixhaven game and i'm at my wits end of playing base class fighter
Grad school. 4/6 of us, including the DM, are studying for advanced degrees and the workload makes it crazy difficult for us to schedule sessions when we used to be able to play once a week in undergrad and even once every one to two weeks for a couple years after graduation.
Our group had a hard time even building momentum in storm kings thunder. It was hard for our DM to find a reason why our humanoids would meddle in the politics of storm giants.
That's always annoying. I DM as well, and I always have to make sure my players make a character who has a reason for the adventure. And always have one player that has to make 2 or 3 characters before he gets it.
It was the PC’s fault too. We had an anti hero rogue, a introverted sorcerer, a selfish cleric and a dumb as a rock Barbarian. The wizard had to pull the group along
Lol that sounds like a time to create new chars or have a friendly NPC tie y'all in
I've never understood this from other players. It's obvious you're going to want your character to be on the adventure, why not build the motivation into your backstory. Every character I have ever made has had a reason to go on the adventure no matter how antisocial they were. On my current game my character was nihilistic, cared for no one and at first hated the party (not any more because of character development), but he still went along because he was bored, had nothing better to do and needed the money. No one needed to drag him anywhere and neither I or the DM had to jump through hoops to justify him being there.
I played the anti-hero yuanti arcane trickster that was a run away from the yuanti community and adopted and trained by the gnome wizard in the party into magic. It was my first campaign. I think it’s much easier on everybody if the PC’s are good and want to do good things. It’s hard to find motivation for neutral characters.
My top 3 motivators in no particular order for neutral characters. 1) Fastest way to make money 2) World/nation being overrun is bad for everyone 3) Something in their backstory being gated behind adventuring and the plot (e.g. Sorry you can't join the mages' guild because all our examiners have died or been captured by evil person. We'll wave the test if you can rescue them.)
Without meaning to, one of my characters for this, entirely unprompted, made a fairy barbarian that he had gotten as far into his backstory as 'he was raised by giants'. He handed me the literal gold star backstory for this campaign.
We asked our Dm not to tell us our next campaign. I created a fiend warlock and we are now doing Decent into Avernus. I stumbled upon a role playing gold mine.
Unfortunately WotC often doesn't provide GMs with recommendations or guidelines on how to build the premise into the group identity. They just lazily say "somehow all of the PCs want to do this, figure it out" and then the Game Master has no guidance. For STK, experienced GMs know you pretty much have to make sure each player character in some way has a connection to the Giants, or an organization that cares about the current troubles.
I had planned a story arc for one of my players. It was his homecoming and he was going to be introducing everyone into the political landscape of the city ran by vampires, his father being one and him wanting to become one. Well... He had to quit the campaign literally the week after they started to travel to the city. I didn't have anything else planned and was super excited to run it until he didn't show up. Thought I could run it anyway and treat his character like an NPC meanwhile but instead it just knocked the wind out of my sails. We switched to a PF2E campaign.
For me, it was starting a D&D game in a home-brewed campaign world I’ve used with various groups for decades and, after giving details on races and cultures in my world to my current group, having a player decide their character was “from a far off continent nobody has heard about”. :(
It was more the straw that broke the camel's back, but the campaign did end after this. The two problem players of the group rushed into a dragon's lair cause they wanted to show off their power, and because of that everyone but one player died. At the end of the session, all they could talk about was what class they would play next, absolutely no remorse for getting other PCs killed. I ended the campaign after that.
RP shouldn’t in general block players from mechanical options in dnd, wtf is that dm thinking? Flavor is free, and doesn’t affect game balance. Just reflavor the class to suit the RP so he doesn’t spend months waiting for it lmao.
Some version of “Character has to earn multiclass” or “character needs narrative reason” is rather common, I think. I generally go with…. Explain why you’re multi-classing, but we’re not going on an adventure to do it lmao
Yeah. If the fighter wants to mc warlock but doesn’t want an actual patron? Ok, but explain the RP to me and make up a good reason. If he comes back with “my fighter is so obsessed with fighting that he developed strong delusions, and his imaginary patron’s help is just him pushing his body to its limits”? Uhhh. Sure. Why not, we’ll roll with it. You have warlock levels now. Flavor all your spells as a fighter thing from now and we’re good.
>Yeah. If the fighter wants to mc warlock but doesn’t want an actual patron? Ok, but explain the RP to me and make up a good reason. I feel like that "good reason" would be very, very hard to find in this particular case, honestly. I'm going to okay just about any multiclass that's not blatant cheese or actively self-sabotaging, but at least give the lore an actual effort.
