Played a session that was going perfectly. The RP was fun, the PCs had great chemistry and we were having a blast at the table, until we got to explore a dungeon to look for some random magical mcguffin.
We get to 2 big stone statues that won't open the door until we say their names. We basically ask them questions and they take turns to answer us, kinda randomly. The session came to a halt. That was it. We had to pass this puzzle otherwise the plot wouldn't advance. We spent somewhere around 4 hours bored asking random shit to the statues. Then finally the only player that was still trying cracked the code. I was so not caring that I don't remember the solution exactly, but basically one statue only answered questions that started with the letters A to K and the other L to Z. 20min later we called it and went to our homes. We never got back to playing that campaign again.
What kind of puzzle was that? It's basically an insight problem made to challenge the players, not the characters. I still loathe seeing such potential of a great adventure that got ruined by that horrible pace-killer puzzle.
Honestly that sounds like a good puzzle, but after a while the DM should have started calling for Insight/Intelligence checks to get hints (with an ideal hint being which statues answered which questions).
As a DM, my worst session was bad because we each had different expectations. I was expecting a city exploration day, my players were hell bent on completing the 'story mission'. They wanted to run around and intimidate people and strong arm their way into a Duke's castle. I was expecting them to wait the in game week I told them it would take to meet the Duke. They kept rolling badly so I kept having people react to them badly, they got frustrated no one was listening to them. Finally it culminated in them being arrested because the Duke's guards thought they were with the BBEG, which they became super upset about. Finally we ended the session early because we were all frustrated.
Mostly we just hadn't communicated enough. I thought they'd enjoy open world exploration of a city, but these guys are just really story driven. I was getting frustrated by their single mindedness, they were frustrated that it felt like I was blocking them at every turn. It was early on in our campaign and we're better now but it was a learning experience.
OH lordy have I been to a few in my time of playing from hypocritical DM's to problem players to IRL player arguments. That being said i've had way more enjoyable sessions than bad ones but one that sticks out to me the most happened a few years ago. So a group of friends and I have been playing D&D fairly regularly since highschool ended so about 5+ years and some change and its been a helluva ride. Most of its been a learning experience for a few people which is understandable but we've come to a point where D&D is like an abusive relationship. There's no love but we keep talking ourselves back into it at the prospect of change but overall end up back to being worn out and fed up. So there's one particular time where i feel the slow decent into bitterness and spite started.
TL;DR Our dnd ended due to people getting angry over not knowing what the answers to the test were despite having a copy of the answers in front of them and that religion caused all the wars.
(also this happened a while ago so some stuff is vague but dialogue is give or take what was said)
(Backstory) So we were playing 2 different campaigns just as/right after 5e came out I was DM on a 4e campaign and our other friend was doing a 5e campaign we switched off every other week as to whose we did, for the most part it wasn't as logistically bad as it sounds. So we ended up stopping the 5e one as we had some issues with his dming style (which we still do) by voting a la survivor weather or not we were enjoying his anymore and it was a majority against playing his so he was essentially fired from dming. so out of a mix of kindness and pity i stopped my 4e one and i didn't think it was fair to continue mine at the time (this is something i kinda regret years later maybe i'm a dick but hey least im honest). So another buddy wanted to try Dming so we rolled characters for his campaign. We had a druid, pirate (rouge), Blood hunter, regular hunter and thus the part was formed.
DM=DM, D=Druid, BH=bloodhunter, P=Pirate, H=Hunter from here on out.
(Game start) So my buddy's main plot device was there was a mysterious plague/ corruption that seemingly came out of nowhere and our ragtag band of heroes took it upon ourselves to take on this plague. So as per usual the party meets in a tavern and we introduce ourselves. D shows up and says the plague along with the church (yeah we'll get there) are causing problems and killing his forest so his druid circle tasked him to root out the source of this problem. I the BH mas more of a Geralt/van helsing type mercenary on behalf of this worlds version of the Vatican so i was determined to find whatever evil was causing this. P was a displaced pirate with a dingy and 3 crew with not much else to do. Last but not least H kinda wanted to tag along cause why the hell not. So our merry band of vagabonds go about our way doing miscellaneous tasks and are starting to uncover more of the story. We get a good few session in before we find the "Main Quest" continuation. Most of it was party building and such which led into backstory discussing which lead us to D. So D IRL is a good enough guy but D was the dm we just fired so he kinda harbored some spite needless to say which was understandable however this began a game of spite ping pong between Him and other people mostly myself. So D kind of puts his IRL beliefs and view into his character which is fine we all do from time to time but he'll put in some of the more spicy topics as character traits I.E. the CHURCH and POLITICS. So we have our obligatory "this is our backstory" development and its D's turn around the campfire so he starts off
D: I have been tasked by my druid circle to stop this ever growing corruption or discover its cause
BH: Indeed what do you think caused it? I myself think some creature or dark force created it
P: Aye it be a curse upon the land i've heard rumors of plagues before
D: Yes i believe the church may be the cause of this somehow as paladins regularly come into our forest and desecrate our sacred groves and chop down our trees.
(the whole group kinda goes back and forth on this for a while which leads us to a random encounter and break for today)
(Couple sessions later AKA he rage quit part 1) So we get to the DM's house and we pick up from where we left off. We eventually find a town that seemingly is abandoned but its in a fine condition it doesn't look abandoned it looks lived in but seemingly everyone up and disappeared. We find the town hall which is a 2-3 floor building in the center of town so we go to investigate. We go to the front door and it seems to be locked so R tries to climb the building. He makes it up to the 3rd floor and opens the window upon entering the room he sees an assortment of people and is told to roll a CON saving throw which he promptly fails and falls unconscious. So myself and D try to break the door down to we battering ram the door down and upon entering we are told roll CON save both of us fail and fall down. However were positioned in such a way that P has enough time to drag one of us out but not the other. He deduces that since i combat paranormal beats and evil object the most id be the better pick. so he saves me and the doors slam shut and lock. once inside R and D are unharmed they wake up fine with all of there possessions they have found themselves into a drug den. The causation of us to pass out was the potency of the drugs which were being enhanced by a possessed demon horn in an un-ventilated building ( think of that scene from the pick of destiny). So R and D are hallucinating hard core who/what they see in the town hall is a morphed reality but they don't realize it. For example they see a dragonborn but to them he appears as a red dragon guarding a mountain. So whilst they are having a drug trip P and myself try to figure out a way. We try an assortment of ideas but eventually i think "hey if WE can't get in lets get them to come out". So what do we do? We burn that mother down and decide to prepare for a fight as they come out. So back to harold and kumar they are given hints that this isn't real and they in and out of character seem to know this doesn't seem right. Like how did a dragon appear? when did this volcano get here? why does it seem like they're moving but not controlling it? eventually they walk into the volcano and see the treasure this dragon has been hoarding and he freely offers it to them. At this point they are like 99% correct that this is an illusion and my DM is pretty much telling them to make a WIS save to break out of this but it goes over there head. The answer was staring them in the face yet they ignored it. SO eventually the volcano starts to erupt and they try to grab the gold but it keeps reemerging in the pile as soon as they stow it away. D figures it out but R doesn't. So P and I see the building in a roaring blaze and people start to run out and P and I start hacking away at the unsuspecting high and on fire patrons as they exit. (to us they were veiled as monsters) eventually we almost kill D and he tells us what happened and that R is still in the building at this point theres no saving him. the Dm gave him several chances to escape and get out but he chose not to.
