Dungeon Master Makes Character Take Drugs | r/rpghorrorstories

[@lexcentrique2554]

Man, if someone tried to drug my character twice, forcing me to "roll insight" in order to avoid letting me saying "no", I would have held a grudge so big against that DM that my own DNA would have shifted to become a dwarf.

[@daltonsharp6254]

Hmmmmm…. Sounds like you might be starting a dwarf book of grudges.

[@lexcentrique2554]

@@daltonsharp6254 Yeah, just for this weirdo, and I'd be holding this specific grudge for a veeeeeeeery long time.

[@lexcentrique2554]

@@daltonsharp6254 And I would be starting having a beard and drinking ale.

[@jaysonklein6018]

I find it funny that the first DM uses King Julian as substitutes for other characters, and randomly kills and revives him.

[@frost68nskate]

The persuasion check for the barbarian... No matter how high of a persuasion check you roll even a nat 20, you can not force a character to do something they don't want to. Not even an npc. A person isn't going to change their mind just because someone is saying something harder.

[@Zarlos01]

I think that the only "social skills" that are usable on others players are deception and performance, sometimes intimidation.

[@Vivi.20.]

@@Zarlos01 I'd say only persuasion checks against a player should only be used if the player being hit by persuasion is uncertain and think the dice may be a more interesting way to decide.

[@kou7191]

​@@Vivi.20. that still implies they're consenting to go for it if the die say so.

[@optillian4182]

_"Jesse. We need to make potions."_ -Walter White, Archwizard of Unfunny References

[@Jonboy2312]

Persuasion can only convince people to do *reasonable* things, as in, let a shady character through a city gate, overlook a petty crime, aid in a quest despite misgivings... But you can't persuade someone to, say, slit their own throat, no matter how many 20s you roll. Same goes for any strongly held beliefs and values, which for many people include things like sex (or even romance), drug use, etc. The player knows their character. If they say the character wouldn't do it no matter what, then the character won't do it. There shouldn't even be a roll.

[@l0stndamned]

On the drug story I feel DM was massively out of line both for how the operated it and for forcing the OP's character to take it. I'd have personally stormed out at that, but I repest that it is an issue I'm very fussy about. I also feel a barbarian would have been a better class for someone getting power from drugs rather than a monk. Drunken Master is specifically about the way drunks move making them harder to read and the like, where as someone using drugs to keep going in a fight is more a barbarian vibe.

[@tsifirakiehl4250]

First story: This is why I don’t let PCs roll Persuasion against other PCs. It’s also why I don’t give my PCs access to hard drugs. The only drugs that have shown up in my games are the dream pastries in “Curse of Strahd,” and the PCs didn’t even buy them. Second story: Why did OP even go to that session? I would have left as soon as I found out it wasn’t the system I wanted. If I say I want to play 5e, that means I want to play 5e, not GURPS. Third story: I mean, I’m glad OP was able to make a new character who they had more fun with, but why would they stay in the game when the DM just insta-killed their character with no warning or save? Insta-kills do not make for a fun game experience, especially if you haven’t even been warned that they’re a possibility.

[@davidtherwhanger6795]

Last Story. Captain Barbosa returns to the afterworld after his latest escapades back in the land of the living, having only missed one session of the D&D game. Walks up to the D&D table. Sits down with a smile. Puts two loaded and ready pistols on the table, keeping his hands on them. "Now. Who wants to tell me what happened to my character?"

[@rootfish2671]

I thought there was a rule stating that social rolls don't work on PC's?

[@tsifirakiehl4250]

@rootfish2671 I don’t think it’s in the rules as written, but most DMs don’t allow it for obvious reasons. When they do allow it, the results have a tendency of ending up on r/rpghorrorstories.

[@rootfish2671]

@@tsifirakiehl4250 I must be thinking of pathfinder 2e

[@windyface9383]

I played a street urchin-type elf rogue. During our first big adventure, we were in a goblin cave looking for two villagers who'd been kidnapped, and the goblins we fought had weird crusty eyes and would fight like they were rabid fanatics. When we couldn't find how to get deeper into the cave, we found this altar on which was a bowl of weird multicolored honey-like substance. When the (eladrin prince) bard immediately turned to me and went "You've grown up in the streets, you've had drugs before..." my character immediately felt SO INSULTED. He was right, but still! Yes I did try the weird hallucination-inducing honey that let us go through the walls in this ancient fairy cave full of goblins. Yes, I kept the honey and later sold it to someone who was going to distribute it as a party drug to his artist friends. Not a horror story, just a game anecdote. It was just funny to me how the entire party turned to my sketchy little thief and went "so you're the one we test this drug on, right?" and even the DM assumed it wasn't a first experience for him.

