u/hg2c

So I have been playing DnD for a couple of years with random people here and there. 2 months ago, my friend group (8 of us, me included.) also decided they wanted to try out DnD. With me being the most experienced player, we all decided it'd make sense if I'd DM. (I had DM'd a couple times before, with AL modules and once with a couple of other friends, 1 of them were also part of this group) Since we were all busy with our studies, we decided it'd make sense we'd play during the 2 week break. Before we had our first session, the players would slowly start to brainstorm ideas for their characters, and I'd help them where ever I could. I even bought some digital source books from DnD Beyond, so they'd be able to have more variety and also have access to a digital copy of players handbook that they could refer to when needed.

Eventually 5 players came up with a character. One of them (the player who I had DM'd before, let's call him Dave) wanted to use a level 1 version of their previous character (a Tiefling Bard) and wanted it to be that his character traveled to Baldur's Gate (where the campaign would be set) after their last adventure (which mind you, was in the plane of Innistrad). The other player (lets say his name is Mike) wanted to also use their previous character (Halfling Rogue) from another game, but as a new version of them. I told Mike that he could play his character that way, and I told Dave that if he wanted to use the same character, he'd have to do it similarly, as it wouldn't make a lot of sense for a level 1 character to just be jumping planes here and there, but if he really wanted it to be that way, I could try and incorporate some plane shifting chaos in the campaign as a story line. He seemed excited about that and so I started writing some stuff for that.

Not even a week later, he comes to me with a new character, a Warforged Artificer, who travelled to this plan from a steampunk future (he straight up described Ebberon to me). I told him that time travel isn't something I want to deal with, but I could rewrite the plan travel stuff I had written, and just switch the planes and the themes. He was happy with that again. He with excitement, talked a lot with the other players about wacky interactions they could do.

Later on, in the same week, Dave comes to me with a new character that he's going to play instead. A human bard called Bardy Mc. Bardface. I was somewhat annoyed, as now, the plane's in chaos plot I had written was kind of useless now. I reluctantly accepted.

Now normally with the players I had told them that they could swap characters, as most of them were new. But according to Dave he was incredibly experienced and had been playing DnD with his family for a long time.

I later started doubting this, as he had mentioned how he has been working on an Elder Scrolls inspired campaign for years and that our friend group could play it later. He mentioned how he had fully fleshed out custom classes, species and lots of more stuff. I was pretty excited when I heard this and I asked if I could see any descriptions or other stuff he had for these cool stuff. He said that he didn't have any of them on DnD Beyond. I told him it was ok, and that I was just using Beyond so the new players would be a bit less confused by everything, and how I was experienced with reading source books and referring to them for character creation/rules. He then said he also didn't have them saved online. At this point I started getting suspicious of him lying. I didn't understand why he would lie about this of all things but it felt a lot like he was. Later on, during a class I saw him looking up Elder Scrolls DnD homebrew from his laptop. After the class, he showed me a document that he said he had made for his campaign. I acted like it was cool, even though I knew it was an obvious lie.

Some time later, Dave came to me with, yet again, a new character (Orc Barbarian). This time, he said it was inspired by Fallout. Called Frank Horrigan. If anyone has played Fallout, the name would ring a bell. I had never played Fallout, so I initially brushed over it. Dave mentioned how his character had warped from the Fallout universe after a nuclear reactor had exploded. It sounded cool, so I decided to re do the plane chaos plot again, and rewrote it to fit in the nuclear wasteland theme.

Then, believe it or not, in a week he came with the new character he wanted to play. With the exact words he messaged me, he said:
"Alright I’ve made a new character, I’ll actually be useful this time around. I am one of the most powerful angels in the whole of Catholicism in human form. Van Helsing the Vampire Hunting Werewolf."

He wanted to play a Bloodhunter (Lycanthrope subclass). Even though I am loose with rules, I had never approved Critical Role content. It took me a couple of days to convince him to play a different character.

