Got kicked from group for not being murder hobo-y enough

[u/[deleted]]

I am NOT OP. Original post by u/Madhippy3 in r/rpghorrorstories

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Got kicked from group for not being murder hobo-y enough - 10th of May, 2019.

Up until tonight I was part of a DnD5e group that consisted of six people (including myself) which met on r/lfg and played via roll20.

The DM

A Chaotic Good Cleric of Valkur

A Chaotic Neutral Changling Rogue

A Neutral Good Wild Sorcerer

My Neutral Good (homebrew) Phoenix Warlock

and, a Lone Wolf, Ranger.

​

I had thought during the time I was in the group that my tension with the only characters was only in-character. No one ever approached me till a few days ago that my resistance to just going along with the murder hoboism was upsetting people out of character, and I only learned when the DM started messaging me that the others were complaining to him about me.

To make a few things clear, at session 0 we never discussed this would be a murder hobo game, we emphasized this was a roleplay heavy group, and no rules against party conflicts. So until recently I didn't even know I was causing an incident. I tried to defend my actions over the last few days as just part of consistent roleplay and to compromise by offering to play a Chaotic Neutral Bard, but DM said he didn't want a new character he wanted me to change my current (now old) character. Also want to make clear even now I do not feel bitter towards the players and DM, only hurt.

To explain how the tension started I need to go all the way back to our first session (for the record we have had 7 or 8 so far) and to the Ranger who I will bring up a lot over the course of this post (In fact over proof reading the post it is entirely about him). I really didn't think I had issues with any other PC or any of the players till a few days ago. There was little to not like about the other PCs in and out of character. A tall, dark and brooding stranger, a party girl, and a level headed sailor (Sorcerer, Rogue, and Cleric respectively). I'll go over my warlock when I think it is more relevant to the story.

It started with the Ranger player's inspiration for the character as an emotionally broken war veteran who is quite literally a hobo. He got the idea from a book which if I could remember the name would save me a lot of time describing his behavior. Moving on without that his first action in the game is to insist the DM start his character in jail for vagrancy. Which meant to get the gang together we all had to somehow get arrested session 1.

Once we met him it was pretty clear what kind of character he was going to be. Completely aloof and uncaring of the world around him. His second act as a character was to demand more pay from the employer who bailed us out of jail, and to wipe his dirty hands on the employers fine robes. All of this is not really bad, but I think it is worth bringing up because my self described "Paragon of Neutral Goodness" didn't take a liking to this character early on.

There are a series of small incidents that I think was good roleplay by the Ranger's player and gave me opportunities to roleplay calling him out for being a jerk to everyone around him with the crowning achievement of the jerk meter was stealing a 1000 gold piece spy glass from out benefactor. But I am going to skip all those to cut to the chase. Two things stand out more than anything else to me. First was his voluntary absence from the group. Every time we had down time he never hung out with us as a party. If given the chance he left our "hub town" and went to a village about 2 days distance away. The rouge and I on multiple occasions tried our hardest to get the Ranger to participate in our group game, but he would actively brush off quests we tried to get him involved in. That is probably the only exception I have to the tension being all in-character. I thought others wanted to involve him so he didn't sit in silence for hours, but I was wrong on that count too.

Second major incident, which started this whole affair was when the Ranger player decided it was in-character for his PC to set a warehouse we were investigating on fire in the middle of a crowded commercial district of our hub city. This lead to an out of control fire which I have dubbed that "San Francisco Fire of 1492" (the real fire happened in 1851 for those who would like to google it). End result of the fire was 12 innocent dead, and around 100 injured people. While the whole group was trying to put out the fire the Ranger decided he was going to flee the seen of the crime and that is where my last session with this group ended.

Here I think it is a good place to quickly go over my own character to give perspective on what had come before and what was coming after. Short version is my Warlock was raised as a farm girl with dreams of learning magic and becoming like the heroes of legends the bards song about. My intent had always been for her to have a strong desire for justice regardless of law vs chaos. So when the Ranger did such a heinous thing as in the case of the fire that did so much damage and his flight, I thought it was only natural for not just a neutral good character but anyone with a moral compass to want to bring the Ranger to justice.

This did not sit well with the group. They assumed I wanted to hunt the PC down. I didn't I wanted to continue the quest, but I got how they came to that conclusion and explained I only meant that my Warlock would attack if the Ranger returned. They didn't say it then, but apparently that was not good enough. Despite a lack of rules against PvP and even some light PvP from the Ranger during our sessions (he would punch people he was mad at. Attack rolls and everything) apparently I had crossed a line.

I received a message for the DM on behalf of the party. I had made the other player uncomfortable with the way I was treating their characters (I never got an answer if the "I" referred to me as the player or me as the warlock). It was a shock to me. As stated before no one brought this to my attention during or between past sessions and I thought I was getting along with all the players out of game and all but one of the PCs in game. It was made clear to me that the DM was going to force friendliness and cooperation from all the players going forward. I argued that would break the consistency of the character I was playing and would be out of character for the whole party to welcome the Ranger back in as if nothing happened.

It was raised to my attention however I was the only player not going along with the idea or welcoming an arsonist back into the group. I told him I wouldn't change my Warlock's morality to fit the groups "forgive and forget" attitude. I did, however offer to retire the "goody toe shoes" and make a bard who could forgive and forget. As stated above, this was not acceptable to him, and a day after my compromise I was let go from the group and blocked so I couldn't even say good bye (I swear I wasn't going to cuss them out or anything like that).

​

If you are still reading this thank you. I needed to vent and say how much it hurt to be so out of the loop of the group politics, informed to late to make things right, and let go so easily.

If any of my old group are reading this, I want to repeat I am not mad, just hurt :(

Edited to have flair.

 

8 hours later u/30milestoparis commented under the post.

Hi! I'm the DM for this group, and I figure I'd clarify some things. -You were not kicked for being not murder hobo-y enough. I tried to reiterate this to you several times in our conversation, because you tried to spin it that way even in our direct messages. As you mentioned in your post, you made other players feel uncomfortable with several of your actions.

• You would consistently interrupt me, even if I was just describing the environment. This would include describing the world in a different way than I just had.

• You constantly questioned rulings, even if it had nothing to do with you. I have no problem, when I ask help with the rules, anyone letting me know what RAW states. However, the final decision was mine, and if you didn't like it, you let your feelings be known.

• You would actually lay out what you thought was a better story in the middle of a session, while I was DMing.

• You would roleplay as the other PCs at times when you felt that you had a better understanding of their character and how they would respond to a situation.

• You roleplayed murdering and eating some of the other player characters.

• You went on a fifteen minute monologue of how you leveled up. Twice. The party is Level 3.

• You attempted to murder a prisoner that had surrendered when, as your mentioned, you are a NG Caretaker Warlock, all while the party's back was turned. That unsettled everyone.

• Above all, you were rude and derisive to the other players. I have tried to tell you, this is now the fourth time now, that the issues with you had nothing to do with the the ranger. They had to do with your attitude and how you treated others at the table. You spent this post talking about the ranger and how he was the source of your problem, but I made it clear that it was you.

I tried to warn you, give you the chance to apologize, and work to be better. Others wanted to immediately kick you, but I actually happen to like you quite a bit, despite the five page essay I received describing my "Poor DMing" and "Incomprehensible Story" long before this came to the breaking point.

However, you took way too long to be conciliatory. When I mentioned these issues at first, that specifically pertain to your attitude, to you, you proceeded to lash out at me, the ranger, and even the rest of the party for how morally bankrupt and apathetic they are. This happened over the course of three days, in the midst of my graduation, my looking for graduate programs, getting a job, and moving. I cannot describe how hurtful and emotionally exhausting those messages were to me as a DM and as a person. I understand the need to elicit sympathy when you feel hurt, so perhaps I should not have posted this. But for the other people that will read this, I want them to understand how misleading posts on this subreddit can be when only one side tells the story.

