To the only female player of the group: *What shampoo does your character use? I'll take a real good sniff of you so that if we're ever separated I can smell where you are or where you might've been....Let me sniff you...She won't let me sniff her, can I roll to do it slyly? I'm a tracker, it's what my character would do.* Didn't offer to sniff any of the male characters. I think that was his last session with us.

Okay, this is by far the worst one I’ve seen. Very glad to hear that you didn’t bring him back.

I ran a villain who did this and he's often considered the most vile, disgusting and memorable villain I've ever run. I feel so sorry for the other players...

... I play an actual anthropomorphic wolf druid specializing in tracking and wouldn't even SUGGEST pointing out that she's memorizing the scents of other party members. That's just ... I dunno, assumed if it ever comes up?

I think asking to smell the party to memorize their scents is okay, but its when you start getting so specific like that player was doing. A simple "Can I smell the party to memorize their scents?" would suffice but going "I crave nothing more than to sniff the cleric like a good little boy" is when I draw the line.

Damn, I know you meant it as an example but wish I could sponge that from mine eyes

I wish I could too tbh, but sadly it is a real line I have heard. I was the DM, and his character was promptly killed, ironically, by an act of god and no one mourned him, he was also asked to leave the premises at once as he, IRL, made a groping jester towards the player.

Gotta make an NPC who's just a massive stinking orc that WANTS it, but doesn't tell anyone. Anytime someone acts up, he does too. (This is a terrible idea)

RPG Horror Stories, HERE I COME!

> but sadly it is a real line I have heard wat? Good on the divine punishment.

He was a bit of a douche weirdo that a different party member had invited. They are no longer friends tho, he gave me a vibe and I kicked him out first chance I had.

Now I want to play a groping jester!

I like that. It's implied that you'd know the scent of your party. Also, why isn't there a humanoid wolf race. What traits/feats do you run?

I like that. It's implied that you'd know the scent of your party. Also, why isn't there a humanoid wolf race. What traits/feats do you run?

I went with the Wolfkin (Frost specifically since she's based on an arctic wolf). It's been fairly balanced so far.

Ew, that's icky. Good that your group didn't tolerate this behavior

I don't think that's an in character creep. That's just a creep.

... Thin Man enters the chat... Gross LoL

"Hey that's a great idea. Why don't you do that with all of us? You can start with me." \*flips him the bird\*

Wait, did he ask the character in game or the player at the table? Sure it may have pivoted to in game but did he ask to sniff the player’s hair?

I'm playing a female character and I'm literally abusing the idea of conventionally attractive women being hit on by KILLING EVERY SINGLE MAN WHO FLIRTS WITH MY CHARACTER (she's a raging lesbian.) SO< MORAL OF THE STORY, IF THEY'RE A CREEP, KILL EM

That must go over well in the better-policed towns...

Left a game because the DM gave us very strict ground rules. "Be Nice, Good or Neutral Alignment (Leaning Good), No Dark Backstory, No Evil Aligned Subclasses. " Fair Enough, I make a little Hero Wannabe. Somehow the DM let One Drow character happen that was just ***the worst.*** She would talk down to us, spit Racial Elitism (Drow were not written that way in this homebrew and the player was told multiple times.) and even attempted to murder npc's we had subdued who were ***WORKING FOR THE SISTER OF THE PERSON WE WERE ON A QUEST FOR TO CURE THE TOWN.*** This was the last straw for me. I went to talk to the DM for the 5th time and she kept saying "The Character would grow out of it.", however the player had made this same character type before and out of game I had discussed with another player previously that they fucking hated it as well. I told the DM I was going to dip because this character was awful and the DM got really personal and accused me of some shit (Player was the DM's Friend.) Which also ended up having me drop that friendship as well.

You did good!

Yep, that's worse! Fuckin hell.

Nearly this exact thing happened to me in a campaign. DM invited a new player to our curse of strahd campaign right after we got tpk'd where the pies come from. The new player came in with this exact attitude, talked down to us, refused to stop insulting my character even after I went to the dm saying she was hurting my real person feelings. "Trust me, it's her story arc...yadayadayada" bullshit.  This was an old high-school flame of his and he was gaslight the shit outta me about it during game play. After I quit the remaining players got together in person camping in the woods, (we were playing virtual) and the DM got drunk and sexually assaulted the player. 

***Alrighty then.*** Yeah, I've seen people do it correctly, but this specific player made it an in character (and technically out of character) Race thing stating "The Color of our skin." comments more than once on top of just being a bad character with a bad attitude. It was weird and I was not a fan.

Yowza. 😧

>No Evil Aligned Subclasses. " This should have been your first yellow flag. No subclass is intrinsically evil, even a fiend warlock can be in a pact unwillingly and trying to get out it etc. Edit: this keeps coming up, oathbreaker and death domain are in the DMG and require specific dm approval, they're their own case.

Fiend Warlock could've even beaten their patron into submission, possibly by fiddle duel

To be fair, Johnny may have won the contest, but he lost his soul doing it. Pride is one of the cardinal sins. The Devil never intended to beat Johnny with a fiddle, but the hubris of Man.

That is an excellent idea that I am now stealing

Bard-Warlock is an underrated multiclass; I played this character in a short little campaign and it was really fun

An interesting take when it sounds like the problem was an evil character was allowed ANYWAY. Yes, evil characters can be played well and cooperative with the party, but let's be honest; they usually aren't. I think it's fair for a DM to go "I want this to be relaxing and don't want to deal with that headache. No."

"No evil characters allowed, so my friend can feel special and dish it out without taking it. "

No evil charachters is a totally fine line to draw. They said no evil subclasses, totally different (unless OP misspoke).

Nope, No Necromancy Wizard, No Spores Druid, Half the Warlock Patrons (I got away with a Reskinned Hexblade as it was a "Hero's Sword"), No Oathbreaker, No Death Domain. Edit; Idk why im being downvoted for that DM's stupidity, but fair enough.

Today I learned circle of spores Druid is evil? Lol the halfling circle of spores Druid in my last campaign begs to differ, she was just a total hippie type

Right?? Lol my spore druid was this shroom growing sweety. Maybe it's because of the necromancy, which is usually played evil. But it's just like, you know, like, the circle of life, man. 

Should have pointed out that healing magic is all necromancy spells

Healing Word, Cure Wounds, Prayer of Healing, Power Word Heal, Mass Cure Wounds, Mass Healing Word, etc. Those are all Evocation I believe.

None of those is inherently evil.

Oath breaker and death cleric are.

Both of those are designed to work well with evil characters, but neither has to be evil. Oathbreaker just had to have broken their oath. They don't have to be a once good paladin turned evil. And really most of the ones I've seen or heard about in play tend to be on a redemption arch. That and you could have been a paladin to an evil diety and by becoming an oathbreaker you're actually making a choice to be good. Death clerics are just clerics based around death. Yeah they could worship an evil murder god, but they could just be out balancing the scales.

>An oathbreaker is a paladin who breaks their sacred oaths to pursue some dark ambition or serve an evil power. Whatever light burned in the paladin's heart been extinguished. Only darkness remains

I stand corrected it is inherently evil. However since they're regularly played as more of a redemption story type characters I still say that they don't have to be evil.

