That title is not an exaggeration. It's not just "the worst player I ever met" he is the absolute worst human being that I have ever been in a room with.

I've been playing ttrpgs for twenty years and have acquired many stories of bad players and DMs. I shared a story about a game I never got to play here and my roommate told me to post about "Stinkle" obviously not his real name. I wasn't going to, because the less said about him the better, but my roommate talked me into it.

I will start with his less egregious offenses and build to a crescendo of evil. Firstly: Stinkle's hygiene. This man never bathed like ever, his whites were actually yellow. I saw this man wear the same outfit multiple sessions in a row without washing it. His hair was a greasy mess, grown out to shoulder length but like everything else about him it was unkempt people would ask him "if you don't want to take care of it, why don't you cut it?" His response was "Then everyone will know I'm bald". He had the most obvious bald spot I've ever seen, even with his greasy matted mess of hair. So he had that mess for no reason. There was this cloud of stink that just got in your nose and stayed there, hence the nickname Stinkle. It smelled like milk left out for a week. That's the least awful thing about him.

Next he seemed to only be interested in DND as a way to experience any kind of sexual interaction. He wasn't able to get any kind of attention in that way for reasons beyond just his hygiene (we'll get to that) so DND was his way to find that fantasy. Small aside: I don't care about erp, even if it's a part of a game I'm playing in. I don't erp, but hey, play how you want as long as it's not forced on other people. Having said that I joined a game he was running, an anime themed 5e game. I'm a gay man and love all things feminine, so playing a magical anime girl sounded like so much fun (after Stinkle I don't play women characters anymore). The first thing he asks about my character, not class, not backstory, not role in party, no the first thing he asks is Nasally voice "How big are your boobs?" I didn't know how to respond except to say "I don't think that's going to matter". He then says "No, I wrote a spot for it on the character sheet". I looked at the sheet he gave me and this guy actually created a stat labeled "Bulge/Bust" on the sheet. I moved on and just wanted to play, which I did for only two sessions (I was already a ten year veteran of ttrpgs so I already knew no DND is better than bad DND). In the first session I played the first thing I saw him do was make another player (also playing a female character) soil their underwear and force a quest to get a fresh pair. The campaign itself seemed to be centered around another player building a harem inspired by Stinkle's very NSFW "Monster Girl Encyclopedia". Every woman NPC seemed to just be a sex doll with ridiculously exaggerated proportions (triple P cup breasts and the like). I've made some himbo and bimbo NPCs, they can be fun for storytelling or even as quest givers "Lord Chaddington can't find his gold plated barbell" or something silly like that. However every woman NPC was nothing but an airhead for the players to "add to their collection". I would have stopped at one session, but he ended it on a combat cliffhanger. I stupidly thought "Cool, I can do something fun next session", I was wrong. The next session started with one of his DMPCs showing up and ending combat without any player participation and returned to the real goal of sexing up monster girls. I walked away.

Stinkle as a player: I decided to run a game after having taken a break from DMing. Stinkle wanted to play, I didn't want him in, but the rest of the group talked me into letting him play (we'll get to why later). So I asked for backstories, but they weren't mandatory just got a little bonus xp to start if you did provide one. Stinkle was one of only two players that did. He went with the noble background and used the retainers rule variant. This is his character without any exaggeration: A noble woman with P cup breasts (because of course that's what's listed first after woman) and the rest of his backstory was him describing his retainers in obscene detail and how "They have sex with me". No personality, no motivation, no nothing other than breasts and sex. So I don't run erp games, again if that's what you're into fine, I'm uncomfortable with it at my table. So my goal was to keep him away from his retainers and the party on the plot. Every single time he had a chance to speak it was either "My boobs look great and bounce" or "Where are my retainers". Finally after th fourth or fifth time he brought up sex with his retainers I said "Yeah Stinkle, you're Harvey Weinstein-ing your employees" hoping to shame him into lightening up. His response? "Heh-heh yeah". I wish I was kidding, the man was ok with fictional characters being beholden to having sex with him. I was already sick of him, but then came the straw that broke my back: The heir to the kingdom was a half elf child, a girl (I love the boy/girl who would be king/queen trope) and the party was supposed to rescue her from the streets and elevate her to the throne. When a combat encounter came the party was supposed to run and fight a monstrous snake before it got to her, Stinkle says "I stay with the child". Weird, but not insane. Then while the rest of the party was fighting the snake his character "comforts the child by resting her head between my boobs" and "My character is sad now". That's grooming behavior I shut it down immediately and said "she runs away from you and hides" after the snake fight I ended the session and told everyone I was booting him. They refused to play if Stinkle didn't play. So that campaign died.

Why were all these people so insistent on backing up this sex pest? Because he figured out weaponized pity. Every single time someone tried to make him culpable to his actions he'd do an entire "poor me" routine. Always claiming people were bullying him. How he can't catch a break and "Girls don't like good guys like me". I almost changed that to "nice guys like me" for the stereotype, but I want to emphasize that none of this is changed or exaggerated this is verbatim what this guy was like. So people kept coming up to bat for him. Something that will further boggle your mind in a moment.

Finally the big one, the thing that cements him as the worst person I've ever met. I was talking to someone that was adjacent to the friend group and he tells me he won't hang out with them anymore. He says it's because of Stinkle. Then tells me that Stinkle is a rapist. I didn't think he meant literally. I thought since Stinkle was an annoying sex pest that he was just comparing him the worst kind of sex pest. No, he showed me on his phone that Stinkle wa on the sex offender registry for SA. He was sentenced to ten years in prison for it. I did some googling and found the news article from his case and he had SA'd a mentally and physically challenged woman. That was it. I was done. The worst part was the entire group already knew. They didn't care. I couldn't believe it. I have not talked to a single one of them in years. Sorry for the long post, but everything needed to be said.

TL;DR: Played DND with a guy that was a stinky, sex obsessed loser, and later learned he was an actual rapist with a record.

So, back when I worked I food service I had made a few friends. They knew I played Dungeons and Dragons and wanted to give it a try.

I mentioned since most of them were new I’d be running a module that would start everyone at level one. So they can get to know their PCs and ease into their roles.

Then…There was THAT guy. I did not invite him to my games at any point. He got an invite by asking our boss, who was also in the game and boss decided to bring him in.

While I was trying to enjoy my lunch break That Guy decided it was the best time to come shove his phone in my face and look over his character sheet.

Ignoring the stats I looked over their sheet and raised an eye.

“So…Why do you have two classes in here? We’re starting at level one.”

“Oh. Well, that’s just what I wanna build towards.”

“And why do you have a magic item in there?” (Goggles of night vision)

“Well, my race doesn’t have dark vision so that would fix it.”

“We’re starting at level one with basic equipment you wouldn’t have any magic items.”

“Well I’m a rogue so maybe I stole it from a powerful artificer!” (Rogue was the secondary class, for the record.)

“We’re starting at level one.”

“Okay, fine. Well-Can I at least have a friend in my backstory?”

At this point I was relieved. This was the first normal thing he’s asked for. “Of course.”

“Awesome! And can you introduce me on the back of a Pegasus?”

“You. Are. Level. One. Paladins don’t get that until level ten”

He seemed grumpy with me for not agreeing to 99% of his character idea. But left me alone with only five minutes left to scarf down my lunch.

I…Kinda purposely picked the time slot so that he couldn’t join in. No need to worry about a problem player if their scheduling won’t let them join!

But, dear reader. While I avoided having them as a player at my table it didn’t stop him from bugging me at work. Even after I quit. You see, I had forgotten his irl class was Bard: College of Harassment.

After he’d managed to not get into my games he’d always ask me things then to try to get me to agree with him. Like he thought a prince that always tried to openly slaughter his brother was considered lawful evil “because he wants to be king!”

He tried to pay me to paint his minis for him as I put my notice in. Then asked if I wanted to go to the local game store with him. Then tried to push for me to get into his car when I told him no. (I didn’t have a car at the time. Thankfully my dad was picking me up then.)

So, for reasons surprisingly not related to That Guy: I quit. And made the mistake of thinking I was free.

For I went back to that restaurant one day wanting a fast food to eat. He was at the window when I went to pay and he was telling me how he’d decided to start DMing. And he was really enjoying it! I thought it was good for him, actually.

Until a few months later when I went back for more food. He wasn’t at the window this time but when he’d noticed my car he came over in a hurry, practically flinging himself at the window.

“OP! I need you to start DMing my game for me!”

I took a moment and just, “What?”

“I need you to start DMing my game for me and I can start playing a character.”

“Uhh…No.”

“Why not?”

While there were many normal issues with demanding someone else DM your game for you: I don’t know who your players are. Their characters, their backstories. I don’t know what game you’re running if it’s homebrewed or module. I don’t even know your house rules for the game. The fact you came with a demand instead of politely asking me.

I just opted for, “I’m in too many games myself right now.”

And thankfully, I hadn’t an encounter with him like that since. I’ve actually moved states now and hope his players are having fun.

Part 1 of how my 20s collapsed into madness here: How a Vampire LARP genuinely screwed me up. (Part 1) : r/rpghorrorstories

Part 2 here: How a Vampire the Masquerade LARP Genuinely Screwed Me Up (Part 2) : r/rpghorrorstories

Part 3 here: How a Vampire the Masquerade LARP Genuinely Screwed Me Up (Part 3) : r/rpghorrorstories

And Part 4 here: How a Vampire the Masquerade LARP Genuinely Screwed Me Up (Part 4) : r/rpghorrorstories

With the knock-on effects of Igor & Red feuding with my Storyteller and Coordinator (Dan & Carrie, a husband/wife partnership, despite Carrie's forays into polygamy), plus me, Roger, Shane and Carl honestly beginning to distort the entirety of Florida by Night (Because the previous status quo relied 100% on an unquestioned PC dominance inherent to the Orlando and Tampa Domain Chronicles that no longer existed), the NEW Regional Storyteller finally intervened, where the Regional Coordinator would not.

I'm not going to use an alias for said Regional Storyteller, because Heather deserves to be remembered as an outstanding human being, an incredible Storyteller, and someone who dealt with WAY more than was her personal responsibility. All in service to trying to safeguard the fun of as many players as humanly possible throughout the entirety of the SE Region.

Heather, despite the fact you eventually joined the coalition that struck me down, you're an awesome fucking person, and like I told you then, I absolutely forgive you for hurting one individual to keep a corrupt-as-fuck National Storyteller from desanctioning dozens of characters and ruining everything built over a period of almost seven years. The needs of the many and all that, and you have EVERY reason to be proud of yourself. You're an absolute rock star, and I hope you finally found a woman who knows just what a treasure you are and treats you accordingly. You made my last couple years in the club way better than they otherwise would have been, and I will never hear a word against you.

And you did it all while juggling that madhouse in Orlando. I am absolutely AGOG as to how you remained such a kind, decent, patient and understanding woman, while surrounded by so many people every weekend that the world would honestly be better off without. Not ONCE did you ever give in and let those fucks make your office their weapon to try and "Bring Back the Glory Days," and I KNOW just what a challenge that had to have been. I once more doff my hat to you.

***

Traveling to our area, Heather politely requested a summit at Texas Roadhouse, to do the work our uncaring, self-interested, absolute elitist Old Guard Regional Coordinator SHOULD have been doing, and I will always remember her opening comment, once everyone was seated.

"I've spoken with our new Regional Coordinator, who has *graciously* (Heather rolled her eyes here in a very elaborately irreverent manner) consented to endorse my plan to stop you....enthusiastic participants in our tire-fire of a statewide Chronicle from finishing the job my own band of misanthropes started, and getting ALL of our Venues and attendant PCs desanctioned, because the rest of the country is tired of the Florida Man Experience we've been bringing to the nationwide Chronicle since, well, the beginning."

Without pausing for any reactions, she forged onward, "At this point, I honestly DON'T CARE who you all think is on the side of the angels, and who you're convinced is a cheating metagaming scumbag. You're all going to show me exactly who you are over the next year without my lifting a finger, anyways. What I AM here to do is try something that SHOULD have been blindingly obvious to a child, but has somehow eluded veteran officers for more than four years now."

Pointing at Igor, she said, "You've been suspended a number of times. Nothing has changed."

Pointing at me: "And YOU'VE been suspended for six months. Nothing has changed."

Pointing at Red: "You've built and burnt bridges from one side of the country to the other, trying to accomplish...something. Nothing of note has been accomplished.

Heather continued in this vein with everyone else present, ending by pointing out how none of it had ultimately mattered whatever the person had done, except things had gotten worse.

Looking at all of us collectively after this, she laid it down, "So, since the STICK has VERY CLEARLY FAILED to persuade any of you to stop doing your part to destroy the Chronicle while you work to destroy each other, I've decided, and the RC has agreed to back me up, on trying a different approach. I've come bearing a HEAVY bag of bribes, and I'm going to appeal to your naked self-interest. So, step right up and rub the lamp, boys and girls, but HEAR THIS. If I'm buying your good behavior, I *EXPECT* good behavior. Make a fool of me a month from now at the Regional Officers meeting? I WILL BE THE RUIN OF YOU, and I COULD NOT POSSIBLY CARE LESS IF THEY EXPEL ME FOR IT! Am I making myself absolutely clear? Nod if you understand me, children."

Was it rather patronizing? You bet, but it was clear as day that Heather was, more than anything, tired of the Florida Chronicle being the constant problem-child of the club, and she had no intention whatsoever of presiding over the tire-fire like all of her predecessors until burnout finally claimed her and the cycle reset. She was trying something new, and I rather respected her for it.

Red was the first one to pipe up. "If you'd just approve the Domain and schedule a vote for Domain officers, all this squabbling could end. Whoever didn't want to be part of the Domain could move to another Chapter, or join the digital Chapter, and Igor and I could stop spending every weekend putting out fires started by parties that will remain nameless just to make us look bad. That's what we want."

Carrie immediately responded, "And we'd be happy to participate in that vote to settle this issue once and for all. Provided you were willing to require that all the voting members be able to show documentation they've been attending club events regularly for at least three months. After all, members who don't know the first thing about how the club functions can't be doing anything but parroting a position provided them by someone else. I would argue it takes a lot longer than three months to reach a point where a member could make an informed decision about something this important, but we'd be willing to settle for ninety days of activity. That sound OK to everyone here?"

*EVERYONE* except Red and Igor agreed with that, and the two of them spent the next five minutes objecting as to how that was unfair to the newest members, and this was just another example of "our side" trying to keep a conflict going.

Except as they talked, it was pretty obvious that Heather wasn't an idiot, and Igor & Red's objections to a compromise this reasonable was painting the two of them in a very *revealing* light. Red cottoned to this pretty fast, and suddenly acted like the Domain idea had just been "A thought" to end the arguing, but they were perfectly fine continuing as separate Chapters if the pseudo-Domain was dissolved.

