D&D Players, What are your 'Red Flags' for DMs? 

The biggest red flag I've experienced so far: During Session 0 Me: can I play this homebrew race? Here's the details, let me know if I should make any changes. DM: Nah, it's cool, go right ahead. DM proceeds to focus fire and kill my character in the first hour of session 1 DM: Next time, pick a real race.

When a GM nerfs the race you wanted for your character not only once, but TWICE, but their significant other is getting away with whatever they want

I once had a grey skinned tiefling character and i got called out for "racism" for "practically doing blackface at the table"

My red flag: half bragging about how they "accidentally" traumatized a character so much that the player had to retire them. My old dm ruined his best friend's character from a previous group by throwing horrifying trauma after horrifying trauma at the character until the PC could not function in the world without acting radically out of character. EDIT: All these traumatizing events were within the span of a few sessions, *not* over the course of a campaign. He said he had fixed his behavior when he and I played together, and then proceeded to do almost the exact same thing to my (first ever) PC. I've learned that people like that don't actually recognize what they have done is wrong, and they are solely focused on trying to break the spirit of the party and/or enact their need for torture porn.

My red flag was our dm kicking a guy out for eating the snacks we bring. If you say from the beginning that we have to bring snacks for everyone, you better be ready for those snacks to be consumed. Our DM made pizza and we all brought snacks, including the 'problem player' but was mad he ate more than everyone else. Like bro, what the fuck do you think we brought that shit for? It ain't decorative

One red flag that I think not many people watch out for: A DM that doesn't set good boundaries. Now this one can just be inexperience but I've found that in most cases if the DM has a well developed world, there are things that just won't mesh with that world and there's likely to be player requests that don't fit with the vision that the DM has for the world. A good DM will take the player input and discuss with the players how they could change it to fit the world/story. But some DMs have issues saying anything other than yes and in my mind this behavior will inevitably lead to a bad experience for all involved.

DMs who punish players for picking a race the DM doesn't like WITHOUT saying "hey I'm not a fan of this race, please choose something else." My first ever DM never told me about his burning hatred for elves, I played an elf ranger (this was back in 3.5) and he proceeded to humiliate my character every chance he could. NPCs would shit talk him, all my actions would have bizarre negative consequences and I had to have the rest of the party buy my own gear.

One that I'd throw out there is that same texting red flag of one word answers (or overly short answers). I had a DM describe that we were in a wizard's tower, when I asked what does the room look like. His answer, "a room." I was quite stunned tbh, then curiously asked, "are there any doors?" "yeah, there are doors." "How many doors are there?" "8." "Do they have any defining features making them distinct from one another?" The convo continued, but I think you get the picture at this point. I almost wanted to ask him, "does my character have functioning eyes, and if so could I be told what said eyes see in plain sight?" I guess I should be glad he didn't require me to roll perception in order to see if I can see the plain sight doors.

Had another DM who made his setting racist against Dragonborn because a king used dragons to take over the world, so everybody hated anything remotely draconic. I took one look at that and said “Bet” and made a good-hearted Dragonborn Cleric who gained incredible spiritual resilience from the shite he went through because he was Dragonborn. Trauma just didn’t faze him, the dude did the right thing no matter how people saw him for it. No matter what the DM threw at him, he stayed true to his heart. That campaign didn’t end well (it got cancelled because of scheduling changes), but I made one of the coolest characters I have ever played. It left a mark on the other players as well.

And being someone who is DM’ing for the first time since high school this month, I’ll be watching this particular video VEEEEEERY closely. Lol.

I honestly think it's appropriate to tell players how they character feel or how a character acts in situations, like: "you enter a dark dungen and can't help it but feel a chill down your spine." But i always encourage players to tell me thats not how there characters react, like:" i don't feel a chill down my back, i grew up in Dungeons like this, strangely my character feels at home." I had great experience with this method

Not having a session 0 and not establishing any of the world before the beginning of a campaign

Banning races could be fine if that is very clear from the beginning and they have a good world building/story reasons.

This small list of DM red flags was all giving to me from my first DM that introduced me to the ttrpg life. 1.Punishing the players for creativity and doing well in game by placing impossible obstacles or enemies in front of us. For they thought it was too "easy for us." 2. Running official modules and calling it their own home brew. 3. Always "losing" the character sheets. I now hold onto my character sheets because of this. 4. Always no matter the game, character, or setting has all npcs hit on my girl friend. 5. Reference to #3 calls it a "campaign" but never gets passed game or session one. The longest we ever played was 4 games. 6. Interpreting the rules or abilities differently to favor his story or to give his bad guy the "advantage." 3 examples are me playing a redemption paladin in 5e and trying to use my channel Divinity to reflect incoming damage and was told, "It's the staff doing the damage to you not the Caster and it says you target the hostile creature and the staff isn't one." Then playing a World of Darkness and I punched a ghost with salted Knuckle raps, "character an experienced man fighter may I add," crit success and preceeded to fly throw the ghost full force, breaking my hand and forearm on the sink.Then playing a Shadowrun game as a Drone Rigger and never being able to use any form of drone cuz it "scares and startles people" in a futuristic setting and always got caught. 7. Rage quit a game when we handed his mini boss, big obstacles or BBEG their ass from kicking it so hard. 8. Never looking over the tables character sheets before the first game and then disapproves either the whole character, specific items in the inventory, or by over powered the character is. Example when I played Icons with this Speedster that can duplicate and had 4 arms wielding swords and cleared a whole building of goons before the BBEG of the game noticed. Then over powered the boss by speed and out numbering them. "If I knew this character was this powerful I wouldn't have let you play it." Me, "Then why when I handed the sheet you looked at it and said it was ok and I asked are you sure?" Overall I will say I learned alot from this and decided to try DMing myself and asked my friends that were playing with me at the time and we've playing and having fun with all ttrpg's we've tried since for 7 years now.

