An Unwelcome Thief, A Hilariously Broken Cantrip, and "Maybe They're Just Good Actors?" [RPG Horror Stories]

0:20 Hello, as the podcast for role players and game masters that help level up your game. We are dungeon Masters. I'm Jason Portiso, I'm Joe McCall, and I'm Jim Crocker. And it is that time of the month where we start doing our our RPG horror stories. We want to read. We want to read about the worst of your games and see if we can actually level them up a little bit. Let's see if we can do our jobs as as podcasts d ms and see if we can fix some things. Somebody could do a good lightning crack sound. Yeah, I'll put it in right here. We'll see what We'll see what sound effect I can actually get. Unless I can't find a lightning effect for free, then I'll put in whatever I can find for free.

1:04 It's just some kind of you just need, like a generic Wilhelm scream. Yeah, I get indicate that we're doing our horror story. I'll put a Wilhelm screaming right here. You know what I found out recently. This has nothing to do with d Indeed, the voice of the Wilhelm scream was the guy who's sang purple people eater. Yeah, yep, yep. Completely dislike like, just broke my reality around me anyway? Sixties trivia? Yeah, okay, we'll talk about it. Movie off the Air? Is he murdered on air? Is that it Isn't that the will help? Oh that was just thought. I'm thinking of the No, I'm thinking of the red hot chili Pepper's song. Oh there's a whole thing, gotcha.

1:48 I try not to think of any red chi paper not ever anyway. Cool? Yeah, what are we talking about in the show D and D Yes? So I've got here a couple of stories that I pulled from reddits r slash RPG horror stories, sort of it by top stories of the month and skim through all the ones that are just about creeps touching people and try to get to the ones that actually just talk about playing the game. Yeah, those those aren't role playing horror stories. Those are just horrible, horrible stories. Don't be gross, don't be part of the human condition. Unfortunately unfortunately, So don't be those guys. And I think that covers all those stories, so or don't be those girls. And then also in one particular case, don't be those people. I'm not going to ignore the diversity that we're finally that we're finally seeing in our PG creeps. Yeah, all right, we're going to start with a story, and some of these, like the stories themselves, are kind of like some of the kind of go in a direction that I don't want to go into, So we'll just kind of use the the idea of the story to get some kind of discussion out of this. So I don't think this one is one of the cases. So let's hear from user a cyber red Loaf with a story called player character steals from party. Player cries metagaming when his character gets caught, and I've seen this one happen firsthand. But yeah, let's read about their game during a descent game. I'm not sure if this is descent like a Descent to Avenue sort, or if they made during a decent campaign. It might be a decent, but decent is is capitalized. I'm gonna

3:20 guess this is decent to have vernest during a descent campaign with some folks. One of the players is a rogue dwarf. We took skill Expert as a level one feet because we're allowed to, and so he has a plus nine to sleight of hand at level one. We all begin at Elterrell and the second everybody is introduced, he pick pockets every party members money without us noticing. Once we set up camp, he snaks into everybody's packs and steals their stuff. He gets caught by one of us keeping watch that night because he rolled low for once, and he immediately breaks character and says we're ganging up on him just because he's playing his character. Well, we take all of our belongings back and then we get attacked by dire wolves. Wor in question runs away from the fight to steal from the NPCs. That's where that session ended. Me and the others are talking to the DM about booting him for his little tantrum. So, yeah, that's it. That's a whole story. Player forgot that there's actual enemies in the game and chose to make his party members his enemies. You hate to see it, you do.

4:19 Well, I mean I hate to see a DM that just that allows that just from the jump. Yeah, you know you're you're telling everybody what to expect from your campaign if you let somebody do that, yep, from the beginning, rather than than nix it. Yeah, I think the PvP does not start an end with combat. I think any action. Yeah, that's a real good way to put that. Any any action towards another player is PvP, including contest a slide at hand versus perception. Yeah. Yeah. And also, this is a really common thing that I see with a lot of like character building, where everyone's a variant human now and everyone just gets a free feed level one, and like, is that is there a reason why only humans get that? Is it to avoid stuff like this where we have, you know, a dwarf with a plus nine?