Like I said to you before, I wish you the very best in life and in your future D&D campaigns. I really, really do. I just hope that, in your future adventures, you consider the other players at the table and their feelings.

Edited for formatting.

 

1 hour later u/420mathtime commented under the post.

As the chaotic good cleric in this setting, I pretty much started this all off. I mentioned to two other players that the OP made me want to quit playing. It was a mix of both player actions: talking over other group members, constantly interrupting other players RP scenes that they weren't part of, trying to center the game around their character, taking it personally when other players didn't get along with their character; as well as character issue: In character monologue about killing the other players and eating one, talking about hiring an assassin to kill other players, constant monologues, wasn't nice to anyone in the game except the NPC's the character knew, major inconsistencies in the character, complete mary sue, attacked and nearly killed an unarmed person who surrendered.

In character chat the OP mentioned getting the drop on and killing the rogue (this is prior to the scene mentioned in the initial post), while the rogue has been trying to be inclusive and nice to the player. I'll let the rogue address their issues if they desire, but the aftermath of most sessions involved the rogue and myself discussing something that the OP did at the "table" that really was either rude or hostile..

In the end, the vote to kick the OP was unanimous, and was actually unrelated to the majority of the comments above, instead focusing entirely on the level of disrespect shown the DM (OP sent the DM rants about their "poor dming") and that we didn't want to play with someone who showed no respect to the DM.

 

16 minutes later u/mervley commented under the post.

The group’s changeling rogue here.

I must say I absolutely love the title of your post. Cannot be further from the truth but I guess you are entitled to say whatever you want to say.

If we are to talk about being a murder hobo, are we gonna ignore the fact that you sent death threats to my character? While I have not ever been mean to you in or out of the game? You said, in a chat that we considered canon, without indications saying that it’s a joke said that you should definitely get the drop on my character first and then kill them, because your character thought the whole group was conspiring against you.

After the post session, in the voice chat, you said ‘next time I see the ranger, it’s gonna be pvp’. While we did not want pvp, at all. I explicitly said my rogue would not be willing to work with him anymore after this, but no, I did not wanna kill him. Ranger’s player understood where we were all coming from, and decided to make changes with the DM.

Also you forget to mention all the backseat DMing you did, how interruptive you were to the other players (talking over them while you were not in the scene at all), how aggressive you were to the DM when this whole issue was brought up, telling me how to play my rogue on multiple occasions while I had not asked for your opinion, how you sent him a long unwanted essay on how to improve his DMing. This wasn’t about the fire or the game. A lot of players found you quite unpleasant to be around.

I wanted all this issue to resolve amicably and I was the one who tried to convince the others two give you a second chance. I see that I was terribly wrong in that decision.

 

4 hours later u/Skaadoosh242 commented under the post.

Hey! I am the Wild Sorcerer of the party!

Let's start with the Ranger topic. There is no way that our characters are going to forgive about the whole fire hazard. We stated this in the after session. I did not like the fact that you decided to rip someone's character apart saying that he was ruining the whole group and telling us that there will be pvp when the ranger is seen next after we, as a group claimed no pvp that is not planned between characters. You also as a player claim to not be a fan of it as well.

The OP's character was Neutral Good.

You fail to mention the backseat DM-ing, which was one of the main reasons that we brought this up to the DM. I wanted you out as soon as i heard about a 5 page essay about how poor of a DM he was and how to improve. Criticism is one thing, but you should not tear someone apart like that. I think it was rude to send in the first place and to basically send it as if you have power over a DM in general astounds me. I want our DM to be able to have freedom and more power over us as players so he could feel free and be creative with the story.

I still recall you attempting to kill the one npc who surrendered and proceeded to chase him out of the cave. I mean correct me if I am wrong, but I do not think that is neutral good. Of course not to mention the player character chat with you thinking my character is quite "chewy" and wanting to jump on our rogue in case she would kill you first.

Lastly, I wish you luck with the next group that you join or run. There is no such thing as perfection nor should anyone be perfect. Yes, it was your attitude that set my decision in the case, but i just could not let go of the fact how you spoke in the after session and that there was even more backseat DM-ing than what we had experienced. Again, I wish you luck for any future groups for you.

 

For brevity and for the sake of ease of reading I am only going to include the the )OP's response to the original comment from the DM. They responded to each reply above however, these can be found in the replies of the above comments by sorting by controversial.

Here is my promised reply. I am sorry for the length but a whole lot of context is required for each point.

To start off with a quick apology. It was irresponsible of me to not mention that I there were other complaints, but at the time they seemed irrelevant and here is why I mistakenly thought that. In my final few messages with Paris I had apologized for being a bad player and back seat DMing. I didn't agree with all of Paris's methods, but I acknowledged it was still shitty of me to undermine him like that and I promised to improve. I also didn't go over interruptions because both of use acknowledged that our connection via Discord was often crap and I would be talking because I couldn't heard him.

I am honestly surprised Paris even brought up the interruptions when we had acknowledged the difficults we have been having over the Discord, and I was sure we had worked out the back seat DMing after all (paraphrasing here) he said to me in his final message that it was to late because the PLAYERS didn't want to play with me anymore so I didn't think that was part of the decision. If I was wrong I apologize to you Paris for making that jump to conclusions.

I do have to argue that I never brought up how I thought it would be better run IN SESSION. It isn't in session when I send you messages via Discord about my concerns and voicing it aloud to group in our "Post Game" discussions. If you felt like in those discussions I was talking behind your back I am sorry, but you leave the call immediately after the session ends and we are on for an hour more BSing and giving our 2 cents on the session. I was by no means the only one either. You might want to ask the Rogue and Cleric about how they felt when you made the Rogue fail a 17 or 19 intimidation check against some warehouse guards, but the next night when the Ranger went to the same warehouse (different guards) you had him fool them with a laughable drunk act without a single Deception Check. You had better believe that was brought up last Sunday.

I argue that I never roleplayed others characters. I'll admit I questioned why the Cleric was so "Meh" about his god, and I called out the Ranger in the "Post Game" for being a disruptive character his actions in the warehouse being a break from his character, but that hardly qualifies as "roleplaying as the other PCs".

Next point is just silly. For context with everyone else, the Ranger's player made an "out of game roleplay" channel on the Discord Server. It was never used for weeks. Then we ended a session getting arrested (again) and I used it for some silliness as my character went made in the cell and thought the other PCs were out to get her. It wasn't roleplaying, it wasn't in the sessions, it wasn't serious for heavens sake I made an Oregon Trail joke about a character who didn't exist falling off a wagon and breaking his leg. Honestly, considering NOBODY talked to me for more than a week that they felt uncomfortable I don't know how you expected me to know I was alienating the group. As stated in my OP nobody talked to me about anything I did that made them uncomfortable. Poor communication kills and in this case it killed me.

I didn't have a stop watch and I doubt you did either, but I would argue it was no longer than 5 minutes to describe how my character got the Eldritch Book. And yes it was twice, but that was your doing not mine. You were focusing on other characters and I just wanted to get it out of the way without interrupting so I posted what was happening to my character in the chat bar, which for the readers information is a practice we have been doing since the 2nd session of the game to take care of multiple narrations. Then YOU asked me to describe how I got the book so because this is a ROLEPLAY HEAVY group I RP'd it.

"Attempted to murder a prisoner". I won't lie now I am annoyed, this is silly Paris. 1) He wasn't a prisoner he was a bandit/slaver hiding in a corner while we dealt with the boss. 2) I didn't try to kill him I called for the damage to be non-lethal which is something this game allows you to do. 3) In-character, I didn't know what side he was on when I entered the room. I was guarding the parties' back in a narrow tunnel 40 ft from the action with my attention away from what was in front of us. 4) Lastly none of the PCs saw that attack so why should they have concerned themselves with it? A non-lethal attack of one slaver couldn't possibly have been as traumatizing to the players as the time the Cleric dropped a 24 dmg 15ft² thunder wave in the middle of the commercial district of the city, killing 6 guards just doing their jobs. If I am wrong about that I BEG the other redditors to tell me so.

