Neglectful DM Shuns And Replaces Player

you're just a side character anyway is what op was told by the dungeon master just after the campaign went to hell in a handbasket and just before they disappeared from the game entirely this is one of those tales where the player and the dm absolutely do not get along in the slightest and drag the entire campaign down with them but first this video is sponsored by the amazing tool dungeon fog in dungeon fog you can create multi-level dungeons terrains and entire worlds in the time it takes for you to click your krabby claws generate your gm notes automatically and export or print high-res images and notes or send a fog of war version for your players to the tv draw rooms with intuitive tools connect them with doors and passages and decorate your map with props from a library with 4 000 plus assets heavy on immersion you can shed some light on the subject with custom light sources and dynamic shadows to create atmospheric scenery creating a more immersive experience for you and your players help yourself to their massive library of user-generated maps that you can claim and adjust as needed with that said the fine folks over at dungeon fog offer any and all crabs a whopping 10 off of your annual subscription just use code critcrab at checkout better yet use the link below in the description all that out of the way roll post after frustrations from another campaign i joined a campaign which a friend was running since he had noted to me how he ran things it sounded great and at the time i had just revisited dnd he was running a pathfinder game however so there was a lot of information to get used to i adjust quick so i didn't have an issue in that regard aside from the occasional question about where something was on my sheet it was seven pages and the information ended up being split into two sections i was being brought in at level 5 with my very expressive gunslinger that cracks jokes so terrible they're funny sometimes he's a beloved character of mine anyways this gm gave me the impression that he had gm'd before and that he was a seasoned and tried gm please note that i don't mind new game masters but i would rather know beforehand so i know what to expect that being errors if that wasn't enough to tell he was actually a fresh gm with this being his first actual game mastered campaign if not for the nature of the events and how they ended i probably would not have thought of posting this here as a horror story and time less than a whole minute in and we're already seeing some foolery now most new dungeon masters like to emphasize that they're new you know why it's so that the players know to be patient and understanding if said dm makes a ruling mistake or shows other signs of inexperience this dm impresses on people that this is just another rodeo and that he has been there done that so given that this is a horror story my money's on the reality being that he is so full of himself that he sees no fault in anything that he's about to do we'll post this campaign had apparently been going on for a long while before i got there and i found out about two to three other players that it also left from what i was told this was due to the players being childish or just flat out but i didn't know anyone else prior upon meeting some of the others i would be playing with however they all seem pretty cool i was invited to one of their chat servers and everyone seemed really nice it looked like they had the same humor as me and it was so perfect the first month or so of sessions actually went pretty well for the most part there was one time where one of the players insisted the rest of us were cutting him off and not letting him speak the thing is i had discord in the roll 20 window minimize so i could tell if my ever so slowly dying headset was still picking up everything i was saying and watch role 20 at the same time his light never came on except once when it sounded like he cut off the gm and the gm told him to wait one moment while he finished an explanation even after i politely told him that we didn't hear him he said something along the lines of well you guys should still have let me speak i tried speaking again to explain but he kept cutting me off to the point where i had enough the gm was oddly timid with some of the group admittedly i didn't handle that situation well and i take full responsibility for that but i always warn people that i'm not afraid to be the ass if you refuse to let someone speak after attempting to speak two more times i told him to shut the hell up for one fraction of a moment he went quiet seething and i told him that i could understand his frustrations however we couldn't let him speak without knowing that he was speaking in the first place he yet again began insisting that we were in the wrong for not letting him talk even though nothing was coming from his mic before that the gm butted in to gently continue on without addressing either of us and ignoring the situation i think at that moment we both decided to just drop the entire thing as it was a horrifically stupid argument on its own not enough for a horror story though op is right that part really doesn't constitute a horror story however it's so mildly infuriating i can see why both people are getting progressively more upset what's worse is that they're taking a problem that isn't really that serious and directing completely unfitting levels of anger at each other this is one of the most rage inducing non-issues anyone's ever seen unfortunately it's paradise compared to what's going to happen next we'll post that aside we had another couple sessions before there was any real issue that issue was my health i have conditions and disorders that make it hard for me to make it at times we were having two sessions a week up until this point and it had taken a toll on me in its own way the gm was already aware of these conditions and disorders so i didn't need to explain much when i requested that we relax a bit and drop the sessions to one a week this was mostly so i didn't miss anything important as both sessions were