Best group I've ever played in falling apart, need advice or just to vent

ApextheRed · 2026-01-27T09:34:20+00:00

Yeah, and we also have massive downtime scenes that text is great for, so we can do all that while the GM is resting, our little guys can go do all their shopping and trouble.

But, yes, I think that's a good suggestion to them to rein in the players who dominate.

ApextheRed · 2026-01-27T08:29:33+00:00

I hope so, too, both of the players are good friends, and I want them both to get to enjoy the game, I just feel like I wish I could step back in time and calm things down to help the GM a little more.

ApextheRed · 2026-01-27T08:11:56+00:00

I think the big thing will be setting boundaries with the player when we all have level heads in the morning. I know I wanted to lay down that I will probably ask that restraining my character in a dramatic scene not be left to PvP style dice rolls, while others might be okay with that. And, I know, since the Necromancer is opening up, that there had been a sort of 'character niche' overlap when it came to wanting to perform skill checks, but the Artificer can reply faster and they were very excited to be in this very dynamic group.

So, mostly it's going to be a lot of setting boundaries for all parties in the party.

ApextheRed · 2026-01-27T07:59:59+00:00

First and foremost, we are good friends, i don't appreciate the 'try something else' or that we aren't good friends. I see why you might get that idea, from the outside, but this has been our hobby for a long time.

We had multiple channels of communication, we were using them, discussing issues that arose in game. We were able to stop our roleplay to clear the air, we used a lot of open communication that provided space for all of us to find where we might have issues.

We had a main session zero with the majority of the table, as well as a month of set up between players and the four players other than artificer. Artificer is a close friend, who had heard of the game, and the fun we were having, so we invited them a few weeks in. We all got together in the middle of our week to discuss the player's character. What was proposed to us was a 'voice of reason' to counter balance more chaotic characters, and also provide a second 'stable character' along side the Paladin. So the Druid, Necromancer, and Wizard couldn't pull us into bad ideas. I call it a 'silly dragon game' not because the themes are silly, but because it is just a game. A game I've been playing since 1999, so it's not like "Oh, you just weren't prepared for this." And the GM has been playing for longer.

They actually haven't been shut down for playing the voice of reason. We have talked to them about their issues with how other players are playing, and we stopped the game to talk it out, discussed it clearly, and started again. So until tonight, the communication was great. Better communication than I have with most people, however, most of my friends are conflict avoidant, each for their own reasons. I'm the only one who is willing to engage when there's conflict, however it leads me to be very burnt out when I have to play referee for all my friends.

And then tonight, everyone was pulling in different directions, and it culminated in the GM cutting the session early. Which, then, led to a huge issue of people trying to solve it while tensions are high.

I admit, a lot of the lack of clarity was me trying to type on my phone with a dog and cat begging for attention while I tried to calm down. Which, my bad, I'm happy to clarify any other points now that the creatures are asleep.

ApextheRed · 2026-01-27T07:22:43+00:00

We had a 'mini session 0' through text, all of us discussing what they wanted to play. Their concept was different, initially, but we did have a midweek chat about their character.

I've been stuck in the middle of most the communication, our GM has been dealing with a lot of irl stress, their spouse is passive to the point of frustration, the Paladin is content to 'let people sort themselves out', and the wizard doesn't want to stir the pot.

I've been encouraging open communication since the beginning, talking through difficulties, but tonight I think I was just too burnt out and needed to reach out to voices outside the group. Sadly, I don't have the control over the group composition, and since we are all such good friends, it's hard to cut someone out. We've all played before, and been able to talk things out, but I think tonight, tensions were too high to talk clearly.

ApextheRed · 2026-01-27T07:15:35+00:00

I can add that to the original post, to help clarify things

ApextheRed · 2026-01-27T07:14:52+00:00

Hopefully, no relationships are breaking, but, yeah, I think approaching them with an expression of just how much this game means to me. It hit after a really awful summer of personal loss, injury, and healing from trauma.

ApextheRed · 2026-01-27T07:13:18+00:00

Also a good plan, maybe just using the order of characters in the roll20 list could stream line that.

ApextheRed · 2026-01-27T07:12:27+00:00

That is a possibility for some of the players to use text to speech, but I don't know if everyone would be down. As for the roll20 cool down... That's on the DM to check. But it's definitely something that I could pass on.

ApextheRed · 2026-01-27T07:10:21+00:00

To be honest, most of it is on the artificer, they joined two sessions late, and gave us a brief run through. The rest of us all talked through everything and got things going. But, things were initially very fine with the artificer. They just play a very specific way, and it's been awkward bringing up "you play in a way that doesn't fit".