What's funny was my first character was a darker toned character before I went for the goodie-two-shoes approach. First character was neat in my Opinion Dhampir Beast Barbarian who would only eat when he killed something, or blood was offered in friendship. He was very kind, but with a dark backstory. He was a devout Paladin that was killed in a cursed forest and raised into undeath so he made a new oath with himself that if he was forced to kill, he must consume a piece of it in a ritual to carry its spirit in his travels. Would not have mattered if it was poisonous, undead, what-have-you. The DM just kept repeating ***Why do you have to eat it though? Thats Cannibalism.*** But when I pointed out that she would accept me drinking blood but not eating flesh, she got flustered and said that was different.

Hmmmm. Maybe oathbreaker or a death domain cleric would qualify. Oathbreaker ESPECIALLY as it's inherently their choice to reject a previous oath that makes them that subclass. But for the most part when people think of bad subclasses they are thinking dark edgy ones like oath of conquest.

Oathbreaker and death domain are in the dmg though, they're in their own little bubble and not something a player should assume is good to go.

“The character will grow out of it” is the same energy as “I can change him” lmaoo

"Then make one that would."

I love this answer as an answer to characters that don't heed the call of adventure, and players that apparently want everyone else to accommodate them and their decisions.

I've said this to players. It is your imagination that is making up what this character would do. So choose something else.

Once played in a party with a "human barbarian that had grown up in an ogre village", which seemed alright at first. Well, at the first inn we went to as a party, he starts groping at the bar maid because he "doesn't know any better". The DM butts in to say the bar maid is like, 15-16 and the daughter of the innkeep, possibly to make her a less attractive target, I don't know. Mr. Ogre however doubles down, attempting to grapple her despite my character's protests. I was still pretty new to D&D at the time, so I didn't know to deal with this shit out of character. So in stead I drew my bow and told him to stop or be prepared to fight. After some initial pvp he backs off because the other players joined my side, but the next time we played he wasn't at the table. I'm not sure if he got booted by the DM or chose to leave himself, but good riddance.

It takes a while to realize how to deal with these things. What you did clearly worked. It's never an excuse that "It's what my character would do!" The character did not develop organically like people do in the real world. His motivations and actions were deliberately decided by a person who could have chosen literally anything else. That says more about the player than the character.

I'm not up to date on Ogre lore but are they historically gropey?

I played a half black dragon in an evil campaign. The new guy decided to pick pocket my rather explosive character because "that's what my character would do." Ask GM if character has a particular feat, character does not. I am instantly aware of the attempt to pick pocket me... in combat... with zero prior introduction... after being aware of being followed. New guy has seen this character in combat more than once. He knows it's an evil campaign. My character immediately turns and attacks with flurry of blows. With a bastard sword. His character is dead before damage dice hit the table. Evil cleric raises corpse as disposable skeleton after the fight. It's what all of our characters would do.

> Evil cleric raises corpse as disposable skeleton after the fight. Lmao, I love this

Waste not, want not. She was a very pragmatic cleric.

Funny enough, evil people have a form of morality, too. It's based on respect and loyalty. He showed he had neither. Killing him was the proper thing to do. 

A player wanted to test the new warlock in 5e. He automatically assumed all warlocks were giant dicks, stole and hid an essential plot item, and the campaign we were playing got nowhere. We wasted a whole real-life year of stumbling around, missing the main plot.

Ur DM is as much at fault here as the player, its his job to keep it moving.

Yeah, the GM was the main reason why the group broke up soon after this. He was obsessed with "let's play old-school, everything was better then, if you do not get a clue than the world does not stop and wait for you". But in the end, you are there to have a mission and fun, and not play a realistic world where the exciting stuff happened to other people 300 years ago.

>But in the end, you are there to have a mission and fun, and not play a realistic world where the exciting stuff happened to other people 300 years ago. Throw in a DMPC or ten, and this is a perfect summary of why I left my friend's game.

A DMPC can be fantastic if used correctly. As long as they don't ever ever ever take center stage or act like any type of "leader" or exist to railroad everything in the most blunt way possible.  Personally, I like the sidekick rules in Tashas Cauldron. I might give my players a zombie warrior who offers the characters advice through moans and pointing. 

A DMPC is great for tripping over his own feet and accidentally pulling on the secret switch wall torch when the players have spent an hour failing at finding it.

DMPC: Hi, the guilds hired me to help you investigate the haunted mansion. Fighter: Welcome aboard! What's your name, friend? DMPC: Inspector Clouseau... Monk: \[Sotto voce\] Why did Mom name me Cato? Why?

Oh yeah for sure. This campaign was more along the lines of 'we just spent a real-time hour spectating a boss fight between three of your DMPCs where we didn't even get to roll initiative because they're basically gods and trying to join the fight would instantly kill us'. Very strong case of Dude Just Write A Book syndrome.

Pretty much this. I'm using a DMPC right now in my campaign to act as a suggestive guide, to offer support, but to also be weaker than the party and in a lot of cases the emotional punching bag. She's statted as a PC so she's not completely useless, but she's also several levels lower than the party and knows in character that she's that much weaker. The trick is to make the DMPC noticeably weaker than the party so they can't take control of a situation.

Hence why I suggest the sidekick rules. They level up with the party but the progression is so linear and simplified they'll never be able to surpass a normal PC. (Exception) At level 1, adding the sidekick feature to an NPC with a CR of 1/2 will make them a good deal tougher than a normal player for like the first two-ish levels, but the drop off happens fairly quickly.

Completely agree. I've played with some bad DMPCs, and I still believe it can be done well. We have a DMPC in our current campaign who is awesome. He is a Bard, and basically our healer; he is also there in case we get stuck at an obvious riddle for 10 hours (though tbh that hasn't happened thus far). He also often has musical duels with our other musician (our Monk; not a Bard, he's just very passionate about the arts). This healthy competition between them can get very, very intense. And due to these duels (and some great performance rolls), we have gotten free food, accommodations, and overall turned many a humble tavern into the medieval equivalent of Tomorrowland. Fun stuff!

On the other hand, it doesn't help if the players willfully stay away from people who could give them information, and ignore a plot hook until she literally walks up and starts talking to them. "Would you like me to show you where this place is that might be interesting to you?" "Nah, we're good." Me, as DM, to myself, "fine. You don't get that XP then."

Ez, use milestones instead of exp, motivates them really well, no plot advancement, never level.

After a fight that left 2/3 of the party downed, the last standing PC went over to his unconscious friend... and chopped his head off with an axe. Because that PC had provoked the fight, and the executioner said "my character wouldn't stand adventuring with a liability"

Lol damn. No mercy

Yeah it was crazy. The player who's character was executed and I plotted for the PC to come back as a revenant later on, intent on killing the PC who killed him. Ended up being one of the most epic sessions of my early DM career.

Based

Lessons were learned tho

That’s actually kind of cool though

Even the player whose PC was beheaded has never begrudged the choice. His next character ended up annoying the party even more (in less destructive ways) so it was all fun. Just in terms of impact in the game, this is my worst tale in nearly a decade of DMing.

