When you're a forever DM and want to hear about shittier DMs than yourself to feel a little better about comparison.

"I didn't mean to kill a kid." Or in EA terms: "It wasn't child murder, it was surprise collateral damage."

Imagine multiclassing Cleric and Celestial Warlock, and your patron is one of your Gods underlings. Your character arc is helping your patron get back in your god’s good graces after their major slip up, and helping reconcile their relationship by being a good friend to both.

Better idea for the thieves guild one, "I give false name," "Roll deception" *roll and pass* "Well, I know that ain't your name, but ya know what? You got yourself some skill, almost had me convinced for a second." And then play out the encounter like that was the first step of the player being scoped out.

Imagine just multiclassing every level into cleric just with a different diety each time until you run out of god options.

That "dont be pedantic" story got to me. >Be level 6 sorcerer >SBEG Casts silence on me >I try to use subtle spell to cast fireball. >DM: "Dude you can't use verbal components while in silence" >Me: "Subtle spell makes it ignore vocal and somatic" >Dm: "Dude quit trying to metagame." >Cant cast spells that entire fight and am taken down in 3 turns. >Party is taken down and all my shit is taken. >Get yelled at by other player for talking back to dm.

"I search the dead body for loot." "There is loot." "What is the loot?" "You don't know."

"Stop being pedantic it's about fun not playing by the rules"... Fine I turn into Superman and fly away.

Jacob: If you have trouble throwing traps at your players because they're way to smart. Me to player: You see a pressure plate on the floor. Player: I step on it. Me: OK then...

On post #2 DM:”stop saying what your spell does and trying to use it it’s no faaaiiiir”

I actually recognize the angel from the first story, her name is Vildeis, she's an angel empyreal lord from Pathfinder and would absolutely NOT try to strongarm someone into following her or damn them if they refused.

I feel like the silence, trap guy was just waaaay to smart for his dm and the dm got annoyed by the fact that he got outsmarted in every encounter^^

The story with the traps be like: "I check the bus schedule." "Okay. The bus schedule says 'there are buses.'" "When are the buses coming?" "You don't know."

roll perception to figure out if the room is trapped it is but you don't know where the traps are... I just imagine they notice a sign on the far wall that reads "this room is trapped"

I can't stress enough how important it is to cast away the "Player Vs. DM" mindset as early as possible. It's one of the reasons I never started playing D&D, but soon realized, through my girlfriend, that Player and DM are a team. DM's usually want you to win as much as you do. Fun DM's will occasionally use their screens to cheat FOR you, even.

The deception one could’ve been cool if the person said “that was an impressive lie, but we knew who you were shortly after you stepped foot inside the city”

That angel of self-harm story I feel it would have actually been a really cool event wholesale if the DM wasn't a wuss about it and accepted "screw you" as an actual answer, instigating a quest to find whatever's causing the creepy vision and curse and destroy it. It could have become some sort of personal nemesis for the human fighter character, giving him some development without forcing a different playstyle on him.

12:30 you probably should not sexually assault someone out of character either...

Gee, I wonder how someone could actually think, "I'm going to play a collaborative storytelling game with my friends. You know what those friends really would think is cool and would make them want to keep playing? For me to commit sex crimes against them."

"Make a Deception check." 32. "He easily sees through your lie and calls you by name." .... "And in local news, a man was found dead in his basement, with a bag of dice and a DM screen lodged in his rectum."

Player: "I use locate object to find the sword." DM: "Uh.... You know there is sword."

I once nuked an entire cult and their hostages before they could escape through a portal with a magic arrow and I'm still the most moral and good aligned player at my table

For the first story. Make an EVEN more generic character for the same game. Make it a paladin. But play them as the most boring, lawful stupid character in existence

It sounds like OP #1 already made their human fighter interesting. I could tell by the way that they wrote that he was a fun character, and I woulda loved to have him in my game. Shame the DM couldn't see that.

The GM made my neutral Druid evil through head trauma so I spent every session killing, plotting, and using magic to give the towns and cities back to nature. The rest of the players tried to stop me and after six towns and two cities he was be headed in front of his mushroom army. This was my murder hobo story but, it was very controlled and with general agreement from the group that it was ok for me to be the main villain

DnD horror stories : Spencer *starts talking about the Sunder game*

Me: I'm playing a reformed thief. DM: So... Rouge who will be taking a few levels in cleric? Me: Cleric with a criminal background. DM: WTF?

