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I wonder if these groups just look for a new player to torment. Honestly it can be the only explanation. Why do you think people are like this? Please let us know what you think and comment below!
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When My Racist Party Turned On Me For Being A Half-Orc
Hi everyone. All Things DnD is back with another story. Racism in DND? Say it ain’t so. If you guessed someone playing an elf, you’re a winner.
When I was relatively new to D&D 5e, I found a game online via Roll20. The party was all spellcasters, Wizards, Sorcerers, Warlocks and the only fighter in the party was my Barbarian, a classic Half-Orc Outlander Barbarian with a big axe. At session zero, it was pretty much decided that the game would focus on this group of mystics traveling in search of mystical relics for their research, while my guy was the rugged wilderness man who guided and protected them. It was a good set up...until the first session.
The spellcasters were all guilty of something I loathe in TTRPGs, be they Shadowrun, D&D, Cyberpunk, you name it. And that is 'character ego'. These mystics were all going on about how they were smart, the best casters, and generally trying to be roguish playboys.
The second horrible part was how most of the party, the elves of course, were racist towards orcs and half-orcs. This led to them barely tolerating my character as their guide, which on its own didn't bug me since...I picked Half-Orc, enduring racism and alienation is kind of written on the tin.
Then while we were on the road, moving our loot wagon, following a map, setting up our camps and protecting ourselves from gnolls, bandits, goblins and other fodder, the characters all decided to show off their high mental stats. This was actually hilarious because RNGesus decided they couldn't follow a map, tell poisonous food from good food, spot hunting traps, fix a broken wagon wheel, or anything mental stats would help with, meanwhile my Half-Orc was almost single handedly carrying the party through various survival and woods-related knowledge rolls. This generally seemed to fit the motif we were going for so GM and I didn't really notice the red flags. I even picked up a trait of disliking magic and 'vile sorcery' since that seemed to fit the vibe I was picking up. It basically turned into a bunch of San Francisco hipster kids trying to tell a Central Valley Redneck how to farm or fix his truck. Pretty funny at first.
BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE!
Eventually, several sessions in, we ended up getting hunted by these homebrew monsters, and my character knew they were color blind. So, to bypass the overwhelming number of enemies unseen, I had to take off some of the party's bright green/blue robes (the colors they could see) which was highly offensive to several of the party members and one even responded aggressively, accusing me of being a superstitious greenskin and even trying to rob them by making up a story to justify me taking their expensive robes (which were just commoner's clothes). At this point their character attitudes were getting on my nerves but it wasn't atrocious, but then he went on this rant about me being a barbarous, thieving, baby eating, demon worshipping, maiden raping, marauding savage and my Barbarian finally just headbutt the sorcerer to the ground. This wasn't an attack and didn't deal damage, it was just a thing the GM had us roll off for, but it seemed the player was angered by this and he drew a dagger on me. He swung and missed, then I tried telling him to sheathe his blade because the real monsters out there would get us if we were busy quarrelling like children. I got a magic missile to the face for my trouble.
Enraged, I brought my great-axe down on the sorcerer and cleaved him in half in a single blow. No death save, the damage was enough to outright kill a first level sorcerer. The rest of the party immediately turned against me and began casting spells. Thankfully I had a lot of health, made most of my saving throws and took relatively little damage, all the while either outright killing or knocking down every caster in the party with a single blow from my great-axe. Eventually they did down me, however being a Half-Orc I was able to get back up with a single hit point. At that point, I managed to put down the last two party members. The GM, amazed by this, began laughing and said his laughter was actually that of the god Crom overseeing the battle (this game had nothing to do with Conan, but the GM knows I'm a huge Conan fan and decided to do it for the laughs).