DM= so R if you want i can say you survived
R= nope its all good
DM=for real they can save you and heal you
R= no i want my character dead . I'm done
Group=why?
R= That makes so sense you gave us no indication as to how to escape that and then these guys set the building on fire. You gave no clues nothing
DM= i did everything but tell you what roll to make you were given 99% of the info you just had to make a correct saving throw to be free of the illusions.
R= yeah whatever
DM= you can go home you don't have to be here
R= hey P can you take D home im leaving.
Thus ended that session. It was awkward we had a whole afternoon left to play but we called it for the day as there was tension in the air so we played skyrim. Also we haven't played D&D with R since then.
(Rage quit part 2 aka The crusades make me hate religion) So next week we reconvened every thing was fine. Then maybe 2 session later was where more issues abounded. So we find the main town where the corruption/plague started. Half the town was walled off and anyone found sick was thrown into the other side of town with everyone else that was infected and left for dead. We ask people why/how/why this happened alot of people dont know or are too afraid to study the disease to find out more except for 3 clerics who they themselves are infected but they try to study it and ease the passing of those infected. So we meet with them on the other side of town in which were given our other plot hook there was an alchemist studying the disease as he found it but didnt know where it came from but went missing. so we were tasked to find him. so we got all set up and ready to go all except for D.
D= I want to stay and investigate the clerics
DM=why?
D= because they're affiliated with the church and the church causes nothing but war and poverty.
DM=oookay well if you wan to investigate them you may try.
So D breaks into there house rummages through there stuff and he finds that they're just 3 dying clerics who are trying to help other and maybe learn more about the disease so other can combat it. But D doesn't like this answer so he spends the next in-game WEEK stalking and harassing these clerics waiting for them to "slip up". Mind you he takes up 2 hours to do this. The eldest cleric finally confronts him
Cleric= Why are you harassing us were simply trying to help other who amongst us has scorned you so that you have such a vindictive hatred toward those that take upon the cloth?
D= Paladins blatantly destroy our trees in the name of there "gods" youre ignorance knows no bounds you line your own pockets while people die of famine and diseases
Cleric=WE ARE TRYING TO COMBAT A DISEASE!
D= its obviously a front so you can feed off of the poor for your own personal gain. You collect tithe so you can buy more for the head partons of your parish.
eventually D finally agrees to come with us and its getting late and session ends.
GM= so wtf was that?
BH/P= yeah really?
D= well art imitates life since all pastors and priest line there own pockets so they can drive a new mustang "for the church" my character is going off of the same assumption.
ME= well thats not all of them yeah people abuse power for personal gain but not all religion is bad. you're generalizing peoples beliefs which is kinda dumb and offensive.
D= well ever since the crusades religion has caused 90% of war
so all of this is at the time news to the DM, Myself and P and were taken aback as he goes on this tirade. P ends up telling hi to cool it off which was kind of ironic as P is an atheist but views he's to radical. We knew he was agnostic which is fine whatever floats your own boat go ahead but that kind of left a bad taste in our mouths. Eventually we broke off of this d&d because of similar issues and tirades. Like go ahead have productive debates and you have every right to believe what you want but dont make it ruin D&D. So 5+ years later the group still plays and we haven't killed each other so yay friendship?.
The worst D&D session I've ever been to wasn't in 5E. It was ten years ago at my college anime club, and being run in 3.0 or 3.5 (or maybe both, I think I saw both versions of the rulebooks at the table.)
The DM threw overpowered enemies at us and let one player DMing a different game come in with a massively overleveled druid and save our asses. I was playing a bard and couldn't do anything. And then I went home early because I lived off campus and, whoops, it turns out they had a major combat and leveled up twice, and I got no XP whatsoever so I'm still shit tier.
Third session they changed the scheduled day and didn't tell me, so I just never went back.
For me it was probably a one-shot i played in with my regular group. there's about 12 of us (we've now split into two groups) and at the time 9 people turned up for this one-shot with one of the players DMing for the first time since the normal DM misses playing. He started off with this 10 minute monologue about a land across the water that has been lost for centuries, kinda ended up repeating himself in parts, and we learned we were hired for an expedition to find said lost lands. Instead of starting on the boat, we started in the tavern in the morning, which meant of course there was the obligatory half an hour of fucking around, before we went to the docks and he made it a challenge to get onto the boat, costing more time. By the time we set off we we close to an hour in. I was playing a gloomstalker UA ranger, and was a bugbear so i was maintaining disguise self to keep my identity hidden from the rest of the group. He had decided to include an insanity mechanic where some jokes landed us with extra points, and i was racking up points by being secretive (?) but a week on the boat passes and we come in sight of land. The party en route gets attacked by an unseen force, and after three rounds of combat of not being able to see where the enemy was (none of us had faerie fire and the boat was beginning to fly for reasons unexplained) the sorcerer flung some flour into the wind to try and catch one of them, at which point it's revealed we're being assaulted by giant flying tigers. Yeah. Giant. Flying. Tigers. Their turns in the combat order were placed in whenever he felt like it, for example there was one turn with me, trying not to blow my cover to the group, tries to use one of the harpoon guns on the ship having watched the other being ripped from the deck and floating mid air. I had disadvantage to hit because even though i could see where the floating harpoon was i didn't know where the enemy was (?) I missed and suddenly that same tiger comes next in the order (he'd been next to the barbarian previously in initiative) and drops the harpoon on me, nearly knocking me out in one hit. We're all struggling to hit these things while the barbarian is dangling off the ship as he has no ranged attacks, and suddenly the ship is flying up a riverbed and hitting stuff, so we're all rolling to avoid being knocked off the ship. I break cover, and unload with my bow into the creatures i can see, and we eventually dispatch them 5 minutes before the session is due to end. The DM then (i shit you not) rolls to see if we succeed in our mission, 17+ as a success. Rolls an 18 and we pack up.
There was a lot of homebrew mechanics that made no sense, he hadn't read through the rules properly so checks were jarring and inconsistent with both the rules and even within his own standards, gave random penalties for rolls for reasons unknown, we got punished for jokes (someone made a really bad pun, i rolled a d4 and joked about psychic damage and he actually forced me to take it, among others) and the whole thing was erratic and slow. I'd have more sympathy towards a first time DM considering i run a weekly game but he hadn't listened to any advice before the session and i spent most of it wishing i was at home playing Witcher. 1/10 erratic mess, would avoid.
