Our
DM
Turned Out To Be A Creep!
So I've been sitting on this one for a second because truthfully I was still sort of reeling
from what happened, but I think I'm finally ready to talk.
I have a hell of a D&D Horror Story to tell y'all.
Here's my tale of how Our DM Turned Out To be a Creep:
After years of wanting to get into it, I finally started playing D&D early this year, and joined
a few Discord servers dedicated to such.
After my old session broke up (A story for another day) I wanted to get back into playing,
so in one of the servers I posted an ad in a LFG section detailing that I was newer to
D&D and looking for a newbie-friendly game, and was almost instantly picked up by a DM
we'll call Ted.
Ted (35 years old) explained to me that he was running a Domains of Dread module and
one of their players was being kicked out for not showing up, so I could have their
spot.
He explained that the DoD module was a lore/story heavy game that was pretty dark, dangerous,
depressing, and player death wasn't off the table, and although it seemed pretty intimidating
for a n00b like myself, I'm a *slut* for a good dark story and knew that staying out
of my comfort zone was going to be key to growing as a player so I said yes anyway.
Now, I'm not a conflict-averse person at all, and I'm in my late thirties so I'm pretty
savvy about men just from sheer life experience, buuuut.....Because I was still really new
to D&D and hadn't played much at all, my inexperience with the game led me to second-guess my gut
instincts about a lot of the following, and this was such a huge learning experience I
won't take for granted in the future.
If I could preface the rest of the story with anything it's this: Trust your gut!
It's usually right.
So.
I made my character, an Elven Bard, and met my party members.
Immediately, I noticed that the party was absolutely HUGE, and that every other player,
other than one boy who turned out to be a minor (and thus no "threat" to him romantically),
and one male who was kicked out -the next session-, we were ALL women.
Now, obviously plenty of women play D&D.
It's not unusual to me to see multiple women in parties, even parties made up entirely
of women!
What struck me as unusual right away was that generally speaking when you see a party of
all (or mostly) women, it's being DMed by a woman as well, on purpose (usually to avoid
the problems we ended up facing).
So that was red flag number 1.
I, in the back of my mind, was thinking to myself "Oh no, is this going to end some kind
of wannabe harem situation here?!"
Some people ended up dropping out or leaving or got kicked out for various reasons, and
we got some new people in (and I personally invited another male to even out the gender
ratio a little bit), but the only person in this tale that's relevant to this story is
our cleric, who I'll call Sparrow.
Sparrow (17 years old) is a really nice girl, and our characters really quickly became good
friends.
She and I talked out-of-character semi-frequently and she occasionally asked me for advice about
dating and boys.
The first month I played with them, though, I really struggled.
I was new to D&D and didn't really know that this was "unusual" enough to say anything
about it to anyone else, but during every single session some NPC would end up going
off and yelling at my character furiously, who was actually a very sweet girl and not
a troublemaker that might've otherwise deserved it.
For example, at one point the party went into a tavern whose front door had been busted
off it's hinges, leaving it absolutely defenseless, so my character asked the bartender if she
could fix it in return for a -small- discount of their food and beers.
She got cussed out and thrown out of the bar immediately, like she'd just threatened to
rob the place and shoot the guy or something, it was such a 180 in behavior I sat speechless
for several minutes, wondering wtf had just happened.
At first I thought maybe it was just because these NPCs were stressed out for living in
difficult times, it wasn't easy surviving in the Dark Domains right?...but it just kept
happening, making me lose the energy and mood for the session every single time, which made
showing up to the next session more and more difficult every time.
I kept telling myself to tough it out, that this was just a temporary thing, but after
one instance of me actually tearing up before a session because I just didn't want to go
that badly, I knew it was time to say something.
After about two months of every session being shouted at angrily from asshole shopkeepers
and other horrible NPCs, I finally went to the DM and told him I was thinking about leaving,
because I was struggling with staying motivated in the game.
I told him that I didn't understand why the NPCs seemed to single out and target my character
to shout at, and he promised he'd nip it in the bud without explaining why I was so frequently
his In-Character punching bag.
That wasn't the only reason I was struggling, through.
I also noticed that The DM never talked to anyone about their character's backstories
or secret things like that, or spoke to anyone in private after the game about it either(except
for Sparrow, I found out a bit later).
The world didn't seem to be affected by us or have anything to do with us, we just....seemed
to "show up" and fumble through attempting to help people (frequently unsuccessfully,
I might add) without our characters having any meaningful impact or existence in it.
Even though he advertised the game to me as a lore and story heavy game, and even though
I was a meticulous note taker, I couldn't seem to figure out how our individual backstories
and characters were being tied into this game.
For instance, in the DoD Module you have something called "Dark Gifts" which you can either be
born with or discover through the story progression.
The characters who had to discover it via story did so very suddenly with almost no
preamble, and after it was "resolved", the dark gift was literally *never* brought up
again, leaving my team feeling like they were mere afterthoughts.
The only person whose character seemed to have any impact on the lore and story in the
game was Sparrow.
Originally, I thought perhaps the DM was just really private and secretive about the game
and how our characters fit into it, and very shy out-of-game, so I didn't think much of
it.
Especially after I found out that Sparrow and DM were friends from a campaign before,
so her being the only person he spoke to seemed fairly normal-ish.
But after several months where only Sparrow's character had any evident meaningful impact
or history, it became clear that he probably hadn't even read our backstories, and didn't
care about the rest of the team's character arcs during the module either.