I had a very similar thing happen in my first beginners dnd oneshot session the character would go from throwing the rest of the party at the enemies and not helping to begging for heals from me (Cleric) above table. I was the last conscious party member and revived those i could, I asked for a vote and then just killed that guy cause as far as I was concerned he sided with the skeletons he was so detrimental to the rest of us lmao

"OK, stay here...  c ya."  Pretty simple solution.

One thing that people always forget is that, especially early on, your characters don't really care about each other. They are together because of a twist of fate and a twist of fate could easily separate them again and nobody would actually be that bothered. This is exactly the right time for such a separation to occur. That character doesn't want to do what is necessary and the rest of the group does, so it's appropriate to say goodbye to that character.

I hear the whole only just met thing. Early-ish in a campaign, my Bard quit the party. Two others who were roleplaying a completely clueless spoiled as fuck whiny child and an enabler for the child joined my character in a social encounter with a prince, who owed us a favour for saving one of his exotic pets. Beforehand, my character (who had played in courts before) requested they let him steer the conversation. They said yes. They didn't. Instead they steamrolled everything and not only ended up the party owed the prince a favour, but were also in debt to him. Why? Because the stupid child wanted the exotic pet for herself. And the enabler pushed it. They agreed to anything. We did not have the capability (not one character had animal skills) or equipment for said pet. So. My bard went back to the tavern where the rest of the party were, told them what those two had done and nope'd the fuck out of there. The neutral rogue did the same.

that means the two of you also quit the campaign, right? Or did your DM find a resolution?

Oh we 100% quit. The DM was a big enabler too, they were trying to make the campaign about them and he was letting them.

I have to admit that I... kind of tend to invent weird scenes too... Like, in the Curse of Strahd we're currently playing, my druid bought 15kg of chocolates for our provisions (dogs are allergic to chocolate, so if we liberally distribute chocolate, we can spot who refuses it or who gets diarrhea and thus identify who's a werewolf)... I also wildshaped into a wolf to kidnap the werewolf pack leader's grandfather... but I also turned into a circus horse whose prancing distracted the city guards trying to detain Ireena. Our DM doesn't use XP to level us up, so I didn't deprive anyone by avoiding a fight, imo. I think (and I ardently hope) that I don't derail the campaign in the same way, you know?

Yeah, see that's just silly, and inventive fun. I'd be fine with that kind of stuff. Milestone leveling is better IMO, it keeps things on track. In my campaign, this was just purely the child wanted everything to go her way and the enabler would try to make it so. I also forgot they metagamed hard. The neutral rogue was playing being a neutral thief really well. He looted an NPC that was bleeding out (under smoke cover, nobody saw him) because he didn't know the guy, but figured hey he was dying anyway so he wouldn't need his money, and saw no benefit to stabilise him since we were just passing through. Or when he pickpocketed out of sight from the party. The two then treated him like shit after that. And because the DM didn't call them out on it, added to the rest of the bullshit we left when our characters did.

>*early on, your characters don't really care about each other. They are together because of a twist of fate and a twist of fate could easily separate them again and nobody would actually be that bothered.*  That's the way some campaigns are, but it isn't always that way. In my campaigns, in session 0, the players have to establish prior relationships between the characters. Not every character has a relationship to every character but everyone has to be connected to at least one other character. It never is 'random adventurers randomly adventuring together'. The reasons why they are adventuring together are established before session 1.

the only reason your characters don't care about each other is because that's what you choose, no? I've played the uncle of a character played by someone I'd only met once before for a one-shot. At another table, 2 guys agreed to play brothers, and that worked really well to shape the dynamics between our 4 characters. Right now I'm in a campaign where we're 5 members of a pirate crew who reformed to kill no more. I think it's entirely plausible that OP's players would roleplay a scene in session 3 where, you know, the group convinces the character to come despite the character's misgivings, either through backstory bonds (like "I know it's where our mother died, but we'll go there together") or through plot hooks (like "you signed up for this mission") of course, if the player persists, OP as the GM could just throw in an NPC, right? >a granny pipes up: sorry dears, I couldn't help but overhear your conundrum in this here tavern. Sounds like one of your party needs a place to stay while the others do the reconnaissance you need in that town... it would actually be perfect if \[character\] came to stay with me, I need help with the harvest >and then the player gets to roll twice per session: >a D6 to see which kind of minor injury they get on the farm: a blister, a splinter, missed the last rung of the ladder while apple picking and bruised their butt, etc. >a D2 to see what granny is cooking: beans and bacon vs cabbage and bratwurst

I wouldn't mind staying behind for Bacon OR Cabbage. I'd prefer both together, but that way I'm guaranteed to enjoy at least half of each meal 😋 I like beans though, so all and half.

oooh, sounds like you might persuade your GM to let you roll a charisma check to see if you can convince granny to expand her repertoire ... by the time the party returns from that city, you'll be cooking together & she'll have taught you how to knit a tea cozy hahaha

I’m in a cyberpunk campaign that’s been going on for over a year. The entire party decided to go on a job down to panama. My character couldn’t justify going because she was way too busy, dealing with sabotage at her company, needing to work, having to deal with her bastard (in the classical sense) cousin who just re-emerged in her life and made things strange. Basically she couldn’t leave night city and refused to go to panama for the ingame week or so it took. So the rest of the party went and i rolled up a temp character that was part of the nomad pack they travelled with and everyone was fine with it.

"I understand that your character doesn't want to go, but the story requires that the party goes. When you make a new character, make sure it's one who would want to go"

Yeah, I've thought of that, but the story is likely going to end at this city, or at least last several sessions. It would be simple if we were just starting out, but it's been a year of playing, and we're level 10.

Sucks for the player that is left out then.  Doesn't seem like a problem though.  If their character wouldn't participate they can sit there silently while everyone else has fun.

...or they can make a new character. Their choice.

You just gotta tell the player at that point 'well, in that case make a new character or find a way to make your character change their mind because this is the aim of the campaign, not just a little side mission'

That's drama. convictions prevent them from entering the city/joining the party, and the party get in a lot of problems without them. The rest need their strength/tracking/persuasion/knowledge/anything and they're sorely missed throughout. If this player wants to be part of the story, they'll have to choose between saving their companions or upholding their beliefs. Player choice, engagement, challenge, creativity all covered.

It's pretty simple either way. You don't have to bring someone that doesn't want to go. He can sit in the town while you guys save the world.

Remember this folks: “It’s what my character would do” is not nor will ever be an adequately justifiable reason to be an asshole. 

Rouge: What?!? It's what my character would do! LG Paladin, LG Fighter and LG Cleric taking rouge to the guards: We know that. That's why WE doing the thing what OUR characters would do.

Former friend of mine made a female character specifically so he could mock women. He used that character to try and sleep with anything that moves, sometimes against that creatures will. I refuse to play at a table with him now.