5:12 Oh yeah, yeah, absolutely, it's it's to avoid stuff like this. It's because you're doing the math whatever, you know, the game balance math whatever, like spiffs that you get for choosing a non human species are ostensibly that feet is going to balance out against that. Yeah, so you know, you break that balance if you decide that you're going to give everybody that bonus feet at first level. So the whole point of like race features is to give you a boost, and humans don't really get them because we are not fantastical creatures. That's part of the balance, right exactly. Yeah, we're not gonna we're not gonna get dark vision, We're not going to get you know, free hellis rebuke you know, right, right, But we can be really really good at like acting or cook or something or whatever whatever. Feet you take a level one. But yeah, there's a reason why you why only humans get that level.

6:06 Now granted every player is getting them, so is that balanced? You know, that's kind of you know whatever, right, But yeah, Well the important thing here is the is not considering theft PvP, yeah, or recognizing the PvP and being okay with that. Yes, that's a different thing. And letting everybody know up front at session zero, right that hey, pvps on the tables is on the table, Like, we're not gonna I'm not gonna allow out right, you know, violence or combat, but you guys are allowed to you know, even that far. Because there is something that comes up specifically in to send to a firness that basically there's a shield that is spoiler alert, there's a shield that is inhabited by a pit demon or pit fiend pit fiend I think, or something like that, some sort of devil, yeah, devil that basically tries to get a player to work for it, but under the guise of it being something holy not something.

7:07 Yeah, I just I just excess that. I just boot that right out of that module. I don't I don't need that kind of nonsense in my game. But yeah, So that was one of the first campaigns that I had ever DMed, and that was like, that was part of my learning experiences, Like I let that happen, and I was. Like, oh, yeah, so that can turn bad really. Fair fellow messy with the with the player makeup that we had, and that was a player's thing too. The expectations just weren't fully say yeah, and unfortunately the game kind of fizzled out well like immediately after that, so we didn't really get to like undo anything. And like, I'm real curious about that player, like, you know, crying about meta gaming, whether like is this a thing where they like all of that pickpocketing of their friends that they were doing. Was that like secret notes passed back and forth to the d M and the players didn't know what was going on or did it happen in the open at the table and the DM said, Okay, you succeed in your pickpocket but you know, okay, so Joe, you successfully pickpocket Jason, but Jason important that you understand that because he succeeded on the role. Like as players we know that, but your character doesn't know that that happened, right, and then like when you finally get caught, I don't think there's anything like there's no metagaming there at all for everyone to go that's where all our gold went, right, you know, like like it's not like it's one thing if like like if you're no kidding caught red handed, like going through people's stuff and you know, and then

8:41 everybody starts looking through their own stuff and they're going like, wait a minute, my necklace is missing, hold on, where's my ring? Like that? I mean, that's not metagaming. That's just like you know, you caught the asshole. Yeah, And this is it's important to note too that I believe this is like day one they yeah, yeah, they're doing the optional exactly optional additional part of this campaign where they start in Eltera L, which doesn't happen I believe in in the. In the book as we're in. That's interesting. That's an additional thing that like additional module that you can get that's through DM DM skilled. Didn't we do that? Yeah? I I bought that additional module.

9:22 And it was so funny to me that that the final line of that, and so now we're having a conversation about kicking this guy out because he had a tantrum, and it's like I would be having a conversation about kick him out because. He's a thief, right. You know, It's one thing to play the character class of rogue. It's another thing to just be a thief, right, And like, I don't, I don't, I don't need that, Like that's that's something that's demonstrated. Yeah too, but just like but even that, you're like wasted so much. Yeah, and it's like, you know, if there's not a purpose to it in the game other than like, well, that what my character would do, which, by the way, let me just say this right up, and I said it before, but if it's your first time joining us, let me just let you know, welcome to the show.

