So… my story starts with the most God aweful problem that I am sure many of us have faced in the past and probably are currently facing.
No group to play with.
Names and some mild events have been changed to hide identities and make things just a little smoother.
As I am an adult, and all my friends and usual group is also adult, work and scheduels had destroyed our usual time and we ended up calling quits on our long time campaign. Now, I have a LOT of time to myself and with no game to play I just mass produced characters and wrote their back stories in overly complex chapters of fun. I always try and make something unique and I've long since gotten out of the cringy young phase were everything I make is some stupid stereotype of cringe. Like a half Aasimar, half Tiefling, chosen one Jinchurriki cyborg or whatever…
So I was having fun with a relatively simple and under developed character with a complex lizard folk name, but we we will just call him Jim… as in Jim Morrison, please get this reference…
Jim is a lizard folk darkness sorcerer. I made him to be very very simple, lizard folk are primitive and instinctual, but the nice dark cave Jim's mother laid his egg in was the resting place of low teir darkness god who had been mortally wounded thousand of years ago and just wandered off and keeled over in that cave. The vague remnants of this dark god's blood seeped into Jim's egg and effected his soul.
This was his origin as a darkness sorcerer and really his entire story. He was very different of mind from other lizard folk due to his soul and mind being tainted and overwhelmed, so his personality became much more common, but he was very passive and marked as true neutral. He didn't care much what happened but he would go along with things simply because they were happening and he was present.
All of this is only mildly important, sorry if I am boring you to death.
One day, my luck finally changed and a random group on DnD amino informed me that they had room for one more. I joined happily, cleared my character as there was only one thing that was not completely clear and I really wanted for him mostly because I have terrible luck so I never make a character of any kind who does not have at least 16 AC. I was sitting pretty with Jim at 15 from dex bonus and natural armor. Jim's weapon of choice was a spear, as the spear head was his foci. And so I asked a simple question. E5 Dnd allows Lizard folk to create shields from dead animals and such. I asked if this also meant I could USE shields. It got cleared and I was happily waiting for game time with 17 AC on a sorcerer.
Now, the real reason I'm explaining all of this was to point out how long the process was, I'm sure you understand without me explaining to this level. But I REALLY put a lot of thought into my character and the DM seemed very happy and eager to see such creativity which was the first real warning. Yeah I tried on Jim, but I didn't try very hard and the DM seemed very impressed, which made me wonder what cring we were also playing with.
Session 0 started and instantly I knew something was wrong. Not just because one of the PCs was a fox and was yelling out of character that she would 1v1 anyone who didn't like furries, not just because another girl with a Yuan-Ti monk was being extra Thotty in chat leaving suggestive voice messages. I rolled with it though, but then I noticed another problem… get used to it, I'm not even a third of the way through the list….
Another player with some homebrew race and a homebrew class with a homebrew subclass. Something like a gunman tarrot card mage something. I grew concerned as the very first thing he did when we started in the almost certain "you are in a tavern" start, was that he instantly tried using illusion spells on me. 2 seconds in and he tries to do this crap which, I try to stay in character, Jim is very passive to the world, avoiding conflict but he will fight if he feel's his life is truly in danger.
It keeps going and we meet everyone and our characters start to get to know eachother. Then it happens… it almost made me just up and leave that very moment…
A commosion in front of the tavern drives the patrons out front to see…. a spaceship landing , where a paladin of the holy order of papa johns comes out looking for adventurers who will take the 50000 year journey back to his home planet to fight werewolves.
Staying in character, Jim sees to him, a gaint hunk of flying metal come out of the sky and some insane freak get out asking him to "get in little boy, we have candy" So he outright says no.
Jim doesn't want to go with intersellar uncle bad touch. Excuse my french, but no shit!
The DM pleads with me to get onto the ship so the story can continue. So I really quickly add into my story that the dying mind of the god Jim was infected with would ocasionally whisper things to him, things that were never prophetic, never proven to be irrifutably true or false, but it was something that always tended to eventually make him feel comfortable, something he came to see as some sort of fate. I did this so that the god could just whisper to him to get on the ship. This finally worked out and I got on, but clearly riding in a giant hunk of metal was not ok with a lizard folk, especially one who lived in a medival setting and the most advanced thing he'd ever seen before is his own magic.
Out of character I ask the DM if the trip will really take fifty thousand years, he says yes, I remind him that the entire party will be dust by then, he stops and thinks for a moment before explaining that there's a time warp effect from the ship traveling close to light speed.
I sigh and just agree. I want my damned game even if it costs me this much. And finally as session 0 starts to come to a close, the fox girl says something, I reply but eventually the Thotty girl with the monk declares she will be attacking Jim. Now, they know very little about him other than he has some very mild mutations that make it so they can't tell if he's a dragon born or a lizard folk. And because he has a shield, they can't tell he's a sorcerer.
The monk attacks me far far off into the corner Jim slunk to to get away from everyone else as he was the only one questioning the magic metal box taking them away from home.