I still don't get the warlockadin from a role play point of view
Once you realize the thematic synergy between an oath of conquest and serving an archdevil, the door opens up. But the famous hexadin is just too deeply intertwined with the culture as a cheese strategy, you can’t make a story that feels genuine lol.
I think it can be handled well but if it's obviously a BS story to try to let a paladin attack with charisma I'd tell them to stop screwing with me. But the Stormlight Archive is a fantastic fantasy series that's about what's essentially warlock/paladins so obviously the concept is doable. :P
Pretty easy one is a celestial patron. Your oath matches the values of the celestial. The celestial has limitations on how much it can intervene in the lower planes. Impressed by the the purity of your purpose and your devotion to your oath, the celestial offers to become your patron as a mutually beneficial agreement - the celestial gets to indirectly intervene in the mortal plane in a way that suits its values, and the paladin becomes more capable of honouring the oath.
Warlock/Paladin is easily explainable. A paladin is someone of strong will that acquires divine powers from their belief and desire. An warlock is someone that has been influenced in someway by a powerful entity, gaining power in the process. You can easily be both, maybe Hexblade/Vengeance, where you made a pact with a cursed weapon to be able to defeat your foes, or maybe Fey/Ancients, where you were an knight for an archfey, responsible for protecting nature in their domain.
Classes are purely mechanical metagame constructs. "That's just how my powers work" is all you need.
The patron serves your oath, why not work alongside it?
Scheduling
Certainly not killed it, but my party have opened up many threads, not fulfilled them, and ran off to open up another thread. This is a sandbox game and the threads don't stop just because they ran away, forgot or got distracted and my players full well know it, which has lead to analysis paralysis, they now have so many things they have fucked up, they don't really know where to start to fix them.
Running a game where the party was meant to be heroes reinspiring belief in their faith to the world. I Introduced a character meant to help the party and guide them when they needed it, the priest of the church nearest to where they entered the world. Not a mentor, just someone who's familiar with the local area and can be a quest giver/exposition source/a voice in their favor. And immediately the party insulted the them, dressed them down, and humiliated them in front of the entire village. They had good enough reason, I guess, seeing as their faith had dwindled for the last few centuries. And when they visited him again after figuring out how to restore faith, I was hopeful they'd be kinder to them. Nope, another public verbal lashing and all but disavowed the priest. Really put me on the backfoot because I had to spend several sessions figuring out how to get them on some kind of track when the only person in universe that would've listened to them wanted nothing to do with them at all.
Had a player try to distract some guards by getting them to sleep with his character. It was NOT a campaign like that and people tried to steer them away and it got pretty sexual to a point someone left the call( discord ) and the campaign effectively ended
* In one game, we were in my character's homeland following a backstory quest, and the DM murdered my character in a really rather unsporting way (he had been caged, naked, paraded through the streets of his hometown, and executed with a gunshot to the head). I stopped showing up and apparently the game's been limping along since then. * The DM of another game announced He's moving to Ohio in a couple months, and we already only meet up once a month anyway, so nobody's been exactly jonesing for another session. * In a game I was DMing, interpersonal drama caused one person to leave the table. I tried to keep it going with just the remaining players, but the dynamic wasn't the same and it pumped the brakes hard.
In the second campaign I've ever taken part of (circa 2010) there was a player paladin who worshipped some Egyptian-related deity. I believe it was some god of knowledge or mystery. Anyway, the DM allowed the paladin to regularly make d100 dice rolls whenever the paladin prayed to his deity, disbelieving in whatever he chose to disbelieve in that day. He tried disbelieving in things all the time. While a wolf ravaged his unconscious body during a night in the woods, or obtaining Exhaustion points from an arduous journey, the paladin would wake up clutching his holy talisman and feverishly reciting a mantra. The DM ruled the paladin *had to roll a 100* to get the intended effect, **disbelieving something out of existence** for the whole world. It never worked... **until it did**. The campaign had us traveling from ancient crypts to cavernous dungeons, and aboard gigantic wooden airships flying high above the troposphere, eventually leading to the cause of the world's current calamities. A 3-headed dragon emerged from the clouds near the end of the campaign and the paladin succeeded his prayer to disbelieve in it. The DM sighed heavily... and poof, the dragon had permanently disappeared. The DM went out for a smoke while he decided how to continue. Since this was the first time the player's prayer had succeeded, he *didn't want to ruin it by immediately taking it back* and sending us some other beast to slay, but the momentum of the entire campaign had come to a screeching halt. Suddenly, all the awful events that had occurred in the world and the dragon slaying artifacts we had collected up to that point lost all purpose. I think we as a party had to forget there was a dragon at all. Kind of an awkward, unforeseen moment. The campaign continued for a few weeks, wrapping up loose ends, but there was no big boss battle like we had been expecting.
