'In a 6-hour session, I played for 15 minutes': Player gets iced out of their wife's Dungeons and Dragons campaign, revealing the DM favoritism and ruining their campaign by refusing to return to game night

Author image for Jesse Kessenheimer
Jesse Kessenheimer • Writer and Editor
Apr 3, 2025 3:00 PM EDT

Dungeons and Dragons is fun because you get to role-play an entire universe where you can be anyone and do anything. Without the limitations of the real world, these fantasy worlds aren't just fun and exciting, they're beautiful, intricate, and hypnotizing—if you have a good DM, of course. But a Dungeon Master's storytelling skills aren't the only thing a campaign relies on. You need balanced gameplay that makes sense and characters in your party who are passionate and dedicated. 

The whole scenario is as delicate as the Tiefling's lineages, dangling by a thread if any character falls out of line. 

So when this DM played favorites, icing out a new player in the group, they risked ruining the entire game night saga because they blatantly picked on one particular character, refusing to give him any kind of win or exciting interaction, just because they had a character vendetta against him. 

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  • The only reason any of us play DnD, spending hours of our free time to imagine dragons, elves, and lore far beyond our real world, is because we want to have fun. Not only is game night our biggest social outing of the week, but it's also a blast. So if you're stuck with 12 hours of game play per week but you're not having a good time, something's gone wrong with the campaign. (TLDR at the bottom) 

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  • I'm pretty sure my Wife's DM hates me. Table Disputes For the last 4 years, My wife has been playing with a group that very quickly became close friends. Every Wednesday and
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  • 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
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  • 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
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  • 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
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  • 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.
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  • 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
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  • 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 HI Yeah! I've been playing Solo TTRPGs for a while because, like my wife, I've had bad table after
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  • 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
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  • 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 |
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  • 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
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  • 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.
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  • 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
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  • 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
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  • 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
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  • 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
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  • 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
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  • 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
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  • 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 on my character. We would go into other
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  • 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 blod.
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  • 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
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  • 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
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  • 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
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  • 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,
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  • 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.
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  • 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
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  • 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,
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  • 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
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  • 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.
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  • 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.
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  • When we spoke, she told me that the Elves are untrusting of anyone who isn't elven, even more so with cursed blod. I told her that there was an orc in the party who had a violent history and the elves seemed perfectly fine with them,
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  • 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
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  • 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
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  • 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
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  • 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.
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  • 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
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  • pantheon who deemed it necessary that my family's bloodline get wiped out. I didn't know what the h I to do! Why would my character be willing to help this goddess who lled her family and kept her and 2 siblings
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  • 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
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  • 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
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  • 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
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  • 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.
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  • 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
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  • 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.
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  • 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
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  • 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
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  • 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
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  • 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.
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  • 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.
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  • TheRealRedParadox Have one last conversation with your DM. Be as blunt as possible that while it's great they have huge plans for your character that you may or may not love, you are spending 12 hours a week not
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  • having fun. And that isn't okay. Make it clear that if something doesn't change immediately that you will just leave. And since 1 on 1 talks haven't worked, have the next conversation at the session table, with everyone.
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