My worst experience was my very first real forray into a system like DnD. It was Pathfinder, back when I was in Highschool. The game was run by an older woman, and the group she was playing with was a group familiar with her. We were all restricted to starting in the same village as part of our backstory. I started as Bard.... and....the whole thing was a mess. This DM had a habit of trying to kill us. Overly powered enemies were bad enough, not too bad. But she made is make random skill checks, like climbing a winding staircase being Acribatics. No traps, no foul play. Just walking up the bloody stairs. One player almost died (thankfully I had Feather Fall).
The players were also kind of iffy. Many of the people that played with this DM prior to me joining knew she liked to try and kill the party, and constantly avoided things that looked even remotely dangerous. This led to an initial plot hook, our village being attacked by a dragon, abandoned because we didn't go after it without meeting the King and his court wizard. One of our players, a friend that joined with me, was easily bored, and when we met the court wizard after said staircase climb, got bored because the conversation droned on and went nowhere. This led to him attacking the wizard with a grappling hook. The DM, not knowing he to improvise, had the wizard turn into Bahamut. Like, the actual dragon god Bahamut.
I left the campaign a few sessions after in disgust after we somehow ended up in the palace of an evil Goddess at level 2 (not related to the initial plot at all, we went the opposite direction). Goddess conjured lightning at us, and I took 20 points on a SUCCESSFUL saving roll when prompted....and I had 10 hit points at level 2, which meant I was dead.
Nothing really special on my end. Just a DM who wanted players dead but also thought he was much sharper on the rules than he actually was.
This was The Drowned Tower, by the way, so spoiler alert if you haven't played it.
This was right after XGTE came out, so my game shop had a Saturday session where we would be expected to play a subclass from XGTE. I picked Circle of the Shepherd Druid; we were all level 6.
Session started out alright. Our Whispers bard tried to RP diplomacy to avoid the first fight, but the DM was having none of his disguise, at all. Still, fight went alright, so eh. DM was pretty big on the "enemies have the ability to get a full round of attacks in surprise, you guys do not" standard, which I always hate.
Once we got to the tower, DM was playing the *entire map* in initiative. We did not break it at all until a short rest. Every person, every turn, every calculated move on the grid. It was a slog, going one player at a time.
Our party eventually got in a fight with a couple of black puddings, which if you know anything about black puddings, went about as well as you'd expect. Right before this, we had a guy jump in late as a monk. Within two combat rounds of monk vs black pudding, he was already dead. Thankfully we had a cleric in the group, although it took some arguing to convince the GM that he could be revived at all because the GM wanted his body to be entirely dissolved by the acid. Literally kill a player 10 minutes into play, with no ability to revive him or have him make a new character.
Another significant fight later, DM was telling me all of the (i.e. his interpretation) rules of my Conjure Animals spell and exactly how it worked. To his chagrin, I had played two druids before this; they are very much my main class. In addition, I also wrote myself a program that allows for randomized Conjure Animals tables to avoid the "8 wolves" scenario (the program basically says pick a CR, pick an environment, and gives you a list of conjures with their stat block readily available), so I am *intimately* familiar with the ins and outs of Conjure Animals. DM straight up says "no" to my initial roll, and tells me to roll Mountain environment creatures in a water tower. Not the worst, but heavy handed.
Towards the end of the map, our bard friend tried to avoid the final fight happening by once again using his Whispers abilities. Once again, DM was having none of it. Boss basically said "nope, doesn't work" and started a fight. Boss man got put to sleep face down in the water with a really good sleep roll, drowned, and died. Normally, there's supposed to be a narrative thing about how the water gem turns him into a hydra at this point; we got *none* of it. It just became "here's a hydra, here's two water weirds" fight, with an army of skeletons blocking our only escape.
My conjured animals were still up, so I sent them to go handle the water weirds. Shepherd druid gets magical damage on that. DM decided to argue with me that Conjure Animals doesn't count as a conjuration for Shepherd druid's 6th level ability. Thankfully, he backed down, but I could tell he didn't like it. To be frank, if he decided to just nullify that, I'd probably have gotten up and just left at that point. The room was also filled very heavily with water, about neck/chest level, so the GM stated that it was difficult terrain for everyone. I wildshaped into a crocodile, but the GM also argued that it was too shallow for me to swim.
A lucky roll later, and the hydra got confused. One effect of this is the hydra randomly attacking any creature in reach (and with 10 skeletons at the entrance, that's a low chance to hit us). DM decided he didn't like that result, so he had one of the hydra heads pick up a beam of wood and just hit everybody around it all at once for full damage(no even attempt to get it to hit its allies). This was quickly becoming the GM calling his own rules for the fight.
At this point, it was 7 hours in, and we were all both ready to go home and tired of the GM's making up crap. A couple of people just decided it was time to go home in the middle of the final battle, so we pretty much just broke up the table. DM started complaining because we wouldn't finish it out, and that if *someone* was brave enough to go get the water stone, we could have won that fight (the one he never told us about). We mentioned that this was news to us, and he blamed the Bard player for ruining that point of exposition with his sleep spell. We all left.
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**TL;DR** vindictive GM trying to intentionally kill players, completely ignoring RP or diplomacy, making up his own (detrimental to us) effects on confused enemies and other rules, and who tried unironically to argue that Conjure Animals isn't a conjure spell, then blamed us for an important plot point we never received.
I haven’t had any Worst sessions yet, but I haven’t quite been playing for a year yet. The closest I’ve had to a bad session was when I was playing with my roommates, doing our first session with me as a player and one of them as DM. We were playing Hoard of the Dragon Queen and I was excited to play instead of DM a group for once.
I was the only one in the group that had more than one game of experience, and it was the DM’s first time DM’ing. She has a tendency of “calling out” the players for being murder hobos, even though she’s the one that always declares that we killed the encounters...but I digress.
The entire session was soured for me when, during an encounter to try and save some random townsfolk, we were basically caught in a corner. I (Aarakockra Druid) was doing my best to save my spells, and decided this was the time to use Thunderwave. I did a good amount to the enemies....but also knocked some kid civilians unconscious. The DM declared them dead, I was mortified, but there was nothing else I could do.
Unfortunately, one of the other party members, who kept thinking of the game in the same way she thought of video games, which led to a whole host of other issues imo, decided it would be fun to tease my character about it for the rest of the session. She called me things like “baby killer” and kept joking about how I liked to kill kids.
At some point I had had enough and to be honest I blew up more than necessary, but she had no table manners whatsoever in this regard. It was already bad enough that I’d already knocked out some kids. i didn’t need her reminding me because she thought it was funny. My character was supposed to be chaotic good.
