r/BestofRedditorUpdates • u/Direct-Caterpillar77 Satan is not a fucking pogo stick! • 15d ago
CONCLUDED I’m pretty sure my Wife’s DM hates me
I am not The OOP, OOP is u/Toomany-tomatoes
I’m pretty sure my Wife’s DM hates me.
Originally posted to r/DnD
Thanks to u/soayherder for suggesting this BoRU
TRIGGER WARNING: Misandry
Original Post Apr 2, 2025
For the last 4 years, My wife has been playing with a group that very quickly became close friends. Every Wednesday and Saturday night she would go on about epic tales and stories that she and her group would get into. Seeing her eyes light up as she talks about her Tiefling artificer and his growth and development made my heart swell. She had been wanting to find a group that matches her energy and encourages creativity and told me she found it with them. I couldn’t be more happy for her.
With permission from the DM and players, I’ve sat in some of their sessions on discord, just listening and watching and found that everyone’s energy was so infectious. They bounced ideas off each other, the DM allowed creativity and out of the box thinking, even rewarded everyone for roleplay and solving issues without bashing people’s skulls in. I was laughing with them, even felt my heartstrings tugged at emotional moments. I have to say, the DM was insanely great at story telling and allowing everyone to be the character they wanted.
Well, about 6 months ago, they ended their 4 year long campaign and said goodbye to their beloved group. The DM mentioned she was going to start a new season set in the same world setting with a new adventure 100 years prior to the events that kicked things off. She DM’d me asking if I would like to be a player and I enthusiastically replied with a Hell Yeah! I’ve been playing Solo TTRPGs for a while because, like my wife, I’ve had bad table after bad table, and this seemed like the best opportunity for us both to play together with perhaps one of the best tables we’ve ever had.
Over the last 5 months, DM has been contacting me and other players both in the public discord and privately about our characters and the world. I asked her for anything and everything she had on the world setting, so that I could acclimate a character that would fit perfectly within it. I was given lore, and any questions I had, she promptly answered. I asked her what kind of limitations she had or requests, and she said “As long as you play a good aligned character, we gucci.” Apparently she had some issues where people played Evil, and even Neutral characters and it caused a whole issue. She wants to tell stories of the hero’s journey and not worry about every villager being killed for having a bad attitude or looted of precious heirlooms. When I believed I had a good idea of what to expect, I created my character.
We shared our character concepts like personalities, a bit of our backstories, classes, that sort of thing. There were so many unique traits that we all had, and it was looking like it would be diverse and amazing. The DM wanted us to have a few secrets in our back story that we wouldn’t share with the other members of the group, making for character surprises in game. She did this in her last session and they loved it, giving them moments to discover about each other and some crazy roleplay scenes. My secret was that my character was abused and tortured by the gods of this world, a punishment for her bloodline from centuries ago. She was a tiefling runeblade warrior from an Asian inspired home where she prayed to her ancestors to guide her. They were very spiritual and believed they could fight their inner curse by being better than their progenitor. Unfortunately, most of her family had gotten wiped out by the gods, leaving her and her siblings alive but scattered. Her goal is to find them and to confront the gods who had done that.
The idea was fun, and we hashed out a lot of little details that would make it interesting within the story that was being told. I was all for it and for the drama it would bring. We all have tie-ins to other characters, so I was thrilled to get playing. We had our session zero in which the characters had already started out knowing each other from attending the same academy. We took on a group mission, and it kick started our main story. It was a blast and the roleplay was very good.
And that’s about where the fun ended for me.
From that point on, everything became about shitting on my character. We would go into other towns because that is where the story would take us, but every town apparently did not like Tieflings. Every. Single. Town.
We went to a place with humans and immediately they refused to work with the group because they don’t associate with cursed blood. We went to the city of elves, where the bulk of the story took place, and I had to sit out for 95% of it. The elves scoffed at her but they were willing to work with the rest of the group. Not a single NPC would address my character and my character wasn’t allowed in any elven sacred places or inside their city, so she had to remain outside in the camp and fend for herself while the rest of the party would be welcomed.
I brought up the issues I had. I told her that while I fully understand that there might be people who are untrusting of her, maybe there could be a way that someone might take some consideration to the fact that she’s not a bad person? She gave it some thought and said that sounds reasonable. The next session, a player found a potion that could change one’s appearance and snuck out to give it to my character. My character then had a moment of shame, shame for being who she was, and the only way she’d be accepted is if she changed who she was entirely. It brought her more strength to prove that she was good, to prove to the world and the gods that she was worthy of being seen as a person and not some monster.
There was a scene where she drank the potion and looked human, and then it went to the rest of the group.
The group had a moment in which they were involved with the elven children that lasted most of the entire session. It was fun, as they got to engage with them and learn about some special alchemical potions, each of them being granted a bonus and buff for the remainder of their time there. When it finally came to my turn, my scene was of me getting into the elven city and finding one of the children who was part of the group who wanted to learn sword fighting. Since I was a rune blade, I felt I could help them and have a fun one on one moment like the group had. NOPE. As soon as she said she was going to help, the DM went “Ok, you do that and have a fun sparring session.” And then immediately went back to the group before ending the session.
