A few days ago, 3 players from my old 5e campaign reached out to me to see if I would be open to reviving that game. Henceforth, I will call them Lynnea, Warlock, and Druid. There was unanimous support for the game to begin. However, when we started arranging for session 0, I got a message from one of them:
Lynnea: So something happened between Warlock and I. I may not be able to play if she does. I have proof that she said something not okay with me if you would like to see it.
Me: Oh absolutely. Tbh I didn't really like them much. What did they do?
Now, before I tell all you wonderful readers what evidence was presented, I should explain my enthusiasm to kick this player out. Warlock was not exactly a pleasure to have at the table, although this was made less obvious by the fact we ran everything online through discord. I have written horror stories back on the alien site starring them, but since I deleted all my posts during the API apocalypse I will have to retell them from memory as best I can.
The Cardinal Sin of Apathy
Every session (until they introduced Lynnea to the party) they would spend nearly the entire session playing a videogame instead of rping or listening in general. The only time I had their full attention was combat. It was easy to forget that we were a secondary task to them, but every once in a while I would be in the middle of describing a scene when their game would get loud enough for me to hear it. Warlock also did not put any effort into role-playing. I have very low standards for role-playing; I don't need a voice or custom art, I just want to see you immerse yourself in the game. They couldn't even clear that bar outside of combat.
A good example of this happened when we were getting excited about the new campaign. I was trying to find a reference point for my players for the survival horror vibes I wanted, and settled on one session where they had to clear out a haunted keep to reclaim it. The plot went something like this:
As they entered the keep, they would explore each room after room, discovering fun lore things like dwarven hardtack, a mimic being used as a talking door, and steel bars from bad guy land. However, each time they entered a room, they would experience things which implied that something material was following them. Claws gently scratching at walls behind them, bodies would be found disemboweled and partially eaten, and every room had a shattered mirror. Rogue, at one point, felt hot, wet breathing down the back of her neck; she whipped around to stab the menace, but there was nothing but clicking and scratching sounds retreating down the hall behind her. At the end of the day, they decided that food stores in the basement were defensible, locking themselves into a lightless room with only one door in or out. They were assaulted that night. Warlock and Barbarian successfully held the door; as hard as the monsters tried, all they could do was scrape and gouge the edges of the door. Eventually they relented. The next day, Rogue decides to try something new: she picks up a fragment of a broken mirror, looking through it over her shoulder to see an emaciated humanoid with steel claws for fingers, which immediately grabs her by the legs and sprint-drags her to the other room. It is a quick fight. However, after discussing with each other for a bit, the players remember that there were at least 2 of these things assaulting them last night. Their hackles did not go down for the rest of the session, working together to scan each room with their mirrors.
It became apparent in the chat that the only one who remembered this session was Warlock:
Me: @warlock, would you like to tell the newbies about the keep with the invisible monsters? I have mind-of-god knowledge about what was actually going on, so I’m not the best person to tell this tale.
Warlock: basically was filled with creatures that could only be seen in a mirror or reflection and almost killed the entire party while taking a long rest by swiping through the broken barricades door.
Warlock: every mirror in the building was smashed and burned
The Lesser Sin of Sloth
Warlock was often a bit inflexible. Sometimes it seemed like they didn't want to listen with their ears. For example, during the party's session 0 where everyone met each other, I explained that the local area uses a gift economy and what that means. My setting was a sort of Studio Ghibli post-apocalypse, where the world is just barely getting out from under the collapse of my Roman Empire analogue, so establishing a standardized currency system wasn’t a priority and most of their part of the world had decided it wasn’t worth it. Warlock refused to understand:
Warlock: this is so stupid. You're saying I can't buy things?
Me: Well, trade on a local level is simple enough that barter works for many day-to-day functions, but like I just explained, if you don’t have something to give them for the thing you want, you do them a favor.
Warlock: You said there’s a tavern over there. Are you saying we don’t buy the drinks at the tavern?
Me: Technically what I am calling a tavern is what inlanders would call a “hospitality fort” and it’s a grey area I wanted to address later, but I feel like you are confusing trade in general with, you know, money. Think of it this way: In situations like this where there is no obvious standard of trade, people will find something ubiquitous to use as a currency: sea shells, precious metals, flint arrowheads, you get the idea. We’ve settled on favors as the currency. The community is absurdly small, so if someone owes someone else everyone is going to know about it by the end of the week. It’s like a social blockchain system powered by gossip.