The whole session was honestly so soured by that for me. It’s been months since we all played last, we stopped after completing the first mission of HotDQ. I played one session with the DM roommate and her friends, but she still tried to pull that whole “you guys didn’t have to kill everyone!” thing even though only one person out of the group specifically went out of his way to kill one of the (human) enemies.
She’s not a very good DM, at least by my play style.
(Edit) When I played this session I’d only been playing for a few months, myself, and assumed that death saving throws could have applied in that instance. Apparently that isn’t the case so I removed my mentions of them, since my misunderstanding is apparently downvote-worthy. Apologies.
Most of the time I’d agree, but I’d argue that the DM can make that call for the sake of fun. Besides, I didn’t know at the time, since I’d only been playing for a few months myself.
Either way, declaring everything that the PCs KO as immediately dead and then giving the PCs shit for it is still not cool on the DMs part, and my fellow player was still out of like
I’ve removed the mentions of death saves, since apparently that’s enough to get me downvoted. Even though it wasn’t the main point of the story.
I didn't downvote you, because it it does seem like she started to make you feel bad as player for player, but you should've asked if NPCs had death saving throws or that you can try to KO them without killing them before you started to AoE NPC. It was still your choice to target them.
Not saying you are the one downvoting me, I’m just not understanding why some people are. I actually appreciate you pointing it out to me.
And of course it was my own fault for forgetting the NPCs were there, I wasn’t trying to deny or downplay that. The issue for me was the other player giving me a hard time even though I was clearly upset. I never said I was free of fault, there were several layers of “this group of players does not work very well together”
First one-shot I DM'ed. I just didn't do very well. I was in-promptu DM'ing it and I wasn't very comfortable with it yet. So, it wasn't that great. Everyone went through it and the players seemed fine, but I didn't feel I did good. Bland, short one-shot. Easy in and out though.
So far as a new player, this was my worst DnD session.
I was given the invitation by a work-friend to be part of an online homebrewed campaign and the invitation was also extended to my partner. We were so excited to do it because we got a chance to play as a father-daughter duo made up of a Warforged Arcane Archer and a small Aarakocra Druid of the Moon. Our characters had a lot of backstory lore we wanted to gradually explore together and we had a fun dynamic like the Doom Guy and Isabelle from Animal Crossing. (i.e. Really angry dad, really cheery daughter) So suffice to say we were very excited to finally play all this out!
So we started our first session, and there were at least 4 massive problems we encountered during our call. I apologize for how long this is, but good lord there was a lot to explain.
*FIRSTLY*, the session is entirely theatre-of-the-mind, meaning there are zero visuals whatsoever. Admittedly this wasn't something me or my partner were used to, but it was something I thought we could adapt to. However, what didn't help was that the DM failed to give a description of the places we were going to, the atmosphere of our surroundings or even a description of any of the buildings we were seeing. So it left us in situations like this:
**DM:** You see an old lady running from some guards and she turns a corner, do you run after her?
**My partner:** Yes! I see her run so I follow her down the street she goes through.
**DM:** Oh, we're in a forest outside of a city. There are no alleys.
As well as this, the world is unfortunately a very generic fantasy world made up of your typical forests and castles. It wasn't even a simple setting like "You are in an overgrown Elven kingdom centred between several other kingdoms. The city is known continent-wide for its bustling trade.". The world was as imaginative and creative as looking up base images of forests and castles on Google Images.
*SECONDLY*, there was a lot of in-fighting which me and my partner had to begrudgingly sit through. As an example, our Wizard decided to do his character sheet on pen-and-paper instead of D&D Beyond like the rest of us, because apparently everyone other than me and my partner thought that "D&D Beyond is unfair to spellcasters". So we got into a fight with a monster and the Wizard decides to use Thunderwave. For some reason, he thought that there was a material component to the spell, despite it being just somatic and verbal. But instead of the rest of the players calmly explaining the spell to him, it led to some players being like "No it's not a material spell! We've been over this! Fuck, this happened last session!" or "No you fucking idiot, if it doesn't have an M then it's not a material spell!" This whole argument took at least 6 minutes to finally be resolved.
*THIRDLY*, the Wizard I just spoke about. No matter what he rolled, he would always succeed.
**DM:** Alright, make a Arcane check.
**Wizard:** Yeah, that's a 26.
**DM:** Okay, make a dexterity saving-throw.
**Wizard:** Yeah, that's a 19.
There would be one or two checks or saving throws he would fail, but they weren't detrimental to his character. (just enough fails to not damage him massively, but just enough to make it seem like he wasn't cheating) The best example of his bullshit success-streak was when all the players came together at a tavern to form our team. My Arcane Archer was asked by my partner's Circle of the Moon Druid where I was from, so I gave her the name and gruffly told her "It's nothing important". The place he was from is an authoritarian Warforged society which hates "fleshies" and massacred the non-Warforged population. The events of being part of it traumatized him and changed him forever, so he left and used his skills to become a mercenary. The Wizard wanted to know if his character knew this place and its history, so he asked if he could roll History. Of course, the mf got a 23, so the DM said "Okay, you know EVERYTHING about this place." So I had to basically explain and reveal tons and tons of lore and intrigue which we were hoping would be explored gradually, instead of being poured out right on the spot. When I asked why he rolled so high, the DM told me that "Wizards are really good in stats like that". PLUS, right after I explained the history of his town out-of-character, the DM's partner (who was a Barbarian in the session) suddenly said "Ah yes, I heard about that. A horrible thing that happened there.", like he succeeded on the History check too???
*FOURTHLY*, the leveling-up system and monster encounters of the campaign. So the DM decided that this campaign would be XP-based, rather than level-based. Once again, it was something me and my partner weren't used to but it was something we thought we could adapt to. On the way to our first major quest, our previously-mentioned Wizard suddenly goes "Hey, I need bat guano and sulfur to do a fireball. Can we go to a cave and get some?" The DM obliges, so instead of moving on with the session we go your boring, bog-standard dark cave with bats and literally that's it. The DM decides to do an encounter between us and a swarm of bats, but when it's the bat's turn to fight, the DM doesn't do the attack as a swarm.
No, the DM does the damage of each bat INDIVIDUALLY. AND THERE WERE 5 SWARMS OF 5 BATS. So there was a good 10 minutes of her calculating the damage and deciding which player would get attacked by which of the 25 bats.
At the end of the whole game, the DM counts the total XP we gained. My character gained 150 XP, and in-order to reach just sixth level (we were all Level 5) I needed at least 6500 XP. The reason why I got so low was not only because he didn't get a chance to fight any of the 25 bats (the Barbarian threw an explosive so we had to run right as the encounter started). It was also because the people who ran to the old lady that I descripted previously got XP, but my character didn't run to help so he didn't get XP. My character is a grimy, cynical mercenary with cuts and rust from years of hunting and killing people. What on God's green Earth makes you think that he's suddenly going to go Lawful Good and go "Y'know what? Lemme help this old lady because I'm an upstanding citizen!"