To counteract the bad vibes, I'd like to tell a story about my DM, who did _not_ railroad or punish us when we did something so unexpected that it even surprised _us._ We've been playing this campaign for two years. We've spent the better part of those two years hunting down a cult. Recently, we finally made it to their lair, our goal being first and foremost to find and assassinate the leader - a decapitation strike - and then to deal with his underlings. The first infiltration went very poorly and we were forced to retreat, but fortunately we had found a teleportation circle inside one of the leader's sitting rooms, so we could return at any time. We spent the next few days repairing one of our magic items, doing research, copying spells, and so on. And every night, we scried on the leader to see what he was up to. The night before we planned to go back, we saw him in the same room that had the teleportation circle. And out of nowhere, one of us said, "Let's just attack him now!" We weren't mentally prepared, and the army unit that was standing by to help us mop up after the assassination was expecting the attack tomorrow. But it didn't matter. This opportunity to catch him by surprise, with our full health and abilities, was too good to pass up. Our wizard immediately cast Teleportation Circle. During the minute it took to cast, we hastily gathered our equipment; and three of us chugged Potions of Speed, including the monk, who also took a Potion of Enlargement. And then we teleported directly into this guy's room. This was not our DM's intention or expectation in the slightest. We caught her completely by surprise. But you know what? She let us do it. The spell took a minute to cast, so she could have had the leader leave his room by the time we got there. But she didn't. She let us have our crazy off-the-cuff attack. Not only that, but she even let us level up before we went, because she had been planning to level us up at the end of the session anyways. Her only condition was that if we wanted to get a surprise round, we had to stay late and do it now, because she wasn't going to give us a week to think about what we would do for this surprise attack that our characters had decided on literally one minute ago. So it was a longer session than usual, but it was completely worth it. The monk stunned the leader on her first turn. My turn was after that, so he automatically failed his DEX save when I cast Disintegrate. I had _just_ taken this spell - my first-ever 6th level spell - upon levelling up. I had been planning to use it either way, but I knew it was risky because it doesn't do _any_ damage if they make their save. But thanks to the monk, I didn't have to worry about that this time, and I did 76 damage on my first turn. It was a great way to inaugurate my brand new spell. We continued the fight next session, and proceeded to obliterate him. Even with lair actions that plunged us into magical darkness and then filled the room with poison gas, we killed him in less than three rounds without him getting a chance to attack even once - the monk stunned him again on her second turn. It was _beautiful._ Our struggle with the cult isn't wrapped up yet, but this fight represented everything we've been working towards for two years, and the DM let us cheese the hell out of it in a fun and exciting way.

No D&D is better than bad D&D. Trust me, i learned this the hard way. My first ever group was a very toxic 3.5 game. Ill spare the whole story for now, but it involves someone yelling at me for being new and "not playing my character correctly", the pcs threatining to kill my pc if i don't do something obviously dangerous, and then the dm calling me stupid for doing so. The group peer pressuring me into playing classes i didn't want to play. Also, i found out one year later that the of the players bullied someone as a revenge plan. That person commits suicide because of the bullying. Edit: things are MUCH better now ever since i moved past that one game. I've been palying 5e for about 5 years at this point

"Your fun doesn't trump other players fun" really important thing for players to remember.

"Have a good October, unless you're watching in the future. Then have a good April." [Watching this in April] *Choke on drink* Damn... he is a Wizard!

Can we address something about the bard story, by the way? He rolled a 32. That’s a high enough skill check to bluff gods!

“I cast magic missile at it.” “It’s a gazebo. It has no effect.” “OH MY GOD!”

1 thing about the deception roll: even if they know you, lying as a pro will still somewhat earn you thieves' respect. Doing bad lying however might have negative consequences.

Talking about attempting rape, I had to deal with that on my first time dming for anyone outside my family. It was all new people, we met through Facebook and they seemed cool enough. The person I want to talk about was playing a wizard and he was a murder hobo, which always ended on him nearly dying since he had a really shitty HP pool. I had my issues with him and I spoke to the party because I wanted to kick him out, he was disruptive and annoying (both as a character and irl), but the rest of the party out voted me, so I gave him a second and third chance. On that third, however, what he did shocked all of us. First of all, he had hinted up to this point he was an "incell" (which I didn't know the meaning of until after this happened). That aside, the party was fighting the redbrand ruffians at their hideout and one of them fell prone with his ass up (i did it for comedic purposes), which he seemed to take particular interest in. On his turn he asked me if he could move up to the prone ruffian, I counted the squares and he had 5 ft to spare, so I said yes. He then declared he was going to pull the guy's pants down and rape him. I said no, obviously, fuck no, but he started arguing that he wanted to, so the whole party jumped in to defuse the situation. In the end I kicked him out, but I couldn't believe it.