mandatory for understanding what was going on in the world and with the party i'll get to that in a moment the gm stated that we would try it and see how it goes to which i was very grateful i did end up missing the next session due to health and then we had another session that week which i also missed that said we still had two sessions a week later on to a new player he would claim that we tried that already no we didn't my request was just ignored despite me being told we would try one session a week until i felt better anyways i was willing to ignore that whatever however then he just didn't give me recaps of what went on because i wasn't there i could ignore that if not for the fact that i would be thrown into combat on the next session with the only context being you found the boss room and now you must make a will save which i didn't have to actually do because my character had no interest in the succubus chosen forms this happened on several occasions where i would just kind of appear back in town or in combat and was given no idea what was going on or why i was there i was given no reason to seek out the other players because of this and really had no idea where to go from there when asked it was jarring and i did express this to him he never gave me the recaps after i asked if i had legitimate health problems that physically stopped me from being there only for the gm to refuse to accommodate for it and then blackball me from the game i would be so pissed that i would become that guy i'd be fudging roles making mary sue anime characters drawing pentagrams all over his notes hell eating his gm screen while making full eye contact the whole nine yards but he's about to get even worse roll post about a week later another session had been scheduled without anyone telling me there weren't even any discord notifications of a change in schedule and believe me i checked due to this i missed a session that i actually could have attended it was disappointing and i brought it up with the gm the response i got was uh i'll work on it this became a common theme in the coming weeks and i was constantly not told any of this pertinent information by now a new player was joining someone i knew actually and who had sought out the gm so he could join a long time and a wonderful friend of mine he wanted to spend more time with me and was interested in the campaign from my descriptions of what was going on so enter player 5. unfortunately the very first combat encounter he learned the gm's version of balance now there's something i didn't mention until now and that's because the problem wasn't as blatantly clear until a few things 1. the gm had given the summoner of the group effectively a demigod summon with the template that would modify her stats 2. the severity of which this changed her stats was astronomical much like the astra demon used to create it she was also gaining the evolution points from summoner unchained so she gained power just like a normal eidolon 2. three the hordes of enemies that we had to fight were way too much for us without that summon which led to an unhealthy reliance on the summoner because without him it was impossible this also made the new player who was going for a defensive samurai effectively useless because the only one that could hold the line was of course the summon the game very quickly became protect the summoner rather than something i otherwise view as team based the summoner was really a one-man army now regarding the balance in particular it wasn't even just the hordes it was the constant constitution drain they would spam these attacks which nearly killed the samurai twice in the first two combat encounters not to mention he was one level lower than the rest of us despite us all supposed to be leveling on a milestone-based system together the ac ignoring attacks and the well out of our league monsters that we were even told by the gm that we were intended to fight so this wasn't a situation where we were just blind to the hints of no don't fight that these monsters could literally one shot us on average attack rolls aside from the few of us that had higher vigor points and wounds and we were supposed to fight them yeah okay there is so much wrong with these short couple of paragraphs that it's like a fully loaded problem burrito about to burst first the gm is giving the players a demigod as a summon and only the demigod is powerful enough to save the party where on earth have i heard that before it reminds me of the airship or the centaur stories both of which are just the worst moving past that i have never seen under leveling a player character work out i'm sure it's been done before but making everyone level 5 except mark who is level 2 singles him out and makes him less effective than anyone else and for what why not just introduce him as somebody who is as powerful as the rest of the party it makes no sense to do this all of these issues are coming to a head and op is about to confront the gm about them roll post before me and the samurai ended up going to the gm to express our issues we did have another problem six straight hours of combat without any break or puzzle between was way too much mind you that was six straight hours of one encounter where all the enemies dealt constitution or strength damage in a 25 by 25 square box already low on vigor and wounds and constitution and strength we had to 1v1 these definitely tankier than normal they dealt a lot of damage and had a lot more health than normal diseased rats due to a massive heap blocking the center of the path we managed luckily but we were supposed to fight the actual boss next after a literal 50 plus enemies being thrown at us and being low on the items we had intentionally stockpiled before i wish that was a joke and the majority of those were random demons and demons which only the summoner could deal with again a game of protect the summoner so after the trash heap of rats and worms and diseased hell spawn we got to a door with five complex locking mechanisms after about a minute i remembered i had an amazing disabled device skill and the