Callin' For Cases!

To the esteemed justices and bailiff Jake: I don't want to play ttrpg with class traitors! Had a session zero of Draw Steel with some of my dm's friends and one of them offered to """""make"""" everyone character"""""""art""""""" using AI I said I didn't want to waste water and electricity on a hobby I actually like doing He also asked to record the session which is apparently normal for that guy because he has a bad memory But I don't want to participate while being recorded by some asshole who's probably going to feed everything I say to an LLM later I want to drop out of this game just for this reason alone. As an artist and writer who has been personally affected by the rise of AI, I don't find this unreasonable. Should I say why I want to quit in the group chat (there are enough players that the group probably won't dissolve) or just message my DM solo?

This is not DnD court related, but I don't know how to get this question answered. Did you guys not finish Curse of Strahd? I don't see anything after episode 18 other than you guys asking for strahd stories.

To the splendiferous justices whom I love and adore, and the stinky boy, stinky man, stinky Jake, Jake man. I bring you the case of the "Am I a Bert in a Room Full of Ernies?" A close friend reached out asking if I would like to join a DND campaign they were about to start. I had never played DND before but am a huge fan of Dimension 20, NADDPOD, and Murph, so I was thrilled! I showed up to the first session with my human battle master, who was a former member of the queen's guard and a loyal servant to the crown, ready to do some fun make-em-ups. Justices, the group I walked into was, at best, Ernie-esque. In the first 30 minutes of the campaign, while the party was standing in the throne room addressing the queen - one party member, the rogue who "couldn't trust someone if they tried," accused the queen of being a "horse-fucker" who, "enjoys the smell." When I confronted him, our druid cast wild shape to turn into a horse that can "absolutely get it, from anyone, anywhere." The DM loved it, and when I went to apologized to the queen she told me to "chill, for real." Later in the session, once we were alone as a party, I accused the assassin of diminishing my honor, and called them "a morally insufficient scoundrel." Justices, the entire table laughed at me. In response, I rolled to attack the rogue with a trip attack, which hit. Since they were not expecting it, the DM awarded me a surprise round , so I used my second turn to attack the now prone rogue again. I rolled a Nat 20. Instead of rolling damage, I narrated that I stopped the blade short, and told him never to disrespect the queen again. The DM responded by saying "No. That's not what you rolled for. You rolled to attack and you crit, so you attack and you crit. You can make it non lethal but you absolutely fuck Chesnut (the rogue) up with your sword" I reluctantly rolled damage and the rogue was thankfully not downed by the damage. We had a long rest shortly after the confrontation so there was no permanent damage done but I left the session feeling like an asshole who was more focused on being realistic and honest than on having fun with my friends. I reached out the DM and asked if they'd like to have me at future sessions and they said they would, but I can't shake the feeling that I am the debbie downer of the group. And so, Justices, I ask this honorable court (not you stinky). Am I an asshole, a Bert, or fine? Please be gentle, I am shy.

To the most honorable justices, and my burpless brethren the baby bailiff. . . Blake? May it please the court and give you all the most supreme crit. ;) I'd like to submit the case of the quiet Kenku. My table was running a home brew campaign and we were getting close to finding and fighting our BBEG. Our party included a kenku, Crowbar, who played by the mimic rules that he could only repeat words and sounds he had heard before. The BBEG was hidden away on another plane and to get to him, we had to enter a cave full of grueling puzzles and traps to reach a portal. We barely made it through alive. At the end of the cave, our DM announced that we would be silent and communicate only in written form or telepathically, (though no one one in our crew had the message cantrip). We were presented with a written riddle (think "speak friend and enter" style puzzle). Part of the riddle was solving for the answer, the other part was determining who could say the answer. If we answered wrong, or the wrong person spoke we were told the reaction would be TPK bad, and we were very weak already from the cave. We sat around the table passing notes, and determined the answer to the riddle was "Onomotopoeia" and the person to give the answer was a choice between either the youngest member of our party, or the physically smallest member of our party. The problem? Crowbar was both. Crowbar vehemently insisted there was no way he would have heard the word onomotopoeia before and therefore could not speak it. Our DM knew going into this that Crowbar was both the smallest and youngest and seemed to be gleeful about our predicament. After several pleas to both the DM and Crowbar to try to find a loophole we conceded we could not solve the puzzle currently. I suggested we take a long rest, exit the cave, teach Crowbar onomotopoeia, rest again, and come back, as it seemed the only solution. In the process, we ran out of potions on the way out, and on the way back our cleric, the party's only healer, went down, and she failed her death saves. My hexblade warlock attempted to call upon my patron for help without success. In the end only 3 party members of our 6 member crew, including myself and Crowbar made it to the end concious. Crowbar triumphantly said Onomotopoeia and the gate opened. Our session ended feeling empty and hollow. In real life there was a fight after the session. The players expressed we were upset at Crowbar for being so stubborn and at the DM for intentionally putting us in this situation. Crowbar argued that's how his character has always been and we shouldn't expect him to change because of a bad in game situation. The DM argued that we could have been teaching Crowbar words throughout the campaign before this so we wouldn't be here. I said it was an intentionally obscure word and we had no reason to teach it. Our DM laughed at me for being so upset, so I got up and left with the cleric, saying we were going to start a new campaign. Later, Crowbar texted me and said I had overreacted to a simple difficult scenario, and that if that's how I reacted when things didn't go my way, then no one would ever want me in their dnd party. I feel justified in being mad, but wonder if I didn't react too strongly. So I come to the mercy of the court asking, was I wrong to take the Murph response of "find new friends" or was my DM being unreasonable? I humbly await your judgement and accept whatever punishment I may receive.

Distinguished greetings to the esteemed justices and polite nod to the slightly bereft bailiff. I come before you because recently a new player has joined my dnd table. I was not against his joining but have felt more than a little miffed when I realised that he had chosen not only the same class as my character (rogue) but also the same subclass (swashbuckler). We even have similar expertise (acrobatics and persuasion vs acrobatics and deception). To be fair to him it is a pirate campaign and his character doesn’t look like mine at all. I have talked to this with my dm but she has not gone against his character choice. What should I do oh great justices ? Should I swallow my disappointment at sharing the swashbuckler spotlight or change my class so that we don’t step on each others toes so much ?