I have been DMing for about 16 years now and I have never had a truly horrible game experience however I have noticed I have caused problems in the past. > A Player has a pet bunny that is precious to her > I want to make a dramatic moment > I have her wake up to find her bunny has been killed, mutilated, and become posssessed by an evil spirit > Player is forced to kill her precious bunny >I think that was swell storytelling > Later find out that my player (which we were both 12 at the time) went home and cried over her rabbit. > I try and tell her she's just being ridiculous and that she's just trying to make me feel bad. Frankly I feel like all of these stories have a common denominator. A lack of respect for the other people in the group. In my case I like to hide behind the fact I was 12 at the time and "didn't know better" but frankly I did. I wanted a knee jerk reaction out of my players and doing that was plucking low hanging fruit. To this day that player has never lived that down (not because I took away her bunny but because it deeply hurt her... and I didn't it completely flippantly and then tried to make her look like she was somehow being mean to me for trying to make me feel bad)... a few years back I invoked that storyline again by introducing the spirit of the rabbit as a patron saint of pets that protected woodland critters and household pets from the depredations of all kinds of ill intent. Every single non-combat pet that has been in my games are protected from malevolent intent (as in I won't kill them off screen or in ways that aren't somehow directly caused by the player)... I have since evolved to find more moving and effective ways of using beloved pets to create tension in a storyline without brutalizing in extreme detail something a player cares about. It was a serious dick move on my part and it kills me that I was ever that immature... even if I was immature at the time.

Once upon a time, I was in a D&D game which was a homebrew version of the Rise of Tiamat campaign. 3 sessions in, we were in a temple and was asked by a wizard to take one of the eggs of Tiamat to a safe place. The players were set upon by a group of cultists and Kobolds. So, we received the egg, dealt with the cultists and kobolds, then escaped through some tunnels. We made it out safe, everyone is okay, and then the start of the next session, we start discussing the egg, and the DM tells us 'you don't know where the egg is'. And we as a group collectively thought 'we must've gotten pickpocketed or dropped it', so we retraced our steps. And retraced. And retraced. This went on for nearly 5 hours. Ultimately, we got fed up with the DM and demanded him tell us what happened to the egg that we KNEW we had taken off the wizard. And because we explored absolutely EVERY option we could. After 5 hours of this, we were all pissed. Except one player. It was revealed, that this ENTIRE TIME, this player and the DM had been in cahoots, and the player's character had been 'hiding' the egg from everyone. The DM literally railroaded us into not finding the egg for the s**ts and gigs of a joke that wasted 5 hours of player's time. I didn't finish the session which had about an hour left, I just left it. I have a sense of humour, I can appreciate a good D&D prank, but this was a deliberate and sadistic waste of 5 players time.

DnD Horror Stories: DM'd a session where my party slammed a Roc's head into a stun warded door at level 6. This happened repetitively till they permanently blinded, clipped, and murdered it. This was my own fault. They leveled up.

Bad DM: "It's about fun so stop being a rules lawyer!" Response: "I'm trying to have fun by using my abilities and you're ruining it by ignoring them. You're a sad excuse for a DM. I'm leaving."

Thanks for that content warning!! I'm not sensitive to that stuff, but I was at the table eating dinner with my kids at the time. Got to pause it and watch the rest afterwards without any awkward ass explanations that I wasn't expecting to do at the dinner table haha cheers!

"It's about fun" *proceeds to kill any fun* Replace that dm immediately

"Tyler, not my fiance, maybe" -xptolevel3 2019

About rewarding your players for smart ways to get past traps, in a recent session I did just that. There was a 80ft long room, and every 10 feet there was a pressure plate that released a puff of gas from the nearest wall when stepped on. Fighter just runs across room, lots of damage but not downed. Everyone else followed suit, except for the bard. He was thinking. He asked how wide the holes where, and I said there was one every 10 feet that was about the size of a fist. He grabbed a rock with mage hand, plugged the first hole, and stepped on the pressure plate. No damage. He did this for the entire length of the room, and got across completely unharmed, while everyone else needed a short rest to patch up their wounds.

