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Why This Might Be The Last Time I Ever Tried To Be A Player
Hi everyone.
All Things DnD is back with another story.
Sometimes it's hard being a player when you have DM’d for a long time.
You may be a little over critical of the choices the DM makes, plot devices, or encounters.
Listen to this story and determine for yourself if this person is being overly critical or
justified in why this game would be his final attempt at being a player.
So to give some context : I'm a forever DM and I mostly only enjoy that role, mostly
due to the fact that I never got really skilled DMs.
Most of them were friends trying to be nice and running the game so I could play or to
test out the waters to see if DMing was something they liked.
And there was the occasional one shot at conventions.
I find the game too slow in most of my sessions as a player.
I’m not saying my friends were bad, it's mostly due to how I enjoy games.
The other players were having fun and so I generally did the majority of the DMing.
During the first quarantine I decided to give being a player shot with a DM proposing a
more open world campaign centered on a small village and his wilderness.
The first sessions were really good.
The 3D map was beautiful and my character with his background integrated into the village
was great . Having a smaller setting made every NPC more meaningful.
I could talk to anyone and I was really invested in the story and my goals.
Honestly, I don’t have a negative thing to say about those first sessions; they were
some of the few times I enjoyed being a player.
But then arrived the lost trader quest…
We were so busy with all the side-quests that we forgot that our first duty was to find
why the usual merchant didn't arrive with his cart full of supplies, so we got back
on the road and after some search found his cart littered with primitive arrows and later
his body being eaten by the wolves.
We easily come to the conclusion that he managed to escape and died from his wounds in the
forest or got finished by the wolves but that last point doesn't matter.
We track down the stolen supplies to a cavern.
Instead of rushing in blindly we decide to try to smoke whatever is inside out.
But we realized there was another entrance on the other side.
With no other option we head inside.
We finally reach a ruined fort and immediately start getting shot by arrows while approaching.
We put up a pretty good fight attacking and flanking from every side putting some hurt
on the goblins before reaching the center of the fortress.
But this is where it started going downhill.
As I was preparing my bow I realized the only other occupants in the room were an old goblin
woman, some wounded male goblins and their children and wives.
They start cursing us for killing their only viable men, telling us that they only wanted
to scare the merchant and steal his food to survive.
Some of the members of our party were feeling guilty but I wasn't having any of that.
So in order to make the party “feel” better I decided I would talk to the goblins.
The old goblin woman angrily spat, “We were just trying to feed our groups and you slaughtered
us!”
“You killed our merchant, what did you expect !?” I replied.
“We wanted to only scare him!”
“Yeah by shooting arrows at him and making him flee wounded in the woods where he bled
out!”
My voice was loud enough to make the young cower away in fear.
“It's his fault!
The village was not far from there he could have run there to safety instead of the forest!”
“Yeah because when I get shot by a storm of arrows my first survival instinct is to
run in a straight line on a road with no cover.”
I’m not sure if goblins understand sarcasm or not.
After that I told the team that it will be better to kill them now.
They told me it was extreme and completely unnecessary.
I tried to explain that they were already struggling to survive with their fighters,
and now what we can do is either kill them or let them starve to death.
The whole group disagreed and since they wanted to keep their hands clean I gave up thinking
that it was not worth the fight.
It could have stopped here but our mage asked "Do you know anything about the werewolf?”
In reference to one of our side-stories.
The goblin woman said no and he responded "Right then we spare you and in exchange you
are going into the forest to search for clues for the Werewolf."
“Yeah right, we just fought an owlbear, a giant spider and found a pack of wolves
nearby eating a guy.
But sure send the pregnant woman and the old lady out in search of a werewolf!”
I said.
I was a little pissed off by this session's end but still had a pretty enjoyable fight,
but I was a little disappointed in my companions choices.
I decided that I was going to stop being a player in this campaign mostly for scheduling
reasons.
Which was a good decision because my final session was the final nail in the coffin.
Our last mission was going to be the cleansing of some ruins full of undead on a forgotten
hill.
The quest was given by the monk that ran the monastery in the village.
I asked precisely why we needed to cleanse the place since they were far from any human
activity and were not attacking the village.
We got a clear answer that it was for holy reasons and we were going to get paid.
Everyone heard the situation and agreed to do the job and kill some undead.
We arrive at the ruins and get immediately attacked by the skeletons.
We fight our way inside the dungeon and find a new character.
The new player’s introduction.
He had been captured as he was exploring the ruins and put into a cell without explanation.
We fight our way through a few more skeletons before reaching a skeleton mage who can speak
but I’m paraphrasing here said "What are you doing disturbing my domain?" and then
starting he attacked.
After winning the fight we found a book.The DM sent us a pretty nicely done fake parchment
with the text, props to him for this, and we discovered that the undead mage didn't
know how he had been awoken and he just wanted peace from the outside world while he studied
.
Then my teammates gasp saying how they screwed up again like with the goblins.
I disagreed again.
If he was so wise and wanted peace.
He probably shouldn’t be putting people in cages and shooting people on sight.
We all knew that the undead were content in their ruins, they weren’t attacking the
village.
I made sure to ask the NPC before we even embarked on this “quest”.
But no.
They were all feeling like they screwed up and I couldn’t help but cringe when one
of the guys said "The DM has broken the fantasy code!"
I honestly wanted to find a way to turn against my team because at this point I was hating
them but that was my last session with them.
I did a one shot to try again as a warrior, nothing important happened and mostly just
got bored but that's not an important story.
I really thought this time I was going to finally enjoy being a player.
I was not the best and did make some bad judgement calls with my character but I still really
felt like an outcast.
The DM was far from being incompetent and sometimes I really felt like I was talking
to an NPC and not the DM . But after what I felt like the DM was forcing us to feel
guilty and "punished" for choosing the violent option when for me the situations he put us
in made violence really the only option.
I was feeling angry mostly because I felt like the DM was trying to do a "Gotcha !" type
of scenario.
After this experience I went back to being a DM and I’ve never had any drama with my
players.
Mercy killing a helpless goblins?
I don’t know, he kind of lost me there.
Getting angry at other players for feeling bad?
Sure the DMs “make you question morality” thing could have been executed better but
I don’t think I would have been this upset.
Would you?
Is he right?
Please let us know what you think and comment below!
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