r/CritCrab

For context: This was my first DND group in about a year and a half. I'm not too versed in Forgotten Realms lore so forgivee if some things are misnamed/misremembered. This campaign was started around 2/3 months ago, DM is self admittedly using AI for "only item stats" (bs, he had been typing away to ChatGPT anytime any of us asked about the setting for the first 3 sessions) and is taking place in Forgotten Realms, Faerun, and currently Waterdeep, past the Canon timeline. My PC is a Teifling Warlock who is on a mission to search for his wife who was kidnapped, and he has been searching for her for a few months. He heard rumors about someone who knew her living in Waterdeep. He has met 3 other PCs, and wanted to help them on their quests, a Dragonborn Druid, Human Paladin, and a Woodelf Ranger.

Our Characters had been exploring Waterdeep in search of Cultists who were stealing artifacts tied to some Old/Dead Gods and the BBEG who was draining the artifacts to make her god stronger. we had killed many and chased off others. We had an NPC join our party who had a noble sacrifice, so we went to bury him in a grove, since we figured it was the proper thing to do. Once I finish carving his headstone, the BBEG appears from the shadows, slowly clapping with a bunch of mages also clapping from the shadows. At this point in the story, we have been offered many deals from BBEG, who wanted our help finding artifacts in return for my wife's safety, and also some Devil guy who wanted Information. Our party had denied every deal given to us. While my character always tried to find the benefits of making the deals with these characters, our party always talked my PC out of it, so when the BBEG gave me my wife's severed hand, I was ready to make a deal. BBEG teleported my wife in front of her, put hands to her head, and was ready to snap her neck. At this point, the party tried our best to stop the BBEG, and as was a recurring problem with this DM, "You tried, and dont even roll for damage, as what you did seemed to have no affect on her" Cool. Love it. My party was offered a deal one last time, we denied it, I say we, but I tried to reason with the group, going nowhere. I tried to attack BBEG one last time, She not only snapped my wife's neck, but "pulled her spinal chord completely from her body" Ok. BBEG disappears almost instantly. It's ok, I have a custom Item, Scroll Of Revivify! we've been saving this for an important death, seems like a good use. "oh uh actually you try using it and it seems like what your wife was killed by, was outside of anything magic could heal" Wow, that's new. Never heard that one before, maybe could have told us that before giving us the "revive anybody" scroll during session one.

Long Story short, feels like no matter what my wife was going to die, and I'm pissed because it feels like I have no agency in this Campaign. My characters sole purpose and goal is now null and void. So yeah, don't really feel like playing anymore because EVERYONE AT THE TABLE DOWNPLAYED IT! I can't even express how angry I am because they would all just tell me I'm overreacting. Feels like a targeted way to get me to leave the Party.

My group has been playing for 3 years. Most everyone was new except the first DM and the current second (they swapped after the first campaign). There are 2 sisters that have been with us from the start and they... just don't seem to get the rules. They do things like forget which numbers to add to dice rolls and forget their own abilities. Last night, one of them who played the Barbarian last campaign, she's playing the Ranger now, we told her to use her bonus action for Hunter's Mark. She argued back she had already used her action to stealth, until someone finally realized the confusion and explained the difference between action and bonus. She said she didn't know she also had a bonus action. We've been playing for 3 years. And 2.5 of those years she was the barbarian using her bonus action to rage. You might think, maybe she's still getting used to the new character? But no, this wasn't our first combat.

How do we help them? The first DM took an approach of patient explanation mixed with I'm going to let you make mistakes and explain them later so you learn. The current DM is a little more abrasive and up front with saying no that's a bad idea and calling them out for not knowing things. We the rest of the players try to pick up the slack and help answer their questions and make suggestions asking the way. But like what advice do you have for helping people remember the basics?

Hello! Huge fan, you're making great work. I really enjoy listening you reading other people's D&D stories, so I decided to share one of my own. This is my story how i defused murder hobo with "Remember Session 1?" twist and court with boss fight at the end 😃

Introduction

This was my debut as a Dungeon Master… which later evolved into becoming a forever DM.

Three of my friends convinced me to run a D&D game for them because they said I was good at storytelling. I was flattered and agreed to make something for them. We were all beginners, playing online through Owlbear Rodeo and Discord.