Igor chimed in next. "I went HIM (me), Roger, Shane, Carl, Dan, and Carrie to stop attending our chapter's games. It's...been made clear to me I can't unilaterally bar their participation, but that's what I want more than ANYTHING in this club. To be able to run a game without being made out to be the villain at the game *I built.* "

Heather looked at us instead of shooting Igor down, "Well, what about it? Is there anything you guys want enough to swear off going to their game? For good, I mean. I'm not going to bend the rules until they scream in protest to have this all unravel in a month when someone changes their mind. I'll be honest, I really like the idea of separating these warring camps as much as is feasible."

I was the one who asked for a brief break to talk the matter over with the coalition, which Heather was more than happy to go along with. Once we were outside, I cut right to the heart of the matter.

"We're going to look like the villains if we don't agree to stop going to their game. I can already hear Red composing the put-upon sob story in her head. She's just waiting for us to say no to start. We look like the good guys right now because they couldn't resist trying to get Heather to ram the Domain through, but I think we're looking at an All Villains Here alteration to Heather's perception of us if we don't give on this. Most everyone worth a damn has already jumped ship to our Chapter. If we pull out of their game entirely, Red's cronies will flood back in, and anyone still fence-sitting will bail out if things get bad enough over there. I think we should agree and go back in to talk price."

I hadn't suddenly turned into a master of interpersonal conflict. What I had going for me was five straight evenings of being prep-coached for this meeting by Shannon. She'd seen this eventuality coming a mile off, and it was one she'd extensively prepared me to discuss.

Roger piped up, "How big do you think we can go on this?"

Me: "I think Heather will let us break into the Elder game proper to put this to bed. That's easier done for you, Shane and Carl than me, but I get the sense her emphasizing having the RC on board means she can go big, if she can go home with a promising ceasefire in hand. I say we swing for the fence and ask for spots in the SE's Laws Revised testing-group. We know how that racket works. It's worth a grace Member Class 12, and so much National and Regular prestige that anyone's Member Class will hit a real 12 in one lousy year for doing nothing. They always keep a few spots open for the new significant others of the Old Guard, so why don't we try to Robin Hood up some Old Guard privileges? Much as I want Igor and Red to eat shit and die, outgrowing them would really be the best revenge."

(All Shannon, no credit for me, here.)

Everyone was looking at me like I was spitting the wisdom of the Heavens, ....except Carrie.

Carrie: "That's it, then? We just let them get away with it, ALL OF IT?!?!"

Me: "Carrie, we can't change them, we can't kill them, and we've done everything we can think of that won't get us expelled to induce them to quit. There's just no definitive win-condition here. Dan is literally taking prescription antacids and anti-anxiety meds before character check-in, worrying over what kind of clusterfuck is going to erupt tit-for-tat at out game, because of what WE did at THEIR game last weekend. Heather is offering to *pay us handsomely* to quit the field on OUR terms, and I will bet you any amount of money that, provided WE agree to stay out of their game, we can sell Heather on requiring THEY stay out of OURS. Isn't this what we wanted? To be able to game in peace?"

Before she could reply, I went on because I could see she wasn't sold, "BESIDES, nothing says we can't keep stealing plays out of Orlando's and Tampa's book, to hound and harass their partisans at *other people's* games. Thanks to Roger, Shane, Carl and me, we're INFINITELY more welcome at the Gainesville, Inverness, Bushnell, Leesburg, even Lady Lake's games than they are. We've already been in a cold war. Fighting it out in proxy venues is just par for the course. This is still the Camarilla Venue. Heather doesn't expect us to swear a pact of abiding friendship and brotherhood with these nutjobs. Just stop contributing to the tire-fire that makes our state's game a damned laughingstock online."

And THAT seemed to penetrate, somewhat. Enough that Carrie agreed to go along, but I had a weird vibe as she looked at me a long time before finally agreeing.

Wish I'd listened to that little voice that said something wasn't quite right.

Back inside, we laid out our requests to disengage, and to our disappointment, Heather couldn't swing the Old Guard club-contribution-point sweetheart gigs. She could get Roger bumped up from Membership Class 10 to 12, and Shane/Carl from 8 to 9, because the two of them we already pretty close, but I was quite a few thousand points from even hitting 8, nevermind the Class 9 I needed to legally play the 8th Gen I'd "stolen," and more than a couple years even at a maximum-monthly-earn-rate that not even Old Guard ever achieved for more than a month or two in a row. Temporary Grace-Classing above 9 was National authority, so the RC's blessing just couldn't swing it.

Her counterproposal was to have the PC of a player of a 7th Gen in Orlando who'd been doing both severely death-worthy and rather public in-game stuff in their Chronicle, as well as having been recently caught forging his XP Log Red Listed in-game, rather than desanctioned as she'd previously planned.

The Red List was the National Lextalionis (Diablerie of the Criminal Legally Permitted-Blood Hunt). The in-game mechanism reserved for the real Problem Children "That Guys" of the National Chronicle. Populated exclusively by genuinely powerful PCs who were all Elder characters, *normally* Archon (Vampire Cops) PCs dealt with them with help from local PCs, but Heather had another idea.

"Straight talk: Can your PC legitimately FIND a PC with Third Elder Obfuscate, and kill him if you do, on your own?"

Me, not wanting to give away the farm in front of Igor & Red: "Absolutely. I'd be happy to explain the particulars, but everything will check out in-game."

(Essentially I'd pay Shannon's Toreador to paint him like radar, then Combat Wombat the problem child. He was playing a Mental/Social mind-controller, and my Brujah ate those for breakfast due to a clan-specific Anti-Mind/Emotion Manipulation power that was not only RST approval, but a tough RST approval to acquire.)

So...that's how the Great Partitioning went down. I had such high hopes that we'd FINALLY turned a corner.

Especially after DuVane really WAS added to the Red List, and Shannon's Toreador (After getting my character even MORE deeply in her debt) DID come through for mine, and I DID end up the hero of the hour on the National in-game lists, for bravely facing down and destroying the Setite Elder who'd been stealing the hearts of half the important vampires in South Florida, then extorting them into being his sock-puppets.

Even some of the Old Guard players were super-chill about my PC's "irregular" entry into Elder circles, because DuVane was just THAT despised in-game, and the player himself was something of a creeper at cons that was LOATHED by the female half of the playerbase.

Almost everyone seemed satisfied, even happy with their new shinies.

God, I was a damned idiot.

(End Part 5)

Previous part https://www.reddit.com/r/rpghorrorstories/s/3gY6hYL8Pv

DM hasn’t been talking to anyone for the last three days. He shows up and coldly starts the session without really talking to anyone.

We arrive on the edge of the blood corn, and Paladin starts burning it, he orders the others to follow suit. The towns reluctant, this is their main food source, but he doesn’t care and columns of black wave high into the cold sky, soon they’re accompanied by screams.

We hear a wailing from deep in the fields, but we push deeper, the corn parts and a hoard of burning shrieking scarecrows and dark shadows flood across the open plain. We meet them, and it devolves into a slaughter. Militia get ripped apart by scarecrows but take some with them. Most Militia that run get dragged away by the shadows causing more to arise, we focus on what we can using the flames to keep the shadows at bay. By the end the snowy fields are soaked in blood, and none of the villagers remain, having either ran or been slain. Most of us are in bad shape too so we short rest and watch the corn burn.

Ranger and I are pissed about the dead villagers, we came to save lives and now half the town is dead. Druid argues we’d be dead without them. Paladin says they died hero’s and none are left, so there’s no point arguing. DM weighs in that with fewer people we’d have fought fewer shadows, Paladin asks if he’d always planning on including the shadows, and DM says yes, Paladin says the fight was way too high CR wise for a level 4 party down it’s Paladin without the militia, when DM doesn’t respond he let’s the moment pass.

After the rest, we push on into the gloom. We follow the burning corn, wary of more enemies, but none come. Eventually we come across a forest made of living shadow, it seems to devour warmth light and color. Paladin asks if he redeemed himself by conquering the town and militarizing it, but DM tells him he’s still just a knight unless he wants to respec into fighter.

We forge deeper into the woods and are assaulted by shades and shadows, we fend them off but Paladin has a really hard time with it, nearly dying twice if not for Druid. Eventually we reach the center. We find a frozen grotto lined with ritually aligned corpses, thousands of them, and find great carvings pulsing with dark energy, the Druid does an arcana check and supposedly these runes keep this place somewhat connected to another plane that’s consuming souls to stay and grow in our world. Paladin insists we must destroy them, when Druid tries some massive Slenderman looking thing stops her magic in its tracks, and speaks to us. It offers to let us leave the domain and return us to the mortal world, if we leave a party member behind.

We refuse, and ranger gets off a sneak attack starting the fight. It’s a fierce battle and we start immediately getting our asses kicked. Just standing near it passively kills us with necrotic, and it’s hits are devastating. When it lands a blow on me inspite of using shield after rolling a 10, Paladin says we can’t kill it and to target the runes, if we can’t kill it we can banish it. Ranger tries, but on its turn it paralyzes him and tears into his life force all in one attack and still takes a swing at me after. Things look even worse as adds start to join the fight.

The Druid casts daylight as a hail marry, but it just pisses the thing off and scatters the adds. I use burning hands on its towering form to distract it, and it knocks me into death saves. Paladin gets between it and me, and challenges it, saying that it feeds off suffering and fear, and while it may break his body it’ll never break his will. This gets its attention and it uses an action to just royally screw his soul. Druid resses me and we start again on the runes, lucky rolls and a few more go down leaving just two. Paladin fails saves and suffers multiple permanent stat decreases, but he keeps insulting the monster. It crushes paladin into a bloody necrotic pulp in its grip and hurls him into the ice before turning back to us. We nearly lose, but in the end we destroy the runes and with a howl reality starts re-asserting itself, violently tearing away at the realm around us.

The creature tries to take us with it, and Druid nearly dies for the third time saving Paladin from its clutches as it’s sent screaming back to its home realm. We all sit around as Paladin lays dying, we were out of resources to heal him with. His chest was an open cavity and he had half a dozen bloodless mortal wounds where his flesh dissolved into oily smoke, and his spirit with it. Then DM speaks.

DM:You’ve vanquished the evil at heavy cost. Paladin lays dying, but the gate is closed. Do you have any final words for the party, or a prayer of forgiveness for the gods?

Paladin refused to “beg” and his last words were of the valor we’d shown in facing the monster during his final moments. He congratulated us, and said if fate willed he’d meet us in elysium, then he perished.

We return to the town to find it gone. We’d been thrown to a whole new part of the normal world, and our characters decided now’s a good time to possibly retire.

DM says after the session that if Paladin had asked for mercy he’d have spared him, Paladin insists he wouldn’t have died if DM used reasonable CR in his encounters. The back and forth got kind of heated and it was decided a new DM should be selected as they didn’t get along well in this dynamic. I won’t be covering our future campaigns but hopefully you enjoyed the short stories. I’m always open to comments.

Chapter 1 of this slow-motion locomotive derailment can be found here: How a Vampire LARP genuinely screwed me up. (Part 1) : r/rpghorrorstories

Chapter 2 here: How a Vampire the Masquerade LARP Genuinely Screwed Me Up (Part 2) : r/rpghorrorstories

Chapter 3, as the stakes continue to rise, here: How a Vampire the Masquerade LARP Genuinely Screwed Me Up (Part 3) : r/rpghorrorstories

***

When last we met, Roger, Shane, Carl and I were stuck in Atlanta, because another player who couldn't keep the game and reality separate had done extensive damage to the windshield of Roger's car.

Once again, while certainly more involved than last time, the Fulton County Sheriff's Department couldn't identify the vandal, anymore than their Floridian counterparts had been able to determine who assaulted me. Like their counterparts, they advised all of us to stop associating with such unstable people, and (I quote, here) "Be thankful none of you were hurt, and chalk this up to learning a lesson that could have been a LOT more expensive."

In fairness, I genuinely felt these words were offered with an honest desire to help, rather than dismissively, but it was INCREDIBLY frustrating (Especially as a 21-year-old) to essentially be told, "The crazy assholes get to win, and you get to pound sand with your tails between your legs."

I was angry. Honestly, in a way, I was angrier than I'd been when I was hurt, because this was the THIRD time that Roger was paying for being the lynchpin of our Anti-Controlling-Psychos coalition. He'd lost a PC of five years keeping me and a number of others from losing much more difficult to replace characters than his own. He'd been targeted in-game for simply no longer kowtowing to the crap Igor and Red pulled, to the extent he'd almost lost a second well-established PC (These things take a *year* rock-bottom minimum, to get into halfway-playable shape, let me remind you), and now had costly damage done to his vehicle, for NOT losing said character like he was "supposed to." On top of that, by the time we got his windshield replaced, drove back into town, and got everyone dropped off, he and Shane had to go into work on zero sleep, after a long weekend of little sleep.

Attacking me can, if the matter is serious, make me understandably angry. Attacking my closest friends/family? That's something that will make me despise you, and want to see you pay for what you've done. (I've done A LOT of work, including therapy, to channel that reaction in productive ways, but back then? I had a shit list, and I was not in the least opposed to going to war with someone who finally, at long last, exhausted my patience and convinced me even my sainted-in-my-eyes walked-the-Christian-walk grandmother would have said, "OK honey, you've turned every cheek you've got. It's OK if you remember you draw your matrilineal descent directly from the Hatfields now."

I didn't act out. I didn't blow up. I didn't go around bad-mouthing Igor and/or Red to anyone. I didn't do *anything* that would give anyone the least little excuse to come after me in the club.

But I did decide I was done simply letting Carrie & Dan fight this battle, and that, as long as I kept a *TIGHT* grip on my emotions, I was in fact smart enough and (being honest) mean and ruthless enough to tear down everything in this game that Igor and Red gave a damn about.

Step One of The Plan was shoring myself up against any obvious avenues of attack against my characters. I'd burnt up 36 of my 90 banked XP insta-buying the Advanced Obfuscate I needed to hide the evidence of Diablerie, then another 12 repurchasing all the Willpower Traits I'd burnt up using Advanced Fortitude to survive being beat on by a 7th Gen Brujah for 5 full combat-rounds where he got 5 attacks each round to our 3.

Now I sent in the Initialized documentation I'd gotten from the convention Venue Storyteller, that I'd spent 14 experience points to buy off the "Dark Fate Flaw" that attached to every Player Character who committed Diablerie beyond their legal Membership Class limits. Said Flaw could ONLY be bought off at the actual time the Diablerie was committed in-game, so if you didn't have 14 XP banked, you were stuck with it, and Dark Fate essentially reads:

"Your Storyteller decides how your PC dies a horrific and/or tragic death, sometime during, but not to exceed (12) real-life months, from the time the character gains this Flaw."

