This campaign cost me two 25-year friendships when they revealed they are a Sociopath and an Incel.

This is quite long so I apologize ahead of time and thank you for bearing with me. I had to leave out many details as they involve the literal court system.

This D&D horror story is more about the fall out than the game itself. I am a forever DM, and an author by trade. I write all my own campaigns, often with homebrew experimental mechanics, and I’ve had a ton of success with them. Our group included myself and my two very-long-term best friends, and a couple others, all in person. We will call those ex-best friends “Socio” and “Incelio”. 

Prior to this our group completed a 2 year campaign spanning from level 1 to level 20, with plenty of experimental mechanics. Everyone loved it from start to finish. At this time I leaned on D&D for joy in my life because I was battling the worst 5 years of my life.

In those 5 years: My mother died of cancer, my sister died of alcoholism, I was nearly killed by a virus in my brain, I was diagnosed with a degenerative genetic condition, and I tore ligaments in my hand and my knee, resulting in years of physical therapy and to learn how to walk again. 

Fast forward to the new campaign. Everyone is excited because I’d been working on the story and new homebrew experimental mechanics for a full year. I’d shown them the progress, asked for their feedback, made adjustments, and genuinely put in hundreds of hours of work on it. 

The campaign starts, and I get the first red flag. I told my players, “since many mechanics of this campaign are experimental, players can’t start with any spells, races, classes or items that aren’t in the PHB. Anyone who wants to use something outside the PHB needs to clear it with me first, and then the whole of the group needs to approve it.” 

This is when Socio makes his first move. Socio was the host, and insisted that no one else could host, going so far as to hold all of my minis and materials hostage at his house. Since none of us had enough space at our homes, this meant the game would end for everyone if he quit. 

Session 0 he comes to the table and announces he’s playing a centaur. I said, “that’s against our starting rules, and honestly, I’d rather you not play a character that can be defeated by a ladder.” He throws a fit, then decides he will only play as an Aarakocra. He also demanded that Aarakocra never needed to land on the ground. He insisted he could hover constantly, in and out of combat. Whatever. I’m a creative DM, I’ll manage it. 

Socio then started to question every ruling. If it wasn’t in his favor, he would storm off and threaten to quit. Multiple times I was forced to bend the rules or just outright change my rulings for him. 

One by one players decide this is too much and leave. We replace the players each time, but each time Socio demanded who we invite, picking people that he was able to manipulate. This is when Socio brings in Incelio to the game. Incelio and Socio then turn the game into their own private show. Basically 2+ hours of dick jokes and 30 mins of D&D. Incelio did nothing but play on his phone except when it was his turn in combat. Two others leave, in part because Incelio made them uncomfortable with comments like, “I deserve a woman.” 

My stress is visible, mostly from the earlier mentioned personal events, but D&D was my outlet for joy. Socio then insists the campaign isn’t working and demands I step down as DM and let his new party member run a different campaign. I make a character and try to be a good player, but I’m called out for any role-play I try because it’s “not in the module,” and eventually get pushed out entirely. 

I then called up Socio and confronted him. He tells me, “it always seems like something’s wrong,” and ghosts me. He then goes to our friend group and demands that they all ghost me as well.

I ended up completely isolated. I was kicked out of my own campaign because Socio didn’t have full control, kicked out of the next campaign because I was trying to role play, and kicked out of our friend group because there were too many things going wrong in my life for him to care. I didn’t ask for much. I told him that he could at least reply in texts with, “that sucks, sorry dude,” and I’d be okay. That was too much for him. 

For a long time I thought I must be the problem, but Socio didn’t stop there. He made new D&D groups on discord by using a group chat I was still in, and told everyone to exclude me. After years of forced isolation, I found out that Socio came out of the closet, is in a horrible divorce, and is fighting in court to get full custody of the kids. (Side note: I’m fully in support of LBGTQ. I support people that need to leave to be their true selves, just not how he did it)
 
Then one day I get calls and texts from Socio on every platform all within 20 mins. I tell him I’m not comfortable meeting while the divorce is ongoing, so we meet after things are ‘finalized.’ He comes to Starbucks and tells me he’s “sorry for how the D&D campaign turned out.” I’m furious, so I tell him as quietly as I can that his lack of empathy and his manipulation amounts to outright cruelty, and we aren’t friends anymore, full stop.

I leave and take everything in stride as best I can, but the situation has me often looking back at the forced isolation, and to this day I still wonder if somehow I was the asshole who destroyed everything. I haven’t heard anything more from Incelio, except that he often calls other friends to bitch about being single. 

TLDR: two 25 year long friends use D&D to blow up their friendships with me by revealing they are a Sociopath and an Incel, and manipulate our entire friend group to push me into forced isolation.