10:08 First all, well, yeah, welcome to the show. But also I hate that excuse, like, well, that's what my character would do, you know. My character. We're about to find out my character would do with the same thing that my person would do that I would do. But so so they started out, oh so this is like day one that we all just met. So like I think of this like our kids there used to be the show. MTV used to have shows, or maybe they still do, but it was called the Shows. Yeah yeah, it was called the Real World and a bunch of strangers. Yeah, a bunch of strangers that didn't know each other to sens when you stop being polite and start being real, start being real. Yeah. But so I'm saying right is like this is your real world. You're a bunch of people that, like you, find yourself in a circumstance together and like all of a sudden, your stuff starts going missing, like it's your first day meeting somebody, Like, yeah, you are going to be like, wait, that's that guy we just called it. Yeah, it's definitely that guy. I was missing something before and I noticed that I was missing something, or now that I look, I noticed that I'm missing a couple of things.

11:10 We just caught you red handed, Like you're not getting ganged up on that. It's called consequences for your action. Yes, And if I were the people that you know besides that dwarf, I would be thinking about not only booting that player, but looking for a different DM, or at least having a conversation with the DM about saying, hey, we don't we want this to be a table where that kind of happened stuff doesn't happen. Can we please, you know, put a lid on that. So scroll through the comments and someone says, kind of what we the first thing we thought was was all I can hear is we had no session zero. Yeah. Yeah, And you know you say you have a conversation with the DM, You're supposed to have one before you start the game. It's called session zero. They say, yeah, we were just all introduced to a tavern, managed to stop a bar fight. Then Elterell went by, by, which I guess might be a spoiler. Spoiler alert has a massive spoiler.

11:57 It happens, it happens stuff boiler th. The Delterrelle stuff more like Xterra element Right. Then someone else says, if none of you guys know this guy is not worth the effort of talking to him or educating them, just get rid of them. Says he's a friend of the DM and nobody else. So you know, you talk to the DM, be like hey, this is this is your friend. Get them in line, and we can't play this game. And my favorite comment this is basically the Fat Fox speed run. So yeah, this is I mean, there's no there's no non obvious advice in this one. Well, but this is also actually you know what, Yes, there is non obvious advice, and it's one of the first things that I that I mentioned another player or another commentator. He st four h two says, you know, does he have a twenty decks at level one? A plus nine shouldn't be possible unless he's already maxed out.

12:41 M m. Someone yeah, and then it says it doesn't work. Rules is written, but if you use the customized origin rules on D and D beyond, which is part of Tasha's you can put both the mountains towards plus two, say in decks, and then the skill master gives plus one. You can get that twenty at level one with point by or standard array, or if you just rolled and rolled rolled particularly well, which I'm guessing. I'm guessing that this thief might do might roll particularly particularly well. And then someone else says, welcome to the terrible dark magic that is rolling for stats. But when its feeds at first level and using Tasha's variant ability score rules, it's fun. But sometimes players use it to make very unbalanced and early level quote unquote builds. And this reason, in my opinion, that sentiment isn't broken is because it's supposed to be a choice between leveling your core stat to twenty or waiting to level eight. That's much more appealing than just raising your commad by one. So but yeah, it's like combining all of this new variant rules. You know, you're giving people free feets for no reason. Yeah, this is also the DM you know, doing a fat too speed run everyone's finding out today. So yeah, lots to learn from this one.

13:52 Does sound like this is a newer DM and kind of fell into the same pitfall that I know I kind of did first. The other thing that I wanted to just sort of interject here is that the other conversation that you can have is like whether gold even matters in your game, because in my games it tends not to. It tends to just be kind of a market. Yeah, if you from the job you want money, shut up from the jump. If you say go. Get a jupant money, that bad. Like, yeah, there's a reason for it, though, there are some things trapped behind paywalls, like diamonds.

14:37 Sure that you need to guess certain spells make it. Clear at the beginning. If you make it clear at the beginning that you're going to treat it as a group resource, then like, then then that just takes ship like your buddies just off the table, because it doesn't you know, like if if if the only number we're keeping track of is okay, the party has twenty thousand gold, it doesn't matter whether you know, the paladin's lugging it around, you know, on his back in a great big chest, or the wizard has it in a little bag in the form of a dozen gems or something like that. You know, then then that that just takes that stuff right off the table from the jump. And it also means that you know whatever, like you know, filching fifty gold from like a merchant or something like that becomes completely uninteresting, which is which is how I would like that with like.