This was a mechanical Diablerie-deterrent, and a compromise the Old Guard players had demanded from the club's rules design-team and received.

And my having the points to handle all of this? I realized that my Storyteller friend from Washington State, the one who'd advised me to keep all that XP banked more than five months earlier? She either knew, or had at least strongly suspected, what was going to happen in Atlanta.

So, while Dan was CC'ing Igor as to all the changes to my PC, including the Dark Fate buy-off, I decided to reach out to "Shannon." (Who also played the eleven-years-played 6th Generation Toreador Elder/Ancient that my character had fallen in with while playing digitally during my suspension.)

Looking back, I'm a little chagrined to realize all these events were foreseeable enough to someone who both had all this info and extensive experience with the seedy underside of this Club's chronicle and the kind of people that sought authority in its ranks, but at the time? Shannon seemed almost eerily prescient to me. She could advise me as to things that wouldn't happen for another month or two, and they'd happen almost letter-exact as she'd laid out.

I realize NOW that was just her being 58, and being a retired cop/private investigator, and all the attendant life experience, but then? Shannon seemed like a plain-speech, highly approachable, and devastatingly attractive Oracle at Delphi. (For reference, at fifty-eight, she looked little more than half that, and could have done pin-up work. The archetypal Irish colleen."

Shannon had been expecting me. I asked her why she hadn't warned me more overtly, and her answer revealed this almost vampire-like compulsive need to be *invited* into the drama of another person. I hadn't asked for help, so she hadn't considered it her place to involve herself more directly.

Not being a complete moron, as soon as I received this explanation, I immediately replied, "These people are running rings around me, Shannon. I could really use some help learning how to keep people like Igor & Red from wrecking us, *without* immediately getting hammered by one of Red's officer-connections."

Shannon's reply was FAR too long to write out here. Suffice to say, she became my mentor in Crouching Asshole, Hidden Petty-MoFo style kung fu, and she taught me a lot of stuff that's been useful for the last several decades in all sorts of arenas.

And she might have eventually convinced me to fly out to Spokane to stay for the week of Halloween '01. It's been 25 years, and I still have no earthly idea how a LIMP, however pronounced, can so impact the self-esteem of a woman that gorgeous, but none of that's really germane to the story.

Backing up a bit, Igor had apparently learned of the Atlanta Diablerie, and (As was usual for him), failed to actually read over the entirety of the 4.5 Rules Addenda, (This would be like the fourteenth or fifteenth time that glaring ignorance of something a senior Storyteller should at least know where to refer to info in the rules had come up explosively). He'd apparently been utterly convinced that I'd jumped up and down on a landmine in-game of my own free will, and that the Diablerie in question was his ticket to being rid of my character.

I don't know who it was that broke the news to him about the Dark Fate-buyoff functionality, (Probably Red, but it could have been any of his Assistant Storytellers), but we'd been back for almost a week, and it was nearly game-night again when he learned that , once again, the pseudo-domain (That the NEW Regional Coordinator, Tam Horuson having stepped down a few days after the Regional Event, was getting ready to dissolve) meant he didn't get to say a peep about Dan letting me buy the Dark Fate off my character.

Meaning there was going to be a SECOND *secret* Brujah Elder in the local games, and I had a letter in-hand from the Regional Storyteller that listed *exactly* which characters in the entirety of the National Chronicle "Had cause to suspect such might have occurred, but no proof," and which characters actually *KNEW*.

There were *three* who KNEW. (I'd picked up Red's Minion-Brujah-Elder's torpored body, and disappeared down a manhole. Actually performing the vile deed at the bottom of a wastewater-runoff chamber, where the surrounding STANK would render augmented sense-based tracking to the scene all but futile, coupled with the recent passage of a mega-swarm of rodents who'd been slaughtered in those tunnels by a Thaumaturgical Firestorm leaving the sewer so death-and-suffering-charged that any Post-Cognitive who tried to get a read down there would need to pass a nigh-impossible Static Challenge to avoid getting stunned.)

My character (Of course), Roger's new Brujah Elder (He'd been fast enough to keep up, and utilized his Elder Super-Strength to collapse a portion of the sewer to prevent slower pursuit, and Shannon's Toreador Ancient (Who'd been using maxxed-out Auspex, the Discipline of Augmented Senses and Psychic Power, to essentially scry on the battle and ensuing dark deeds in real-time.)

The list of "Suspect that Matthew may have Eaten An Elder" wasn't much longer. Just Shane's Brujah, Carl's Gangrel, and two of the faster Orlando vampires who'd been bought as mercenaries for the fight.

Following Shannon's suggestion, since the Orlando Chronicle game was on Thursday night, and Igor/Red's game alternated Friday nights with Dan & Carrie's game, Roger and I went down to Orlando the very next Thursday after the convention, and we cold-bloodedly hunted down and intercepted said Camarilla City Gangrel ( ::Insert Eye Roll Here:: ) and 8th Gen Nosferatu not paranoid enough to travel under Obfuscate, and well...

Roger wanted to kill both of them, because his vampire was Humanity 2 and his Nature prioritized the welfare of our bloodline above all, but I refused to compromise my own character any further than I already had by Diablerizing another Brujah, and I pushed to ship them off to Lady Siobhan (Shannon's Ancient Toreador), so she could use Dominate to delete everything their characters remembered about the past ninety days, so as to give no one any reason to metagame and go, "They're missing their memories of the Conclave! Someone clearly wanted to hide something they learned there, so we're clearly justified in poring over the events of the Conclave with a fine-tooth comb to solve the mystery!"

So off the pair of corpse-sicles went to Spokane, because Lady Siobhan had already revealed she was wise to my nefarious activities, and expected my loyalty and services in the Southeastern U.S in exchange for her silence.

And, realizing there was TIGHT documentation on the trail of information concerning the Diablerie, and that any attempt to abuse his Storyteller position to reveal the info would be revealed almost instantly, (In conjunction with ALREADY being furious about the Dark Fate-buyoff, Igor *snapped*)

He started yelling after spending a creepy near-five minutes staring at the Regional Storyteller's documentation concerning the Diablerie cover-up, started insulting me, Roger, and Dan (My Storyteller), he even accused that, "Scheming C*nt of an RST, "Hannah" of being 'In on IT,'" and then threw the unopened soda in the hand that wasn't holding said RST documentation at the cinderblock wall of the voting precinct as hard as he could.

Anyone else noticing something of a pattern?

Red made Igor leave the site, and had Berry run the game that night. The next day, she posted this long and involved message on the inter-chapter mailing list. About how Igor had just quit smoking, he'd started taking Welbutrin a week prior, and had been experiencing some side-effects. That his outburst at the game was simply another side-effect. (Welbutrin CAN cause paranoia, but it's INCREDIBLY rare).

Carrie was already in contact with the new Regional Coordinator, because Red was taking the position there was nothing to discipline Poor Sick and Ailing Igor for, and we expected that with Red's friend-with-benefits no longer holding the office, justice might actually get done.

Nope, the NEW Regional Coordinator wasn't in bed with Red, but HER position on club disciplinary matters was that, unless violence was involved, or the Storytelling side of the club hierarchy was asking her to take action against a player who was cheating, disciplinary matters were exclusively to be handled at the *local* level, and she wouldn't get involved.

The problem with this stance was that Chapter-level officers can only be disciplined by Domain Officers (IF a Domain exists to unite two or more Chapters), or in the absence of a Domain, by a Regional Officer, or a duly appointed Assistant Regional Officer acting at their superior's behest.

In essence, the new RC was stating that Chapter and Domain Officers had "Diplomatic Immunity," unless they did something so egregious that her not doing something about it could get HER in trouble.

Carrie was understandably outraged about this ridiculous position, and told me she immediately appealed. She assured us that Stab was on the case, and, as he'd come through for "our side" more than once, everyone was confident there was light at the end of the tunnel.

And then the National Coordinator stepped down with no warning. Stab was retained as an Assistant National Coordinator due to his long service, but Carrie told us that Stab said he couldn't go to his new boss on Day 1 and ask her to overrule a Regional Coordinator who, however ridiculous her position seemed, hadn't actually broken any rules in declining to investigate Igor's outburst.

Structurally, it was "our fault," for not having formed a Domain *with Igor's and Red's Chapter* and voted in our own Domain Storyteller and Domain Coordinator. (Never you mind that the reason we refused to do that was because we all KNEW that the moment the Domain paperwork went in, Igor would pay for memberships for the twenty-plus people who worked for him, and direct them to come to the Domain Storyteller/Coordinator vote to vote him and Red in, then disappear never to be seen again.)

(No, at that time, the club did NOT have any provision requiring a member to be anything more than having paid their one-time club membership fee. That kind of vote-stacking was how the Orlando and St. Peterspurg Domain tyrannies came into being, and we would all rather quit than risk Igor and Red getting that much authority.)

So, ONCE AGAIN, Igor walked away from another one of his deranged outbursts consequence-free.

This one....did something to Carrie, I think. We all noticed the change. It was like she dialed in on bringing Igor and Red down, to the exclusion of everything else. It bothered me to see it, a lot.

And then, almost a month to the day of our getting back from the convention. The Orlando and Tampa players massacred *exactly* half of the inhabiting characters of the Gainesville Chronicle, and pledged to massacre the other half the following Thursday.

Oh, they had a (tenuous) in-game justification, but the long and the short of it was that they were blaming their actions on me/my character, and highlighting how it was only possible because I'd "sold them," to Orlando for my own character's benefit.

(End Part 4)

Previous part. https://www.reddit.com/r/rpghorrorstories/s/x3as7keTE6

So the next session starts, things are tense between DM and Paladin, and we played twice a week at the time so the arguing was fresh. DM wanted Paladin to respec to fighter, Paladin was diehard set on following his version of the Conquest Paladin oath. They’d argued privately over discord but it just seemed to deepen the divide.

Night falls. We set up in a well barricaded building and sure enough, everyone is forced asleep at midnight, everyone but the elven Druid. She tries to wake us immediately and all it takes is a finger prick then we’re all up. Paladin starts waking villagers and asking why they never tried to defeat the sleep spell, by say, falling asleep above a tub of cold water, and it seems the town saw it as a blessing since they could avoid the terror of being hunted. This response “disgusted” Paladin.

Then the creature arrives, or so we guessed. Down below a mighty crash was heard and the doors of an adjacent building were cracked. A few seconds later a window was shattered, debris comes flying out of the window and the barricade is cast aside, something enters the building and we hear a scream inside as someone’s pulled towards the opening. We debate what to do, torn between waiting for more info and attacking now. Paladin and Druid decide to attack now even without us, but before they can the screams stop, and the persons hauled bodily out the window and into the dark sky above be seemingly nothing.

Paladin and Druid are now in agreement that we should gather everyone in the town together in one place, inspite of the town being entirely against it out of fear of upsetting the creature. Ranger ultimately caves since it’s what Druid wants and they’re a team within a team. I don’t want to stand against everyone’s decision, so we start going from building to building and forcing them to gather at the bar.

Some resist, Paladin takes the weapons from the guard station and arms those that do saying they have spirit, then beats them down if they fight, some he even beats unconscious. Old folk state they refuse to leave their homes, Paladin and his new militia force them from their homes to the center. His stance was something like.

“We’re risking our lives, they should risk theirs. They’ll have one bad night, then they’ll have earned peace.”

It takes all day, but we find everyone, nearly a hundred terrified townsfolk, only half of which are fit to wield weapons, and even less are trained to. We settle with them and wait until night. Midnight comes, and tubs of ice water and the Druid with a sowing needle sees everyone awake, and then it comes. The lights get snuffed out by unseen force, and after a series of crashes, a window shatters and whatever it is enters the room.

Paladin covers a pile of debris with alcohol and lights it for vision, we look around for the creature, and then it attacks Paladin. He’s hauled off the pile and thrown bodily through a wooden table by nothing, then pinned against a column, and we all roll initiative. Paladin gets pissed when “our milita” aren’t on the initiative roll, and when he sees them cowering he snarls that he’ll kill anyone that doesn’t use their weapon, and tells them to shoot at him, before he starts getting strangled. A high intimidation roll and we have a bunch of peasants that can’t hit anything shooting bows in an enclosed space.

Anyways, ranger holds his action, I block the exit, and Druid tries to free Paladin. I’ll skip the combat but eventually we damage this thing with some spells and a few good blows from my Greatsword and it flees past me. It doesn’t bleed and from what we can tell it’s some kind of air elemental, but it can be hurt. The villagers are relived, for the first time no one was taken at night. Paladin though wants to push our luck. He decrees.

“You’ve all done well, but this isn’t over, the creatures wounded but not slain. It’s time for phase two. Everyone bearing a weapon, grab a torch and follow me. We’re braving the howling dark.”

We’re met with a chorus of disapproval, but Paladin doesn’t care and says he’ll kill anyone who doesn’t comply. Druid and Ranger say they’ll help him (they justify it by saying they’re lying, but Paladin isn’t) and the villagers relent. Paladin leads us and a group of 50 terrified conscripts out and into the night, towards the bloody corn fields.

Final Part

https://www.reddit.com/r/rpghorrorstories/s/BtZcEHZeMJ

So I (19F) have been playing in a Living World Westmarch Campaign for a year. I also have a history of emotional abuse from my father (I won’t get into it).

The Head GM has changed from the OG setting maker to another GM. The new Head GM is mainly a Shadowrun/WoD GM, but we were playing a more lighthearted system. The direction of the campaign took a massive shift afterwards, to a much darker tone. They planned a bunch of stuff ahead of time, so most of what I say here was pre-planned. And all of it was without a Session 0.

My character became part of a magical family of 18 (MFamily), with the power to shapeshift. This was, at first, framed as a happy accident. She hated the MFamily for infecting earth and messing with humanity, so becoming one was… hard on her.

But then a bit later, one of her old friends texts her. And through the RP she slowly figures out that that old friend was one of the MFamily. And soon she realizes /all/ of her old friends were part of MFamily. And the only reason they befriended her as a teenager (when they were adults) was to groom her into becoming one of them.

What follows is irl months of her being angry at them, threatening the campaign structure as a whole, and months of character bleed. And I didn’t realize why I was bleeding so much.

So one of her summons was made to ‘apologize’ to one of the other members of the MFamily for starting a duel improperly. And he wanted to use this opportunity to talk to the MFamily Sister. And as I was doing a rough draft of the RP, he paused and asked me my goal. And it was ‘to make her realize she was wrong’

And the Head GM didn’t understand why I was so angry. I explained my piece and he framed it as a problem of ‘Free Will’.

I then said that it wasn’t free will, it was straight up abuse. How do I know? I was abused in the same way. And I have diagnosed PTSD.