To the Extemporaneous Justices of the Supreme Crit, and the…rudimentary at best bailiff, I bring the case of the railroading DM! We’re playing in a cyberpunk/fantasy world, à la Gangs of Neo Galaderon, and we went to the home of an NPC to save. They were stuck in a VR set, and one party member suggested we make them a homemade meal to kick them out of it (they only had “nutritional goop”). We looted the pantry, found pasta sauce and noodles, and started to cook when someone said to “bake the water”, which we all found funny! We proceeded to narrate together how we baked the water in the oven, our other companion jokingly put the whole box in the pot to cook, and the autognome stirred with his finger. We’re all having fun when the no-nonsense DM says “I’ll say you guys just make it the regular way” with his arms crossed, almost pouting. Justices, were we unfairly railroaded out of this silly cooking idea??

To the benevolent judges and "AHHH!!!".....Oh Jake! I didn't see you there. I bring forth a question: Who owns a character after a player leaves the table? I was approached by my DM and he asked if I could run the next campaign. I was nervous cause I've never DM'd before, but with his encouragement I gathered the group and we set off. The game was going well for months until my DM approached me. My DM asked if he could make a new character claiming he had taken their story to their end. I was worried cause I still had so much planned for him and even offered to workshop, but he was firm. So I narrated his PC leaving and introduced his new character Everyone loved this new character, so I thought we were all good. Untill one session later, my DM approached me again saying, " Im going to leave the game. I feel bored." Once again I offered to workshop, but he was firm so we bid him farewell and we continued forward. But I had a problem. I was left with his character that the party loved. So in the next encounter, I decided to introduce my BBEG and as a way to show off the bad guys power, I would have his character sacrifice himself so the players could escape. When I told my DM this, he was upset. Saying that it was his character and he should get to decide what his ending was. I argued that since he left the game, they were now a NPC and as DM their fate was in my hands. Well suffice to say this soured the group and the campaigned fizzled out. So I ask, who owns a character once a player leaves the table? Should I have let his 2nd PC sail into the sunset? Or was I allowed to give him a heroic death? I throw myself at the mercy of the court.

To the illustrious Justices and the uncelebrated bailiff (if we are being nice this time then please take a moment to celebrate him instead) My case begins with our party taking a job to hunt what appeared to be a Half-Dragon/Half-dog, one that seemed to have a knack for appearing in unexpected places. We followed its trail to a Noble's hunting grounds, where we found a hunting shack it had tried to break into for the dried meats and jerkies inside. We came up with a plan to lay a trap for the beast. We got into the shack, and baited a Snare spell cast by our Artificer with some of the jerky from inside. We then climbed some nearby trees and waited. Myself and the artificer were in the same tree, and our DM said we heard snarling from above. He then described a Blink Dog with red scales wreathed in flames above us in the tree. When combat started, the dog used its breath weapon and then blinked out of the tree. I asked "didn't it use that ability to get up there already," thinking that its sudden appearance is what started initiative. But the DM said that no, the Dog was already up there when we started climbing the tree. I was a little shocked to hear that. I can't imagine climbing a tree and not noticing a flaming dog up above me. I began to voice an objection, but ultimately decided not to hold up the game over something that ultimately wouldn't affect the outcome of the fight. What followed was also a pretty fun fight, with the "Wink Dog" (b/c it's a Half-Blink Dog) being able to teleport and use its breath weapon from great positioning. I'm not mad about the fight - but I do think it's silly to say we climbed a tree and never saw the literal flaming dog above us. This is a low-stakes case I'm sure but I'd like to know - was the DM silly here? Or will I have to use a Flaming wreath this holiday season (or something else fucked up) as punishment?

A joyous dolphin backflip to the sweet summer justices, each of them their own unique and tropical fish, and a half-hearted head-nod to the flatfish Jark scuttling along the ocean floor - by the way, did you get that thing looked at? You did? Oh, how weird - for some reason it looks worse than last time. I come to the Church of Dice Christ to confess. After years of loyally listening to NADDPOD, I finally found a local group to play DnD with. Our DM decided to run Curse of Strahd. We’ve been having a ton of fun learning the game and have discovered that our propensity for shenanigans is quite high. As a result, the main plot has progressed slowly: after over a year of playing roughly every two weeks, we only barely reached Vallaki. When I heard you all were doing a Curse of Strahd campaign, I stopped listening cold-turkey. I thought I was strong. But as time went on, the NADDPod siren song called to me, and my party’s campaign progress was so, so slow. A couple months ago, I caved and ended up binging the entire Strahd campaign. I tried to not use too much of my new prophetic knowledge. I thought I was strong. But some has admittedly bled through into gameplay. My party was dangerously flailing around the campaign like the baby in Spirited Away, so - with a little bit of my subtle guidance - I helped us avoid or anticipate some of the most dangerous encounters. At first, it felt kind of good. My party actually got a boost of confidence in their gameplay, stating on several recent occasions that they feel like we’re “finally starting to be good at DnD”. But the sweet taste of this secret has soured as time goes on, and now I have a tummy ache. I don’t want to confess to my party now because it's been so long and I know it could retroactively ruin the story and their newfound confidence. However, this misstep deserves punishment. Do with me what you will. My body is yours, but my soul is already burning somewhere in the Nine Hells. Sincerely, - Ignorance of Strahd is all a facade

Greetings to the illustrious baliff Jork and the pretty good judges Axford, Tanner, and I want say.... Murph? No that can't be right. Anyway, I bring you the case of maddening mind control. I was playing in a slightly homebrew Tomb of Annihilation campaign over discord with people I had met only online. I had previously played through the lost mines of phandelver with this DM and another of the players. So far things had generally been good. Occasionally I (in and out of character) had made choices that the DM had to shut down to keep us on the tracks, such as trying to continue to fight when the DM was trying to capture the party (the other players had given up at this point, I did not realize until after that we were being forced into a loss to continue the story). I say this because I made another choice that either got me kicked out or ended the campaign but I still feel was the correct move given the context I had. Near the end of the campaign in the final dungeon, one member of our party who had been forced into a deal with the bbeg got mind controlled and became a boss fight for us. After we won, the DM described him coming to his senses and everyone else wanted to continue into the dungeon. I (and my character) could see no logical way to continue to the bbeg fight with a party member who is clearly susceptible to mind control, and said (in character) I wouldn't continue if he was with us. After a little in character arguing the session ended. At some point before the next session though, the discord server disappeared from my list without a word. I never got a single message about why. I don't know if I was kicked, if the campaign fizzled, or what. But I ask the court, should I have ignored the obvious danger and let things take their course? Did the DM create an unsolvable problem by mind controlling a character and giving us no reason to believe it couldn't happen again? Am I super in the wrong and can't see it? I lay at the mercy of the court.

