This is another story brought about by inexperience while DM’ing. This is from around the same period as the first story (high school).

I invited everyone who wanted to play D&D to the table. There was no need to sort through players and pick people to match the campaign, right? No experience requirements. First come first serve! This time, I would be the exclusive DM. I would be the one running the show from the start. All of the problems in the multi-DM shared campaign would be resolved.

The first 5 people who wanted to come came, and that was the group.

This taught me another important lesson not just about DM’ing but also about groups of players in any setting.

Just because 5 players all want to go on a D&D adventure doesn’t mean that how they want to play the game will be compatible in the slightest. I will focus on 3 players.

Player 1 was a super hardcore roleplayer. He wanted to get into character and stay in character from the start. He didn’t want to talk about shit outside of that. He would tolerate distractions here and there, but he would get mad if it happened a lot. The game was the primary focus for him. He wanted to spend 4 hours immersed in a world.

Player 2 wanted to go on a Lord of the Rings style adventure where 5 heroes are given a clear beginning, middle, and end, and they’ll save the world and celebrate in the end. His primary goal was the adventure and the friends around the table.

Player 3 viewed D&D as a chance to hang out with friends while bullshitting over a game. He never went in character. He rarely, if ever, talked about what was happening in game. He almost always talked to everyone about completely random, unrelated things to the game.

At the time, I naively believed that the 5 players would be able to mesh and have fun. I thought that they’d be able to break through their differences and find a mutual playstyle that they all enjoyed.

No.

This campaign lasted one session. The characters were created in session 0, and they met for the first time in session 1. In session 1, player 3 was non-stop talking about South Park or other shows that were big on TV at the time. We tried to curtail the conversation and redirect it to the game multiple times, but it only lasted 1 or 2 minutes before it was back to South Park or another Comedy Central show.

The session lasted around 2 hours (of the originally planned 6), with Player 1 straight up saying he was done with this campaign. The other two players decided to call it an early night. Player 2, Player 3, and myself talked a bit after that, but it left a sour taste in my mouth.

And with that, that campaign was dead. I was able to salvage most of the ideas from that campaign for future campaigns, and I played with most of the players again, but I realized I had to be super careful with who I mixed and matched player wise. Player 2 got along with Players 1 and 3, so he could play in both. Player 1 and Player 3 didn’t get along with each other at all, so they were never part of a campaign together again.

I talked to all of the players afterwards. I tried to get the party back together after that, but I wanted to figure out what had went wrong.

Player 3 was of the mindset that “it’s just a game; [Player 1] needs to chill out and stop taking it so seriously”. If something went wrong in game, they laughed. If their character died, they had an idea for a new character. They weren’t above stealing from party members to cause chaos. They were not a person that was going out of their way to feel negative about things happening in the campaign.

Player 3’s favorite type of D&D campaign was one where there was a lot of comedic moments and silly stuff. They wanted to play silly characters with silly goals and silly powers. They liked alternative pen-and-paper systems like “Big Eyes, Small Mouth” because there was a lot of possibility to just make silly meme stuff.

Player 1 wanted to take it seriously, though. Player 1 wanted it to feel dangerous. They wanted it to feel tense. They wanted to worry about what happened, what was happening, and what was going to happen. They wanted to be on the edge of their seat. They wanted a serious adventure from start to finish.

So Player 1 and Player 3 wanted completely opposite campaigns. It was impossible to resolve that. Player 2 was fine with either. The other 2 players didn’t want to come back, so they were permanently out.

In the end, the important thing I took away from that was:

Just because everyone at the table likes playing D&D doesn’t mean they’ll like playing D&D at that table. They may not like the DM. They may not like the setting. They may not like how other players play.

Sometimes it just isn’t meant to be with a specific group. Trying to force a group to work can be far worse than just letting that group die.