An obsession with horrifying gore scenes outside of when they are meant to happen. Note that when I say gore I mean anything beyond bloody, disgusting, and vile, including things that are outside of a dead body (things that traumatize people for life IRL). “Gore” is a simplification for things that I’d get canceled for immediately if I wasn’t anonymous. If it is in an extremely dark fantasy campaign, then I don’t mind the intense gore at every corner. It makes sense, and adds to the depressing, terrifying, hopeless, dark atmosphere. I also don’t mind it if it is every once in a while in a regular fantasy campaign. However, some DMs out there are OBSESSED with gore, to the point where you feel uncomfortable even wandering through a regular, inhabited castle’s dungeon. One of my DMs was like this. If you entered a weak kobold den, you’d likely find several bodies, dead or alive, that have been “gored”. If you fell into a trapdoor in a dungeon that opened into a floor of spikes, you’re fall would be cushioned by dozens of dead bodies piled up, with excruciating details from the DM about what the gory mess looked like. You’d think the descriptions would be less uncomfortable and gross since they are merely spoken, but with my (and frankly all D&D players’s) strong imagination it quickly comes to life in your mind. I’ve felt sick a few times just hearing what vile things this woman thought up in her head. She’s my favorite DM for dark fantasy campaigns. But we absolutely forbid her from DMing regular sessions. We only allow a moderate amount of tragedy in her own characters’ backstories when she isn’t the DM, else she’ll make her character extremely traumatized from vile Shit that no person, fantasy race or not, would feasibly have to suffer

Changing the dungeon based on what the party plans is a huge red flag

Its one of my current dms. I am playing a Dwarf-Orc called Torwynn. She's a bit of a dummy but very strong. My issue was her father (who died when she was 10) was turned into a monster she had to fight and kill twice using the axe her father gave her, all while sobbing. What annoyed me, was that I and my character wasn't given time to grieve or process what happened and were immediately thrown into another dumb combat situation where the DM did stealth fails of 'you fart' or 'your ass cheeks clap together so loud you're heard'. I was really mad at him for a while and considered leaving the game altogether. I later went and wrote what I wanted to happen and accept that more than what happened in session. It helped me get through it, mostly because I'm not ready to let go of Torwynn yet.

A red flag for me is DMS that script player character death without talking to the player first. I've played under a couple DMS where a player showed up and was informed "hey you're character is dead because 'plot,' time to roll up a new one."

When a player drinks too much every session. A few beers or cocktails are fine but outright drunk isn't fun for anybody else who isn't drinking.

The Matt Mercer reference is actually not terribly valid as an example. Matt actually had a situation where he COULD have done something like the op is saying. It happened MUCH earlier and it was when his Boss npc should and would have levitated up but this character had no legendary actions. He stuck to his actions even though that character would have known better. If the gorgon experience is anything it was Matt learning that legendary actions are needed when so many players actually know what they are doing. Liam O’Brian’s was underestimated in the earlier encounter so Matt started being a little more thorough with combat encounters.

I run a DnD campaign that takes place in an apocalyptic scenario. The world slowly coming to life. Literally. Turning into a fleshy, eldritch monster with hair instead of grass, for example. Organs instead of underdark caves, too. I have this murder hobo character in our party. Well, not murder hobo, more like "beat up everyone and do what I want despite the obvious story." He'd randomly beat up NPCs if they even made one wrong move. He once abandoned the party during a bossfight just to run away with his pet boar. And then he opened a door to another world, a world he made, which was just Camelot. His character is themed around knights and King Arthur. I had to improvise on the spot, "the world you once knew has been consumed by the forest and bushes, your kingdom long since abandoned-" (he's been gone for 127ish years). And he responded with, immediately, "no, it's not. It's thriving." Keep in mind, he hadn't told me any of this beforehand. He didn't even make a map for me to use. He just did this because yes. Fortunately, though, he listened to me next campaign when I told him I was uncomfortable with the idea of having to do two campaigns at once, one in his world and one in ours. And then it grew worse. He's back to beat-up hobo mode. And it kinda helps, as we need combat in the place we visited. A kingdom with rapidly-dwindling supplies, since the world's crops are turning into... fertilizer. 😶 There's this corrupt castle in the middle of the kingdom, with a King who feeds on the starving townfolk for survival, keeping the queen locked in the basement. The queen being his sister. This is a "we must keep the bloodline pure" family. Later, we encounter their son. Who's obviously got some birth defects, mostly physical and some mental. But a kind soul, with a rather inquisitive mind and good intentions. His motivation for helping us? "I wanna do good. I wanna... I wanna see the trees again, I wanna see grass..." He's 4 years old, too. Beat-up hobo, out of character, begins to make fun of the kid because of how ugly he looks, and begins to call him a freak and laugh more. Then, in-game, he has his character grab the kid by the arm and scream at him to interrogate him on the location of the kid's father. This begins an argument at the table with us and him about how abnormally cruel the Knight is to this kid, WHO IS FOUR, and how he didn't ask to be born like that. That it's not justifiable to make fun of him for being "freakish."

When I was younger and dumber I took my character (non-dnd rpg where the dm had characters) and she went from a mentally and emotionally strong person to a mentally unstable vessel for their inner demon (now physically manifested) to control. An interesting concept if done right and filtered accordingly. This was a whole campaign in itself and I overused the villain, didn’t communicate with my players (sisters) about themes they were uncomfortable with, and made them feel like there was no solution (there was, the demon just manipulated them a lot, not an excuse though). After that era I realized what I was doing and my sisters and I mentally burned anything related to that campaign. This event happened when I was an edgy 14 year old and I have since become a better DM. Me and my sisters still roleplay together and we have long moved on from that dark era.

i got one ignoring your characers moral stances or even how they act entirely so i started my first campaign our dm was my ex friends brother i made my character to be a pacifist and didnt like killing there enemies so the first swarm i said i wanted to knock them out you know not kill them i roll a nat 20 so the dm litterally said i ripped off the enemies arm and beat them with it causing them to die from bloodloss the i started beating the others to death i didnt know much about dnd but this swayed me away from it until i found good friends to dnd with now i love dnd

My Red Flag: Encouraging Player vs Player Conflicts. I joined a Curse of Strahd game half-way through the campaign, only to find out that half of the party was changelings or vampires actively screwing over the rest of the party. My own character got turned into a werewolf in that game, and the DM took control of my character in the final fight and used my character against the rest of the party against my will.

I have a character concept in my brain that I might use as a litmus test if I ever join an in-person D&D group--a blue Tiefling Vengance Paladin. If the DM gives me shit about making my Tiefling blue (and doesn't have some sort of lore reason to justify it), then they're probably gonna give me shit about anything not RAW.

My red flag as a dm seems to be getting excited before the session. Someone always gets downed or worse when I'm enthusiastic.

I like the script-writer's commentary! Adds another point of view rather than just reading what happened. Not that it wasn't good with just reading, but both is nice.

Dictating characters actions/feelings is the biggest for me. If it's not magical compulsion (and not constant if that) you need to lay down the law or walk.

Personally I think that any DM who offers premade characters to players right in the beginning without even asking whether they want to make their own characters or not have already failed to set the mood for their game.

DMs who decide that when they kill a PC, they will mutilate the PC so revival is much harder (beheading, torn limb from limb, etc). I had a plauer get gutted, but not in a way that stopped revival. And even then, that player and I already had a system of Revival in place as he was NOT the body, but a Symbiotic Mask worn by said bidy. Also, dms who not only share art a player shared privately with them, with the entire group without asking said player. But also those who share NSFW art without asking the party if they are okay with it.