To the Effervescent Judges and that weird guy in the corner, I bring the case of the Duplicitous DM. After a full year of not getting to play D&D, I finally turned to Reddit to fill the void. It took days of scrolling to finally find a post that felt like the perfect campaign for me - deep, character-driven roleplay, an immersive world, and a healthy dose of combat. I was so delighted that I made an account and messaged the DM right away! After a quick conversation, I was accepted into the group. At first, it was everything I’d dreamed; the other players were amazing and quickly became a solid friend group, and the DM was busy, but slowly having conversations about all of us about our characters. We had to delay our first session for the holidays, but when we jumped into playing, we had (at least what I thought) was a great time with each other. But then, tragedy struck: the DM, 4 sessions in, told us that he needed to take a break from the campaign for his mental health, and that he didn’t expect us to keep our Saturday mornings open, but he would love to come back to the campaign when he felt better. We wished him the best and, among the players, wondered when he would return. After a few weeks, we remembered him sharing that he used alt accounts to post his campaigns, and, out of curiosity, we went looking for his previous Reddit posts. We uncovered several different accounts that he’d posted from, all pitching similar campaigns. After one month of silence from the DM, one of the alt accounts we’d figured out was his posted a call for a new campaign - different genre, different premise, but the same Saturday morning timeslot he’d supposedly been saving for us. To make a long story short, I confronted him with the post, he confirmed it was him, and he said he had an addiction to starting campaigns. Justices, I won’t pretend I write with a question in mind other than “what the hell?” The ghost of my tossed-aside paladin craves the righteous justice you mete out, but if you have another view I cannot predict, I will humbly accept my punishment. P.S. Those fantastic players I met through this debacle and I are still friends, and now we play with a marvelous DM!

Jubilations Joyous Judges, Jurors, and Jacobs. I bring to you a case of a DM most unjust and unjubilant. Several years ago, we fixed a (now dead) wizard’s illusion-made-real machine, which would allow his simulacrum to become a real boy. Our wizard and artificer were successful with great rolls, but for safety, we tested it on an illusion of a pile of platinum bars.. equaling roughly 1 million gp. Didn’t want to test it on the guy, you know? Anyway, it worked, on both money and the guy. So on our way to launder it - the money, not the guy - we were told the money - not the guy - was disappearing slowly. So we book it to the bank. As soon as a laundering deal was struck with the teller- we were down to half our pile- a little demon/devil (tiny, red, twirling mustache, offensive French accent) Popped out of nowhere, grabbed the teller and the money, jumped into the vault portal, and locked it tight. It’s been 4 years in and out of game. Our money is still out of reach! Our characters are in the Icewind Dale, so it’s not like The money would let us do anything crazy. We just want to build our guild- the Claws of the Crag- a castle! Please guide us on how much further we can bemoan our otherwise great, though still sometimes petty, DM. I humble myself before your benevolent nonsense of a punishment. Apologies to Jake the Great for length, I have tried to keep it as brief as possible.

To the Magnanimous Justices and the Bailiff who is either awesome or despicable depending on the day, I present the Case of The Suspicious NPC. I am currently in a campaign DM'ed by my brother with a few other friends. We are level 13 (started as a level 10 one-shot) and have picked up a couple of recurring NPC's along the way. One of whom is a small lizardfolk rogue (Vutha). I (and by extention my character) have not trusted this guy from the jump. He's "funny" and has been helpful, but he's also rude, arrogant and definitely a higher level than the rest of us. (His rolls are always insane unless the DM rolls comically bad and seems to be there just to show everyone up). That issue aside, our party's rogue ("we have rogue at home") is absolutely smitten with this little freak (not romantically; she just loves having another "2 cool 4 school" rogue around who's basically her minion). In the overarching plot of the campaign, we have recently discovered that some evil gods have been corrupting people to do their bidding (including as-of-yet-unknown allies of ours) and can sometimes be spotted by compulsive actions/idiosyncrasies. I floated the idea to the party that Vutha, who is practically a kleptomaniac, may be a suspect. Our rogue practically jumps down my throat anytime I criticize or point out obvious issues with Vutha and this time was no different. She acts like he's her occasionally misbehaving puppy who can do no wrong and regularly belittles my character's choices (aka MY choices). The DM of course said Vutha was fine, but of course I know to take that with a grain of salt. My issue is the constant attitude from our rogue towards my monk. I have spoken with one of the other players and the DM (my brother) about this several times. The other player (warlock) agrees with me, but the DM poopoos my concerns every time. Justices, am I right to feel irked by this rogueish rudeness or should I just let the two of them do their thing while the rest of us are relegated to sidekicks? I will hold action to punch the lizard as I await your ruling.

Dice Christ forgive me, for I have sinned. I have an awesome rogue that I do not deserve. My friend wanted to host a one shot for his birthday. We all rolled new characters for it, and my stat rolls were crap, so I rolled again, then again, then several more times. I didn’t stop until I had three 17s, a 15, and two 12s. My rogue could do it all. It’s now three years later and the one shot has become a full blow campaign. I love my rogue, but constantly feel the guilt of his unearned greatness. I throw myself on the mercy of the church.

My dear deacons of dice Christ, i kneel before you in the holy pool of dice, and what i can only imagine is Emily's tea, in Repentance. Dice christ tells us that THOU SHALT NOT COVET THY PLAYERS DICE, but i did just that. My group of friends has been rotating DM's for over 8 years. For the last 2 i have had the pleasure if running the show. One of our sessions happened to land on my friend/players birthday so I decided to buy him some dice with little duckies in them(he's a huge oregon ducks fan and we live in eugene). After gifting him the dice and before the session started, the dice devil took me. I leaned over him reaching into his dice tray and snatched the ducky D20, i loudly announced oppa Shang Tsung style "your crits are mine!" And rolled the unsullied dice into his tray. NAT 20. The entire table erupted in laughter at the bit and we then started the playing. For the next 3 sessions(5 plus hours each) my friend could not roll above an 8 on his ducky dice and I feared i had inadvertently become an agent of the dice devil, and in turn, cursed my dear friend with subpar rolls. So I humbly ask you, those closest to dice christ to cleanse me of, or punish me for this most egregious sin. P.S. the ducky dice have since rolled several nat 20's, 2 of them against my bbeg. And hes a gloomstalker ranger/rouge multiclass so he absolutely fucked my shit up.