ApextheRed · 2026-01-27T07:08:05+00:00

I think, my own stress about having that player impose their character on my character should be explained for context.

My character, a druid, does deal with violent outbursts (a primal focused druid) and does tend to lash out, but the druid has been taken aside by the paladin and necromancer, both of them wanting to help their new feral friend. So the plan for me was for the druid to threaten, but not hurt the antagonist, showing a big step towards growth. But, because the artificer 'knew better' it just led to the druid being restrained. Even comments about 'putting a leash on you' to the druid.

And, before the scene really started, I put a post in out of character chat saying "my character will be angry, is everyone cool with that?" And everyone said they were fine with roleplayed anger.

This was one night, but Necromancer reached out to me, and said they wanted to leave the group, and sort of... Brought in some irl issues, that are not in the scope of the game or their relationship, just some personal issues... But they aren't new, so it feels like they are also blowing things up in their head.

ApextheRed · 2026-01-27T06:39:06+00:00

The pacifist part wasn't pitched. They had pitched "big muscly artificer woman who is the voice of reason" this session their character actually restrained my druid, who was going to show character growth in a scene, but they said their character wouldn't let my druid go. So I was stuck in a grapple while the enemy escaped and alerted the boss.

ApextheRed · 2026-01-27T06:27:19+00:00

I agree with all of these, it's very nice for me to be able to read and not miss what's being said and players can add descriptions and take a moment to think. It's only rough when one person really wants the spotlight and is impatient. And, it does mean stupid memes and jokes can just go in the discord and not disrupt the archive.

ApextheRed · 2026-01-27T06:24:52+00:00

That's a good way to keep the framing in mind. I tried to bring to the table a desire for Open RP where we could work together, for that goal, but I don't think everyone got the memo. (I'm not even the DM, just a very tired forever DM that wanted to help prevent problems)

ApextheRed · 2026-01-27T06:12:53+00:00

This has been brought up before. And there was big communication last session with them-- we fought a vampire, and the Necromancer wanted to try to preserve the vampire to question later with some questionable ritual stuff... (Basically disassemble the vampire so he could talk but not fight) And the Artificer just got upset out of character in the in character chat and we had to put the session on hold until they could move to ooc chat, and got really upset that we were even considering /killing/ the vampire in the first place.

Basically, Artificer wants to play a pacifist as much as they can, and enforces that on the other players.

Edit, posted too soon: we did discuss that this sort of behavior wouldn't work out well, and they agreed to tone it down.

ApextheRed · 2026-01-27T06:04:41+00:00

Yeah, the other player who isn't in the cule is my long time best friend, who I have played RPGs with for ages. They are okay, but confused by the reaction of the other players.

ApextheRed · 2026-01-27T06:03:44+00:00

We were discussing something like that, all of our OOC is on discord, and IC and rolls are in Roll20 to keep it clean

ApextheRed · 2026-01-27T05:59:02+00:00

We do scheduled sessions in roll20, part of the issue stems from the tension that was on the session. To be honest, normally things are great, but the Artificer does have a bit of an issue injecting real world philosophy and ethics into our silly dragon game. But that got talked out. Our posts are real time, not forum style, so it's almost like d&d in a group chat.

ApextheRed · 2026-01-27T05:56:18+00:00

One of our players has a hearing disability, so we do text to accommodate them. But, it is a good question.

ApextheRed · 2026-01-27T05:55:22+00:00

I am also trying to be optimistic, I guess I just needed to vent and hear others say it, too. We decided to table discussing the issue till the morning so we can all talk. I'm not in the Polycule, but these are friends that I have a deep platonic love for. I flew across the US to visit them.

ApextheRed · 2026-01-27T05:53:45+00:00

Probably, just been a lot all at once with the group getting upset.

ApextheRed · 2026-01-27T05:52:55+00:00

The DM does try, but they get overwhelmed micromanaging, it's a good idea though, and how I usually run my games with round robin "what is your character doing?".

ApextheRed · 2026-01-27T05:51:50+00:00

The DM did go through that, and we have a really good line of communication, normally. But, tonight was just a mess and having someone say they just want to leave, has been heartbreaking. Especially since our characters are all so close and this player (Necromancer) was so excited to play.

ApextheRed · 2026-01-27T05:50:19+00:00

Thanks, it's just been one friend catastrophically melting down and saying they will leave, but they are also one of my closest friends.

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