I tend to feel when a DM hammers in certain buzzwords such as "Gritty" "dark fantasy" or "realistic" they're codes for "You're going to be miserable so don't play"

My big one is when a dm insists that ever encounter must be "deadly." This makes the players make stronger characters, so the dm makes the monsters stronger, so the players make their character stronger... on and on it goes until every fight is a bitter war of attrition that leaves everyone miserable. I call it the doom spiral.

Only red flag that made me turn around was when I put out a generic looking for a group application in this one discord. Got one guy offering to let me join his, but I had to tell him how much I knew about Japanese culture/history and be willing to read his 20+ pages of homebrew. This *could* have been a decent game but going off d&d horror stories the odds whern't in its favor

So, my red flags are more so for cruelty. And certain encounter and the other is just a denial of an idea. 1. When any sort of dire animal appears that doesn't normally show up as a dire variant. SO MANY SMALL ANIMALS BECOME HORRIFYING WHEN DIRE. We had two moments with this. 1. Dire Humming Birds, wing beats when it groups give negatives to pretty much all checks and drink blood like vampires. 2. WASPS. BRUH. Things were the size of large cats we didn't even try to engage. We noped out, it was like the DM just liked to throw horrifying projects at us to test them. Not such a bad "red flag", the DM wasn't so much "bad" just so horrifying. Second thing. I got a lecture for carrying out my Kitsune's curiosity for potentially outrageous outcomes. Like, an actual lecture for trying to "derail" everything. Look, I totally get that some experiments can add badly. I mean, the character quirk pretty much altered everything when ever he did something. Two examples. 1. We had come across eventually both a bag of holding and a portable hole. Bright idea, what would happen if a portable empty space was put into a sealed of space inside the bag? Let me tell you, nothing good. Second example. We had time to prepare for an attack that was gonna happen to us in a fort. Bright idea with the mage and my kitsune. We found the the most isolated room, only one way in; the door. Right inside behind the door, we made two "gates" one on the floor and one above the door. Which, we tossed coins and other objects into. Caltrops, poison needles and other goodies. You ever see the game portal where you could potentially end up in a constant falling loop with two portals? It was that. It worked so well that they never even got close and we avoided like three major encounters from it.

As a DM I kinda have beef to pick with the first complaint about "player creativity". There's a very fine line with what should and shouldn't be allowed with creativity, and the applications of it are hazy at best. Everyone knows it's very satisfying to create a solution to a seemingly unsolvable situation, it's a great feeling. However, a common problem with "creativity" is that a lot people confuse a smart way something might be used with how something is actually used. For example, a bridge is going to collapse because the ropes are cut from the center while you and your party are on it, and a smart player might try to cast something like cast web before it snaps. Holding it together. This falls in line within reasonable expectations of the spell, albeit not explicitly written in it. A fair use of creativity. However, a bad example (I've had this exact situation happen before) is lets say an enemy is going to blow a war horn and alert the camp that there are intruders, and the Artificer casts Air Bubble inside the instrument to block the sound. Now see, Air bubble doesn't do that. (In fact, the creature has to be willing to even have it cast on them). The spell creates a sphere of breathable air, it doesn't block sound or prevent air flow or anything that would be effective here. This is a player going "I want to cast X and win". This was a bad feeling because in this case the creativity was a crutch they tried to rely on, instead of actually thinking of a solution they could actually do. Which is the main problem. It encourages players to attempt to use spells/abilities for things that spell/ability can't reasonably do. Such as freezing a river with cone of cold, (even though there is a specific spell for this EXACT kind of situation). A player will try to use "creative" solutions as a way to be lazy instead of coming up with a "real" solution. Which sounds objective, but part of the game aspect of DnD should be working with tools you have, not tools you wish you had. You can't just make a potion that does exactly what you need today, you can't just find the item you need right now when you need it. Players should feel the agency of their decisions, their items, their choices in spells and a DM should play into what the players want to do so the players feel like those choices matter. A player might feel like "This DM is shutting down my creative solutions", but in my opinion, going that far out the bounds of how spell is used, shows a lack of creativity, because you're just making up a solution you don't reasonably have. Our bard in the second example didn't have silence prepared, and he was honest about it so he couldn't solve that situation. However, it made him think, "in stealth ops I should really have this spell!" Which is a good learning experience and shows that he's thinking about how to apply spells to situations outside of just combat.

I am SO GLAD you brought up Commander Shepard and Garrus in response to the cross-species romance discussion. I am currently playing through the Mass Effect series for the first time and I LOVE Garrus and am attempting his romance arc. I got a little indignant when the op said "why would a reptilian Vesk be attracted to a mammalian humanoid," so I am SO happy you brought that up because I was thinking the SAME FREAKING THING. Garrus is best husbando.

I had a DM ask for a back story, which he decided to overwrite and remake her how he wanted her to be.

The only time i think it’s fine to tell someone what their character does is skill checks to describe how they did

I joined a group off of the official dnd discord server once. The dm decided that the way we were going to level up was by killing our characters. (With free revives but still) on top of this, it seemed like nothing we did really mattered, as he would just kill us in every situation we found ourselves in. I did not stick around for session 2.

“Anything said at the table is audible in game.” My first and favorite gaming group had this rule. In combat it didn’t matter because it would just be us tapping tactics. In RP it made it more engaging. You had to think before you spoke, so staying in character was easier and lead to incredibly dramatic moments at major character arcs. The rule was if you didn’t want to say it, somebody just needed to say “out of character, but…”. This would allow us a couple minutes to clarify any questions we had pertaining to how the situation came about, to ask the DM if there were details we were missing for a situation, etc. but it was always for the benefit of the RP experience. Never a detriment.

My biggest red flag is DMs who insist on having DMPCs in the party. I had a DM who had a rule of always having a minimum of 1 DMPC per player on the table, sometimes 2 per player. To make matters worse it was obvious the story always revolved around them to the point where he hijacked another player's background villain to be about one of his characters instead. We overheard the villain talking about how he doesn't care about that player's character anymore and is now only worried about the chosen of the fairy goddess (one of his many DMPCs). When I tried to tell him his focus on himself was ruining the game he refused to listen to me, saying I was the only one who didn't like it. At that point, what was originally a 4 players game had already been reduced to just me and one other girl who kept sending me Crit Crab videos and comparing it to our DM, but he still thought I was the only one who didn't like the game...

That very last one (enforced LGBTQ) is a blissfully rare thing in TTRPGs, but in the MUD/MUCK/MUSH world of online text games it's way more common. The number of characters I've had get crap for not being X or Y is too damn high. "She's not interested" gets treated like a personal attack. And pointing to the PCs I've made that *are* didn't much help in said cases. (sidenote, LGBT players tended *not* to be the people prone to that behavior, if anything they call that out as unfair when they see it. It's Cishet who do it in the MUD world and I have no idea why.)