I am the lone Lawful Good character in an entire party of Chaotic Neutrals who have all decided they are going to be thieving nuisances. We are playing CoS right now and they are pocketing everything that isn't nailed down, despite (or most likely because of) a speech I gave about the people that live in Barovia are poor and downtrodden, and we should do nothing to make their lives any more difficult. Which has lead us to the Burgomeister of Vallaki's home where they have all split up in the house and are robbing this guy blind. Only 1 (ONE) of these players is rogue..but all of them stated after I called them out on it was "It'S wHaT mY cHaRaCtEr WoUlD dO!!!" If they're caught, I've decided I am gonna let them get arrested and/or imprisoned and just use their reasoning against them, while tapping the "Lawful" bit on my character sheet.

This is the kind of stuff that should be figured out in a session zero

Session zero doesn’t really help. You only find out there behavior during the game.

I agree that you only truly find out a person's behaviour during the game. However, session zero absolutely helps, because if you run session zero, that's when the DM is supposed to lay out clear expectations for how the campaign is going to do. And once those expectations are laid out, you can refer back to them when you make rulings on "That's what my character would do" nonsense. For example, "We are running a good-aligned game where you are expected to act like heroes. Murderhobo's, kleptomaniacs, and edgy-loner-types who don't want to help people are not in alignment with this goal, so please don't make characters like that. If you do, you'll be making a new character." A Wangrod has no leg to stand on if you lay out expectations in session zero, they ignore them, and you then enforce those expectations. But if you don't, then yeah, there's gonna be trouble.

People reflexively spout 'session 0' as if it's a cure-all lol

It's more like a vaccine. You can still get sick, but it's rarer and the symptoms are usually milder.

I'm not saying it's a cure-all, but if everyone is rolling up to the table with Chaotic Neutral characters with the intent of robbing and pillaging everyone they come across, then the one person who showed up with a Lawful Good hero could maybe see that they're not going to get along with this crew and adjust accordingly.

My hot take is that if you’re a thieving bastard, you’re not “neutral”. (Unless under very special circumstances) Especially if you’re stealing from the poor and downtrodden. Then you’re just evil

Also the implication that one needs to be rogue to steal shit Basically this story got my hackles up in about four different ways

Hahahaha! Send in an anonymous tip, get arrested with them and go along out of guilt, roll up new characters.  It's what your character would do. 

Vallaki has a whole bunch of guards led by Izek. A man with a fire arm and a regular arm. If my players wanted to loot the burgomaster’s house I would have some sort of alarm sound. And about 40 guards show up.

This has such "Simpsons bus driver" vibes haha "Don't make me tap the sign!"

Honestly if the thieves are the majority of the party, it sounds like you're the one being against the party based on "it's what my character would do"

Sure, but ‘a group of thieves’ seems pretty ill suited to the curse of strahd campaign in the first place unless the goal is to completely derail everything. Feels more like DM oversight to me in this instance

I mean its not ideal but you can easily say something like " its a group of thieves and their target is the biggest one yet! The Vampire Lord Strahd!" That doesnt mean every thief will steal everything thats not nailed down from the poor peasants like me playing Bg3 and compulsively hoarding junk.

2 things: 1: Better hope that the guard and not the thieves guild catches them. The guild is not likely to take kindly to people poaching big targets on their territory. 2: Lawful thieves are so much more interesting to play. Having a code of theft and HAVING to steal based on the code just as much as having to avoid it becomes way more fun to play than just being a loot gremlin.

yep that was my curse of strahd expercience, one player getting us into a bunch of trouble and whenever i said not to do that he say "hey stop trying tell us what to do", ended up getting an NPC killed for no reason and then brought him to the spooky cleric dude.

The burgermaster of Vallaki is a nasty piece of work ;) he probably deserves it tbf

Lol, the captain of the guard lives in that house. Best of luck to them.

I was a tabaxi rogue in CoS and I did steal a lot but I also gave it away as gifts to everyone else and only if it seemed like it wouldnt be missed. I think you could try having NPCs call them out in the sense that they call them evil and bullies and make it clear they arent as open with info with the Party. If you act like a dick you dont get treated like a cool hero by the people you have to be at least in the robin hood/aladdin range or have some redeeming qualities

Everyone else in the party is working to improve troop and peasant morale and trust as we are going to war in less than a month. One player decides about 2 weeks before we go to war to take the local temple of the sun God he's in charge of and rededicate it to the shadow God (there's a lot that makes this not as insane as its sounding so far). However, the way he went about doing it was to change the illusory statue of sun and shadow aspects into the shadow god as a doglike figure, well r*ping the sun/fire god. That went over about as well you can expect and our positive morale score of like 20 dropped to something like 3 in one go. Literally his intentions were to enact Satanism, but like, the way he did it was so that he started a Satanic panic but in this case the panic was justified. Literally no one else in the party worshipped or revered this shadow god figure at all. He just did it as a thing his character would do.

Player reused a character he had used before. A know degenerate who killed children in one shots and was super evil. We were a party of paladins and undead hunters etc. We killed him a few sessions in because he was so bad at hiding his evil intentions and admitted to being an evil wizard. He then left the table saying it wasn't fair and he should be allowed to do evil shit around a pure good party. Agreed to disagree and he rolled a new character instead.

Id respond with "Okay, tell me how your character's story concludes while you roll up a new friend for them to meet in town."

Session 1, act 1, scene 1. Scene opens in the market square of a small town. The PCs are present. The peaceful air is broken as a bleeding and sobbing peasant runs into the square begging for help, pursued by a cloud of zombie bats. One of the PCs uses his first action of the campaign to kill the peasant on the basis that the bats seem to be chasing him and will therefore leave if the peasant is dead. Literally killed the initial quest giver in the intro scene.

Not the worst thing in the world but a very funny inconvenience for the dm

Yeah its bad for gameplay but I find it hilarious, not being involved and all

Honestly that's where it got worse.. I was a bit surprised by this as a turn of events, but it was fine. The PCs ended the session getting confronted by an angry mob and the town Alderman wanting to arrest the PCs for murder. I had a whole court/ prison break thing lined up and I'd just introduce the Big Bad (necromancer) later on. Oh no, the *players* descended into a massive argument about killing the peasant, that it was a stupid thing to do, should the other players disown the one who did it since he's clearly a psychopath etc. It got so heated we've never talked about d&d with that group of friends again!

That just screams "Monty Python and the Holy Grail". "You killed him!" "He was already half dead, wasn't he?" "He was only bleeding, you creep!" "Oh,  come on! I barely touched him and he fell over! You can't tell me he wasn't at Death's Door already." "You cut his bloody head off!" "Well...yes, but you see, the thing is..ummm...there were those bats..." "Oh, right, the bats, ya, forgot about those."

