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Player and DM Plot The Perfect Revenge Against A Creepy Player
Hi everyone. All Things DnD is back with another story. This story was
submitted by our viewer Elis. This one is tough. On one hand the player in question
was a problem that was awful and inappropriate, but on the other, his actions also led
to some very interesting gameplay and plot twists...I’ll need you to tell me
what you think after listening to this:
There are plenty of stories about players mixing
badly. People fight, people leave, and otherwise amazing campaigns get tainted by the unfortunate
events of real life interaction. This story is mine, and it’s the series of blood-boiling
actions taken by a fellow player with the ego the size of a Kaiju that led to the downfall
and premature death of a 2-year long campaign. Four years ago, I was playing a Pathfinder
campaign with a few friends I had made online. Let’s call them Cleric, Wizard, and DM, since
those are their favorite roles to be in concerning tabletop roleplay games. We would do our sessions
over a Discord voice call, and sometimes write out character interactions in the group chat messaging
threads in a turn-by-turn roleplay style. We eventually found out that the Gods were
dying due to a hole in the ground that was a gateway to Hell: The crack in the Earth’s core
that was shielded by a magical barrier dutifully named, “The Fracture”. Our goal as players was
to find the blessings of the Gods, bestow them upon people on our side, and eventually make
our way to The Fracture and close it before the magical seal wore off and unleashed all of Hell’s
forces on the planet. Easy enough, but there were 13 Gods and only 3 players, so
the campaign was really DMPC heavy. Cleric played a… well, a cleric. Named Tav.
He was secretly a Kitsune that had an entire plot-driven character arc that I would have loved
to see, and is arguably one of the most fleshed out PC’s I’ve ever had the
pleasure of playing with. I was invited to the campaign after it had
already been going on for about a year by the DM. I had played with them before, both with
them as a player and a DM, and knew they were great to work with, so I said yes. The condition
they proposed for me was that I play a female character, which is something I’d never done
before. I still don’t know why they encouraged it, especially because of the havoc something as
old-fashioned as gender would cause, but I agreed to the term. My first character in the
campaign was an Elven Investigator named Asa. She was a visitor from the Elvish lands that
came to the country The Fracture had affected the most to see what she could do
to help them, frustrated by the indifference of her people. That’s
how she started out, anyway. Wizard had played in the campaign so far as
a peppy human bard with a knack for getting into trouble with the town guards. Wizard
was tired of her, and wanted to do homebrew stuff for a new character, stating that
he wanted to be more “DPS” than support. The DM allowed it, and Wizard created…Krayne. A
name that, when spoken, will always ruin my mood. Krayne was an obnoxious dragonborn sorcerer
with a backstory involving massacring his home village and killing his father for a reason
that kept changing every time it got brought up. Sometimes it was “I felt like it,” and
sometimes it was, “He was abusive,” but the story was never told the same way twice.
He was often drunk, and had the “fireball first, questions last” mentality of a murder hobo
player that claims to be “Chaotic Neutral”. He made this switch shortly
after I joined the campaign. Krayne had a tendency to hit on Asa every
chance he got. His flirting got more serious as he started to give her gifts and shower
her in compliments. Krayne openly stated that everything he ever did for her was,
“Part of my plan to eventually bed you.” Player character romances were never something
I had a problem with. They’re a lot of fun if done right. But in this case, Wizard
and the DM were dating, and the DM was not okay with Wizard making Krayne chase Asa around
like a dog in heat. Neither Wizard or DM had a very good perception of, “It’s just a game.”