[@WolfHreda]

"You say, 'well, here's someone the Square community doesn't give a shit about. A deadbeat.'" "Well, aren't you?" "Well, yeah." 😂

[@windyface9383]

@@WolfHreda It's the assumption that hurts! Like they could TELL that I was a delinquent just by looking? How judgemental!

[@rb98769]

1st story: I'm really not big on players rolling persuasion against each other, and Doge makes a good point that nothing in the rules says it's mind control, even though a lot of people seem to read it that way for some reason. The barbarian knowing how horrible the experience was should at least incurred some sort of penalty if the DM wanted to go down that path. I'm glad everything turned out okay in the end there, I hope the DM understands it's not a fun experience. 2nd story: That sounds like a terrible group in general. But hey, it was just one session, no big loss there. I agree with doge, but OP stood his ground and didn't keep coming back, which a lot of people do in these stories for some reason. Quitting is always an option, no one should feel obliged to stick to a terrible experience.

[@rynowatcher]

I think die rolls to made decisions faster make sense. Sure, not raw to use persuasion checks, but these drug rules and the high monk are not RAW either. Generally, I think OP would have liked it if he got a "good trip" as they said watching the other character have a good trip eas fun.

[@strawman3859]

its also possible to make your persuasion and it still doesn't happen persuasion is just to bring them to your way of thinking its possible they are to scared or to worried to do the action

[@rynowatcher]

@@strawman3859 I am kind of in the camp that if you picked up the dice and rolled you agreed to let the dice decide so it is a bit of bad sportsmanship to cry foul only when you lose. I do not think it should be used unless you either have discussed it in pvp or if you want to decide an arbitrary decision that two players are eating up a lot of time arguing, but rolling the check is agreeing to letting the dice decide. I like how cyberpunk handles it; you have a "face off" to see if you can force someone to do something. If you fail, you do not have to do it, but you get a penalty to rolls when you are around them till you do. Basically, their version of a fear mechanic; you can not do the thing they want if you are willing to live with the penalty till you get out of that situation.

[@Zarlos01]

​@rynowatcher this would be using intimidation on D&D to force someone to do what they don't wanna do.

[@strawman3859]

@@rynowatcher whats the alternative to rolling in this situation? you think refusing the roll would of gone over well at the table? i doubt it

[@patjacksonpodium]

*sigh* Ok, fine...I'll do it. 🎵Bah-dah dat dat dat dat🎵 I was gonna swing my sword But then I got high I was gonna fight them orcish hordes But then I got high Now I'm sittin at the table, bored, and I know why (Why man? Whyyyyyyy?) Because I got high Because I got high Because I got hiiiiiiigh 🎵Bah-dah dat dat dat dat🎵

[@vortega472]

Oh I love that kitten's face - it reminds me of my cats - every morning - on my chest inches away telling me: Hey lazy it's time to fill the food bowl - you can be replaced. You know both our cats are rescues - you have to admit they're kind of lippy for a couple of former street urchins.

[@ethankaryadi37]

I just read a story about a DM who turned his game into a TV drama. It was rather tame but it goes to show how a DM shouldn’t invest too much on rp and should consider the other nuances.

[@Shane-hx4xp]

2:50 makes me think of the scene in the movie Training Day where Denzel Washingtons character makes Ethan Hawks character hit a pipe laced with it. 😂

[@SamWeltzin]

That first story is why I don't allow persuasion rolls on player characters. Deception sure, but not persuasion. A player's agency overrides a mechanic to convince characters of things they might not have been inclined toward.

[@HereticReborn]

That kitty intermission. 😂

[@Gormfeld]

1st story: Hopefully this served as a learning experience for OP. When a sketchy, known drug-user hands you a mystery tablet, you DON'T TAKE IT unless you want to risk visiting outer space. They were a highschooler though, so some naivete is to be expected. For the second instance, we can definitely blame the DM for forcing that persuasion check. All in all, this doesn't sound like a groupkiller incident, and it sounds like they patched things up. Good for them.

[@koboldking7153]

OP probably just didn't want to be rude after being accepted into a game

[@Reac2]

There are no persuasion rolls against other players period. There are insight rolls for when someone is lying but they work on a scale. 10 is you feel something is off, ~14 is you know what is off but not on what way ~18 you know exactly what's going on. It's the only reasonable way to handle player interaction. You cannot force trust. If you want to role play a gullible idiot, do it, but nobody can force you to be one. You can do persuasion rolls only if both people agree to see what their characters do, for random fun, but that's opt in.

[@nathanc5108]

That title just reminded me of something that happened really early on I'm my campaign we where sent to investigate so leads on a magical organisation (magic was illegal in the world) we basically found some magical dust and out one player decided ti snort it, it was basically a magic enhancement drug that could turn your magic wild wacky wild magic shit happens. Long story short my friend snorted a plot device

[@williek08472]

Dungeons and Drugons

[@violinfanatickamraz1403]

Next thing ya know a bunch angry mothers claim DnD made their kids do drugs. Lol

[@93lozfan]

That is one hell of a thumbnail

[@KOBULT92]

That first story is why my number 1 rule exist for all my games- No pvp persuasion. Aka: persuasion checks on player characters. Period.