Warlock: But what if I want to buy something? How am I supposed to pay for something if they don’t take cash?
Me: (sigh) I just explained, you need to talk with the person who has your thing and either find something you can do for them or get them to agree that you just owe them a favor. I’m going to be keeping track of your reputations in the community as a sort of credit score; if it gets too low you won’t be able to pay with IOUs anymore.
Warlock: I thought you said this was going to be a high-realism campaign.
Me: Fair, we probably have different ideas of what exactly counts as “realism”, but if you look at the player handout I do specify that I spent a lot of time thinking about how this new age of chaos has impacted the way people live their daily lives. I understand it is a bit of a mindfuck to try and navigate a culture so different for our irl culture, but I did a lot of research on what contexts different economic systems arise in and a gift economy fits the local area best.
Barbarian: Um. We were going to go deal with those goblins?
Rogue: (turns on mic) Right, I was just thinking about how we don’t have a healer. I’m going to go ask Calabash if we could get some potions of healing—
Warlock: How are we going to buy potions of healing if no one takes money around here?
Rogue: Mmph. (leaves the call)
Me: Calabash has a number of potions of healing for you all. It’s emergency resources for times such as now. The band looks after itself.
Barbarian: And what money are you trying to buy things with? How do you have money on your character sheet?
For context, I made homebrew backgrounds that each of them had to pick from, representing their social station. None of them come with money, unless you include the Noble’s gold ingots. Barbarian had noticed this during character creation and asked about it, so he already knew everything I was telling Warlock now and had been sitting patiently this entire time. I want to say that he must have been holding onto that question with the patience of a boulder in a river, but since he was my only IRL friend at this game I already know his patience was and is rivaled only by the Buddha himself.
Me: (pulls up Warlock’s sheet on Roll20, which I had sat with them to make, and begin checking it. There is indeed no money on it.)
Warlock: Well, I thought one of you would have been a noble. Anyway, what if we find money in the goblin camp?
Me: That’s a good question, and ties back into the tavern being a Hospitality Fort. Merchants do pass through and stay at the hospitality forts, and when you are elsewhere you will be staying at hospitality forts. So, our tavern does in fact accept gold, and merchants accept gold as well. However, most trade is done in gold ingots, as explained in my description of the noble background if you haven’t read it. Gold pieces are only worth their weight in gold. You’ll hear the tavernkeep calling them “specie” instead of coins because of this.
Warlock: You promised a high-realism campaign. I should be able to—
Barbarian: I think we have prepped all we can for our first quest. Are we going?
Me: I’ll message Rogue that Calabash gave them (rolls 3d4) 7 potions of healing and that we are starting the quest.
After this session, I talked about this with Barbarian. Barbarian agreed with Warlock that the gift economy was frustrating to deal with as a player, but they did say that Warlock was “being really weird” and didn't understand why they were so upset. I decided to quietly move the gift economy out of view after this, but never quite fully removed it because it tied into the law vs chaos theme of my setting. It was a blow to my dming confidence that I allowed session 0 to get so off the rails, but Barbarian (who also dms) was able to talk the bad thoughts out of my head.
In addition to not being the best listener, Warlock also could be quite hidebound. For example, at the climax of the quest mentioned in the last story, the party managed to stealth their way to the main chamber of the goblin warrens, where they saw 30 goblin warriors being given a rousing speech by their warchief Bogan Redcap, Lord of All Goblins.
Warlock: I have an idea. Can I use my yuan-ti ability to turn into a snake and sneak up behind the warchief?
Me: There's a lot of visual clutter in this room for you to sneak through, but there's a lot of goblins. Give me a Stealth.
Warlock: 16.
Me: Okay. There's a couple close calls, but you are a ghost in the dark and you get there unseen.
Warlock: I'm going to transform back into my humanoid form and decapitate the war chief.
Me: Sick. Roll to hit, then let's roll initiative.
They end up actually being able to take Bogan Redcap, Lord of All Goblins down in one hit, but it was a cool enough idea that I would have let them decapitate him anyway.
Warlock: I hold up the warchief's head and tell them to bow before me or die.
Me: Fuck Yeah! Roll Intimidation and I'm giving you an inspiration. Let's see what happens.