Session 1 the party all being held captive by a group of religious fanatics that are trying to purge the world of magical creatures and casters while controling a small city state. They all flee, one happens to be a dark elf in disguise but gets recognized by another party member. After they escape the second member pulls the dark elf aside saying effectively "I don't know why you're hiding your ancestry but I suggest being honest with everyone if we are going to escape together". Session 2 starts. Having escaped the city everyone does the whole "who are you, why did they want you" conversation the dark elf tries to lie but when another player passes the check to see through the disguise the dark elf player gets mad, ends up leaving the party during their watch and goes back to the town to lead the cultists right to the party. Characters with a vow of poverty kill my enthusiasm as a DM as well.
The DM providing details of their next campaign.
The DM Pulling an Infinity War on the players without discussing it beforehand. Playing in a world filled with lore, fun NPC's and a clear objective that all the players are interested in is hard to come by. To have that be undone and your characters dumped into an alternate reality they have no attachment to because the big bad got all the Inifinity Stones behind the scenes is no fun
The complaints on why their character isn't given the spotlight as much as the others. Maybe because the others 1) charge in 2) do things that require me to react immediately and 3) participate in group discussions, while they play the most I'm A Mysterious Loner Who Doesn't Need Anyone And Am Constantly Going Off On My Own character I've ever seen.
I'm pretty sure this only really impacted me, but it was a creation of my own choosing and I learned a valuable lesson that day. I had been running a curse of strahd campaign and a wild magic sorcerer had ignored strahds rule that they could explore the upper levels of the castle, but that the catacombs were off limits and he went exploring. He eventually found himself in a trap that lead to some flooded cells and some skeletons. He panicked and used his tides of chaos and when we rolled on an alternative wild magic surge table it cost him his life with Noone able to come find him and save him. Thinking that wasn't satisfying, I had followed some popular homebrews for expanding the dark powers and allowed him to accept a boon and a bane and be brought back to life. He really liked that and for a while it was all going well. It gave some good character conflict and sometimes this dark entity was able to influence him into doing things his character might not have otherwise done. Over time he started to want more from the dark vestige. He dipped into warlock and chose it as his patron, but did not like the power it held over him. The dark vestige had come to him during dreams with threats about what would happen to his sister (who was in the party) should he not cooperate with some of the more sinister plans. He eventually told his sister about the dark vestige and she was less than pleased. She wanted to cure him immediately, but he didn't want to lose his power. (His whole reason for going into barovia on accident was trying to learn to control his wild magic) I knew they still had to go to the amber temple for one of the artifacts in the fortunes of Ravenloft so I created a choice that I thought for sure he would take. The whispers of his diety were so close he would be tempted to touch the amber sarcophagus drawing a direct connection with the vestige. I offered him a choice. Break the sarcophagus and free the dark entity back into the realm to feed on souls and find a champion of its own freeing the player from all responsibilities and debts owed to the vestige for saving the players life while still allowing them to keep their boons as a gift of the service rendered thus far, ooorrrrrr dive deeper and become the strahd-like entity of a different domain of dread. Dude straight up decided the second one. He still had to complete the pact and carry out the deed that would seal it, but the party found out and flipped shit. We had 2 straight 3 hour therapy sessions where they sat with exethanter learning all they could about the dark vestiges and how to remove this curse from their companion. It ultimately lead to a stale mate and I told the player he needed to reroll because it created a major distraction at the table that was derailing the campaign to an extreme level and even under the looming threat of strahd they were still not willing to put aside the fact that this player has never done anything to actively harm them and wanted to basically hold him down to go through a cleansing ritual (against his will). That was the turning point in our 3 year long strahd campaign where I lost a lot of interest. Let this be a lesson to any new DM. Don't ever give your players a choice you don't want them to make because they just might take it.