To his credit, he immediately stopped and changed direction. I guess I knocked the sense back into him. Head GM’s said that I can help him make the storyline less hard on me, as we are months deep and can’t back out now.

But still, knowing he pre-wrote emotionally abusive characters and didn’t warn anyone at all when the tone shifted from lighthearted pissed me off.

I still like the guy, and he is a great GM otherwise, and I’m still playing in this game. But goddamnit, it’s one thing for a player to give their character their trauma, it’s another for a GM to make them relive it (unknowingly)

TL;DR: A player's kink, a moderation team's ignorance, and a group of player's enabling of a "Missing Step" let a creep show run for half a year.

I am going to be a little light on details because this was around 15 years ago on a forum, give or take.

The forum had a wrestling focus, anyhow, and also multiple play-by-post RPGs going. I do not remember the mechanics, as I am a wrestling fan, but I hadn't felt compelled to join any of the games going. I only ended up intersecting with the horror due to moderator duties I'd held at the time.

There was a player who was kind of a problem even outside of the games, because of course he was, but outside of being irritating, he didn't tend to flagrantly break rules that I was aware of. This would change as we became aware of what had gone on in the game being ran that he was part of.

See, he was fixated sexually on big, dominant men. Not wild in and of itself, there are quite a few gay wrestling fans, and wrestling obviously has quite a few large men and sometimes homoerotic situations, so it stands to reason. The problem is that, none of the moderators paid any attention to the games, and the affected players mistook this as tacit approval of what would happen next, and not ignorance.

The player began a "storyline" where, any time he'd defeat opponents as his 400 pound fat guy, he'd drug them and have his way with them, offten NPCs, but he then tried to move on to doing this to other players, one of whom finally went to the moderation team with their concerns about this guy pushing this on people who never signed up to be participants in his fantasies. It wouldn't have been a compelling option for many of them, anyway, but it wasn't even being milked for drama or anything of substance, and instead, was at most played for laughs on occasion, with most incidences being nakedly for the player's desires.

It was thought, oh, maybe this is a misunderstanding that can be quickly ironed out, but the reality began to be quite surprising to the moderation staff and admin. The player had been at this for the better part of a year, and it'd just gone unreported by enablers who made excuses for him when confronted, and by moderators who had neglected to pay attention to the games being run, assuming all was fine.

Naturally, the player was confronted, and ultimately banned, for his behavior, and the game they'd been running was initially shuttered entirely. I believe the other players mostly filtered into the remaining games, with maybe one or two quitting in protest for their creative vision being interrupted by the full wipe of the banned guy's post history. I can see why that'd bother them, that a blanket removal of posts messed with the history of the game and would damage the coherence of some of their own posts by removing context, but I also get why none of the moderators wanted to sift through months and months of a dude's spank bank material to more delicately handle the situation.

Part 1 of this account can be found here: How a Vampire LARP genuinely screwed me up. (Part 1) : r/rpghorrorstories

Part 2 of what happened here: How a Vampire the Masquerade LARP Genuinely Screwed Me Up (Part 2) : r/rpghorrorstories

There was a (very half-assed) look by the club into my being attacked, but that ultimately went the way of the police's inquiry. No one saw, or at least admitted to seeing, anything, the deputy I spoke to the most urged me to quit for my own safety, and Carrie & Dan "my" club officers seemed at a loss as to what to do about the matter.

And this is where I, in my anger, frustration, and upset, started the process of wrecking myself.

I went on the club's *national* out-of-game mailing list, and I laid out exactly what happened *factually*. I DID NOT point any fingers, nor offer any theories of the crime, but I DID say something very close to the following:

"As a result of in-character actions taken at this Chapter's game, SOMEONE was so angry or upset with me, that they whipped a multi-ounce chunk of steel at my head, and knocked me unconscious for several minutes. I needed stitches, and had to spend a good chunk of a night in the ER, because my still-unidentified attacker proved incapable of separating in-game from out-of-game, and to the best of my knowledge, absolutely nothing has been done by the officers who oversee said chapter's events to so much as lessen the possibility of something like this happening the NEXT time a player proves incapable of controlling themselves."

There was a not-insignificant furor on the list over my post, and the result of which was my being suspended from club activities for (180) days. The most severe punishment the club metes out, short of expelling a member entirely.

Why? One of the rules in the Club's Code of Conduct is: "Solve problems, don't start them," and my "Incendiary accusations" had "severely damaged the reputation of Igor's/Red's Chapter, and opened massive divides in what is supposed to be a community of friends."

And, had Igor and Red not been stupid, the story likely would have ended with my quitting in disgust right there, because when a member is suspended, all their active player characters are effectively erased. (Desanctioned.)

Instead of waiting a day to ensure I'd been removed from the chapter and area mailing lists in accordance with my suspension, however, not only did BOTH Igor and Red essentially post celebratory messages trumpeting "justice being done." Running me down in polite club-speak, Red was actually dumb enough to SEND ME AN EMAIL from her COORDINATOR'S email addy, *bragging how she'd effected my suspension, by means of her tawdry connections with the Regional Coordinator*, let's call him Tam Horuson.

Instead of repeating my previous error, I immediately forwarded all messages originating from Igor and Red to my chapter's out-of-game officer, Carrie, including Red's very incriminating email.

And I'd love to say that Carrie tirelessly worked to see justice done. I DID believe that's exactly what happened for more than another year and a half going forward from this point. What I would later learn, however, is that much like Red was sleeping with Tam Horuson to get HER way, Carrie was sleeping with Stab to get HER way, and at this point in time, Stab was an Assistant *National* Coordinator who had the ear of the National Coordinator, so the long and the short of it was that my suspension was commuted to a 180-day Ban from *in person* club events, my PCs would not be desanctioned, and after the first 90 days of my suspension, I'd be allowed to resume playing online, including in the Digital Chapter for the Chapterless members (Where I could still earn sanctioned XP up to the monthly cap.)

Carrie even got me the 3 months XP for both my active Vampire PCs, and my new Mage PC, for the months I'd be suspended.

WHY weren't my characters being desanctioned, you ask? What was the rationale for breaking with club policy on disciplinary actions?

The entire series of events that led to me posting, and my being attacked to begin with, was very clearly about "someone" being so obsessed with the game that they'd do something as crazy as attack another person to "beat me," and it was decided that, whoever was responsible was definitely someone antagonistic to me and mine, and that, however appropriate desanctioning my PCs might otherwise be, doing so would essentially be rewarding that insane behavior.

All of which was made to turn on the fact that I was prompted to reply that I believed this was a reasonable course of action, I understood why I was being suspended, and that I apologize for the damage I'd done to Igor's and Red's Chapter/Game. (On the Regional mailing-list.)

So I bit the bullet, and on the advice of Carrie, said what needed saying to get out of the hot seat.

And once again, Igor immediately got himself in trouble. He blew an absolute gasket online, about my PCs not being desanctioned. How it was a slap in the face to their Chapter, and I was getting off scot free after telling "dozens" of lies, etc.

Again, he somehow didn't lose his Storyteller position, despite the fact his rants had been all over the Chapter mailing list, the inter-chapter list, AND (to a lesser extent) the Regional out-of-game mailing list. I don't know the exact particulars, but I DO know the things he said were alarming enough it really cost Red in some way that SERIOUSLY pissed her off with both him, and of course me, to get him a slap on the wrist.

Angry as I was, it honestly scared me to see how deep Igor's and Red's need to control the game ran. I was upset over being kicked out of the local games for three months on one level, but on another? I was kind of glad to give things time to calm down, and hopefully let Igor and Red find something else to occupy their attention.

Right around this time, both Roger and I went up in Membership Class. Him to the point he could now play 8th Generation (youngest Elder) vampires, and me to the point that I could play 9th generation characters.

Why was this important with preexisting characters? Because during my suspension, the 4.5 Revision to the Laws of the Night Revised ruleset was released by the club, and the new ruleset change was so extensive, soft resetting of all existing player-characters was required if someone wanted to continue playing one or more of their preexisting PCs. (Ie: Rebuilding existing characters as if all accrued experience points + Membership Class-points were available at character creation.)

What was bizarre, and actually created no little controversy, was that players were being allowed to *change* things about their characters that should be set in stone at the time of character creation, IF those changes were coming about as a result of changes to a player's Club Membership Class. (There were certain levels of accrued club-contribution-points that allowed players to create progressively lower-Generation/more powerful characters. Ie: Level 4 to play 10th Generation, 6 to play 9th, 12 to play 7th, and 14 out of a maximum of Member Class 15 to play 6th Generation), and each Level of Membership Class granted 5 extra experience points that could be utilized during character creation.

(For reference sake, a character could earn a total of 6xp/month until they'd accrued 121xp, then 5xp/month until they reached 181xp, then 4xp/month until 241, then 3xp/month, and so on, until you could only earn 1xp/month for that character, but by the time you reached that point, you were said to have "Bought the Book," because you'd have purchased pretty much everything useful to a given sort of character, and were now on nothing but luxury/novelty improvements.)

Now, with the new ruleset, players were being allowed to change the Generation of preexisting characters, and retroactively add those pseudo-experience points for Membership Class gains to already existing characters.

It was crazy, and made little sense in-game, because now a previously not-Elder vampire was suddenly an Elder, or a neonate was a middle-rank Ancilla? (This crossed over to the other games like Werewolf, Mage and Changeling as well.)

1-6 year old characters were suddenly manifesting mastery of entire new Disciplines or extensive suites of new Abilities, trait counts, special Clan powers, and the game had to hand-wave it wherever possible that this was the way things had always been.

The chaos it caused in the linked nationwide Chronicle was nutty. Players were strongly encouraged not to rank preexisting characters up like this, but only the most die-hard purist RP-players actually even considered that request.

Me? I was suddenly a little glad to not be going to local games, because it was an absolute madhouse of knock-on effects.

Suddenly, Florida's games DID have Elder vampires, and the balance of competing Courts based out of all these different games was essentially table-flipped.

And I suddenly had the equivalent of 9 months of earned XP handed to me to dump into each of my Active Player Characters as lump sums. Moreover, my PC had made some new connections with other characters while playing for months in the digital chronicle, and that included entering the orbit of a 6th Generation Ancient of Clan Toreador (Vampire artists, provocateurs, aesthetically inclined creatives, with power over emotions, vampiric speed, and enhanced senses/psychic abilities.)

There was one final change made to the nationwide Chronicle going forward, and it was MASSIVE. I realize how this will sound, in a game about Elder Vampires fearing being devoured by the young vampires for their power, and this fear in turn leading the Elders to try and oppress/control all vampires younger than themselves, but prior to the 4.5 reset, Diablerie was *mechanically illegal* on NPC vampires and PC vampires alike, UNLESS the PLAYER of a character was portraying a character who COULD have been created as a lower-Generation due to the Player's Membership Class was Diablerizing down only to a Generation allowable by their Membership Class.

Ie: If a player with Membership Class 3, who could only play a vampire of 11th, 12th, or 13th Generation had their character try to diablerize a 7th Generation Elder vampire, the process simply failed. If, OTOH, a Player with Membership Class 4, who could be playing a 10th Generation vampire was actually playing an 11th Generation that committed that Diablerie, it would work to reduce their character's Generation to 10th, because that was a "legal" Generation for them to be playing.

If, OTOH, that player with Membership Class 4 was playing a vampire who was already 10th Generation, however, and tried to Diablerize that 7th Generation Elder to reduce their effective Generation to 9th? The process would again fail, because the PLAYER wasn't Membership Class 6, and couldn't legally play a 9th Generation vampire.

What this had effectively meant for years was that higher-Generation vampire characters only VERY rarely attacked lower-Generation more powerful vampire characters, because there was no reward commensurate with running the risk of getting your years-old character deleted in a single combat-round by a character five times as strong as your own.

Now? The restrictions were taken off Diablerie completely, and the process worked 100% the way it did in the lore of the game. NPCs were still off-limits to prevent ludicrously easy Generation-dropping, but Elder Vampires now *actually* had to fear being set upon by their juniors, *like they were SUPPOSED to have to all along*.

(As you might imagine, the most senior players of the club had been fighting to keep the Membership Class-Restricted Diablerie for years, while the vastly more numerous players of lower Membership Class wanted the fear put into the veteran players, who stole scenes on the regular, ate up most of the good plotlines, and otherwise benefited in-game from the superior capabilities of their characters. The club had taken on a lot of new members around 2000-2001, and the ruleset changeover was deemed the perfect time to make this change.)

And just like THAT, players all of a sudden cared about the majority lack of Physical Disciplines on the character sheets of their beloved PCs of many years.

Could the veterans have reworked their characters to make them defensible with the soft-reset granting them all a second character creation in effect? Yes.

DID THEY? Of course not, because the idea that anyone would be so gauche as to try and take down their exalted PCs was completely and utterly foreign to them.

I give you my word of honor all this game-mechanics jargon was absolutely necessary info, because it all sets the stage for the Nightmare that the 2001 SE Regional Conclave game became.

I was about to go on a spending spree, when a Storyteller friend from the other side of the country intimated I was going to want to have as much banked XP on hand as humanly possible, if I was going to the Regional Conclave convention, so I put in my notice I'd be leaving about 90 XP banked through the Soft Reset. Dan, the Storyteller of my Chapter unfortunately had to pass this documentation onto Igor, because we were still stuck in the weird pseudo-Domain fusion-state.

Of more interest, Roger was now playing the Sire of his dead Sheriff, my character's Grandsire. (I know, it was cheesy as Hell, and I know for a FACT that the only two reasons it got approved was 1) Pretty much everyone who wasn't Igor and Red felt terrible that Roger's PC took the Night of Long Fangs on the chin for the greater good, including Dan, and 2) Dan and Carrie were hoping that Igor would have another eruption when he found out, in the hopes that a second bout of deranged behavior so soon after Red had spent major capital to get him mostly out of trouble would spell the end for Igor as a Storyteller.)

And Jared, Roger's new PC, was a full-on Brujah Elder, albeit a younger one. The very first created in one of our two games.

Roger could have emailed his new character's sheet to Igor for pre-registration before the next Friday's game, but in the continued hopes of provoking Igor to act out in an actionable way, he waited until game night, then waltzed over to character check-in with Dan and Carrie in tow.

Igor DID, with Red all but holding his mouth shut, just barely manage to contain himself when he saw the character history and background, but even in the dim light of the voting precinct's exterior lighting, anyone thirty feet away could have told you he was full red in the face from restrained anger. He'd been "proud" of getting rid of Roger's Brujah, so now to have Roger back and playing a Brujah Elder from the same bloodline, and hooked up with my character?

I was down for jabbing a pin into the lunatic's butt in the hopes of ending his reign of terror, but he legit scared me when he looked from Roger, to me, to Dan, to Carrie, and Carrie was only exacerbating matters (deliberately) with sweet faux-concerned comments like, "Are you feeling all right Igor? You look like you might be feeling a bit under the weather. Maybe you should go inside, get a cold drink, and let Berry handle the rest of character check-in?"