I made a very simple campaign: a mysterious curator hires adventurers to recover ancient artifacts for him. Nothing super ambitious, but it gave me freedom to design dungeons and adventures while everyone learned the game. We were all having fun. …mostly.

During this campaign, I learned what a murder hobo is.

The Party

There was Flik, a paladin who wasn’t heavily involved in this particular story.
Aela, a ranger who constantly tried to keep the group together.
And Bolt, the main character of this story, a fighter.

Bolt described his character as physically disgusting. According to his backstory, his parents threw him away as a baby and he was raised by a leatherworker who rise him and took him in as an apprentice. He always carried an official recommendation letter from the craftsmen’s guild proving his identity and profession. This will become important later.

Overall, we were all learning the rules together and having fun. No pressure, no stress. Every now and then Bolt would do something weird, stupid, or disturbing, like eating a raw rat during the first session, attacking another player for no reason, or constantly provoking NPCs into fights. As long as it wasn’t ruining the fun for the others, I tolerated it. Aela usually smoothed things over if can. But there was sessions when NPC and other players wanted to talk something out and Bolt was "I take out my crossbow and shot at his head." ending negotiations and starting fight with irritation from other players.

During Session Zero, I told them I wanted to create a world that reacted to their actions. They could do whatever they wanted, but there would be consequences. I also sometimes ran solo voice chat sessions with individual players if they wanted to handle personal side activities without slowing down the main group session.

Saving the Carpenter

After several sessions, the party completed a few jobs for the curator and started taking side quests while waiting for the next artifact lead. One day, while shopping in the city square, a crying woman approached Flik. She explained that her husband, a carpenter, had gone to a nearby village the day before to sell chairs and was supposed to return home that evening. He never came back. Flik promised to help despite Bolt complaining about it, and the party traveled to the village. There they found a local merchant named Tom. The players questioned him about the carpenter. Tom explained that the carpenter is his close friend and they had done business together for years.

Bolt showed Tom his craftsmen guild recommendation letter and asked if Tom might be interested in leather goods in the future. Tom happily read the letter and was excited about a possible new trade partner. As a DM, I was honestly happy because it felt like Bolt’s player was finally engaging with the world in a meaningful way.

Then Aela asked Tom more questions about the carpenter’s visit. Tom said, that the carpenter had visited him as usual and afterward he left for the main city using the same road the players had traveled on. Bolt rolled Insight. High roll, i said that "in your opinion he said the truth." Bolt still refused to trust Tom. The party searched around the shop. No signs of violence. No blood. Nothing suspicious.

As then an inexperienced DM, I honestly had no idea what else I could do to convince Bolt that Tom was innocent.

Eventually a little girl approached the party and confirmed she had personally seen the carpenter leave the village yesterday. Flik and Aela started heading toward the road outside town. Bolt stayed behind alone with Tom.

Then came the interrogation.

“I know you’re hiding something. Talk, or things will get ugly.”

High Intimidation roll. Tom cowered behind the counter.

“Please… no… I already told you everything I know. The carpenter came yesterday and left yesterday, just like always. He’s my friend and business partner. Why would I hurt him?”

Bolt punched him in the face.

“Talk, you filthy dog!”

Tom begged him to stop, saying maybe something happened on the road instead. At that moment Aela returned and pulled Bolt away. Before leaving, Bolt openly stole gold directly from Tom’s cash register while Tom’s little daughter watched her crying father.

The rest of the quest actually went normally. The players eventually found the carpenter’s wagon crashed off the road. Goblins had attacked him. They rescued him, cleared the goblin cave, returned him safely to his wife, and received their reward.

End of session.

Consequences

The next session focused on a dungeon expedition for the curator. Everyone had a great time. At the very end of the session, the group’s butler handed Bolt a letter addressed to him. Bolt read it aloud. It was from the craftsmen’s guild.

“Dear Bolt,

We regret to inform you that your name has been removed from the registry of our guild. We do not tolerate violence and refuse to associate ourselves with such behavior.

If you wish to respond to these accusations or discuss possible reinstatement, please visit our headquarters.

Sincerely,
Guildmaster”

As a DM, I thought this would become a cool character development arc.

Flik immediately pointed out that of course Tom reported him — Bolt had literally shown him his official guild recommendation letter before threatening him.

Bolt replied in a cold, serious voice:

“I’m going to give Tom a visit.”

