Don't Let Your D&D Players Do This!! And other Q&A3 Answers 

I am a forever DM, so I don't really have a story of someone doing something horrible to me, but I did witness one of the most glorious train wrecks of all time. It was an evil campaign that I was running for a group of people that I didn't know too well (red flag #1). They wanted to play an evil campaign (red flag #2), where everyone was, more or less, in it for themselves (red flag #3). During session zero, we all talked and agreed that everything goes, and there would be no whining of any kind if things didn't go their way, and everyone starts to roll up their characters... This is 3.PF game, by the way, and it seemed everyone in the group wanted to us some third party, home-brew OP something or other (red flag #4)... However, I did stand up for myself and tell 'em to stick to official material because those were the books I had. So, after some begging and pleading, and lots of disappointment, the party was made. We had a LE human fighter, NE elf wizard, CE halfling rogue, and a CE gnome warlock. So, with the villains made, I unleashed them on the road heading to small, happy hamlet that didn't have a care in the world. Caravans traveled the roads with little to no guards, the local militia was lazy, and it was the perfect place for any proper evil group to get a nice foot hold into. So, scene is set. The players are an hour away from town. And I've got a nice quest lined up involving the local graveyard when I witness what can only be described as the most idiotically hilarious series of events I have ever witnessed. The halfling rogue, who is heading up the rear of the party, decides that the wizard is wearing some really nice robes, and immediately attacks him. The wizard drops, and sits at negative 3 HP. The Fighter then turns and attacks the halfling with his great sword because apparently because HE was going to kill that wizard; fighter hits, deals max damage, splats the rogue. At this point I'm just sitting there in shock and awe as all of my work is swirling down the drain, but I can salvage this if the warlock and the fighter don't- and the warlock attacks the fighter with an eldritch blast. This doesn't kill the fighter, who just charges at him and attacks, dealing some damage, both are looking pretty rough but not dead yet. Hoping to maybe, just maybe, save the wizard and just play a prison-break story, a patrol of the local guard are heading down the road and come upon this scene. Two men appear to be dead and two are fighting it out, flinging magic and swords around. Naturally, they shout 'Stop! Drop your weapons and stop casting spells!'... And the warlock takes this as a challenge, turns about and tries to blast one of the guards but rolls terribly and misses. Okay, but it might be fine, I think hopefully. The two party members will come to a truce, kill the guards, and hash out an agreement. Right? Wrong. The Fighter then shouts to the guards, "Help me bring this black-heart in! He killed my two friends!" and rolls really well on his bluff check. The guards believe him, charge at the warlock and the three of them beat him into a bloody (but still breathing) pulp. Just as the guard is going to cuff the warlock, the fighter decides 'Nah' and just ends the bastard. Naturally, the guards are not amused and tell him to drop his weapons. He does not, and says, and I quote "There is no way I'm going to be brought in by a pair of back-woods yokels with pointy sticks", and he was half correct. They did not 'bring him in', they stabbed him to death. Now, imagine during all of this, I am receiving private messages from everyone who's dead or dying, telling me it's not fair, I should do something, and yadda-yadda-yadda... After that, I made a personal rule: I would never run an evil campaign ever again. Thank you for reading.

The worst thing that any DM has done is something I see more often than not...and that's taking a Me vs. Them mentality. Rather than making the game fun, and allowing the characters to succeed, he took it personally whenever we'd win a battle or achieve something, like we were beating HIM. Instead of being happy that we were working together well as a group and having a great time, he basically made a scenario that guaranteed we would all die, and thus, he could finally win.

Worst this my old DM has done....... We had two new first time players come into our campaign. They spent hours going through the player handbook looking through races, classes, and spells to choose the perfect character for them. We started playing within 20 minutes everyone was in the inn for the night and upon waking up we were on a small island and he told everyone to swap character sheets with another player. As an experienced player this wasn't an issue since I have played most classes but the two new players had no clue what to do with the characters they were handed. One of them didn't return for the following session. When I asked we he didn't come he told me "Why would I go through all that to choose a character I wanted to be to get stuck with a random character?".

I had a dungeon master that nerfed a lot of her player's spells and abilities when she felt an encounter was too easy. It would make more sense to buff on the fly in my opinion, as if you do so the players are none the wiser.

I’m a DM now, but before, in my old party, I had a pretty horrible Dungeon Master. She made up her own rules, didn’t even take into account armour class when doing combat, and made *EVERYONE’S CHARACTERS FOR THEM* (including mine, which was a Half-Orc Paladin at the time). Now listen, all of us were new players except for this DM, who was a beginner in playing as Dungeon Master. Whenever we did something that she didn’t like, then as the (I quote) “supreme overlord” of the game, she would let something horrible happen to our characters. Not only that, but each time I tried becoming Dungeon Master, she’d always ask me, “Okay, so what’s the first rule of being a Dungeon Master?” Obviously, I didn’t have the guide, so I had to stand there with nothing to say as she laughed in my face and mocked me about not knowing how to properly play. Worst part was, the party I was in consisted of my best friends of 3 years. The DM was my childhood best friend of 7 years. The last straw was when one of my party members got raped by a cult of High Elves because she did something the Dungeon Master did not approve of. She then proceeded to have the rest of us raped alongside that particular party member. I was done by then, so taking a bunch of my other friends, I made a new party with a new character I had created myself (it was the most empowering moment of my life). By then, I had already researched all about the game, which also included this channel’s D&D guide videos. I was more than ready to lead a bunch of mislead beginners to a proper campaign. Now I play as a Dungeon Master, and my other party members are busy creating their own characters for a new campaign. Thankfully, I’m not playing with my last DM any time soon.