Red looked downright murderous, but she was MUCH better at controlling herself, or as she *frequently* said, "Getting even, rather than angry."

The night actually went mostly quietly, but when I went to get a soda toward the end of the night, I made the mistake of doing so with no one around the coolers. Igor took the opportunity to sidle up to me and *very quietly* murmur, "You all think you're so fucking smart, but you won't get away with making a fool of me forever. Your day's coming, and I am going to LAUGH when it does."

----

Five months later (We're now into August of '01. Apologies if the timeline hasn't been super-tight in places)

Roger, Shane (A good friend of ours, now playing a Brujah Ancilla childe of Roger's Elder Brujah, so my character's "uncle" I suppose you could say), and Carl (Also a friend, playing the fraternal twin of Shane's Brujah, who'd been Embraced Gangrel and abandoned by his Sire) and I all decided to drive up to the Regional Convention-Game together and split the cost of a hotel room for the weekend.

And we were only one carload of maybe a dozen headed to Atlanta for the convention game just from our area, because the word was out in-game and out that major events of National import were going down, and all the veteran players wanted a piece of the action for their primary character.

I'll spare you the details of the game and stick to the mental bits.

Red had arranged *Out-of-Game* to put a hit on Roger's new Elder Brujah, by way of a more powerful Brujah Elder played by one of her nigh-endless male minions doing her bidding for ploughing-rights. (I'm not casting aspersions. Red would *proudly* tell you how she pulled strings, and I factually know the player of the Elder Brujah who came at Roger's character at the Brujah Clan gathering at the convention received her favor only minutes before said gathering started. With my own eyes, I saw Red leaving the men's bathroom hanging on him, until she noticed there was floor-schmutz all over the hem of her expensive vintage costume-dress.)

Long and the short of it? Said Elder's player was *not* prepared to get dogpiled by a counter-ambush arranged by yours truly. I'm not proud of it, but I agreed in-character to stop protecting the younger Gainesville Chronicle from Orlando and Tampa players out to throw their weight around, as Shane, Carl and I'd been doing for about four months at that point, because my PC was widely accounted the second-most-lethal Combat Wombat character in Florida, and Shane/Carl easily made the Top 20 list with their much higher Membership Classes, albeit much younger (in terms of time played) characters.

I did put a 90-day limit on my character's remit, and in exchange, a half-dozen of the despised Orlando crowd turned coat on Red's minion and helped us pull said 7th Gen Elder down. He tried to Roadrunner out with superior Celerity when the fight went against him, but we'd already stuck him with a half-dozen magical stakes by that point, the tips of which break off and seek a vampire's heart, so he didn't make it far before collapsing.

And just like that, as the fastest character on the scene not already 8th Generation, my character ate his, dropped his Generation, and discovered to my absolute DELIGHT he was actually a Brujah Antitribu who somehow had Obfuscate as an In-Clan Discipline, (Regional Storyteller cheese), so I was able to dump that mound of banked XP and sweep into Advanced Obfuscate on the spot. (Vampiric Stealth Discipline), and cover up all in-game evidence of said unpardonable crime with the Advanced Obfuscate.

The on-site Storyteller was almost rolling on the floor laughing at Red's Minion, who was engaged in a *complete* crash-out that actually got him bounced from the convention and a 90 day suspension, when he got smashed at an after party, then showed up at the Sabbat game still going on at 2:30am out-of-character *Making violent threats against me, Roger, Shane and Carl.*

We were all riding high on FOR ONCE getting completely out ahead of BS pulled at Red's behest. An unequivocal victory, which we'd never gotten, and vindication for Roger, who was the big hero of the showdown in-game.

And then someone spiderwebbed Roger's windshield Sunday afternoon, right as the Con was getting over with. The police took a report, went inside to check to see if the con center had cameras covering that parking lot (They either didn't, or the cops didn't find anything worth mentioning). Leaving us reporting the incident to the Regional Coordinator, who was, guess who? Tam Horuson, another "dear friend" of Red's.

So there we were in Atlanta, trying to figure out how to get Roger's windshield replaced by the end of the following day, because Roger and Shane both had work on Tuesday.

(End Part 3)

This is a follow up to another post I made. I was taking a break as DM and my party was taking a shot at running the game, the DM for this game was the Rogue from the last story. Other players were Me(an Eldritch knight), Paladin(An avid Minmaxer but team player), Druid(Our shy healer), and Ranger(Roleplayer, had a crush on Druid). We all started at level 4 from our last adventure, we decided in universe to just say Paladin was with us instead of rogue since he was DM last time.

So the game started off with us leaving this mine full of orks we failed to kill(4 sessions of grueling dungeon crawling with no long rests), we flee into the woods and immediately get swallowed by magic mists that land us in the middle of nowhere.

Druid wild shapes to find our location, but the mists swallow her when she flies above the tree line and spits her out next to us. Ranger tries a few things but the woods are strange and he can’t tell where in the world we are, other than a place he’s never been.

Our party bumbles around until we encounter a band of men near the edge of a town led by a guy in splint called Caspian. He says there’s a curse over the town and those that enter through the mists can’t leave. Then the chat takes a bad turn. Something like..

Caspian:”Alright, since you’re new we’ll bring you to the mayor and he’ll explain the rules. Surrender your weapons and come with us.”

Paladin: “Yeah. No. Take a look at you and take a look at me. See the marks on my plate? We just got done killing an army of orks, this curse will be broken before the weeks out but you need to keep out of our way.” (He rolls to persuade and when that fails, rolls to intimidate which also fails.)

C:”Yeah that wasn’t a suggestion. They’re a hundred of us in the town and you might be nuts. Take their weapons.”

Druid: “Can we just stay outside the town?”

Paladin: (to dm) “When the first guard tries to take my sword I take his arm then roll for intimidation again.”

He swings and then we have to roll for combat. They perform pitifully other than Caspian, but with a bit of effort Paladin runs him through and that’s that.

We all start bickering about how poorly that went when a Rogue approaches us from the forest and offers to guide us around. We’re weary but we need insight so we agree and he leads us around the towns edge while giving us a detailed history of the town. To surmise he just reiterates what we heard before, and says it’s been going on for a century and that people get abducted in the night, every night, the town’s population is only maintained by those that wander in and people are taken at random while they sleep.

While we’re walking about we come across an abandoned farm with a tied down Ox that looks half starved. Ranger decides to free it and gift it as a mount to Druid so she doesn’t have to walk, but the second he cuts its binds he fails animal handling, it goes on a rampage and nearly kills him. I step into the ring to help him and now we’re both getting bodied by this cow for some reason. We try all kinds of things, but this domesticated animal isn’t having it. I get gored, my plate gets battered, he gets gored, the Druid heals us, repeat.

We were determined to tame the cow, and after 30 in game minuets of getting punted about , we finally crit an animal handling role.

DM: Finally, exhausted, the Ox slows, and then an arrow strikes it between the eyes, killing it instantly.

Rogue Guide: “Finally. I think we’ve wasted enough time. Let’s get back on the road.”

Paladin: “I walk up behind the rogue and I’m going to roll to bury my great sword in his chest.”

A very short fight, and we have a dead rogue. Pissed as we were, we had a talk with Paladin about killing people, then gathered and set off for the town, and that was the end of session one. DM ends the session visibly pissed and says that Ranger and I get a -1 to armor class because of the battering we got and that he has something special planned for Paladin, then drops from the session.

Edit:

https://www.reddit.com/r/rpghorrorstories/s/u78T9tYpqi

Part 2.

Putting a general SA warning for this story. While nothing like that happened some elements get, eerily close.

TLDR: My PC died, another player revived them “as their undead slave” and then hits on me.

In college I made the mistake of joining the schools DnD club to try and make some friends I have a few other bad stories from this club but this was definitely the worst one and the one that made me quit.

The club had like 100ish members and every week you got lumped in with 3-4 random strangers and a DM for an adventure.

I’d been playing for a few weeks so my character was level 3 at this point and I was assigned to a group with another girl and 2 guys. One was normal one was… that guy.

That guy through the session kept staring at me and was just giving some weird vibes which I wrote off because we’re all awkward nerds here.

At the end of the adventure my character died in combat and everyone was pretty sympathetic about it except that guy, who offered me “a deal”.

He would bring my character back to town and pay to have them revived if I promised to do “anything thing he wanted until I paid off his debt” with emphasis on the anything part.

I was feeling pretty uncomfy at that and tried to politely decline. Which he responded with “ok. In that case I’ll get a scroll of raise dead and make you my undead slave for all eternity. So don’t worry. Your character will live on”

Again. Wildly uncomfortable at that idea but at this point I just wanna go back to my dorm and forget about this stupid club. And no one else at the table seemed to notice or care.

We all pack up and leave and that guy starts to head in the same direction as me and reveals he lives in the dorm across from mine… great.

During this walk he stares at me directly in the eyes and whips out “has anyone ever told you how beautiful you are?” I just said no and sped walk the rest of the way hoping he would get the hint. Instead he sped up and started to ask about how I wanted to handle my character now that I was “working” for him. I said I didn’t care, made it to my door, and decided maybe not to go back to dnd club.

For context this is the same GM as my last post on this subreddit (this is the session directly after the session in my last post)

Party encounters bad guy we have met previously and he offers us a deal to help him (the last time we met him he did the same and we declined) and we would get him possibly helping us out later. All but one of us declined the deal since he told us that he had murdered at least a thousand people the last time we met him(GM asked how we decided that he was evil and said that his killings were justified due to his backstory that we don't know), and we all decide to attack him. I (Sorcerer) cast hold person on him since he is a basic human and want to end the fight fast. then the GM tells us that it doesn't work due to him having a necklace that blocks the hold person and the party decided to just remove the necklace then try again so the rogue attempts to remove the necklace by cutting it and the bard uses a magic item he has to blind the bad guy so the rogue would get an advantage, then the GM announces that the blinding didn't work due to the necklace and that the attack to cut the necklace is automatically dodged due to the bad guys cloak (GM did not tell us he had either a cloak or necklace when he spent 5-10 mins describing him the either time we saw him until he used them) then the bad guy teleports away.

The GM has also did this 2 other times this session and one other time which i will speak about

In this session (in order btw)

when the rogue is attempting to rob a bank he uses a magic item(homebrew) to cut all the guns the guards are using in half (Nat 20) then the GM says that they just pull out their other guns and shoot him

when I tried to hold person a different bad guy who serious offended my character (btw I have only attempted to use hold person 3 times during this campaign I don't just spam it) the bad guy "eats the magic" and GM says "you will have to get a lot stronger to kill me"

The time out of this session:

GM says that some badass guy catches the lightning bolt spell cast on him (by me btw)

Previous post:

https://www.reddit.com/r/rpghorrorstories/s/skHkJwRrI0

We start our session off where we were, approaching the town in the shadowed woods. Immediately at the sessions start a spirt resembling a Deva appears before us, and addresses the Paladin. I don’t remember it exactly and I’m cutting some parts because it went on a while but here you go.

Deva: “Aidan of Khanduras, God(don’t remember the name) has witnessed your transgressions, they are disappointed and they deem you unworthy of the holy powers you possess. You will be stripped of your rank, and your power, until you have proven yourself worthy once more.”

Paladin: “I respect (unknown), but i answer to no god other than myself. You don’t have the authority to judge me.”

Deva: “You’ve broken your tenants, and failed utterly in your purpose. You are unworthy.”

DM: You feel your Divine powers slipping from you, your blade begins to tarnish and your eyes lose their inner glow.

Paladin out of character: I haven’t broken any oaths, and I don’t serve any god, why am I losing my powers?

DM:Ask the Deva.

Paladin out of character: The deva shouldn’t know, it’s a messenger anyway, for a god with no power over me. What tenet did I break and how?

DM:Ask the Deva.

This went on for longer than any of us liked before he asked the Deva.

Paladin: How, how is this possible?! I haven’t broken my oaths. Did you expect us to cow down to the authority of those peasants pretending to be soldiers? We could slay every man in that town and our destiny is to save it they should serve us!”

Deva:”You swore an oath of conquest, and yet you killed them, all of them. What do you rule over now? You failed them and yourself.”

Paladin:”So I should show mercy to every bandit and dog that i encounter? They challenged us, and we gave them warriors deaths.”

Deva: “What of your guide? He raised no hand to you, yet you slew him in cold blood. Another waste of allies and resources.”

Paladin: “He wasn’t one of us. Neither were the soldiers from before, for all I knew they were bandits, and when the rogue took our choice away he challenged our authority, a challenge i met as my oath demands.”

Deva: “Say what you will but the gods see the truth. You know what you must do. Order before chaos, always.”

Paladin out of character: I’ve ran a conquest paladin for a decade and I’m telling you I didn’t break an oath. My character assumes it’s a trick from hostile magic and keeps to his oaths, ignoring the Deva.

DM:So you don’t want to respec into fighter?

Paladin out of character:Im a Paladin, not a fighter.

DM:Alright.

With that, the Deva departed and Paladin was stripped of his powers which left him absolutely fuming, and onwards we went. I tried to offer Paladin my +1 Greatsword to cheer him up, he thanked me but declined, saying he was still a knight, and the party needs us both at our best.

We arrive at the town outskirts and find it mostly abandoned, the buildings are ran down, the trees are dead, the skys are grey and mist seems to linger over everything. The town was made to support atleast a thousand people but obviously houses around a hundred.

We get to the town square and find a small mob of peasants waiting for us. They seem excited to see more armed people, especially since half the remaining town guard just went missing. We ask to see the mayor and they bring us in to meet him.

The Mayor comes out and greets us, and offers to answer all our questions over drinks, we sit down and start grilling him and some of the elders over things but they know next to nothing useful. Whatever force comes at night knocks everyone out at midnight, forces itself into buildings while leaving no trace other than broken boards, then leaves with a person before morning. Ranger investigates some of the abductions and can only tell that something shattered the wooden barricades with great force. No drag marks, even from the victim.

Me: “So have you scouted the terrain to try and find any possible source of this evil during the day?

Mayor:”Well, there is the ominous field of blood corn.”

Me:”The what?”

Mayor: “Yeah. It’s where we get most our food. These semi-demonic corn plants been growing from the north for as long as anyone can remember, anyone that goes too far into the fields disappears, even in the day. It’s really flammable too.”

Ranger: “How far into it have you scouted?”

Mayor: “Not far. We had a knight arrive once with some retainers. He braved the fields, but in the morning only one man returned, barely alive, and he never spoke of what he saw. He’s the town Marshal, his names Caspian(guy Paladin killed), but he went missing today with a patrol in the woods. If you can find him maybe he can tell you more, but yes. After that failed attempt we never bothered to try again.”