Aela privately messaged me:

“I'll follow him without him noticing.”

The session ended there and I scheduled a private Discord session with Bolt while secretly running Aela’s actions through private messages on the side. Bolt’s player had absolutely no idea she was following him.

Bolt confronting Tom

Bolt arrived at Tom’s shop and found Tom there with his young son. This time Tom had hired a guard. Bolt tried intimidation again. Failed.

Meanwhile, Aela messaged me privately that she climbed the outside wall, entered through the upper floor, and waited hidden ready to engage if needed.

After arguing with Tom, Bolt grabbed the merchant’s son by the arm and yanked him aggressively toward himself. He rolled badly. The boy hit the ground, smashed his head, and lost consciousness.

Fight started. The guard attacked Bolt. Bolt immediately killed him with a counterattack.

Then Tom’s daughter walked into the room and started screaming after seeing a bloody swordsman standing over a dead guard and her unconscious brother.

I messaged Aela:

“You hear combat downstairs and a little girl screaming.”

Aela replied:

“I go downstairs with my bow drawn, ready to fight Bolt.”

Then came the beautiful moment.

POP. The sound of person joining the Discord voice channel.

Without even greeting Aela's player, I simply said:

“Roll initiative.”

Her token appeared on the battle map. Bolt’s player was completely shocked.

Aela shouted:

“Drop the sword and we can leave peacefully!”

Bolt answered:

“You’ll have to make me.”

Combat started. Aela cast Fog Cloud and yelled for Tom to run. Tom grabbed his unconscious son and escaped with his daughter.

Bolt retreated upstairs, trying to lure Aela after him. The fight was intense.

Then I described voices downstairs:

“Where is he?!”

A crowd of villagers with pitchforks and axes stormed the building. Together with Aela, they overwhelmed Bolt and knocked him unconscious. Tom thanked Aela for saving his family. She tied Bolt to her horse and personally delivered him to the city jail.

End of private session.

The Talk

Afterward, I privately asked Bolt’s player if he even wanted to continue playing with us because his behavior had stopped being funny and was starting to seriously annoy the rest of the group. He apologized and asked for one last chance.

Me: "You know that Bolt is in bad spot right now. He is in jail with many charges and it will be difficult to pull him from this situation." I asked him if he want to make new character but he wanted to play Bolt. I needed time to think.

Two days later, inspiration hit me. I called him and said:
“You’re getting a trial. Keep roleplaying Bolt exactly as usual. Trust me and follow my lead. And afterwards you will play nice with the rest of players.”

Bolt: "Ok."

The Trial

For Bolt specifically, I learned how court procedures worked and built an entire courtroom session around it. Several in-game days later, the trial began. Flik, Aela, Tom, the guildmaster, a court physician, and many familiar NPCs filled the courtroom. Bolt sat inside a cage in the middle of the room. The physician confirmed Bolt was physically fit enough to stand trial.

Then came the charges. Eighteen separate charges. The prosecutor demanded 25 years in prison. The defense attorney gave his speech. Bolt continued acting insane, threatening everyone and saying he’d kill them all if he escaped the cage. Other players were annoyed with that, but that was the plan.

Then suddenly… Bolt collapsed. Convulsions. Black sludge started pouring from his mouth. Judge asked guard to open the cage for physician to help him.

The courtroom panicked.

Bolt’s jaw stretched unnaturally wide. A thin arm crawled out of his throat. Then another. The black sludge flooded onto the courtroom floor as a horrifying humanoid rat demon emerged from inside Bolt’s body. Its name was Uridezu.

Bolt slowly regained consciousness as the demon stood before the court.

I said:

“Roll initiative.”

The courtroom trial instantly transformed into a boss fight. The demon summoned giant rats and swarms of rats.

Flik threw Bolt his sword so he could fight too. Eventually, when Uridezu was heavily wounded, it teleported to the judge hiding behind his desk.

Bolt leaped over the railing and decapitated the demon, covering both himself and the judge in black blood. This was NOT scripted.

Everyone in courtroom [players included] just stared at Bolt standing over the terrified judge with a bloody sword in hand.

Then Bolt slowly dropped the sword on the ground and helped the judge stand up. After a short break, the physician examined Bolt again and confirmed the demon was gone.

Then he asked the obvious question:

“How exactly did this demon infect you?”