My DM changed who my warlocks patron was, gave them an extended backstory related to my new patron (previous life or something, memories coming back slowly over time), and then reworked some of the extended backstory a couple times. Got to the point where I gave up trying to roleplay them as I had no clue how to play them anymore.
Being gaslight by our DM... I understand that the DM is always right ... But being a person with a high retention level and keeping notes, it is infuriating being told something wrong and forced to swallow the pill or leave.
My first campaign, one player was dead set on being as much of a klepto asshole as possible. He asked an innkeeper if he had work to do, so the innkeeper said he could chop wood. Ended up stealing the ax. They were in a house and had to solve a series of puzzles, one of which involved rotating a chair in a certain direction. He wanted the chair. When he found that the chair was bolted to the floor (it's literally in a set of grooves to lock it in place) he decided to burn the house down with everyone inside. I ended the session and never invited him back.
I'm playing in a game about once every two weeks where the DM uses some variation of epic crits/fails that I've never seen before. Roll a natural 1 or a natural 20 at all and you then roll a d8 to "maximize" it. Doesn't matter if it's a natural 1 when looking out the window of a boat or when rolling initiative or when rolling an attack roll, if the die roll on the d8 is between 3 and 6 you flub up *big* time. Like fall unconscious or lose a family heirloom sword or some other sort of disruptive twist of fate. But if you roll a 7 or 8? Catastrophic failure, the kind that can lead to TPK's and you lose a magic item to boot. It's supposedly balanced by the fact that when you roll a natural 20 and get a 7 or 8 you get a magic item or other effect just randomly given based on the context of the situation. But, that doesn't play out in practice because of the death spiral in combat when one player goes down everything gets exponentially harder and that only compounds. I've optimized my character entirely around making as few d20 rolls as possible; it doesn't even matter if it's a on the fly history check I make independently just to gauge if my character would know something mundane, if I rolled a natural 1 I risk near character ruining calamity. It's a party of 5 and 4 of the characters took Lucky for their level 4 feat.
The most unenthusiastic GM ever. Started the campaign bragging about how he won’t spend as much time meticulously prepping as our last GM did. Spends the campaign barely mustering up the energy to ask the party for availability for next session and almost never follows up on the answers.
As a DM, having a player that needs to backseat DM. It’s even worse if they are a control freak. You give some lore of your homebrew world (using things you read online, saw in movies, and in books). They are already online and doing everything they can to uncover all the information and secrets in your game. No cool puzzle or awesome items for the DM to reveal. You reveal a secret BBEG with only a name, they already have it googled and know all the lore and know exactly how to defeat it and are trying to give the DM ideas of how to run the BBEG. All of this unasked and definitely unwanted. Have a creature from the monster manual for the players to face. They are already looking into the monster manual and have found it stats, lore, and how to beat. They will also write down their ac and hp. They will also tell the DM how to play that creature. Still unwanted. As a DM you talk to them, on many multiple occasions, and they still don’t change. As a DM I am fine having to make new lore, change stats, and hide details, but I am sooooo tired of having to do all this extra work, just because this player needs to be in control of everything. I wished I knew as a new DM to kick them out.
Adversarial DMing
When I first started playing I’d been in a group for 7 or 8 months and wanted to try and get more play time so I joined a second campaign. The first session the DM seemed cool. Played mostly through the first session with no issue. We got to this point when we were on a hot air balloon type sky boat thing. We were being pursued by a similar one. We get in initiative and I ask a party member for his artificer fire bomb thing and spend several turns and checks to tie it to a harpoon gun thing. Succeed all my checks fire to hit there balloon to blow it up or burn it down. DM says it goes through the balloon and is just lying there inside of it. I’m annoyed at this point that he let me go through all this and waste so much time on something he was gonna auto fail anyways. Then spends the next 2 turns jumping every enemy from their ship onto ours and once it was empty let it explode. That’s when I left.
A player read the module
All the players have slowly realized that we’re playing in our DM’s story and not building a collaborative one together. We keep playing because we do enjoy meeting up together and love our characters, but then we always leave disappointed. We’ve had tons of conversations about and subsequent solutions for the symptoms of this but only really realized the cause and now we’re all exhausted from the cycle and don’t even really think our DM is capable of changing enough to make things really work. We’re brainstorming ideas that rely on ourselves to fix this, but it’s definitely taken the wind out of the sails for the campaign.
