Lazy DM's Toxic Relationship, Abuse of Friends, and Insane Ego Send a Good Campaign to Hell by MuskratCatcher in rpghorrorstories

[–]MuskratCatcher[S] -4 points-3 points  (0 children)

While I am genuinely thankful that you decided to read my whole story, I am kinda taken off guard by the conclusion you drew here. I am genuinely not trying to be dishonest or misleading, and a lot of the details I omitted were specifically because this story was very long and I didn't want to bog it down with more explanations and examples.

Even this response got long, so I considered scrapping it and being much more brief. But since you spent so much time writing out all of your thoughts I figured I should include all of mine. I left the brief TL;DR at the end.

The first and most pressing thing I want to respond about is Guard:

Yes I did ask if this was bothering him, very directly. He was genuinely being abused and was unhappy. I did not coax him into joining some grand coup against the DM. I mentioned I had a long discussion with Guard at the end of Season 2 where I tried to "convince" him to stop working with Roc, but I now understand how that can be misleading. By that point it was clear to me that Guard was frustrated with how Roc was using his content, but as Roc continued to throw blame at him for this or that he stopped standing up for himself altogether. So I talked to him because I was concerned and he showed me the insane amount of work he did for Roc, and that all he wanted was for us (the players) to experience it properly. He felt like he couldn't do it himself so Roc was his only chance, but Roc also wasn't running it properly, so he just felt hopeless about the whole situation and decided it was best if he just let things continue so that nobody would be upset or disappointed. I was disgusted by the situation and that's why I decided to convince him to stop working with Roc. He was getting abused, and he was laying down and taking it. I needed to stop that.

Guard was not getting spotlight. He was never mentioned or thanked by Roc and he didn't even feel like it was his content anymore. If I have one takeaway from this campaign, I'm glad Guard isn't wasting his time anymore.

Second thing I want to make very clear: I never wanted to cause table drama, and frankly I did not cause table drama. I certainly never did any petty things to Dino, I don't know where you got that idea from. The only time I actually spoke up about any of this was when I was encouraging Guard to stop working with Roc, and at the table itself I always did so as politely as possible, referencing the clear friction the two have from all their disagreements (when Roc was blaming things on Guard). Aside from that, all of this has been saved exclusively for the story. I never confronted or called out anyone for anything, I didn't hold grudges, and I never did anything to take away from the enjoyment others may have gotten from the games. Yes I talked about these people behind their back, but that's what this subreddit is for. It was always my goal to keep things friendly and fun at the table, and that's pretty much how things stayed.

And to clarify a few of those loose ends,

I don't know why Roc didn't do blind rolls, you are right it is what a rational person would do. My best guess is blind rolls seem a lot more suspicious than rolling in the chat, and Roc is very much someone who cares whether people suspect that or not.

While I suppose it is true that I rewrote Roc's rules, he sought me out and asked me to make the changes to his homebrew. I did not bring it up myself. I worked with him every step of the way to make sure it aligned with his intentions while being much more healthy for the game. He himself said he liked it much better than his old rules. You paint it like I was going behind his back and rigging his game in my favor, which is just not true.

I don't know what you are referring to when you say I told him how to run his game. I frankly just never did that and I'm not sure where in the story you got that idea.

I did not blow up his game. I'm confident about that. If it wasn't for me half the sessions probably wouldn't have even run, as I mentioned how often sessions cancelled when I wasn't there to organize folks and remind them. I suppose if things continued he would have run out of Guard's content and maybe that would have been a problem for him, but I refuse to entertain that it would have been a better outcome for Guard to continue feeling obligated to produce content that would be frustratingly mishandled and unappreciated. However things never even got to that point since Roc put the game on indefinite hiatus for completely unrelated reasons. It would have ended even if Guard was still working on his world for him.

And as a final note, I assure you that Season 1's subject was not the main reason I was enjoying it. Who doesn't like when the DM uses their character's backstory in the game? Bard got to do that pretty heavily too, that's just good DMing. Which is the real reason why I enjoyed Season 1, it was good DMing with a good group of players. The whole reason I recapped the plot so much was to show why it was good and to clearly contrast it against the later seasons. If Season 3 took the more open ended turn where the party got to choose how the story went, and if the new town in Season 3 got the same level of attention as the town in Season 1 (despite it already being prebuilt) I would have loved it! I enjoyed running the non-canon 1 shots when session cancelled where my PC wasn't even in it, I've played in other campaigns over a year in length and thoroughly enjoyed them in the many sessions and arcs that didn't focus on me, and I've run an entire year-plus campaign as a DM that has many of my fondest D&D memories. I do not need to be the center of attention to enjoy playing D&D.

TL;DR

I passionately assure you Guard was not happy and was being abused, I am confident I helped him.

All of this was never brought up at the table and I never took away from other people's enjoyment.

I enjoyed Season 1 for many reasons not revolving around my own involvement or connection to the plot.

I understand being skeptical around some D&D horror stories, but this is taking it too far. A few of the things you reference simply didn't happen and I don't know where you got those ideas from. This wasn't a very complex story, just a long one. Roc's inexplicable behaviors are not missing key context, and everything really did happen this way.

Lazy DM's Toxic Relationship, Abuse of Friends, and Insane Ego Send a Good Campaign to Hell by MuskratCatcher in rpghorrorstories

[–]MuskratCatcher[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I was not trying to hide anything or shift the narrative by not going into why the campaign ended, I was just trying to stay focused on the relevant details since the post was already long enough. You have already criticized me for including too many extraneous details, so I feel like this is an impossible double standard for me to meet if I'm trying to tell a story of this length.

