I’m a bit bummed and I’m feel­ing pret­ty shit­ty about it. Recent­ly I had post­ed a few dif­fer­ent art pieces of my char­ac­ter Tre­ori, a PF1e char­ac­ter I made for a game back in 2019. Due to sched­ul­ing prob­lems I had to drop that game and I’ve been miss­ing her and recent­ly myself and Embyr joined a TTRPGs where I’ve tried to recre­ate her. The con­cept doesn’t quite work in PF2e so I end­ed up mak­ing Amani while con­tin­u­ing to look for oth­er games I could play her in. It took a while and after a few LFG posts on red­dit a GM approach Embyr about a game. We met up on Dis­cord where we dis­cussed our ideas with the GM, a home­brew cam­paign and he was okay with the third par­ty con­tent that would allow the both of us to make our drag­on char­ac­ters and I could re-make Tre­ori. The GM even said the par­ty could use anoth­er heal­er now that the group size was up to 8. This was the first red-flag, there were sev­er­al. We got invit­ed to the Dis­cord and intro­duced our­selves, there was anoth­er new play­er as well that was join­ing up at the same time as us. With­out dis­clos­ing too much infor­ma­tion about our char­ac­ters race me and Em told the group about our char­ac­ter class ideas. This is where one of the play­ers chimed in that he wished we would have talked to them about tak­ing anoth­er heal­er. That isn’t quite what I want­ed to hear but I get it still with a par­ty the size it is some over­lap is to be expect­ed. About this time I start­ed going through the chat his­to­ry on the Dis­cord and I could clear­ly see there was a prob­lem play­er in the group. By the time we were giv­en the invite to roll20 the GM actu­al­ly told us that there is a prob­lem play­er and that he was going to have to do some­thing about it. I’ve already gone on too long about that game. It didn’t go well but me and Em made it through ses­sion 0 and ses­sion 1 (The night­mares that those were) and we bond­ed with the oth­er new play­er. We also occa­sion­al­ly still chat with one of the oth­er play­ers (You know who you are) but we def­i­nite­ly didn’t feel great about that game. Em again made a red­dit LFG post and anoth­er GM reached out to her about his home­brew world and him want­i­ng to get back into GMing. Every­thing about this sce­nario sound­ed bet­ter than the last and by the time we had a full par­ty we were already set­tled on drop­ping the oth­er game com­plete­ly. We invit­ed the oth­er play­er we had formed a friend­ship with and I once again remade Treoi and Em made a new drag­on char­ac­ter. We all seemed to get along great. The oth­er per­son even invit­ed one of her oth­er friends into the game and we all joked and laughed as we cre­at­ed our char­ac­ters and got to know one anoth­er and learn about the home­brew world. I had thought we got along pret­ty good. We joked about our char­ac­ters being the scoo­by-doo gang. One of the play­ers look­ing at the world map sug­gest­ed that he should write a song akin to Yakko’s world with the names of the cities on the map. I broke into song and sang rough­ly the first minute of the song. It seemed we had a great fun gam­ing group… That was until the game actu­al­ly start­ed… Ses­sion 1 came and went, one of the play­ers was play­ing a necro­mancer and we got to talk­ing in char­ac­ter, the oth­er two play­ers kin­da stuck with each oth­er and didn’t real­ly inter­act with us (This includ­ed that new friend we had invit­ed from the last game). The adven­ture seed was plant­ed we all had a rea­son to be there but again those two kin­da stuck to them­selves. They were talk­ing with the NPC and we didn’t inter­rupt, while not all the infor­ma­tion was direct­ly rel­e­vant to me and Em it was still a part of the sto­ry and we were okay let­ting them lead on this. We had a com­bat short­ly after­wards, the par­ty worked real­ly well togeth­er and we fair­ly eas­i­ly removed the threat while I han­dled the heal­ing and some sup­port