The first guy could have given the “generic” character another option. Like, how does he avoid following the angel? How does the party get the angel to leave him alone? That could be a plot hook. It could be interesting, and spice him up while also playing the character he wants.

6:12 One minute is 10 rounds, so I imagine that's what she had in her head

4:39 that's literally what happened to my first character, although the dm didn't care about my domain I just accidentally prayed to Odin instead of pelor and started a God war. Started as a life cleric died as a war cleric with lycanthropy.

"I hate when a DM makes you have to roll for everything." Some of my best games ever of fun and hilarious situations, used that house rule. Example: Paladin, opens door, failed. The Paladin takes the handle of the door, and swings it open, and with his 18/92 str, the massive force shatters the door, sending splinters and pieces of the door flying! The Paladin has to do a Con save. Rolls a Nat1, unlucky for the Paladin, one of the Splinters of the door, flies and pierces his eye, roll damage 1d2. The Paladin takes 2 damage, and lost sight in his Right eye. This Paladin, was played by Me, his name was Rolf Akimir, this was a 2e game, so not pathfinder stuff. The game had many hilarious situations that had lasting impact. It is how you use it, that determines how fun, or how frustrating it can be.

Worst DM-moments that happened to myself: Me and the only other female were rail-roaded into goinf to an art exhibit by ourselves. We get knocked out with no save while there. Had to spend the rest of the night waiting for the guys to rescue us. At our repeated questions if we could save ourselves, we just got "nos". Nothing we did would help apparently. Mind you, I was maxed out on strangth and she was a magic user. Can't remember what the guys did to get out of the stone casts we were in (don't ask, something about turning women into statues), but both of our nerves snapped when one of the guys complained about us not "properly" thanking them. Seriously?! We were the tank and the healer! We are not your damsel-NPCs but part of your group and have saved you loads of times. I was really tempted to let the next enemy get his skinny, glass-canon, elven ass. Sadly, my character wouldn't do that, so I ate that damage as usual. Another time, my character got impregnated magically very much against her will and again with no other way out. I was told it didn't matter, because the hag that did it would collect the baby anyway. Erm... No? If I have to carry that demon spawn for nine months, it's my char's. If you want a big bad, push it out of your own vagina. PS.: I wonder why so few women play pnps? To be fair the later dm apologized for that later. He copied that from somewhere supposedly.

Worst D and D group I have been in is when I was playing one of my first game. I played as a rogue monk and was always in the back as the druid was the group leader and the person in charge as a shapeshifter with the third member as a fighter. We played a few session before the DM who I was friends with IRL told me that I should be more interactive and be more creative. I have social anxiety and did not know my other players that well but I enjoy roleplaying so I took his advice and became more creative and started to take point in combat and started being creative and going first. I then got yelled at for doing stupid stuff every time if the party's plan failed as they all blamed me, including the DM for things going wrong even when I was not the one coming up with the plan I went back to taking the rear and letting them plan and got yelled at again for not engaging in conversation again by the DM. I told him how I felt and I left stopped playing. I have not talked to the DM since even though we were good friends IRL since.

Hey Jacob or the editor, I just wanted to thank you for the content warning. It means alot and I just wanted to make sure you knew that it was appreciated!

"then have yourself a good april" *dramatically looks up from my drawing back at the screen* how-

Little homebrew rule that I use as a DM: You can see your Mage Hand, even in darkness. It gives off a mystical blue glow in a 1 ft diameter sphere.

I played with a group that said that my Half-Elf Thief was useless, because I chose to focus on having high skills, instead of combat. I play Shadowrun now.

I don't like DMs trying to force players to do something different.

Am I the only DM who revels in the moment the players foil my plans? Like I love that they are being creative and engaging with my adventure! I feel validated whenever someone cares enough about our game to put extra effort into their actions!

My favorite character (a Great Old One Warlock called Splish-Splash Eldritch-Blast as a nickname) became less and less connected with humanity as he became closer to the Great Old One, and eventually became unable to tell good from bad, I killed 3 people I could of healed because they said "help me" and he saw that as end suffering and thus death... God I miss him...