I still want to know why the Elven Wizard is always sad.

Evil characters can absolutely work together without backstabbing and still be evil. You can form alliances with other evil forces to try and achieve your own goals--backstab them later. Once you've finished your campaign/achieved your individual goal, assuming the others are still alive, you could simply roleplay at being powerful rulers vying for control. Play out a whole war for the world, as level 20 characters, and see what results. As for during the campaign, when you're weak--no matter what your goals are--you're doubtlessly going to need allies. You many not trust them, they may not trust you, but you can come to an understanding. First of all, you're each going to be smart enough/strong enough that if you decided to turn against one another, it would end in stalemate or death. Second of all, you need each other--you each bring unique abilities to the table that, if your DM is good enough, are all necessary at some point or another to achieve your shared goals. Work out deals with the other players. Make an arrangement inherently built on mistrust and selfishness, where you all understand that you're doing this for yourselves and that the alliance won't last once you get where you're going (and have that end goal be a level-20 achievement, so you can play a full campaign). Also, you don't have to kill or hurt each other to do power plays within the group. Make your presence known. Try to out-evil your compatriots. See who can be the most horrible to the NPCs by exercising your own unique brand of evil--whether it's psychological and subtle or violent and unmistakable, make sport out of torturing those poor unfortunate souls. Practice your monologueing to each other, but never reveal your full plans. Use your allies to practice deception, if that's your thing. Don't kill or alienate your allies until the last minute, when you're ready to seize control. If the group doesn't want that ending, finish the campaign by dividing the world into portions for each of you to rule. But if they do, it can become a spectacular final showdown when you all try to put your plans into action. You've achieved what you set out to do, except for one final obstacle: each other. For players hoping to die a glorious and gruesome death (believe it or not, dying dramatically is incredible fun), this can be satisfying for both the victor and the loser. My point is, an entire campaign of allied evil-alignment characters can be justified from the characters' perspectives, and not just for playing purposes.

I once got into a fight with another player in D&D, and killed them literally minutes after we began. I was a thief, who was a character of endless greed. The DM started us each off in a town where we were hired by a local noble to go get some magic whatsit from somewhere, and he (very ceremoniously) gave us each a magic item to help with our quest. I was given a belt, and my 2 other party members were given a gauntlet and a crown respectively. Being the greedy bastard I was, I told the person who had the gauntlet (our wizard) that I wanted the gauntlet as well. He obviously refused, to which I outright said I'd kill them for it. Mind you, this was an intimidation tactic and I had no intention of ACTUALLY doing it, but they ran away regardless. After chasing them for a bit, I came up with a plan. The belt I'd been given allowed me to (once per long rest) jump 100 feet in any direction at a ridiculous speed, as well as stop myself afterward without harm. So I planned to leap at our wizard, grab the gauntlet, and then book it with it. But it turns out that the items we'd been given were cursed, and could not be removed. The noble had planned to use them to control us to suit his whims. So as I grabbed this gauntlet, I ended up *ripping the wizard's arm off with it* . The wizard, with his frail 5 hit points, was instantly killed by this and the gauntlets turned to dust upon being removed. Long story short, don't be a dick. It probably won't work out well.

My dungeon master gave me a cup that could be filled with any beverage, and anyone else would find the liquid revolting, so I said water... inside a poor village and all my friends died...

I have a crazy D&D story from when we were playing Dungeons of Fandelver. This was most peoples' first campaign and our DM's first time running the game. Our party stopped to rest in a local inn and had just apprehended a minor criminal in possession of a drug-like substance. Our chaotic neutral Drow fighter and his Elf rogue buddy decided to sneak off to a room and smoke the substance and dragged my goody-goody Half-Elf paladin into the room. The DM told everyone to make constitution saves and my character drastically failed his save entering the smoky, hazy room and immediately passed out! The Drow then had the idea to strip my character of all clothes and possessions, cover him in honey and feathers, then tie him to the bed. He then called up the barmaid to swap out the pillows. She opened the door and immediately quit her job and left town! I eventually regained my belongings but vowed as a paladin to forgive but never forget.

I was once in a situation where my character wielding a gauntlet of lightning went to the rescue of the barbarian who was being dogpiled by 7 undead. I used the lightning on his armor killing 6 of the zombies but knocking him unconscious. It was funny efficient and legit.

A player not helping other players or DM look up rules and then makes that sucking their teeth sound and rolling their eyes when he has to wait. Criticizing instead of helping. A player who picks apart every DM ruling. Using the RAW argument and then the RAI on a case by case bases. Roll playing and not ROLE PLAYING. Showing up late. This was from one player. No one in our group plays with him anymore.

Worst thing done to me by a player? Rage quit my game because the Villain was doing their job right, and the player failed to properly use their only Wish spell. I had insisted beforehand on at least three occasions, with other players additionally reminding this sentiment, that the Wish spell is highly, highly specific on the wording of the wish. Thus when they made the vaguest wish they could have, and it didn't work the way they wanted, they immediately storm off the table in I shit you not, tears. And this was a grown man.

1. Enter a room 2. Only one player knows the floor is a black pudding (GM passed a note) 3. *Look up from the note* The room is full of black onyx gemstones! 4. ??? 5. Players lose 90% of their items.