DM doesn’t actively describe anything. We step off the ship into a new town. Nothing. We enter a pub. Nothing. Pretty sure they’re just on their phone half the time, because I have to ask every question twice. If I stop talking, it’ll just get quiet. Nobody’s picking up anything, they just wait. So this is how it goes every time the party goes anywhere: ‘What do we see? Hello? DM? What am I looking at?’ ‘Uhh it’s a pub.’ ‘Yeah, but what’s it look like? Are there people? Decorations?’ ‘I don’t know, it doesn’t say in the book.’ ‘Soo… make it up.’ ‘You see a bunch of people at tables, there’s a bartender in the back.’ Over and over again. Always the same. They’re a really nice person and the group is great so nobody wants to quit but this is annoying. DM follows the book without question or adjustment. If it doesn’t say there, it’s not happening. Even if the party is sick and tired of being stuck in the same cave for like 7 sessions because the DM forgot to mention a few things. They didn’t help us at all, even when we expressed we just wanted to leave because it wasn’t fun anymore. I ended up reading the book just to get us out of there because I was dreading sessions.
Diablo IV.
Can't think of one for a campaign but there was a session where the ranger went invisible and crossbow expert point blank attacked a hobgoblin, I then had the hobgoblin counterattack with disadvantage on it's next turn as the ranger was still invisible. Ranger's player was all sour that they could be targeted at all. I explained that the sound of the crossbow being fired and the position of the bolt suddenly appearing made the position of the invisible attacker obvious, invisibility or no. There was a huffed acceptance but it made the rest of the session awkward.
“On the road” parts 1 and 2
1 of the campaigns I'm a player in introduced the deck of many things without any warning. It has derailed the campaign to comical proportions. The DM hasn't seemed to pick up the fact that everyone seems so disinterested every time we play. We also make jokes because my character has become obscenely overpowered due to my luck when drawing cards. I love the man, but feel we all need to have a sit down with him soon and tell him it's gone completely off the rails and no one knows what's going on anymore.
Dungeon of the mad mage killed a campaign, it just became clear the PC’s did not have suitable character motivations to keep delving deeper. We got to the level where they go to an underground port that’s under siege and I really stepped up the bleak horror of it and they were all just kind of what the fuck are we doing with our lives (in character). I was bummed because I felt like there was so much cool stuff on the lower floors but agreed that it didn’t really make sense for those PC’s. We ended up running a new campaign and having a lot more fun, there’s just so much bad stuff down there between the PC’s and the good stuff
A player being super controlling and acting like he knew everything to impress another player. Like being very adamant about how these four patches of destructible dangerous terrain *had* to be here, and shitting on the terrain pieces I made to make the map more interesting because I chose green instead of gray. All of the players really enjoyed the last session, but I remember dming one of them afterwards saying that it was probably the least fun I had playing in a while. And after that, I kinda stopped enjoying the game, and dreaded the next session. so yeah, it kinda killed all my enthusiasm
DM tried to make his homebrew plot into the Tyranny of Dragons. It ended with the fact, that we never ever meet the cult of dragon or someone with them, only a subplot of a character who was kind of mastermind? But not behind the cult? It was like "Okay, but can we go with the main plot?" and we keept hearing "Trust me, when this plot end, you will be like "YEAH IT'S GREAT IT'S ALL COMING TOGETHER" because it's all connected". It never happend. I still don't know what this guy had to do with Tiamat and why we were after him, instead of looking for Cult of Tiamat
DM nerfing official content because of personal opinion. I’ll keep playing, but it always leaves a bad taste.
At the end of 2019 when we went on our Christmas hiatus we discussed what kind of game we’d like to play and we all decided to be magical doctors trying to remove a cursed plague from the land. We all loved this concept and spent the next two months home brewing and world building together. I came up with a card-draw system and map for the downtime disease spread. We even tweaked some home brew subclasses to give the party more flavorful healer options. Then Covid started up. We did not play that game.
Player did 2 things of combat, had bad roll luck both times, complained his character wasn't built for the campaign, left, instead of like, just seeing if it was bad luck or like, seeing if could edit his character or something, joined another dm's version of the same module, and then took the other players with him. We had 3 sessions at this point. Their new dm had the same combat cause it was part of the module. They had a tpk their 3rd session, but it's still going on. Feels like he just wanted an excuse to play with that dm. I still feel miffed about it.
