My Worst Horror Story

Hey. Thought you’d love mocking me as an idiot for fumbling this, and my failing to notice signs is definitely cringe.

My former GM, let’s call him Larry had an amazing campaign I played for over a year, my favorite character I’ve played made it from session 1 to the epic finale, that just could not have been better, going from level 3 all the way to 20 in just about a real life year. We become friends on Discord at the beginning of that campaign which is where we held online sessions. I noticed no red flags of any kind.

I later tried GMing Curse of Strahd for the group and his character had this thing, preparing NPCs to fight Strahd by strangling them. I thought it made sense, Larry knew vampires bite necks. But the very first red flag: He only did it to the young female NPCs and kept asking their ages. He had great roleplay otherwise so I ignored it. He didn't do it to the only child character, but he also never got an opportunity to.

I then for the first time played a female character at his table and he asked for a session 0, amazing backstory incorporation, friendly NPCs, and great character moments. Then he spent half the campaign with my 77-year-old Elf being choked (The setting was magic high school so I was a teenager in elf years, that’s about 14 if my math is right), a red flag I should have seen coming was… he specified we had to be students, no one was allowed to be an adult character, like school staff. Larry assures me he did this to everyone and it was just to create danger a level 1 Sorcerer could handle herself. If she found out what Larry did, by Talona she’d pray he be poisoned.

I missed one session and people started blowing up, no details were given so I thought people were overreacting when he was called a creep. Until I heard what he did in the session I missed, he choked 5 underaged girls and nobody else. I immediately stopped taking his side.

I still loved that first campaign but knowing who was running it tainted the experience and I am now remembering a lot of female players leaving. They never blew up at him but now I can’t stop thinking Larry was choking their PCs when we weren't present.

Other red flags that don't fit elsewhere. I forgot to mention the time he tried to force me to play a Cleric that had to be 100% loyal to my deity and wouldn’t do anything they don’t deem acceptable, after I explained my experience with religion, I won’t go into detail but I had a friend who became ill and wasn’t allowed to go to school because his mom was Christian and she couldn’t let her boys be exposed to the evils of vaccines and the theory of evolution. I will never return to the church.