And instead of seeing two characters exchanging some flirty banter for the show, they saw Wizard
directly flirting with me. I didn’t get the reasoning at the time, but I decided to respect
it when the DM told me how they felt. I didn’t think it was very in character for Asa
to fully accept Krayne’s advances anyway. In a written interaction between Asa and Krayne,
Asa stated, “I'm flattered, but I thought I should just let you know that you have no chance
with me. I would still like to spend time with you, but as friends. We've been through enough
as a group to be that much, haven't we?” Krayne let this crystal clear rejection fly
right over his head, and his endeavours went from playful flirting and obnoxious
behavior to relentless pursuit. It got to the point where I, the
Player was uncomfortable. The last straw was something that I’m not entirely comfortable
sharing with the entire internet, but considering our age difference, and the way he spoke to
Me… That’s when I realized that maybe, just
maybe, Krayne’s actions towards Asa were actually directed towards me. I went
straight to the DM, ready to leave the campaign. Instead of letting me just
go and getting justifiably enraged at their partner’s actions, the
DM asked me, “Do you want to teach him a lesson?” I’d known the DM for half a decade at this
point, and Cleric and I were going strong as buddies for a solid year. The campaign was the
one time every two weeks that we could really talk to each other and have fun because of the
long distance between us. If there was a way to get back at Wizard, maybe even get rid of him,
without me having to leave behind one of the only ways I could consistently interact with two
of my closest friends, I was interested in it. The DM gave me their idea. “Let’s make Asa evil, and tell no one.” I didn’t really get how making Asa as
undesirable as emotionally possible was going to teach Wizard a lesson, but I trusted the DM and
their process. All I had to do was have Asa act in such a way that no reasonable
person would be attracted to her. Go big, or go home: Asa was now a racist,
xenophobic snob with enough aggressive nationalist idealism to grow a tiny square mustache. She
was no longer in the human territories to help, but to scope out their military strength with the
intention of bringing back intel to her father, the King, in order to coordinate an attack plan
for genocide. That part had to remain a secret for plot reasons, but I was sure to have Asa “slip up”
and say things that would make anyone unwilling to invite her to any kind of social gathering in case
she took it upon herself to bring white sheets. Sessions went from being filled with awkward
and uncomfortable side-stepping around Krayne so we could get to the plot to intricate
espionage missions Asa had to pull off right in front of her unsuspecting party members.
She became friends with the human King, his son, and built up a portfolio of vital information
that could only be found if Krayne or Tav rolled a 15 or higher on an investigation check
when going through Asa’s things. She had plenty of intel on the human’s defenses and attack
strategies, and all she needed was something to convince all the elves back in her homeland
that the destruction of humanity was their only hope of survival so that they would go with
her and her father’s evil scheme with vigor. The drastic change was strange, and not
telling Cleric about all the PMing I was doing with the DM was reproachable, but the gameplay
was so refreshing that I was actually having fun again! Being evil wasn’t
so bad. It really helped me forget how uncomfortable Wizard’s
acting through Krayne made me. And yet… If Asa said, “I hate humans.” Krayne said, “Good thing I’m a half-elf!” A change in his character made on a whim.
I don’t understand why the DM allowed it. If Asa said, “Half? You’re one of
those blood-diseased disgraces?” Krayne would say, “Oh, come
on! Don’t be like that, babe.” As blunt as Asa’s character changes were,
Krayne’s pursuit of her did not stop, and neither did the messages I got from Wizard.
When I brought it up to the DM, they said to play along with him. I guess the DM wanted to
see how far their romantic partner would go. The extent to which I followed those orders
is something I’m not proud of. I wasn’t comfortable with it at all, but the long-running
relationship I had with the DM kept me faithful that they would eventually pull through for me
and this arc of the campaign would finally end. It took forever, and I started to feel guilty,
and tired of all the lying I was doing for the DM. But right as I was at my breaking point,
one voice call and a written role-play session would flip
the script. In the voice call session, the party accidentally
stumbled upon a hidden royal library that held top-secret information from the human crown.