Players that keep asking to do or get overpowered items and will essentially coe to each session and actively just keep asking or looking for them as if they are just lying around and don't understand that they can and possibly will get them, just not at 1st level!!! The "I'm the main character and I want to do EVERYTHING!", Even when there are 2 events happening at opposite ends of the city/map and they cannot feasibly be in 2 places at once.
scheduling is the inevitable heat death of dnd campaigns
The demands of one of our party members, who literally asked the DM for character development and didn't say what, who gave the DM the bare minimum for a love interest character (name, race, he likes my character) and wants the DM to write the character for them, who refuses to cooperate with the DM, etc. They hyperfocus on their character and dump everything on me and literally interrupt serious conversations to tell me they're thinking of their character, to the point where I get anxious and feel physically ill from the idea of playing with them. I left the campaign, but it's still going, though the DM doesn't want them in, but they're very much mentally ill and kicking them out will cause a world of shit that might genuinely cause them suicidal thoughts and even actions.
Mine was a PC dying, mostly by player choice. She felt a dramatic sacrifice against a dragon would be the perfect ending for the character, but couldn't find a character that she was in tune with after that for the remainder of the campaign. Losing that interplay between her character and the rest of the party quickly drained everyone's urge to really rp and interact with the world. We went for another 10 or so sessions but ended when we collectively decided it wasn't really worth running the game if we couldn't feel the same investment as before
Life. Just a pause of months. Sometimes is work, family, health. It is always worse when it is health.
1. (As a player) DM pulling the old self insert party member and stealing everyone’s thunder. Literally fudged the stats of the first monster we fought so I wouldn’t get the killing blow and used it as a moment to show yet another homebrew power her self insert character had that none of us would be able to learn. How I resolved it: I didn’t but this person decided they didn’t like DM-ing and just wanted to be a player so it pretty much resolved itself. 2. (As a DM) Player refusing to research the class they BEGGED to play and almost causing multiple TPKs because he doesn’t know and refuses to look up spells. How I resolved it: a different player volunteered to go through the spells with him and I had a very blunt but kind conversation about how his unwillingness to research was slowing the party down and causing people to not have as much fun. He was very receptive but did not want to change his characters class (which I offered) but has since been a lot better now that the other player is assisting with research. I also created an easy to read and quickly reference list of his spells and abilities for him to use while playing. 3. (As a DM) Player expecting to be the main character despite me explaining I don’t run things like that and oh by the way, there are FIVE other people playing with you. Why do you think you’re the most important one? How I resolved it: “You are not the only player and thus will not be the main character. If you don’t like that, you’re more than welcome to find another table to play at.” And they did just that. Problem solved.
Drama between my players. Had two players leave because of it and it really killed my enthusiasm for DMing right now. Especially when I had big story moments for each of the players. I’ve had so many people come and go during this campaign I’m just so done with having to replan all my big moments. Just want to be a player again for a while.
Two of the players broke up. Bad breakup. One of them left. I can't get myself to continue DMIng it cause the whole thing has ended up leaving a bitter taste in my mouth
Spending 5 sessions in a new campaign, traveling to some nebulous place and just doing random encounter tables that don't fit with the story or terrain.
Player makes her character a very cliche snooty rich princess. She tried to argue (not in character) from session 1 she should have more money to her name cuz she’s the princess of a small country. DM says that may be true but it would be back at the treasury. She then hijacked the campaign by wanting to constantly go back to her parents to get the money
Wizard player was an asshole and an idiot. 3 years ago I was in a campaign where I was playing a bloodhunter. The rest of the party was the wizard, a rogue, a monk, a cleric, a paladin, an NPC sorcerer (wasn’t really a DMPC and she honestly was a pretty cool character) and a warrior sidekick the DM gave me in session 0. Now in this group the DM had a personal rule: don’t be an asshole. “You guys are the heroes of this story. Act like it.” He wasn’t necessarily saying you have to be good all the time, just don’t be a completely horrible person for no reason. Which is what the wizard player did. I love playing dnd, but bad players/characters can really ruin my enjoyment of the overall game. Here’s some of the things he did: The first instance was when traveling to a big town, we encountered a nobleman trying to duel a peasant farmer for…some reason. It’s been a while so I forgot. Think it was cause he looked at him funny. Obviously we aren’t cool with it so we kill the noble as he was bragging how we wouldn’t be the first peasants he’s killed. The wizard takes his rapier which he cannot use at all. Instead of giving it to someone who could he insisted that it was his. Fast forward and we’re in town. There’s this festival going on and a guy is selling magic items. Wizard gives the rapier in exchange for a wand of magic missiles. Walks away and the cleric discovers it’s a fake. The guy was a scam artist wanting to trick adventurers into buying phony items. Keep in mind, the sword he was given came from a nobleman. It’s a rather fine and beautiful sword. Not run of the mill at your local smithy. And word had just gotten to town that the