[@OTQV]

... They were playing with a drug addict/drug dealer monk character on their highschool D&D club?

[@noneofyourbusiness8963]

PCP should make a barbarian unstoppable.

[@solarchos4352]

*sees the thumbnail. * DAMMIT, AA-12! Stay away from the powdered sugar!!!!!

[@dwaynejackson551]

Wow... I just said I needed a horror story and got it almost instantly.

[@Slashthekitsune]

That last story doesn't sound like the OP is telling us the whole story. I don't feel like so many players would agree with an obvious "That Guy" unless OP was getting ample warnings that it was a trap from the DM.

[@mikeharris6429]

The first story is a perfect example of a garbage DM. I’d have punched the monk player out and told the DM that they are a loser and quit.

[@NPC-xd6on]

lol i take drugs while dming and have 27 sessions under my belt lol

[@vampire9545]

It is the way

[@rootfish2671]

I put moon sugar and skooma in my home brewed campaign setting but that's more for the NPCs to attack the PCs who are wacked out on it

[@vampire9545]

Thats not how pcp works. PCP would of given him super rage especially a bad trip, should of ended up with pvp and immune to most damage. Also the AH move of rolling contested checks pvp is fucking stupid too

[@l0stndamned]

I think barbarian rage + risk of loosing control of the character would be the easy way to run that stuff.

[@Morningstack]

Thumbnail giving some Metamorphosis vibes there

[@evanbrown7325]

When the thumbnail is more graphic than the story.

[@alicemilton8756]

Everyone always RPs PCP wrong

[@TheZen0n]

Story 1: no no no no no. Player Consent is a MUST. If the player goes "i dont want my character to do drugs" it ends there. Period. not this "well, RoLl iT oUt!!" bullcookies. Consent is Queen in ALL realities, and you can revoke it at any time. Doesnt matter if its the 1st time or 100th time. The only good part of that story is they talked it out and the behavior stopped. Real life character growth right there :)

[@Nikodraws149]

Op from the gurps game 100% should have ducked out when they found out the game wasn't what they wanted. Thought i so have sympathy. I've only used lfg threads once because i wasn't in any of the games running at the time in my group and the ones i was in were all on break and i got desperate for rp content. I specificied in my post i did not want to play dnd or Pathfinder and wasn't interested in playing in a high fantasy setting, i was looking for something character and narrative driven rather then combat and was fully open to playing in a new system. I am fully aware that was a really rough order in world of ttrpgs. I figured the worst that would happen is no one would respond or i would make someone's day who was having trouble populating a game in the niche system they wanted to play. What i did not expect was all the people who would try to convince and debate me into joining their 5e game because they wanted a player that badly. Even one who openly disliked the system and setting they were trying to run. Like their game would be the one that would make me like d20 combat systems. I ended up in a mutants and masterminds west marches that fell apart before i even joined my first game. Never touched lfg again. All that to say in my brief encounter with trying to play a game online with strangers I did, a few times, almost agree to playing a 5e game out of sheer why to play. Surely I would have eventually if one of my other games didn't start back up

[@jeremyrichard2722]

When it comes to the drugs story all I will say is that as GM I long ago ruled that charisma-type skills don't work on PCs. I won't go into some of the long arse stories about why again but the bottom line is that I think removing player agency is bad. Mind control is one thing (I use it sparingly) but I don't think a player should be prevented from using common sense or deciding for their own character simply because someone, either a PC or an NPC is charismatic. I see immunity to such things and it all coming down to RP as one of the benefits of being a player controlled character. To put this into perspective. Let's say you've got some evil empire run by some hugely charismatic big bad, you know an evil emperor type like Darth Sidious or the real life people such fantasy folks tend to be loosely based on. If we follow the logic that lead to that barbarian taking drugs to it's conclusion imagine a campaign where you walk into a final confrontation and the bad guy charismatically gives his villain speech and the PCs all fail their insight checks and instantly decide he's right and that ends the campaign instantly as they just join the other side regardless of whatever else happened or whatever reasons they had to oppose the guy to begin with, just like the Barbarian being made to take a pill he knows was bad for him after a really bad experience. Especially if your saying knowledge and experience don't matter, this is a massive, massive, problem. Star Wars wouldn't have really been the same if Sidous went "Hey hero boy, come join da Dark Side" and despite everything else Luke just spontaneously said "Wow your weirdly likable when you say that, sure dude.... let's do it" and the credits rolled. Of course I will admit most games do make a point that charisma is not mind control, and it can be spotty how to resolve certain things which is why a lot of GMs have a problem with it. White Wolf games have an even bigger problem with this as they tend to introduce the concept of "super charisma" of various sorts which isn't mind control, but someone just being naturally persuasive and likable beyond what any real person would be capable of, so questions like "what's reasonable" no longer apply and it comes down to generally a simple difficulty modifier set by resisting attributes and them typically burning something like finite willpower dots to not do what your asked if it's really out of character. This of course started with Vampire which had both suggestion and ways of becoming superhumanly persuasive, and then got as far as games like Aberrant which took things even further as it featured what are basically super heroes who do their thing my manipulating quantum energy with their brains to alter reality (which means super powers do not need to make sense any more pretty much), which means some guy with Mega Charisma, Manpulation. Appearance, etc... is literally breaking reality every time they try and convince someone to do something yet somehow that's not mind control as that's a whole different thing... and of course entirely inferior to what you can do with this as for the most part there are active defenses against direct brain takeover and your allowed to at least perceive that as an attack.