My biggest mistake was starting a new player at level one whilst my other players are level 24. I like to introduce new characters in unique ways, so I introduced the new character as a spy. My older players went to interrogate the halfling and one hit killed the fella unarmed. He never played again...

i think some in party fighting can be good though i played a game awhile back where i was a tiefling fighter and everyone else either hated or didnt trust my character and a few times the elven druid in our group would try and fight my character, while i could have easily killed the druid i just defended and took damage because i felt it drove my characters story forward, our dm saw all this and we made it clear as players we were ok so she let it go. and then our dm put us on this quest to retrieve a treasure from a cave, in the first part of the cave there was an archegriffin that was guading a key and a stone door, the griffin attacked after we grabbed the key it tried to get the druid first so i put my tiefling between them and tanked a bunch of damage while the druid got the door open. we managed to escape i think my tiefling had like 1 or 2 hp left but after that the druid stopped attacking him and started treated him with respect so it can make better character moments if you're doing a long campaign rather than a quick encounter

One session that stands out (and reminds me of what was stated) to me was where we just started the dungeon after finding a hidden entrance in the side of the mountain. We were just about to clear out the last room with the mini-boss and our DM said "Hold on!" Our DM brought out the module sheet and stated "He casts Fireball into the middle of your party". Now, had we been at a higher level, then it might have gone better. The real bite was that only two of us were lvl3 and worse yet, we had two level 1 PCs with us too. The fireball took everyone out and we all failed our Dex saves. So, it was a party wipe with the LVL 1 PCs dying by massive damage. We all just sat there, fairly dissatisfied with the fight ending before we even had a chance to do anything. So, after watching the video, our DM seriously messed up since that was the first time he/she had ever cast Fireball. I wish now that might have been immediately corrected so that we might have had a chance to fight this tough battle. Hopefully that was a good opportunity for our DM to learn from that mistake.

Once i was playing a game where the DM was a railroader. We all started out as level 10 wizards that were part of a magic school. the king hired all of is to preform a summoning ritual. My character was the one invested fully in summoning magic and linguistics so I was supposed to be in charge of performing the ritual. The other players made different types of wizards. My character asked what they were summoning and the king refused to tell. When pushed he said they were summoning a powerful creature so they could control it and use it in their army. My character said that was a terrible idea and refused to do it. The king drew his sword and said if I didn't do it I would be executed. I cast Teleport.

I found your channel about a month or two ago, and instantly fell in love with the simple style you're going with. I look forward to each video on the edge of my seat, with eyes wide.

once our party entered the final room of the dungeon where we encountered the main villain. as he was being embued with the strength of a lich. which was when our dragonborn wizard JOINED THE LICHES SIDE. Our party was in shambles after 2 rounds. I managed to kill the lich after the party ganged up on the trechorious wizard. After the battle we took him to town where he was promptly executed in front of a crossbow firing squad.

Once I was playing a barbarian named Derick the Cleaver, (My weapon was a longsword but the DM said I could role play it as a cleaver), and we were fighting gargoyles. I rolled a bad roll and one thing lead to another when suddenly my cleaver broke. I was so mad, sad and emotional I killed the already bloodied gargoyle with my bare hands. Everyone in the party gathered round to see me, kneeling over my broken cleaver having a moment, tears filled my eyes as I remembered the good times I had with my cleaver when some wizard 'mended' it together... I hate wizards now.

The worst thing that players have done in my game is make concept characters. They build a concept, a highly specialized and interesting character who gets introduced to the game, does the thing the player wanted to see, and the player looses interest and wants to make and introduce someone else. If you do don't care about your character, please don't play them.

I think players that like to sabotage or assault other players should be politely asked to leave. The world is already on fire irl we don't need that in our off time.

I was finally able to start DnD with help from this channel. Thanks!

I remember watching the first tutorials from your channel and now I’ve dm’d for friends and family and now I’m going to wild magic class! The game is great, thanks for making this!

The worst thing I've had a DM do is devalue a character and reduce someone's creation to comic relief. For example I had a muscle sorcerer (a homebrew archetype) and literally everybody had some kind of beef towards him and every accomplishment he made was thrown back in his face. It was an awful experience and even though I had put so much love in that character I didn't want to play him ever again. Another thing the same DM does is building over leveled encounters and having a "me vs them" mentality and nearly everybody died most encounters. It was awful

I've been DMing for some of my friends, and it's CHAOS! One of them has an attack fly that does 1 damage, so he uses that to determine enemy max healths. Another is a Tiefling Warlock that can't help but discreetly kill ANY nearby authority figures. You can see where this is going...

1. I hate when other pcs steal my stuff just to tick me off. Especially if their PC has not knowledge of me owning the item.As DM I will not steal powerful stuff from PC unless I get okay from player. I will how ever tell players I have to downgrade their stuff if I made a mistake.

In a game of dnd my party sold me into prostitution, got a nat 1 on a con save and got a few stds, and worse even is they stole the gold i got as a tip

I played with a guy who regularly cheats in games (his past 4 characters have all been barbarians with a 20 in strength and mathematically impossible HP), so I devised a campaign where I told everyone that they could make their favourite character...only for me to swap who was playing as who. I gave him the character with the worst stats as punishment for his acts, and he wasn't allowed to spend his turns commanding the other players either Everyone else enjoyed the session, even if they weren't super keen on the swap initially (I hadn't told them it was happening), and liked playing other people's characters. The cheater just sat and grumbled and moaned throughout the entire thing

I was killed by my group because my character obtained money from a kill that happened to be from another player. Apparently the creature I killed stole gold from another party member and so because I took it and my party member was revived, they wanted me to give it back. I refused so they all proceeded to shoot me, hit me with a javelin, and hit me with a fireball. Most frustrating death I think I could ever experience.