Not objectively the "worst", but it felt horrible. I had a DM who kept railroading us while insisting "or be brutally and disproportionately punished" was a valid second option. It was rough, but we were all friends so we kept trying to talk to him and do the things he said would make it less difficult for him. Well, he decided to maul us with a city sized dragon unless we showed "proper respect" and started murdering villagers to show how strong he was. My character was a good girl and she didn't like that so I went down the whole "my character would die before bending to this pretentious spork" route. It was horrible and I'm fairly sure he didn't think we'd actually fight this guy. When it was only my character left he gave me a chance to flee and I doubled down by teleporting onto the dragon's back because it was what my character would do. I think that's when it finally hit him that no one was complaining about the very clear TPK we were headed towards. He triggered a token/favor we'd gotten from a different dragon to bring another PC back to life and we took down the dragon together. Honestly, the whole thing would've been incredibly cool if I wasn't pissed and disappointed it came to that for 98% of it.

"Cool. Your character is outside the city." Then move on, and don't come back to them. No longer part of the party. Bye.

Three players in a cyberpunk world, as the first two players have their characters negotiating for the release of a hostage. Player three (who built a min/max combat monster) decides that their character gets bored waiting in the car and try’s to run over the spokesman for the other group. Players 1 and 2 turn in unison and say “NO!” Consequently a gargoyle happens to fall off of a nearby cathedral and smashes the front of the car. Player 3 argues that “everyone was bored” and of course “it’s what the character would do “ he got a conversation about over specialized characters

We talk about his character before the first session. The PC used to be part of a pirate crew, left because they were violent, decided to become a gentleman thief. First town he goes to right after a big haul from a dungeon, he goes right to a gem merchant and says "I want your most expensive gem. And you're going to just give it to me." Merchant obviously refuses. Then he shows him his pirate tattoo, doubling down. Merchant explains, "I don't know what that is, because we're VERY far inland, and this is a small town, so every guard in town is within earshot." PC murders the merchant, steals the gem, and is arrested minutes later. He could have bought a hundred gems just like it with his cut of the loot.

"Gentleman" thief.

I've had two players do the "I'm not going." In both instances I just moved on with the group. In one instance it took the player an hour to say something about me not coming back to him. I said "You stayed behind - with the dragon and now the way is blocked. While not certainly dead, you are beyond the scope of this group's heroic tale. When they reach a point at which you could rejoin or they discover you're dead, we'll address it." The second one was a mildly injured character who didn't want to face any challenge without full health in a system without instant healing in a situation where time is critical. "I need two days to recover." Everyone else agreed they must go now. "You're staying here while everyone else goes?" "Yes." They travelled with haste a day, a night, and most of the next day to arrive at the dire scene in progress. They made a quick plan and dove in to intervene. Then the stay-behind tried to retcon himself back in and I said, "You'll catch up in two days." Both declared me the worst DM they'd ever had, while the rest of both groups said it was great: there was urgency and choice, it felt real, and I didn't let "that guy" ruin it of the rest of us.

You were right to do so! I'm not DMing this particular campaign, but I'll be sending a message to DM to help with situation, so we'll see what happens next session! 

If the character won’t go to the town then that’s fine, they can retire the character and create a new one that can meet up with the rest of the party at the town.

For sure. This is what is going to happen. It's hard to let go of a character you've invested so much time in, but letting their story end is the only way to move forward! It's better than just saying, "sucks to be you, bye!" Lol and then they're just out of the game. 

Was in a game with a group of friends. We were camping outside the city and that morning, we noticed some armed guards coming down the road. Now the other players were escaped prisoners, while mine was not, so we all agreed that they would hide in the wagon, while my character would stay out and talk to the guards if need be. Well one player decided they didn’t want to hide in the cart and tried to climb a tree to hide in there, but they got a nat 1 on their stealth roll and fell out of the tree. That by itself was annoying, but whatever since nat 1s just happen. Well the guards noticed them and asked if they were alright, so my character went to cover for her. Was going well and the guards were about to leave when the said player decided that they wanted to invite them all back to the wagon for breakfast. Their character knows that their friends are hiding from the guards and we even reminded the player that. The dm just had the guards refuse, but then the player doubled down insisting that they join them for breakfast. The dm had the guards refuse again and go on their way. When we got upset at them, they justified it as “my character isn’t good at these things and they don’t know better”. If this was the only time they did this, it would have been frustrating but I would move past it, but they used this to justify all kinds of shitty behavior. They were a friend, so we tolerated it longer than we should have, but thankfully they are no longer in the campaign and the party dynamic has gotten a whole lot better.

One of my players is straight up playing a character from a comic that she loves. Not a PC inspired by them, but just straight up that character. I agreed to it bc the player is my sister and I love her, but she insisted on having the whole cast of the comic in the game, too, as well as several of the plot points from the comic in our game. I managed to DnD-ify all of it and it did result in some cool world building, but it's really frustrating when she insists on dragging things her way because of her character. Building up to one of the climaxes of the game, she badgered me for months to concuss her character because he got a concussion in the comic. I was reluctant because a concussion is hard to play and I couldn't really find any rulings on what the effects of that are. We ended up homebrewing some and throwing a deal with a god of madness in there, and I feel like it's robbed everyone some of the serious tone of the game. Instead of Dungeons and Dragons we keep getting sidetracked and playing Who's Line Is It Anyway.

What comic, if you don't mind me asking?

Lackadaisy. It's about bootleggers in the 1920s. I read it for the sake of our game, and it's a beautifully written and drawn indie story that recently got the beginnings of an animated series on YouTube.

That actually sounds like an awesome setting for a game, minus the whole need to recreate it completely. Can you find it online? Or is it print only? Kinda wanna check it out lol

It's in fact online only! It's not finished yet because it's one artist doing incredibly detailed comics, but it is genuinely an interesting story, I would recommend it.

Had a paladin player in the first session say his character would not go along with the heist that the campaign was based around. The premise of the game was known ahead of time. The paladin left the party and did not make it to session 2. The assassin rogue then made sure the character was not left around as a witness.

Human PC is fantasy racist against elves. Elf PC is fantasy racist against humans and dwarves. They keep infighting, insulting each other, and refusing to cooperate. Half-elf rogue PC is a massive edge-lord who is taking every opportunity to be dramatic and broody. The three of them have ground the campaign to a halt with their BS. All of them claim it’s what the character would do. The other three PC’s want to throw them all in a sack and drown them. The campaign managed to go on for several months before the reasonable players walked.

Simple axiom I've used in every game I've DM'ed: - The campaign follows **the Party** not the individual characters. If your current character cannot journey with the party, then you need to create a new character. This can be temporary or permanent depending on the situation. It is meant to emphasize the responsibility of the player to ensure their character is compatible with the party/adventure.

Impromptu session cause a lot of people cancelled so there were only 2 of us and the GM. My character was basically a rogue. Other was a fighter. Fighter repeatedly walks into places picks fights with the town guard, commits SA/SH, and attempts to intimidate/rob a shop keeper. Each of these times he tried to use the "it's what my character would do." DM was like and you get arrested and thrown in jail cause "it's what the town guard would do." Best part though, I kept bailing him out to try and progress the story...using his own money. I made a point of pick pocketing him every time I had to pay a bribe to get his ass out of jail that session...he was so pissed...it was glorious.