spells. One of our ene­mies escaped and the two of them ran off to pur­sue. We got a lit­tle bit more infor­ma­tion from the NPC at that point and the necro­mancer rushed in to drink a pint of blood from one of the slain ene­mies, he appar­ent­ly can learn spells that way. The oth­ers returned hav­ing lost the ene­my after he got to his horse. That’s when the NPC revealed the ene­my cast­er was actu­al­ly a vam­pire, you know the one that the necro­mancer just drank the blood of… Well fuck this could be a prob­lem. Ses­sion 1 end­ed there and the two oth­er play­ers seemed to be rather insis­tent and con­trol­ling on what they want­ed to do next but weren’t will­ing to explain why, this was of course OOC dis­cus­sions in the dis­cord we had to press that we absolute­ly need­ed to get the oth­er play­er to some kind of priest to help with the poten­tial prob­lem while we might still be able to deal with it. OOC argu­ments con­tin­ued them insist­ing on a cer­tain course that we didn’t all agree on but at least agree­ing on the fact that we need­ed to help our oth­er par­ty mem­ber. The oth­er play­ers post­ed a long pub­lic jour­nal of their ses­sion notes about all the events. Cool, I had my own IC jour­nal that I hadn’t shared. I didn’t want to make it seem like I was copy­ing them or try­ing to steal their spot­light. Good notes. Good sto­ry. I’m okay with it. I admit I had felt a lit­tle bit like they were try­ing to make things about them but it was only the first session.

Ses­sion 2 start­ed. We dis­cussed what we were going to do to get the necro­mancer help and myself being an ora­cle I chimed in a bit more than I had the pre­vi­ous ses­sion sim­ply because this was an area I was more knowl­edge­able in. We dis­posed of the bod­ies of our ene­mies in the ocean weighed down with stones and were going to make our way to a tem­ple when the necro­mancer want­ed to exam­ine the body of the vam­pire… you know the one we just tossed off a cliff into the ocean… Em to the res­cue. She’s play­ing a solar drag­on, as she ages she would even­tu­al­ly have the abil­i­ty to fly in space and car­ry oth­ers for now she just can see in absolute dark­ness and doesn’t actu­al­ly breath. She jumped in to retrieve the corpse. Who needs air… Oh and the dark­ness, not a prob­lem either she can see in super­nat­ur­al (deep­er) dark­ness. The necro­mancer cursed. He got his answer and it wasn’t good. He was con­vinced he was infect­ed. We trav­eled through­out the night get­ting to the city we need­ed to with a large tem­ple just at dawn. Again being the ora­cle I took a bit more of the lead here when deal­ing with NPCs. It seems I sur­prised the oth­ers with my diplo­ma­cy skill (I think the oth­er play­er was expect­ing to be the par­ty diplo­mat with a +7, mean­while I’m sit­ting at +11, Sor­ry you aren’t tak­ing charge here espe­cial­ly when deal­ing with the cler­gy). By this point in time there were already some sub­tle com­ments com­ing from the oth­er play­ers where they ques­tioned some of Embyr’s back­ground there were also a few jokes tossed around about the necromancer’s mis­take con­sum­ing vam­pire blood. The sec­ond of the duo that seemed to have their own agen­da even tossed in a poor taste rape joke (not cool) after Em com­ment­ed that they the necro­mancer was being vic­tim shamed. After nego­ti­at­ing with the priest and con­vinc­ing him to help a heretic (+11 Diplo­ma­cy is nice) He failed at the cure the par­ty decid­ed to split up the duo went off to look for some herbal cure while the rest of us tried to go to a sec­ond tem­ple that’s nor­mal­ly off lim­its to out­siders. Em ques­tioned the idea in char­ac­ter not think­ing there is real­ly an herbal solu­tion for such a mag­i­cal / super­nat­ur­al ill­ness. So the par­ty split and some of us tried to get to the oth­er tem­ple only to be turned away at a walled gate, where the oth­ers spent time wan­der­ing the city and even­tu­al­ly