If it may please the inimitable judges and the capricious bailiff, I bring before the case of the Deadly Discord Drop-in D&D AND a bonus D&D gossip. First, the case. The year was 2021. I was medium-new to D&D (I played in person inconsistently in 2019 then online during COVID, and joined a consistent online game in 2020 - more on that in the gossip later). My boyfriend had a friend who wanted to try DMing in his homebrew Dark Souls inspired world. My bf, my friend, and I joined his Discord server, along with several other randos who I didn’t know and didn’t get to know ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. These sessions were a “drop in if you’re available” format on the DM’s whims. He would post random times and people could join if they were free.So long as there were 3 or more players, the session would run. As an adult with a job and commitments, this appealed to me because I didn’t have to commit to scheduling for a long campaign but could still play the same character across multiple sessions. The first session I joined went great. My level 1 Twilight Domain Cleric was super fun to play, and I was very excited to level her up and build out her story. The few following sessions went well too, I played with my friend and bf, so the group was pretty much the same each session plus or minus one or two players. However, I was starting to notice a few issues. The first issue was that this DM used XP leveling, and if you weren’t present for a session, your character didn’t get any XP. This meant that you could end up in a session where you were level 2 and other party members were level 5 or 6. I found this annoying, since I wasn’t able to join as many sessions and was falling behind some of the other characters’ levels, but my bf and I were the same level, so I stuck it out. If you hate this already, don’t worry, it gets worse. I'll remind you that the campaign was Dark Souls inspired, and as such had many deadly encounters. RIP my Cleric, she died. I believe I was level 3 at the time, so I started to build a new character at level 3. It was then that the DM told me that new characters had to start over at level 1. I felt like I was being punished for my character’s selfless sacrifice, and my question for the court is this: am I wrong for finding this system absolutely insane and unfair? Especially given the deadly nature of the campaign, this seems to me like a flawed system deserving of your punishment. Things ended with the boyfriend soon after and I left the server, but I still think about it sometimes when playing in my much better campaigns. Now, the promised gossip: In late 2020, I was bored and single swiping on Hinge. I lived in my hometown, and ended up matching with a guy I went to high school with. We went on a few socially-distanced outdoor dates, during which I mentioned that I had been missing my college D&D game and watching a lot of Dimension 20 (shoutout justices Axford and Murphy). He responded by telling me about the online Roll20 game he was in that played every week. He let me know that they had just lost a player who could no longer make the scheduled time and invited me to join. I played a fully tatted Rogue Grandma named Larcenous Lynn who had just escaped a retirement home (she was *not* going back, no matter what her kids said) and had a fantastic time. A few weeks in, the guy ghosted me and the entire D&D group, never to be heard from again. Six years later, I’m still playing D&D with that same group every single week. He never resurfaced or explained what happened. I went to high school with him and lived in the same town, so I know he didn’t die, he just ghosted all of us.

Good day wonderful honourable Judges and however we are treating that other guy today. I present the case of decimated backstory homework. I was playing in a star wars campaign as someone who used to be part of a gang of thieves of ancient Jedi artifacts. I sent this backstory to the dm (my boyfriend at the time if thats relevant) who asked for comprehensive indepth details. I was absolutely happy to do this to flesh out my character and help the dm out. The dm did not ask this of any other players. I did spend quite a bit of time at the dms request doing this, only for him to kill off all the npc characters off screen in an random shootout that the pcs had nothing to do with. In response he said "got your ass and made you put so much work in for the sweet twist". I ask you judges and bailiff if I am over attached to the backstory npcs I was baited to put a lot of work into, or was the dms plot twist that and I quote "utilised his creative writing degree to emotionally get me good" narratively interesting? The campaign was good but did fizzle out in the end mainly due to schedules and the dm actually cheating on me (in a strange way i think killing the npcs hurt more?!?). I thank the court for the guidance on whether I should be miffed by the slightly unsatisfying decimation of my characters backstory and npcs or if their deaths were a satisfying twist.

To the well-dressed justices and the baliff who I can only assume isn’t wearing any pants. I bring you the case of the vacation that ended a campaign. Before I get started, Murph will be pleased to know, I made better friends. A few years ago I was playing my first campaign, Curse of Strahd, with my house mate at the time DMing. We had made it to Valiki, my half-elf had just found her father’s body buried at the top of yester hill, and our asamir had been struck by lightning three times already. All things were going well until our DM’s girlfriend asked to join us. We were all close with her and so we were all excited to hang out with our friend. She played for a few sessions and we managed to make it to Strahd’s dinner. Strahd’s brides handed us gifts while my druid regaled the guests with GoodCharlotte’s ‘The Anthem’. I did notice the DM was giving his girlfriend some nicer gifts but I ignored it because I was enjoying the session and I assumed he wanted her buy in. Fast forward a few weeks and the girlfriend has been and come back from a holiday that we all knew about. Plot twist: she comes back engaged. Not to the DM, she got engaged to someone else. Our DM is gracious and kind of heart and he decides she can continue to play with us but she eventually ends up also dating the Asamir. Our campaign eventually falls apart, we as a group no longer speak, I think her and the Asamir have been together for three years now, she never got married. Justice’s I beseech you, who was in the wrong? Was it the girlfriend for making use of her enthralling wiles over geeky men, was it myself and the other players for not trying hard enough to stop the DM from maintaining a friendship with her? Was it perhaps the Asamir for dating his best friend’s ex girlfriend behind his back for 3 months and unceremoniously getting caught by the DM? Or was it even our gracious DM who let his nativity and trust cloud his judgement? We will accept whatever punishment you bestow! PS please do a show in NZ we are getting FOMO

To whom it may concern (I'm at work), I have spent nearly a decade playing D&D and other various tabletop games, but one of my earlier on campaigns was... interesting to say the least... It was already an extension of the previous campaign we'd been playing in, but our original GM was playing with twisted intentions and was extremely toxic (that's a story for another time). So, we broke off, wanted to still play our characters, and ported them over from Pathfinder to D&D under one of the other players as the new GM. It was fun continuing these characters we'd come to love for a long time in better circumstances--until one of the players started dating the GM... While we would play, the PC of the person they were dating would have long, drawn out RP at the table in a lot of different scenes. We spent probably double the time on their backstory because, at that point, our GM had self-inserted an NPC that was their in-game partner. I brought up this difference in time spent on backstories and it caused a RUCKUS. When we got to my backstory in this new campaign, we reached a point where it was decided that my character would have to work with her mortal enemy in order to further progress the adventure toward the BBEG. Looking back, this did provide a complex villain for the campaign and I will say (as a GM of ~6 years now) it was an interesting take, but as a new and young D&D player, I was extremely unhappy with this. I told my GM that I didn't want to work with my character's enemy because I didn't find it fun at the time and would leave sessions in tears because I was so frustrated. Nothing was changed about this, and we fought about some other things, so the group ended up asking ME to leave. I lost a whole group of friends and my first ever character's story at the same time and was devastated. Since then, I've worked to make the TTRPG space more inclusive and welcoming and try to take in my players' ideas and things they like/don't like into my highest consideration because their fun is my top priority. I brought new players in who were interested in trying, travel to conventions now to spread the joy of tabletop, created a local games community, and we're trying to start working with local university research for even more adaptive and inclusive tabletop. Since this game, my motto has been "anyone is welcome at my table as long as you're kind and curious", because I know D&D saved me and I never want anyone to go through the things that I did when I started out ever again. <3 Per my last email, Daughter of the Valkyries