There, Asa rolled a Nat 20 on an investigation check and found a scroll with a detailed map
and plans of how the human army was going to create tunnels underneath the magical barrier
holding back The Fracture’s forces straight into the Elven city capital, and let the forces of
Hell rip the nation apart while the human race stayed safely hidden behind their walls. It was
enough evidence for Asa so that she could bring it back and convince her entire country that the
extinction of the human race was the only option. Krayne wanted to burn it, saying that wiping
out the elves was probably a good idea, just not the method that the human army had planned. I was shocked to hear Krayne say that, and
had Asa remind him that she, too, was an elf. His defense was that she was different,
and that he would keep her safe because of their relationship. They’d definitely be official
by the time the army could finally do the job. Uh… what? Asa snatched the map and demanded to keep
it, her heart racing with anger and fear. This is when Krayne thought it would be a
good idea to threaten her with his sword. Uh… what?! She ran back to the party,
consisting of Tav and 2 DMPC’s, screaming for help. Tav quickly defused the
situation and made the compromise that the party would take the map straight to the human King,
as he didn’t seem like the type of guy to be into genocide. Maybe there was someone in the army that
made those plans without the King’s permission. Once the plan to wipe out the Elven nation was
brought to the King’s attention, he would stop it. Asa hid the map within the confines of her
clothing just in case Krayne tried to steal it on the way there, and the only thing
Wizard had to say about that was, “Now Krayne has one more
reason to want to take her clothes off.” Ew. The next session was a written one. In it,
the party was making their way through a downpour of rain to get back to the capital to
tell the King about the plans, when they met a person that was already carrying one of God's
blessings. It was the DM’s way of progressing the main story line with The Fracture, but they
made the mistake of having the blessing carrier be a woman named Dimitri. Krayne immediately
started to act the same way he did to Asa to her, and the DM was having Dimitri act uncomfortable
but accepting because of her desperate situation. Asa tried to cut in (the girl wasn’t human,
so it was in her character to care about the girl’s safety), but Krayne wanted to
spend time with Dimitri, and made a cheap shot at Asa’s lack of skill that was caused
by a lot of bad rolls to make her back off. "Oh, ho-ho..." Asa took in a deep breath, and
then let it out slowly, her eyes closing as she tried to collect herself before they snapped open.
The elven eyes were nearly gleaming with spite, her brow furrowed deeply as she nearly snarled
at him. "If this is about the map situation, you can forget about it. You will see in due time
the kind of help that piece of paper will do. You destroying it will do nothing to
progress us towards helping the gods." Her demeanor changed, a smug look about her as the
snarl turned upwards into a wicked smile. "Well, I guess that's what's to be expected. All you do
is destroy everything you touch. Consider it a mercy that I keep you from burning anything else
lest you go off and massacre another village." Krayne is taken aback, and turns to Asa.
His hand, for a moment, leaves Dimitri's and raises up to his sword. He almost wraps his
fingers around it's hilt before he stops himself. He lowers his hands and gently wraps them
around Dimitri's, this time he holds onto them, less to comfort her now but as an anchor
for holding onto his temper. The air around him starts to get hot, but cools down as he
focuses on Dimitri's hands. "A mercy, is it?" Dimitri turns her smile to Tav before
she looks down at the floor of the cart, content enough with that answer. She almost looks
relieved before her eyes lift to Krayne again, then to Asa again, and...
quickly back to the floor, almost fearful. She makes no comment, but
she leans towards Krayne eagerly. "H-Hey, it'll be okay, right? Going to the king will solve
our problems, won't it? There's no need to fight." Dimitri's mannerism disarms Asa, and she
realizes what she said might have been... out of turn. But it's not like she can back out now.
Krayne had insulted her, and actually had the grounds to do it on. That burned her very core to
know it was true. So she took a steadying breath, studied the situation before her, and finally
decided to get some things off her chest. "What's this? You hide behind your
newest conquest? Let me guess, you plan on persuading her even after
she clearly tells you no as well? As a distraction? Because you're too scared of what
you really are to give me a reasonable response?” "A mercy, is it?"" She mocked
his voice by making hers deeper. "Yes, a mercy! You reached
for your weapon right there. You pulled it on me back at the library.
You obliterate everything we come across!" Her rant had become frantic at this point,
her hair sprouting from the tie it was in. Still, the party marched on, and the
rain continued to soak them to the bones, sticking their clothes to their bodies
and reveal what they were really made of. Asa's stature was frail and rigid,
sharp in places that could cut where it hurts and starved in places
that could never be fulfilled. "You're destructive, uncivilized, and have no
concept of the way others perceive you! Or maybe you know exactly how others see you and that's
why you act like such an egomaniac. No one has ever wanted you, and when they did it was because
you were useful. Not because they liked you or genuinely wanted you around, but because you were
an instrument to be used as a means to an end." Angry elves with a Lawful
Evil alignment, am I right? Krayne slinks back, clearly hurt. For a
second, yeah he thought she was his friend, to a small degree. Sure, he has ulterior
motives but this was something that stung him deeper than he had imagined. He sunk
into his seat, as the words crossed his mind. 'You're a tool. Your only purpose is to die so
others don't have to. You're worth nothing more than a body on a battlefield, Krayne. Your
brother understands this, why can't you...' His mind for a moment goes blank, something
in him changes, he gently drops his hands from Dimitri's as his now blank face
stares at Asa. His eyes...stopped being their same brown shades, and now stared
at Asa with a clear slit in the pupils. "Okay." He stands quickly, grabbing on to Asa's tunic
with a fury not before seen, the golden claws on his hands dig into the fabric, and into her
chest a little as he wrenches her from her feet. She tumbles from the wagon onto the muddy
ground beneath them. She has only a second to get her bearings before Krayne follows up,
his fiery yellow eyes not piercing under the shadows of his hat. Unceremoniously, he stomps
on her chest to hold her down into the mud. He draws his sword, wreathing
it in flames. He speaks, smoke pouring out of his mouth, and
tears down his face. "Go on, talk like him some more.