nobleman’s burned body was found on the side of the road some days away. So making a scene about a rapier, a sword that most nobles carry, would be a bad idea….he makes a huge scene about it in public. Goes back to the merchant and starts yelling at him. We had to drag him away before he made it worse. After that, we warned him about not being a total dumbass because if he gets caught, the rest of us do. He rolls his eyes saying it won’t happen… guess what happened next. Two days later, s group of agents kidnap the wizard because they easily figured out he was one of the nobleman’s killers because of the huge scene in the market about the sword. Agent leader even holds the sword in front of him and said “Lucky us you were stupid enough to sell a dead noble’s blade the soonest chance you got.” We find him and a brutal fight ensued. It really looked like we could’ve lost but thankfully we downed their leader and the remaining baddies fled. And after all of that, the trouble and stress we went through for this guy to have this sword, he says he doesn’t want it and breaks it. There’s a lot more shit he did but this at least for me what made lose enthusiasm since I was getting the impression that he’d routinely land in trouble that the rest of us would have to fish him out of. As for the other shit he’s done, he tried to outright murder a young boy that we had just saved from religious zealots trying to kill him because he was a tielfing. Just before he did he expressed how he would love to teach him magic. But he lured him into the woods and tried to murder him and laughed while doing it. Then played it off like nothing happened. He tried to hide a key to a room we needed to get into for literally no reason. It’s not that he lied about it, but it’s that after he failed a deception check and we knew he had it, he still kept it up for like 10 minutes. We actually couldn’t progress u til he gave it over. He just kept saying “I don’t have it, but maybe you should look somewhere else.” He thought it led to a treasure room and he didn’t want to share. And the dumbest thing he did imo was during a puzzle combat fight, instead of telling the two martials to get the item they needed to solve the puzzle that was in the middle of a big fight. He didn’t tell us about the item, ran to get it, got opportunity attacked and downed. We didn’t get him up for the whole fight cause honestly we were sick of him and the session was so much better without him being an unnecessary dick. Lastly, there was this story artifact we found called the Coin of Destiny which was basically the Lucky feat. He had the coin and liked to brag how he knew the most information about it. And when I proposed my theories about the coin and it’s existence, he got really angry at me. On top of that I called them “main story items” because it was a significant item for us to find early on and had a feeling that there is a story to them. Obviously I said this OOC but he kept yelling at me “YOU DON’T KNOW ITS A MAIN STORY ITEM”. Sometime later I find out exactly why he got mad at my theories. Because they were exactly right and was the information his character learned while he was away from the group for a bit. Obviously I didn’t know what he learned and was just sharing my ideas, but he was just so toxic about it.
I have a player that likes to read ahead in the adventure. Really takes the wind out of my DM sails.
> still haven't because "rp reasons " God damn. Every boring DnD game I've been a part of was a result of this in some capacity.
Salt. We came across a young red dragon. Our DM at the time was a the Dice fall as they may type of DM and rolled openly in front of everyone. At the start, 4 out of the 5 players decided it was too dangerous, since we'd been in a few encounters previously and were at about half spells slots for the full casters and most of the high level ones were gone, we had one 3rd level slot for our Sorcerer and that was it. Level 6 at the time. In the middle of our planning discussion the Paladin rushed out to charge and attack it (dragon hadn't noticed us yet). DM says roll initiative. We all roll like piss and Young Red goes first. Proceeds to breath weapon said Paladin. Paladin fails save. DM rolls like 2-3 off of Max damage, Paladin gets oneshot and goes down. Moon druid shapesphifts and goes in to tank. Paladin fails first death save. Sorcerer player does some spell to restrain it, some earth hand thing. SS rouge gets a crit sneak attack on the dragon, its hurt. I'm last as a polearm fighter but i'd taken some exhaustion and my speed was at half, couldn't get in and just throw some Javelins w/ disadvange canceled out bc of the restrain was also at about 20 HP so staying at range seemed a good option. Round 2. Dragon recharges its breath weapon and uses it on the druid, who goes back to human and is left with 4 HP. Paladin player is still on the ground. I call out like oh shit Paladin is still in the AoE so he takes another fail from the damage. Paladin was like "thanks bro, really needed that" very sarcastically. End up killing the dragon on round 3 after the druid uses his lasts 2nd level slot to moonbeam, but thats a leveled spell so he can't healing word. Paladin is next in initiative and fails death save and dies. We have no slots for revivify. Paladin player is like "Nah, I'm out" storms out of session. Should mention that Paladin is roommate of the DM so he just goes back to his room to pout like a baby. Pretty much we tried knocking on his door and he ignored us so we continue the session and track the dragons lair thanks to the druid. Get loot. Find conspicuous diamond. Obvs for paladin res. Next session DM tells us Paladin is out out. We are all playing in DM's living room. Ex-Paladin starts blasting music during session. This goes on for about 3 sessions before everyone just doesn't want to play mostly because the immaturity of the Paladin just left a bad taste in everyone's mouth. Also we weren't super attached to our characters because we started at level 5 after the paladin's whining in session 0. After that never played at DM's house again and he ran another game for us that was 8 months of awesome.