15:27 Just like any shared bank account that comes with a lot of trust and has to come from a partnership with that is based on trusts. Yeah, and you know, there's only two situations where you have a shared bank account, well three three situations you have a shared bank account. You can be married, you mean a dn D party, You can be business partners and that's kind of what a d ND party is is married business partners with kids, business partnership with slightly more sex. Yes, especially if there's parts of that party or dragon board. But yeah, you can't. You can't even start that conversation with somebody who's thieving from their own party. If you do get to prevent sieve me from your own party, have a much bigger problem before you get to the share bank account. Absolutely, And to Joe's point where like, yeah, yeah, you got things like you know, diamond dust or a vivifi that costs you a bunch of gold rather than finding gold, I'd rather give them a diamond that they can turn into dust. I think that. I think it's more interesting.

16:18 If they want to plus one armor that bad and it costs like a couple of thousand gold, I'd rather be like, okay, well it costs as much. Well you guys have seven gold? Cool? What if you go kill this dragon for me? And I would give plus one armor. I think that's so much more interesting than gold and or stops and stuff. We get this at the games the game store, way more than the breweries where we get loop hungry players. But they're they're probably young there most of them, or they're just new players that I know, got guys in the thirties who just never played before and they think that this is what it went about exactly. Well, or they're they're coming to it out of like MMOs or something like that where that stuff. Matters fall out where I'm like, I need all the bottle cap so I exactly yeah, perfect example.

17:02 So like that is my way of shaking them out of that. It's like, know the what we're actually after telling a good story and with the other and the method to get there is by getting by leveling up stuff like that. The other thing that you do. Actually at the games that you host to is you have that spray bottle and when people try to do that, you spray in with the water. Say nothing, like like a kid. I don't have that my brewery kit for the dry eraseports. So I'm just saying it, just saying it's got multiple purposes as all. And I do have a large bag of dice that I can throw if they really pissed me off. I have that that metal d one hundred.

17:43 Hello adventurers, just stepping in here to remind you guys that we're actively looking for submissions for our Hello DMS episode that gets reported every month. Send us your burning D and D questions to Hello Adventurers Podcast at gmail dot com. Or send us appointsmail by visiting Hello Adventurers podcast dot com slashed voice. Don't forget to begin your message with Hello DMS. You can't wait to get your questions to talk about them on the show. Send us your questions today. That's Helloadventurers Podcast at gmail dot com or the. Voice at Helloadventurers podcast dot com slash voice. Now, let's get back to the show. Next one, let's do well, let's do two more of these, let's do let's do this. Let's do a really quick one and see if we can squeeze him a fourth one.

18:29 This one is just funny and it's something that Joe and I have actually dealt with firsthand. And what I read this to B like, isn't it ridiculous? And he's like, wait a second, and yes, it is ridiculous. This is coming from a user us. Your name is actual Keanu Reeves. I'm gonna I'm gonna dispute whether you're the actual counter mightbe might be the title of the post is player tried to sneak in an overpowered Homebrew cantrip. All right, so super short post as a title said as one of the players in the group that I DM for it, took a Homebrew cantrip for his warlock that let him roll six D twelve as a bonus action without a material cost, ritual, or concentration at level four. He never even asked if Homebrew was okay, and seemed upset when I told him he needed to switch that spell out for something in the books. Wild to me that some people get upset when you won't let them be so overpowered that destroys any semblance of difficulty balance. Also, I now feel like I should look over his character sheet to make sure he isn't trying to sneak in other pieces of a BS in there. Wait, what do you mean I can't What do you mean I can't do that?

19:38 Was he upset that you didn't allow it, or that you were like laughing hysterically clutching your sides. Hold on, what spell is that? Eldridgema? It's just completely insane and there's nothing to talk about for this particular story. It's like, Yeah, that's dumb. I can't believe you thought you get away with that. Don't do this. But this opens up like a couple of different things. So first of all, he's like, oh, now I have to look over his character sheet. Maybe you should? Yeah, you should, you should? Anyway, I don't. I don't think you know. I'm let's let's put this on the table for a second. How do you guys feel about going over your player your player's character sheets and approving them? Is that something you do, Like.