I'm sure he'd love to meet you." Asa hadn't expected for him to prove her right. No wind in her lungs, no sight in her eyes, she
laid still under Krayne's boot for a moment. His words registered slowly, like
ooze seeping from an infected wound. The cracking sound that her ribs
had made was yet to dawn on her, but the pain that followed rattled her
until it shook a scream from her throat. Her breathing was ragged, and she clawed
helplessly at Krayne's leg, desperately trying to push it off of her. "G-Get..." She
coughed, and fear began to visibly take hold. She froze under him, eyes wide when she
saw that his weapon was drawn. "W-Wait..." Asa stuttered desperately
as she shakily reached down. She plucked the map from within her clothing
and tossed it far away from both of them, hoping that giving the scroll up would be
enough in exchange for her life. There's a moment of silence. But Krayne
slides his weapon back in it's sheath. His eyes visibly change back to their normal
state, and the smoke stops flowing from behind sharpened teeth. He steps off of her, and snatches
up the map while turning back to the cart. "No. You can live with it." He tucks the
map into the breast pocket of his vest. "He wasn't worthy of my time, and
you know what...neither are you." He walks back to the wagon, and climbs in.
He sits in the far corner of the wagon, slumping onto the wall and
hiding behind his coat and hat. At this point, Tav rushes in and heals Asa, and they all head to a cave
to bunker down for the night. Meanwhile, in the real world, Wizard messages
me asking if he just blew it with Asa. The DM was celebrating in the PM thread we had,
knowing full well that Krayne had indeed blown it, doing all the work for them, and teaching himself
a lesson. I don’t know if that really counts as “a lesson” because my character was the one
that got brutalized while his is just… not getting laid,
but I digress. I honestly don’t know what he expected. Secretly
evil or not, you can’t break a girl’s ribs and expect her to like you for it. I told Wizard that
sentiment, minus the secretly evil part, and he went into an emotional meltdown. He desperately
tried to fix things, having Krayne approach Asa on his hands and knees, calling himself
a monster and begging for forgiveness. Asa, pride and body wounded, gives her statement. "You killed your father. You destroyed your
people." She stood slowly, weak as her body was, feeling strength throw itself through her veins
rapidly as anger flushed her cheeks and ears. "You have proven today that you are incapable of
controlling yourself. I can't know if you won't do this again. So, Krayne," His name was
a curse on her lips as she cast it on him. "Why should I trust your apology when
I cannot even trust your temperament?" Krayne shook his head, the hushed words just
barely escaping his mouth. "You can't...You can't trust me-I can't trust me." He sits back
up, his eyes turned down and tears still streaming from his face. "I just want to right the wrongs
I've done, at least make up for it in some way. I left to adventure, to help people to make up
for what I did to my home and all those people and...in one lapse of judgement I threw it
all away. I know you can't forgive me. I can't blame you, but you guys...you especially,
mean a lot to me and I...I can't live knowing I did everything to hurt you, and nothing to
try and fix it..." Tears well up in his eyes more as he clenches his fists. "But I can't
anymore...all I'm good for is destroying things...I'm just a bomb waiting to go off and all
I can do is take everything I care about with me. I can't be a hero. I can't fix the things I've
broken. I can't earn your forgiveness-" He takes this moment to lock eyes with Asa, pleading now
for something he knew he was never going to get. "-Why am I even still here, Asa? Why did god
put me- a monster- here if I'm just going to ruin everything?! Why didn't I just let him
kill me, Asa! Why couldn't I just die?!" Asa couldn't have said it better herself. She huffed, her body tensed from his rant. She
wondered for a moment if he really thought she was that stupid. Why would she fall in line behind
a man who could not keep his emotions in check? Why would she bring his honeyed and tear-soaked
words into her heart when he had almost crushed it with her own rib cage not a few hours
beforehand? Why would she do anything at all? And after I asked the DM and Wizard if it was