It's kinda long, and probably not as interesting as the ones in the video, but I've got a story to share: > Very first time playing D&D ever. We're doing 3.5e, which in hindsight, is not great for people new to TTRPGs. > I have two characters ready, a Neutral Good half-elf ranger and a Lawful Evil tiefling fighter (supposed to be a blackguard/anti-paladin, but I didn't know those existed yet, so I settled for fighter). > Consult DM on which character would be better for the campaign. She tells me to play the tiefling fighter because it'll be "interesting". > Fast-forward to first session. > There is another DM that I didn't know about. This barely matters, because the second DM ends up being the only one for all but two of the sessions anyway. > Almost the entire party is Chaotic Good. I can already tell that playing a Lawful Evil character with this party won't go well. > Beginning of the story is full of events where my character either gets hurt or has to leave the area because of blinding, holy light. I accept this because I'm playing what, as far as I'm concerned, is a literal demon, so at the time I think this makes sense. > 2nd session ends with my character and another party member being ambushed by *35 Lv1 kenkus* because the 2nd DM kept ignoring us and wanted to punish us for "not paying attention to the game". The DM fudges the rolls super hard to make us lose the fight. > 3rd session begins with our characters being stripped of their gear and sold into slavery. Nobody else in the party realizes we're gone. > This is the beginning of where the campaign really falls apart, because the DMs decided their GMPCs mattered more than us. > One of the GMPCs appears from nowhere and single-handedly saves my character and the other kidnapped party member, repeatedly calling us idiots the entire time. We later reunite with the party by sheer coincidence. > 4th session begins with half the party waking up to being torn apart by fiends. We try to fight back, but are severely outmatched, and lose pretty badly. > I should mention that, before the campaign started, the DM told us that it'll be a beginner-friendly game and "nobody will die". > This turns out to be either an illusion or shared dream, and has no importance to the later story whatsoever. > Campaign continues for several sessions with most events just being the party having to run away from kaijus that the GPMCs are able to fend off single-handedly. > Final session begins with a literal god of evil approaching the party and demanding they kill me. He also rips off my right arm, so I can't use my greatsword anymore. > By this point, I've long since caught on to the fact that the DMs didn't like either me or just my character, and wanted him dead. > Play along and make up some BS about how I was a double agent, waiting for the right time to kill everyone and steal their stuff to give my god an advantage in a Ragnarok-esque war. > Half-heartedly PvP the other players and lose even more badly than I normally would have, because I'm reduced to using a broken bastard sword with my left arm. > Party wins, takes my stuff, god of evil vanishes, everyone moves on like nothing happened. > Around 2/3rds through the session, party fights some slavers and releases their captives. > DM casually asks me to reveal my next character. Suspect they didn't expect me to have more than one prepared. Joke's on them, I made a replacement after the 3rd session. > Dual-wielding Chaotic Good human barbarian. Trying to leave my "greatsword and plate armor" comfort zone a little, but don't really know what I'm doing. > Reveal that my character is the adopted brother of the dwarf cleric, exposit other small bits of backstory to justify this. > DM actually kind of likes my character because it reminds him of his favourite game. Players like him because of the mental image of a human who grew up thinking he was just a really tall dwarf. > Party rests at nearby town. One of the other players, a dragonborn fighter who got a divine sword that my tiefling character was openly jealous of, goes to a shop. > The player never really took the game very seriously, would pretty much go along with anything he thought was funny. > Lightbulb moment. Say that the ghost of my tiefling character is haunting the dragonborn, and he hears his voice in his head constantly, like an almost literal shoulder devil. > Dragonborn player thinks this is hilarious and makes it canon. > The game eventually ends on an underwhelming cliffhanger, and the DMs never hold another session with this group again.

Earlier this year, our GM made the king of a nation essentially be untouchable and hold an annual tournament to try and hit him. Fighter rolled a nat 20, spent superiority die and was blessed.. total 37 to hit.. MISS

This reminds me of the time I was a monk, and tried to break open a chest with my quarter staff, because I thought it was a mimic. The DM said, "The mimic bites and breaks your quarter staff."

The guild master starts feeling extremely awkward because he thought he knew your name but now you made him second guess himself

Dm: is there to create a story for the players to overcome, but not too easy nor not too hard Player: is meant to be there to help other players and be helped by other players to overcome a challenge

Not marrying Tyler is an affront to his honor Jacob. Shame!