20:21 If I'm running stuff at the store or you know, or like in a brewery or something like that, and it's pregens, then we pregens. You don't have to because you already did. There's a certain like I don't want to spend a lot of time policing people, but a quick glance. Yeah, yeah. And I also kind of like there's also a way to kind of treat this as more like a positive thing. And it's like some of us may be new to the game, you know, and we're all going to make sure that we're all playing according to the rules, because that makes sure that we're all on the same page about stuff. And if you notice that somebody has maybe made a mistake or misinterpreted something, call it to the attention of the table, and we'll all talk about it, and we'll make sure that that's being played correctly. So that's a way of introducing the idea that if anybody goes too far off book right, that we're gonna you know that, like it's everybody's job to rein them back.

21:19 And he gives everybody permission to say yeah, no, no, no, no cause because like if I'm sitting, like if I'm a player sitting next to that guy and he's pulling out his sixty twelve for his. Come what are you doing? Come on man, what do you like? What do you do? What do you doing? Do I stop at sixteen? Like everybody at the table should feel like they have permission to call bs on something like that. But you know. Whatever, a plus one here and there, or whether you know, somebody like actually doesn't have any level one spell slots left, they cast an extra magic missile. If you catch, you catch it. If not, you know, and we're all having fun and the game's rolling along, then the game's rolling along.

22:05 You don't sweat it. Yeah, and stuff like that with with the with the matt with the spell slots, like, I'm not going to like check your spell slots. I have so much things to track, you know, just don't don't be abusive. And if you if you're casting, you know, you know, level three spells every single turn a level five, then we'll talk. But the table wow, right, yeah, it's it's a let he's level four, right, or the spells he's at level four. Yeah. So I'm saying like, I'm a level four whatever. I do a pretty good job, and I do you know, twenty or thirty points of damage? And then this guy does seventy. Sixty sixty twelves over here, Like I'm going to be like, wait, what excuse me? But yeah, don't don't do this. And I was gonna say, yeah, I thought you were starting to say, like, well, like if you're like a group of adults, But that's actually where I've had Rabbit, that's where Joe tell tell our story please.

23:00 Yeah. So I just I had to go into somebody's and I didn't I never looked at player character sheets before this, but I had to go in somebody's having trouble finding something on their player character sheet. And we pretty. Exclusively play on using D and D beyond it's it's I think it's a great resource, especially for new players and filling out the character sheet or whatever. We can go through the positives and negatives of that. Yeah, that's all episode right there. Yeah, actually the the next time. Yeah, but I like it, And so I was I was trying to help, and then I like noticed a bunch of green items, which in on D and D beyond. If it's a green item, it's a magic item. So I'm like, wait, what I didn't nobody were like level ones or something like, nobody should have magic items. There was no magic.

23:49 Items, and I look and this player had added like a couple of like like rare magic, very powerful magic items, Like what is this? And then I checked another person who was this person's significant other, and they also. Had a bunch of like rare powerful magic items, and so I deleted them. I remember why you had to check sheets, and can I can I can I blow them up a little bit? Yeah, I'm not going to I'm not gonnallusions. Okay, So this was the friend and the significant other, and then their kid was also playing with us, so you can tell. All the friends set up all their character sheets and we were looking up as the kid asked about specific stats for their familiar, which, of course at level one was a sofa track. Yeah. Right, And Joe learned a valuable lesson to just give just give it a glance again.

24:44 So now I now, again, that's a nice part of D and D Beyond is that I can that you can glance at everybody's at any given time. So we had another plant more recently that. Was having and this is turning into something else, but that was having trouble with They kept casting a spell and we're like, something doesn't seem right about this, and we realized he was misreading. Was he misreading the spell or I forget what it was? But we could go into D and D beyond because he read it to us. But what he read wasn't what exactly what the spell said. Because I'm not at a point where I can I know the spells off the top of my head. So a lot of times I'll just rely on my players and go, hey, like, read it back to me. You read their interpretation. They read their interpretation.

