My DM is insanely railroady. When we finally tried to talk about it, my friend group imploded.

This is mostly just a post to vent my frustrations if anything, but man. I definitely feel awful right now.

So after I finished my year and a half long campaign, one of my friends eagerly took over to run a 5e game of his own. The only information he gave me going into the session was that I needed to make a character that was looking for work in a homebrew city he had made up. I rolled up a half-elf warlock, and was pretty excited about the backstory I had set up for my character. I made him an urchin and a thief, who had a rough upbringing and no qualms with stealing things even though his life was more on track as an adult.

Now we are a table of thirty somethings. The DM was not a novice, and had been running games since he was 12. This wasn't even the first time he ran a campaign for me. But from session one, the game was completely agonizing to play in. Since I was a thief, and therefore clearly the most evil character that could exist (in his mind), my DM decided to tell me that if I didn't do the opening quest that was laid out before the party, the townsfolk would gather an army to hunt me down and kill me. I hadn't even shown any resistance to doing the quest at this point. I was kind of flabbergasted, but figured this was just an unsuccessful joke as I've known the DM for years and didn't think he would be that controlling. I continued to play through the game and as each session went on, kept running into more and more very visible railroad tracks.

We were sent to go rescue a child who was prophesized to become a lich in the future and were tasked with making sure he didn't go down a dark path. The DM had centaurs show up and threaten to kill me if I didn't comply. A giant showed up later and let me know that if I ever allowed harm to befall the kid, he would run up and kill me. The kid himself was shown to have great magical prowess and let me know that he could kill me if I ever did anything evil. All of this despite me never having actually even stolen anything in game, much less acted in an evil fashion.

But it didn't end there. Whenever we got into a fight, it became clear the DM wasn't actually tracking hit points. The fighter in the group managed to dish out over 140 hit points to an undead we encountered without felling it, at level 5. Every time we "defeated" an enemy, they would turn and run away safely without incurring attacks of opportunity. Many NPCs carried invisibility potions and would take them to make quick escapes, even if it wasn't their turn. I swear I'm not making this up, but at one point we got into a fight in the basement of a bar and as we defeated each foe, they would get knocked backwards from our attacks and land in a nearby river (in the bar's basement?) and get safely swept downstream and away from all harm (us). The DM was a huge fan of the word "no."

I was genuinely getting tired of being in the game. It felt like we were being stonewalled constantly, the party was never able to succeed at anything, and NPCs frequently would give us the run around and never pay us for completing the quests they would give us. Often they would promise specific quest rewards that they would never actually deliver on. I feel like the final straw for me was during session six, when the DM decided that being able to heal during a short rest was too OP and told us we would no longer be able to do that.

I had already tried to talk to the DM after the second session to let him know that I felt like the game had so far been incredibly railroady, and while he seemed offended, he let me know he would try to do better at allowing us to make choices that actually affected the game. By session seven, no such changes had been made, and apparently I had done a bad job at hiding my distaste for the game, because he confronted me afterwards asking if I dislike his game. I was glad that he was reaching out to ask how I felt. I was honest, but polite, and let him know I was feeling checked out because it felt like I wasn't allowed to do anything that hadn't already been predetermined by him.

I had assumed that this was leading into a heart to heart conversation and that everything would fix itself and I could exit the game with only minorly sore feelings, but he exploded on me. He accused me of constantly trying to resist his plot and pointed out a few times I refused to cooperate with NPCs that were giving me the run around, claiming that I refused to do what the plot was clearly guiding me towards doing. He claimed it was clear since the first session that I was making it a point not to enjoy his game and that I supposedly didn't give it a fair shot. The only point he made that I actually agreed with was that I was constantly distracted during his game, which I apologized for. I had been a bit rude the last two sessions, as I had already felt checked out of the game and was pretty bad about making constant table talk.

Not only did he choose to quit running his game right then and there, but he disinvited me from ever hanging out with him again, period. I couldn't believe it. I still don't quite understand what happened at this point. Talking it over with other members of the group, half of them agreed with all the points I made, and the other half seem to believe that the DM and I are both in the wrong as we simply have "different styles" of gaming that don't mesh together.

I'm sure I could have handled it differently. After my first attempt to talk it out with him didn't go well, I figured I would just tough it out for the good of the friend group. That was a mistake, as my disinterest in the game did not go unnoticed by the DM and it definitely offended him. I should have just exited the game after I first tried to talk to him, though I'm not sure at this point that it would have ended any differently if I had.

Like I said, this is mostly just a vent post. I'm not a regular poster here at r/dnd so I apologize if this sort of post isn't allowed or would better fit elsewhere. I just don't really have anyone to talk to about the situation at the moment. My friend group is small and close knit and I'm shocked that the DM is choosing to end everything over this.