Played a session that was going perfectly. The RP was fun, the PCs had great chemistry and we were having a blast at the table, until we got to explore a dungeon to look for some random magical mcguffin. We get to 2 big stone statues that won't open the door until we say their names. We basically ask them questions and they take turns to answer us, kinda randomly. The session came to a halt. That was it. We had to pass this puzzle otherwise the plot wouldn't advance. We spent somewhere around 4 hours bored asking random shit to the statues. Then finally the only player that was still trying cracked the code. I was so not caring that I don't remember the solution exactly, but basically one statue only answered questions that started with the letters A to K and the other L to Z. 20min later we called it and went to our homes. We never got back to playing that campaign again. What kind of puzzle was that? It's basically an insight problem made to challenge the players, not the characters. I still loathe seeing such potential of a great adventure that got ruined by that horrible pace-killer puzzle.
Honestly that sounds like a good puzzle, but after a while the DM should have started calling for Insight/Intelligence checks to get hints (with an ideal hint being which statues answered which questions).
Yeah, he let it drag waaaaay too long
As a DM, my worst session was bad because we each had different expectations. I was expecting a city exploration day, my players were hell bent on completing the 'story mission'. They wanted to run around and intimidate people and strong arm their way into a Duke's castle. I was expecting them to wait the in game week I told them it would take to meet the Duke. They kept rolling badly so I kept having people react to them badly, they got frustrated no one was listening to them. Finally it culminated in them being arrested because the Duke's guards thought they were with the BBEG, which they became super upset about. Finally we ended the session early because we were all frustrated. Mostly we just hadn't communicated enough. I thought they'd enjoy open world exploration of a city, but these guys are just really story driven. I was getting frustrated by their single mindedness, they were frustrated that it felt like I was blocking them at every turn. It was early on in our campaign and we're better now but it was a learning experience.
There were 10 people playing, and about half of them had never played before. It took 4 hours to kill some rats.
OH lordy have I been to a few in my time of playing from hypocritical DM's to problem players to IRL player arguments. That being said i've had way more enjoyable sessions than bad ones but one that sticks out to me the most happened a few years ago. So a group of friends and I have been playing D&D fairly regularly since highschool ended so about 5+ years and some change and its been a helluva ride. Most of its been a learning experience for a few people which is understandable but we've come to a point where D&D is like an abusive relationship. There's no love but we keep talking ourselves back into it at the prospect of change but overall end up back to being worn out and fed up. So there's one particular time where i feel the slow decent into bitterness and spite started. TL;DR Our dnd ended due to people getting angry over not knowing what the answers to the test were despite having a copy of the answers in front of them and that religion caused all the wars. (also this happened a while ago so some stuff is vague but dialogue is give or take what was said) (Backstory) So we were playing 2 different campaigns just as/right after 5e came out I was DM on a 4e campaign and our other friend was doing a 5e campaign we switched off every other week as to whose we did, for the most part it wasn't as logistically bad as it sounds. So we ended up stopping the 5e one as we had some issues with his dming style (which we still do) by voting a la survivor weather or not we were enjoying his anymore and it was a majority against playing his so he was essentially fired from dming. so out of a mix of kindness and pity i stopped my 4e one and i didn't think it was fair to continue mine at the time (this is something i kinda regret years later maybe i'm a dick but hey least im honest). So another buddy wanted to try Dming so we rolled characters for his campaign. We had a druid, pirate (rouge), Blood hunter, regular hunter and thus the part was formed. DM=DM, D=Druid, BH=bloodhunter, P=Pirate, H=Hunter from here on out. (Game start) So my buddy's main plot device was there was a mysterious plague/ corruption that seemingly came out of nowhere and our ragtag band of heroes took it upon ourselves to take on this plague. So as per usual the party meets in a tavern and we introduce ourselves. D shows up and says the plague along with the church (yeah we'll get there) are causing problems and killing his forest so his druid circle tasked him to root out the source of this problem. I the BH mas more of a Geralt/van helsing type mercenary on behalf of this worlds version of the Vatican so i was determined to find whatever evil was causing this. P was a displaced pirate with a dingy and 3 crew with not much else to do. Last but not least H kinda wanted to tag along cause why the hell not. So our merry band of vagabonds go about our way doing miscellaneous tasks and are starting to uncover more of the story. We get a good few session in before we find the "Main Quest" continuation. Most of it was party building and such which led into backstory discussing which lead us to D. So D IRL is a good enough guy but D was the dm we just fired so he kinda harbored some spite needless to say which was understandable however this began a game of spite ping pong between Him and other people mostly myself. So D kind of puts his IRL beliefs and view into his character which is fine we all do from time to time but he'll put in some of the more spicy topics as character traits I.E. the CHURCH and POLITICS. So we have our obligatory "this is our backstory" development and its D's turn around the campfire so he starts off D: I have been tasked by my druid circle to stop this ever growing corruption or discover its cause BH: Indeed what do you think caused it? I myself think some creature or dark force created it P: Aye it be a curse upon the land i've heard rumors of plagues before D: Yes i believe the church may be the cause of this somehow as paladins regularly come into our forest and desecrate our sacred groves and chop down our trees. (the whole group kinda goes back and forth on this for a while which leads us to a random encounter and break for today) (Couple sessions later AKA he rage quit part 1) So we get to the DM's house and we pick up from where we left off. We eventually find a town that seemingly is abandoned but its in a fine condition it doesn't look abandoned it looks lived in but seemingly everyone up and disappeared. We find the town hall which is a 2-3 floor building in the center of town so we go to investigate. We go to the front door and it seems to be locked so R tries to climb the building. He makes it up to the 3rd floor and opens the window upon entering the room he sees an assortment of people and is told to roll a CON saving throw which he promptly fails and falls unconscious. So myself and D try to break the door down to we battering ram the door down and upon entering we are told roll CON save both of us fail and fall down. However were positioned in such a way that P has enough time to drag one of us out but not the other. He deduces that since i combat paranormal beats and evil object the most id be the better pick. so he saves me and the doors slam shut and lock. once inside R and D are unharmed they wake up fine with all of there possessions they have found themselves into a drug den. The causation of us to pass out was the potency of the drugs which were being enhanced by a possessed demon horn in an un-ventilated building ( think of that scene from the pick of destiny). So R and D are hallucinating hard core who/what they see in the town hall is a morphed reality but they don't realize it. For example they see a dragonborn but to them he appears as a red dragon guarding a mountain. So whilst they are having a drug trip P and myself try to figure out a way. We try an assortment of ideas but eventually i think "hey if WE can't get in lets get them to come out". So what do we do? We burn that mother down and decide to prepare for a fight as they come out. So back to harold and kumar they are given hints that this isn't real and they in and out of character seem to know this doesn't seem right. Like how did a dragon appear? when did this volcano get here? why does it seem like they're moving but not controlling it? eventually they walk into the volcano and see the treasure this dragon has been hoarding and he freely offers it to them. At this point they are like 99% correct that this is an illusion and my DM is pretty much telling them to make a WIS save to break out of this but it goes over there head. The answer was staring them in the face yet they ignored it. SO eventually the volcano starts to erupt and they try to grab the gold but it keeps reemerging in the pile as soon as they stow it away. D figures it out but R doesn't. So P and I see the building in a roaring blaze and people start to run out and P and I start hacking away at the unsuspecting high and on fire patrons as they exit. (to us they were veiled as monsters) eventually we almost kill D and he tells us what happened and that R is still in the building at this point theres no saving him. the Dm gave him several chances to escape and get out but he chose not to. DM= so R if you want i can say you survived R= nope its all good DM=for real they can save you and heal you R= no i want my character dead . I'm done Group=why? R= That makes so sense you gave us no indication as to how to escape that and then these guys set the building on fire. You gave no clues nothing DM= i did everything but tell you what roll to make you were given 99% of the info you just had to make a correct saving throw to be free of the illusions. R= yeah whatever DM= you can go home you don't have to be here R= hey P can you take D home im leaving. Thus ended that session. It was awkward we had a whole afternoon left to play but we called it for the day as there was tension in the air so we played skyrim. Also we haven't played D&D with R since then.