25:30 No, no, no, no, read it verbatim please. Now, So now that's a new thing I have to do is go back and actually, yeah, again with D and D beyond, I get too short, I get to go and do that. Actually, don't know what you're talking about that last one, so we'll talk off. We'll off. I don't blow up any particular player spots, although in next case it's fun Nick. That probably was Nick, I think, I think, I know. I figured it was Spell it was though, but it wasn't Nick. Jimmy mentioned before that, like, I know you have Pregen characters, even for these one shots. For the Brewery games, we do encourage them to use our Pregen's just because we have no time to waste. But at the game stores especially, you know, if it's advertising, they know what level it's going to be, they'll come in with their characters. And for for game store players, I'll encourage them to play something they want to play. But then but then I'm reading it twice and this actually goes both ways. And this is why I want to bring it up, because we'll have the occasional character that throws in like a plus three weapon and you're like, no, not everyone else gets that. And I know I had one Debris last week where he built a pretty normal level three cleric and he just had a magic item in there, like a plus one armor or something. I'm like, hey, I built all these characters without magic items, so just just unequipped that and we're fine and now and now you're on the same level as everybody else. But then in the other direction, we get you know, new players at these things. And it's particularly with Beyond. If you don't equip a thing, you don't get the benefits of that thing. Just adding it to your inventory is not enough player at my game store games. Who is the type of kid that like, you know, it doesn't it doesn't like to make a lot of noise, you know,

27:00 draw a lot of attention to himself, although he mostly exclusively plays rogues, But that's neither here nor there. So actually, yeah, it makes a great good rogue, good. Good class to play. I don't want to draw attention to you. But she's not like the quiet kid that won't talk who's playing a bard. Yeah. Yeah, So after a couple of games, and he had his character on Beyond on his phone and you know, after a couple of sessions where I was like, no, like, so I attack him like it does an eleven hit and he's like yeah, I'm like don't think that's right, because yeah, you know, ten plus your decks alone, forget your armor should at least get you to thirteen or fourteen. Yeah, So I'm like, let me see this, And I look at his I look at his equipment, and he's got it. Know, you know, he's got studded leather. He's got what he's supposed to have. He didn't equip anything, yep. So like so he sitting with an ac of like ten and and just you know, getting trounced. So so I now double check, especially younger and newer players, if they're using Beyond, I check everything to make sure that you're correct for for both reasons, because they overpower themselves and try to be a sneaky little sneaky little boy and slipping the silver dragon familiar or they might be it might be the opposite, and they make a mistake that ends up costing them a lot. So you should be given giving your players it once over the game of playing. Now, we built our character sheets together and I physically wrote it out for them.

28:20 I mean, whenever you can, you want to do shared character building. When I ran campaign games in the store, that's what we did our first session was always we build our characters together, and then you know. I should I should point out this is that this is going to be an ongoing. Campaign yet, yes, absolutely, yeah, yeah, And because then if you build all your characters together, then there's there's a very little room for that kind of fudging. And everybody's at the table at the same time as you're leveling up and getting treasure and all that kind of stuff, so there's there really isn't room to slip that sort of stuff in there. Yeah, this is also one player with some experience playing it, like he's playing in Wana Joe's game as well and then now playing in this one with me and a couple of one shots here and there, but it was really only his second the full campaign. The one girl she's only played one shots with me. The one guy has only played one shots with me, and the other guy has played like two one shots with me and then one like five years ago in college and it didn't go well. So like, so these are fairly inexperienced players, and I get to like literally hold their hand to be like, hey, let's go step by step and here's everything to consider, and they're like things that they didn't even know was on the table to consider. Yeah, and Jim, you and I were talking about off Mike before we started this episode about alternate character sheets rather than Beyond.

29:32 We were using character sheet by a more purple, more better that'sn is it dot com MPMB dot com and these did a lot of things that Beyond does for you by like you know, automatically during your character sheet, and we can we spent hours, will come up with concepts and make an artwork and like really like it was, we had a couple of beaters and it was like some of the best times we've had hanging out and we got characters out of it. We didn't play one minute of an actual game, yep. And then all four of us went to work the next day because we all work together. But yeah, but like. Those sessions can be as you know, there can be as much creativity and fun going on in those because you're asking background questions, awesome, trying the origins together and stuff like that. You know, that's a lot of those, A lot of those indie games I play, written into the rules are Okay, your first session is going to be making bonds with each other and all that sort of thing. And I think you know, there's no D and D game campaign that isn't just going to really benefit from from that kind of approach.