Warlock gets a 23, and I describe the entire room of goblins dropping their weapons and running in fear. However, this commotion catches the attention of every alert goblin in the warrens, and the party braces to fight the oncoming waves. When the first set of goblin reinforcements arrives, the players have decided on their first actions:
Barbarian: I rage and hit the nearest goblin.
Rogue: I'm hidden under a table. Sneak attack.
Warlock: I raise the warchief's head and tell them to surrender or die.
Warlock rolls high on their Intimidation roll, so the goblins decide that they are the most dangerous threat in this room and prioritize taking them out, much to the amusement of Barbarian who was literally pulverizing the goblins by hitting them hard enough that their bodies took on the consistency of rice bags. When the next wave arrived, each player declared their actions, and guess what Warlock chose?
Warlock: I raise the warchief's head and tell them to surrender or die.
Warlock rolls poorly, so they effectively entirely waste their turn. So, next round they try again.
Warlock: I raise the warchief's head and tell them to surrender or die.
Rogue: Why?
It doesn't work. This continues until I pause the game and explain to Warlock a psychological principle called the Law of Diminishing Returns. They react to this by trying to find other ways to use the head to intimidate the goblins, which I allow but it still has no obvious effect on the goblins. By the end of the 12 rounds of combat, Rogue and Barbarian are exhausted both in and out of game, whereas Warlock is just frustrated. There were many other times Warlock started acting this hidebound, one of which nearly caused a party wipe, but from this point forward I knew to be on the lookout for such behavior and correct it before it became a problem.
The Sin of Greed
Warlock was only motivated by acquiring new and better weapons. Whenever we were doing anything that did not lead to cool weapons, I could feel their eyes glazing over. This contributed to the campaign fizzling out in a fairly direct way.
The way I did quests was that I had a main list of quests on the Quest Board text channel, which the entire party could see. However, if a player had their own ambitions or a patron they answered to, I would create private text channels for them to receive quests or rp with their Patron. Since Warlock had a Patron, they had one such channel for their patron to send them on quests. I like to use warlock patrons and cleric gods as ways to yank the players around the map to see all the cool things I made, so their Patron had an interest in ancient lore and lost technologies.
Their first quest from their patron went fine, mostly because I included a hint that there would be a sentient magic sword in the proximity of the cheese recipe they were ordered to retrieve. They were very excited to find this sword, and only remembered the cheese recipe because I and Barbarian reminded them of it. (The cheese was like blue cheese but with penicillium mold, making it work like a potion of Cure Disease. Barbarian thought this was funny.)
The second, and ultimately last, quest commanded them to rescue several hundred records from a nuclear reactor finally going critical after sitting unmaintained since the second age of this world ended. Since the fallout from the meltdown would inevitably end civilization as their character knows it, they also had the option of traveling to the sea where some cephalopods had finally entered the bronze age using nuclear power instead of fire, where they could recruit one of their specialists to go with them to the reactor to help them figure out how to shut this effectively alien technology down. I made it clear that their patron did not give a single flying fuck about the oncoming apocalypse as long as the records were safe.
Clearly, Warlock cared even less. They did not respond to their patron, and did not address it at all until I poked them about it during a session. I do not remember their wording when they reiterated it to the other players, only that their tone made it clear that this quest was a pointless chore. The other players picked up on this and decided to put it off until they had no other choices, and once it was the last quest no one took the initiative to start it. This put me in a bind, mainly because I had fairly explicitly stated that if they put it off any more they might be too late to stop the nuclear plant from going kaboom, but I knew if I gave them any other quests they would definitely push it to the back of their queue, and I am fairly certain they wouldn’t like to have a very high chance to accidentally destroy their own civilization. And after Barbarian and Rogue both got busy and couldn’t make the sessions anymore, things just petered out.
The Cardinal Sin of Lust
Now, you may have noticed that two of the three players mentioned at the beginning of this very, very long story have not appeared so far, namely Lynnea and Druid. This is where we will begin to sketch out the real problem with Warlock, that being that they are a terrible, very horny person irl.
I met Warlock through a poly friend of mine (an ex that I was able to keep as a completely platonic friend; polyamory really trains those emotional boundaries) and they are poly themselves. This is relevant because I am going to accuse them of cheating on very little evidence in a few lines, and I feel that it is my responsibility to let you come to your own conclusions on this subject while presenting my opinion of them.
