D&D Venting

I just had the wildest session of D&D.

A friend has been running a 5e campaign for the last year. It’s generally been fun, but I’m not a fan of the system, and I’m starting to feel disconnected from the story. I posted this in the group chat:

I’d like to wrap up the current campaign sometime soon. […] And then we should take a break.

Like, maybe we play tabletop games, or a one shot, or a mini campaign. Something to cleanse our brains.

And then we can start a new campaign. I’d be happy to go on the second arc of Dan and company. Or we could do something different. It’d be a group decision (and a great opportunity to bring in a new player, wink wink).

Honestly, it wouldn’t surprise me if this is what [DM] is already planning.

Idk. Y’all know me. I like it when things end. How do y’all feel?

That was a few months ago. I was hoping we’d be able to wrap up the campaign by the end of the year, but that hasn’t happened. In part because …

A friend of a friend expressed interest in trying D&D. For the last month we’ve been playing an unrelated one-shot. Tonight was session four.

SPOILERS FOR THE ONE SHOT FOLLOWING. If you’re playing it, then skip the next paragraph. For reals!

OK. My character in the one-shot, Salt, is the dad of three kids (now adults). Two are twins he had with the villain of the one-shot; the other is an adopted aasimar named Kivian. Kivian was supposed to be sacrificed to grant Salt’s then-partner, Veruca¹, terrible powers. But Salt grew a conscience, and took the kids and ran off. For the last eighteen-ish years he’s been raising them as adventurers. He’s never told them about any of this.

END SPOILERS.

The first session was setup. We got to a new town with plans to quietly celebrate Kivian’s birthday. We were resting in the inn, when … monsters attacked. End of session.

The second session was all combat. Salt was reckless, because he’s gotta protect his kids — and the monsters were deliberately targeting him (for perfectly obvious reasons, if you’ve read the spoiler paragraph).

Session three started with the DM narrating a scene where a big monster showed up and killed Salt; Kivian freaked out; things went weird; and we all woke up in our beds again. My interpretation is that the DM didn’t expect the battle to go that badly and wanted to handwave it away. But we all had the same terrible dream, so we armoured up and explored the town. Inside the forge we found a portal continually spawning demons. This triggered a lengthy fight that lasted the rest of the session. I was pretty sick of it by the end, and expressed as much in the group chat:

Hey. FYI, I was really flagging towards the end. I kinda ended the session on a down note.

I share this to express the feeling and expel it from my brain.

Yarr.

Finally, we’ve made it to tonight’s session — the fourth session. First I asked the DM about resources. Based on what I know of the adventure, I don’t expect to have any breaks, which means that we won’t have any long rests to recoup character abilities. He was cagey with his answer. Fine, I’ve DM-ed, I understand the need or desire to keep things close.

We tried to figure out how to close the portal. In the meantime a wave of necrotic energy from nearby swept over us every few minutes, causing damage if we fail a saving throw. I rolled poorly, as I often do, and it incapacitated my character. I got frustrated.

We sought the source of the necrotic wave. It came from another building in a different part of town — it was inescapable. Inside that building was a pedestal with two red controls, and after some trial and error we determined that we had to enter some sort of code. Pressing the wrong button triggered a massive magical backlash (half on a successful save). We couldn’t find any clues. On the first attempt we got six inputs correct by blind luck, so I assumed the DM was toying with us. This whole time we’re still taking periodic damage from the necrotic wave. Around this point I wrote “FUCK THIS GAME” in my notes.

My character tried a code and took 15 HP of damage, incapacitating him for the second time. I’m so pissed that I left the computer for a few minutes, although no-one could tell because my camera was off. The other players revived me, because it’s D&D and they’re awesome, but by this point I’d checked out. The monster that had killed me at the start of session two showed up, so we tried to escape. Because I have terrible luck, I’m the only one who failed to get out of the building, so I took a hit reducing me to one HP. I disengaged and went out the window, but the monster burst through the wall and incapacitated me for the third time. Then, despite the best effort of the rest of the party, the monster killed me.

Kivian freaked out; we woke up in the inn again. We realize we’re in some sort of time loop. Everyone else was pretty happy with things, but I was still furious. While everyone else logged off, I said, “Hey [DM], can we talk for a minute?”

Then we (and another player) had a chat for the next hour. I told him I got close to rage quitting. He had no idea that I was upset. I started venting about the campaign. The whole time I felt terrible because he’s been putting in the time and energy to run things, and now I was complaining about his hard work. And in the back of my mind I was thinking: I killed the Mountain Home campaign last year. They probably think I want to kill the other game. I don’t want to be that guy who ruins everything.

Everything’s OK. We’re probably going to take a break and do something different in the new year. This wasn’t just about the current session; it built up over time, and I have a bad tendency to stay silent and put up with things. This time I communicated.