During the story progression, the party ended up rescuing some soldiers from a pretty desperate
situation, and the captain of the guard, a NPC we'll call John, ended up taking a liking
to my Bard.
When we eventually left the island they had been on, NPC John got promoted to DMPC and
just invited himself to come onto our boat and leave with us.
Even though our characters were obviously not comfortable having an extremely vulnerable
human on board with no magical abilities or martial skills (he was a level 0 commoner
with no D&D class) when we were in literal constant danger, since he was the DMPC, none
of us felt we had the "right" to tell John no.
So DM now has a DMPC on board.
Right away he's trying to claim my Bard romantically, when it's been clear for weeks she already
had eyes for the other male player's character, who we'll call Gary.
(Insert Fallout 3 Reference Here) Now, Gary and my Bard are not technically *Officially*
together yet, but everyone already knew they were falling in love, so I found this kind
of tacky on the DM's part, but again, my insecurity about the game led me to saying nothing out
of character, although my Bard did turn John down, in-character.
Now, my Bard wasn't *just* a sweet girl.
While that was true, to make a long story short, the Dark Gift she was born with made
her act incredibly dangerously when she experienced bloodlust and during extreme losses of emotional
control.
She had never attacked a party member, but was already well known for being extremely
reckless in combat and really scary sometimes.
Because of this, she felt it would have been impossible for her to be with a "normal person"
who might be in danger from her.
She felt like Gary could protect himself from her, if he had to, so he was the "safer" choice,
and told John as such.
He didn't take it well, and the session after my Bard turned down John, he was never mentioned
or RPed again by the DM, just...vanished off the face of reality, so I can only assume
John's character was promoted to DMPC just to romance my Bard.
While there's nothing wrong with playing a character just for Romance purposes, it's
also a yellow flag when combined with everything else going on.
After looking back I think maybe the DM made John to attempt to romance my Bard to make
Sparrow jealous, but that backfired on him spectacularly when I didn't bite.
I also think that's why NPCs screaming at my character became a thing again.
So time moves on and next session the party is introduced to a new DMPC who is an Incubus,
and incredibly powerful.
We'll call him Howard.
It's immediately evident that he's very useful in combat, but also immediately evident that
Howard is sexually harassing poor Sparrow, who tries to turn him down as nicely as she
can every time.
He never seems to get the hint!
Even though Sparrow's character is engaged to another party member and has no interest
in Howard, he keeps hounding her every session until every single party member is absolutely
sick of him, Sparrow's in-character wife-to-be wants to KILL him, and it takes my character
scaring the shit out of Howard in-game to get him to calm the fuck down.
A Little.
My growing unhappiness with the DM was only tempered by how cohesive and amazing our group
was becoming.
When it came to Ted, it always felt like our characters didn't really matter.
Not only were we more unsuccessful than successful at our attempts to do some good in the world,
it continued to feel like our characters didn't really exist "in" the world and that the DM
didn't really pay attention to our care about the rest of us.
The stories we were making with each other made up for it, though.
Howard still constantly harassed Sparrow but the fun we were having in-character was enough
for us.
We'd learned to ignore the annoying DMPC.
We'd learned to make our own fun when the story wasn't and find comfort in our failures
as a team.
Character deaths were mourned, small victories were celebrated passionately.
We loved each other.
Despite him.....We were a family.
Then, 5 months into the campaign we very suddenly get a group DM from Sparrow explaining to
all of us that Ted kicked all of us out of the server, that he did NOT want us to message
him ever again, and that the campaign was over.
The team was devastated.
We had all really bonded and found that we loved playing with each other, and couldn't
believe that he had thrown us all out so unceremoniously.
I was FURIOUS, instantly thinking to myself that this *had* to have something to do with
the DM being so creepy with Sparrow all the time.
So, I asked in the open group chat, "Does this have anything to do with how creepy Howard
was to Sparrow's character?
I mean it really felt like Ted was trying to date Sparrow."
Sparrow came to me privately and explained that she had met Ted through another D&D group
and Ted had developed feelings for her, so he invited her to play another campaign that
he was DMing.
He had confessed to Sparrow that he didn't care about our characters or read anything
any of us had written in our backstories, that the game had, in its entirety, been an
excuse to attempt to spend more time with her in hopes that she'd eventually fall for
him, and when she turned him down out of character, he made Howard in an attempt to date her in-character,
and when she wouldn't even do -that-, he threw us all out and spent two weeks afterwards
harassing her on her social media contacts everywhere until she had to block him on *everything*.
So, in the end, all my gut instincts about this being some kind of weird romantic ploy
was right.
Sparrow ended up telling me later that the reason Ted's NPCs yelled at my character so
much was because he secretly hated me for being older and savvy about men, and hated
the fact that she and I were friendly and she talked to and asked for my advice out-of-character
frequently.
I get the sense that he invited so many women in the beginning in an attempt to make Sparrow
jealous, but when no one found the DM dateable in-character or out, he nuked the game out
of pure spite.
A small part of me wishes I would have left far before this, but I would have never met
the fine people I had.
The good news is, when we found out, one of the members volunteered almost instantly to
DM us so we could stay together.
We unanimously agreed.
Trust your gut!
If someone creeps you out it is probably for a good reason.
I’m glad the story has a happy ending and this didn’t ruin D&D for the player.
Tell us about your creepy DM stories in the comments below!
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