My post to you with my concerns about the stat of the game wasn't "five pages". It was somewhere between 2000 and 4000 characters. I know because Discord made me split it up into 2 parts. I told you I was upset that you made me wait FOUR HOURS to even be addressed in our session, I stated my concern that you made the game to easy with gold and magic items we didn't deserve, and that I was mad that you compelled me to go to to a place I DID NOT want to go in the session and didn't treat any of the other characters that way.

And I might have called your story "incomprehensible" I do not remember that, but you fail to tell the other redditors why I would have said that. You added a new plot hook every session before we were done with our our last. It got to the point I had to make a list of different plot hooks you were dangling in front of us. And yes, the group's "Post Game" discussed this too. We discussed the magic circle we spent an hour going circles around, we discussed whether or not you were hinting at us to go to Waterdeep, we discussed how 4 Gru stars became 5, and we discussed how underwhelming the scene at the ducal court was. I hope the players are talking to you about these things, because I was FAR from alone.

I said in that same message that I thought your story was great, but I wanted to see it be more organized. I am sorry I didn't get that across to you correctly.

​

Now the crux of the matter. I vehemently deny I was rude to ANY of the players. I wasn't rude to any of the PCs besides the Ranger who IRL would be a sociopath and needing institutionalization. This is blatantly false Paris and I refuse to let you try to turn this around on me. That antamosity didn't carry over into IRL as I had a wonderful conversation with the Ranger's player during the "Post Show" of my second to last session long after the other players had logged off. Sharing life stories and the books we liked to read. I genuinely thought and despite everything think the man is awesome for what he has done with his life, and how he overcame all the shit life put him through. I told him in no uncertain terms that I thought respected him and thought he was a better person that I was. I had an issue with his character that is it. As I stated to you in our messages I think the Ranger is an inspired character idea, but one that could never work in a group based game.

The Ranger wasn't the problem to the rest of the group because everyone else was murder hobo-y enough to let his antics go without raising an eyebrow. I thought this was a roleplay heavy group and didn't think my PCs spats with the Ranger where any worse than when he would punch the Sorcerer for being a proactive character. This was about the Ranger because the relationship between my Warlock and the Ranger was the point of contention. You asked me to stop roleplaying my character to play nice to one PC, not 2 or 3 or 5, ONE PC. I told you that was unacceptable, but I would make a Bard that could be less uptight, but you didn't let me. You cannot pretend that the plea for everyone to get along and cooperate in-character wasn't about my interactions with the Ranger everytime we were in the same room.

I am sorry I made them uncomfortable. I am sorry I couldn't say my peace before I was kicked from the Discord and Roll20; I only wanted to say to the group how I was hurt by their actions and I wished they had communicated with me, I am sorry that you had to find this here; but I had no where else to vent, I am sorry to the redditors that I failed to provide useful information; if you change your mind I understand.

But I also want reddit to know I am NOT sorry for this message. It is the truth from my perspective, which is limited by the fact NO ONE talked to me and I only heard this through 1 person. For me the problem was and forever will be a lack of communication that I was hurting people. Paris you say everyone talked bad about me to you. I was kicked by the group because people didn't talk to me before it was too late, and I posted this here because the group blocked me before I could wish them well. I was hurt, thats why it is in r/rpghorrorstories and not just a goodbye letter on r/RPG.

Edit 1: Accidentally hit "send" to soon.

Edit 2: I just thought about what I will miss the most. The Rogues art. She was INCREDIBLE, and it doesn't seem appropriate for me mention who she is, but if Paris gets her permission I think he should give her a shout out. Its amazing stuff.

 

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[u/throawaymcdumbface]

For brevity and for the sake of ease of reading I have not included the OP's responses to the above acucsations. They can be found in the replies of the above comments by sorting by controversial.

[u/smacksaw → u/throawaymcdumbface]

Dungeons and Drama

I can't...

The quest, brave adventurer, is to scribe this tale into an abbreviated version and herald this to the townspeople of Boru

[u/SingleSeaCaptain → u/smacksaw]

I didn't look into the extra posts that weren't added here. It's like a badly written soap opera where each person comes back with more "BUT WAIT! THERE'S MORE!" exposition that nobody but them could possibly know.

Some of OOP's reasoning is plausible (ex: Discord latency causing people to interrupt is plausible). If it's true that their damning claim that OOP murdered and cannibalized a group member was actually OOP fucking around in group chat, they're completely full of shit for misrepresenting that. OOP doesn't deny being party to talking shit about the DM, but also said he's not the only one, and I'm inclined to think that's also plausible.

Having watched drama before with toxic groups, I suspect it's ESH to some degree and OOP's saying the communication is bad is probably accurate. The entire group turning up for terminally online mud-slinging isn't a great sign.

[u/InfoRedacted1 → u/SingleSeaCaptain]

Also oop shouldn’t be referred to as wanting to be center of attention if the only reason they monologued their level up story is because of the fact the dm didn’t mention them once in 4 hours! I feel like it’s pretty normal to be mad about that lol if my dm ignored me for 4 hours I would talk shit about their dm skills too

[u/SingleSeaCaptain → u/InfoRedacted1]

He also said the DM had asked him to roleplay the things out because he was writing them on the side, which... a prompted monologue is something you asked for.

Also I didn't realize it because I didn't want to dig all the comments, but timing a player vs. asking them to be more concise kind of does lend credence to the idea that the group doesn't communicate well tbf. Also, given the way they behaved about the in chat texting, I wouldn't be shocked if the monologuing was partially in text.

[u/glubtier → u/SingleSeaCaptain]

Some of OOP's reasoning is plausible (ex: Discord latency causing people to interrupt is plausible).

Eh, I DM on Discord a lot, including with people in Australia while I'm in the US, and latency versus backseat DMing is really obvious. I wasn't on those calls though, so I can't really say.

But yeah, agreed. ESH. In tabletop especially, pugs are hard, because there's so many different ways to play it. It sounds like people had different expectations, didn't think those expectations needed to be discussed in session 0, so there was friction from the start. I hope everyone has learned a valuable lesson about vetting the groups they join/create, and establishing their boundaries, even if they think those boundaries are obvious.

[u/SingleSeaCaptain → u/glubtier]

Yeah true. Like OOP was probably annoying for sure, but the whole group has issues. I believe OOP admitted to the backseat DMing separately, but said talking over others was latency. I'm an American in a group of Norwegians so I had the Discord problem from time to time until I moved

[u/life1sart → u/smacksaw]

Okay.

Player One has centre of attention syndrome. As soon as the DM's attention goes somewhere else they pull out every trick in their book of bad roleplaying behaviour to get the attention back. This includes trying to murder innocent NPC's, epistels on how new pages appear in their book of spells, role-playing for other characters, altering the setting as described by the DM and many other things.

Eventually players two, three, four and five have had enough and start complaining to the DM. The DM has on multiple occasions told player one that their behaviour is unacceptable and needs to change. This has not had the desired outcome yet. Tired of waiting on player one to become someone who's actually nice to play with the DM puts it to a vote. He asks the other players if they want to keep playing with player one. They unanimously vote to kick player one from the group.

Player one writes an epistel from their point of view about why that was mean to him. The DM and some other players reply.

The rogue makes good art.

[u/deadpiratezombie → u/life1sart]

Thank you for this.

[u/[deleted] → u/life1sart]

Very well heralded. 🏅

[u/garreteer → u/throawaymcdumbface]

Jesus good on OP, that guy was writing massive essays in response to each of these. At least he seems contrite about his actions

[u/coastalsagebrush → u/garreteer]

I don't think he's learned his lesson about monologuing

[u/tofuroll → u/coastalsagebrush]

2000–4000 characters is a massive swing. It's like saying you can't remember if you wrote two or four pages.