To the majestic and magnanimous magisters and their malignant and potentially mutinious minion. I bring you the Case of "Hot Water, Hurt Wizard". During our campaign 5-6 years ago, my fellow party members and I were traversing the middle of the continent, which is dominated by a massive body of water called Lake Fury. The lake is the result of a calamity 500 years in the past, and there is only a tiny strip of land left in the middle of it that's very dangerous to cross for many reasons. The key detail to this case is that the water of the lake is boiling hot, hot enough that ships are unable to sail on it. During an encounter, my character and the party's wizard were thrown into the lake, and we took a ton of damage from the boiling water. The wizard then asks the DM what seemed like a simple question at the time: what type of damage was she taking? She wanted to use her reaction to cast absorb elements to try and resist the damage. The DM didn't have an answer. We ended up stopping play and had a 10 minute long discussion about what the answer could be. Was it fire damage? Acid damage? In the end, in order to get back on track he ruled that the boiling water was "True Damage" and that absorb elements could not grant her resistance, and we quickly moved on. Justices, was my wizard pal wronged? Should she have been able to half that damage? What type of damage is "boiling water" anyways?

Dear beloved crit justices and sweet baby bailiff Jeff, I present to you the case of the Stone that Killed the Party. I was playing with a few coworkers and their partners, most of us new to the game. The issue was with a boastful dwarf warrior played by someone I was meeting for the first time. Throughout the sessions his character would jokingly insult mine even during scenes my character wasn’t involved with. This culminated in what would be the final session of the group. After a hard-fought battle, my character climbed up a cliff to survey. The dwarf throws a rock at me. The DM calls for an attack roll and he hits. I had 2 hp. He rolled a 2. The DM says I fall from the cliff and take a death saving fail. The party laughs and almost forgets to heal me while the DM excitedly smiles. I later let my DM know that I thought the razzing was a little too much. Some weeks pass and nothing is ever scheduled again. Should I have just dealt with that and enjoyed the rest of the game and not said anything? I feel worse because I encouraged the DM to host the game and I know how much work that is. Warmest regards, Wick (he/him) PS. The dwarf at one point after that sessions texted the group chat a multiple paragraph in-character rant boasting about his prowess which no one replied and killed the group chat.

Dearest devilish judges and angelic baby bailiff, I write to you regarding the case of the Blasé Devil Deal. I joined a campaign with some random folks I met on discord after moving to a new city. I hoped this would be a good way to meet friends, and it has been! However, I didn't necessarily become friends with every single player at the table: in particular one player who we'll call Sarah. Sarah ended up leaving our campaign of Descent to Avernus about 6 months in. Frankly, I was not sad to see her go, because she refused to role-play or do anything remotely character-driven, and I found her disruptive. Cut to several months later. Sarah has rejoined the campaign. My character has become cursed, and our DM leads us on a fetch quest to find a powerful devil who we can barter with to lift the curse. The devil agrees to help us in exchange for selling our soul. It's very clear the DM has been trying to get one of us to take a deal like this, as it will become important later on in the story. Enter Sarah: almost immediately, she volunteers to sell her soul to lift the curse, later saying that she wasn't sure if she would still be in this campaign down the road, and that she doesn't care what happens to her character. Ultimately she did help me out, but I can't help but feel that her eagerness to take the deal and her meta reasoning made the whole thing anticlimactic. Am I right to be upset that Sarah undermined the drama of the moment, or should I just be happy that her character did a nice thing? Also, am I right to be annoyed that our DM let Sarah back into the game in the first place? P.S. The campaign has since finished and overall was a lot of fun. We played the final session without Sarah after she bailed, because she couldn't leave her dog home alone. She sent a picture of them with a cone on their head and told us "family comes first".

to my favorite crit justices and my favorite baliff, big mike, i bring the case of the nemisis switcheroo. A few years ago I took part in a boss rush style campaign, where our characters (antihero henchmen) would be tasked with taking out their own evil bosses together. I played a very cool pro wrestler build that was 5 levels of barbarian and 5 levels of rogue, where I would use profeciency in grapple checks and reckless attack to force sneak attack whenever I wanted. My boss was the retired wrestling world champion, now manager. when it came time for me to confront my boss in the middle of the wrestling arena, i was suprised to see that when he began to fight, he split into two seperate earth djinn. Justices, I had known my boss for my entire adult life as my character and my entire wrestling career. I had no idea he was actually two earth djinn in disguise over my 15 years of working for him in my backstory the djinn proceeded to poison me with a poison sword for 10 minutes, preventing me from using sneak attack, since the poison imposed disadvantage on attacks. I was womped! I had to wait for my team to kill MY boss while my build did almost nothing. did I deserve a suprise boss that happened to counter my exact character build, or was my expectation of a no holds barred grapple fest too presumptuous? ps., the dm has a wife and a 5 year old child so dont kill him or anything

Dear sweet justices and that cutie balif Jack. “My group was starting a new campaign and my dm nerfed me before we could even start. I rolled amazing stats, with him there to witness, he came to my house just so I could roll. And then when my roll was too good he decided to change it to standard array. 10, 13, 14, 16, 17, 18 Was my roll, I was already planning all the feats I was gonna take, but then a week before we start playing I'm told that I have to change to 8, 10, 12, 13, 14, 15 That's 16 less stats now I have to take ASIs to get my character to be able to even hit the enemies and all the fun feats I was gonna take are outside of my reach in any way. Is this fair? I feel cheated” That was what my player Said when I asked him his side on our disagreement. These rolling of stats was for our second campaign. The first campaign he Also rolled amazing stats. The dice gods must love him. The other players who doesnt nearly role as good, not so much. We started the second campaign level 0 with child pc’s, but he actually first joined the second campaign 5 sessions into campaign, when the Crew became adult and level 1. Me and the other player talked about doing it standard array, and They were okay with it. But when he joined he became sad that he couldnt use his good roles. He has rassed me ever since. So should I let my player get his OP stats, or must he settle for being as average as every other player? I Will leave it in your hands justices.