find­ing an apothe­cary. Some extra­or­di­nar­i­ly lucky rolls the shop­keep had an herb that could off the effects of vam­pirism for rough­ly a month but it was excep­tion­al­ly pri­cy. They duo being off on their own had to make their own deci­sions on all of this. Mean­while the rest of us hav­ing failed and already hav­ing been up for 24 hours at least went to the near­est inn and I paid for rooms for every­one while the necro­mancer wait­ed to meet up with them when the duo even­tu­al­ly would come look­ing for us. We regrouped, bought a car­riage and then made ten­ta­tive plans for where to go next to cure our friend. End of ses­sion 2… but wait. This is where one of the duo spoke up, From what after the fact by this point she had already spo­ken to the GM about this she felt that Em’s IC com­ment was call­ing her stu­pid when that wasn’t at all what Em said. Em spoke up at this point and reit­er­at­ed what she said and said she was sor­ry that her words made her feel that way and it was in no way meant to be offen­sive. The oth­er play­ers thanked her for say­ing that. Em then brought up the rape joke and the play­er admit­ted to mak­ing it, no apol­o­gy or any­thing just agree­ing that he did it. By now it was 12:30 at night and every­one was being silent. The necro­mancer broke the ice and we called it for the night.

This after­noon we got a mes­sage from the GM. The duo appar­ent­ly had a whole slew of com­plaints about myself and Em includ­ing how I appar­ent­ly took par­ty gold to get rooms for the par­ty with­out ask­ing (I didn’t I paid for it out of pock­et) com­plaints how we were inter­rupt­ing when they were try­ing to do things, (nope oth­er than the ran­dom two peo­ple talk­ing at once because dis­cord and imme­di­ate­ly being qui­et when it was clear some­one else was talk­ing) and of course that Em’s apol­o­gy wasn’t good enough despite the fact that she said it was okay… None of this was ever brought up direct­ly by the play­ers them­selves only through accu­sa­tions brought up to the GM. I don’t know how long they chat­ted to the GM for but we spoke with the GM for at least 45 min­utes about and he told us of the addi­tion­al accu­sa­tions. At the end of it Em sug­gest­ed she and the oth­er play­er should hash it out togeth­er. The GM said he’d get back to us. Time passed. The GM left me out of the con­ver­sa­tion and spoke more with Em because the heart of the issue seemed to be more between Em and the oth­er play­er. I end­ed up chim­ing in ques­tion­ing some of the false infor­ma­tion they pro­vid­ed sug­gest­ing that there might be some oth­er motives here espe­cial­ly since they didn’t try speak­ing to any of us first. More time passed and the GM spoke pri­vate­ly with the necro­mancer, the only per­son of our whole group he knew before the game start­ed. The whole sit­u­a­tion exhaust­ed him. We nev­er found out what that oth­er play­er want­ed, a sec­ond apol­o­gy? (Which Em wasn’t will­ing to give) but he wasn’t will­ing to kick out play­ers or spend more time medi­at­ing some­thing he real­ly shouldn’t have to for peo­ple he hard­ly knows. He end­ed the cam­paign rather than deal­ing with it. I get it. It was prob­a­bly the most fair choice he could make but damn. It took me 4 years to find anoth­er game I could play Tre­ori in, one I was gen­uine­ly excit­ed and look­ing for­ward to. The GM said he wasn’t expect­ing the adven­ture to turn into find­ing a cure for the necro­mancer… I’m dis­ap­point­ed. I’m burnt out on want­i­ng to play any TTRPGs after this. Need­less dra­ma. This could have been poor com­mu­ni­ca­tion, but I tru­ly sus­pect, and Em more so than me, thinks this was some tac­tic they were try­ing to use to gain the upper hand and force us to defer to them in the future.

I don’t get some peo­ple. They couldn’t get their way so no one gets to have any­thing. Maybe I’ll get to actu­al­ly real­ly play Tre­ori again in anoth­er 4 years.