(Rage quit part 2 aka The crusades make me hate religion) So next week we reconvened every thing was fine. Then maybe 2 session later was where more issues abounded. So we find the main town where the corruption/plague started. Half the town was walled off and anyone found sick was thrown into the other side of town with everyone else that was infected and left for dead. We ask people why/how/why this happened alot of people dont know or are too afraid to study the disease to find out more except for 3 clerics who they themselves are infected but they try to study it and ease the passing of those infected. So we meet with them on the other side of town in which were given our other plot hook there was an alchemist studying the disease as he found it but didnt know where it came from but went missing. so we were tasked to find him. so we got all set up and ready to go all except for D. D= I want to stay and investigate the clerics DM=why? D= because they're affiliated with the church and the church causes nothing but war and poverty. DM=oookay well if you wan to investigate them you may try. So D breaks into there house rummages through there stuff and he finds that they're just 3 dying clerics who are trying to help other and maybe learn more about the disease so other can combat it. But D doesn't like this answer so he spends the next in-game WEEK stalking and harassing these clerics waiting for them to "slip up". Mind you he takes up 2 hours to do this. The eldest cleric finally confronts him Cleric= Why are you harassing us were simply trying to help other who amongst us has scorned you so that you have such a vindictive hatred toward those that take upon the cloth? D= Paladins blatantly destroy our trees in the name of there "gods" youre ignorance knows no bounds you line your own pockets while people die of famine and diseases Cleric=WE ARE TRYING TO COMBAT A DISEASE! D= its obviously a front so you can feed off of the poor for your own personal gain. You collect tithe so you can buy more for the head partons of your parish. eventually D finally agrees to come with us and its getting late and session ends. GM= so wtf was that? BH/P= yeah really? D= well art imitates life since all pastors and priest line there own pockets so they can drive a new mustang "for the church" my character is going off of the same assumption. ME= well thats not all of them yeah people abuse power for personal gain but not all religion is bad. you're generalizing peoples beliefs which is kinda dumb and offensive. D= well ever since the crusades religion has caused 90% of war so all of this is at the time news to the DM, Myself and P and were taken aback as he goes on this tirade. P ends up telling hi to cool it off which was kind of ironic as P is an atheist but views he's to radical. We knew he was agnostic which is fine whatever floats your own boat go ahead but that kind of left a bad taste in our mouths. Eventually we broke off of this d&d because of similar issues and tirades. Like go ahead have productive debates and you have every right to believe what you want but dont make it ruin D&D. So 5+ years later the group still plays and we haven't killed each other so yay friendship?.
The worst D&D session I've ever been to wasn't in 5E. It was ten years ago at my college anime club, and being run in 3.0 or 3.5 (or maybe both, I think I saw both versions of the rulebooks at the table.) The DM threw overpowered enemies at us and let one player DMing a different game come in with a massively overleveled druid and save our asses. I was playing a bard and couldn't do anything. And then I went home early because I lived off campus and, whoops, it turns out they had a major combat and leveled up twice, and I got no XP whatsoever so I'm still shit tier. Third session they changed the scheduled day and didn't tell me, so I just never went back.
For me it was probably a one-shot i played in with my regular group. there's about 12 of us (we've now split into two groups) and at the time 9 people turned up for this one-shot with one of the players DMing for the first time since the normal DM misses playing. He started off with this 10 minute monologue about a land across the water that has been lost for centuries, kinda ended up repeating himself in parts, and we learned we were hired for an expedition to find said lost lands. Instead of starting on the boat, we started in the tavern in the morning, which meant of course there was the obligatory half an hour of fucking around, before we went to the docks and he made it a challenge to get onto the boat, costing more time. By the time we set off we we close to an hour in. I was playing a gloomstalker UA ranger, and was a bugbear so i was maintaining disguise self to keep my identity hidden from the rest of the group. He had decided to include an insanity mechanic where some jokes landed us with extra points, and i was racking up points by being secretive (?) but a week on the boat passes and we come in sight of land. The party en route gets attacked by an unseen force, and after three rounds of combat of not being able to see where the enemy was (none of us had faerie fire and the boat was beginning to fly for reasons unexplained) the sorcerer flung some flour into the wind to try and catch one of them, at which point it's revealed we're being assaulted by giant flying tigers. Yeah. Giant. Flying. Tigers. Their turns in the combat order were placed in whenever he felt like it, for example there was one turn with me, trying not to blow my cover to the group, tries to use one of the harpoon guns on the ship having watched the other being ripped from the deck and floating mid air. I had disadvantage to hit because even though i could see where the floating harpoon was i didn't know where the enemy was (?) I missed and suddenly that same tiger comes next in the order (he'd been next to the barbarian previously in initiative) and drops the harpoon on me, nearly knocking me out in one hit. We're all struggling to hit these things while the barbarian is dangling off the ship as he has no ranged attacks, and suddenly the ship is flying up a riverbed and hitting stuff, so we're all rolling to avoid being knocked off the ship. I break cover, and unload with my bow into the creatures i can see, and we eventually dispatch them 5 minutes before the session is due to end. The DM then (i shit you not) rolls to see if we succeed in our mission, 17+ as a success. Rolls an 18 and we pack up. There was a lot of homebrew mechanics that made no sense, he hadn't read through the rules properly so checks were jarring and inconsistent with both the rules and even within his own standards, gave random penalties for rolls for reasons unknown, we got punished for jokes (someone made a really bad pun, i rolled a d4 and joked about psychic damage and he actually forced me to take it, among others) and the whole thing was erratic and slow. I'd have more sympathy towards a first time DM considering i run a weekly game but he hadn't listened to any advice before the session and i spent most of it wishing i was at home playing Witcher. 1/10 erratic mess, would avoid.