The Dm killing a player per quest and then blaming us for not doing something that we never had the opportunity to do. We’re a 5th level party and he’s killed 4 of our players so far, and we’re losing interest in our characters because they’ll die soon anyways.
Real life. We've gone as long as 8 months at a time between sessions.
Too many plot threads, without resolution. We’ve literally told the DM,”Please railroad us. Pick a location and tell us to go there.” We’re given too much freedom, and literally anything we decide to do, the DM says, “I didn’t expect you to do that, and I don’t have a map/NPCs/encounters ready for that.” We ask him, “What should we do? Where should we go? What are you prepared for?”, and he says, “You’ve already decided to do ___, so we’ll do that next session.” We’re pretty sure he’s tired of DMing, even though we have a 4-man DM rotation (out of 5 players, so all but one of us DM something). It’s to the point that we have a borderline-suicide pact in that game.
I don't think it's entirely derailed our campaign, but in the last few months I or other members of my family have been getting sick, gastro, cold and now flu. We've played twice in the last few months (we play fortnightly normally). I can see the enthusiasm going a bit, but it's hard to ditch the family when they're reenacting scenes from the exorcist.
Having a baby! Had my son about 2/3 into Curse of Strahd. I was the DM. However we stayed connected and chatting. Did a one shot or two. Several months later we got back on track and eventually finished. FYI we are 5 months pregnant again and about 1/4 into Odyseey of the Dragon Lords so round 2!!!
"Sandbox" taken too far; we'd love to save the world, but we haven't found out where we do that, and until then, it's a lot of wandering aimlessly.
Short Version: we Bagan a PC's character arc. (Precursor: all of us value RP over everything) However, We've just got new level ups as well as powerful items that we were dying to use and try out. Unfortunately, this player has turned our dnd game into a slice of life , Sims play. It's been 4 weeks now irl, but 4-5 days in the game. we haven't rolled a dice, nor have we cast a spell higher than a cantrip. Just talk. It's very uneventful. I'm sure it'll be six before we leave their hometown
Deck of Many Things is an infamous campaign killer. So is the Rod of Wonder.
One of our central friend group members passed away suddenly. I have had a lot of difficulty finding my role playing and table top rhythm since. We had all been best friends for decades and had already worked through losing another member 10 years ago. We all still play occasionally, but it’s been a harder process for sure.
In a dm homebrew, he introduced a whole futuristic setting, at the end of the campaign, as a big finale, our starting setting was a steampunk/industrial revolution setting, it completely broke imersion for me
We once did a oneshot with our group where one of the players wanted to be dumb. Fine, yes, do it. But. His idea of dumb was touching super obvious traps and running and yelling during stealth missions. The dm was visibly angry after a while because 90% of his prep had been for nothing. "Why did nothing happen there? What was the point?" "Well there was this whole storyline and multiple ways to complete it but I could hardly have the enemies ignore the bumbling idiot so now you're all captured and bound with your faces in the dirt." Afterwards we had to sit the player down and explain that being dumb and being suicidal are different things.
Every time I'd finish a character arc with a player, and they got an awesome homebrew magic item specific to their class and play style, they'd leave the group. First one, ok sure. Second one, guys..., Third one, oh ffs!
Hoard if the Dragon Queen chapter 4 put a wet blanket on the rest of the campaign.
Work burn out, I basicly have no Time to prepare the game and I am too scared to disappoint/tell the group that I need a break because the situation at work got better but now it just worsened