okay to say something really, really dark, I had Asa say: "Maybe you should have." Even though he has a really dark moment after
that, it turns out alright in the end for Krayne. He’s completely unharmed, and doesn’t
manage to hurt himself. He just went for a really intense jog to get out his angst like that
one scene from FootLoose, and Dimitri catches up to him to help before anything drastic happens. Once the party gets back to civilization,
Asa gets enough supplies for her journey back home. Tav had picked up the map and given it
back to her, and she had made a copy of it with a high sleight of hand check. She offered for
Tav to come with her, as she thought they would be better off without Krayne, but he refused,
saying he had to stay and finish his mission to save
the Gods. One tearful goodbye later, Asa was out of
the party and out of my hands. The DM took her over after that, and told me Asa would be
re-statted to be the BBEG of the season finale, and told me to make a new character. This time,
a male. I decided to bring back one of my old favorites; an Ifrit Barbarian named Ibu who was
on a mission to find his missing daughter when the God of Fire thought he’d make a great blessing
carrier and he got roped into the party’s mess. The weird messages from Wizard didn’t
stop completely, but they did decrease a substantial amount, as he was suspicious that
the DM and I were in cahoots. I was able to enjoy the campaign as an honest to a fault barbarian
that bullied Krayne like an older brother and cut him to the quick when he was being… well, Krayne. The party had to enter Elven territory
to retrieve one of the God’s blessings, and when they were there, they were arrested for
not having proper visitation paperwork. They were dragged to a palace where Asa sat on a throne,
saying nothing but grinning victoriously as she sent her former party members and my new character
to rot in prison. The only one who was surprised was Wizard. Cleric had figured out that Asa was
evil months before she actually showed back up. Wizard was ticked off and wanted the
bloodiest revenge possible on Asa for… not sleeping with him and
also being evil, I guess. First, they had to get out of prison.
They do that, but on their way out, they overhear soldiers talking that Asa is
about to pull an Uno Reverse card on the humans and dig a hole under the magical barrier of
the Fracture leading directly to the human city capital. The walls surrounding
the country would keep the chaos in, the other races would watch helplessly
as an entire race came to an end. They had to stop her! Through Ibu the Ifrit Barbarian’s eyes, I watched
as one of my past characters was defeated, humiliated, and beheaded by Krayne. Seeing as
she was a horrible person bent on destroying an entire race, it was the fate she deserved, but
something about Krayne getting to kill her rubs me the wrong way to this day. It definitely didn’t
help that after he beheaded her, he burnt the rest of her corpse and then carried the head around
like a trophy for half a session, creeping out everyone else in the party and setting the mood
and power dynamic for the rest of the campaign. It’s for the best that the campaign eventually
ended due to a lack of enjoyment and an increase in every-day life business, even if the
players never got a real conclusion to the plot. The animosity I still hold for Wizard is
something I don’t think I can contain for very long if I ever have to deal
with him again. But that campaign taught me alot about patience and setting my
own boundaries that I never forgot. I’m still in touch with Cleric, who’s doing great and just
graduated college. I’m also still in touch with Wizard and the DM, who are still together for some
reason. I hope Wizard grows as a person eventually, but I guess you can’t expect much from
the kind of guy that would write an 8 page long document of a Wish just to make sure he’s right.
I really wish that Asa had managed to AT LEAST kill Krayne in the final showdown. I
think I would have fudged a few dice rolls. But you live and learn. Please let
us know what you think and comment below! Don’t forget to subscribe to
our channel, All Things DnD. Our next video will be posted in 3 days, so stay
tuned for more amazing Dungeons & Dragons content!
Yeah no, this sounds like a cheesy setup by the DM to generate drama.