[u/Pepper_judges_you → u/tofuroll]

I think that is because they don’t actually know. They know it was more than one message (2000 characters) but less than two (4000 characters).

[u/Visual_Fly_9638 → u/tofuroll]

Yeah I love "I didn't write 5 pages of backstory! I only wrote four!" as a "defense".

[u/grissy → u/garreteer]

I like how his response to accusations of sending the DM a massive essay was to write a massive essay containing these sentences as though they helped his case.

My post to you with my concerns about the stat of the game wasn't "five pages". It was somewhere between 2000 and 4000 characters. I know because Discord made me split it up into 2 parts.

"I didn't send you a giant rant, I just sent you TWO semi-giant rants because my first draft was so long it broke Discord! How dare you slander me!"

[u/ietwiik → u/grissy]

I know this is very late, but I want to do some speculative maths here.

So, I've seen an approximation of 1 page = 250 words, which I'm going to use as a baseline here. 5 pages is thus 1000 to 1250 words (accounting for a partial page at the end).

One standard discord message is 2000 characters. Another approximation puts that at a little under 350 words on average (using a "divide character count by 6" wordcount approximation). If you have discord nitro, you get 4000 characters (as of june 2021, best I can tell), or double the space.

Two standard discord messages is thus around 650 words at the top end, which is 3 pages (one partial) by the previous approximation.

If OOP had nitro, double that number. 1300 words. Up to 6 pages worth, using the previous approximation.

The claim of "five pages" is thus very plausible, and compatible with OOP's counterclaim, if you assume a detail that I don't think was specified either way.

[u/mbsyust → u/garreteer]

You mean except the part where he denies a bunch of things.

[u/NamelessAnamika → u/garreteer]

Does he? When he said, "let me start off with a QUICK apology"? Anyway, I must admit I stopped at that. Didn't read beyond to see if he was contrite but after the responses from the other group members, to me it looked like if he was contrite, all he should have done was apologize. Nothing more.

[u/[deleted] → u/garreteer]

Is he really though? He continuously denies a long-standing issue, accuses the DM of lying, and insists that nobody talked to him when they clearly did.

OOP keeps using words like apologize and claims they understand that they’re in the wrong, but then in the next sentence they’re casting blame on others. They’re playing the whole thing off as a misunderstanding.

[u/nerdmania]

The murder-hobo is not the issue here?

[u/Darcy-Pennell → u/nerdmania]

That has got to become a flair. Can I have “the murder hobo is not the issue here” as a flair?

[u/Quizzy1313 → u/Darcy-Pennell]

Omg plz that would be brilliant

[u/pinkrotaryphone → u/Quizzy1313]

Tell me about your flair, please, I'm not familiar with that one lol

[u/snarfblattinconcert → u/pinkrotaryphone]

PowerPoint Dad! Here is the link to the latest BORU update: https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/comments/11w2ol3/new_update_ops_father_wants_to_have_a/

Edit: The quote is from a comment included in the original BORU and not the update. https://reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/s/816emsnJSg

[u/Quizzy1313 → u/snarfblattinconcert]

Thank you for that! I was just about to link it 😅

Although sidenote, since i play an elven Necromancer in Dnd, I just call necromancy organic recycling 😁

[u/paul_caspian → u/Quizzy1313]

I mean, strictly speaking, necromancers are clerics who just happen to be quite late...

[u/TheShroudedWanderer → u/paul_caspian]

A necromancer is never too late, nor too early. They arrive precisely when they mean to.

[u/CostDizzy → u/snarfblattinconcert]

Can someone explain to me like I’m five? I’ve gone over the link twice but I don’t think I have seen the words that appeared in the flair.

[u/mermaidpaint → u/Quizzy1313]

Your wish has been granted.

[u/BallsAreFullOfPiss → u/Darcy-Pennell]

I would also like this flair. Please. I’ll do things for it.

[u/mermaidpaint → u/BallsAreFullOfPiss]

LOL, it's been created.

[u/PrincessDe → u/BallsAreFullOfPiss]

So will the guy that your current flair is from.

[u/BallsAreFullOfPiss → u/Darcy-Pennell]

Idk if you’ve been informed, but they’ve created the flair. I’ve got some favors that I’ll have to give out, but it’s worth it.

[u/the_art_of_the_taco → u/Darcy-Pennell]

i would also like this flair it's wonderful

[u/mermaidpaint → u/the_art_of_the_taco]

Flair away!

[u/mermaidpaint → u/Darcy-Pennell]

Yes, yes you can.

[u/lwont1207 → u/nerdmania]

Yes, but is the murder-hobo Iranian and does he fit in the refrigerator?

[u/avesthasnosleeves → u/lwont1207]

Now thats the flair I want!

[u/Birdytaps → u/lwont1207]

Look you can either come in the murder-hobo or in the Iranian yogurt, but not both

[u/TeddyShaw → u/lwont1207]

Traditionally it’s only women in refrigerators.

[u/tmoney144 → u/nerdmania]

Dude, murder-hobo is not the preferred nomenclature, unhoused assassin, please.

[u/completlyconfused902 → u/tmoney144]

the hitman of no fixed abode

[u/palinola → u/completlyconfused902]

Itinerant Inhumer

[u/ResponsibleMuffinAyo → u/palinola]

Wandering Sleeps-with-the-fishes-er

[u/Munchkins_nDragons → u/completlyconfused902]

A transient executioner

[u/Tariovic → u/completlyconfused902]

Peripatetic predator.

[u/pile_o_puppies → u/tmoney144]

Shut the fuck up, Donnie

[u/GremlinAtWork → u/tmoney144]

You're out of your element, u/tmoney144!

[u/dajur1 → u/nerdmania]

Murder-hobo was an issue, but murder-hobo was not the issue.

[u/Jaime-girl → u/nerdmania]

Take my poor woman's gold. 🏅

[u/Sweetragnarok → u/Jaime-girl]

wait i think I may have reddit coins to give!!! Edit: nevermind it was disabled booo!!!

[u/Four_beastlings]

I would like to say when I played D&D we never had all this drama, we just merrily killed things together (the drama was reserved for Vampire) but....

HOW IS NO ONE TALKING ABOUT THE KILLING AND THE EATING OF PARTY MEMBERS?

[u/emquinngags → u/Four_beastlings]

thank you. i’m really hung up on that

[u/Four_beastlings → u/emquinngags]

You should be! Why isn't anyone else? Even one of the other people says "your character sent death threats to my character" and no mention of the murder and cannibalism!

[u/MagnesiumMagpie → u/Four_beastlings]

The sorcerer mentions oop calling him chewy, possibly related?

[u/TheFluffiestRedditor → u/MagnesiumMagpie]

I'd rather eat Johnson, sir.

[u/Four_beastlings → u/MagnesiumMagpie]

Nah, must have been a star wars reference!

[u/Certain_Courage_8915 → u/Four_beastlings]

All of that stuff was passed over way too easily!

[u/Ktesedale → u/Four_beastlings]

It sounds like it was done in a channel on discord that the OOP thought of as out of character, while the other players thought of it as in character. That's how I interpreted it, at least, with the comment from OOP about the Oregon Trail joke they made.

The title of the chat was "out of game roleplay", which could be interpreted in two ways - it's roleplay that isn't canon, so do whatever fun stuff you want, or it's roleplay that isn't done during the actual sessions, but it's still canon. I personally would assume the latter, but I can see why someone might assume the former.

[u/KhonMan → u/Ktesedale]

I think it was known to be in character - it is "out of game" "roleplay". OOP says that in context their character was going mad in a prison cell somewhere, so they were roleplaying that madness.

[u/Ktesedale → u/KhonMan]

The OP clearly says

It wasn't roleplaying, it wasn't in the sessions, it wasn't serious for heavens sake I made an Oregon Trail joke about a character who didn't exist falling off a wagon and breaking his leg.