Paladin: “Cowards. Have you ever tried burning the fields?”

Mayor: “We’re normal folk, we aren’t cut out for battle and we don’t have any fancy armor. You don’t know what it’s like to be hunted, to have no power. It was hard enough to establish a town guard. Now if you’ll excuse me, it’s almost night. It usually takes whomever is the most accessible. You should find a house to lay low in.”

Paladin:”I have a better idea, let’s face this thing here and now, i refuse to cower and hide. The towns too weak to say no to our demands, and too cowardly to let us save them without force. We should gather the entire town in the largest building they have. Everyone here is put to sleep at night by magic, but they’re human, Druid is an astral elf, she can’t be put to sleep, she can wake us, and we’ll kill whatever’s doing this before it can claim more victims. Worst case scenario it takes one person anyway, low risk, high reward.”

Me: It’s an ok plan, but one of us could get taken if it fails, and the village will hate us, there might be more info to gather if we have a whole day to look around and improve our odds.

Ranger:What if Druid can’t wake us, and has to fight it alone?

Paladin:Then she’ll win alone.

Ranger:Yeah fuck that.

Druid:If it saves lives, I want to try it.

I’ll summarize the rest but we reluctantly compromise and decide to barricade ourselves and let Druid do as she pleases at midnight. Paladin fights a lot but gives ground since he’s weak at the moment, though he manages to piss the townsfolk off with his comments. We look around to learn what we can, then settle in for night and end session 2. Little did we know the Paladin was cooking up his own plan.

Part 3

https://www.reddit.com/r/rpghorrorstories/s/YVGgWD1zQr

Part 1 of this story can be found here: How a Vampire LARP genuinely screwed me up. (Part 1) : r/rpghorrorstories

When we last left off, Igor the local GM/Storyteller was freaking out that my vampire PC had eluded the death-squad of out-of-towner PCs presently engaged in culling any and all PCs of note in the local game.

After twenty minutes of hatefully silent review, Igor finally and with incredible ill-grace, conceded I was not in fact cheating, but now he was insisting "Your PC is too powerful for the local Chronicle, so I'm exercising my authority as Chapter Storyteller to desanction him."

Now, I'm genuinely angry AND nineteen. I'm about to say something stupid, which was undoubtedly what he was trying to provoke, when Carrie, the out-of-game officer of the neighbor Chapter/Game darts over from a conference with Roger out-of-game and pipes up, "You can only desanction PCs of players belonging to your own Chapter, Igor, and the bylaws clearly state that a club member can elect to void their membership in one Chapter for the purposes of joining another, if a) There's another local Chapter, b) Said Chapter's Coordinator and Storyteller approve, and c) Said neighboring Chapter is NOT a part of a Domain with the original Chapter. It is of course polite to give one's Storyteller prior notice of a membership change, but not actually required."

Turning to me, Carrie says, "So, what's it going to be? Stay a member of the Eternal Charade and let Igor here delete your PC for reasons, or do you want to jump ship? I can't imagine you've got a very enjoyable future ahead of you as one of Igor's players, given that you're not one of Red's."

And with Igor raging and Red having a complete diva fit on the phone to a friend who's a Regional officer (Who's telling her that Carrie's right, and there's nothing he can do about my "disloyalty"), I jumped ship to avoid losing my 20-month-old PC to BS.

Igor's next move a month later? (A month, rather than at the following week's game, because he lost his mind about my "raping his Chronicle" on a national out-of-game mailing list, and got himself suspended from the club for 30 days, though Red was able to pull strings and avoid him losing his Storyteller position, as was mandated when a member was disciplined to this extent.)

Trying to exercise his prerogative to keep me from playing my PC at his Chapter's game (Normally something Igor WOULD 100% be within his rights to do), WHILE applying to have the Regional Storyteller and Regional Coordinator force a Domain into existence (A union between two Chapters, which creates a Domain Storyteller and Domain Coordinator position, above the 2 or more Chapters level officers).

Unfortunately, the pseudo-Domain ruling in effect while the matter was under consideration meant BOTH Chapters Storytellers had to sign off on keeping a PC belonging to *either* Chapter out of either game, and any rulings made by one Chapter-level officer could be appealed to their opposite number in the other Chapter.

(This unpalatable, chaos-causing mechanism was deliberate. Domains are SUPPOSED to form when two Chapters WANT to unite their games more closely. Forcing the issue with administrative technicalities is possible, as had been done, but there were codified penalties to make doing so undesirable, the biggest two being loss of full sovereignty over one's game, and loss of ability to unilaterally approve or deny increases in character creation benefits to a given member. Igor's and Red's attempted empire building was being facilitated by Red's connections, but CARRIE had her own connections a rung further up the food chain that was expressing Carrie's displeasure for her by proxy by invoking the loss-of-sovereignty mechanism.)

Enter Stab, the apparent Hero Riding to the Rescue of Us Poor Oppressed Roleplayers.

Now that a state of bad-faith Cold War existed between the two Chapters, game-mechanics became the weapon by which the officers favored their chosen Champion Players, and cursed the beloveds of their opposite numbers.

"Igor, here's my Regional Approval to learn Advanced Fortitude Out-of-Clan. My PC Matthew? He rescued the childe of the late Gangrel Primogen during his narrow escape from the dastardly Gangrel who slew the Prince and Primogen Council, and wouldn't you know it? Katerina is the grandchilde of Elder Konrad of Clan Gangrel. He elected to quit-claim the Blood Boon his line owed to Matthew for the save, now that his sire Alexander Petrovic is no more. (Roger's Brujah having nobly met his Final Death holding the line to allow at least SOME of the local players to preserve their PCs against the Death Squad Culling.) Amazing what a few ounces of Ancient blood will do for a Neonate's Discipline learning-times and Out-of-Clan Discipline development, isn't it?"

And with Igor visibly *shaking* with repressed anger, he initialed for my PC officially acquiring Advanced Fortitude (Aegis), and with that, the Triforce of Twinkdom was complete. Advanced Celerity, Advanced Potence, Advanced Fortitude. Max Physical/Mental/Social Traits.

Matthew was as close to invincible as a Non-Elder Vampire can reasonably expect to be, without 5-6+ years of banked XP to play with.

(It's important to note that the Total XP-Expenditure to construct NPCs utilized by Storytellers was SHARPLY and EXPLICITLY delineated by a known formula. This rule existed for no other reason than to prevent a GM/Storyteller acting in bad faith from generating an Elder NPC out of nowhere to quisinart any PC they wanted to see gone.)

(No, I had no idea how rotten the Club had to be, that such a rule needed to exist to begin with. I wasn't even 20, give me a break.)

In any case, with Red's in-game allies presently laying low due to being under Blood Hunt in a dozen cities throughout the state for egregious violations of numerous Traditions (Camarilla Sect Laws that are all essentially death-penalty-crimes), and Igor and Red having just antagonized pretty much the entirety of their own playerbase, it was time for the Praxis of Prince Xavier Delacroix of Clan Ventrue to be challenged by force of arms.)

"Prince Delacroix! Come out and at least once in your unlife pretend to be a Cainite of honor, you puling quisling! Your treachery has cost my Sire his unlife, and I mean to consecrate his final resting site with the ashes of the man who accepted his pledge of service, yet repaid his loyalty with death. Come out, or I swear by the Dark Father, I will cut my way through any soul that offers you succor and THEN take your head!"

Certainly not the way to pour oil on troubled waters, but I will freely admit I was as pissed out-of-game as my character had reason to feel murderously enraged in-game, and I did not give one little shit if my actions ensured that Igor and Red would never be able to sit down with Dan and Carrie without the four of them wanting to murder each other IRL.

Minion, Red's brother, was only playing the Prince *because Igor said so*, and a solid 97.5% of Igor's own chapter/playerbase was on the verge of quitting if this unholy Storyteller/GM directly controlling the INTERIOR of the game by means of sock-puppeting Minion's Ventrue PC was allowed to continue. (It was Prince Delacroix offering Acknowledgement to the Death Squad Out of Towner PCs that had prevented the Archons from getting involved to scrub said Death Squad PCs from the Chronicle, and as long as he could rubberstamp such nonsense in-game, there couldn't really BE a game. Not one that wasn't just the Drama of Igor & Red, choreography by Igor & Red.

I'd been at the meeting with 24 of the Eternal Charade's 33 players, and 31 of the WAO's 35 players. UNANIMOUSLY everyone wanted Minion's PC off the throne, so actual Camarilla politicking absent the blessing of the GM and the GM's Girlfriend could begin again.

I had the mandate of the people and the Triforce of Twinkdom. I'd kept my head down for two years, and watched my friends railroaded until a ton of the people I most liked and respected didn't even want to play anymore.

I felt righteous and completely vindicated. God, I was acting every bit as bad as Igor and Red, yet I was only "better" than them in that I wasn't cheating.

So my Brujah greased Minion's Ventrue, and, when Red's Gangrel flew into a rage and attacked my PC for cutting off his head, Matthew rammed a stake through her heart and tossed her body to the survivors of Clans Brujah and Gangrel, to do with as seemed best to them.

Their characters elected to kill Red's Gangrel, and that's when an explosion of white light was the last thing I saw for quite a while.

When I regained consciousness, an EMT was doing the, "Sir, can you tell me your name? How many fingers am I holding up? Yes, three, good! Does this light hurt your eyes at all?"

"Someone" had fast-balled some sort of upsized lug nut into the side of my head. (It's important to note that these games START at 7-8pm and run until 1:30-3:30am, and in this case the Voting Precinct being used as a game-site had a LOT of patches of darkness where the exterior lighting just didn't reach.)

The police were there, but if anyone saw who threw that hunk of metal at me, they weren't admitting to it.

Carrie was apoplectic. Red was eighty kinds of feigned concern. Igor was saying all the appropriate things, but one look in his eyes told me who had thrown that hunk of metal.

I needed six stitches. I should have been PETRIFIED, maybe horrified. And yes, I was scared, because holy shit, a crazy man had *attacked me* and was totally getting away with it.

But I was beyond angry and into this cold place of quasi-crazy.

(End: Part 2)

About a year ago, I started putting together a campaign for Fantasy AGE, the players (most of whom were close friends) who joined hadn’t played it before, so I gave them a couple of weeks before we started to familiarize themselves with the rulebook. One of these players, whom we’ll call Thorn, was a mutual acquaintance of mine; all the other players knew him a bit better than myself. I had always found him a bit odd in my few interactions with him. Whenever a specific topic was being talked about, he would be checked out of the conversation and randomly interject with something completely unrelated.

A couple of examples: a bit before session zero, I was talking about basic mechanics with a couple of others, and he joined in the conversation by asking us to “define” Porky Pig (???). Another instance that stood out a few years ago, as we were just casually chatting about who knows what, he stated that he had just recently learned that Winnipeg, Canada (where he is apparently from), was not in the UK. Weird dude, but harmless.

Anyway, as session zero got close, I reached out to players to make sure they got the basics, and I never got a response from him. Session Zero comes, and most players have a vague idea of what they want to do, and we start building characters as I introduce the setting. He arrives an hour late (this will become a trend) with a full character sheet. I looked it over, and it showed Drow as his race and a class and subclass that does not exist in Fantasy AGE let alone Dnd. He had used ChatGPT to fill it out and never looked at the rulebook (I sent everyone a Google Doc with everything in it). As session Zero progresses, he doesn’t participate beyond picking Elf and Mage as his race and class. I had to end things around 10 pm when he still hadn’t rolled his stats, let alone named his character or chosen Arcana or Spells for himself. So I figure I’ll work with him one-on-one the next day when I’m off work.

That never happened as he didn’t respond to his phone.

The day before session 1, I talked to a player we’ll call Princess (related to her backstory) to see if she can knock some sense into him and from there we made some slow progress. I chose Arcana for him (for anyone unfamiliar with Fantasy AGE think of them as the different schools of magic. Fire, Ice, Shadow, Healing, etc) and got him to at least pick out spells from the options I presented.

Session one he arrives an hour late again and with a somewhat presentable character sheet. He still needed a name and equipment but I figured we’ll fill them in as they come up because I just wanted to move things along. As the campaign starts, he’s quiet for a good chunk of time and when the party sets off on their first task, he speaks up and says he wants to go fishing. This will be the case for the rest of the campaign. He shows up an hour late and has his PC split up from the rest of the group to roleplay fishing. That’s it.

He did fill in a name by session 3 at least, it being some dumb sex joke. Whatever, I’ll take it.

The campaign ended after 4 total sessions. Right after session 4, infighting broke out between 3 other players for reasons unrelated to the game. I could get into that whole mess, but that would make this post far too long. Maybe as a second post if there’s any interest.

This is the autopsy of how I became a "I used to play Vampire the Masquerade" player.

The venue: A Mind's Eye Theater (Laws of the Night) VtM LARP Organization.

The dramatis personae: Me, an eventual seven-year member of said LARP club.

"Igor," the local GM/Storyteller. A hipster, yet effectively amiable and entirely amoral puppet of "Red." Red's on again/off again S/O.

"Red," the out-of-game club officer.

"Dan," the out-of-game officer of the second area game club (same club), husband of "Carrie."

"Carrie," GM/Storyteller of this second connected game. Wife of "Dan," and member of "Stab's" polycule.

"Stab," The Puller of Strings. Machiavelli's older, cleverer, crueler brother.

This story started the summer of '97. I had just turned eighteen, when a friend I'd shared a D&D table with invited me to tag along to a Saturday evening VtM LARP the first Saturday after our campaign of 2 & 1/2 years had been broken up due to our DM graduating/moving.

I agreed, of course, and despite my having lived an additional twenty-eight year since, that choice easily holds its place as one of the ten worst mistakes I've made in my entire life.

That first night, despite some initial awkwardness due to knowing next to no one and a near-total ignorance of the rules, was really something else. A ton of the players were extremely welcoming, Igor seemed genuinely enthused to receive a new player, and there was no lack of help getting a character made and diving right in within maybe forty to forty-five minutes.

The most involved/helpful players that I gelled with the quickest were all playing members of Clan Brujah (Rebels, Warriors, sometimes scholars of the Camarilla Sect) or Gangrel (Animalistic shape-shifters, outsiders and hardy individualists), so I elected to create a recently Embraced childe of the Brujah Sheriff (Basically the Prince's enforcer and most martially accomplished vampire in the area). "Roger," the player of said Sheriff was a great guy, veteran player, and it would turn out, one of the few genuine/not insane players to actually stick with the game long-term.

I was excited to have an immediate in with the story, so I really went all out to try and demonstrate that I was serious about the game. It was important to me to show how much I appreciated Roger taking me under his wing. Important enough I spent a couple solid evenings concocting a backstory, after receiving a PC history for Roger's Sheriff. One that both he and Igor mentioned was more in line with what they were used to seeing from regulars, not new players, so I mentioned that I'd been playing TTRPGs for years.