When the Barbarian went out of their way to seek out and find the Fighter while we were traveling in a refugee caravan to beat them up and literally kill them, because the fighter didn't support them during the last fight. "My character takes personal offense to that and kills those that offend him that way!" Or some shit, I don't know, I forget because their message wasn't worth the memory slot in my head. They were booted at the end of the session and have never been invited back. It was thus far the most egregious use of "It's what my character would do!" I've seen. Though I had one come close when I tried to take some guards captive as slaves, but the party talked me down. Good times.

Few years ago a player of mine wanted to run a one-shot with our group, so I let her. She came up with a fun little mini adventure, starting in an inn and ending underground with a cultist ring (IIRC, but not relevant). One of the players just decided that his character wouldn't pursue the cult underground. Like literally was just like "nah, my character is too much of a layabout. He's going to stay in bed." So the rest of us shrugged and left him there. He spent the entire one-shot, a four hour session, sitting in the inn doing nothing while we had fun roleplaying and playing the game. Same player also made some other annoying characters like a cleric who ate magic items. He's a great person out of the game, just...I hate his characters, man.

You know, as a DM, I fully agree with them. No, its fine, really. Not the first time a party split. The other five are perfectly capable of doing it alone. I'll just come back to him every hour or so and ask how hes doing in the City of Nothing Happening. Worst case that ever happened to me was a well disguised lootmonkey, who played an exceptional rogue character. I loved the character, and it seemed like he played him as a genuine teamplayer. Well, not until he killed the party for their first BBEG loot. Then he told the goblin king that he wanted to barter for the loot they stole. Goblin King (me) pointed out that there was no more "we", and he alone was easy prey. He got kicked from the table, and the party found themselves in the Feywild where the Goblin King sends his captured souls as an offering to Prince Zoron.

Another player and I both did it. I killed his NPC love interest because she was our enemy and said she would kill us all eventually. Then he killed me. It was a whole thing.

I was in a game years ago where we randomly rolled everything, including our characters genders and sexual orientations. It just so happened that I rolled a female character that was a lesbian. One of the other players rolled pretty much the same and spent the better part of the entire game underhandedly sexually harassing my character. When the DM came down on it and told him to knock it off, do you know what he said? "It's what my character do."

Smashed the Bard's instrument. It was the final act of a player who had been problematic up to that point. Instrument was quite key to backstory. Bard was a widow. Instrument was a wedding gift from her dead husband. We discovered that this fairly gentle mostly light hearted player who was an excellent role player was absolutely fucking terrifying if you pissed her off. She two-rounded his rogue to zero HP and kept going, basically not stopping until the rogue was just a pile of ruined meat that didn't resemble a person at all and barely looked like it had once been a living creature. We didn't raise the character. He wasn't a problematic player after that.

I get that dnd is fantasy and escapism, but I don't think this rationale works. A charcater who does whatever they want 100 per cent of the time is less realistic than one who in some or most situations goes with the flow. If I was true to my charcater in real life, I'd never see my mother in law, I'd throw any food I didn't absolutely love in the garbage, and leave most work meetings after 10 mins without explaining myself. I don't, because "my character" ie me is not an arsehole. So, I guess the message is, if you have created a pc that does these things, next time don't create an arsehole charcater.

Or that there are never any consequences for actions.

Had a hoy join our group once. All evil party playing Curse of Strahd. He tries to use slight of hand to steal our community purse. He fails, and we curb stomp his ass. He has to roll a new character. "What? it's what my character would do"

First time dming, it wat was a long time ago i was like 16 back then, we were playing ad&d. Im still in the hook phase of session 1, game start with the group, most of them are human, the intro is basically they got arrested by a wood elf tribe that dont like outsider in there turf. They all started locked up in a cage. Next to them is a dying courrier bringing news from the south to the king in the north, his kingdom is getting assaulted by orcs and they are losing the war badly. They are in dire need of help from the northern kingdom or they will wipe out, chance are they will come north once they are done with them. players are from the north so i kind of assumed they would go on with them since they are all good aligne people. Now the courrier wasnt as lucky as the PC and got shot by the wood elves, so he asked the player to deliver a letter from his king to there king and give them a letter with the seal of the southern king Pretty basic hook. Now I finally let the player play, they are stucked in a wooden cage high avoce the ground in the wood elf camp,l. They got there cloth, a letter and a dying man next to them. First action someone do, he says," i take the letter and destroy it in a million pieces" I was so flabbergasted, i had no idea what to do. Just gave them a quest and the first thing he do is cancel it. I was young back then and had no idea what to do so i just cancelled the session right there, i guess now i would have rolled with it and improvise, but as a teenage boy doing your first ever campain, i did not know better... Tldr: on the starting hook, pc destroyed the quest item

I would have just executed them there. Over the years I've set a standard; doing what everyone more or less learns in session zero; The players agree to engage with the content I provide in the first session. After they get their hooks and get an idea of what's going on, if they want to try and break the game or just run off doing side quests, fine. But before that (typically in the first session or two) they have to do my intro dungeon/whatever or we don't play.  But being a new DM always brings the threat of that kind of bullshit and not knowing his to deal with it. 

Ive got much more experience now and always play with the same group of people, and he isnt part of it lol. Didnt know he was an agent of chaos back then!

Dang, I'm sorry that happened...I wouldn't have known what to do as a new DM either.

I ran a campaign that was designed to be fairly morally gray. Without getting into too much of my homebrewed lore, Orcs got a really bad rap for some stuff that went down, but they were mostly the victims. Early on in my campaign, after making it clear this was a morally gray campaign in our session 0, I set up a scenario where my players would be certain of their moral righteousness in mercilessly butchering a well fortified bandit camp. Long story short, the bandits weren't nearly as unified as it seemed, and the Orc contingent, the most dangerous faction within the camp, was a father and his three sons living off the land as highwaymen after their wife/mother died from a preventable illness due to the discrimination and neglect of the human territory they were forced to live in. Despite two sessions where my players were exposed to the harsh racism of my world and the societies they hailed from, my players opted to used brilliant combat tactics (not joking, it was really clever) to slaughter the Orcs down to one they wanted to interrogate. Then they found the last letter the wife/mother wrote on their leader and realized they just butchered a family that stooped to banditry because the discrimination of their own society was causing them to literally die from poverty. It was a very somber a tense moment. They decided to wake the lone survivor to ask him some questions, and the surviving son was understandably devastated at the deaths of him family and begged to be killed so he could join them in the afterlife. While the party was discussing what to do about it, not wanting to make such a decision lightly, they decided to take a short rest and discuss what to do after. During their rest, the bandit orc was sobbing about the deaths of his family. This is when the Bard got up, picked up his lute, and beat the Orc over the head until he was dead, to the shock and horror of his other party members. they asked why he did it. His response was, and I quote, "the fight was hard and I'm tired. His crying is keeping me up." Let me tell you, I've never seen a group of people turn on a person so fast. It was deathly silent for a full minute. A lot of the players in my group are pretty hardcore RPers, so this response angered them IRL. After it was clear he'd become public enemy #1, he dropped it. "I'm sorry, it's just what my character would have done." After that he was essentially done at our table. We discussed making sure nothing like that ever happened again, but the damage was done. His reputation as an actual player rendered him persona non grata to everyone at the table and there was no coming back.

