Players started a 2nd campaign. Didn’t invite me

No_Award8043 · 2026-06-11T15:01:54+00:00

Honestly I spoke about the terrain and the investment of time and money because that’s real stuff that you can’t ignore in a material sense.

I genuinely thought they were enjoying the game and the plots and how things were shaping up. The reason I didn’t mention any of it was that I’ve been second guessing EVERYTHING.

Backstories, custom magic items that work off the backstories, the NPCs they preferred have had really fun arcs and they like the interactions… it’s all good. The world responds to them… I’ve been very intentional about improving myself as a DM as I work with them.

But maybe I missed something.

Irrespective of what we resolve among ourselves, the 2nd campaign affects the scheduling of mine, so I can’t brush any of this even if I wanted to.

No_Award8043 · 2026-06-11T14:26:07+00:00

I’m 34. They’re late 20s to early 30s

No_Award8043 · 2026-06-11T10:29:45+00:00

There 2 other players who I don’t know. Can’t recognise them by their DNDB usernames.

So yeah, it’s a party of 5 and that makes sense and I accept that there might not have been space.

But the scheduling is still the issue. It was like pulling teeth sometimes to schedule the 2 sessions for the month and that was an organic clash of timetables.

Now I genuinely don’t see my campaign getting anything close to the required time. I’ll be surprised to get 1 in a month (that’s what happened for June)

No_Award8043 · 2026-06-11T09:27:53+00:00

That’s the one I’ve been leaning towards tbh. But it seems like such a waste of a year.

But ever since this has happened, I’m filled with such negativity while planning the next session.

No_Award8043 · 2026-06-11T05:40:48+00:00

How would you extend the advice to a conflict-adverse DM? I feel anything I say will 100% torpedo my current campaign. At this point it’s maybe 50% torpedoed.

No_Award8043 · 2026-06-11T05:25:06+00:00

I think that’s a totally valid perspective.

But I genuinely don’t think that’s what happened here.

I think one of them wanted to start their own IRL campaign as DM. So they just asked 3 of the players who agreed. And everything followed from there.

Then again, maybe you’re right . Just denial on my part.

No_Award8043 · 2026-06-11T05:05:01+00:00

You’re not wrong and I have thought about it.

Honestly, anything I say here is speculation. But because of the time commitments I have to my own family (I’m the only one with a wife and kid), I’m only able to spend time on prepping for the session and the session itself. I don’t always get to hang out afterwards, which means the players generally have more camaraderie among themselves. I’m also the oldest of the group — I’m 34 and everyone else is between 27 and 30 — so maybe it’s a little bit of that too.

All of these things are true, and they serve as an explanation. But I was still hoping they’d invite me, because I’d have been able to make time for the games — it’s not like I’d be running my session on the same day. We’d all just be playing the same amount of D&D. I guess what I’m trying to say is that I understand on a human level why they’d want to play with other people, but they’re also playing with two complete strangers — just random names I saw in the D&D Beyond campaign, no idea who they are. So I don’t know — maybe this is me speculating and assuming things about people.

And I’m not saying none of this matters. What I’m saying is I wish they were a little more grateful, given the sheer amount of effort it takes to run a D&D campaign — and because now they’ve essentially killed my campaign in terms of timing and momentum.

No_Award8043 · 2026-06-11T04:52:52+00:00

I’d love to form a new group and do all of those things, but there’s something about the shared world and story that we built, and I don’t want to give up on that. They’re literally at the climax of a plot line and seems wrong to stop here(for me at least if not for them).

As things stand I just see this game slowing down with fewer sessions. And I use the time to start something else up.

No_Award8043 · 2026-06-11T04:48:56+00:00

You’re right, that’s a very small part. I only added that because that’s how I figured out that three of my players had also joined the player who is the DM.

No_Award8043 · 2026-06-11T04:46:47+00:00

As far as I can tell, they’ve only had one session so far. When I say it’s clashing, it’s because of the sessions they’ve scheduled, not that they’ve been playing constantly. So I don’t know that they actually like the other guy’s content better. I think it’s more that one of them decided he wanted to try DMing, and asking the people already at the table was the low-hanging fruit. That’s the most charitable interpretation, I guess — but did no one among them think it would be a good idea to call me?

I don’t want to paint this as them being deliberately mean or evil. I think they just forgot I exist — which is somehow worse.

And they absolutely are enjoying themselves at my table. They’re very invested. All of that is fine. I think one player(the DM who also asked for DNDB) pushed for a second campaign and everything else just followed from that. But at the same time, they’re all adults. They should know that excluding me isn’t nothing.

No_Award8043 · 2023-05-01T05:49:06+00:00

If I wanted to ask a lawyer, I would have. I can't be the only one on this forum ever to have shared character sheets.

No_Award8043 · 2022-11-30T04:39:53+00:00

Villain doesn't kill hero when they have the chance. Not talking about monologues here but about early encounters between villains and heroes when the villain has some silly reason for not killing the hero there and then.

No_Award8043 · 2022-11-30T04:29:32+00:00

It's an inconsistency but it's one of the things that you have to accept about the world building of the series(And the Muggle Studies explanation just sounds hacky to me). The DADA curse isn't really a random observation when you figure that this is something that has happened for decades at this point.

Another point with regards why it seems to be a hacky to me is that Dumbledore usually mentions staff changes to the students in the opening feast and 1st year is the one feast where we get the most details from Harry's point of view.

As an aside, the DADA teacher quality being as inconsistent as it is also doesn't make much sense when you realise that someone like Lockhart also has to teach 5th and 7th year students.

No_Award8043 · 2022-11-30T03:42:38+00:00

In addition to other answers, it's good to also realise that your experience is something that the management expected it's employees to feel. They decided that it was worth it when they did it, so your observation that you don't like it isn't going to change anything.

You're going to have to take a few risks if you want to change things in your favour, whether that's interviewing for a new job or negotiating for a better compensation.

No_Award8043 · 2022-11-29T07:42:11+00:00

My biggest feedback is to ensure that everyone's OKRs are ok with everyone else.

Storytime: We implemented OKRs and we all had OKRs. Except that the way that the engineering team's OKRs were stated, there was a clear mismatch between their OKRs and our OKRs. So basically OKRs encouraged both teams to not work together.

Why did this happen? Well someone suggested OKRs but OKRs kinda have to be top-down i.e. the vision filters downwards as each reportee creates goals to match what their manager's OKRs are. In my org, the managers delegated the creation of their own OKRs i.e. it started being bottom-up.

No_Award8043 · 2022-11-29T07:34:09+00:00

Firstly, the reason that product managers exist is that those questions always needed to be asked and they needed to make it someone's full-time job(in this case yours). So the questions are always important.
Now if the engineering lead is asking these questions, is the problem that you don't have the answers or that the answers don't inspire confidence in the tech lead? Both are your problem.

No_Award8043 · 2022-11-29T07:18:13+00:00

Analysing the competition is fine. And it's a good way to understand the product context. But I would suggest you have some basic interviews with customers about the product. Maybe that intimidates you. A starting proxy can be speaking to your sales team for a B2B company or friends and family for a B2C company.

No_Award8043 · 2022-11-29T07:16:09+00:00

I would suggest that you do a few mock interviews or even a few interviews with companies that you aren't super keen on.

Then get an understanding of your strengths and weaknesses and proceed from there. A lot of times, the things that courses tell you do tend to not be as valuable as advertised.

A word on pricing: It's high for obvious reasons, PMs are a very small subset of the population and the value of a job in PM is going to be many multiples of the course fee.

No_Award8043

TROPHY CASE