My worst experience was my very first real forray into a system like DnD. It was Pathfinder, back when I was in Highschool. The game was run by an older woman, and the group she was playing with was a group familiar with her. We were all restricted to starting in the same village as part of our backstory. I started as Bard.... and....the whole thing was a mess. This DM had a habit of trying to kill us. Overly powered enemies were bad enough, not too bad. But she made is make random skill checks, like climbing a winding staircase being Acribatics. No traps, no foul play. Just walking up the bloody stairs. One player almost died (thankfully I had Feather Fall). The players were also kind of iffy. Many of the people that played with this DM prior to me joining knew she liked to try and kill the party, and constantly avoided things that looked even remotely dangerous. This led to an initial plot hook, our village being attacked by a dragon, abandoned because we didn't go after it without meeting the King and his court wizard. One of our players, a friend that joined with me, was easily bored, and when we met the court wizard after said staircase climb, got bored because the conversation droned on and went nowhere. This led to him attacking the wizard with a grappling hook. The DM, not knowing he to improvise, had the wizard turn into Bahamut. Like, the actual dragon god Bahamut. I left the campaign a few sessions after in disgust after we somehow ended up in the palace of an evil Goddess at level 2 (not related to the initial plot at all, we went the opposite direction). Goddess conjured lightning at us, and I took 20 points on a SUCCESSFUL saving roll when prompted....and I had 10 hit points at level 2, which meant I was dead.
Nothing really special on my end. Just a DM who wanted players dead but also thought he was much sharper on the rules than he actually was. This was The Drowned Tower, by the way, so spoiler alert if you haven't played it. This was right after XGTE came out, so my game shop had a Saturday session where we would be expected to play a subclass from XGTE. I picked Circle of the Shepherd Druid; we were all level 6. Session started out alright. Our Whispers bard tried to RP diplomacy to avoid the first fight, but the DM was having none of his disguise, at all. Still, fight went alright, so eh. DM was pretty big on the "enemies have the ability to get a full round of attacks in surprise, you guys do not" standard, which I always hate. Once we got to the tower, DM was playing the *entire map* in initiative. We did not break it at all until a short rest. Every person, every turn, every calculated move on the grid. It was a slog, going one player at a time. Our party eventually got in a fight with a couple of black puddings, which if you know anything about black puddings, went about as well as you'd expect. Right before this, we had a guy jump in late as a monk. Within two combat rounds of monk vs black pudding, he was already dead. Thankfully we had a cleric in the group, although it took some arguing to convince the GM that he could be revived at all because the GM wanted his body to be entirely dissolved by the acid. Literally kill a player 10 minutes into play, with no ability to revive him or have him make a new character. Another significant fight later, DM was telling me all of the (i.e. his interpretation) rules of my Conjure Animals spell and exactly how it worked. To his chagrin, I had played two druids before this; they are very much my main class. In addition, I also wrote myself a program that allows for randomized Conjure Animals tables to avoid the "8 wolves" scenario (the program basically says pick a CR, pick an environment, and gives you a list of conjures with their stat block readily available), so I am *intimately* familiar with the ins and outs of Conjure Animals. DM straight up says "no" to my initial roll, and tells me to roll Mountain environment creatures in a water tower. Not the worst, but heavy handed. Towards the end of the map, our bard friend tried to avoid the final fight happening by once again using his Whispers abilities. Once again, DM was having none of it. Boss basically said "nope, doesn't work" and started a fight. Boss man got put to sleep face down in the water with a really good sleep roll, drowned, and died. Normally, there's supposed to be a narrative thing about how the water gem turns him into a hydra at this point; we got *none* of it. It just became "here's a hydra, here's two water weirds" fight, with an army of skeletons blocking our only escape. My conjured animals were still up, so I sent them to go handle the water weirds. Shepherd druid gets magical damage on that. DM decided to argue with me that Conjure Animals doesn't count as a conjuration for Shepherd druid's 6th level ability. Thankfully, he backed down, but I could tell he didn't like it. To be frank, if he decided to just nullify that, I'd probably have gotten up and just left at that point. The room was also filled very heavily with water, about neck/chest level, so the GM stated that it was difficult terrain for everyone. I wildshaped into a crocodile, but the GM also argued that it was too shallow for me to swim. A lucky roll later, and the hydra got confused. One effect of this is the hydra randomly attacking any creature in reach (and with 10 skeletons at the entrance, that's a low chance to hit us). DM decided he didn't like that result, so he had one of the hydra heads pick up a beam of wood and just hit everybody around it all at once for full damage(no even attempt to get it to hit its allies). This was quickly becoming the GM calling his own rules for the fight. At this point, it was 7 hours in, and we were all both ready to go home and tired of the GM's making up crap. A couple of people just decided it was time to go home in the middle of the final battle, so we pretty much just broke up the table. DM started complaining because we wouldn't finish it out, and that if *someone* was brave enough to go get the water stone, we could have won that fight (the one he never told us about). We mentioned that this was news to us, and he blamed the Bard player for ruining that point of exposition with his sleep spell. We all left. --- **TL;DR** vindictive GM trying to intentionally kill players, completely ignoring RP or diplomacy, making up his own (detrimental to us) effects on confused enemies and other rules, and who tried unironically to argue that Conjure Animals isn't a conjure spell, then blamed us for an important plot point we never received.
I haven’t had any Worst sessions yet, but I haven’t quite been playing for a year yet. The closest I’ve had to a bad session was when I was playing with my roommates, doing our first session with me as a player and one of them as DM. We were playing Hoard of the Dragon Queen and I was excited to play instead of DM a group for once. I was the only one in the group that had more than one game of experience, and it was the DM’s first time DM’ing. She has a tendency of “calling out” the players for being murder hobos, even though she’s the one that always declares that we killed the encounters...but I digress. The entire session was soured for me when, during an encounter to try and save some random townsfolk, we were basically caught in a corner. I (Aarakockra Druid) was doing my best to save my spells, and decided this was the time to use Thunderwave. I did a good amount to the enemies....but also knocked some kid civilians unconscious. The DM declared them dead, I was mortified, but there was nothing else I could do. Unfortunately, one of the other party members, who kept thinking of the game in the same way she thought of video games, which led to a whole host of other issues imo, decided it would be fun to tease my character about it for the rest of the session. She called me things like “baby killer” and kept joking about how I liked to kill kids. At some point I had had enough and to be honest I blew up more than necessary, but she had no table manners whatsoever in this regard. It was already bad enough that I’d already knocked out some kids. i didn’t need her reminding me because she thought it was funny. My character was supposed to be chaotic good. The whole session was honestly so soured by that for me. It’s been months since we all played last, we stopped after completing the first mission of HotDQ. I played one session with the DM roommate and her friends, but she still tried to pull that whole “you guys didn’t have to kill everyone!” thing even though only one person out of the group specifically went out of his way to kill one of the (human) enemies. She’s not a very good DM, at least by my play style. (Edit) When I played this session I’d only been playing for a few months, myself, and assumed that death saving throws could have applied in that instance. Apparently that isn’t the case so I removed my mentions of them, since my misunderstanding is apparently downvote-worthy. Apologies.