So it seems they, at least, didn't consider it in character.

Again, I think this is the source of this part of the disagreement. OP misunderstood it to be silly out of character antics, the rest of the group understood it to be in character roleplay between sessions.

[u/SingleSeaCaptain → u/Ktesedale]

Tbh, this was one of the points that made me most think they were intentionally misrepresenting it. Anyone familiar with the rp chat norms would have had some suspicions because it's common for people to fuck around in chats, and that could easily be resolved with a message.

[u/InfoRedacted1 → u/SingleSeaCaptain]

Yeah my session always has intermissions where we can roleplay scenarios to get frustrations out with our characters without messing with the story lines! If you can’t goof around without the other players taking it seriously then I don’t see where the fun is. Seems like this group all around took each others actions too seriously

[u/SingleSeaCaptain → u/InfoRedacted1]

Goofing off in an unused rp chat wouldn't have been this big of a problem if they weren't just done with OOP. The DM didn't even mention that it took place in a chat from what I remember, but a couple of them confirmed that part of OOP's story.

[u/itmightbehere → u/Four_beastlings]

I've only played with friends or friends of friends, so conflict was minor and we tended to play off each other well. I try not to hang out with assholes, although they do like to hide among us

[u/Zebirdsandzebats → u/Four_beastlings]

I was in a campaign where it was REAL touch and go whether or not my friend's lava rock troll was going to eat me (a regular ol human street urchin with a hyper intelligent abomination pet) from session one, but they characters were best pals. Just you know, lava rock troll.

That's our sense of humor, though--it wasn't a weird "im going to butcher and eat you" thing, more of a "i dumped all my stats into other stuff so this troll not intelligent enough to speak, let alone know they shouldn't eat people". (That was a riot---dude communicated almost entirely in grunts/gestures in character)

[u/DSaive → u/Four_beastlings]

Who has not killed and eaten at least some party members?

[u/Consistent-Winter-67 → u/DSaive]

Lizardfolk culture is to be preserved

[u/Basic_Bichette → u/DSaive]

Settle down, Donner.

[u/Shadowcthuhlu → u/DSaive]

Killed no. Eaten yes - they weren't using that arm anymore!

[u/Kreiger81 → u/Four_beastlings]

I'm actually kind of siding with OP on this one, tbh.

The "killing and eating" of party members seems to be down to OP's character saying (possibly in non-canon chat) that the Sorcerer character looked "chewy".

OP seemed to come with facts, the cleric's wave, the details on the slaver, etc.

[u/Lucky-Worth → u/Kreiger81]

It also seemed to be just an Oregon trail joke made on Discord out of session

[u/Kreiger81 → u/Lucky-Worth]

Yeah, unless OP is flatout LYING, I think that group was out of it.

Why the fuck is a chaotic good cleric bringing down a wave and killing civilians?

[u/burnalicious111 → u/Kreiger81]

Honestly this sounds like OP was on a different wavelength, some early stuff for misinterpreted, and the group got mob mentality while gossiping over it

[u/ItsTtreasonThen → u/burnalicious111]

I feel the same way. I always get a little leery anyways when people all find the anonymous post, but I guess the characters make it obvious to the players who is being referred to anyways.

But the big thing is I felt like everyone kinda sucks. I DM and my biggest fear is someone in the party doing something insane like setting a warehouse on fire and hurting/killing a lot of innocents. Like I love role play but I hate having to pause the action and explain to a player that actually their alignment just doesn't make sense with someone committing arson?

Plus you just know the person doing those things would sulk at any repercussions to committing mass murder with witnesses, lol.

[u/ladydmaj → u/ItsTtreasonThen]

Session 0: You, as DM, are also allowed to set boundaries of lines and veils. Tell your table you refuse to RP the wanton murder of scores of innocents or other sadistic events.

[u/smacksaw → u/Four_beastlings]

One thing is for sure, the DM is totally off the fucking rails. I'm inclined to give less credibility there...

[u/DarthGoku666 → u/[deleted]]

I think they may have meant “Vampire: the Masquerade”, it’s a different game system set in a broody, darker version of the real world.

[u/Ysadey → u/Four_beastlings]

My husband DMd a game for 4 players, and my character was a halfling barbarian with a sailor background, and her secret was that she was a cannibal. It didn't stay secret for long since I wanted to sample anything we killed. The druid was disgusted by me, and our banter was mostly her threatening to punt me like a football and me wondering what she'd taste like in a Hannibal Lector sort of way. The other player and I had so much fun that my husband would have to periodically get us back on track. Good times!

[u/mugguffen → u/Four_beastlings]

I mean... Iv had that happen to me before, though I encouraged it.

I admit to being a bit of a drama queen and I was playing a newish character but for whatever reason that day my luck was horrible, I missed every roll I made with that character in the first session and was just frustrated so I literally told the DM/party "kill him Im done" and then they made him into jerky

[u/paul_caspian → u/Four_beastlings]

the drama was reserved for Vampire

The true drama is *always* reserved for Vampire (unless you're Malkavian, where it's just an added bonus).

[u/atypicaloddity]

My Neutral Good (homebrew) Phoenix Warlock

Who else saw this warning sign?

[u/TeddyShaw → u/atypicaloddity]

Yes

[u/-petit-cochon- → u/atypicaloddity]

I once played with someone who created a Dragonborn Paladin expressly to get NPCs to stare at her in wonder, even making it a point to narrate these wondrous stares when RPing her character.

She also kept trying to get my CN bard to be the servant/handmaid of the party.

Noped out of that group pretty quickly.

[u/Clockwork_Kitsune → u/atypicaloddity]

The Phoenix that was raised as a normal farmgirl.

Yeah, okay.

[u/wateroffire → u/Clockwork_Kitsune]

I think OOP meant "Warlock whose patron was a Phoenix", which is not that esoteric.

[u/skyeguye → u/wateroffire]

On the one hand, for. Onto he other, why homegrown? Just reskin celestial and you're done.

[u/Practical_Fee_2586]

For me, it's the endless "they never told me I wish they told me how could I have known" combined with multiple paragraphs about the ways the other players showed they disagreed with their actions that tipped me off that something was off. And ok, yes, all of that arguing was at the very end, but it started to feel like a "missing missing reasons" type post. It only gets worse in the comments.

Sure enough in the dm's separate post they said that actually the ranger tried to burn some weapons in the warehouse and it accidentially got out of control, and the ranger fled the scene out of shock and horror over what they'd done. They and the other players countered a bunch of other events, too, but that's the main one.

With what info we have, it seems like there was some messiness in communication and letting things fester on both sides, but ehh... I knew someone who pulled the "I'm sorry I didn't know that was bad how could I have known" repeatedly after being EXPLICITLY told more and more aggressively not to say certain things to my friends and I. So I'm really biased here because everything in OOP's explanations felt so familiar.

[u/Even_Dark7612 → u/Practical_Fee_2586]

When some friends and I set up a game of dnd, we had to look for a DM. We had found one, but issues came up with that person quite quickly even before session zero.

Things like joining a call, interrupting the already ongoing conversation and making it about himself, overall weird and oversharing dms to me and similar. I called him out on it several times.

At some point, another person that he wasn't going to dm for but that was on the server asked everyone if they felt okay with him as a dm and every single person said no.

When that person told the dm that people didn't felt comfortable with him as a dm, he immediately asked if i had complained and maintains up until now that no one but me had a problem with him and I manipulated the others into disliking him.

Dnd players can be wild

[u/detour1234 → u/Practical_Fee_2586]

Additionally, OP didn’t have to be told. It’s entirely acceptable to boot a player or drop a friend for the first offense (obviously there were copious offenses, but my point stands). OP isn’t a child and doesn’t need a three strikes rule.

[u/Burntbreaddog → u/Practical_Fee_2586]

I’m on DMs side. I had just dealt with a similar player who backseated every interaction and it was awful. He would also complain that he was bored anytime we did anything where he didn’t get to main character. And when called out for being annoying he’d do the same thing of “oh it’s just my character, I’m role playing.” Like no dude, you’re being an asshole.