Further more, when I checked his backstory on DnD Beyond. It looked incredibly odd. Nothing similar to how he had written before. I looked up Van Helsing. I found his wiki page. And believe it or not, his backstory was an exact copy of the Van Helsing fandom wiki page. His 'backstory' already had the entire story for him. This made me think to Dave's 'Fallout inspired character'. I looked up the name, and turns out it's a character in Fallout. His backstory was incredibly similar to Frank's fandom wiki page. After I paid a bit of attention, I realized it was an AI summary of the wiki page, with 2 sentences added at the end to make Frank travel to the Forgotten Realms. I told him that he had to make a different character, and actually put some effort into it. It wasn't fair at all when one player wanted to practically play a god, and not even putting in effort to their character, when everyone else is just wanting to have fun. More so, its not fair to me who's putting in so much effort into making something that's fun for everyone and you don't even have the audacity to be considering.

So behold, he comes with a new character. Called Joe Hendry (Dave was in a wrestling phase around then, and for those who don't know Joe Hendry is a wrestler I believe.). He introduces the character jokingly, so I assume it is a joke. But no he actually wants to play that character. I yet again force him to make an original character with at least a little bit of effort.

Eventually he makes a Human Fighter called Miyamoto (with the character image being the image of Miyamoto Musashi) His backstory was 3 sentences, but it was at least better than his other characters. At this point I had rewritten stuff so many times, and it was annoying how he couldn't make up his mind. I told him that he was free to make characters as much as he wanted. But after 2 days he'd be locked into whatever character he had decided. He accepted.

So eventually we finally had our first session! Despite our best efforts for scheduling two people were unable to attend. Mike and another. During the session, Dave decided that he would try to ask out a wife and daughter for a date. Together. Since persuasion checks isn't mind control, I decided that neither would accept, as it would go against their values no matter what Dave rolled. (The wife was happily married and had no reason to want to cheat on her husband, and the hook of the first session was literally the daughters forbidden love with someone else.) Dave rolled high on both, and when I didn't let him "seduce" the two, he was visibly annoyed.

Later on, there was a segment in a dark area where torches could not be used, as there was explosive gas in the area. Since all of my player's characters had darkvision them seeing wasn't a problem. Miyamoto could not see in the dark though. For him to see though, I made them run into a giant fire beetle early on in the area, so that Miyamoto could use it as a light source. Dave decided that it would be smarter if he squashed the bug. He was blind the entire segment + a combat in that area. The entire time he was complaining about how I made it unfair for him by making everything in the dark. (Fun fact, the combat was entirely avoidable if they had just walked past the enemies, but Miyamoto decided it would be funny if he shouted swears at the enemies through the dark).

During the second session, he decided to completely deviate from the group and go his own way, to find a "Vampire Nightclub" that a NPC had jokingly said.

Now its important to know, that I was severely under prepped for this session. One drive had screwed up and deleted all my files, causing me to try and and write as much as I could in 2 days, so him deviating, was making the session that was already stressful for me, even worse. I am not an experienced DM.

To visualize Baldur's Gate, I was using an online map website I had found. Dave, decided to also open the website, and look through every single land mark one by one.

First he went to a graveyard he found on the map. Called "Candulhallow's Funeral Arrangements:. I made up a random human NPC who was the grounds keeper. Dave went and "Erm Actually" 'd me. Because according to the forgotten realms wiki, the place was owned by Elves. I told him the Elves were out of town, and the Human was an employee. He was annoyed there weren't any vampires.

Later as I'm explaining stuff to the rest of the group, he jumps in exclaims he's going to the Flaming Fist headquarters, Sea Tower of Balduran. Now the current plot going on was a faction war. Between Zhentarim and Shield Trading Co. (I had written that Shield Trading was a socialist faction in my lore) And the Thieves Guild is attempting to stir things up. He decides to forcefully introduce Flaming Fist into the equation, even after I kept telling him there was no Flaming Fist here. I end up having to role play him applying to join the Flaming Fist, while the rest of the group is waiting to actually play along with the story. (He is never going to get a response.) He went behind the DM's back to find the resource that I was using and wanted to use it against me.

And now, a week later, he decides that it would make sense if "Realistic damage was a thing". He wants it to be that crits cause PERMANENT DISFIGUREMENT to player characters, such as losing an arm or an eye. Because he wants the game to be more "hardcore", "realistic" and "brutal". Worst of all, Dave wants what limb you lose based on a dice roll.

You are a level 2 character. You cannot afford to lose an arm just because of luck. None of the spellcasters in your party can cast greater restoration. You cannot afford someone else to cast it for you.

TL;DR: Player decides that its a better idea to be annoying than cooperative