Bolt answered:

“I don’t know.”

The physician listed possibilities.

“Did you stay somewhere infested with rats?”

“No.”

“Did you come into contact with rat droppings?”

“No.”

“…Did you perhaps consume raw rat meat?”

Silence.

Then all the players suddenly remembered the very first session where Bolt said he want to eat a rat that he just killed.

Me then:

“So… you want to cook the rat first?”

Bolt then:

“No. I eat it raw. Right now.”

Me:

“…okay. Roll Constitution.”

After the session, the players asked if I had planned that reveal from the very beginning.

The judge ultimately ruled that according to the kingdom’s laws, a person influenced or possessed by demons could not be held legally responsible for their actions.

However, because Bolt’s own irresponsible behavior led to the possession, he was still fined heavily and ordered to stay away from Tom and his family. Tom was NOT happy about this outcome.

After that session, Bolt changed how he played the character. He was still weird but stopped sabotaging the party and started cooperating with the group. Over the years more players joined us, and today — several campaigns later — we’re still playing together.

TL;DR

One player slowly turned into a murder hobo, assaulted an innocent merchant and his family, got arrested by another player during a side session. I asked if he want to play with us. On his trial everyone discovered that he had been possessed by a rat demon ever since he ate a raw rat during Session 1 and asked me if me and Bolt planned this from the beginning. 😄

In advance, I'm sorry if this is a little scuffed but english is not my first language.

Ok so Ive been playing DnD with this group for about two years now since we all started playing together. It was really funny at first, you had your typical goblins and whatnot. My DM, who we'll call Sam for simplicity's sake, has been our DM for all our 4 campaigns. All have been really fun but I couldn't help but notice some level of unfairness in this fight specifically.

To paint a picture, the party consisted on a assassin rogue and 4 elements monk (first ever campaign for both), a a college of lore bard (who I was controlling because the player couldn't get to the session), a psi warrior (who was controlled by someone other than its main player for the same reasons as the bard) and a sea sorcerer (me). Bear in mind we were level 11 when this took place and the DM really like REALLY wanted to get this fight going in spite of two players not being able to be present.

We were at the monk's wedding, after a couple of sessions of looking for a way to get back to his kingdom (he was a prince) and getting to marry his lover (npc). While at the wedding, the music suddenly changes to one of disaster (apparently it was the red wedding theme for Game of thrones but no one at the table knew that) and without any perception checks or insight or anything we all get ambushed by 15 assassins (each with its own turn) and the main archmage. The monk, who was at the altar, was surrounded by 6 assassins whom all had 2 attacks each and, with surprise and all, took the monk to death saves after just 1 turn in combat.

It seemed unfair just at that, but then it was the archmage's turn. He casted Time stop and got 3 turns for which it used delayed blast fireball, then waited a turn and used wall of force to trap every member of the party (besides de monk) in it, making the fireball explode and we all insta-fail the save because of the wall. Right out the bat, 58 points of unavoidable fire damage. It was a really flashy and cool combo, all things considered, but we were level 11 and essentially had no counterplay. Then it was our turn and we did our standard damage, our fighter rolled kinda bad so we didnt do all that much damage but it was still a good amount. Then the monk, after dying, got to transform into a "Jade Dragon" mode that killed all the assasins and the archmage without rolling anything and healed us a bit (20 hp) but then his body was destroyed. I think they talked about this beforehand (Sam and the monk) but they he revealed that the archmage was a SIMULACRUM and that the REAL ARCHMAGE was just right outside of something. Then he walked in and threw a METEOR SWARM at us. We all died except the rogue who got a 20 and avoided all damage and the psi warrior that survived with 8 hp.

Then our turn comes and the warrior, in an attempt to be "in character" and kept fighting the archmage face to face and died in humiliation. Then the rogue took me (i was only unconscious, not dead thanks to my resistance to fire damage) and left and that was the end of the campaign.

Right after we had a talk at the table about what was that and Sam said that he wanted a "tragic ending" and that "we had a real chance at winning".

Im I overreacting? Sam said that with two spellcasters we should have been able to counterspell the meteor swarm or time stop or something and won but I don't think that was fair in any capacity.

so this came about in the span of a single night in drunken sleep deprived insanity. we'll call the problem player "Jack" after jack horner in puss in boots, mostly for the amount of unnecessary items (a lot of them magic items) he had on both of his characters.