Good Eve to the Esteemed Justices and The Wonderful Baliff Jorp. Today I bring to you the case of DM Daniel. I've been playing in a game for around a year and a half now. That is ran in a local game store where I have made alot of new friends. Recently the DM wanted to take a break from dming as they wanted time to plan the end of the campaign. This was when The Paladin Daniel whose character was a sentient skeleton named The Bone Man. Who in his backstory was the avatar of a trickster god and couldn't die and spoke like skeletor said he could run a sidequest (you can imagine who this went). We started by The Bone Man wanting to play a board called Bumanji which the party got sucked to but The Bone Man didn't who then become the dm for our in game characters and would narrate hour long combats that we couldn't be apart of as 'our characters could only look on in awe at the spectacle' he also made us through Dominate Person kill an entire town of people as we were 'Dominated in the tavern by the Lich while we were asleep' then he in real life through a fit when me and the players said that we would rather just wait until the actual campaign starts up as this isnt even cannon. So Judges and Jorp I ask you do we as players request that Daniel be kicked from our table?

To the beautiful and highly esteemed Justices and the okay-looking and adequately esteemed bailiff, Cake, I humbly present to you the case of the Twist I Should Have Seen Coming. This is a tale from my first ever campaign. Seasoned player's first time DMing and all newbie players. All was going well. We met regularly, and were all awkwardly getting the hang of role-play and combat but still having a great time! We were all in college, and when the end of the spring semester came around, our cleric, our barbarian and our paladin were all heading home for the summer. We agreed that we would "split the party" with the cleric, the barbarian and the paladin going on an off-screen side quest, while those of us staying would continue meeting for the main campaign. The three absent players would rejoin in the fall at whatever level the rest of us got to during the summer, In the first summer session, the DM introduced a DMNPC barbarian. Her introduction was a little clunky and oddly delivered but I didn't think much of it. The DM was just like that at times, and honestly the meta-reason of balancing the party felt like such an obvious reason that it didn't warrant questioning. We were a rogue, a sorcerer, and a wizard (me). I thought the DM was doing us a favour by throwing in a tank for our otherwise very wimpy party. She continued with our party for the whole summer, fading into the background during role-play and really only coming out in combat. This just served to confirm my theory that she was only here for combat balance and I continued to ignore her as it related to the story. In the last session before the other 3 players returned, it was revealed that she was a doppelganger on the run and she turned on us! We ended up winning the fight, but both me and the rogue went down. I rolled enough death save successes to stabilize but the rogue was not so lucky. After the fight, the DM outlined all the "evidence" that pointed to why we shouldn't have trusted the doppelganger, such as her avoidance of social interactions in towns, her strangeness when we first met her, and all the lore she didn't get to drop because we never tried to role-play with her in downtime. She also made fun of us for how difficult it was for our level 4 characters to defeat a challenge rating 3 monster. I tried to point out that she was our second fight of the day, and while a short rest had allowed us to regain most of our HP, me and the sorcerer were out of most of our spells, to which she just shrugged, and said we shouldn't have become so reliant on the DMNPC barbarian in combat. We all got too busy to keep playing together but remained friends and this tale continues to come up from time to time and I continue to bite my tongue and accept the razzing. The player who lost her rogue character doesn't seem that offended and I figured if she isn't upset, then I have no right to be either. The statute of limitations to confront the DM is long past, but I seek your expert judgment to remove this chip from my shoulder. Whether you provide me with vindication or acceptance of my own mistake, it will give me the peace I need. Was the DM being unfair, or am I being over sensitive? Was this just a lesson about meta gaming I needed to learn?

To: the handsome, good-natured bailiff Jake and his superiors, the effervescent justices Good afternoon and may I please this court. I guess this could be a confession if I felt bad about it but I don’t. I am a dating app user, recently I sent a like to someone not for the cleverness of their profile or their magnetic smile but because they mentioned they play DND. My most recent in-person campaign is in the distant past and I thirst for a good table with whom to play. Was I wrong to allow this thirst to direct my flirtations? Must I be punished? Do I have to tell this person I’m more interested in DND than dating? For clarity, I have gone on 1 date with this person so far.

To the unholy judges and the very nice bailiff Jake I was once in a campaign where I very much had my backstory I was a warforged who learnt to be an articifer by watching my maker over years And I was his guard The war ended and I was left there and suddenly became sentient My sub class was armorer and got my AC 24 My brother was annoyed that he never hit me and changed the backstory that I was a bully in school and the monk who I bullied killed me

Hi judges! Hi Jork! I recently joined a campaign that has been running for 2+ years. Everyone has been extremely welcoming, and they have been eager to tell me all about the world they made and send me many many many many lore documents so I can catch up. Despite all this (or maybe because of it?) I have really been struggling to immerse myself in the world and match everyone else's effort and care. I like playing DND with them! And I really appreciate how welcoming they've been to both me and my character. But I'm easily fatigued by the overarching lore and tend to zone out in outside-of-game conversations when everyone starts talking about how awesome the campaign is. I fear terribly that I'm harshing the vibe by being the only one who doesn't show interest in the family lineage of a beloved NPC or the tense relationships between the different nations and powers in the DM's world. Should I be sentenced to catch up on the lore? Should I be disbarred from the campaign? Or is the DM in the wrong for expecting this level of commitment and world knowledge from the guy playing the 6 int barbarian? Will accept any sentencing with grace and not rage about it even a little bit.

Hello gamers and Murph, the last couple months I’ve been dming a fallout 2d20 game weekly, for a group of 3 to 4 players. This is a game I brought up for the group to learn and play since we all love the universe and it’s been going pretty well so far. However, one of my players for maybe the last 3 sessions has been fact checking me in the middle of the game and even combat. If I make a ruling he disagrees with he’ll pull out his laptop and look in the source material or Reddit. It’s extremely distracting, and I haven’t been disproven yet for my rulings. Guys I’ve read the handbook, I’m confidant in 90% of my rulings and when I’m not I look it up myself to make sure. How do I even approach this?

