How I actually enjoyed a toxic DM

How a positive attitude to a toxic DM can make a bad experience fun


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When I was 22 or so I decided to get back to our hobby after 5 years without it.

Now I am what I consider a healthy person, I take good care of my body with a few workouts a week and if you want to annoy me, you're going to have a frustrating time, while I would smile at your failing attempts.

I had two friends who were playing at the time with a group for 5 months and told me there is an empty sit they were looking to fill. 2 friends in the same group for what sounded like 2 arcs? Sounds good to me.

I massaged the DM and we set a time to have a small interview before I join. Our talk took about 15 minutes. He said he wanted to see if I am a good fit but just talked at me for 14 of them about how he started playing and one minute of him speaking about the world where the game is set. "Self-centered but not terrible" I thought, boy I was wrong.

The main thing you have to know is that we played in the World of Warcraft world and that the DM was the only one who played the games. The other players and I played Warcraft 3 9 years ago and saw the film once, but we were told it wouldn't matter. "Just think of it as a fantasy world that I don't have to homebrew and would be made clearer as we go" was what he said. Of course, he didn't hold up to that and got annoyed at everyone when we didn't know who every character in the history of the warcraft was. Like, hitting the table annoyed.

Now let us get into the more toxic parts of the story. DM is the kind of guy who were probably bullied at school and saw in me those dummies. For the next 3 months of playing, he pretty much bullied my character and was a complete 'NO–sayer" to everything I said or did and kept talking to me like I'm an idiot.

When I asked something about the system and world, he kept yelling stuff like "You should know it" or "You have to go ask a smarter person". I mean, I know I played a barbarian, but saying I never noticed if wizards use helmets or not is a bit extreme.

The fact that his GF was playing and that her character made googly eyes at my character a few times didn't help. The fact I played him as an oblivious person that never noticed actually made the DM angrier. Again, I don't care much about his attempts to get back and my character for his insecurities and let him take out his anger on my poor barbarian.

I think that was why he stopped calling me by my name 'Guy' and started calling me 'Gay'… Yeah, I am completely serious. But as I said, it is hard to annoy me (plus I am not a stupid homophobe), so I answered to this name as it was my own and didn’t play along as he kept trying to push male character on me.

Eventually, he killed my character at the dumbest fight in DnD. We were facing a camp of bandits with the help of griffin riders from the a closest castle. The plan was to creep up on them and attack simultaneously, at least that was what we the players planned. DM decided he want us to do something else and had all the archers and riders yell at us that we have to send an NPC spy to learn the layout of the camp before attacking. I was against it but had to cave because DM decided we have to take a vote where he has three as much votes as all the players combined.

Not one minute later he told us the spy went there and that we are idiots for not drawing on him the tattoo that apparently all bandits of this clan have. I asked the other players, and he did tell them about the tattoo before I joined but it was never mentioned to me. Somehow, he made it up to be my fault. I was pretty much done with him by that point.

Now for the action. Our characters headed to the bandit camp only to see that all bows are on us. For the next 6 rounds they shot at us as we were running full speed to them, taking cover behind the tree, and the riders were attacking from above. It was a dense forest, how far can bows reach and how slowly did he think we ran?!
By the time we reached our enemies there wasn't much engaging left.

The one and only time I showed my less than positive opinion of him and his attitude was when I entered rage for the one last bandit who stood when I got to him and said "Well that was a great use of my character's feats". I got a mouthful for the rest of the session, and enough damage from a randomly exploding tent to lose all my HP and then some.

Keeping a smile as he rolled the damage dice was the greatest psychic damage I ever inflicted IRL.

While I did enjoy smiling at this person's toxicity for a while, it was never meant to last and left the group. No DnD is better than bad Dnd, right?


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