30:29 I think we forget sometimes that D and D is a team sport. Sure. I mean they walked into that session zero with like rough character ideas and a couple of like mechanics things that they wanted to do, and like maybe a name, and they walked out excited for this game. Yeah, that's great. That that's the best way to go to see if you can swing it that way. Yeah. So all that to say, don't don't try to sneak when past your DM under the DMS, don't let people sneak when past you. And yeah, there's a there's balance for a reason. Unbalanced games are not fun. All right, let's build the T Jason, Let's do one more RPG horror stories, because I feel like we're getting into like DM academy territory with a lot of it. I think this is just RPGT I think we just say, yeah, we deserve, we deserve a horror story. Let's say it like this is RPG gossip stories. Sure. All right. This is from user, a British historian, and the title is an out of character couple in my game just broke up over a neat one. Okay, we have a rule in our game that if your character is making an item, you don't roll crafting on it right away. Rather you wait intil the item is stress tested, then roll. I actually don't hate that rule. This is to avoid players just trying over and over again to craft something. Obviously, this is mostly done calmly having a friend take a swing at the new shield or whatever. But we had a tense moment where the players are running across the field down towards a cliff chased by bandits. The couple, one a human fighter and the other a halfling artisan, make it to the edge first. This cliff had an

32:00 old rope bridge that had fallen apart and was hanging loose. The Halthleen set to work grabbing all the ropes and was thrown to the other side by the fighter. After one turn of the fighter and the two other players holding off bandits, the bridge was ready. The Halthleen has a plus eight to crafting. I say it's a rush job, but it will have to pass on a DC fifteen or DC ten if you wait a turn and continue to work on it. Players decide to hold out another turn, get a bit danked, but otherwise holding steady. Just before the Halfleen's third go the fighter asked to use their movement to cross the bridge with a DC ten. I honestly didn't want to get too held up here, so I say sure. They rushed first onto the bridge. Halfleen gets a gnat one, No matter, last of the day, Halfleen luck another gnat one. Bridge snaps, roll decks, Fighter rolls at thirteen. Sure, fine, you grab onto the bridge now hanging out with the far side of the cliff.

32:53 We all had a laugh and this seems like a silly action movie moment, and thus led to the rest of the party leaping to grab the bridge like a lap her and climb, jumping on top of the fighter and naturally meeting The fighter was the last one up and got shot by some arrows, but no real harm done. Party escapes the crisis and sets up can to rest and recover. So far, that's actually a pretty good, pretty good action scene. Yeah sounds cool. Yeah, that sounds great. Halfly apologizes to the party during the downtime, feeling really bad about the bridge, and the fighter player was very bite saying to the effect you always fail when it's important. At the time, I read this as a very immersed in character moment of the two characters, and it was like watching two actors on stage be angry with each other, and I thought it was all in kind spirits. Next week we go to meet up and Fighter doesn't want to play anymore after the last session, Halfleing says she was apparently really upset about it and angry. They broke up the next day after an argument about him coming to the session. I'm sure there were other issues, but I.

33:48 Feel like a cat I thought there were just great. I feel like a catalyst here. You always fail when it matters, which like. To see fighters. So the halfling was is the crafter. The fighter is the one that that tried to cross the bridge couldn't. Fighter says to Halfling, you always fail and it's important. Yeah, and then it says, we go to mean Yet the Halfling was upset by the fighters words. Yeah, and that didn't show up. That broke up. Mm hmmm, yeah. I mean that honestly sounds just like her every everything leading up to that, Like that's a good game. I actually that's an awesome sen game. I really I really like that crafting mechanic where you when you roll on using the item, not making it. That's great. Yep, that feels so much more like plausible because they variant on the d C but it depends if you want to rush it or take a turn to do it. This is like, this is good, Jemmy. And then it's like, yeah, sure, you grab onto the thing and everyone's got to hoist you up. That's a really cool moment.