Greetings to the most renowned and sweet-smelling Judges (and the craven bailiff, Juice.) I present The Case of the Bumbling Barbarian and the Inevitable Storyline. My party and I were a few months into a Curse of Strahd campaign loaded with homebrew when our lovable idiot barbarian found a cursed axe that whispered into his very smooth brain. The axe regularly convinced him to endanger the party, attack allies, and generally make life harder for everyone. Some party members wanted to solve the problem the traditional D&D way: murder - but my bard became the barbarian’s staunch defender and reluctant babysitter, keeping such a close eye on him that I regularly tied a rope to him like a toddler monkey backpack. Fast forward to the Amber Temple. Mid-combat, while the rest of us were fighting for our lives, our heavy-armored, stealth-allergic barbarian somehow vanished from initiative and the battle map. When I asked the DM about it, the concern was shrugged off with suspicious confidence. As it turns out, while we were all distracted by not dying, the barbarian had quietly slipped away to awaken and form a pact with an evil god. No perception checks, no stealth roll from the walking cookware set, and no chance for my bard- his self-appointed handler -to intervene. To be clear, the campaign was fantastic and our DM is awesome, but I still feel mildly robbed that this particular god-awakening felt less like “what the dice decided” and more like a cutscene we were destined to watch. So I ask the Court: am I justified in feeling denied the chance to stop this catastrophe, or is this simply the price of adventuring with a cursed barbarian and a DM who found a storyline too juicy to resist? I await your righteous judgement.

Justices Murphy, Axford, Tanner, and the Baliff who we may or may not feel a particular way about, May it please the Crit: I ran a Descent into Avernus game a few years ago. Near the conclusion of the campaign, I advised my players they could ultimately decide the ending, with whoever they wanted to align with having effects on who their end fight would be against. (trying to be vague here to avoid spoilers for the module) Justices, they chose to not align with ANYONE and they wanted to defeat Zariel themselves. I told them it was possible, but above table, it would be incredibly difficult. I neglected to inform them I had taken their character sheets and had ran five simulated battles with Zariel, all ending in a TPK. In the fight, things were looking grim, and one of the six players died and was revivified. To get them out of the situation, the rogue made a desperate pull on his deck of many things. He pulled wish. The conclusion of his wish was that virtually the campaign was pointless, Zariel was not redeemed, but she would rule Avernus with her original goal in mind. Fast forward to this past week, we’re playing a crawl through the hells game set in the same timeline, just four hundred years later. Zariel has been acting as a double agent to benefit the party, that is, until the last session. The players had eliminated all of the competitors to rule Avernus, and Zariel showed her true colors: the wish wasn’t worded well enough to prevent her from returning to evil due to the corruption of Hell. The former rogue who is in this campaign became LIVID. I ask the Court, should the players Wish override the corrupting nature of Hell? I humbly rest.

Take me to church! Esteemed high priests of critiverse and still somehow baliff jake, i present to you the terrible farewell one shot. I was dming a one shot for our forever DM, who was moving across the country. He'd recruited a group of friends, some from our longterm table, some newbies to ttrpgs. My friend said he'd double check their characters, but clearly didn't. I was running a module called lair of the rat king and the first battle was against 6 mutant spiders. The poor party of five was so under baked and terribly constructed that the battle took 2.5 hours and i lied about most of the spiders' rolls and changed their mechanics to not immediately tpk the party. As an example of how bad the PCs were, the level 5 paladin had an AC of 12. We ended up having the bloody party return to town and spent the rest of the evening fixing their characters before running the one shot for real the next weekend, which went much better. I believe i have already been served my punishment, as i was not able to hold the remnants of the table together. I prostrate myself before dice christ and hope to play again one day.

Hello esteemed justices Murphy, Axford, and Tanner, and a hearty wassup to my lowly homie, Jork. This case begins with a member of our party dangling from an airship, needing rescue, while the rest of us were on the ground. The party quickly determined who could fly up to help. Without any way to fly, my wife and I were forced to keep our characters on the ground, and too far away to assist. The other four party members, however, flew up to rescue our ally and confront an NPC who later proved to be a major villain. (One other PC was secretly a dragon, but that is a story for another time). During this encounter, one of the characters on the airship threw a corpse overboard. With this, the DM instructed me to roll a Dexterity saving throw. When I asked why, I was told I had been struck by the falling corpse and, due to the height, would take maximum falling damage. Despite objections that the airship had been moving away from our position for a while, the ruling stood. I failed the save and took the damage. This resulted in my level 3 character taking double their max health, resulting in their death. This incident continues to be brought up as a joke at the table years later. I ask the court: am I wrong for being upset by how this was handled, or should I be more open to the humor of the situation? I humbly await your judgement.

To the Honorable Justices and the worm bailiff, Lowly - I present the case of the Marvel Menace. In the early days of our playgroup one of us wanted to try DMing for the first time with just me running two PCs. The practice session was fun and I agreed to another. What I didn’t know was that the DM invited a second player to the next session. I was nervous because my two characters were parodies of Marvel characters - funny for a one shot but far from what I would typically play in a full campaign. Of course, the new player comes in with Thor and Black Widow and a full campaign ensues. From there things only got worse as the second player created exclusively Marvel characters for all subsequent campaigns, one shots, and mini arcs in our larger play group. These PCs have not been well received at the table as we tend to play typical medieval high-fantasy adventures. Judges, I ask you - who must bear the blame for this superhero epidemic that has been going on six years now? Is it the second player for forcing his superhero fantasy into our forgotten realms, is it the new but overly permissive DM that enabled us, or must I make my way to a Dice Christ confessional and beg forgiveness for this superhero inception? Perhaps everyone is to blame and this case has no heroes after all. I leave the ruling in your capable hands.

To the puissant judges Axford, Murphy and Tanner and who can not forget the Lord of Skaldova, Drake. I write to you of the case of the player who hates his backstory. I have been DMing some long term campaigns with friends from college for many years now and the last campaign we played was a fantasy sci-fi campaign set in a far flung future with elves and all that good stuff. My player, a cyborg bounty hunter with a magic monkey had a backstory where after an accident he was left scarred, turned into a cyborg, in serious debt and most importantly disconnected from his family. Pretty cool I'd say? The issue is that every time I tried to introduce the characters family as a plot device they say "I don't want to talk about that." Which left me confused, I had brought it up multiple times throughout the campaign and even had the bbeg use the family as a bargaining chip and he just said "I don't know them." Part of me feels that that is in character but I they would ignore any plot or dialogue involving them. I gave them plenty of things in the game they enjoyed but it was hard to bring them into the plot because of this. Eventually the campaign died out because everyone was very busy but justices, am I wrong for thinking this player just wasn't interested in the game or should I have just ignored the backstory? P.s. this player and I no longer speak because they didn't want to talk it out when we had an out of game disagreement