In the 90's i played ADD2E. I had this DM that was a lovable guy but always wanted to run these high level godlike campaigns. He would take a lot of pop culture and comic references and build them in game. However, he had a roommate that would always play characters that were evil with over the top powers. To help wrangle that in a little bit we took the suggestion from Dragon Magazine to have a council with appointed roles. I got the job of being the RULE Interpreter. I had to go through all our source materials and determine if there was a rule in place during disagreements. I would show that rule to the party. Then between the Judge, and the DM a decision would be made. So after a couple of sessions into a campaign we were all getting tired of the roommate whose character was basically an anti-paladin with venom symbiotic armor that was treated as heavy armor with none of the encumbrance penalties. Plus he had what you would consider the infinity stones in his teeth. All the other party members were good or neutral. So during this campaign we were about three sessions in and the roommate is killing npcs and taking us way off quest, so the rest of us decided it was time for the character to die. I had noted every complaint people had about the rule breaks that were going on, we studied his attacks and defense he was constantly doing. So the next time we played we told him that he could no longer cast spells if he was wearing a helm and an archer in our party did a called shot to the head with an aiming bonus, dex bonus, and a plus three bow. Per the rules in 2e any unarmored body part is considered ac 10 plus dex, since he was wearing full plate he gets no dex, and since he was in combat he was not allowed a perception check. Once he was out he threw a fit, but the next five sessions went great and we completed the campaign.

Worst thing that happened to me was one of my players, who sometimes plays in another group as dm, not agreeing to the way I did things and actually starting to personally insult me.

How to be evil without being annoying: When going to town quietly kill merchants and just take their goods.

One of the worst things for me is when a DM NPC blocks you. Now, if you're doing something stupid, that is a different matter, but one DM I play with is infamous for making NPC's these amazing beings that can stop anything the PC's do. In one session, we were investigating a suspicious young girl that was painting pictures of the future with otherworldly ink. Her brother was the mayor of the town, and he had prohibitted us from speaking to her, so I snuck into the room. As we start to get information, he has the butler walk in and immediately spot me, I pointed out that I was stationed above the door (I am an Aarakocra that likes to sit in unusual places) so the butler wouldn't immediately spot me. He agreed and asked me to make a stealth roll, I got a 24 on my stealth, which apparently the butler managed to outroll, and then attacked me, beating my 21AC. The issue here is that I saw his roll on the 'to hit' roll, and he rolled a natural 2, so either the normal civillian butler is somehow getting +19 to his rolls, making him stronger just about anything else in the monster manual, or this was never an encounter I was going to avoid. Basically the DM knew how we were meant to find out about the girl, and anything that went against that would be punished to force us to do things his way. The only thing worse was when I had a DM that actively changed details of his campaign if a player made a logical argument for doing something. We found a bandit camp and murdered the bandits there, I said I wanted to look for a water source because we were running low on provisions, and it made sense that the bandits would set up camp close to fresh water for their own supplies. The DM thereby decided that these Bandits weren't close to water, and had no drinking water on them or in their camp, and later admit that he'd have given me water if I had just said 'I look for water' rather than also explaining why I did it.

The biggest mistake a DM can do is "shutting a player down." This is when a DM is unfair and doesn't roll the dice just to stop a players actions. All players deserve to be respected. I have been a DM mostly and a player for MANY years, basic D&D, D&D, 2nd, and up to Pathfinder. As a player it pisses me off when a DM cheats just to his goal and/or stop you from doing what you want. This can be catching a arrow with no roll, making a drunk bar man in a level 3 game have a 15 DR, or simply not rolling. I have had all these and recently the last 2 from a new DM.

I made a one shot for the first time I was to DM. Still relatively new to the game at that point. The scenario is that the players characters, all strangers, happen to be in the same tavern. After they introduce their characters to each other over tavern beer, one of them notices a note under their cup. "Your beers have been poisoned. You will die by sunrise. There is an artifact being put on display at the mascarade ball this evening. Drop it into the city well to receive the antidote." They could explore the labyrinth bellow the city for clues. Or pull off a heist at the mascarade. Or investigate the poison, which was actually just a strong hallucinogen that made the characters see monsters in shadows or hallucinate suspicious expressions in random strangers without the players themselves knowing it was misdirection. Pretty good setup for a quick adventure, I thought... until two in the group revealed that they had poison immunity. -_-

A very good video for beginner Game Masters of any genre. Thanks for making this video. If this had been available when I first started Game Mastering, it would have saved me a LOT of headaches.

Actually I usually play with experienced players that avoid messing with each other normally. My worst experience is with DM that wanted to tell me what my characters backstory was. It was frustrating for me to create a backstory as requested then have it torn apart by a DM that felt his idea of how my Half-Orc became a monk was better.

But one thing I think a lot of people ask - which I ask my one friend whenever I hear of something monumentally stupid happening in one of his other gaming groups, usually by the same one or two players over and over again - is "Why don't you tell that disruptive player to either smarten up or else leave?" Here's the thing, a lot of us older players remember back in the 70's and 80's, when we first got into role-playing games. We were the marginalized, the disenfranchised, the geeks and nerds who got tormented or at the very least ignored. It is probably one of the unspoken reasons why we gravitated towards one another, banding together to play these games. We felt accepted finally, and some of us vowed to never make anyone feel unwelcome again. That is why I think so many groups refuse to deal with bad players, as they have too much sympathy for them, no matter how disruptive they become to the rest of the group. (I can recall one time in a group, with one player who preferred to play lone-wolf, that another player started playing lone-wolf, hoping to get the same attention from the GM as he was giving the first player, and then getting angry when the GM treated him differently. Sadly, that game eventually imploded as the GM took things to an extreme to get that first player to interact, and the second player balked at it.)

