By popular demand of that Rigel guy, another story with the same cast of characters. This time the story of how one of my sessions was thrown down a well in a matter of two hours. This may get long, so strap yourselves in. Here's the cast of characters.
Me - Me, the DM
Mave - Monkey's girlfriend, who basically has him wrapped around her finger
Monkey - Person who usually DM's
Muffin - The guy who's always picked on by Monkey and Mave, but never seems to leave their campaigns
Zindof - Chill dude, sadly pretty flaky when it comes to TTRPG's, which comes up in this story
This was 2 or 3 months ago. I had an idea for a D&D 5e campaign that I was extremely excited about, 3000 words worth of notes in a matter of a week after I had first come up with it. I laid out the basic plot, some gods (that they wouldn't encounter until later), and the first town as a sort of 'demo'. Now, the following story isn't going to make sense without a synopsis of how my world works, so I'll try to keep it quick and simple. The world is ruled by a 'mad god' who grants any prayer that comes his way, always twisting it in a fashion to both grant the wish, and punish the person who makes the prayer. Collateral damage is almost always assured as a result of a prayer. Think of it like a genie that rules the whole world. All the PC's would make a prayer in their backstory that backfires and causes them to resent and want to kill/subdue the mad god for the good of the world they live in. All the people in my group seemed extremely interested in my concept when I brought it up with them, and they all wanted to play. I was extremely flattered. Sadly a few problems began to show before the game even began, I'll make a list as to not assault your eyes with a wall of text.
• With the rest of the group making superficial prayers (that didn't affect game balance/combat) Muffin wanted to be whole size group LARGER than the rest of the party, with basically 0 penalty. I told him that since the rest of the group was making superficial wishes, and that I couldn't do that. He grumbled. A lot. This of course didn't stop him from doing what he did in the game, even though he should have known his request was a no-go. I of course still allowed him to be big (he was a Dragonborn the size of a Goliath) but it wouldn't have any affect on his stats.
• Monkey (again, this was the guy who usually DM'd for us) who I was going to for advice attempting to get me to throw out basically all of another player's backstory because it was too long.
• Zindof, who attempted to make a character who "loved" the mad god. Which made absolutely 0 sense as to why he would be traveling with a party who wanted to kill him.
So yeah, things weren't looking great from the outset. And honestly, I knew this game might end up being a stuff-show the moment the first red flag was raised. So game night arrives, all my hard work finally coming to fruition. I've made a town with the Main Quest and 4 side quests (all of these quests having 2-3 separate endings except for the Main Quest, since that feeds into another quest). The side quests go on for a while, so I hoped that would keep them distracted and entertained if they didn't want to do the Main Quest the moment they got to town. I swear the first thing that happens is Monkey knocks on 2 separate houses to ask them about nothing, forcing me to come up with 4 characters on the spot, right before he was going to go for the trifecta, the rest of the party pulled him away. Muffin was still somehow convinced that his character was Large, and was quickly shot down by the rest of the party causing him to grumble for almost the rest of the game (he perked up when he started rolling really well in a fight later on). Mave ended up carrying Monkey around (he was a goblinoid), so he couldn't go anywhere unsupervised. The party decides to go to the local tavern, where long story short, they learn that the well in town is apparently whispering and attempting to get people to jump in with promises of wealth and power. Obviously, no one has been dumb enough to believe it. The party decides to investigate, and all go to the well, ignoring its pleas for someone to jump down. Mave decides to hold Monkey over the well mentioning it's by his SCARF. Obviously the scarf comes loose, and everyone starts rolling dex saves, with Zindof coming in clutch and catching the goblin before he became the ghost's dinner. This is where it gets bad
Monkey, the moment he's saved by Zindof, runs screaming out of town. Saying that he won't be coming back because he's scared of the party, and I stuff you not, says "That's what my character would do". I immediately respond with "Then roll a new character.". Monkey, as if by magic, comes up with reasons to go back to town. Zindof obliges by running after Monkey and giving him a pep-talk to come back. When they return, Mave and Muffin have gone inside the Alderman's house to take the job for the ghost in the well. The Alderman tells them there's a cave to the east of town that leads to the aquifer that the well draws from, and they should be able to access it from there. They come to an agreement, and leave. They tell the others where they're going, and they all begin marching due east, eventually making it to the cave. Another long story short, they find out that the cave is occupied by a Bugbear and a Hobgoblin on opposing branches of the cave. Each of them want the other dead, with the Hobgoblin hinting that maybe there could be peace between them if they attempted to talk it out. The party attempts to convince the Bugbear, but they all fail on their persuasion checks, the Bugbear sees them as traitors to their earlier agreement to kill the Hobgoblin, and combat begins. The fight goes somewhat smoothly until Mave decides to prepare an action to shoot at the Bugbear if he charges at her from behind a stack of boxes he's hiding behind, because one of the other casted Cause Fear earlier. However one of the other players charges the Bugbear, negating the need for the Bugbear to charge, so her prepared action doesn't go through. Obviously I should have ruled it so she still shot him, but I made a mistake, and even admitted to it. This doesn't stop her from going dead silent for the rest of the game though. Soon after that, Zindof leaves unexpectedly, leaving me, Muffin (who is having a good time because he's wrecking house during this fight), Monkey (who is mad because his girlfriend is mad), and Robin who is mad for obvious reasons. The moment combat ends, I stop the game, and leave the VC.
The next day, I get criticism from Mave saying I had made her the 'bad guy' for the scarf coming loose while she was holding Monkey over the well. That was the moment I promised myself that I would never host or be in one of their games again. Maybe a week or so later, I decide to host another game without Monkey or Mave. I took the most well-behaved players from my last game (Muffin and Zindof) who were happy to try again with another group, and decided to find another two players online. That's a whole different story though.