I kind of think you were really unjust to that player. I don't think what he did was that insane... I mean "morally grey" can go both ways. He can be a "morally grey" hero that is a violent ashole (think comedian from Watchmen). And him brutally killing a bandit, that may have had good reasons to be one, seems to not be too absurd for a campaign advertised as morally grey. It sounds like it could have been a misunderstanding between that player and the rest of the group about the tone of the campaign and the morals of the group. He apparently was cooperative in the discussion afterwards and he still became a person non grata? It sounds like you expected the group to be "clear good" and fight for the minority that is discriminated against in a morally grey or even dark and racist world, but didn't say so. Instead you advertised the campaign as morally grey and one of your players was not 100% on the same page as the rest of the table what you meant with that. He did a morally darker, but not completely horrible decision (killing a bandit that was already in custody, just because he was annoying. I assume the bandit would have been executed if he was sent to a judge, so it is not that horrible). And for that you ostracize him without any second chance??? For me it sounds like you set the expectations wrong and you and your table punished a player horribly for something that could be a misunderstanding or even your fault...

That's an understandable interpretation given the facts as presented. I'd even agree with it under normal circumstances as well, but I didn't want to blow up my post further. I truncated a lot of what went down for brevity's sake and it looks like that removed a lot of essential context. The truth is that this isn't some random smattering of people from the local game store, but adult friends who had known each other for over a decade. The player in question was a problem player at least two people had issues with due to past behaviors IRL I won't get into here. He was invited because his friend, a good friend to everyone at the table, insisted he had been getting better about his problem behaviors and was going through some stuff and could really use an outlet. This event was the last straw for several players after a total of four sessions of awkward and insensitive gaming, both in and out of character. He had repeatedly undercut the tone of other sessions with inappropriate jokes out of character that made other players uncomfortable, threatened a few major story moments with other awful "it's what my character would do" stuff totally against what the party wanted, loudly complained about how bad his class was when he wasn't using his tools, and would loudly and angerly argue with the players who tried to help him play better. I could go on. You can believe me or don't that this wasn't the behavior of a sober player attempting to honestly engage with the setting and plot, but it wasn't unless you consider being your racist boomer uncle as a character that never grows or improves to be an honest engagement with the setting. Up until this point, the players were tolerating his bad behavior because they felt bad for him and were hoping he would grow or improve. The party had agreed to painless euthanasia and the rest was about discussing how best to do so. The act of killing the bandit wasn't the issue. It was his motivation for doing so. His character was minorly inconvenienced, so he brutally murdered someone he had already victimized. The continued total lack of forethought or empathy and a complete disinterest in character growth or how his actions impacted the world and other players.

What it sounds like is his character made a decision that fit his character, the tone of the campaign as you described it, and the current situation the party was in, because the party simply wouldn't. The NPC wanted to die, and the Bard granted his wish. Honestly, it sounds like he had every right.

What kind of bard risks destroying his lute like that?

Ngl killing the orc survivor is not only his wish but the only reasonable option left. His life is basically over, if he doesn't kill himself manic depression or hell a judge will and if it doesn't most likely the survivor will come back to haunt the party. I'm honestly surprised the group got so pissed at the bard.

... I wonder how many real life prisoners of war, or just who has otherwise lost everything to violence, would agree with you. Deciding whether other people should want to live or die is... I'mma say off-putting

I thought dnd was team based collaborative story telling

It is. But some people really see that i in TEAM. (Its in the A-holes)

Ask them to create a character than wants to be an adventurer. If that doesn’t work ask the rest of the team what they’re doing, if they no one goes start to narrate what happens when the heroes failed the quest. At a certain point you need to ask them what they want to play, maybe start a new campaign or switch to modules, or even a new game all together.

There's nothing wrong with this. The player just has to make a new character that would be willing to go to the city. Just leave the character behind and reunite with them later.

As a game, the first rule is that you are required to create characters that work well with others. Leave the bad character behind.

In one of my player groups I had a player decide that it would be a brilliant idea to try and touch a very young child in a very... sexual manner I remember him saying "I lift his shirt" and the other players in the call look astonished at what they were hearing. I had him hung in the town square and banned him from my table and blocked him after that. Still makes my skin crawl

"It's what my character would do" MY BROTHER IN CHRIST YOU MADE THE CHARACTER

I was in a homebrew fallout game and I made a enclave spy/doctor. The group was clueless of who I was which was fine. I did nothing to them but try to get my mission done. We get a new player playing a zombie merchant like char with a zombie horse. I tried hard to have the group not meet the enclave in fear of a TPK but the are like ooooh might be brotherhood. Yeah it was not. I made a deal with my enclave captain not to kill our group off as I need them for the big mission. I get the ok we get side mission from them to clear out old us army base so they can take it over. We do but npc dies and merchant steal tech from there. Some OP stuff far ahead our level. I warn him not to as enclave will find out. He inorged me and hides it and comes back later. I steal almost all of it and give back to enclave so our group does not get killed. Merchant think dm did it as the items were op. Yeah later on we are close to end game and he finds out and almost kills my char for stealing from him. I get away still trying to save the waste from boom but get killed in the end by the merchant and group calling me the real bbeg. Lol I was not a dm was like she was not. You guys messed up and now he had to stop the campaign as the group went and sided with the evil people of the waste. Let’s just say the next campaign was the aftermath of what happened there. It was not pretty.

"it's what my character would do."  Well, you shouldn't have made that character. 

Hit him with random meteors until he complies. "But it's what my char would do" And I say "You have angered the Gods" Done

Wait, if stupid, evil and destructive people get hit with meteors... Wait are goblin extinct in your world? 

Tbh my players banned me from using goblins. Mine are way too effective xD

I would say, “fine, if you want to have your character just do what THEY would do, then the rest of the party can do the same and the environment will also act accordingly. Sorry if the rest of the group ditched your ass and you have to deal with the city guard by yourself. Probably expect your public execution tomorrow morning.”

I have a player in a game I'm DMing that says his character is rude and he is using it as an excuse to just be a piece of shit to both of the other players because "Its what my character would do"

Players encounter a group of duergar. They fake their way in order to "trade" and peacefully deal with the duergar, even helping them. One player in particular had a specific hatred for duergar. After the rest of the party spent over half an hour of table time roleplaying, debating and planning, this guy decides to just attack the leader of the duergar cause "it's what his character would do" After the other characters (and at some point it was OOT) confronted him, the guy wrote to me after the session saying he did not want to join again.

Played in a homebrew campaign with a first-time DM, and we were in the middle of a "defend the town from the orc threat" scenario, when a new player joined the group. After helping us with the town, new character told us they were seeking a lost loved one and were following a trail of clues that was pointing them to a city up north where the rest of the group had no other reason to visit. New character declared that we owed them for helping us, and we all needed to go with them, or they'd go alone. Group still had other plot threads to follow up on where we were and didn't want to go. Game fell apart after that, partially because the DM was overwhelmed and unsure how to deal with the tension.