I once had a DM send me a homebrew class telling me I should play it. I had wanted to play a cleric, but the class he sent me seemed cool so I just ran with it and made my character. Now one thing I should mention about this DM is, while this was my first time playing with him, the other players had played a campaign he DMed before and informed me he doesn't allow feats because he thinks they're overpowered. Anyways, there was a built in class feature that let this homebrew class attack a creature twice pretty early on, I think it was either 1st or 2nd level. When I used this in the first combat he told me that it was overpowered and I can't do that anymore. On it's own I probably would have said, "sure whatever," but they fact that he sent me this class to play and didn't even know what it did and changed what it did when he didn't like it made me upset and I never played with him again after that session.

If they call for a saving throw with no reason given for why it's needed, and then giggle when someone fails or express disappointment on a success. That just says to me 'how much can I traumatize this character/player?'

Had a DM where the DM couldn’t give their full attention to the game because they had infant siblings running around in the background all the time. And they had to focus their attention away from the game to respond to the usual toddler mishaps that we never overheard in specific but it was obvious that it happened. There was also a strained undercurrent of “OMG I have no idea how to do this but Imma do it anyway”, which I respected the moxie of but required HECKIN patience to wait through. DMs, arrange your time and space so you can give your full attention to the session. If you can’t do that? Then rethink DMing. The players feel either that they are suffering through your distractions with you, or they feel that you don’t respect their time and energy to make characters and play through your campaign. Neither is desired, and both make it harder for players to stick around. That DM had promise, but they DESPERATELY needed better organization.

Biggest red flag: The DM isn’t lenient or fun with creativity at all. There are two DMs that stand out to me when it comes to this. One was super fun and let us do all sorts of wacky shit (within reason as to not ruin the game), and the other had a stick up their ass and would literally pull out the most recent rule book if she suspected anything. If I asked if my poison gas spell(? might be cantrip) was flammable, the first DM would say “Sure, why not, but only if the gas isn’t too thick in the area” and I would have to release a small amount of poison gas and then ignite it to create a small explosion. The second DM would likely kick me from the session by having a “gang of mountain barbarians kidnap me in my sleep” or just straight up kill me and make a bullshit excuse as to how I am still alive in the next session.

I once had a DM who would always cry about how horrible her campaigns were, but never actually try to improve. The list of things they did included: Extreme railroading. Dmpcs stealing the spotlight and we couldn't get rid of them for plot reasons. Ignoring when a player was uncomfortable with their character being de-clothed and pushing through with it anyways, and many, many more incidents.

DMs who find joy in "beating" the players. D&D isn't about purposely trying to make the players lose, and DMs who see it that way are immediately off the table for me. Another would be the DM that treats D&D as a... activity you should do in private... if you know what I mean. It's never happened to me yet, but I remember seeing an example of it in the video on "what made you nope out of a campaign" and it disgusted me to no end.

I am enjoying the script writer adding to it as I feel like more commentary from experts are really helpful to understand and enjoy these games. I like listening to Matt Mercer talk about the rules and ideas but never watch CR as that's their game, not mine.

"No arguing with the DM" or any variation of that. The fact that it has to be there as a rule in the first place is a red flag. Because either it indicates problematic players or DM universally in my experience. It's the job of the party just as much to say "not cool" or whatever else is necessary as it is the DM's job to keep players in line.

As that rare species of DM who also has done enough being a PC, I always create a campaign that the group should love. Not just myself. And all I ask is the group at least tries to play along and experience the work I put in. If the DM has some obvious hooks when i'm a PC, I throw them a bone and take a few of them. Not always, but thats how i see how it should be done. Your all working to create a story together.

one of my biggest deal breaker ones that i ran into just a few minutes ago is DMs that seem obsessed with not letting your stats be your stats basically his argument was that my wizard with +8 INT and +6 to arcana knows next to nothing about magic regardless of rolls because the party is level 1 i put forth the argument that even a level 1 wizard has already spent years reading, researching, and experimenting his reply? "as god i reserve my right to be a terrible person" except so much more assholey than that i blanked the exact wording from my memory. i replied that i had no interest in playing skyrim with extra steps and walked out immediately. for context the knowledge in question was what the ethereal plane is and how bags of holding work. no this was not in an attempt to cheese anything.

Thank you. This was the channel that showed me what end was. 4 years later, I've stopped watching you for a while but I always come back, and it feels like home. Thank you

When the DM makes a gritty realism game, doesn't tell you as a first time player what that will mean for you as a sorcerer, then proceeds to constantly fuss you for hoarding your spellslots when you DO learn what it means for your sorcerer. Then immediately throws you and the group into a 3 boss gauntlet in the next session after you relent, no short rest between each, and oh yeah dominated by the mindflayer after the 3 boss gauntlet

Player and DM here. Had a fair share of awful and great DMs and players. Most of these are not red flags, more like personal preferences or actually red flags for players. Do you guys talk to your DMs before playing with them? Also, banning races is ok, DM should have fun too, maybe the guy just had enough. He can be great DM that just tired of awful players that happend to play tieflings. So here are my red flags for DMs: -Not communicating setting, homerules or anyrhing out of the ordinary to players before session 0. -Bad prep. If you see a DM that has almost no prep work, reading adventure from his phone, not remembering his own NPC names etc. If that happens on first session - most likely thats gonna be the golden standart of his. -For people who love fights - theater of mind games are huge red flags. Most likely there will be almost no fights, tactics wont matter, rules of combat as well.

Cheers to Starfinder from this Vesk boarding Marine combat engineer turned high risk salvage operator. Need a derelict cleared of zombies to rip out the leaky reactor core? He's your beer-swilling lizard!

No, no no no, no, it's not "A little over the line" for the gm to decide, describe and draw attention to a player character getting an erection at the sight of an npc. it's creepy, and weird, and 100% of the time it should be the player who says if they are attracted to an npc or not. Gms do not just get to make things happen to player characters for jokes. Especially sexual stuff. That is a giant pile of red flags and something I would absolutely walk from a table over.

How anyone can force people to play LGBT characters, but then ban Tieflings, which is like the queerest of the races is beyond me.

I was worried for a moment when I heard the "Starfinder, disallowed races". When I first picked up the corebook, I read through it and saw that Vesk/Solarians are a bit OP when combined. I told my group I wasn't allowing them for balance issues until I could find an errata to make sure I wasn't reading too far into it. As for my person red flags in a DM: I had a DM, in one of the few times I got to be a player, who had a board behind him with tick marks on it, and written across was "TPK Counter". It had close to twenty tick marks. Asked about it. "When I get bored of a group, I just TPK them and we start something new." I just left. That didn't sound fun at all.

I've said this in comments before and I'll say it again. Forcing draws of the deck of many things just when it's visible whether they are wanted or not, rolling against doing them. Also with another dm, attempting to beef encounters literally just to kill off a character (my barbarian) cause he kept getting random magic stuff, not my fault the dm decided to roll all loot random.