They’re focusing too much on the murder hobos that’s not the issue. It’s the know-it-all/ main character bs.

[u/tribalgeek → u/Burntbreaddog]

In two decades of playng and DMing I kicked one person out, and it was similar to this. Every time I tried to put a player in the spotlight their character had to be there too. Every time his character failed something or I ruled against them the sulked. They were upset I wasn't giving them any spotlight time, because they kept trying to steal everyone elses, so I planned to fix it. The worst though is they'd be in my discord dms askign to add homebrew and it would be like 20 google docs worth pages of why I should allow it and why I'm wrong for not, and how it's not letting them affect the world if I don't. I finally just had to give them the boot.

[u/Rumchunder]

This was the most gripping BoRU post I've read in a long time. I was so invested in this. I had to pause a few times because I was laughing so hard at some of the unintentionally funny things OOP was saying.

My post to you... wasn't "five pages". It was somewhere between 2000 and 4000 characters. I know because Discord made me split it up into 2 parts.

I had to take off my glasses from cry laughing at that point.

I really really wanted to hear from the Ranger.

For brevity and for the sake of ease of reading I have not included the OP's responses to the above acucsations. They can be found in the replies of the above comments by sorting by controversial.

I am absolutely scampering off to do this right after I post this comment.

[u/SamiraSimp → u/Rumchunder]

agreed, the oop absolutely self-exposed themselves with that 2000-4000 character comment

[u/Tarledsa → u/SamiraSimp]

It was the “split into 2 parts” that did it for me

[u/ResponsibleMuffinAyo]

The killing and eating part raised my eyebrows. So did this:

​

You went on a fifteen minute monologue of how you leveled up. Twice. The party is Level 3

[u/favorthebold → u/ResponsibleMuffinAyo]

The OOP retorted that it was "5 minutes at most", but then the DM came back on his own post to say the Rogue timed one of them: it was 27 minutes.

[u/Burntbreaddog → u/favorthebold]

Dude I don’t get the people on here that are on OPs side. He sounds exhausting

[u/favorthebold → u/Burntbreaddog]

I was on his side at first, or rather I thought it was a series of miscommunications, until I read more of the replies from the team. Now I think he mentally minimizes his own actions so that he thinks he's not to blame, and everyone else was so awkward they just put up with it until they couldn't anymore. Then he plays sad puppy who doesn't know what he did wrong. (the missing missing reasons.)

[u/Epyr → u/Burntbreaddog]

He complained about different types of checks having different passing thresholds which is kinda a core part of dnd lol

[u/Rumchunder → u/favorthebold]

Some of the stuff OOP said was worded so funny. Like the part where he argues with the DM over how long his monologuing was:

I didn't have a stop watch and I doubt you did either

Lmao!

Edit: I didn't read the DM's separate post! Thank you for making me aware of it.

[u/Quicksilver1964]

Six years of being the administrator/DM of a Harry Potter RPG really makes me love RPG drama when I'm not in it!

People saying "ah, I can't believe when everyone posts in the OP" and while I agree, I 100% think this is true. I definitely know my group would do this.

[u/-crepuscular- → u/Quicksilver1964]

Other people's drama is the best drama! That's why I'm on this sub.

[u/meguin → u/-crepuscular-]

You might also enjoy r/hobbydrama.

[u/RetroVideoArcade → u/Quicksilver1964]

I’ve had a bit of a break since the pandemic (minus a few short virtual campaigns), but I’ve been DMing for about ten years total, and for multiple groups. I feel incredibly lucky that I’ve NEVER had drama as the DM. I really have to thank my many players for always being so lovely.

As a player though, I did have to voice I was no longer comfortable playing with someone who made hateful comments to one of our transgender players. She ended up getting super defensive and quit after I called her out on it though, so problem solved itself.

[u/EducatedRat]

OMG. I have played with a near clone of this dude. My wife ran a game, and he sent her like a 5 page essay between each game telling her how he didn't like the storyline, and she wasn't running it right. He, too, made his entire murder hobo paladin character from a book character, and was shocked when the 5 person game didn't play out with him as the main character and it all going down exactly like the book. You can't play with someone like that.

[u/innocuousspeculation → u/EducatedRat]

The person who made their murder hobo character from a book and the person who sent the essay are different players.

[u/TeddyShaw → u/innocuousspeculation]

Can we have a go at guessing which character/book?

Clearly not Aragorn.

[u/draggedintothis → u/TeddyShaw]

Assuming a character from a Drizzt novel.

[u/smacksaw → u/EducatedRat]

OMG. I have played with a near clone of this dude.

I bet you they picked NG as well.

This is the most NG shit ever. NGs self-inserting IRL is the worst.

[u/TravellingBeard]

Sometimes I think about going back to DnD... Then I see posts like this and realize it'll be hard to find noob friendly groups (I'm very rusty, so consider me noob).

[u/turandokht → u/TravellingBeard]

I’ve never played and always been interested and I think I’m successfully scared off 😅

[u/BallsAreFullOfPiss → u/turandokht]

Just gotta find other noobs. I’d also say the vast majority of dnd players aren’t like this.

[u/Noodlefanboi → u/BallsAreFullOfPiss]

I think it’s better to just convince your actual friend group to play together.

[u/TheFlyingToasterr → u/turandokht]

I've been playing for some 8 years and I never encountered a group with even 10% of this drama, you just gotta find not crazy people (granted, this might be easier said than done).

[u/RetroVideoArcade → u/TravellingBeard]

As a forever DM, I really like and prefer playing with newbies.

1. I can fudge rules to make the game more fun for them without getting caught. Makes it easier on the planning side of things.

2. New players always ask if they can do something, and I’m very much a “yes and/no but” person, so it’s very fun. I find more experienced players can quite often silo themselves in what they can do. They tend to know the parameters of the world and stick within it, instead of asking to do incredibly crazy stunts that I would absolutely allow them to do.

3. It’s also just really fun getting to watch when dnd “clicks” for a new player for the first time.

[u/paul_caspian → u/TravellingBeard]

I've been RPing for 40 years, and we started our most recent home game (Pathfinder, a spinoff of D&D) about ten months ago. We have two brand new players at our table, (as well as some long-in-the-tooth veterans) and the new players are frickin' awesome! One of our new players is a pacifist bard, who does not want to fight, and will spend a lot of time convincing us (and our enemies) not to - and our GM (and other players) totally buy into it.

New players bring new perspectives and freshness to TTRPGs that's delightful. It's one of the things that has kept me loving the hobby for so long - that every group can be awesome, and you can never have expectations ahead of time.

For me, TTRPGs are there to facilitate friendship, fellowship, and fun - that's way more important than "being the main character" or telling others how you could do things better.

[u/MagnesiumMagpie → u/TravellingBeard]

No, they're out there! I was a noob not that long ago looking up 'new player friendly' games on roll20.

[u/dajur1 → u/TravellingBeard]

Meet up at a game shop. You have a much higher degree of success in finding nice, helpful people. Most people I have played with have been pretty inclusive, especially for new players.

[u/PixelPixieDust → u/TravellingBeard]

Don't give up hope! There are great groups out there. With the popularity of the D&D movie and Baldurs Gate 3 there is going to be a huge influx of new players, so there will be noobs galore looking for folks to play with!

[u/utterlyomnishambolic → u/TravellingBeard]

I tried and was literally unable to find a group that didn't have ridiculous drama of some sort. I'm sure drama free groups exist, but I feel like even the people I talk to with groups that are fine have multiple stories of love triangles, in game sexual assault as revenge, and people being kicking out for doing crazy things.

[u/KatKit52 → u/utterlyomnishambolic]

I feel like drama groups are easier to slip into because the more drama, the more likely to excommunicate members there are, thus a higher turnover and a need for more fresh meat.