Jack is in two games, one monk (importantly, jacks fiancé) dm's. and another game i dm. in monk's game, jack plays a weird artificer/illrigger multiclass with no subclass as a level 5 character. with that, he uses the crooked moon's dark bargain feature that none of us in both games know about and knew we could do (this is in both of his characters. i called it out in my game, but let it go as it interrupted the flow of combat.) he rolled his stats on both characters, they came out around the ballpark of 3-4 16s, one 18, and at least one 14 as the lowest stat. though stats like these on both characters are possible, they're very improbable.

like i mentioned in the beginning, jack had too many items for anyone to actually need. his rogue/sorcerer in my game had upwards of 320lbs of items. oh but he should realize that he'd be encumbered right? well he turned off encumbrance for that. his artificer had magic items that most of all, nullified the purpose of our cleric who was built as a tank (funny story, cleric was the only one drinking that night and was so upset, he was going to bring in a hobo wild magic sorcerer because "this shit is wild.") the magic items overshadowed my purpose as a debuff support as well.
he homebrewed magic items (which we found out were generated by chatgpt) for each of us in monk's game as monk was a new dm and jack offered to help write some things out. our magic items had some caveat that made us change something about our character, or straight up ask jack to change it. me and rogue got the shit ends of these. rogue's required him to take a level in fighter as his shapeshifting weapon required proficiency. mine took spell slots from people, but if the creature didnt have spellcasting (which most if not all enemies did not have) i would explode, dealing upward to my total hit die to myself. meaning i either barely survive, or go unconscious. i obviously made him change this and made him add things i could do. he did, but kept the self-inflicted-kamikaze. and then there's his weapons and items. first, his weapon did upwards of 2d8+whatever modifier on a regular ranged attack or near 60 per turn. and then theres his armor class. he had a 24 with medium armor (that doesnt give d-adv on stealth somehow) with a shield that gave +4 to ac, and a frying pan that also increased ac. two problems with this. Jack physically cannot use the shield with the frying pan as the pan requires your off hand. but his offhand is taken twice by both his musket and also his homebrew solar beam emitter. both of which are two handed.

there are two possible explanations, and one worst case. either he didn't know about all these contradictions and bs stuff as he is relatively new. which, okay, if youre at least willing to make up and fix this stuff and follow our agreed upon things, we can call this an inexperience bump. or, he's used to powergaming and tried to do it in a roleplay heavy game, which, also, okay, maybe this game isnt a game for you, there are many powergamer tables out there. but third and what i hope is not the case: he knows hes doing all this and wants to be the main character with the rest of us as minions or fodder. which i would mention his roleplaying. he's done less than all of us rp wise. we have a player who is brand brand new (call him fighter), fighter is an edgy cool guy built on aura farming, and he plays it really well. and he is present in the roleplaying. but thats besides the point.

so... im not sure. me, rogue and cleric are currently talking to jack and monk about this and its still in progress. we don't want to stop being friends with them as we've all been really close with me being the newest addition to the group (having come in like 7 or 8 months ago). we just don't want to play with jack if his character overshadows our purpose as players and characters. so what do you guys think? personally, i feel like this is a learning bump. ive had issues of adding items that are outsidee of the rules in my early days. hopefully this will end well enough and we can move on from this. i just figured i share this to get some outside opinions as our opinions when we found this out last night were... skewed (as mentioned, one of us were hammered and i was sleep deprived).

TL;DR: player suspected of skewing stats, gives himself multiple powerful magic items that trumps our roles in combat. homebrews items that nerf us or make us change things in our character to even use. has an illegitimate AC due to item contradictions.

Update: we made a little bit of progress with jack. He acknowledged his wrongdoings and was willing to fix things. I didn’t want to do anything about monks campaign without rogue and cleric as they’re at work rn. I did make him fix his character in my game and I told him I will be watching his character sheet in the case of this happening again. Fixing, including using point buy like everyone else did, removing his items, and I blocked third party sources unless I approve of them. It’s a step, but the rest is still up in the air.

https://preview.redd.it/bz0s6rcgy1zg1.png?width=723&format=png&auto=webp&s=3219e00755bcf6cde6ec672a63b7c83dbf084754

Hey there crab gang!

