There I was, skipping merrily towards a table at a gaming convention, ten dollars poorer and full of foolish optimism. The event blurb promised A Grand Tournament Adventure!—which sounded like a perfect chance to flex my imaginary muscles, smite some imaginary monsters, and maybe impress my partner with my incredible ability to roll sevens at dramatic moments. What I got instead was… well, imagine buying a ticket for a thrilling roller coaster only to find it’s a single, rickety shopping trolley pushed around a parking lot by a man who keeps making seagull noises at you.

We were four souls: my partner, a rogue-playing woman, me, and… Creepy. Creepy will be explained later, because his whole deal deserves its own section in the DSM-6. Then there was our GM—introducing himself with the confidence of a man who had reinvented Dungeons & Dragons. His “innovative system” would, he declared, purge the game of all the “negative and racist elements” baked into the core rules. And how would he achieve this? With the groundbreaking technique of… giving us three piles of paper. Class. Race. Background. Pick one of each. Revolutionary! Margaret Mead is rolling in her grave.

I picked Monk because I wanted to be a close-quarters kung fu menace. Then I looked at the pre-filled name and felt my soul leave my body. “Fu Long Chop.” This was supposed to be the anti-racism version? Buddy, this name sounds like it was rejected from a 1970s martial arts parody for being too much.

Before I could open my mouth, the GM excused himself. “Back in a moment,” he said, and vanished for 20 minutes. Did he go to get a snack? Referee a boxing match? Sit in a dark room questioning his life choices? We never found out. We made our characters without guidance, which is basically the RPG equivalent of trying to build IKEA furniture using only interpretive dance.

When he finally reappeared, I asked, very politely, if I could change the name. He reacted with a facial expression that screamed someone just spilled warm milk on my tax return and emitted a high-pitched, unholy “Eeeeeeeeeh!” Not “Huh?” Not “Why?” Just this shrill, confused kettle noise. I explained the orientalism problem. Another “Eeeeeeeeeh!” By this point, I was starting to wonder if he had only one reaction programmed into his social repertoire.

We begin: an arena, mid-battle, goblins swarming us. Not a bad start! Until Creepy. Creepy did not look at people when they spoke—he stared. Fixed, unblinking, laser-like, as if trying to determine what you’d taste like sautéed. Any time I spoke to my partner or the rogue, Creepy would jump in with something lewd or just… wrong. His entire presence radiated I have a box under my bed labelled “parts.”

My turn comes. I’m ready to unleash my monk fury, flurry of blows primed and loaded. The GM interrupts: “You should use your feat.” The feat is called Leapfrog. It lets me jump over an enemy and hit another one five feet away. Which is adorable, but completely pointless here. Still, he insists—like he’s about to write a dissertation on why this is superior to, you know, actually doing damage. Fine. I Leapfrog. It’s about as exciting as reading a parking receipt. We eventually win, but between the Eeeeehs, the Creepy Gaze, and the crushing sense of wasted potential, I knew—this was going to be one for the blog. Working title: Why I Paid $10 to Play D&D in the Weirdest Fever Dream of My Life.

After the goblins fell, I was ready for something cinematic. A victorious fanfare. A booming announcer voice declaring us champions of Round One. Maybe even some in-game fan art of my monk doing a heroic pose. Instead, the GM, in his best “by the way” tone, dropped: your characters are taken back to their slave pens. Yes. Slave pens. This was, apparently, the first mention of us being enslaved. Not in the description. Not in the session blurb. And absolutely not in the non-existent trigger warnings section, which was as empty as my enthusiasm at this point.

I went still. My face was frozen in a polite, brittle smile that said, “I am currently processing this decision and have decided to delay my existential crisis until later.” The GM, blissfully unaware, launched into what he clearly thought was a rousing pre-battle speech about the prizes awaiting the tournament winner. He even threw in a big “LET’S GO!” cheer, which landed with all the enthusiasm of a sad trombone at a funeral. The atmosphere had gone from Rocky training montage to Les Misérables prison scene in thirty seconds flat.

Then came the part where we were asked what we’d do with our winnings. Creepy, undeterred by concepts like subtlety or boundaries, said he’d buy an island—while making prolonged eye contact with Rogue. Just a reminder: Rogue is a petite Japanese woman about half Creepy’s age. My soul visibly crawled out of my body, muttered “Nope,” and went to sit outside until the scene was over.

We moved on to the “second part” of the tournament—a dungeon crawl. And by crawl, I mean exactly four rooms in a straight line. Imagine paying for an escape room and finding out it’s just a corridor with a mildly aggressive janitor.
Room One: Exposition. Lots of backstory. Nothing to hit. My monk is bored.

Room Two: a trap with cogs and wheels. Rogue asks the GM how her class interacts with the trap. GM replies, “You’re a rogue. You know how rogues work.” Sir. SIR. You spent half an hour earlier bragging about how your classes are “new and improved.” This is literally the first time she’s touched your Frankensteined ruleset. Also: it’s a convention game. Explain things.
Room Three: Pain and Regret. A five-foot-wide bridge over a deep chasm. We cross in single file. Gargoyles swoop in, hover twenty feet away, and start hurling magic blasts. Great for ranged fighters. I, being melee-only, have the combat range of a particularly angry goldfish. Why? Because the GM decided that instead of helping us build functional characters earlier, he’d go on a mysterious half-hour walkabout.