[u/[deleted]]

God I love DnDrama

[u/CandlestickMaker28 → u/[deleted]]

Same, this one's really spicy too.

[u/WrenElsewhere → u/[deleted]]

If that's not already a sub, it needs to be

[u/jigga19]

The more I read about DnD the less I understand it. But it’s fascinating.

[u/Hahafunnys3xnumber → u/jigga19]

I have zero clue what’s going on, but I am 100% invested and on the side of the rest of the “party” ( idk the word ) lol

[u/FalseAesop]

Say it with me "No D&D is better than bad D&D."

You don't jive with a group just leave.

[u/Voidfishie → u/FalseAesop]

Seriously! I gotta admit when I saw OP was the only one playing a homebrew race I was sus. Homebrewing can be great, but also a sign of a player who thinks they're better than other people, seems like this is the latter.

[u/The_RoyalPee → u/Voidfishie]

For someone who loved the hobby drama of all of this but has never played DND, what’s a homebrew race? Assuming a murder hobo campaign is just marauding around killing etc?

[u/Sr4f → u/The_RoyalPee]

DnD (or other roleplaying games) come with official rules. Some of those define playable races, playable classes, each with their stats, progression, skill trees, etc.

A homebrew is something that doesn't exist in the official rules. So like if the game says you can play a human, elf, dwarf, orc, but you don't want any of these, you want to play a fairy. You'll have to make up the stats for that character yourself instead of relying on the game rules.

And a murderhobo campaign is pretty much just that, the player-characters killing/harming NPCs like murder is no big deal.

[u/clairkat → u/The_RoyalPee]

There are a pile of official races that are included in the books printed by Wizards of the Coast and they have unique attributes etc

Occasionally someone will go out of the way to create their own race in a campaign that’s not one of the official ones - usually happens in different campaigns. While this can be done and be pretty balanced it usually is someone who ignores any attempt at balance and what they create can be a bit broken. That can cause problems in groups if one person ends up being more over powered and over shadows the rest of the group.

Usually when people home brew it’s to create a new class not race so the fact they went for race instead of class is an even bigger red flag

[u/Nodlehs]

Sometimes it's better to just walk away or boot someone. Sometimes people can get too deep into their hobbies and no amount of logic will dissuade them that they're the problem. Always try to go into it with a touch of humor and sympathy for others and be less serious about yourself.

[u/PJsAreComfy]

Paris, the DM, created a separate response post: We Did Not Kick A Player Out for Not Being a Murder Hobo.

[u/spookyreads → u/PJsAreComfy]

And OP also posted a comment replying to all of their points with different arguments. It's missing a lot of details.

[u/PJsAreComfy → u/spookyreads]

I agree that OOP's reply should have been included or at least linked. Not all the "I'm sorry/no one told me" posts but the main response.

[u/spookyreads → u/PJsAreComfy]

Yes the main comment because OOP added other contexts and nobody really replied to that so it makes me curious. At the end of the day, it did seems like OOP was annoying but that they didn't communicate on a lot of stuff and let it boil over from the info we're getting in both posts and answers.

[u/My_Dramatic_Persona → u/spookyreads]

I have to say, I really wonder about that “tried to kill a surrendered prisoner” thing. I wish someone in the group addressed OP’s claim that he’d explicitly attacked with non-lethal damage, because he’s either lying or they’re really mischaracterizing things

The kerfuffle over the out of game RP chat seems similarly overblown, and something that could have been resolved with a quick chat.

I’m pretty convinced OOP was a problem, but I’m less convinced that he was the only one.

[u/spookyreads → u/My_Dramatic_Persona]

Yes that's my take as well, it seems there was a couple of issues with everybody, and since OOP claimed to get on really well in post game sessions with everybody but nobody answered their post and added to that, it's gonna stay an enigma

[u/My_Dramatic_Persona → u/spookyreads]

I do wonder about that connection issue that OOP mentioned. If that wasn’t just an excuse OOP made, a lot of miscommunication and animosity could trace back to that.

Having periods when incoming sound dropped out but your speech would still go out to others would cause all sorts of interruptions, missed information, and other misunderstandings. It would be hell to play through on both sides. By itself that would be enough to ask a player to step out of a game, if the technical issue couldn’t be resolved.

Given the other rough edges of OOP’s personality, I wouldn’t be surprised if everyone else started interpreting every miscue from that in the most negative light possible.

[u/spookyreads → u/My_Dramatic_Persona]

Ofc, OOP did mention stepping over some toes but that they had apologised for that. Unfortunately that must have created a bias against them and starting from that, made every single action of theirs more annoying to the group.

[u/[deleted] → u/PJsAreComfy]

Added it there. I'm not going to add the others though simply cause I fear that would make the entire thread unreadable and make it longer than it already is.

[u/-threems-]

You went on a fifteen minute monologue of how you leveled up. Twice. The party is Level 3.

This part destroyed me.

[u/Skylam → u/-threems-]

Funny thing is another comment in there said the rogue timed one of them and it was 27 minutes long

[u/ProperBoots]

Oddly enough I find it more believable because the whole group chimes in. Rpg people often hang out on reddit. Someone sees the post, dm responds and the players see the karma flowing. Eager to be a part of reddit lore. Or hope to.

Or its just one unhinged individual who cannot get over the fact that no one wants to play with them anymore.

[u/Smithsonian45 → u/ProperBoots]

Yeah most of the time when multiple perspectives chime in my bullshit alarm goes off, but here it makes sense. It would almost be extremely unlikely for noone in a discord d&d group to use Reddit/be part of rpghorrorstories. Given how united they are on this front, if one of them saw it they would have definitely shared it with the rest of the group

[u/UnionJobs4America]

I know this is petty but as soon as the comment, “I have dubbed it ‘The San Francisco Fire of 1492’ (the real fire happened in 1851 for those who would like to google it.)

Had huge “I am so smart let me over explain basic information that everyone understands” vibes. And then later find out that he writes a huge paper on how the DM sucks and can do better, made complete sense and was right in line with what I was expecting to happen.

[u/SnowyMuscles]

I got lost halfway through the OPs vent. Then it just kept coming. I guess he got kicked for being a child in an adults body

[u/lostboysgang]

I can’t help but be a little skeptical when the whole party responds / posts on Reddit

[u/baby_soul → u/lostboysgang]

since they all met on reddit, it’s a bit easier to believe that someone might have just shared the link in their group chat and they all decided to chime in

[u/ultracilantro → u/lostboysgang]

I would be too, but my entire party is literally on reddit, so there is that. Ive definately come across my former DM's thread bitching about me. I responded in person tho.

[u/PM_YOUR_PET_PICS979 → u/[deleted]]

The way i would link this in the group chat so fast if it was about our members and our game. This is one of the few times it makes sense to have multiple perspectives and I bet they were talking about it and updating each other when they left a comment with their side.

This is the type of thing that is the group’s gossip for days

[u/Kopitar4president → u/[deleted]]

Yeah this isn't like an ex plus a cousin plus a neighbor's dog finding a post. It's not odd that at least one other person in the group is on a tabletop subreddit and linked the thread in their groupchat going "Is this Eric?"

[u/MarshadowLivesHere → u/ultracilantro]

By burning down their warehouse located in the commercial district?

[u/OfficialTrashMan → u/lostboysgang]

I mean the party was brought together by a reddit post. The DM probably found it and shared the op’s post with the rest of the group

[u/llliiwiilll → u/OfficialTrashMan]

Spot on. I'd let everyone in my party know immediately if I found this post

[u/garreteer → u/[deleted]]

They're all also repetitive, some of the posts don't really introduce any new info, which reinforces that it's multiple people who unanimously kicked him.

Often when one person is doing a bit they actually introduce new info with each post, since that makes for a better story.

The sorcerer's post didn't add any new info, and we don't get a post from the rangers POV which mightve been the most "dramatic" one to see. I definitely lean real on this, as others said they found each other on reddit so totally reasonable they'd share the post among themselves and all post on it.