lock picks to go with it i roll and get rolls around 28-ish on each all were unlocked within a couple of in-game minutes and the session stopped there this is noteworthy because this is when i voiced my tiredness of the six straight hours of combat i told him that a combination of that and puzzles would be nice to break up the tedium of roll to hit roll damage and go on to the next one it was so bad that we were all dead silent after the first three hours because there was nothing to even talk about between just mindless rolling i also expressed a break could have helped since the one break we got lasted a whole five minutes irl for us trying to help the less dex-strong people jump across a gap in the floor which could cause someone to get swept away by a disease-laden river the response i got from this request and suggestion was less than friendly the player that had gotten into an argument with me prior spoke up in defense of the gm he took what i said as insulting and the gm himself stated that it was quote unquote necessary to balance out the role play sessions with the combat now i'm gonna call complete over this because aside from that campaign i had also been gm'ing my own i have a group that doesn't like too much combat but also doesn't want too much role play balancing the two does not mean doing several sessions and hours of only combat to balance out several sessions and hours of role play you can balance them without driving your players absolutely bonkers each time you do too much of either i explained this to them and the other players jump on board to attack me aside from the samurai who remained silent because he was just as tired as i was the gm ended the discussion with a rather aggressive the locked door there's your puzzle a locked door is not a puzzle not in this case there are ways to make it one but this isn't one of them this has been an interesting development it seems that the rest of the players enjoy and are okay with everything the gm is doing at least enough to have been there before op joined and then to defend the gm style when it's called into question this could imply dishonesty on op's part but i think the better story is that the game simply has a very niche appeal and that opie and their friend observe what most would just call bad gmming but in the context of most players at the table enjoying it that way so if you look at it through this lens is the gm really bad for doing this or is he good for providing a game that the majority of players at the table enjoy even though most players everywhere else would strongly dislike it that said the story isn't over yet and op is about to make some interesting choices roll post i left not wanting to deal with being ganged up on and being frustrated over the very unnecessary comment towards expressing my thoughts on it all regarding the stupid locked door puzzle i addressed the game master in his dms on discord the samurai did the same though i wasn't aware of it the response we got was i'll work on it he never did in case you're wondering by this time i had gotten really sick of how i'd been treated i was still not being told of sessions and i was missing them because of it and my health was still dragging me down add to this all the fact that the gm had started ignoring and dismissing anything i said no matter what i said he also had begun asking people if x day or time worked for them but would leave me out of the discussion entirely i didn't get to input on decisions because i don't know when confronted again and asked why he said it was already decided on i had only found these things out because the samurai told me what was going on and of course because i was still missing sessions that had changed dates or whatever else i wasn't asked for my opinion and i wasn't told anything by this time i had gotten the impression that i didn't matter at all that much i felt like a side character and it had been a few months at this point i decided that i would express all of my concerns to the gm in a polite but thorough manner so that he could see that it was criticism and suggestions not an attack on him i actually copied the message and sent it to the samurai to ensure it was understandable and not unintentionally giving off any kind of hostile or angry vibe i wasn't angry just desperately trying to reach out and give feedback so that things could get better when the samurai told me the message was good to go after making some edits that came off the wrong way i sent it to the gm the response i got was horrifically and overwhelmingly dismissive he did not address one thing in the message and gave me yet another i'll work on it seething i didn't respond and just left it alone only one more incident happened before i left and that being my offering him some minor criticism the weird thing is that the first bit of criticism i gave was actually towards a rule and not him turns out that rule wasn't even a pathfinder rule like he claimed it was but he took it in a matter so personal that he got angry at me he wouldn't talk to me for a while after this and i'm still confused about it i even told him straight up i was referring to the rule itself not you or anything you have done i think the rule could be better as it's balanced so against the players that it harms us immensely the ruling question was regarding double crits i looked into the pathfinder rulebook and there was absolutely nothing not a single thing to clarify the gm was allowing monsters to double and triple crit players which was instant death the samurai was basically dead from one hit from a double crit and the gm apparently thought this was funny no it really wasn't the rest of the criticism was just ways i think he could do better with the combat i suggested giving the enemies more creative kits so that the combat would be more unique and engaging he didn't take that kindly either and refused that what he was doing was flawed in any way i never said it was flawed just that it could use some tweaking i also commented on how the areas were no larger than 20 feet wide at any given time and since he wouldn't