This story is long and complicated and by the middle section you will ask yourself whether it belongs here or not. Let me assure you I was thoroughly traumatised by this and I still haven't recovered fully.

No content warning. Just death and sorrow.

I will introduce some characters as we go.

This all happened in the duration of 10 years. We were playing the Hungarian TTRPG M.A.G.U.S. with many hb rules from my cousin and dear friend, hereafter known as DM. It resembles a hybrid system with some elements of dnd 3.5 and call of cthulhu added in but in a D100 system. Over the years rules evolved to accommodate the growing party and our growing ambitions. The world started out as high-fantasy and slowly developed into lovecraftian horror. Progression is slow and different from regular DnD, 1-4 is low level, 5-8 is an accomplished adventurer, 9+ would be the stuff of legends almost as powerful as level 20 in regular dnd. DM is an artist who created countless illustrations, maps and character art that made the game come alive. To me my main PC was a part of my life like a friend or a brother.

I started the campaign as the only player one-on-one with the DM twice a week. My PC, Mordecai, is a human boy of 16 (as I was a human boy of 16). The PC was a self-insert. Mordecai’s father is a depressed and burnt out physicist and his mother a chemist, a loving and deeply emotional woman. At the beginning of the story Mordecai slowly learns the world around him. The family is part of a technocratic cult and my character is training to become a mechanic (I did go into engineering in real life as well), the most desired role in their society (this I found out not to be true in real life). On the day of his acceptance to the University his father is executed on grounds of heresy, a huge scandal after which Mordecai severs connections with his family to save his reputation, a decision he would deeply regret in later life.

One year passes for us but thirty for Mordecai. He is to become the youngest ever Mechanic Initiate (turning level 5) of the cult. He achieved this by completing countless physical trials and exams. The week before his initiation he met his mother in a library by chance, as he was preparing for his lines for the initiation speech, and he learned the truth of his fathers death. Mortimer was sacrificed in a human experiment to uncover ways to turn dead human matter into living machines. His world shattered the same day, just after reconciling with her mother she disappeared never to be seen again. Mordecai was too late to save her. Feeling betrayed and disenchanted he used his initiation ritual to steal the Master Guide a tome of incredible ancient knowledge written in the extinct language of gnomes. From a game mechanic point of view Mordecai can only progress beyond level 5 if he starts translating the book. In theory the book can help him achieve an unheard of 12th level. The Master Guide is the basis of the cult and discovering its secrets was the ultimate purpose of the society.

Around this time my younger cousin joined our games as Aurelios, a middle aged wizard of considerable renown (also lvl 5). Magic works differently in this world than other DnD games. Magic is based on a resource called Mana, with it a wizard can create custom spells. Wizard’s power level is completely dependent on the skill of the player, but a lvl 5 wizard is incredibly rare and powerful, especially if used correctly. Mordecai meets Aurelios and his apprentice Jos (a DMPC) ; they shared adventures while evading Mordecai's cult. Eventually they arrived in a city so far away the cult surely couldn't reach them. They accept a query from a dwarven lord to organise an expedition to a continent far north where the dwarfs are thought to be from. Our mission is to help uncover the truth about the history of the dwarfs. We receive a ludicrous amount of money (4000 gp which converts to around 40k-100k in dnd 5e), way too much for two ambitious and intelligent people like Aurelios and Mordecai. Probably a mistake on the part of the DM.

As the third real life year starts Mordecai and Aurelios started organising the expedition but they quickly lost focus creating a company to invest all these resources to provide an even more solid base for the expedition. Mordecai and Aurelios Shipping and Logistics (MA for short, which also became our party name). They got stupidly rich and the game is derailed into a tycoon simulator. This is when my sister joined the game as Seth, a morally gray mercenary who became the chief of security of MA. Years passed in the game and a rumor was spreading: the cult was on our tail again.

As we were closing in on the end of the third year the main cast was completed with my brother also joining us as Tempy the Bard, an agent of chaos and a revolutionary entertainer. It is important to know that my brother wanted to go full in on the RP and started learning drama and writing to better impersonate Tempy. He wrote ballads and performed Shakespearean theater based on the adventures and lives of our characters once a month. As the rumours got confirmed, the cult reached the city. MA hastly launched the expedition and six ships of war plus an additional six shipping vessels set out to the unknown.