Saw your video on Shadiversity on the VidCon event. I enjoyed a few video's here. Though, I've played tabletop games for 19 years now and most of your content is clearly for new players, but it's really good. So I rang the bell button and threw a few likes around. Smiles from Denmark.

Worst thing other players have done to me: So I spent weeks preparing a special Christmas adventure for my friend group. They were all going to be various characters in Santa's Workshop (Doctor Elf, Mechanic Elf, Santa, Mrs. Claus, Assembly Line Worker Elf, and Elf Police) I made custom character sheets and drew up a complex map on graph paper for the whole thing. The main plot was that it was 3 days till Christmas and Santa had a list of things that needed done before the big day. The only problem was while they were asleep at night someone would sneak in and wreck all their progress (This was secretly the Grinch and his minions). I even laid out a murder mystery with a dumb ice troll as the only witness. I was really excited and all set for a great adventure but the two players in charge of everyone else (mr. and mrs. Claus) didn't take it seriously and instead decided to institute communism in the North Pole, Make the Elves into slaves, torture the elves who resisted, and not feed them or pay them as necessary. I said that they couldn't do that because of their alignments (lawful good) but I did write that they disrespected the elves and thought of them as slaves under personality traits. They argued that they weren't compromising their morals because they thought of the elves as lesser beings (which is true I guess) and I didn't want to take up the next two hours arguing. After the first night when they woke up and everything was wrecked they didn't even care. The other players seemed to think that the clauses were the culprits and secretly planned to murder them in their sleep and take control of the north pole. They didn't pick up on any of my hints toward the Grinch's hand in things. The game then went downhill fast and Christmas was ruined (in the game). I will make sure to assign roles next time I do one of these instead of letting them pick. Wow that turned out longer than I thought it would, I just kinda typed it up in a mad flurry of fingers... It wasn't a complete waste, I still enjoyed DMing. Thanks for cool vid CJ!

I had a game where the DM killed me off in one hit, no saves no nothing just suprize attack your dead because my char embarrassed all his friends chars.

Cj, I wanted to let you know that although I'm not a fan of this D&D edition, I am a fan of your videos and have used your videos to show my friends how to play any roleplaying game

I had a working dual DM game. The idea is that one actively helps the players, while the other actively tries to kill them. When the players travel to a new place, the Evil DM gets a limited number of points to try to hinder the players however possible (spent on traps and monsters) . The Good DM can give the players help (like maps or secret passes) at the risk of giving the Evil DM more points to work with. This module was mostly to aid in combat time, where one could make actions and respond to player actions while the other crunched numbers. This also aided in town time, where having multiple DMs processed through player actions faster.

a player won't forgive me as DM for their characters death and constantly brings it up

Interesting way to bring up a lot of information to players. i like this.

I think you should let your players do anything within reason

Have you watched Hero's and Halwits? That list of terrible things that can happened on the last episode of season 2. It was so bad what Geoff aka Bo Jingles the Tiefling bard did. They had the most strategic plan that they can do. The spend literal hours in real time on setting up the plan and got right where they need it. It was on Bo Jingles to handle the last part. Geoff in real life would be considered Chaotic Evil. Guess how the plan worked. All the other players where ready to beat the living hell out of him for it.

For evil RP characters: Assume your characters see their companions as possessions or tools. What kind of greedy wizard overlord allows their possessions to be easily damaged or destroyed? Also, the death or injury of a fellow player character could be a problem, as it would stop the evil character from achieving their goals as easily as before. Once again they are being decent companions, but they're only thinking of themselves.

Choice paralysis only occurs when you are presented with a large number of choices. As a DM, you can let your players do sandbox games with virtually no limits on their freedom without presenting choices and thus preventing choice paralysis

The worst thing that happened to me is my first session another Player Character stole everything I had on me except for my armor just because and then got mad at me when I didn't appreciate it because it was 'all in good fun' but it wasn't fun for me. I was still a relatively new player so it was upsetting.

I’m currently in two campaigns: 1. I’m playing with a friend and his friends 2. DMing for long distance friends First party doesn’t care about characters at all. I was told like 3 times in one session that nobody cares about character backstory unless it’s directly relevant. We also hardly RP, which as someone who puts a lot of time and effort into character creation, it stung a bit. I will say I’m giving the campaign at least a few sessions because we have a very large party and an inexperienced DM. It’s mainly one or two people that are bitter :/ Second campaign in running with two brand new players who have a lot of experience with “do whatever the hell you want” RP but none with D&D, so I get things like “I pick up the whole party and run away” (from our elf rogue, with a strength of -1...) and no exploration. I’ve learned to railroad them more than I have previously

So your HP doesn't recover IRL? What do you do about that? Have you never healed from walking into a door? cutting yourself in the kitchen? You are so min maxed you don't even naturally heal.

I never want a DM not letting me buy a bunch of useless shit to make traps with. Its fucking hilarious using candles to time oil explosions like in game of thrones.

The worst thing my DM has ever done was rely on my character (A Ranger with proficiency in stealth) to fail my stealth checks that should've been extremely easy but had a DC of 16 at one point (My character was lvl2). Eventually, when i kept having good rolls, they flat out angrily told me (and the rest of the table) that if i kept succeeding the story couldn't progress. When i agreed bc i didn't want to "ruin the game" as they put it, they made my character look very icompetent in the one thing he's really good at (by falling through a sturdy door??). The story then just arkwardly continued.

I played with this one player in some campaigns. He was a total lunatic, constantly going his own way, and regularly engaging in PvP and going crazy. Every session then became about 1) Try to contain that player, and 2) Try to do the damn quest, lol Needless to say, his characters died. A lot. He once lost three separate characters in a single 4hour long session! (and we play with 1 character, where you gotta roll a new one up once the old one retires/dies).