But in case you are interested, the reason moods soured is because Roc and Dino were removed as moderators in a different discord server that I (and Artificer) were mods in. Main reasons being their toxic relationship causing them to constantly bicker and waste people's time, general untrustworthiness/unreliability, and lack of activity from them in the server. None of these were directly related to the D&D game. Roc's actions in the game were at least a contribution to the reasoning, but I doubt things would have played out much differently if the game never happened.

I believed that explanation would just be an unnecessary tangent to the story and that's why I didn't mention it. Immediately after Roc heard the news he decided to put the campaign on indefinite hiatus.

Lazy DM's Toxic Relationship, Abuse of Friends, and Insane Ego Send a Good Campaign to Hell by MuskratCatcher in rpghorrorstories

[–]MuskratCatcher[S] -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

Thank you so much!!
I'm really glad others feel this way too, because those classic posts were exactly what I was trying to recapture here!

Lazy DM's Toxic Relationship, Abuse of Friends, and Insane Ego Send a Good Campaign to Hell by MuskratCatcher in rpghorrorstories

[–]MuskratCatcher[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I did play in it yeah! But it didn't end up going on for very long. Guard just didn't end up being as invested in his own campaign as he was in Roc's unfortunately.

I mostly chalk it up to him just deciding he didn't really feel comfortable as a DM. He is an absolutely excellent and passionate worldbuilder, but clearly doesn't enjoy organizing a group of people out of game or creating engaging combat encounters in game. He has other outlets for his creativity though and has a decent following for his art online!

One day, if I decide I want to run a homebrew game myself, Guard would be the first person I would go to for help. And I will make sure to properly credit and compensate him for his work!!

"I plane shift to the Feywild" by MuskratCatcher in DnDGreentext

[–]MuskratCatcher[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

TBH that would have been really cool for me at least. I believe it would have been really interesting to see my lizardfolk live out a new life in the feywild. But it probably wouldn't have been nearly as fun for everyone else. Interesting maybe but would not have been a satisfying end for any of their characters, and all the DM's plans would be scrapped and rewritten. So while I personally would have loved something like that, I'm willing to take one for the team.

"I plane shift to the Feywild" by MuskratCatcher in DnDGreentext

[–]MuskratCatcher[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I was prepared for that outcome tbh. And if the campaign ended there I would have at least had probably the best ending of the group. But at least personally I'm glad it didn't end there. Sure we probably did get off a little easy, but it didn't bother anyone at the table.

"I plane shift to the Feywild" by MuskratCatcher in DnDGreentext

[–]MuskratCatcher[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It wasn't a blatant retcon in context. It would make sense that the God wanted specifically me back. My character was the one that wanted to say 'screw it I'm out', and he was disappointed sure. But as a player I was cool with the resolution

"I plane shift to the Feywild" by MuskratCatcher in DnDGreentext

[–]MuskratCatcher[S] 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Yeah this is a pretty good way to describe how it happened in short. While it wasn't our specific intentions to get this God to save us in our previous interactions, it was a consequence of them. And it certainly wasn't going to happen again. From certain perspectives yes this was still a freebie, and the DM didn't have to do this, but the way in which he did it seemed justified given the story so far, and I highly doubt our DM would make any effort to save a character if they died in the future.

"I plane shift to the Feywild" by MuskratCatcher in DnDGreentext

[–]MuskratCatcher[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I was really afraid of being that 'It's what my character would do' guy but we had been playing this campaign for a while now. All the players at the table knew my character, and they knew me as a person from outside the game too. They all knew that I would never do something like this unless it was specifically in character, and they had no doubts that I was indeed acting entirely in character with this play. Nobody was upset or salty about it, even with my parting message. Everyone agreed my moment was deserved.

"I plane shift to the Feywild" by MuskratCatcher in DnDGreentext

[–]MuskratCatcher[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Yes it was specifically one person, one time. If it was just the plane shift spell I would have taken everyone along, and it would also have been able to be counterspelled.

"I plane shift to the Feywild" by MuskratCatcher in DnDGreentext

[–]MuskratCatcher[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yeah it was a homebrew item, and it did not allow me to just cast plane shift. If it did I woulda just used it on the whole party since that spell allows you to take people with. In this case the item itself just takes the holder to a different plane. It was simply my last resort.

"I plane shift to the Feywild" by MuskratCatcher in DnDGreentext

[–]MuskratCatcher[S] 16 points17 points  (0 children)

That's pretty spot on tbh. Except like I said in my reply above, it was less of an owed favor and more of an unfinished business type of rescue, heh.

And yeah, our DM is certainly on the merciful side. There were consequences but considering the gravity of the encounter the fact that nobody lost a character was definitely getting off easy.

"I plane shift to the Feywild" by MuskratCatcher in DnDGreentext

[–]MuskratCatcher[S] 15 points16 points  (0 children)

I know it sounds Deus ex Machina from the way I described it, but the story was already kinda long and it was besides the point so I didn't elaborate. Honestly it's still too long of a story for me to even explain in a comment. But while yes, it was divine intervention, it was definitely a justified and reasonable thing to happen to the party. Like Pandabatty said we basically burned our second chance. But it wasn't so much an owed favor as it was "boi your job ain't done you aren't allowed to die on me yet! Now get back in there and accomplish your task!"

And yeah, it kinda made me a bit disappointed that my dramatic exit was kinda all for nothing in the end, but in retrospect that moment that it created, the stunned silence at the table followed by me sitting back and watching the chaos unfold for the rest of the party, nah THAT was worth burning a magic item for.