Rogue throws daggers. Cleric casts. Creepy fires something. My turn: “I can’t hit them.” GM: Eeeeeeeh with the facial expression of a man who just discovered his soup is 90% hair. My partner suggests throwing a stone. GM: no stones. I suggest grabbing a cog from the trap in the last room. GM sighs, waves his hand, says fine, and retroactively decides I already had one. I throw it. Miss. Thrilling.

Room Four: healing pool. We all sip politely. Except Creepy. Creepy decides to swim. Naked. Yes. I ask him to stop. He does not. Instead, he launches into a monologue about his character’s genitals. Then about the other characters’ genitals. The GM? Possibly astral projecting to a land where none of us exist. I ask again. No luck. At this point, my fight-or-flight system chooses “flight,” and I excuse myself for a bathroom break.

In the hall, I genuinely consider just leaving. Ten dollars is already gone. My dignity is halfway to the parking lot. But then Rogue comes over, softly checks if I’m okay. I wasn’t—but her kindness is enough to convince me to power through the last 90 minutes. Which, in hindsight, may have been the bravest (and dumbest) decision I made all weekend.

So, hesitantly, I came back to the table for the third and final part of the tournament. My enthusiasm had been whittled down to the emotional equivalent of a damp teabag. Creepy was still there, radiating his unsettling aura like a human Wi-Fi signal you didn’t want to connect to. No clue if the GM had spoken to him—certainly no indication that anyone had considered checking if I was okay. The GM himself seemed gloomier, moodier, and vaguely resentful, like I’d personally stolen his lunch and fed it to a raccoon. Probably because I’d dared to question his problematic PC name, his casual sprinkling of slavery into the game, and maybe because he’d pegged me as “The Awkward One” during the shooting range debacle.

The third trial was set in a large chamber: locked door at the far end, a dragon between us and freedom. Now, a dragon in D&D can be scary-but-beatable at level 3 with the right adjustments. This could have been an exciting challenge! But before we could so much as roll initiative, the GM narrated how all these previously unmentioned “other competitors” rushed in to fight the dragon… and were immediately obliterated. I assume this was supposed to build tension, but it was really just a flashing neon sign that read: YOU CAN’T WIN.

We players started brainstorming alternatives. Could we wait for another team to show up and fight it for us? “There are no other teams,” says the GM. Could we wait until it’s asleep? “It’s a skeleton dragon. It doesn’t sleep.” Excuse me, what? Skeleton dragon? This had never been mentioned before. It was like the GM had pulled it from his back pocket purely to slam dunk our idea into the bin.

Fine, we’ll sneak past it. “Door’s locked. Key’s on a chain around the dragon’s neck. Do you fight the dragon?” At this point, the railroad tracks were visible from space.

Eventually, I say, “Okay, clearly the GM just wants us to fight it, so let’s fight it.” Choo-choo.

We enter combat, halfheartedly. The GM is doing his best sad puppy impression because we’re not leaping in swords-first. And then—magic happens. Rogue says, “I think I can get the key.” Suddenly, teamwork! Cleric distracts the dragon, I throw Rogue onto its back, Creepy runs into position to catch the key. We’re playing the game.

Just as Rogue reaches for the key: “It’s… uhh… melded to the dragon’s body. It can’t be removed.” Of course it is. Rogue slaps her hand on the table: “That’s fine. I have acid!” GM checks her sheet. Yep, it’s there. Rogue melts the chain. We cheer! She throws the key to Creepy.

GM, clearly miffed, asks, “So… you just want to run?” We nod. “Fine. You win.” And just like that, adventure over. No narration of our daring escape. No acknowledgment of a creative win. Just the sound of a GM angrily scooping up maps and muttering about how he “just wanted to make a fun beer-and-pretzels game.”

The room felt like someone had just announced the party was over because they didn’t like the playlist. Players quietly packed up. I offered a handshake and a polite “Thanks for the game.” He ignored me.

In the days after, I had wanted to reach out to give him some tips and advice on how to improve it. But, unsurprisingly, found the GM had blocked me on any social media sites we might have otherwise shared. He probably blames me for it all going south, and to be honest, I get the impression he'd have blamed anyone and anything else for it rather than looking at what actually happened. The whole thing kept replaying in my head—not because it was some epic tale of woe, but because it was such a perfect case study in how not to GM. It wasn’t just the railroading; it was the resistance to player creativity, the weird mood swings, the inability to read the room. A good GM works with their players to make the story exciting. This guy acted like we were NPCs in his solo campaign.

This could have been salvaged so easily. If he’d set the tone clearly from the start—"Hey, this is a quick, silly brawl for fun"—we could have matched that energy. If he’d rolled with our plans instead of swatting them down, we’d have been telling this story with joy instead of disbelief. Even just acknowledging our final plan as clever before ending the game would have sent us home smiling. Instead, we got the tabletop equivalent of a sulking child flipping the Monopoly board.

And the real kicker? I walked away not thinking about the dragon or the battles, but about how exhausting it is to try to have fun with someone who doesn’t want to share it. That’s the part that lingers—and the reason I’ll be politely skipping any table he runs in the future.