let ranged characters use their weapons at that close of range we were often forced to just hit the monsters with our weapons which would damage the weapons luckily i was an exception in that i had a custom blade gun that could be used as a melee weapon due to design and function as well as a ranged weapon it literally fired the blade too and was my close quarters combat choice but that didn't change how the other ranged players were not so lucky it was as if he didn't want any ranged players which was really weird early on he had even tried nerfing my gun to the point of one reload would last two or three rounds when it was supposed to be won balance i guess even though it was not balanced the final problem happened only about a month later when i realized he was listening to only the others when they brought up issues i contacted the game master and dms again this time i sectioned my issues out and made them more simple so that perhaps he would actually read them this time he did but with almost every issue he dismissed it as a non-issue i mean for crying out loud he straight up told me he didn't do the vast majority of the things i listed when the samurai could literally vouch for me and state that he did in fact do everything i addressed i showed the samurai everything the gm had sent me and everything i had sent the gm not only that but the things he didn't outright dismiss or deny he tried to excuse as if the things i mentioned only happened in the last week when he had some personal problems i could understand that if not for the fact that every problem i listed was a problem before those personal issues ever came to light this had been going on for a very long time and i was not going to accept those issues we were past that at the very end however there was one sentence that made me tell him that i quit you're just a side character anyway that one sentence confirmed everything i had felt everything i had believed and everything i had hoped was just me being the paranoid idiot that i am nope not paranoia this time the most laughable part of all of this though is that he thought i meant i quit the session for the following night why would i ever join back period after all of that there were also things he would do both in my campaign before all of this which would cause him to leave my session too that made me believe he was a very very sadistic person it was weird and kind of disturbing the way he would laugh whenever he royally screwed over the players or the players experienced struggle harm or pain there was even a point in my campaign where he relished in the fact that his character literally shoved a bounty target npc down a crypt's long stone staircase just because she didn't know the answer to a question he as a character and a player already knew the answer to after i decided to be forgiving the npc should have died but i decided to make things interesting he tried to get the bounty holder the person whose bounty this belonged to to not heal the target throughout the night the reason this was necessary was because his spells could not heal the devastating wounds the target had acquired and they were too far from a proper city to give her medical attention to keep her stabilized basically extreme internal bleeding in his own campaign he seemed to get enjoyment when one player was basically all but killed lost almost all limbs and an eye it was just the way he reacted that was really creepy and disturbing i didn't feel comfortable with it at all please note that i did have to leave out some things because of how long this story is already getting i can't really put into words how truly terrible i was treated at one point i had a mental breakdown because of it being in an inescapable tough situation irl and seeing the similarities in the way i was being treated both in real life and from this game master and some of his players it pushed me to break i don't know why i stayed for as long as i did and i should have left it was my fault for staying i get that and i'll take that fault if you guys want to know some of the things that have happened since i left here you go information from a very frustrated samurai friend the gm made a new rule where rerolled characters start at level 1 instead of being at the party level despite the encounters not being scaled down at all they're not on an xp system so that means they get levels when the gm decides they met a milestone but they don't get to know what those milestones are my samurai friend is still in the campaign this is several months later and still one level lower than everyone else the gm won't tell him how he's supposed to get that level and hasn't given any reasonable clues the gm is now making players roll linguistics to comprehend known languages even though that's not how this is supposed to work at all the gm is complaining about players not getting his hints even though they follow the path he's handing them he's just not giving the players the information they need and expecting them to oh i don't know pull it out of their asses or something oh and apparently i was not the only one that wanted only one session each week the gm just really doesn't want less than two we're at the end of the story and i'm still under the impression that this is just a classic case of the gm and player being at odds and with different expectations granted i don't like the way the gm is running his game and i wouldn't want to be in one of his games i get the frustration that said gm and his players clearly like it this way and gm does not want to change the entire structure of his game because of one player's complaints that said here are some other terrible horrible stories and if you don't suffer a mental break just listening to them then i'll give you double the brain cells that you lost listening to it till next time [Music] you

Channel: CritCrab

Views: 434,206

Keywords: reddit, r/, r slash, rpg, d and d, dnd, rpghorrorstories, horror, story, stories, crit, crab, critcrab, TTRPG, trpg

Id: Z2p8t47jnqM

Length: 27min 10sec (1630 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 25 2022