A neutral evil wouldn't take along something to torture. They would just sneak out at night lol

Worst one was our bard playing a prank on my goblin Necromancer where he tricked me into drawing a card from the deck of many things and I drew balance thus turning my evil goblin with plans on ruling all goblinkind was changed into using my undead to allow the goblins to achieve higher society.

You're definitely right about the "anything goes" kind of DM. We would run a game and there was one person that would just decide to go off on their own and steal 3/4 of the gaming session. I've had 2-3 gaming sessions in a row go towards two party members that horribly botched rolls and didn't bother communicating to one another. It was pretty bad and made it hard to want to keep showing up.

First game I ever played was with a friend at an introduction to DnD event. Free stuff and what not. The DM was rude throughout the game and enjoyed making us feel dumb. End game comes around and we defeat the monks trying to destroy the world. My buddy and I decide now is the time to strike. He starts reading from the scroll to summon the demon to destroy the world and I keep everyone back with a volley of arrows.

At the end of the first D&D campaign, I had ever played our party had completed our objective and we're celebrating. The DM NPC had poured the drinks and offered a toast. I said that my character doesn't drink in general but then the DM said that they are drinking right now. Turns out the NPC had poisoned them all and shot my character with a crossbow in the head and the DM told me they were instantly dead. No rolls where made and they 1 didn't say(possibly even know) of the 3 saving throws for my character. Then I had to listen to how the party tried to take down the NPC but the DM said they couldn't because they were poisoned leaving them for dead.

We have one chaotic evil character in our mainly neutral party and he completely derailed the session by trying to kill people. We saved one guy he tried to kill but he slit his throat after.

The absolute worst thing a DM has done to me personally would be not realizing their table was full early enough. They were running Curse of Strahd, I'd been in two sessions so far and decided to dedicate some time to really fleshing out where this character was going and suddenly got waitlisted. I understand the points of too many cooks and wanting to ensure you aren't letting your table get out of hand, but when I came back a second time and wasn't told it would be a problem I spent several days worth of free time mapping out backstory, levelling paths, and where my character would be going. I made paths based on how the party reacted to learning he wasn't who he originally said he was (Charlatan Rogue with False Identity) and worked pretty hard on it. It's to the point where it's going to be genuinely hard for me to go back out looking for a new group unless I can get the DM to put it in writing that I'm not going to be bumped out of the campaign after 1-2 games in something I thought was going to last months, especially because now I feel committed and would be loathe to join a new group at the same time slot for fear that a spot would open up and I'd have to choose between the two. I'd call having your spot taken unceremoniously away from you worse than having your happy ending robbed from you, especially for a new player who might just stop trying to join games as a result of a fear they're just wasting their time.

I killed one of our members. But it worked out because of member hated playing that character. So it worked out.

The way me and my friends would play D&D when first starting is that the DM would have a character and we would rotate between DMs. While one person was DMing the other players had control of the DMs character. While I was DMing one day my friends decided to mess around and have my character marry a random enemy skeleton.

Good list. I learned from my first character that the rest of the party doesn't appreciate when you sell their characters into slavery. Looking back after the years since it happened if I had been the DM, knowing what I know now, I would have taken my character and said that's fine, but now he's one of the villains and you have to make a new hero.

I like your animation

i think another important point to make (yes i know how its an old video) for characters who are playing as evil within a game of role play is that while your character may be evil it does not require them to act evil. now ultimately what they as evil characters want in the world is to see to the end their own selfish goals, but up to that point they dont need to do anything inherently evil unless it makes it easier for them to achieve what they want. the burden of sticking to mortality is on good characters and there probably should not be a burden on evil characters to be immoral. besides few evil people truly think they are evil.

Cool video, CJ. My only complaint would be that it's too short! :D Worst thing another player has done to me: When I've spent ten minutes negotiating or talking down a potential enemy to get what we want without having to fight or kill anything, then my teammate says, "Okay, too bored now, I attack him!"

My dad once ran a AD&D mystery adventurer for my friends for me. And in AD&D a first level character and especially a wizard are really weak and don't have much more than 4ish hitpoints. We all had 2 characters (wich was a terrible idea) in the end were facing off with some sort of necromancer. One person had his wizard charge headlong into the enemy. Befor getting his brains knocked out, later he got more upset than I have ever seen him because we were played by character not by player... we never continued that campaign.

I give my little nephew a narrative railroad but i will tell him that you can make many choices in the game which he might make different choices than the narrative railroad choice but he is more comfortable with the narrative railroad choices. He is a saiyan in d&d.

In one campaign, I ran a character with light vulnerability. The light literally burns. Well, she died, and the party cleric put a condition on her resurrection that she would convert to worship his sun god and attend the churches where they are always held outside in bright light. In other words, I was expecting to worship something contrary to the very nature of my character in a setting that would always hurt her. I was evil, but the good cleric felt far more evil for imposing like that and I lost all interest in the campaign afterwards. It also permanently shaped my perception of clerics, where I take precautions against divine intervention at all times.

Is there a vídeo that you explaine How to choose Monsters and whats stats are important in the Monsters?!

Awesome video :D

great video! the worst experience I had was my first time DMing. I had two veteran players (with more experiences than me) and 3 relatively new players. the two veterans conspired against the party behind my back. Instead of stopping the nonsense, I let it play out, since they were weaker and outnumbered. it didn't end well, and I had to kick the people I was counting on for support from the group. I've since become much better, and made up with the dissidents, but some people still refuse to talk to each other.