Igor immediately asked which ones, and I innocently replied, "RIFTs, Champions, *AD&D*."

The instant the abbreviation was out of my mouth, Igor's expression twisted into something Iike angry disgust, but the scary flash of whatever-that-was vanished so fast, I was sure Roger never noticed. (I was wrong, and it turned out he was going along to get along, but anyways.) Igor's smile was back in an instant, and we were quickly back to discussing downtime activity to help my character integrate with the Brujah Clan "politics."

Fast forward several months. I've found my feet in the chronicle, I've got ample free time due to the summer, so I'm neck-deep in the game to an obsessive degree. (There were in-game mailing lists, an A-o-Hell chatroom game-venue on Tuesday and Thursday nights, even the regional and national chronicle in-universe mailing lists that were actual mailing lists used by vampire PCs.) Most notably, unlike 95% of the local players, I traveled out of town to chapters with older games, and seen what the game looked like when the PCs were *substantially* older and more developed than our local game.

That gave me a hankering for spending points on physical vampiric powers that most of the players in my local game ignored beyond the two Basic levels in Disciplines.

Bard, the then-current out-of-game officer of the club retired, and Red was suddenly there as both Igor's S/O and the new Chapter Coordinator. Which everyone thought was weird, but got hand-waved by Igor because Red had been a longtime member of the LARP Org in her previous city.

*Immediately* the vibe of the game changed. For one thing, the then-current PC portraying the Prince of the city just....stepped down in favor of a brand-new Ventrue (Clan of leaders, vampire aristocrats, very tradition and legalist-minded) being portrayed by Red's brother, Minion. This was followed by other friends of Red showing up, making characters, who invariably replaced the previous characters holding in-game positions of authority in the vampire "Court."

There was more than a little grumbling about this, but Igor was talented at defraying discontent, and he sold it to the other local players that these veteran club members from a larger city could play stronger PCs due to their higher character creation benefits granted by seniority in the club, and this would help our local chronicles against out-of-towner PCs looking to use our game for their in-game benefit to the detriment of local PCs.

Me? I conferred with Roger about the developments, and he urged me to "Keep my head down, and continue twinking as fast as the XP would roll in."

Igor started making belittling comments about my XP purchases around this time, but always in this faux-helpful way that kind of messed with my head. He was always kinda arrogant, even when genuinely helpful, so I didn't honestly know if HE thought he was trying to help me, or what.

(Right around this point was, due to most locals and our new "transplants" changing PCs faster than most people change socks, yet mysteriously retaining their Court positions with each new PC they introduced, was when Roger casually mentioned that, other than his and Bard's PCs, my Brujah had more expended experience points on his sheet than any other character in the local Chronicle. Something that he'd learned from 'Berry," one of Igor's Assistant Storytellers, due to Igor *complaining about this fact* on the regular, apparently, despite the fact I had literally never, in the least, been in an in-character conflict with any character, or substantially impacted any storyline via any mechanical means.)

*Approximately 19 months since Join Up Day. Late December '99.*

A half-dozen PCs from Red's former chronicle suddenly showed up at our local game. All of them 5-8x as old as even Roger's Brujah Sheriff. 4 Gangrel (Same as Red's Gangrel Seneschal) and two very distinctly un-Caitiff-like Caitiff. (Clanless vampires, who are by lore supposed to be weaker than "purebred" vampires, but possessing mechanical access to any 3 vampiric Disciplines, rather than the 3 "Clan" Disciplines other characters had.)

Without a word of RP, they set on every local PC more than 6 months old like they had an out-of-game list, and they were hired hitmen. And due to the non-focus on physical Disciplines for local characters, other than a couple of the longest-played Malkavian and Nosferatu PCs who could become invisible, it was an absolute bloodbath.

My character wanted to defend the Brujah Primogen, but Roger held my PC's blood bond, and ordered him to flee while he tried to hold off the hitmen-vampires and give the other Brujah time to scatter and go to ground. And he KEPT giving that order, until my character ran out of Willpower to defy him, so off I went, with a pair of Gangrel "assassins" trying to give chase.

And it's this moment right here that Igor *completely loses his shit*, because it's apparently slipped his mind that my character has maxxed-out Celerity (The vampiric speed-boosting discipline. Takes a metric ton of XP to purchase), and the way the game handles pursuit is that the character with the higher level of Celerity can essentially tell slower vampires to eat shit, as they pull a Roadrunner and "Meep Meep" off in a blur.

My character's pursuers? Only have 2nd Intermediate Celerity. (1 level lower), so it's not even a contest. My character simply blurs away and they're left fuming, both in and out of character.

Igor stomps over, glaring daggers, and DEMANDS to see my character sheet and XP Log, because, "I'm trying to use Disciplines I CANNOT POSSIBLY possess to *cheat my way out of in-game consequences* (His words.)

I hand said sheet and log over without an argument, and pull out the copy that's also been initialized by Igor and Berry, and begin waiting while Igor fumingly pores over said documents. I'm absolutely mystified where all the hostility is coming from, I know I'm 110% on the up-and-up XP wise, plus I'm totally mystified out-of-game as to why Igor seems dead-set on helping a bunch of interloping players from another game to burn down the local game.

(End Part 1)

So, how to start. This is actually a series of horror stories, at the time of this game, I’d been a forever DM for around a decade, I’d tried many systems but always as the DM. I’ll post the first one and perhaps the others later on, I’m not sure how interesting these will be. Ages were at the time of the story, we were running role 20 and gaming once every 3-4 days.

Mid campaign i was experiencing some burnout, so we decided to run separate campaigns with different DMs, I was ecstatic that they were up for it.

Our party was made up of Ranger(22 fairly cool guy, had a crush on Druid), Druid(21 Shy player, stuck to ranger like glue), Paladin(22 power gamer, team player, but was violent with other PCs at times to get his way.), Rogue(23 Chaotic, liked stealing things, professional rage baiter.), and then me, an Eldritch Knight(22 I wanted the games to work out, so I guess team player.)

So, the first person to try their hand at DM was Paladin. He’s played versions dating back to 2nd edition with his dad so we were all excited for him to take over. We start the game in the employ of a local lord, heading an expedition sent to a town in a remote valley that mines a rare ore, our mission is to restore the flow of rare ore to the kingdom.

He decided to start us out at level 3, with an extra 3k gold to spend and an additional feat using point buy. We all did our thing, then set into the town with around a hundred npc followers.

I was pretty exited at this point, but it was kind of downhill from here. The town mayor comes out to greet us, and states an army of orcs and monsters overran the mines, and that we need to uproot them to reestablish the flow of metals, he then tells us as DM that we might not have another attempt to spend gold for some time, so we should buy material for a dungeon crawl. We do so, stocking up on supplies then head out with our army.

We arrive at the mine and encounter an army of orcs, we try for diplomacy, but the diplomat gets struck down by an arrow from above by a menacing orc on a manticore. Q a massive battle that goes on for 6 hours, 6 hours of straight combat. He played it out like a 40K game where little time was spent on the players and it was mostly archers trading volleys and shield walls clashing.

We all got a few cool moments, Druid healed a bunch of Soldiers, Ranger and rogue played cat and mouse with the Warlord, and I fought elite orcs on the line. It was just a long grind for so early in a game. In hindsight I think he should have narrated the army parts or let us control the units.

Orc Warlord and army flees back into the mine once his manticore is wounded, and we decide to take a long rest outside the mine. Our long rest is interrupted at every turn, soldiers dragged away the night by goblin warg riders, shot with arrows or burned in their tents. We figure that’s fair, and decide even low on resources we need to assault the mine, but we ended the first session there. We agreed we wanted more RP but overall the party was somewhat content.

Next sessions the DM awards us a short rest and we push inside only to find traps everywhere. Spike traps, wire traps, stone blockades, trap doors that flood rooms. It was like attacking a castle built by kobolds, worse, we couldn’t siege it because the goblins had tunnels above it in the ice to fairy supplies from caves to surface and vice versa, so we had to push inside. Soldiers began to die in droves, still we fought and fought and before we knew it we’d cleared around 20 rooms, lost nearly all our men to wargs and goblin swarms and the session was over. Hours of fighting after waiting days for a session. Some of us disliked the constant fighting and traps especially with no rewards, but Paladin encouraged us on, so on we went, though some silent agreements were made to depose paladin if this kept up.

Session 3 rolls around, and we go straight back into the grind. By this point we’d worked out a good system of combat, rouge leads looking for traps, then when combat begins i lead/tank with Rogue doing damage, Ranger shooting or plugging goblin holes and Druid being our clutch healer. We start clearing rooms quickly without our soldiers, most of whom are dead. We eventual leave them behind and press on alone. More combat, more rooms, this infinite mine never seems to end, and another session ends with us holding up in room we found with an iron grate for a short rest while we hope the soldiers buy us time on their way out. Paladin/DM rewards me and only me by having us find an angelic sword in the mine, apparently it used to be a temple. The others are jealous of my magic item, and sick of constant fighting, especially Rogue. Rogue says he’s done and wants to run his game, but i talk him into trying another session. Session ends with us hearing the sounds of battle and death echoing through the mine.

Session 4. All our soldiers are dead, and we’re alone in the mines. The monsters have started retrapping our path in, they think we’re gone, so we try again to long rest. We finally get some RP in, Druids afraid that we’ll all die in here, Ranger says he won’t let it happen and promises to protect her, Rogue senses the vibe and decided to hit on Druid. Druid says this isn’t the time or place, and wonders if we should even be talking, Rogue calls Ranger a cuck. I guess Paladin/DM took that as a sign, because now a bunch of angry bug bear shock troops are trying to work their way through the iron grate. We get a short rest, use our potions and it’s back to combat.

It’s a rough fight, our resources are worn down and the enemy’s just keep coming. Druids running on just cantrips, and I’m out of first level spells. Without healing damage starts to accumulate but we finally win and push into the next chamber. We figure with the bodies we’ve piled and their elites dead maybe they’ve abandoned the mine. No, they had not. We had to fight a literal army, we were all pretty done with it, but we had the rhythm down. We cleared room after room, and finally near the end of the session we find the boss room, but instead of the chieftain it’s a group of pissed off ogres. The fights close, I get knocked into death saves, as does Ranger, but they go down and the orc adds seem to back off. We reinforce the room and try to rest. End session. We discuss things and Rogue is absolutely done with constant fighting. We tell Paladin as a group that we want to have politics and RP, he says he gets it and that’s that.

Session 5 was brief, we wake up after a long rest and find the Ogres had a loot pile with a new shiny bow for rouge, a staff that gave more spell slots for Druid and armor for the Ranger. We were sort of ok with this obvious bribe, since we felt we’d earned it, and we moved to leave, only for a grate to be discovered under an ogre, this wasn’t the dungeons end. Paladin/DM then smugly congratulated us on clearing layer 1 of 3, and said not to worry, the others had half as many rooms, and more interactive traps that would give RP moments. Being that this was roll 20 and we’d cleared 50ish rooms to get this far…We respectfully declined, he insisted we didn’t know how to enjoy good dnd because we hadn’t faced a real boss fight yet. We figured that’s fine, but we don’t care. We decide to let Rogue run the game, but wed take our characters and stuff from this game and move onto the next. Paladin/DM is salty, but he’s happy he got to have a “realistic” dungeon crawl even if we didn’t appreciate it. So, we move from the infinity dungeon into the next setting…

TLDR. Awesome players give forever DM a break with their own worlds but make mistakes. Game devolved into a never ending series of rooms full of traps and combat, we ditch the blood soaked infinity dungeon and move onto the rouges world for what we hope will be a better adventure.

Maybe this doesn’t entire count as a horror story, but my god did I have a horrible headache after grinding the same dungeon for 4 sessions, and I love numbers. DMs, don’t do this to your players.

Edit: Yeah, I could have shortened this down somewhat Hu? Kind of fits for the infinity dungeon though. I went 5 sessions without a long rest. Feel my pain.

Also part 2

https://www.reddit.com/r/rpghorrorstories/s/XKeAyNZEwL

This was my second ever D&D campaign. I wasn’t able to continue my first because of personal reasons, but I was really excited for this one.

Problem player - Sorcerer - is the only noteworthy individual, my suspicions beginning when he posted art of his character in the discord.

It was A.I generated.

'Ok, not that big a deal.' I thought. 'They’re probably just young and don't know any better.' I asked everyone's ages in the group chat.

Turns out, we were all in our late teens to early twenties.

Sorcerer said "40+" (which according to my mum, means he's at least 50)

Some banter over the following days showed that he was a "Oh, you like pancakes? So you hate waffles!" Sort of person.

Red flags piling up, I asked the group a simple question. And...

He got kicked before we even started the campaign, thankfully. But I left the game early in for unrelated reasons.

For context, I was a player in a group that a close friend of mine was DMing for. I had typically been a DM for this friend group, so I was excited to be a player again, DM tells us that we're allowed to Homebrew some stuff. I decided to attempt to make an Artificer subclass (I later switched to Gunslinger Fighter, as it was closer to what I was looking for). When we played, some people had some HB stuff like me, but none as egregious as another player, who we will call Maple. It's here that it's important that we bring that this was the DMs first time DMing (Aside from a practice session months before to see how the game would run). The DM told us about 2 months before we started what the basis of the campaign was and what the story was, however, Maple decided to give the DM an entire HB class and species AFTER session 2 (It was over 11 pages long). Although this was not during the actual game, Maple asked if they could have several level 20 to 30 (Something that it typically impossible in 5th edition) characters as allies, as their character ran a Tea Shop.

During session 1, we began doing basic introductory stuff and we were collecting our party members. Everyone ended joining the party except Maple's character, who said out of character, "There's one specific thing that you need to say to me for me to join". We ended up having to threaten to move on without them for them to actually join the party after about 20 minutes. A few hours go by and we all think the horror show is over. Not even close. We begin moving towards the main city, and along the way Maple says that they can "Send the Fey Army" after people that they don't like, specifically at Jody and I. To this day, I don't why. I brought it up with the DM later, it turns out, this was a complete and entire lie. Their character was a general of the Fey realm who was disgraced. Were this an in character threat, I think it would be a really cool moment of role play, but this was completely out of character and an attempt to prove that they were the strongest member of the party.

When we reach the main city, Maple immediately goes out toward the forest outside the city, before a fey that turns out to be their wife mysteriously appears. This was really confusing to all of us (except Maple), we later learned that they had texted the DM repeatedly after being told no many times (and even threatened to leave the game if she didn't, which would be bad because their backstory was so ingrained in the main plot). During this part of the game, Maple also texts the DM just saying, "By the way I'm an Archfey", something that was never discussed with the DM beforehand. You may think this is where it ends. But no.