Anger in the discord server, anger over roll20 and I realized the party was furious. All but one of the casters left the voice and the server, meanwhile the GM and I were kind of confused by the sudden rage. As I set up camp and looted the bodies, the last caster explained that the other members of the party were apparently annoyed with me for several sessions for showing them up with my dice rolls, not really caring about their character's playboy attitudes and they were mad at the GM for not stepping in and giving them more to do outside of combat and mystical item examinations. I felt horrible hearing this since I don't want to inhibit anybody's fun and the GM was the same, but nobody ever indicated they were dissatisfied with the game as it was.
Thankfully there is a happy ending: the last player who stayed was one of the casters I downed but didn't outright kill, so we decided to retcon it that he accidentally hit me with a spell he meant for the traitorous casters and I just didn't realize it in my rage. He begged me for help while at zero hit points and I decided to treat him since, once my rage ended, I realized he was trying to take my side. We played a few more sessions afterwards where we roamed to a new kingdom, picked up more party members (new players) and things went well until the game ended.
Seriously. It’s always elves. I get that there is history and justification in game but c’mon, you need to actually get along with your party members.
A Party member identifies as Winona Ryder and attacks me.
Homophobic, xenophobic, and insanely paranoid. What else could go wrong?
Roll20 can be an interesting place to find games. I've had decent luck in roll20 as a DM for a large, long-running West Marches campaign by just being picky and willing to kick bad eggs out early if they are problems, but as a player the option of being picky and curating the experience is not present. So, at least as of a few years ago, my experience as a role-player looking for a campaign on roll20 looked a bit like this:
Step 1: Find an interesting campaign.
Step 2: Apply to said campaign with a lengthy, detailed application.
Step 3: Typically at this point I'd be kicked back to step 1 due to not getting into the campaign, but sometimes I would get in! Happy day! In this small percentage of cases, I'd proceed to step 4.
Step 4: The game never happens because half the people don't show up. This happened an astonishing number of times. But! Some rare few campaigns that I apply to that proceed to accept me and that I show up for actually do happen! In these miraculous instances, I'd move to step 5.
Step 5: The campaign has one session and then collapses.
On very rare occasions step 5 would instead be "I find myself in a fun campaign with sane human beings who also enjoy my hobby," but not often. The following story is a tale of the examples of me joining a campaign and bouncing out of it. I can't say for certain it died after the first session like so many other roll20 campaigns, but at very least I bailed on it.
So the DM on this campaign seemed like an okay enough guy at first. He had a nice world map, and posted a bunch of details on the world in the campaign forum outlining the setting and it's unusual stance on magic. Basically, if you were an arcane caster you were going to be burned at the stake, and if you were a non-cleric or paladin of the dominant religion, or a druid, you weren't in quite that much trouble, but you were eyed with suspicion and would need to be careful as some overzealous religious nuts might still want to kill you.
The campaign started at level 10. I decided to roll up a moon druid, because it seemed safer than rolling up a wizard in this theocratic dystopia. I don't remember what name I had, I'm just going to call my character 'Druid McTreehugs'. The rest of the party was a fighter (Bob), a paladin (Steve), and a warlock (Winona Ryder). The session begins with us meeting outside of a city that has called for aid because it is about to be besieged. My character shows up. Apparently this group already knew each other out of the campaign or had a session zero where the characters all met, because the only one needing introductions was me.
"Hi, guys! Are you here to protect generic fantasy town, too? I'm Druid McTreehugs." says I.
"Are you a witch?" asks Bob the Fighter immediately.
"What? No. I'm a healer and.. why do you think I'm a witch?" I replied.
"Do you do magic?" Bob demanded.
"Some! But only the nice kind," I said. Totally a lie, I'm a bit of a munchkin and many druid attack tactics are not at all nice.
"...hrmph, I got my eye on you," said Bob.
"Druids are gay," said the male voice of the warlock over Discord. His Discord image and name are 'Winona Ryder'.
I have no idea what to say about this one, so I just... don't. No one else comments.
The DM continues. He describes how we have a long journey ahead of us to get to a generic fantasy village to save it. We set off as a group and do some fairly typical roleplaying. For a few minutes, it seems like a fairly standard D&D group.
That doesn't last.