I used to have a DM that made all his NPC's into jerks that only insulted us, the best we had were neutral and even then they were not great, so yeah, i don't play his games anymore

Our gunman through my raccoon familiar off a cliff.

The wizard charmed my fighter to run through a hallway of traps that only he passed a check on to detect ended in player death after an ambush of my character after all the traps went off.

the worst thing that ever happened to me was .... I am a experienced player with many games under my belt I was playing with a newer DM (witch is fine) but he worded things in such a way that I knew the whole campaign ending before it happened but I was the only one who cough on to this because the players were also new and it was tough for me to not make decisions (metagaming) based on what I knew was going to happen and I did not want to point it out ( or ruin it for others) to the DM because he was feeling stressed about DMing in the first place so I took the DM aside before the next game and came clean and decided to not play I did not know what else to do

The worst thing players have done to me is completely ignoring every and any thread of the story of the campaign I give them, including never investigating magical objects (and one of the players has the identify spell), accepting a quest to find a missing girl one minute and then deciding they don't want to do that anymore because screw her I guess?? (And they're all supposed to be be good allignment!) I play in a second group that has none of these problems, but this first group I swear has the collective attention span of a two year old. In one session, they apprehended a couple of bandits, shackled them to a dungeon wall and said they were going to tell the town guards about them. Then they completely forgot that until after a few in game days went by and I reminded them. I think I will make it so that the bandits ended up freeing themselves and then hunt them down, but they're bringing a lot of friends this time. One group is great, but the other I want to quit. End of rant, sorry.

Thanks for featuring my question CJ!!!

I figured out a way to play an evil character without the fear of harming the other players, you just play as a summoned creature, one of the other players tries to summon a specific creature but something goes wrong and summons you instead and they cannot figure out how to unsummon you so they are stuck with you for the time being, this also means you need no you must be loyal to the player who summoned you

Refusing to do anything except digging holes

The video hits the nail on the head so hard in case of my friend who was a DM for the first time (and as it stands for now, the last). We were all the D&D newbies, but you know, some things that happened in our campaign simply didn't feel right to me, which is something I pointed out to our freshly baked DM, but he ignored. Spoiler warning; that campaign didn't last long. :D

Yeah, I had my troubles with players and DMs before. I had one player who wanted to railroad the other players into another scenario even though the other people already agreed to the original scenario.

Worst thing other players have done to me: I haven't had anything in particular happen yet that made me upset. I'm pretty easygoing and follow the "the DM's word is gospel" mindset. My dad had a poor time once when his DM decided that his rogue was too powerful and made enemies enter rooms with their backs to each other so he couldn't sneak attack them or flank them. One thing I hope my DM or other players will never do to me: The only thing I can think of that would make me angry would be if they let me die when they could've easily saved me. I've played games where my character died and their was nothing I could do about it and that's fine. But if I'm unconscious and my party leaves me or does nothing to revive me then I don't think I'd want to roll a new character with that group.

My very first session of D&D, one of the players tried to attack another for some arbitrary reason(doesn't matter cause i know he's the kinda guy that loves to fuck with people) and he ends up rolling a nat 1, causing the cantrip he cast to come back round and hit the caster instead, and of course it's a cantrip that makes it impossible to heal him until his next turn. Did I forget to mention he decided to do this in the middle of an encounter? So of course since our cleric cant do anything and the barbarian is already fighting half the enemies, the other half come and attack me and him, leaving him unconscious with negative hit points. Molar of the story? DON'T ATTACK OTHER PLAYERS!

one session I joined because of my friend, it did not go well, the other players boss me around and constantly tell me that I'm playing my class wrong so after three more session I left the campaign

In a session, my beginner group had to take a long rest, so I called a Worg to take care of us during the night. In the real world, my friend, who was playing with an Arackrocka, decided to sleep and turn his player in an NPC. To feed the worg we just cutted the NPC chest and gave to the worg. HAHAHAH we made this "terrible things", but we had a lot of fun ( after that we regenerated the chest of the poor Aracrocka)

So I have recently started a game with some of my best friends and we are all pretty hyper people so it’s been pretty spastic and fun. We have a wizard who we let make a cantrip that he found online called “Hershey squirts” where you can make someone poop themselves if they fail a DC saving throw. That is all that he’s done since session one and we’ve told him to stop and even gotten into fights with him in game to stop him. Do you have any advice?

This video reminded me of some happenings in two of my campains. Same players in both insidents, first time there was a cleric and barbarian that didnt get along to well. They had smal arguments all the time and once the cleric attacked the other, he scored a natural 20 and almost killed the barbarian, had to stabilize and heal. The barbarian left the party for a while, but luckily some ingame and out of game serious talk fixed it. In the same campain the barbarian later stole a magic whip the cleric had while he was asleep, the cleric didnt notice untill next time he wanted to use hes whip and the player got really confused. But this time i had talked with the other player and he agreed to give it back right away, even lrt them as a free move in combat so that was just a funny moment for all :P Second time one of them played a Robin Hood like character, he stole a expensive perfume from a shop and planed to sell it. The other player in that campain had become a ghoul (still can use hes weapons and skills etc, but not liked by anyone unless he make hard disguise checks, and he needs to eat rotting corpses. Some homebrew ruling) The ghoul player took the perfume and poured it all over him, the Robin Hood like player got super madin and out of game, and wanted the ghoul player to leave the party. Again some serious out of game talk fixed it, and i think the ghoul player will pay back when thry get some more gold.