The thing that Warlock did that annoyed me the most was that they kept inviting girlfriends to the campaign right before their relationship with said girlfriend collapsed. I was quite sad each time their girlfriends did the responsible thing and bowed out instead of staying and creating tension; each one made an effort to make a unique character tied into my lore and worked with me to find a good way to introduce them smoothly in the next session, only to leave before their first session started. Going back over my logs, I found 3 different girlfriends who left in the span of 6 months, and that’s not counting the one that stayed (Druid) or the fact that they were clearly lining up Lynnea to be their next girlfriend at the end. Speaking as a poly person myself, I think churning through about one partner per month is a bit of a red flag. Even assuming that these were long-term partners who all happened to leave at the same time, this simply does not happen unless they did something to drive them all away. Considering that each of the 3 who left sounded like they were still in the honeymoon phase when I first met them, I think they did in fact get a new girlfriend and then drive them off in a month.
I did notice that Warlock stopped playing videogames during our sessions after Lynnea joined, which should have been a hint to me that something was different. Lynnea has informed me that Warlock had broken up with them a few years before, but at the time I met them they were apparently trying to win them back. As profoundly stupid as this seemed to me, they apparently did get back together some time after the campaign ran out of steam, but Lynnea was unaware of their ongoing relationship with Druid.
For those unaware, polyamory REQUIRES open communication between all partners. Keeping secrets is generally considered cheating. Poly people tend to have a surprisingly wide category of things that count as cheating, and having a semi-secret fuckbuddy is absolutely one of them. This discovery led to a breakup.
Of course, I had no idea about any of this at the time. The next thing, however, is the thing Lynnea shared with me, and is the thing that got them kicked and banned.
The First and Final Nail in the Coffin
Quick extra context: Warlock owed Lynnea money. Because of this, Lynnea would speak with them weekly to get the money, which was given in small payments of $40-$90. At this time, she had found a new partner who is as loyal and reliable as Sam was to Frodo. This did not stop Warlock from trying to win her back by writing poetry for her and other romantic gestures. She and Druid have also been trying to worm their way back into Lynnea’s good graces, since she wasn’t able to cleanly cut irl ties.
This finally brings us back to where our story began. Lynnea sent me this screenshot:
Shitty transcription is as follows:
Warlock: Can i ask a wierd question
Lynnea: Sure
Warlock: ik you do t have an OF but can i plz get content equal fo what I’ve paid for and given money for
Lynnea explained that nudes had not come up once before now. Apparently, Warlock and Druid had excused this behavior with “they were drunk when they sent that”.
I didn’t need any other reason to ban and block them.
Druid reached out to me after this to ask why Warlock was banned.
Once again, transcription:
Druid: hey so may i ask why Warlock got kicked?
Me: Hey. Short version is that they were on thin ice with me already for how they were behaving at the table. Lynnea reached out to me to express that they wouldn’t feel comfortable playing if Warlock was at the table, and she had receipts. So the decision was not hard.
Druid: What did she do at the table, if I may ask?
I gave her a civil but curt summary of my grievances.
Me: I do feel it was immature for me to not give Warlock an explanation for the ban, and I am sure my dislike of them came out of nowhere. But even if they did want to come back, now they know that I was just tolerating them this whole time, which I am sure hurts.
Druid: I apologize but im going to leave the campaign. Id feel more comfortable playing with somebody who’s NOT Warlock’s ex-finance, as I am her finance of recent. If you’ve gotten this many problems with her, let Warlock know yourself. She does not deserve to be in the dark with everything after all she dealt with.
Lynnea and I have talked, and we can’t come up with anything that warlock could be “dealing with” right now.
So, this left me with one player who is very excited for a new campaign. I have been reaching out to IRL friends of mine, but frankly none of them have as reliable attendance as Warlock. (That is, of course, why I kept inviting them to things.) Message me if you are interested in a player-directed low-fantasy survival horror dnd campaign that most likely will run one session per month (I am going to college and essentially keeping my head above water, which is my priority). It would be very sad if kicking the problem player out is what killed the campaign.
Edit: Kicking the problem player out is not what killed the campaign. My school schedule did. I was getting my gen eds done this semester, and when I wrote this I didn't understand how much of my life that would absorb. That, plus financial problems, is what killed the campaign.