The thing is, I've played a criminal type character, and honestly, it's really fun. It's just like, don't act like a spree killer, ffs. You can handle your objectives in a harsh, callous manner, or you can pickpocket or steal certain things to help your party out. Just little stuff here and there that says like "this guy is shady, and maybe not someone to cross" or "he believes the ends justify the means". My dude would like, make reckless decisions, break into places to get information for the party (which often went really well because the DM let me be a goblin rogue), and I used my underworld connections to get us in whenever we arrived somewhere new. It was a lot of fun being a character that was willing to do unsavory things to help advance the party. That doesn't require you to be an actual psychopath lol.

Two of the worst examples from my passed DMs were fudging rules to kill players and waiting until a player was pounding a wooden stake through a vampire's heart with a nat 20 to decide he "wouldn't allow it"

I use unseen servant to run into traps.

I was literally watching how to be a good DM with Matt Mercer.

Man, one of the DMs I was with ages ago played favorites with characters. They'd never let me have anything, ever. First, they told me that the stats I rolled, even though they were worse than point buy average or a standard array, were permanent outside ASI or magical items to improve it. They said my dwarf character had to have the strength to wear the heavy armor they were proficient in despite the racial trait, said clerics could slot as many spells as they have slots, and never hashed out the backstory with me to get a character that fit the world.

I got quite upset once because the dm got my character raped when he was unconsious and couldn't do anything. The other players seemed to find it funny (as it didn't happen to their character) so i just kept silent about the discomfort. i told my self to not be so attached to my character, but watching this video really made me aknowledge how not cool it actually was. Just in general, you don't joke with rape

my horror story: "ok, we found this super rare egg. who carries it?" "i think is should!" "Oh Oh, Me Me Me" My Character being ignored: "uuhh i got floating disc... mage hands... unseen servant... i can hold things guys..." "ok ok, i think i know who should hold it... THE TINY HALFLING MONK WHO LITERALLY ALMOST GOT US KILLED A MINUTE AGO!!!"

Did you ever hear the tragedy of Darth Plagueis the Wise?

13:00 There are some tables where sexual assaults, rapes, and other "Mature"-rated activities occur with the *consent of all players* that these things are possible (or likely) occurrences. The problem here is the character's backstory. If this character was visited by Bahamut in the manner that he so described, the appropriate response by the DM (again, assuming that the campaign is M or X-rated) is to have the deity wreak vengeance upon the character and take the player through a very serious chain of events that will alter the way that they play moving forward.

7:57 At this point in the game... After the dm has told me not to stop and debate rules and its about fun not playing by the rules... I no longer have a reason to track my characters remaining health. It is now infinite, because its about fun not playing by the rules, and well not being prone in the dying state is more fun.

15:15 Your backstory doesn't need to be an epic fable Just remember there's other people at the table

I was playing that artificer and tinkered and made a vile smell like the best damn meat these winter wolves have smelled he said roll to see If you deceive them I got a 25 "The wolves watch as you throw the fake vile and immediately attacked me" Tf is that bs

When the murder hobo character tried to assault one of the PC's, the DM should have had Bahamut come down and give him the "Or Else" as in the original deal, "Change your ways or else"

One of the most important things any new DM needs to be taught is that you need to be prepared with characters, locations, connections, etc but also for the eventuality that none of that will come up. That the players will never ask about them or choose to follow any threads associated with them. I've seen so many DMs who are super excited about what they've created and proceed to tell the characters all about what they've missed out on. But, from my perspective, it's important to not tell them anything about what they missed out on. You can hint that they've missed out on something but you should never give specifics. Partly because it means you can potentially reuse that idea later but, more importantly, it encourages players to explore. Finding out cool things is their reward for asking the questions, challenging inconsistencies presented, talking to the strange character, etc. One way I see DMs fall foul of this is when a character has a secret and they just explain all of those secrets neatly in an unattended journal belonging to them. It's usually better to leave a trail of hints that players may or may not follow. Learning the secret/truth is the reward for noticing and following the trail. Reveals often have a muted impact if they're not built up or earned. You need the player to be invested in knowing the answer. If players missed something cool, my next thought would be "Did they miss it forever or should I play into this much later down the line? Not in a way that directly punishes them or is mean-spirited but maybe one where something happens because of it and the players are reminded of some of the clues they disregarded. They are left to come to the realisation that their choices created this outcome." I think this sort of thing helps the world come more alive. What the players don't do is just as important as what they do do.