I always read your channel name as, "Stop thinking!" And I always get confused for a second

1:55 In my experience (As a beginner player in Pathfinder.) this is exceptionally useful. I've had two campaigns where it was just a straight dungeon crawl, and now currently in a third that just takes place in a city, with the general idea of "You want to learn more about, and possibly destroy, this thing that no one knows about." My party ended up scooping dead seagulls out of the sea, (Which happened because the the mysterious thing.) and cooking them, and then selling them for a silver a piece. The next day, they caught, (With my help, as the local Half Orc Fighter/Paladin with a 20 strength stat.) half a shark, as it was being eaten by other sharks, because the sharks were drawn to the seagulls.

Worst thing done to me by another player in a D&D campaign -- glory-hog asshole player reincarnated my dead rogue (elf) as a half-orc against my wishes. I'd already had a plan in place to recover the character normally, and he knew that, but he did it anyway because he was the kind of guy who needs to be the "hero" of the story even when there are other real people playing. Totally fucked up my character's role and made him basically unplayable. My character likely would've gone insane, suffered an alignment change to chaotic neutral or evil, and been completely useless to the campaign.

I had a game where we the players broke it on the first session. The setting was sky pirates. We were tasked to complete the dying wish of a friend. The DM planned for us to be Savvy Swashbucklers battling in ship-to ship combat in a multitude of different monster races. Instead, we were 4 humans and 1 elf, all specialized in forced movement. The DM was notably frustrated when his uber powered Mary Sue Navy Captain, who was supposed to be a recurring villain, was confirmed dead when we pushed him off onto a jagged stone floor that he went into unfortunate detail describing that it was under our ships when he was making the opening setting.

I just recently started DMing for my long distance friends, asking them if they wanted to play (an enthusiastic and expected yes from one, the two others gave a “sure sounds fun”) we didn’t have a session 0 but we made a new groupchat to discuss it so they knew what they were getting into, made characters together and learned the main rules in the week before the first session. Enter them: I set them up in a small trade port town, they enter stereotypical tavern because I’m still a relatively new DM I’m still testing the waters (haha, it’s a water based campaign I’m funny) and I describe the few tables and people littered throughout, first and foremost two shady figures at a table together, some sailors and a disgruntled band in the corner not playing anything. They were supposed to talk to some of the people at the tables to fill some time and create a sort of relaxed and fun atmosphere before a dude runs in, shouts about pirates, faints, and three pirates barge into the tavern to attack. Player 1: our bard, she goes up to the band first and tries to prove she can play which hilariously leads to a string of 9-1 performance rolls and a skeptical group of musicians. She then flirts with the tavern owner and now has a girlfriend in that town they’re about to leave. Player 2 and 3 just go to the bar and get hella drunk. That’s all they say. So I throw in the dude, get stuff going, player two literally just goes “I pick everyone up and leave with them” Me: you can TRY but you can’t pick everyone up this isn’t an RP it’s d&D and your strength is like -1. P2: so I jump through the window and run Me: well there’s more pirates out there and you’ll get the party killed but if you really want to... *cue me trying to hold this campaign together at all as my players do jack shit and try to defy physics* Anyway later they find a fun little vampire kid in a shed (not plot relevant, I just liked the idea from XP to level 3’s video on fun NPC’s to add) bard immediately adopts him, leaves the shed and kills a guy in the street in front of everyone to feed him. They think they’re gods here I’m about to blow it up in their face in the second session lmao.

I have only one question what do you do if you misjudged the power of your stock enemies for a 1 level dungeon and your pc's are getting slaughtered

So one day... we recieve a quest from a powerfull demon called "Gaunter O'Dimm" to retrieve a scale from a gold dragon. He advised us to use diplomacy to get the dragon scale, so to practice, he had us attend a wedding party in Oxenfurt. We attended the wedding, and everything looked calm and festive. The wedding was an outdoor forest party in the countryside, and there was a lot to do. The Witcher and Fighter went to gamble... and lost 700 gp. The fighter also had to wear donkey ears as a bonus penalty. The wizard and I went to a lakeside game. The old lady hosting the game said that to play the game, we both needed the help of a fair maiden. So we went to look for fair maidens. I found this really young, fair skinned cute, acorn haired noblewoman in a red silk dress. I rolled a fricking 20 on a performance skill check, and wooed her flawlessly. We even became lovers for a while. The wizard on the other hand, uses a spell Friendship... to trick a farm girl into helping him. Then we go back to the old lady by the lake. She tells us the challenge was to have both maidens toss their shoes in a lake full of shoes... and dive after them. First one to get it back, wins! The wizard... who has a habbit of being a dick... bet money on the game. I had a viking and sailor background and a +9 in Atheletics. I just stripped off my tunic and turned into Lord Poseidon 😂! The wizard, in fear of losing 300 gp, cast Alter Self to give himself gills. I win the challenge honarably, and come out of the water faster than the wizard. My partner cheers for me and invites me to dance. Before we went to dance, I went to collect my money from the wizard. I pat his back, trying to be a good sport... then I sense his gills and scales. "What the fuck are those?" I shout at him. "You cheated?! You insult my power?" I shout at him. I try to punch him, but he casts Mage Hand on me (misused that spell). I didn't know any better, so I cast Dispell magic. He then polymorphs me into a pig! I was a pig at the wedding for one hour! One hour!!! He then starts teasing me, he even called the fighter to carry me to the pig pen... after he looted my gold and items, stole my date, danced with her... but before hand, he strolls past the pig pen with her and laughs at me. So I had to watch him humiliate me for one hour as a pig.

I am the D&D pro of my group and the dm had done all those nono's and my gnome range keep stealing my *CENSOR* i am teetering on if i should stay with my group or just do the other one with experienced players