When I was a much Younger Dm meaning back in the mid 80's I was the bad dm limiting races and classes for campaines and oneshots and even handing out premade character sheets so the characters would fit the world.. a couple times it ended terribly, figured out the premade characters can work if you at least let the players choose who they want to play rather then assigning them. Had a player call me out as a DM for not allowing artificer or warforged in my games and one shots last year, They threw a fit even though I told them that I didn't have the books for that class or race. That player kept at me to the point I almost broke with the group I was DM'ing for, fortunately I now have those books and on a couple occasions I even Homebrew specific classes or races for the players. I still dm and play with the group, I have lost a few groups over the years mostly because of players or myself moving out of the area.

The DM saw I was going to play a paladin and went into a tirade about how celibates could never adventure, and it's easy to get them to renounce their vows. I told him I'm playing an Oath of Ancients paladin who enjoys wine, song, and good company, there wasn't anything about celibacy in his backstory and he's probably going to party if he has the opportunity. I was told that's not how paladins work and I would lose my spellcasting if I indulged at all. I didn't bother showing up to the first session.

I once had a DM face a 1st level party with a Revenant in a situation where the party had to flee and leave their paralyzed friend behind. The only possible outcome was that one party member dies first session. In our case 3 of 5 party members died. This wasn’t an isolated incident. In nine months of playing with that group I lost 5 characters and never reached 5th level. The DM would just say “this is old school dnd we’re characters die a lot” or “sometimes the dragon wins”. Some of the players never lost a character because they ran away from every encounter and the fighter types got left holding the bag. I was happy when Covid hit and the group broke up.

DMs who are more interested in their story than yours. Example: Had a DM who seemed super into his own story, but whenever the party say, wanted to RP with a family member, he'd seem super out of it. Thankfully I've gotten better DMs since then, but it did sorta make me afraid of making my own story.

the 'anything is allowed at my table' DM, what this has always meant to me has been 'the players can rape, murder, abuse everything and anything and that's ok as long as it's something the character would do'

Enemies running away should absolutely happen depending on the situation. If there were 5 goblins and 2 died, the rest are probably gonna run away. I would be very careful with the crazy ideas. I want to hear them first, but if it's something outright impossible, then no, I'm not allowing it. Nerfing abilities can have as simple an explanation as: because it unbalances the campaign, or because it doesn't fit the theme. Nerfing official stuff is perfectly ok, as long as the nerf is communicated before the game. Can't really fault the DM for getting burned in the past and just vetoing a certain race/class based on that. Perhaps there were already players that tried to convince them to play tieflings and then went chaotic stupid.

Sometimes we do have to rush the players along in certain scenarios though and I mean that's just kind of how it is like when I pitched the game that I had written out recently to my current three players I told them this is specifically designed to take for or five sessions and I wrote it that way because I knew I would only have 5 weeks tops that I could dedicate the time slot to dming that particular game and I gave them the parameters of it before we all started and made sure to explain the limited scope of it all and now two sessions later I'm getting complaints that it feels like where like I'm boxing them in. I've had to remind two of them already that I specifically stated I wrote this game out to last four or five sessions two of the three of them expected to go into perpetuity I clearly said it was quite literally the second line in the game pitch quite literally the second line in fact it might have actually been the second sentence they were all made very clear on that topic and that point before we started and they've already forgotten two sessions later we can't wrap up a game in 4 to 5 sessions if the players just go completely into left field and go do something entirely irrelevant like I understand that railroading is bad but playing a module is also railroading and what I wrote was a module everyone agreed to play it and then all of a sudden nobody wants to do that so forgive me for rushing my players along if they can't be asked to actually read the game pitch

TLDR: Lack of Safety Tools / Ignoring when humor and banter makes someone uncomfortable. (Details Included Below I actually would like advice on how to handle this properly as I've not yet left the group causing this issue) Important Information: I am one of only two women in this group, and I'm autistic so things like spoken rp and taking certain types of humor is difficult for me when I don't know the group very well. I'm patient and try not to be a bother but, my discomfort was ignored and the more I play with this group the more I'm worried I'll need to leave it. As an aspiring dm and relatively new player the biggest red flag for me is just a lack of safety tools. I was in a group that I was initially stoked to be with because it was a My Hero Academia dnd rp, I'm kind of obsessed with heroes especially MHA. My character is named Hanabi Matsuri and her quirk or Superpower works like Sai from Naruto with the ability to bring anything she draws to life but, at only level 1 she can't really make anything that big yet without it causing her to pass out. Also she's one of the only characters at the table who actually have their backstory written out. Our first session happens but, I don't get to really do anything as I showed up late, okay no big deal and this is going well it seams. Next session the first one where I get to actually do something we're doing the UA entrance exams ripped straight from the anime and it's going great at first we have some cute conversations and even have canon characters make appearances but then the combat portion starts, I'm being attacked by two robots, and none of my moves are working because I can't seem to roll anything higher than an 11 this session, I had chosen what I thought was a safer location, and immediately got teased for it. Hearing another player say "Of Course the girl picks the worst spot to be in." Now I'm new to this group and don't know anyone close, I'm autistic and sometimes teasing like this gets to me when it shouldn't because until I know someone well enough I can't always tell how much of it is a joke and how much of it is genuine. So I as calmly as I can and without seeming too whiny, I attempt to express that I don't really like that kind of humor since I don't know them well enough to tell when it's a joke but, it gets brushed off as me being too sensitive the other girl in the group wasn't bothered by it probably because she knew them better than I did. So I imagine the teasing that made me uncomfortable was just normal for her Shortly after that the DM I guess felt bad for me and did a 'cut scene' I was struggling, and I was starting to think my character wouldn't pass, that on top of too many people talking at the same time made it impossible for me to form any words. I should mention I'm not good at spoken rp I'm a writer yes but, my brain doesn't always like to push the words out of my mouth. So my brain works like a computer while my mouth can only spit about the same as a type writer that's low on ink. The cut scene goes well, I have my anime moment which was fun and made me feel better, like I hadn't totally managed to mess everything up. Though, the next session which was several weeks later (they have literally no schedule despite how many times I've begged for just an IDEA of when our sessions will be since I'm not in college like they are and I'm an adult living in an apartment alone, it's super easy for me to just be late if I don't know what's going on because my dm decided to message me while in the middle of making dinner or something. I don't like to be the annoying one unprepared because I just don't know when I need to be.) So in this second session t some point everyone started making gay jokes, not very flattering ones either but, I try to participate by making a point that I'm bi. Nobody responds to me, so I say it again just trying to participate in the laugh, we're on a discord call so I think maybe they just didn't hear me but, then I'm teased again and shot down which just soured me a little. We're trying to do the USJ arc and everyone gets scattered around the facility by 2 groups live and run back on their own but my character doesn't have the kind of mobility that they do so she gets sucked into the warpgate and sent into a randomized area. We roll to see what area we get and OF COURSE my girl lands in the water zone the only place where her ink based power just doesn't work like it should because if you've ever seen Batman Beyond, water washes the ink away. So I'm not entirely sure how that's going to work out. Overall I'm worried though that these constant jabs, and this uncomfortable environment is going to get more toxic since they don't seem to care if something they say comes off the wrong way or not. I don't feel comfortable confronting people I barely know of my concerns either seeing as my disorder was largely brushed off already and I don't want to seem like I'm trying to use it as a crutch it just happens that in some situations my symptoms flair up and there's not a lot I can do about them when they happen without a little help from those around me to just be a little patient with me. Luckily this isn't the only campaign I'm in, I have a Final Fantasy Homebrew that one of my best friends runs, a star wars rp I adore, and I am working on my own varient of Villains and Vigilantes soon.