The journey is full of danger; only five warships and two shipping vessels survive but MA suffered an even greater loss. Due to a giant miscalculation on the part of DM, MA got in a TPK situation with a Kraken, years of effort could have sunk to the bottom of a nameless ocean if Aurelios didn't find an incredible solution that let him concentrate all the magically energy built up in him into an incredible burst, one final custom spell that saved the party but tragically he sacrificed his life force in the process (bg3 is years down the line so shut up Gale). We weep and hold a beautiful ceremony, Trev dedicates a twenty minute ballad to him. It's epic, we cry and from this point on Jos becomes the main PC for my younger cousin. Shortly after we make landfall and establish the colony of Aurelion (our new party name dedicated to Aurelios) and we dedicate the town square to all the 567 men, women and children (of all races) who lost their life during the journey.

The latter half of year four brought a change to the game’s dynamic which basically lasted for the rest of the ten year adventure. The game style turned into a town management survival type as Mordecai, Seth, Jos and Trev became the de facto leaders of Aurelion, a colony of 478 people. Over the next few years we introduced a multi-PC system where everyone could start new PCs from amongst the colony NPCs so we wouldn’t have to always play at insanely high levels, lowering the risks but expanding opportunities for side quests. Around the same time the game moved to a three sessions a week schedule as several more people joined in and I became a co-DM. All games were made up of a rotating cast of 7 players with the core group relatively unchanged. Due to the insane game frequency and the new multi-PC rules, no-one joined all sessions but at least fifteen semi-regular players were involved, most of them at around 50% attendance or lower.
For the next five-six years we played out the story of Aurelion, the struggles and the happy times. There was an overarching plot line related to Mordecai and the Master Guide, the story of dwarves and gnomes but it took a backseat to let all other parallel stories play out as most plot lines slowly converged and came to conclusions. Jos became an Archmage (level 10), Simon became a Paladin and personal champion of his God (level 11), and Trev wrote a world famous book of our adventures and became the inventor of magical 4d cinema (level 10). Mordecai achieved his wildest fantasies uncovering the tome’s secrets chapter by chapter becoming the greatest Mechanic on the face of the world (level 12). Finally only one story was left to conclude the original quest for truth for the dwarves and for the Master Guide.

As it turned out these were more closely related than we originally thought the dwarves are actually descendants of the gnome race and this continent was originally the home of gnomes. Ten years of build up as we started the last session and entered the last dungeon where the last piece of the puzzle lay, the BBEG themselves protecting it, the heart of the continent. This was a session where all active players (around 10-11 by that point as we lost some people over the years) were invited as this was supposed to be the session to end all sessions. Everyone grabbed their strongest PCs and we entered the dungeon. Epic fights ensued and we found many puzzles slowing our advance. We arrived in front of the last door behind which was the BBEG. Countless death and unimaginable hardships lead us to this point. We were out of health, mana and generally we felt that we were losing this fight. Mordecai made a final speech and we created a plan. Everyone was supposed to get into an ambush position, our only chance  for victory. We would have to make the BBEG leave their protective room to fight on even ground. Mordecai decided to become the bait as he is the only one who speaks gnomish and that was the language of the BBEG. We were ready. We shout "Together for Aurelios!" and Seth opened the door. I taunted the BBEG... nat100... the plan worked and we started the fight in the room.

And then instead of rolling initiatives the DM stood up.and started describing the fight. We could do nothing as he monologued for 20-30 minutes non-stop, I zoned out, I could not believe what was happening, everyone was in shock. DM R-ed the whole final bossfight alone. He described how everyone was trying their best but the BBEG one by one downs all PCs and at last Mordecai remained standing. He describes how Mordecai in his desperation does the exact same thing as Aurelios destroying the BBEG and losing his life in the process.

I was shook... we all were... I couldn't react. I was in shock when we concluded the session. The day after I talked to the DM and asked him why he did it. He said this way the ending was streamlined and in theme with the epic adventure, if we fought the BBEG regularly it wouldn't have been this epic as we were way over leveled and even with all our injuries and low resources it would've ruined the ending for everyone. I begged him to let us play out the final fight instead. He said he is done with TTRPG and wants a break. And that my friends was that.

I was heart broken... I still am. It's like I lost a friend without being able to say goodbye. This was one year ago. I don't know how to move on and I don't know how I could ever play TTRPG again...