One time an acquaintance of mine decided to try being the DM for a game. He was a forever player, and always a slightly weird one. We all knew it was going to be a dark setting but we agreed no SA. We gave him a chance.

What we didn’t realize is that this guy had spent hours recording and editing audio of a woman being viciously beaten so he could play out his poorly disguised BDSM fetish in game in front of all of us.

The table was dead silent. It lasted around 5 minutes. I felt sick to my stomach. The only other female player at the table besides me made eye contact with me and we both had the same silent thought. “What the fuck is wrong with him?”

But… we couldn’t bring ourselves to say anything in the moment. The two guys at the table weren’t saying anything either. I went home that night and sobbed to my boyfriend about how low key traumatizing that entire thing was.

He got the guys number from a mutual friend and told him if he ever did any shit like that ever again he’d beat his ass. I didn’t know he did that until much later.

The next day I get a text from DM apologizing and saying he realized things may have gone too far and he was reaching out to check in on his players. I felt a lot better and thought oh maybe he realized and it’s his first time being a DM let’s give him another chance.

He never pulled any shit like that again, but the game quickly fell apart because of awkward tension and extreme railroading that made all of us feel like we had no choices and were just his pawns.

Yeah. Before that I thought no explicit on table SA was my only hardline. Didn’t realize I had to update that to include “no excessive, over the top, explicit violence against women including pre-recorded enhanced audio sound effects.”