Personally, I wanted to thank you Brian for the kind and motivational words at the end of the video. I recently struggled with a person that did that kind of thing constantly. He would belittle my hobbies, how I would do things, and would constantly question why I enjoyed certain things, only to throw in exactly why he didn't like like doing those same things. Needless to say, I have quite the story. Recently I had to not only kick out a member of one of my tables, but also tragically ended a friendship with someone who had some of the stereotypical red flags, both in DnD and in the general social life. We were starting up a custom homebrew of my own design. It was session 0 and I could already sense that this particular person was already setting things up his 'usual' way whenever he would come to the table as a player. Whether or not he did this to take advantage of new DM's, or to purposefully manipulate situations into his favor, I can only speculate. Nevertheless, he had multiple red flags present even before session 0 of my homebrew kicked off. Starting off my own campaign, as a requirement of mine, I had my players share copies of their character sheets. Because of him I had to create a custom homebrew rule to clarify that the players may choose one background at level 5, but could 'study' for a second. His character sheet was already overpowered with all sorts of customized items, skill proficiencies, and abilities that I hadn't heard of before, and, being a newer DM in his own homebrew, my gut feeling felt something was fishy. It didn't help his case as this player would use manipulative tactics such as, "Does that mean I get two backgrounds? I think so, I shall get two backgrounds," before I could make an objection, or he would ask questions of "would that be a dc of 5 or 10?" before I could answer him to try and get away with a lowered save difficulty. He would do this constantly as a player, to myself and to my roommate who would also occasionally DM for us. As a result of this player having two backgrounds on session 0, I enforced the rule that his character could not have two "PHD's" which gave him the multiple backgrounds. (I know this sounds controlling on my part, but I could already tell I was going to have problems with this person). I informed him that he would start with one "PHD", and work for the next in pertaining to the lore of my campaign. Part of the campaign was that any formal education was gained through a large prestigious school located in the capital city, or you could gain education by finding a master to help you learn a skill and then take a mastery test at said capital's school. You would get one background "for free" from this school starting out, but had to work on getting more as your character developed. He made 0 changes to his character sheet, and proceeded to overly criticize the campaign as soon as it started. This player has been notorious for creating characters with exceedingly high stats to where they were difficult to hit, and would guarantee a success on pretty much any roll of a commonly used skill, minus a nat 1. He was also known to become passive aggressive, or he would 'sulk in the corner,' whenever he didn't get his way in a situation, or if this same group of friends did something else that he didn't want to do. He was notorious for becoming passively aggressive when things were not done perfectly or by the rules 'as he understood them' or by the book and would try to manipulate situations to where people would feel uncomfortable. He was known for being a rules lawyer at times, especially when he was DMing his own version of Curse of Strahd (pretty sure he would play favorites with certain players as some players would incur steep penalties while others would get away with a whole lot o loot; I could never confirm this). Yet during his times as a player, he would attempt to sway in rules (abuse the 'rule of cool') in order to dodge penalties such as taking damage or would interrupt game play to explain something to where he would completely ruin the mood. He would constantly stall games and combats arguing as to why he should be allowed (or to disallow someone else) to do something. This happened all throughout my homebrew's first session. Reguardless, my campaign's session 0 concluded and everyone, minus him, was happy with the outcome. My other players thanked me for the action packed session and they all went home. (The players were still on session 0 technically as they hadn't met up at the true player bonding point yet). Next morning outside of session I get a text from this player that he and his then girlfriend, her also being one of my best friends didn't feel like they got the plot of the story. (He liked to take it upon himself to speak for her as he thought he always knew best; something that she eventually came to hate). Before the game began, the players were textually informed that there were rumors of a particular artifact that existed, and the players needed to go after said artifact by which of their own reasoning for obtaining such an item. This factor was explained in the prologue to session 0 before game play even began, though I realized that this was a mistake on my part and have changed how this will start up. As a result I decided to scrap the original start of the game, and restarted the campaign over with a brand new beginning to give my players a different experience while tying in the plot. Needless to say, this player's girlfriend and the rest of my players were not very happy about my feeling I had to restart a whole campaign because it didn't fit his liking, but they respected my decision. Incredibly this was a decision of which, come to find out later, actually worked out in favor of all of us. In an incident unrelated to DnD some time between sessions, this player caused some drama with his now Ex girlfriend, of which myself and a few other of my players had to intervene in order to calm her down and get her away from him. After dealing with that situation, which triggered some issues with some of my own past trauma, we all came to the conclusion collectively that this person was not only never allowed to play DnD with us again, but that we were never going to interact with this person due to the level of toxicity he portrayed. As it currently stands, this person will never join a table with me, and is now out of my life for good (hopefully). As for my own self, I will be kicking off the new year with fewer toxic people in my life, a better group of friends, and a better start to a custom homebrewed DnD campaign.

“He that said everyone plays them the same: edgy and chaotic stupid” This has got my blood BOILING because currently I am in a wild beyond the witchlight campaign that I just recently joined and I am playing a chaotic neutral Tiefling bard who’s only goal is to start up a circus and are generally pretty okay in intelegence, yes they have scars from a few failed stunts but they don’t really care about that or hold a grudge against the animals that caused it and they’re generally fun-loving and just want to put on a show. They even carry around a harp on their back just because they can. It’s one thing for a dm to say tieflings are rare because they’re so hated as a work around for not having tieflings in their campaigns but to outright SAY that you don’t allow tieflings because you dislike them is just pure rude because people CAN have fun ideas for tieflings that AREN’T edgy.