Monk swings, monk hits my shield. I stab with my spear and roll pretty well. But gunslinger tarrot card mage interupts with. "I turn his attack into poison damage." The attack was a substantial amount of the Monk's health and Yuan Ti are immune to poison damage. Being able to change my damage type was BS right off the bat and I talked to the DM who agreed it was BS but Tarrot card bs started whining and whining until the DM got his character sheet and told him that Jim was over 60 feet away and his tarrot ability had a range of 20 feet. He promised me that he would talk to the Tarrot bs character because as he looked over the homebrew class he saw obsene op content like being able to give, strip and change resistances or immunities to various damage types at will as a free action.
But long story short, a lot of people saw all of this and took the Thotty girl's side and decided that their characters wanted a piece of the lizard folk.
They charged at my character joining the fight, one quick perception check showed me that the back of the ship had a long narrow hallway.
I ran down it and waited until the rest of the party was within the hall and I cast burning hands. With the roll, and that every one of them failed their dex save and the DM told tarrot card that he couldn't use the ability more than once per a rest for balance issues, this attack would have killed literally everyone but me and the papa johns paladin.
The party starts screaming and calling bs. But before it goes too far, the DM tells us that we "suddenly wake up from suspended animation and it was all a dream" We are finally here at the end of our fifty thousand year trip.
This ends session 0.
Session 1 starts and Tarrot card never showed up again. But he was replaced through DM bullshitery magic with another player rocking a cowboy wizard. Wizard class, but he worked on a ranch and said things like "cowpoke" and "yeehaw" a lot.
It wasn't too bad, my character was doing pretty well despite the utter horse shit of a story which got worse every passing second. The Papa Johns paladin helped us off the spaceship and revealed he was a super powered level 20 paladin. I think this was to try and show us that he could force us to stop bickering.
He introduced us to his friends, a whole order of something like 15 other level 20 paladins. Now, being mildly curious, Jim asks if they just sat here and waited fifty thousand years for him to come back. The DM sat and thought for a moment before responding in character. "Oh, we used our special artifact that lets us cast wish to just skip over the fifty thousand years.
Now, I wanted to remain calm but a very very fair question popped into my mind and I spoke it, half out of and half in character.
"why in the name of all that is holy does a group of legendary god level (level 20) Paladins who have access to a wish spell need a group of newbie (Level 1) Mercenaries, and why would you all waste a wish spell just to skip time? Hell, why did you even use the space ship at all? If our weak asses are REALLY nessisary, why didn't you all just wish us here? Hell, why didn't you just wish your problem to dissapear?
Session 1 ended pretty quickly and I never got a real answer other than. "Well… Papa Johns paladins are just… REALLLLLLY stupid…
Session 2 started and I was already not thrilled, but I had no other game to join. This sort of nonsense continued and finally I just said screw it and rolled with the slapsick silly bs. Letting one of the paladins use me as a flame thrower as I cast burning hands on werewolves and he had a special chilli pepper that was infused with the dragon's breath spell so I would be breathing fire for his attack.
As silly as it was, it wasn't really fun for me, but I stayed because the others were having fun. But as I lost interest, the DM grew frustrated. Eventually he made the papa johns paladins angry at me for being able to use magic having "just now realized I was a dirty heretical magic user."
He set up a few hoops for me to hop through and I just said fuck it, I was tired of it and Jim wasn't the right character for a silly campaign. I had him activate his spells, using every ounce of his power to cast burning hands down his own throat to kill himself. He tried to DM BS Jim back to life but I just told him I was bringing another character in. I made the crazy Kaldor Draigo from "If the Emperor had a text to speech device" Surprisingly he fit right in. But the damage was already done. By session five, the massive holes I poked in the poorly constructed story made the progression start to flounder and the game wasn't even worth showing up to anymore.
Eventually, the extra Thotty player who seemed to be a little naive and not understand boundries instead of actually be a Thot. She started to talk to me, trying to get me to join some out of session games they were playing, I repedatively said no as some of them were borderline lewd high school games like "Truth or Dare" and well… those games always go bad. Plus, I'm 30 and they were all in their early 20s and late late teens. It would be a touch creepy.
But they screamed that it wouldn't go wrong, my point in my objection being that it's a game that can ALWAYS go wrong, they said it wouldn't and so when it was my turn, I asked her truth or dare, she said dare, and to show her what I meant, I mentioned a very clearly lewd action and EXTREMELY quickly clarified that this was the exact reason why I didn't want to play, and the mental level the group was at was likely the reason the campaign was falling apart.
The next session rolled around and the whole group got together and declared I had sexually harrassed Thot girl and was to be kicked out of the group.
I still regret ever looking to join the group, but how would I have known? hindsight is 20 20, but some times, you've got to recognize the warning signs and just take a bloody hint. No matter how desperate you are, don't ignore the red flags. Just accept your fate and leave.
It's really not worth it.
[zombify_post]
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