At my table, there is understanding that any rolls made without the dm's request are imaginary and do not count.

17:05 I was playing a barbarian human who had some grieving issues that he never really came to terms with. Little did I know this characters ...recklessness, was causing issues outside of the table for 2 other players (5 players, 1 dm) Noone told me FOR A YEAR+ until the literally day after that campaign ended ....it's been 3 years and change since that campaign ended and it still fucks with me Lesson: talk shit out with your group ...if you cant, get a new group.

Gets to the end of the video, "unless you're watching this in the future, then have a good... April.." looks at date on my phone to see it's April 2nd..shit this episode was spooky

“Roll to open the door” Nat 1 “You broke your hand did not notice a part of the floor was uneven and fell face first unto a dagger with it’s blade facing upwards. Make a new character” (The campaign had started a minute ago)

I love how wholesome this video was in the end. Normally DM horror stories just leave me with a taste of bitterness :| Especially when it's one of these "And then I got my revenge" player stories where they deal with real life problems in game 😖

I played D&D for the first time freshman year in high school. I don’t think it was 5E but idk what edition it was. We find a locked chest. Rogue fails to pick it. I offer to break the lock with my ax. Critical 1. Ax comes back and hits me. Roll for damage. Damage somehow kills me. DM just killed my character and I couldn’t play for the rest of the day. Made me hate D&D until a few weeks or months ago when a good friend of mine had me watch critical role. Now I’m in a campaign with a great DM and I’m having a great time

As the permanent DM (because I'm "far more creative and good at running the game"), this makes me feel a lot better about my mistakes, like allowing a very creative player to kill the BBEG nuclear bomb made of Greek Fire.

When I first got into dnd I joined a toxic group and they basically were all murder hobos so I thought it was normal and then I branched out and joined a few other campaigns eventually getting kicked out due to my wicked ways. Over time I learned from my mistakes and basically went to rehab so I could enjoy dnd and prevent others from not enjoying it. Luckily one of the dms understood that and eventually let me back in after experiencing how I had grown as a player.

I was *blessed in my first ever foray into D&D* Unbeknownst to me, my brother *has been DMing for veterans & new players online, since he was 10 years old*

Does anyone know if Jacob has a fiance? I feel like he's mentioned it before but cant say for sure.

I just watched this 3yr old video for the first time today, and when he said "Have yourself a good April", it made me rewind to make sure I heard it correctly lol

I get the impression that a DM is like playing goalie at an ODR (Out-Door Rink, for all my non-Canadians out there) during Christmas Break. You signed the metaphorical waiver when you strapped on the pads (or sat down behind the DM screen) that said: "You are not here to have fun. You are here so that EVERYONE ELSE gets to have extra fun. If you DO have fun, that's a nice bonus, but it's not about you. By proceeding with this action, you, the goalie (or DM) hereby agree to the above statement." Idk, I've never DM'd. I'm just observing

Bad GMs. My greatest fear ; - ;

"That's the end of the video" From experience, I did not actually expect it to be the end of the video

“Have a good April” Jesus I had to do a double take! 😂 3 years later and he got me 😂😂

For the 32 deception roll, it would be funny if the thieves knew their name, but they lied so good they thought their real name was fake and this fake name was the real name

18:04 Time to set an event on my calendar for April 1st with a link to this video, have me completely forget what the link was to, rewatch the entire video, only to remember at the very end :D

If a player ever makes their character sexually assault another PC in a game I run, they’re getting a D20 to the forehead. Unless they have a high AC.

Oh dear... WOW that final case... almost makes me appreciate our party's rogue who mind you so far been consistently screwing with the group cuz he's "whimsical". It's gotten to the point where the remainder of the group have had to explicitly alter our playstyles to keep him "under control" (it's possible some members like how I as the ranger keep spotting him)...... but hey I guess he didn't try to sexually assault me... didn't think I'd ever say that as a positive... like ever.

Holy fuck it's actually April, how did you do that? Next level

already can tell from the defeated faces, that this is gonna be a juicy video.

*Sees "worst DM's" in the title* Me: "Allow me to introduce myself."

The idea of the red-thread was excellent. I will have to use that in the future.

I'M LAUGHING COS I'M WATCHING THIS AND IT'S LITERALLY APRIL RN