Idk if this is a red flag but i remember a DM, it was my first game and i was still really new. They just made me feel bad for not knowing things and forgetting what each dice was for. It made me really down cause i felt like no one wanted me there so i ended up leaving cause of mental health

Ten rules of being a DM: 1. Don't be vindictive against characters. 2. If you want to ban something, ban it. Don't allow it and then punish the player for doing it. 3. Clearly explain why you want to nerf certain abilities (e.g. flight) 4. Maintain separation between what happens in-game to characters and out of game to players or yourself as the DM. 5. Do not take control of a player character for no good reason. Don't force them to become the BBEG. Don't control their weapons. For the love of Gods don't make an NPC automatic succeed at seducing them or describe their character's physiological responses to that. 6. Your players probably don't want you to railroad their PCs to be constantly sadistically tortured and abused. If that's the kind of campaign you want to run, find players who are ok with stuff like that from the start. 7. Do not try to increase the challenge by increasing the likelihood of a TPK for every single encounter. If you want to make very challenging encounters common, design them so that there are a broader range of possible outcomes besides one side winning by annihilation and roleplay the enemies like they are people, not mindless zombies (unless they are zombies of course). Do not think of combat as a duel to the death but a complex battle with both sides having complex objectives. 8. Make your rulings consistent and don't ban something arbitrarilly unless it just wouldn't work in the campaign or is blatantly OP or ruins the game somehow. 9. Do not ban cliche character designs for being cliche. Remember, the character's story isn't written yet. A cliche backstory will quickly diverge from the cliche. 10. Do not ban character designs based on identity politics categories alone unless it just wouldn't work with the story and the party, or contains excessive real life political baggage not necessary for the character concept which makes it problematic.

DMPCs are a huge red flag to me. I know that they can work if in the right hands but never experienced a ‘good’ one myself (always end up taking over the game or using meta knowledge etc).

Used to be a ban hammer DM, because I went through a stretch of some 4 years where I kept running into insufferably problematic players. Finally ran into a very good, very chill group who helped me realize that I needed to eliminate my list of forbidden things and concentrate it down to simply one rule: "don't be a jerk." And I started holding players to that. Was amazed that I had fewer problems by simply warning players at the start of the game that I would immediately boot them if they were egregious problematic. This gave players with problems the opportunity to adjust their behavior, and it taught me to bend a lot more and be more tolerant. For example, I banned tieflings for the same reason a lot of DMs do, but I changed my ban to a simple rule: only one tiefling per campaign, and the tiefling could not be an edge lord. Had a player emphatically thank me, because he had only been playing for a year, and every group he tried to join forbade him from playing a tiefling, even though it was the reason he got into the game, and he had promised not to be a jerk. He played a tiefling guy who was like a witch hunter eldritch knight, acting gruff and cranky but secretly harboring a heart of gold. Was a fun character

PANR has tuned in.

Red flags "I'm great at RP but I don't do role-playing in one shots because there's no time to include that." Tells me their bigger campaigns are going to have subpar roleplay because they're not as good as they think they are. Second red flag, inconsistent rules for a themed rpg. Dm wanted s campaign eith characters based on aspects of us irl. Required any performance checks to actually be performed, like you had to improvise songs and sing them irl, most characters couldn't ve talker than you were irl, etc. But things like strength checks for his girlfriends somehow super strong character weren't based on what she could lift irl, among other exceptions made for her and his best friend compared to the other players.

I just started dming my first campaign with a party of entirely new players and I'm watching this video to make sure I'm not majorly fucking everything up :""")

I just want to say that I do ban certain races but I have good reasons for it, I ban all the ones that let you make your own custom race because I let players backstories and the rest of their ideas mold the world before they start playing so the least they can do is let me have the races I know how to work with instead of just making one up, I also don't like flying races because in order to make balanced encounters I have to either limit the flying ability by fighting in buildings so they won't just fly off and act like gun drones the entire encounter or I have to make flying enemies, both of these make it feel like I'm targeting the player which I don't like and I've had players complain that I'm singling them out because I have things that only effect them, so I just gave up

More like a pink flag than a red flag, but how a DM treats Clerics, Paladins, and sometimes Warlocks. I tend to play Paladins without some kind of God hovering over head. After all, their power comes from their Oaths. If a DM tells me "no", then it makes me more reluctant to play the class cause I've had too many DMs use the threat of God taking my powers away when I don't tow the line or if I forget some detail about the God in question or, worst case, when I HAVE to do SOMETHING; if I do the thing, I lose my powers, if I don't do it, the other players hate me or the DM is annoyed with me. Same thing with Cleric. As for Warlocks, well, I SHOULDN'T have the threat hang over head, but I've had some DMs pull this anyway. The short term solution is to play another Class and call it a day, but I'll be very suspicious of the DM moving forward.

On the Declining ideas things, a lot of these are case specific, and I feel many of the these redditors are being dishonest. If you want to bring a character that does not fit within the game, yes, I will say no (I was running an Edwardian era conspiracy thriller in a homebrew cyberpunk 2020 setting), he wished to play a S.T.A.L.K.E.R from the Stalker franchise, or at least, a character that is similar in the setting, which does not fit. Similarly, if a character is a mixture of races, cultures, class options and feats that are excessively unusual, and done exclusively for power play/ power roleplay (a real thing that is not often talked about), I will also likely say no. This is not to say I say no to anything weird, I’ve ran strange combinations before, but, the player has been willing to slightly tweak the character to fit the setting (first guy ended up playing an EX-combat medic from the war), or, in the latter case, fix the character to a playable degree (IE the dragon born/elf/orc/German human samurai with the heir background is changed to maybe just be a half orc samurai from FANTASYJAPAN who is a noble)(I don’t play 5E anymore, so if forget a lot about it). Additionally, I feel that the idea that it is the players story is false, this is also my story, I have to write every single character, quest, side quest, later effect of current actions, history, etc, so yes, I have some say in the story. As for banning races, I do it for roleplay reasons, my setting has no dragon born, and when I still ran 5E, I did not allow them In game, further more, I don’t allow some classes because they may not fit the campaign (no monks or samurai in my Viking games, no Vikings and knights in my samurai games) UNLESS they provide a compelling roleplay related reason. If you, as a player, have some DM red flags, please ask me, I would love to maybe explain some of that behaviour. I tend to prefer an even mix of mechanics and roleplay.

Your script writer has GOD AWFUL takes. The whole bit where he tried to justify/defend the lizard boner is a HUGE red flag. None of the reasoning hold up to even a basic amount of scrutiny - EVERY PLAYER AT THE TABLE NEEDS TO CONSENT AND BE OKAY WITH SEXUAL ACTIONS AND THEMES BEFOREHAND. "No right to be offended on their behalf" seems to be an attempt to ignore or skirt around the fact that erotic elements suddenly appearing in a campaign surprising the players is a breach of personal boundaries in and of itself, regardless of the outcome.