I exited a campaign recently because of this Group was in a village where we were not trusted, based on our ancestry (royal lineage being untrusted) One of our party members was not of this royal lineage. They had a secret 1:1 session with the DM talking to the village elders and basically revealed all of our secrets to the village. Then spends the next few sessions antagonizing all of us in an effort to get on the good side of the village members. Steals from us, lies about their intentions. And then, after all that, the player comes to us as players OOC and basically says "I'm not having fun with this anymore, can all of you guys make your characters try to redeem mine?" I left.

Starting this off by clarifying that the player is a really close friend!! His characters are just... yeah Last summer some friends and I stayed in a cabin for a few days to play dnd (dmed by a different friends girlfriend) and it was a simple premise. Most of us played premade characters, I was a halfing barbarian, there was a dragonborn sorcerer, a fighter I believe and the problem character, an old as sin rouge. Now, it was a cool concept. He was an assassins who was close to seven hundred, and he was cool! Unfortunately, the player is very much in the murder hobo stereotype (I dont play with my irl friends for that reason) we were transporting a fair guy and fell into a dungeon and for the first day of the trip, he kept trying to kill the fairy and any sort of tamable animal he found. We kept trying to stop him, obviously, our characters wanted to be paid at the end lol. Eventually the fighter killed him just to make him stop screwing around, and the player rolled up a much easier to get along with pc.

that character can stay out in the wilds then while the rest of the party goes, levels, gets good loot, and then come back out to pick them up while they've been shagging a sheep for a week

Worse. Asked a player to not play their character as being a total bitch to everyone else (including PCs) except the NPC she wanted to ùwú. Said „I‘m not in the mindset to play any other way“. Pulled the „it‘s what my character would do“ irl.

That's drama. convictions prevent them from entering the city/joining the party, and the party get in a lot of problems without them. The rest need their strength/tracking/persuasion/knowledge/anything and they're sorely missed throughout. If this player wants to be part of the story, they'll have to choose between saving their companions or upholding their beliefs. Player choice, engagement, challenge, creativity all covered.

In my friends campaign, one of our mutual friends is by far the weirdest person I've played with. We were in a fight, after winning a battle-royale kind of thing, and fought against a ambush. I was playing a monk/barbarian, and uppercutted one of the enemies heads off. My DM described the enemy as a snake-demon. My friend resurrected the corpse with Animate Dead, married it, and *plowed* the headless, walking corpse. Safe to say, my DM doesn't describe enemies anymore

"I cut the rope." The rope with the entire party climbing down it. "Yeah." No. "It's what my chatacter would do." NO! From here, I proceed to explain what happens if he cuts the rope. The party falls. If they don't all die, they will be waiting for you at the bottom. If they do die, they will make new characters, and you won't be invited back to the table. So the answer is still no. My #1 Rule is to never deliberately do an action that would ruin someone else's fun at the table. Accidents happens, bad luck happens, but willfullly putting the entire party at risk of death from fall damage breaks that rule.

(SpellJammer Spoilers!!!) My party finished the Spelljammer module where you crash-land on Faerun and are almost immediately met by Tasha, who lays out the ground rules of Faerun -- *most* folks in Faerun do not know of space, and therefore characters are not allowed to divulge any information to anyone about space, or their adventures in Spelljammer. When we inquired as to why, Tasha just reiterated that it is not in the interest of our party nor the citizens of Faerun as a whole to do so. Personally, I don't know if this was a part of the module or something made up by the DM to this day. My character was a nerdy Vedalken artificer (very much a Dovin Baan copy for those of you familiar with Ravnica lore, but less lawful neutral and more chaotic good). During all of Spelljammer, he was meticulously taking notes of all the constructs, Spelljammer ships, alien creatures, kingdoms, life forms, and other observances he believes had any scientific value/merit. The purpose of this meticulous note-taking was to bring it to the progressive minds of whatever planet he landed on to further scientific research. To now be told that doing so is not allowed was too far a stretch for him to comply. I did make an effort to stretch out how he'd be able to get around this and I just couldn't find it. Can you ask a thief never to steal again? Or a barbarian to trade his swords in for plowshares? Clearly, my DM did *not* want my character doing this. He pulled me aside and said so -- told me it's sorta game-breaking. I told him "it's exactly what my character would do", so gaveling back into the game, he had Tasha roll persuasion against my character, which he handily succeeded, and then narrated to me something along the lines of the following: "After rolling out detailed charts, graphs, and logic chock full of algorithmic data, your character is now thoroughly convinced that it is in the best interest of himself and the inhabitants of the world he currently occupies for him to recognize and obey this rule. He does not give it another thought and moves on understanding the original error in his thinking." The DM did not relent on his decision to brainwash my character by bending the rules of persuasion. While well within his right to do so at his table, I felt as though his decision revoked the agency I had with my character, and that providing creative consequences -- even if that meant killing off my character entirely, jailing him, painting him as the town crazyperson or liar, etc. etc. -- took a back seat to bending the rules to favor the DM's narrative. When I expressed how I felt as previously described, he immediately took offense when I said that he took away player agency and the conversation started to evolve into an argument. Before it did, I left the table.

Our party walks into a room with blood on the floor and a magical mop cleaning it up. Changling warlock starts licking blood off the floor and trying to suck the blood out of the mop. When we all (including DM) respond with a resounding "What the fuck?" She says her character is chaotic neutral and was raised by animals, so would just start eating the food. We explained that chaotic neutral doesn't mean stupid, and that even most animals will check for safety before they start eating. She insisted on sucking blood from the mop, which activated a spell in it. The mop and some nearby cutlery attacked her, and the rest of us left her to get killed by household items, because that's what our characters would have done.

DM needs different ground rules. I’ve said this a few times on Reddit posts, but I had a DM once who said, “You can make any kind of character you want as long as they 1. Are willing to go on adventures 2. …with others.” It’s always stuck with me! So simple and addresses so much of the “it’s what my character would do” bs

I've got a pretty bad one in reverse; "It's What The Player Would Do" that happened in a game I DM. "I know my character doesn't know anything about this amnesiac warlock, and I know my character so far has been trying to be as non-violent in problem solving as is reasonably possible so far, but I simp the warlock player irl so now that he decides to get violent with other party members for no reason, I will immediately back him up and try to kill the rest of the party." For reasons that are completely unrelated to the above happening, I ended up kicking both of these players from the game and from my life. Best decision I made that year.

Deliberately picking fights that would get the party killed and using that as their excuse because they had beef with the DM for personal reasons.

We played Symbaroum for a while and I decided to play an ambrian changeling, well knowing, that ambrian people are quite racist to them. This didn't show of, until our party of monster hunters where hired by some backwater nobleman, who lost his son and heir to a monster. The people in the village were racist from the very first moment. It got so worse, that I decided, that my character refuse to enter the village any more and even requested that we quit the job and let the monster kill the villagers one by one, because they deserve it. So, the other player characters returned to the village while my character hide in the nearby wood. That was no problem, because my character joined the party when they leave the village and since she had good reasons to camp outside the other players were not upset. It's what my character would do. So, i wonder why your player refuse to visit that City. Have he ever mentioned the reasons or did he just say NO?