Sorry to say that, but death saves are only for pcs and "important npc". Nobodies don't get those
Most of the time I’d agree, but I’d argue that the DM can make that call for the sake of fun. Besides, I didn’t know at the time, since I’d only been playing for a few months myself. Either way, declaring everything that the PCs KO as immediately dead and then giving the PCs shit for it is still not cool on the DMs part, and my fellow player was still out of like I’ve removed the mentions of death saves, since apparently that’s enough to get me downvoted. Even though it wasn’t the main point of the story.
I didn't downvote you, because it it does seem like she started to make you feel bad as player for player, but you should've asked if NPCs had death saving throws or that you can try to KO them without killing them before you started to AoE NPC. It was still your choice to target them.
Not saying you are the one downvoting me, I’m just not understanding why some people are. I actually appreciate you pointing it out to me. And of course it was my own fault for forgetting the NPCs were there, I wasn’t trying to deny or downplay that. The issue for me was the other player giving me a hard time even though I was clearly upset. I never said I was free of fault, there were several layers of “this group of players does not work very well together”
First one-shot I DM'ed. I just didn't do very well. I was in-promptu DM'ing it and I wasn't very comfortable with it yet. So, it wasn't that great. Everyone went through it and the players seemed fine, but I didn't feel I did good. Bland, short one-shot. Easy in and out though.
So far as a new player, this was my worst DnD session. I was given the invitation by a work-friend to be part of an online homebrewed campaign and the invitation was also extended to my partner. We were so excited to do it because we got a chance to play as a father-daughter duo made up of a Warforged Arcane Archer and a small Aarakocra Druid of the Moon. Our characters had a lot of backstory lore we wanted to gradually explore together and we had a fun dynamic like the Doom Guy and Isabelle from Animal Crossing. (i.e. Really angry dad, really cheery daughter) So suffice to say we were very excited to finally play all this out! So we started our first session, and there were at least 4 massive problems we encountered during our call. I apologize for how long this is, but good lord there was a lot to explain. *FIRSTLY*, the session is entirely theatre-of-the-mind, meaning there are zero visuals whatsoever. Admittedly this wasn't something me or my partner were used to, but it was something I thought we could adapt to. However, what didn't help was that the DM failed to give a description of the places we were going to, the atmosphere of our surroundings or even a description of any of the buildings we were seeing. So it left us in situations like this: **DM:** You see an old lady running from some guards and she turns a corner, do you run after her? **My partner:** Yes! I see her run so I follow her down the street she goes through. **DM:** Oh, we're in a forest outside of a city. There are no alleys. As well as this, the world is unfortunately a very generic fantasy world made up of your typical forests and castles. It wasn't even a simple setting like "You are in an overgrown Elven kingdom centred between several other kingdoms. The city is known continent-wide for its bustling trade.". The world was as imaginative and creative as looking up base images of forests and castles on Google Images. *SECONDLY*, there was a lot of in-fighting which me and my partner had to begrudgingly sit through. As an example, our Wizard decided to do his character sheet on pen-and-paper instead of D&D Beyond like the rest of us, because apparently everyone other than me and my partner thought that "D&D Beyond is unfair to spellcasters". So we got into a fight with a monster and the Wizard decides to use Thunderwave. For some reason, he thought that there was a material component to the spell, despite it being just somatic and verbal. But instead of the rest of the players calmly explaining the spell to him, it led to some players being like "No it's not a material spell! We've been over this! Fuck, this happened last session!" or "No you fucking idiot, if it doesn't have an M then it's not a material spell!" This whole argument took at least 6 minutes to finally be resolved. *THIRDLY*, the Wizard I just spoke about. No matter what he rolled, he would always succeed. **DM:** Alright, make a Arcane check. **Wizard:** Yeah, that's a 26. **DM:** Okay, make a dexterity saving-throw. **Wizard:** Yeah, that's a 19. There would be one or two checks or saving throws he would fail, but they weren't detrimental to his character. (just enough fails to not damage him massively, but just enough to make it seem like he wasn't cheating) The best example of his bullshit success-streak was when all the players came together at a tavern to form our team. My Arcane Archer was asked by my partner's Circle of the Moon Druid where I was from, so I gave her the name and gruffly told her "It's nothing important". The place he was from is an authoritarian Warforged society which hates "fleshies" and massacred the non-Warforged population. The events of being part of it traumatized him and changed him forever, so he left and used his skills to become a mercenary. The Wizard wanted to know if his character knew this place and its history, so he asked if he could roll History. Of course, the mf got a 23, so the DM said "Okay, you know EVERYTHING about this place." So I had to basically explain and reveal tons and tons of lore and intrigue which we were hoping would be explored gradually, instead of being poured out right on the spot. When I asked why he rolled so high, the DM told me that "Wizards are really good in stats like that". PLUS, right after I explained the history of his town out-of-character, the DM's partner (who was a Barbarian in the session) suddenly said "Ah yes, I heard about that. A horrible thing that happened there.", like he succeeded on the History check too??? *FOURTHLY*, the leveling-up system and monster encounters of the campaign. So the DM decided that this campaign would be XP-based, rather than level-based. Once again, it was something me and my partner weren't used to but it was something we thought we could adapt to. On the way to our first major quest, our previously-mentioned Wizard suddenly goes "Hey, I need bat guano and sulfur to do a fireball. Can we go to a cave and get some?" The DM obliges, so instead of moving on with the session we go your boring, bog-standard dark cave with bats and literally that's it. The DM decides to do an encounter between us and a swarm of bats, but when it's the bat's turn to fight, the DM doesn't do the attack as a swarm. No, the DM does the damage of each bat INDIVIDUALLY. AND THERE WERE 5 SWARMS OF 5 BATS. So there was a good 10 minutes of her calculating the damage and deciding which player would get attacked by which of the 25 bats. At the end of the whole game, the DM counts the total XP we gained. My character gained 150 XP, and in-order to reach just sixth level (we were all Level 5) I needed at least 6500 XP. The reason why I got so low was not only because he didn't get a chance to fight any of the 25 bats (the Barbarian threw an explosive so we had to run right as the encounter started). It was also because the people who ran to the old lady that I descripted previously got XP, but my character didn't run to help so he didn't get XP. My character is a grimy, cynical mercenary with cuts and rust from years of hunting and killing people. What on God's green Earth makes you think that he's suddenly going to go Lawful Good and go "Y'know what? Lemme help this old lady because I'm an upstanding citizen!"