On the trail, my druid solves our food situation by summoning delicious goodberries. This draws the ire of Bob the fighter and Winona Ryder the warlock.
"Are you sure you aren't a witch!?" Bob demands.
"I think he's a witch!" says Winona Ryder.
"We have to give him a witch test," Bob says, drawing his sword.
"Do you consent to take the witch test willingly?"
"If he's a witch he must be burned!" agreed the paladin.
"Does your dad know you're gay, druid?" asks Winona Ryder. I'm not even sure if that one is directed at me or my character, but I don't reply to it and no one else says anything.
I'm kind of confused at this point. I expected NPCs to be potentially hostile to a druid based on the campaign information, but I didn't expect a party member to be drawing steel over berries, egged on by a homophobic warlock (and for the record, I'm straight and have no idea what the hell this dude is on about).
At this point I'm getting annoyed, as it looks a lot like initiative is about to be rolled, and I do not handle it with poise and calm; I handle it like a munchkin who knows, for a fact, I could take on the rest of the party by myself if it came to PvP. Nothing against people who don't optimize, but the sheets are all public and at this point I glance at their sheets and note that these characters trying to bully mine are what might be charitably called by an optimizer "sub-par."
"Nope, not going to take your test. I'm a druid, I do nature magic. Don't like that? Too bad. Oooh, look, magic." And I summon 16 giant poisonous snakes.
So it's at that point that initiative is rolled. The DM, for his part, seems to stay entirely neutral. He doesn't care about the other characters threatening mine, he doesn't care about the homophobic slurs, and he doesn't care that my character is winding up a haymaker to hit back, or that is how it appears.
I win initiative, and so do my snakes. I am aware that at this point, things have gone off the rails and it is not entirely likely my character is going to get along with this group. But the munchkin in me is pleased to see that I am almost certain to take that smug Winona Ryder warlock down. I transform into an elemental, give my snakes their orders, and earthglide downward. No reason to stay exposed when my pets can do the work, right?
My snakes approach Winona Ryder to attack. Sixteen giant, poisonous snakes against someone with AC 16. This should be very messy. My snakes will hit a bit better than half the time, dealing heavy damage, and he'll be lucky to survive this onslaught.
"I eldritch blast each snake as it approaches!" declares Winona Ryder. He proceeded to, with the DM letting him, do a full volley of three beams at each snake as an "opportunity attack."
It is at this point I think my brain broke a little, because everything about that is wrong from a rules perspective. It's like an onion of rules stupidity, there are so many layers. I don't even know where to begin here.
You don't get an opportunity attack because something approaches you unless you have a feat or class feature that says so, and there are no such warlock abilities. But even if there were, you only have one reaction, so he could do this to at most ONE snake. But even if he could react to someone attacking him in melee, and had infinite reactions, snakes have a ten foot range. He can do it any time someone attacks him?
On top of that you don't get three beams with eldritch blast until 11. We were 10.
I point out at this point that basically everything here is wrong and there are no rules anywhere that allow anything even remotely like this and the DM states "we do things a bit differently."
No joke? Would have been nice to have this "different" rules available to everyone. So 16 snakes all die before they get to attack and my druid elemental pops his head up a ways off on his next turn.
"..so, wait, you guys are just cool with that dude sending out magic death beams but you're harassing me over berries?" I ask, a mix between in-character and out of character.
No reply. At this point the DM intervenes and has a messenger from generic fantasy town rush up and inform us that generic fantasy town needs our help! The party stops fighting. I kind of check out, with my elemental lagging a bit behind in case the idiots attack me again. I'm pretty much done at this point.
I stayed just long enough to hear Winona Ryder convince a child in a generic fantasy town to drink a vial of black liquid to induct them into the cult of Cthulhu. At this point I facepalm in real life, disconnect from the server, and wonder why I just wasted hours of my life on this crap.
I wonder if these groups just look for a new player to torment. Honestly it can be the only explanation. Why do you think people are like this? Please let us know what you think and comment below!
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