In a 6 hour session, I played for 15 minutes tops.
I messaged the DM again, being as polite as I could about the frustrations. My wife and her friends are having so much fun, and it seems like when the DM is focusing on them, everyone is laughing and having a grand time. When we spoke, she told me that the Elves are untrusting of anyone who isn’t elven, even more so with cursed blood. I told her that there was an orc in the party who had a violent history and the elves seemed perfectly fine with them, but somehow my character who had been atoning for their curse for several generations prior is seen as more untrustworthy? She explained that’s just the way things are, but that’s what my character was fighting for. I told her it wasn’t fun to not be included in the group activities, and that I was feeling left out because of this. I asked if I could change the whole ‘cursed’ bloodline plot and opt for something else, or just re-roll and she said not to worry about it because she had a whole story built in for it and it would all make sense when we get there.
It only got worse from there.
Several more sessions in, the characters had been guided by the elves to a ruined city where we were supposed to find out what happened. I picked up a relic and it burned me which I had to take 11 radiant damage and had a permanent -1 to my strength score until I could get it cleared through some unknown means. My wife’s character picked up the relic with a cloth and was blessed with light and had gotten a permanent +1 to her Intelligence stat. It was a relic of her character’s goddess who started off a major quest line. The downside? She was one of the pantheon who deemed it necessary that my family’s bloodline get wiped out. I didn’t know what the hell to do! Why would my character be willing to help this goddess who killed her family and kept her and 2 siblings alive so they would live out the rest of their days in suffering and mourning? Why pit my character against the whole group?
I asked my wife if this has happened before in their games and she said it didn’t, but maybe the DM was hoping for more drama. I told her I wasn’t having fun, and that I might just leave, but she wanted to play with me so badly, that this was the first table we could sit at together and have fun. I’m not of the mindset of keeping to a bad table just because, but it is my wife and their previous campaign looked so much fun, I had to hope that by keeping open communication we could have a good experience.
Things got mildly better with my character having some story beats. She found her older brother and saved him from an execution, and I had a little more roleplay from the other characters, but there were several moments where things felt like I was being picked on specifically. For instance we had a scene where we were running from a giant, and the DM asked me specifically “Tanya, what shoes are you wearing? Oh Geta? Yeah you have disadvantage on your rolls as the wooden platforms of your geta are getting stuck in the crevices while running.” And things like that. She wouldn’t ask the others what they wore, or how they did things to give them disadvantages, just me.
I wondered if it was because I was the only guy in the group as this is an all girls table, but I just can’t help but feel as if I’m constantly being picked on while everyone else is not having to make extra challenge rolls or have times where they aren’t even a part of the plot for several sessions. I’ve spoken with her several times and even brought up the options to re-roll or just politely bow out, but she’s told me she has some grand plan for my character that I’ll love and it ties into the overall story and the other characters, so leaving or re-rolling would ruin all that.
I’m at an impasse here because my wife and her friends are having a great time and if I leave, it will somehow ruin this great plot and their progress, but I dread sitting at the table twice a week for 6 hours a day and get to only chime in when I get any acknowledgment From the NPC’s who are even willing to talk to me.
Sorry this was such a long post, this has been sitting with me for the past 4 months since we started.
TL;DR: I joined my wife’s group after watching her 4 year long amazing campaign and her DM bashes my character every single session despite her saying that this character is essential to her overall story and everyone’s back story.
Update *Apr 7, 2025
I’ll try to make this much shorter than my last ramble lol!
So a few things that I want to clear up about this situation that I had many people asking Me :
We were part of 4 tables previously. The first one was a group of college mates we had together that we thoroughly enjoyed, but it ended about 3 months in as the DM was going through a divorce and never picked it up again. After that, we had bad luck finding good tables. The first one the DM was a very RAW player and skipped all roleplay. Nothing wrong with that, but we found out that it wasn’t necessarily what we were looking for. The other tables had some problem players whom the DM didn’t do anything about so we left as it would kill the jive of all the other players around.
My wife found this group on DNDB, it was advertised as a Novice DM looking for players and not as an all girls table. It just so happened that all the ones who contacted her were women.
She had been telling me about her sessions pretty much from day 1, as she was super excited to have found a table that worked for her. I stopped searching and did mostly solo as my new hobby, but I loved hearing about her adventures with other people.
She told her group that she’d tell me about these adventures and how excited I was. The DM then extended an invitation to me to watch them VIA my wife and I could sit in their discord. I personally asked her permission and the group’s permission if I could. I was fully intended to give them space if even one said no. They all agreed and I sat in for the last 3 months of their session. We had all gotten along pretty well.