I've not had the experience of beimg under another DM, all my time in ttrpgs has been as the dm so far. But this is helpful on what to keep an eye out for both in myself and others.

beating a dead horse i know but any form of "player vs DM/GM" mentality, like braggin about how many PCs they have killed refusing to help players of any experience with character creation. dosnt matter if theplayer is new to TTRPGG overall or just the system used/played sorry in advance for any spelling/grammer problems. im not a native english speaker

DM's who nerf pc skills/spells. Had a dm once that got pissed because my warlock had a quasit (pact of the chain) that had invisibility and could fly, so i could basicly scout ahead. He did not know i had the quasit as he didnt bother to ask/check what kind of characters the players had, and as we were about to enter a cave, i sent out my quasit to scout, and the dm said it ruins the whole campaign. Suddenly the whole cave had a magical barrier that basically made my quasit blind in there...

I'll admit, I don't normally allow dragon born characters if it's one of my home brew story's because there generally over powered, especially with the breath weapons, but if the player talks to me about it, and we come to an agreement, then yeah, cool, play a dragon born, but generally, I don't allow them. Mainly bc of the breath weapon, or because of there special skill depending on the type of dragon born, and there's always lore behind it

I will 100% agree with the red flag of DMs who force shitty connotations onto PCs to make them seem a way they are not. Especially when its sexual or flat out insulting, and triply so when it is not at all appropriate for the character. A DM forcing a character who is, for example, prideful and highly strict in how they uphold themselves, to respond pitifully or pathetically to some event (such as a failed skill roll) is absolutely infuriating to me because it is completely ignorant of the character itself and throws out any semblance of believability the campaign may have had. Whatever the campaign was before, it is now at best a light-hearted joke with no real meaning or value. Any player investment in the story is gone in a heartbeat. Noone at the table cares about the game anymore, at that point. Because nothing they say or do will ever actually matter- the DM will overwrite and retcon whatever they want for the sake of a gag. Another major redflag, at least for me personally, is when a DM doesn't seem to understand what's going on in their own story. Its one thing to need to refer to a book or PDF to understand the behaviors and personalities of a pre-written NPC as part of some official book or module- it's another thing entirely to have written and prepared the entire campaign yourself and still not know how a major NPC talks, behaves, or even looks like. it's a clear indication that the DM *hasn't* actually prepared at all, and is just winging everything. A campaign like that is bound for a cavalcade of contradictions, inconsistences, retcons, and incomprehensible/convoluted events.

Lvl 1 party. Chain devil torturing an NPC session 1 in hell. Makes us roll to "see if we sneak past" one person rolled a 2 and nothing bad happened. So like why make us roll in the first place?

Playing favorites. I was in a group where the asshole player was friends with the gm. When my Yuan Ti pureblood of all people called his character out you know something’s wrong. Yet my character kept getting punished and he kept getting away with being a douchebag in game and out.

My biggest red flag so far, was in part the DM's playstyle and in part the enviornment. My GF at the time (now wife) joined a game with a few friends from college. The DM would host games at his APT. The first game was fine-ish. We stuck with the group long enough to meet the BBEG. The BBEG was a Mystic. None of us could touch him. None of us had any abilities that even made a scratch on him. The DM boasted about "Hah mystics are so broken lol." While we were fighting him. We were level 13. Now the biggest redflag was the game space, their apartment. I saved the best (worst) for last. The toilet had black mold on it, there had never been a vaccume on the carpet, and the kicker... when he scheduled the next game he told us. "Oh yeah, we have a flea infestation, but it's fine come on over." We dropped that group and never played with them again.

Biggest red flag for me when I played D&D 4.5 is that the DM didn't reprimand the other players who deliberately punishing my character in game simply because I made a in-character decision that they out of character didn't like, and basically said DM just makes excuses for their behavior needless to say I had to leave the group despite my attempts to not start a fight when said DM allowed say asshole players to kill my character in her sleep for BS reasons.

I played as a DM a couple of times and I‘m very glad that I did none of the things that are mentioned in your various videos. I admit that I do two things tho that are not quite to the rules. First when I give my players several options to choose from I tend to have the end result be the same. For example: they can choose between two ways through a forest, but in the end the same stuff happens bo matter if they go left or right. Just because it would be far to complex for me to have all those options ready. Second, I sometimes change the HP of boss monsters a bit on the fly so that the fight isn‘t too boring or that we don‘t have a TPK. I feel like cheating for this one. I probably am not good enough with the CR to properly set the enemies. Last session I didn‘t do this and the end fight was over too fast so that not every team member could show their abilities. Which was a shame. Would interested in what others think about this. #1 is excusable I think.

THAT ADD SCARED ME! XD

1. A dm not explaining in advance if your character is unsuitable for a setting. 2. Taking away the entire point of a class, subclass, or other feature because of this. My dm is awesome at story telling, world building, and being open to all our ideas. But I had chosen a necromancer. In Curse of Strahd. Now I can get a dm attacking me or my gaggle of ghouls but it really diminished my experience for a few sessions when he’d hinted a strong enough vampire or lich might be able to wrestle control of my undead. Now I get it could happen especially in a dark fantasy like CoS, but had he told me my main ability could not only be useless but turned on my group I would have probably used a different character or subclass from the start for a better experience. Luckily we changed my subclass to something more suitable a few sessions later at a convenient plot point.

When a DM is just too controlling. I get it's your campaign, but it's your players' adventure. Let it be theirs.

Allowing one player to just be ingame 'bullied'

My DM is insisting all players DM their own one shot before starting the main campaign. I think that's fair, but he also micromanages how we are planning our one shots. One of my fellow players is planning on her one shot being on a small made up continent off of Faerun (the main world of DND). I asked her what the oldest language for the world is when creating my character, and she asked our DM what the oldest language of Faerun was. He told her that the world wasn't allowed to be connected to Faerun, and that she would have to decide on the language information herself. I don't see this is necessarily bad, but when both she and I asked him questions about DND ( eg "what is the most common language spoken?" ) As he is a lot more knowledgeable, he would just respond that we had to decide on that information ourselves. I don't necessarily think it's bad DM but he just hasn't been helpful at all in this process, and if anything a little annoying. He's also gone on to tell me how DND is "supposed" to be played. And another one of our friends is already considering on leaving the group because he has to explain everything in detail and then have us know every little detail about our characters / worlds.

Inflexibility in ruling against players but homebrewing everything else is a big red flag for me

A fifth edition DM who says you can only cast two cantrips per character level. So much for a Warlock Eldritch blast build.

It's one thing to be accepting of a person playing a KGBT character, it is entirely another thing to force players to play LGBT characters.

The DM who adds new mechanics to a spell or combine two spells into one and ignores player feedback. A DM who thinks players should have fun the way the DM thinks they should have fun. For example combining the cloud kill, stinking cloud and a random direction roll every round while you are in the area of effect.