34:56 Yeah. And and the craft and and it's also important. I think that's the important thing is that the crafting failure is not and everybody dies. It's oh, here's another opportunity for adventure that that particular failure creates. Some other people have to make some dice rolls and stuff like that. What all it's doing is changing the situation as opposed to you know, it doesn't auto dump everybody into whatever whatever. Yeah. Yeah, this is this is handled so well the whole way. It's been so long since I've seen a good DM in these stories. A breath of fresh air. Yeah. And also sometimes the dice have a story to tell. It's kind of like when we used to play we play a game called card Gets humanity. We had random card lession and sometimes it was just like the game was funnier than all.

35:38 Of you where that's where my old podcast came from, from a from a joke about how good the random cards were. But yeah, this obviously has nothing to do with the game. And what great rope plane by the halfling to take that that thing that is like over the campfire the mechanics to take the mechanics and then turn that into man, I really you know, I'm sorry I let you guys down, and which is supposed to be an opportunity for the other players to go, oh no, no, no, you know your your gadgets have saved our lives more times than we can count. And of course that's where the fighter says, not every swing of my sword at a monster runs it through the heart. Sometimes it requires more than one try, and we know your.

36:22 Heart is in the one for the moral of the story. Yeah yeah, and that's exactly why you suck to bring it up in role play. Like all I'm saying is she's single. We know she's single, and she role plays And now that was the other thing now needs a campaign so the dice have a story to tell. Maybe the dice for telling a whole different story of the whole time, like it was the universe letting you know, like this was the guy for you, her person for you. I don't know. Browsing through the comments and like, you know, it's like, is it one person using a one in four hundred chance to vent at their partner like a child in public?

37:05 Yeah? Yikes? Was it? Like was it really good role play? And and the halfling just took it wrong? Like either way, there's again there's there's underlying issues here. Maybe the ex boyfriend is just super immersive, like it just happened to line up. She had just lost her job, like you always fail when it matters that period. On the way home, he's like saying, it's what my character, what do you. Want, bro? Character would do? This is what my character would do. Gives the ring back, he says, At the time, I was like, oh, spicy, intercharacter conflict. Fun. And the next day it was like, yikes, Wow, Brittany is a much better actress than I ever thought. She was so immersed, she was so immersious crying for a week. Yeah, oh my god, I think I don't think going to top that one this week now, I'm glad we chose the t Yeah, yeah, that was that's awesome. Sorry for well, you know, you know, good for her because that sounded that sounded like it was. Yeah, it's on its way out anyway. The dice are right on that one. And if you need a table, if you have a seat at a table.

38:15 Yeah, call me. So lose the whole ass man, that's what they like. What the advice columnists would say, like, you know, dun't that guy and his character. As my mother used to say to my my female friends in high school, it's like, so I heard you just lost one hundred and fifty pounds of ugly fat. So that's gonna do it for RBG horror stories this week. Unfortunately, we have lots of these every single month, So send us your awful stories from your worst games or you know, players who completely mistook excellent moments in your great games because that game sounded like it was going so well and it's his loss for not showing up now, yeah, teachable moments. Yeah. So, you can send your stories over to your Hello Adventures podcast at gmail dot com or tell us yourself Hello Adventures podcast dot com slash voice and that like your story, You'll will tell it on the show, and you know we'll react and give you advice and just have a just have a good time, like any good parasocial relationship your DMS. Yes, we're gonna do a mail bag episode slash DM Academy episode pretty soon, but I think that's gonna wrap it up for today. Guys, Thanks for reading horrible stories with me, Anya So, and thank you for listening to Hello Adventurers. You're your host, Jason Portiso, Jim Crocker, and Joe McCall producer, editor, an engineer.

39:28 Jason Portiso used it by an experior artwork by Krisdon Broderick. You can reach out to us with any feedback or suggestions by emailing Hello Adventures Podcast at gmail dot com. Hello Adventures is a JTP audio production. Good Goodbye Ventures, GI will you rolled in that one? I'm sleeping in our bed. I'm quitting the podcast.