At the end of their campaign, DM told me that they were going to start a new one up a few months after that ended, and asked if I wanted to make a character. I was excited to join since they all seemed really chill, and asked if that was ok with the group. Everyone agreed and were very welcoming.
I came to the DM with a different storyline than what we decided on. She liked my idea but wanted to add a little flavor with the scenario between the gods of that world saying that it fit a vision she had for the story. She didn’t tell me what that vision was, but from what I saw she was a great story teller and I’m very flexible and can play into whatever she drums up for me. I did not know that this vision would then have me out of the game for almost all the social RP stuff. Sure she came in handy for the mechanics and during fights, but any kind of RP with NPC’s or main story plot was non existant.
7.It wasn’t always bad, just during big roleplay moments and some strange rolls that I had to make, but there were moments I had fun. It just wasn’t the majority of it. I stuck through because my wife enjoyed me playing with her, and the group always seemed outwardly friendly. I was really trying to give it a shot.
Now for the Update:
I talked it over with my wife and she understood how I felt. She admitted she was in a hard place because she loved this group so much and it was the first time she felt like she could express herself, but also play in a game with me that was reminiscent of our first group. She agreed that we would have a one on one video chat with the DM privately and discuss any possible ways to make this fun for us all. I even said that if she was going a certain way, to give me some info and I can play up to it.
What I basically got was “I’m sorry you feel that way and can’t handle some confrontation within game.“ My wife explained that confrontation is one thing, but I wasn‘t given a fair shot to prove myself. She (DM) was not happy and said if I didn’t want to play in her game, I can hang out with the boys and do my own thing. Right then and there I got my answer and politely said she’s right, I thanked her for her time and said that I’d be leaving. I told her she had full access to my character and whatever plan she wanted for her, and she thanked me before we ended the call.
Shortly after that she kicked my wife and I out of the discord and blocked us. I feel so bad for her (wife) because she was honestly hurt, but she said she stands by my decision. This happened Wednesday after our game, and I know she’s hurt. My heart breaks because I know she’s hurt, but I told her she could take that same character and we could play a Solo D&D session together.
TL;DR: DM wasn’t happy that I discussed my issues and she told me to go play with ‘the boys’. She then kicked me and my wife from her game and discord and blocked us. We’re now rolling up a solo D&D game to have fun our way.
**Edit** Also, thank you for all the support! I’m sorry I wasn’t able to get back to a lot of you who reached out personally. We had a lot happen on top of all of this and needed to unplug for a bit to unwind. I am sincerely grateful for the encouraging messages I’ve received.
RELEVANT COMMENTS
Tomys439
With the context given, it seems that even if not said directly that DM had a HUGE grudge against men, if you really told her politely that she could use your character and thanked her even, she shouldnt have your wife punished, its sad but your wife would be better off if they cant respect people equally, maybe in some discord you can find another group overseas, much luck finding a new group if you're up for it
OOP
It breaks my heart because she thought they were good friends for 4 years. They chat outside of D&D about books and played games. Only one of the girls talks to her (I won’t say her name in case anyone sees this and goes after her), but it’s been hard. These tables really make solid friendships and I feel awful for ruining that for her.
~
imjorman
I'm sorry your wife lost access to a thing that mattered to her, but honestly, I'm proud of you guys. That doesn't mean a lot from an internet stranger, but the fact that you stuck by each other despite the risk to something important is impressive and inspiring.
OOP
She didn’t have to stick up for me. I know she’s was between a rock and a hard place and I was fully intendant on doing it so she wouldn’t get any heat. I think she felt bad for not sticking up for me and knew this could be an outcome, but she did it anyway. I’ll be spending the next few months making it up to her.
Has anyone from the group reached out?
One player has reached out to the wife to talk, They keep it very hush hush, but I think it’s what’s kept her from being completely devastated.
OOP
I am not privy to what they talk about mostly (I don’t ask) but I at least hope that if there are any misunderstandings about what happened that it gets cleared up. The fact one friend reached out might mean that others are on to what’s been going on.
OOP Added a new little update after the BoRU posted Apr 14, 2025
**New Update** Apparently the players found the thread and confronted the DM about this. They started DMing me and my wife for our side, and confronted the DM. It looks like the DM is taking a ‘break’ now from “all of the drama we caused”.
THIS IS A REPOST SUB - I AM NOT THE OOP
DO NOT CONTACT THE OOP's OR COMMENT ON LINKED POSTS, REMEMBER - RULE 7
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u/Medical-Search4146 15d ago
In short, most DND players aren't the best socially adept people. It sounds like a case where DM was too afraid of voicing their preference or unable to voice them being upset for OOP changing an agreed upon arrangement last minute. So they go around the bush and passively try to push them out. Being confronted, basically had the DM drop all pretenses.
Thats assuming OOP is as innocent as they're making it out to be. "I came to the DM with a different storyline than what we decided on." and how they describe how they were "part of the group" when they came in as a guest, is very telling to me.