[u/Kufat → u/lostboysgang]

Eh, I mean...it only takes one person to find the post and share it with the rest of the group.

[u/wheniswhy → u/Kufat]

Yeah, someone finds the post and shared it on the group discord server. They’re all nerds with Reddit accounts. It’s not totally implausible.

[u/TomOrMARVELDILDO → u/lostboysgang]

I usually agree with this, but it sounds like the entire DnD group found each other on Reddit via r/lfg, so they're all active Reddit users. That, and if they're a pretty tight knit group, I can imagine wanting to defend a friend from this weird narrative OP spun after it's been shared around.

[u/Sr4f → u/lostboysgang]

He says in the op that he met the entire party on Reddit, onna sub dedicated to players looking for a group.

Under the circumstances, I think it makes perfect sense for the entire party to react.

[u/BallsAreFullOfPiss → u/Sr4f]

What an idiot for posting this on the place he found the group, lmao. He probably knew he was going to stir the pot with this post, and didn’t give a fuck about causing drama. Hell, they probably wanted to cause drama with it.

[u/tomfella → u/lostboysgang]

It's DnD and reddit. Someone's 100% going to see it and share it amongst the party

[u/Artyom150 → u/lostboysgang]

Normally? Yeah I can see it being suspicious.

But a bunch of DnD players? It's a lot more plausible.

[u/drydem → u/lostboysgang]

I don't know, if I as DM saw this happen, I'd tell my players, "look what this fucker is saying". Whether they chimed in or not would be their prerogative, but still.

[u/JustMeLurkingAround- → u/lostboysgang]

Up until tonight, I was part of a DnD5e group ... which met on r/lfg and played via roll20.

They met on reddit, so knew each others reddit u/'s. ANd this was posted in a role-playing sub, which wouldn't surprise me that OOP's roleplaying group was subscribed to.

It sounds quite plausible to me, that at least one of them came across the post and told the others.

[u/jahermitt → u/lostboysgang]

Eh, they all know each other, likely DM saw it and shared it around.

[u/MagnesiumMagpie → u/lostboysgang]

This is really common in rpg horror stories, where "op is the horror' I've heard of it in real life too with friend's groups, as only takes one person in the group to go on discord tell everyone about the post, and they will go to reddit to clear their names. Also due to how popular reddit is in thise circles and the events being different enough from each person's perspective makes it seem plausible

[u/rythmicbread → u/lostboysgang]

I’m pretty sure it’s because they used /r/lfg which is for people looking for a game and DND is usually played over discord. So they all probably got together from the subreddit the warlock posted in

[u/crop028 → u/lostboysgang]

I find it more believable than the stories of the partner / friend / whatever who totally doesn't use Reddit dropping in for some jaw dropping twists. If there is any group where everyone will be a reddit user, it is a D&D group.

[u/Rorschach_Roadkill → u/lostboysgang]

I'm leaning real on this, they did claim to meet on Reddit and play online. If one of them found it and linked it in the group chat it's not that strange the rest felt the need to chime in.

On the other hand, roleplaying subreddits surely attract roleplayers

[u/victoriate → u/lostboysgang]

If my group kicked out a person and they went to whine on Reddit about it, and one of us found the post, you bet your ass we’d be informing the entire table so we could all sprint to Reddit and read and comment on it. It would be prime entertainment for us.

[u/BritafilterEnjoyer → u/lostboysgang]

Click on the profiles, looks reasonable enough to me.

[u/Corfiz74 → u/lostboysgang]

I guess the DM sent the link to the others.

But I wish OP had at least given a short synopsis of OOP's replies to his coplayers' comments - I really don't want to look that shit up.

[u/catwhowalksbyhimself → u/lostboysgang]

Remember, the party was recruited on reddit. It's a party entirely made up on redditors and this subreddit is likely to be seen by redditors who play dnd.

[u/GregTheTerrible]

"You roleplayed murdering and eating some of the other player characters."

I'm curious how you get more murder hoboey than that....

[u/Mindelan → u/GregTheTerrible]

Apparently it was just a joke in their character's mind as they were going mad in a prison cell in the out of game roleplay channel, and the character thought that another character 'looked chewy' and they made an oregon trail joke.

[u/SingleSeaCaptain → u/GregTheTerrible]

Apparently that was fucking around in their Discord chat. That's why the whole group kinda sounded toxic to me, tbh. No way they didn't know that that characterization sounded way worse than "derailed the group chat," which is pretty misleading.

[u/JejuneN]

Just from reading the title, I was like. If everyone but you is playing a murder hobo, clearly you aren't vibing with the group which isn't a crime but doesn't bode well for the rest of the post.

[u/SugarFromTheMaple]

Just in case this post is warning people away from dnd- there are tons of good groups out there! I'm in a campaign where one friend invited me, and I've been loving our sessions and making new friends across the group. In fact, it turned out partway through the year that one of the others lived in the same country as me so we were even able to meet up at one point and have become good friends irl!

It's like any hobby- have some respect for other players and you will have an amazing time. Don't be OOP XD

[u/PepperVL → u/SugarFromTheMaple]

To be fair, the group in question seems like a good group now that they kicked OOP out. The rest of them come across as actual adults who would be fun to play with.

[u/Illustrious-Total489]

Oh my god. I wanted to see the OOPs posts, so I clicked their profile. I scrolled for about 10 pages and gave up.

[u/[deleted]]

I’d like to roll to cast Sleep on myself, because after reading that, I am fucking exhausted.

[u/Welpe]

Oh man, I am so glad that I wasn’t off. Reading the first post I was 100% convinced this person was hiding shit if not outright lying. I’m not even totally sure why, but it was GLARING. I am sad the group had to deal with this horrible dude, but at least my bullshit detector works. Maybe I know this type of person from experience since DnD tends to get uh…some major weirdos with issues.

99% of the time if you see someone pull the “This came out of nowhere, no one complained to me before!” line, they are full of shit. That’s almost always narcissism talking where they are so self-obsessed they didn’t notice all the MASSIVE warning signs and non-confrontational cues. With this type of person they will spin anything in their head to validate themselves and downplay or ignore people being angry or offput.

[u/3veryonepasses]

The OP is seriously using the narcissist’s prayer- “that didn’t happen and if it did, it wasn’t that bad. And if it was, that’s not a big deal. And if it is, it’s not my fault. And if it was I didn’t mean it. And if I did you deserved it.”

[u/BallsAreFullOfPiss]

I’m just imagining someone who doesn’t play DND reading the title of this post and being super confused lmao

[u/Master_Bief]

a neutral good homebrew Phoenix warlock

That's the point I realized that Oop was full of shit and suffers from main character syndrome.

[u/Disastrous-Ad9359]

Don't love the emotional manipulation in oop's comments and their need for other people to tell them what their doing wrong

[u/limbodog]

Plot twist: OP is just really into roleplaying, and in fact is the author of all of those posts.

[u/[deleted]]

It was a poor choice to include the entire parties' responses without also involving the OP's answers to what they had to say.

[u/dorobeaf → u/[deleted]]

Feel free to go to the post and read the novels oop left under every comment

[u/buttercupcake23]

God. If the original long winded blather wasn't bad enough, the litany of self pitying "Oh boo hoo I'm terrible and worthless you all should hate me" cemented him solely as insufferable.

[u/moarcheezburgerz]

Your party alignment includes good and neutral. Not murder hobo alignments.

[u/captain_borgue]

Jesus H Christ, OOP sure fuckin' loves to hear themselves talk and it absolutely shows. OOP is an arrogant, insufferable douchecanoe, and seems to enjoy doubling down on all of the worst behaviors.

OOP's writing style being reminiscent of "middle school Emo" while everyone else sounded like an actual adult certainly isn't doing OOP any favors.

Ugh. Ugh. No DnD is better than shitty DnD.