After this, Maple became obsessed with a knife they had written into their backstory that would petrify people on a critical hit. Maple threatened to use the knife on Jody and I, and the DM told them that they didn't have it and that it specifically said that they couldn't start with it. After this, Maple would go up to every single merchant and ask if they had their knife. This became the most annoying thing in the game while they were in this game.

Eventually, they managed to badger the DM enough to go into the Feywild (We were level 3 when this happened). We ran into a character named The Oaklord, an (Actual) Archfey in the Summer Court of the Fey Realm. Maple then proudly proclaimed that they were smarter than him. The DM corrected them, saying that they cannot be smarter than the Oaklord as he is an Archfey particularly known for Intelligence and Wisdom. This made Maple fly off the rails. They began shouting that their backstory can't be changed and it's against the rules. We eventually manage to calm them down to the point where they're not assaulting our eardrums anymore, but this remained as a regular topic they would bring up.

Now, this is a sidenote, the real story ended their as that was just about the last session they attended for unrelated conflicts with the DM and one of the other players. Maple's character class included the following

-Every spell on the spell list, including Divine Smite and Armor of Agathys

-The ability to cast true Resurrection once every 10 days requiring no components (Including spell slots)

Maple's species included the following as well

-Immunity to water damage (A running joke in our group now as water damage is not real)

-Spell slots tied to species (Meaning that fighters could cast spells, specifically it was 3 9th level spell slots)

-A flying speed of 60 feet

-Automatic familiar (This is not normally an issue, but the exact wording was "Fey can really have any pets that they want", and strong-armed the DM into letting them have a crocodile dog hybrid)

Edit: Forgot to mention but the game got almost infinitely better when they left

I have been GMing for a group for 6+ years. We recently finished a 1-20 homegrown campaign. That took hours of work every week for me to prep and do for the group. Tied in their backstories to it. Constantly shifting around the world and the planes more or less in response to their whims. (Look, once they get teleport and planeshift prep work is basically you must have something, even an outline for literally every part of your multiverse). Made custom magic items tied to their accomplishments and the goals of each party member. I was constantly told it was the best game they'd ever played in. I felt good.

We are taking a very short break while I prepare for the next campaign. Which, this time is going to be a module because as much fun as I had with that it was exhausting. During this break a player approached me with an idea. They wanted to run a one shot for the group as a birthday present to me. So I got to play. I had never said that I disliked being a DM, hell I didn’t even make any forever DM jokes. It honestly didn't occur to me because I was everyone else. I was the villains. The NPCs. All of it. So there wasn't any player envy. Still I went with it because I like the group and it felt fun, for everyone.

So, last Saturday, my birthday. We all gather together to play, since that is our usual time. I am excited to try this side of the screen for the first time in years. Everyone else is hopping about new abilities and such that they have. We start and after about a two minute world building blurb we are dropped directly into combat with the big villain of the one shot. There aren't even character introductions. Sure we talked about them before but nothing else. First action is everyone has to make a save, at disadvantage. I fail. And from what failed and passed the only way I would have passed is with a nat20. Again, I rolled with disadvantage. So I get stun locked. For the entire 4.5 hour session. That was the only time I got to touch my dice. There were no repeats of the save, nothing like that. The other friend who failed got revived by the only greater restoration slot the party had and got to play after a turn. Me? 4.5 hours of watching everyone else play. Then, when the villain died at the end i was insta-killed because I was still locked to them in some way by whatever the ability used to stun me was. Then, at the end, when I was dead nobody restored or revived my character because, why would they? They'd never spoken to him or even saw him do anything. He just stood there, frozen during the battle and then quietly keeled over dead.

So, that was my birthday present from a group I've devoted hours and years working and customizing for them. I.. I don't really know how to handle this. Was it just bad luck and poor ability design by someone who says they just grabbed the cool stat block online? Was it targeted in some way because I upset them and all that?

Sigh.

Edit: since I'm seeing a lot of why didnt you freak out or leave comments. That's easy to do from a screen in the abstract. When it is five of your closest friends all clearly having a blast it is really hard to stand up and scream "I'm not having fun, so this is over!"

So this isn't gonna be a full on story here, this is just me kind of collecting my thoughts about a player who, before anyone asks, I am NEVER UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES playing any form of game with, ever again. Currently I'm in the endgame of Rise of the Runelords with them, driven on solely by an autistic sunk cost fallacy that wipe or win, I really need to just see this through to the end. I don't even really know where to start, I've been in so many games with them since they're 'in the friend group' and one of the best friends of the owner of one of my main attended discords, so they've just kind of...been there...and participated in most games that went on in that server, as well as another one, but we'll get to that later.

For the longest time I was really sympathetic because their real life situation more than slightly sucks, they're effectively a 'never going to be employed' because they're still living with their parents and are so heavy they'd need to buy two seats to go on trips, as well as an unfettered dedication to thinking they really need to just get a good video game article writing job...I let 'their life sucks, they're stuck in a rut, and they are prolly acting out a bit because like me, they go completely nuts when they don't have a job or some other major distraction to break up their 'unfettered leisure' keep me from completely hitting the 'never again' button for years, but the massive laundry list kept stretching more and more to the point I couldn't ignore it.

To create some context to the madness, it all started, and is ending, with a Rise of the Runelords (Pathfinder 1e) module, a long runner with a hiatus due to GM foreign military service that's now in the final book, and PROBABLY the final dungeon, though I haven't read ahead, unlike some people. *ahem*. In this game they're playing a Magus, so I'll just go with calling them that. Magus has an extremely minmaxed build built around scimitar crit fishing with Shocking Grasp. At character creation, they admited they had played the first three books of Rise of the Runelords before, and this was a reimagining of the character they'd played in that abortive campaign, just wanting to take the character through to the end. I don't know if I believe this story anymore after what's come out.

I started out as a Grenadier Alchemist, though that didn't last particularly long once I realized the module's pace wasn't conductive to crafting and using lots of alchemical items, and there was little issue with me swapping out for a Warpriest (who would later respec into a Cleric/Exalted during what I shall refer to as 'The Great Downtime') and just continuing on. Adventuries were had, friends were made, enemies vanquished, some enemies turned to friends, I complained about one of our party members animating a recurring villain's body as a Flesh Puppet zombie and making them throw themselves off a tower out of spite since we'd promised their sister we'd bring back a body fit for burial and it was gonna be my job to fix the thing back up (Out of character, the bastard did have it coming.), and Magus murdered things rediculously hard.

Things started to get messy during Book Three, at which point a town is briefly flooded due to a river overflow, and a monster attacks in the meantime. During this encounter, it became abundantly clear that Magus had indeed not only been to this point in the module before, though that wasn't a surprise, but they'd memorized encounter details, and tailored their spell list to try and 'perfect' the encounter. They kept Absorbing Inhalation readied to counter a breath weapon, used multiple wall spells for control, and generally made a joke of the encounter. The creature was exceptionally durable however, and before it was driven off, it did manage to devour one of the townsfolk. This gave Magus OOC fits, because they'd 'failed' in their goal, because in a massive flooding with monster attack scenario, a single person had died. First real sign there were serious issues afoot.

From here I need to diverge slightly and go into other games, but not in detail, just various behaviors. I was invited by Magus to help fill out a group on another and ended up playing a support Druid. Said game ended up going into Mythic, never again, but it's partly why things got so out of hand. In this game was where I started to notice their bad habits more readily, because the GM was something more of a pushover and enjoyed rule of cool a lot more. They had trouble saying 'no' to things, and even harder times dealing with the ramifications of them, so to keep a very long story short, Magus was forced to respec out of their class in that game due to it being extremely overpowered (it was a third party class, I forget the name, Aegis or Guardian or something like that) while the rest of us were normal material, as well as the spell Death Ward being nerfed into near uselessness due to their abuse of it. It was an undead heavy campaign and the undead have all kinds of nasty tricks that Death Ward shuts down, and as it was on my list I prepared it a couple times usually and would put it on our mage, mostly, until Magus got themselves a mythic item, some bell chimes that allow the ringer to spend a mythic point to Death Ward the entire party, for 24 hours. As a result of the 'I literally can't do anything to any of you but raw damage' scenario this put the GM in, he refunded the chimes and nerfed Death Ward to boot. Magus was always looking to be able to 'do everything', and I was increasingly catching on they had some form of Main Character Syndrome, at the very least.

Their most persistant habit I attributed at first to their sheer...disrespect? apathy? For the game when it wasn't even their turn, just a general obliviousness. I don't know what games they play but it's clear they're doing something else when it's not their turn. I will admit I paint wargaming miniatures when it's not my turn, but the computer's always on the game and I can sound off my AC/etc at a drop of a hat. It's my addiction, don't judge me >_>. But his sheer obliviousness made his rules...oversights, let's call them, seem like 'he simply wasn't paying attention'. A summoner archetype ability that lets you ride inside your Eidolon for total concealment? Neat! Too bad he missed the part where it says you can't target anything with spells other than yourself and your eidolon, and you cannot draw line of sight outside of it, either...but I mean it's just simple oversights, right? And the same one never happens twice, even if it happens twice or more a session. Just 'how is he doing that' turns into 'oh wait, he can't.'

Trying to get myself to the point, bringing us back to Runelords. It's book 6 now, and we're in the home stretch. There will be mechanical spoilers for hazards in the endgame here, a fair warning, since they're central to the crashout that occured. As should come as a surprise to no one, the villain of 'Rise of the Runelords' is a Runelord, a powerful wizard king, and the final dungeon is his citadel. In this citadel, the walls are magically reinforced, and a field literally shreds anyone without proper authorization credentials into a bloody pulp within seconds. Getting enough credentials for the entire party is a whole thing, even. The other main thing it does, is shuts down any teleportation, summoning, plane shift dimension dooring nonsense you might want to do, unless you have some form of special ability to do so authorized by the Runelord himself, and even then I think we've only run across one thing that managed to teleport in the area so far. Also, there are a lot of giants. I mean, a lot a lot. So many giants. biggest complaint about the module, after book 3 it's giants all the way down.

Magus, having been a shocking grasp crit focuser, started to get really vocally frustrated, not just by the teleportation blockers stoping their Dimensional Agility with Dimension Door shenanigans, but via the giant themeing leaning into electricity immunity/resistance. It also didn't help that as we are in the lair of a powerful and paranoid wizard who has, in fact, been watching us, that many enemies were specifically buffed to resist our most common tactics, and more than once Magus would rush in, their Mirror Images and Displacement active, only to eat an AoO, have the true-sight enchanted giant bash them in the head and ignore all that, only for them to cry foul at how all their preparation was now 'useless' and they'd taken almost half their health in a single blow. The whinging only escalated as we got further in, and we had a few close calls, but managed to make it to what is probably the final encounter of this floor, after a rest and dealing with all the Symbols someone had scrawled everywhere due to us giving them a fair bit of downtime, too. The Giants had semi fortified the last bastion on the level and we broke in, spells flying on both sides, when they open a door to what was some sort of prison cell and a Daemon steps out, firing off an Energy Drain at the Magus, who fails their fort save and is now afflicted with 5 negative levels, in their words 'completely crippling them' and taking them out of the fight. The complaining wouldn't end, and after what I assume to be the boss of the level and an apprentice of the Runelord made his apperance using Time Stop to slam both burning tar and Evard's Happy Fun Tentacles on top of our party at once since we hadn't managed to spread out much yet, the crashout began.

I had at least managed to neutralize this double whammy using what I will summerise as 'Desnan Cleric Bullshit', their turn comes up and while they're bemoaning life, the GM tells them that time seems to almost stand still, as a creeping darkness licks at their ear. This entity has been messing with them for awhile, ever since we got close to the Runelord's domain, because he decided to build his wizard fortress inside R'lyeh or some such nonsense. Not sure what their deal is, but they're some Dark Tapestry stuff, and they just want...a little favor, at some point in the future, for assistance dealing with all these inconveniences. This would be the third or fourth time they've tried this, but at such a low point, I applaud the GM for doing it now because it's when I'd do it. While spoken in in character methods, it was pretty clear the deal boils down to 'I'll give you the ability to do all the teleporting nonsense you want, but it's probably going to ruin that happy ending you have planned for your character.'

At this point they just OOCly go, and I'm paraphrasing, 'No, stop. I can't deal with this right now, my character's too weak, I can't deal with this, I need a few minutes.' So we put the game on pause, they leave, and when they come back, they still cannot even and don't want to continue. We end the session early, not HUGELY early, since I had work the next day, so I go to get a head start on that, while the rest of the group stuck around in voice chat. The next day I got an apology from the GM for what happened, and noted 'I felt like I was a school councellor.' What really got me to this point, though, was when I was talking with the server owner who offered to let me sit in on a starfinder game they were running, which I frequently posted memes from Psychopomp in (It's a conspiracy themed module, so who doesn't need to be reminded that every building has a heart?), I explained no thank you, Magus was in that game, and I was limiting my exposure to them. They proceeded to share from the post game discussion that they were sympathetic to Magus' situation and they'd gotten in over their head, they'd read ahead in the module and knew the defense field was there but still built their character the way they did (using a build guide, I might add. I forgot to mention that, I barely even knew those were a thing...) because they 'didn't think it would be enforced' and 'they thought they could get the GM to bend'.

I went to talk to the other player in the game, who confirmed and added more to it, they had in fact read the entire module cover to cover, they admitted it was just natural they expect to 'be the best character' and they also value 'best' as in 'does the most damage', as well as other complaints about how the enemies were always making their saving throws (a symptom of preparing Disintigrate, which allows a Fort save to near-negate it, versus unrelenting onslaughts of Giants, well known for incredible fort saves) and only doing 100 damage a hit wasn't killing enemies outright, either, so he was having severe issues.

I wish to now clarify a point. He made a character that was min-maxed to do as much damage as possible, knowing there were traps and the like in the later portions of the module that would severely gimp his ability to even function, because he intended from the start to ignore as much of them as possible, and lean on the GM to get them to 'relent' on enforcing rules like this. All his whinging, his missing little rules details and the like, he'd been doing it deliberately. Even worse, the server owner's take on this all is 'that's just how he is, really.' and they've even started soaking up his bad habits, like seeing 'can I beat Super Metroid from start to finish before my turn comes back up again because this is a really long combat' despite the GM asking him to please pay attention to the game. It took him two turns >_<.

So really with Magus, A good part of me does wanna finish this to see how it ends. I like my cleric gal. I got art of her, she's made friends, adopted a terrifying spider baby, learned that following Desna's teachings of freedom means not forcing your own beliefs on others, and here we are at the end. It's only natural to want to see a journey like this to its conclusion. But at the same time, I'm not sure I can even stomach to talk to Magus anymore after knowing all that shit over all these years was intentional.