[@notoriouswhitemoth]

Ummm... zuì quán kungfu does not involve _being_ drunk. It _imitates_ drunkenness to appear vulnerable, in order to catch the opponent off guard. Some zui quan masters use a flask, but it's primarily a cudgel and/or shield, if there's anything in it it's most likely water or tea to help them keep up their stamina. Also, alcohol is one of the most dangerous drugs known to man.

[@7thsealord888]

Story 1 - On the drug thing, the first time might have been funny. But when the DM let other Characters "influence" the Barbarian into doing it AGAIN, against that Player's wishes, this was crossing a line. It is good that the group has since talked this out. Story 2 - Dumpster fire, from start to finish. OP might have agreed to join, but the instant they found out the DM had lied, they had every right to walk. Story 3 - Griefer and DM were both d#cks. I would have dropped this group without a second thought.

[@Torqegood]

Very simple. "No they are not high. No they are not high. They are not being high. You do not roll persusian. That takes agency away from a player. So no this is not happening."

[@lollma0]

Now if they played Cyberpunk then that would be okay

[@unluckyone1655]

I played a med tech that often made drugs and gave them to homeless people to distract cops and other gangs. That was a fun character

[@vexxama]

Bad ruling on persuasion. Maybe if it was the first time and the character was dubious, but the second time around it shouldn’t be possible, or at least much more difficult due to there being a good reason not to accept. And that’s not even getting into persuasion checks against players to force them to do something even their character knows is a bad idea.

[@rynowatcher]

On interplanetary persuasion rolls: I think they are a good way to speed up a game at an impass. The first story is not really that bad if not for the drug trips lasting hours. More of a dm sin not to skip the boring bits, but the other players seem to be enjoying it. Meh?

[@DanaOtken]

It sounds like the DM and other players felt the game was more fun while the player of the barbarian was unable to really do anything, and further that depriving other players of agency also improved the game. I think this was one of those games early in a player's career where being able to violate real-world social customs has a novelty that becomes the primary source of enjoyment.

[@DrawciaGleam02]

Where's the background from???

[@DnDDoge]

Elden Ring

[@danielburciaga8111]

Kitty jumpscare

[@AlexanderTF]

Yeah GURP's is one of the worst systems I've ever tried, plus the game started alright but within the first 30 minuets another player tried to rob me, cause he metagamed and got to abuse everything in the system that the GM wasn't as experienced in, so we all had a limit of 150 points to buy skills, he convinced the GM that since his character transformes into multiple forms he can spend 150 multiple times, and could just be the Main character.... GURP's as a system can be good, but some of it's players and users are kinda trash...

[@rootfish2671]

Crazy your GM let the player have such an overpowered character compared to the other party members

[@marybdrake1472]

There was nothing funny about that last story. That was just overall dumb, useless behavior.

[@Tank1Sniper]

always one when 1 get off work woooooo!!!!

[@slagarcrue85]

I’ll pass on the last portion of this. Nice video regardless doggie.

[@gigaswardblade7261]

ngl i spaced out and thought monk was a dude just because id expect some high school age dude to be the type to pressure a character into taking fantasy acid

[@ninten90z70]

That first story was a horror story. I don't need context to know the GM involved is an ass. Ruling in favor of robbing players of their agency against players whose characters roll high on Charisma, and a disregard of player consent? No, no to all of that.

[@23gameoverlord]

The first story wasn't to bad, just some stuff that needs to be cleared up and have boundaries. The 2nd I can't really comment because there's not a lot of context for me to say otherwise, the last one was pretty bad but was a little confusing at the end.

[@DisneyChar]

Sounds like pvp is fairplay, go barbarian and handle the problem players, either way your problem is solved. Lol last guy thinks he won when in reality he was bulooed into being useful

[@dragowolfraven3806]

Wow.

[@zerothehero6100]

Wow, what a really unpleasant thumbnail.