For the sick as hell judges and...Jakeothy. I present the case of the absent one-shot. I am a DM that runs two different groups, boy group girl group style, in the same homebrew campaign setting. About 2 years ago two of my players, my brother and his then girlfriend, were going on vacation for a few weeks effectively putting both campaigns on hold, not a problem. During that time I put a one-shot together combining the remaining members of both groups. I messaged them asking if they wanted a specific reason as to why their characters weren't there, but to my surprise they messaged back that they were mad I was doing this. My brother and I met up to talk about it and he told me that they felt left out and if we were going to do a one shot while they were gone we should have asked them first or it should have been with new characters. I sympathized with the feeling of being left out but I rebutted that I didn't need their permission to do something with other people's character's for a fun one-shot. We ultimately left the talk agreeing to let them know in the future even if they couldn't be involved but I still felt wrong tying people's characters to the decision of other players. So I ask the court: Did I really mess up or should I just obliterate my bro IRL? I humbly await your judgement. P.S. The day of the one-shot was the same day they visited the Shire

To the gregarious judges and the egregiously incompetent bailiff Jank. I bring the case of the endless nutz. I started a new DND campaign 4 years ago (after the last one fell apart due to 9 players being unschedulable), and it was great success, finishing after around 50 sessions a year ago. In the early days of the campaign however, as some of the players were getting to know each other for the first time, a joke emerged. Initially I encouraged it, as it brought the players together. Somewhere around the 25th deez nutz however, after all pretense that it had to make sense was lost, I became less keen. Some examples include: -"Can I borrow a d6" "d6 deez nutz" -"The owners name is Randy I think?" "Randeez nutz" -"ball-bearing deez nutz" This all peaked with their first meeting with the BBEG (later revealed to be the Rogues father) who I had unfortunately named Dragauram. On introducing himself he was met with of course "Dragauram deez nutz across your face" by his son. Please consider my plea that I didn't need to change all my NPC names in order to prevent this happening, and my players deserve to spend eternity dice hell.

*microphone static* Hi Balif Jake, I want to place a drive-thru order from the Crit Court: I would like one judgement for the case of Geas-lighting my players. Halfway through a dungeon, my players in a magic school campaign encountered a side NPC who had a hidden identity as an ArchMage. The low wisdom wizard player randomly asked to insight check the NPC and I agreed. He crit, so I divulged the NPCs secret. I became worried when the players wanted to blackmail this NPC. The party was running low on spell slots and were only 1/2 complete with the dungeon; adding an additional conflict with the archmage NPC felt dangerous, so I had the archmage respond by casting Geas on the low Wis Wizard. The command was to prevent his character from telling anyone about the NPCs’ secret identity. Shockingly, the player rolled another crit on the WIS save. At that point I was sweating. I didn’t want my players to get wiped in the dungeon because of an additional encounter. So to maintain the illusion of control, I went to the bathroom and texted the player to help me out and if he would consider failing the WIS save. The player agreed. How could I have handled it better?

To the supreme justices and the marty supreme bailiff I submit the case of the “unwanted sacrifice”. Me and my friends were playing a D&D 5e inspired oneshot set during WW2. The tone was very lovecraftesque as we were a team of special agents sent into the frigid regions of Russia to investigate some weird ass mysteries. As we reached the final act of the oneshot, two of the players were separated from the rest of us and had to fight an eldritch entity. In this very moment, one of the players decided to use a granate to kill himself and the creature standing in front of them. The issue? The other PC was standing right next to him and was caught in the blast. The DM immediately pronounced them dead and moved along with the session. As a table, we laughed at the situation but our friend was pissed off. Even though I find it hilarious, I do agree that being removed from the game without a say is a terrible feeling so I ask: should my martyr friend simply get over it or should my kamikaze friend recognise that a oneshot does not give you permission to make certain decisions lightly and without discussion?

To the sweet, cerebellius justices and that braindead bailiff Jock, I present the case of that time I might have ruined a divorce. I DMed for a group of friends who were about to run through a mystic hedge maze filled with illusions targeting the PCs' pasts. Two of the players were nearing the end of one of the friendliest and most amicable divorces I'd ever seen, with both being very understanding and trying to do right by the other. At one point, Harry the Husband's character witnessed a traumatic scene from his character's past. Around the time his PC's mother was berating him for something that wasn't his fault, I saw his face and realized his PC was *a lot* like him and this was all hitting too close to home. I pivoted away from that and the session ended soon after. I never saw Harry again. He sent a text saying he didn't want to play anymore because of the divorce, and another friend left to have more time with his wife. The divorce soon turned much more hostile, and I have not heard from Harry again, despite reaching out to him. I understand that the divorce was a much bigger issue, but on the other hand, is it my fault the table fell apart and he ditched us? Should I have been more sensitive? Two of the players have joined me at another table, and other friends are planning a one-shot with them to finish the story, but it still feels a bit like I'm not blameless. Maybe it's the bailiff's fault? Hoping you all blame Jock, EvilAnagram

To the righteous reverends of reason, Today I come to you, hat in hand, to confess to not only worshiping false idols, but to being responsible for creating the idol in the first place The whole situation happened innocently enough, as they often do. I was at a DnD session with friends and during a pivotal roll, I started chanting “quack quack quack” a la Mighty Ducks-style, and the result of the roll was a success! This led to the whole group being on board with doing that every time we roll moving forward. Before I knew it we had a formal prayer (Praise the Duck), invented a Goose devil, and even came up with a title for the head of the duck religion, The Dope. While it was all in good fun, I’ve begun to notice that almost every time we do the duck chant, the roll ends up bad now, and this has gotten me thinking. Have we angered Dice Christ by worshipping a false idol? Are we being punished for our hubris? I ask for your help in showing contrition, and to hopefully be welcomed once again into the loving arms of Dice Christ! P.S. I am writing this the day after I went to the Radio City Music Hall live show, and just wanted to say I had a blast!

May it please the Crit, and I think there’s someone else there but I can never remember their name? I bring before you a few cases, please choose whichever you most enjoy. 1. I present the case of the MurderHobo Heist. Back in college when I ran a campaign, my players decided they wanted to rob a bank. I cannot stress enough that this was not related to the campaign, they just decided this was something they wanted to do. So, I had them roll for finding a bank. With a fairly poor roll, I told them that the only bank in town was the Main Bank that served the whole city. I warned them that this would be very difficult, but they insisted on doing it anyway, and we ended the session early for them to plan. When it was time for the heist I too had done a lot of planning, and almost immediately they were discovered after tripping an Alarmed (the spell) door. They all escaped relatively unscathed but were upset with me for not allowing them the heist they wanted. Judges, was in the wrong for not allowing my players to have fun and play how they wanted to? Or was this true murderhobo behavior that was adequately punished? 2.I present the case of the Fudged Crit Fail. Back in high school I was very new to D&D, and still, in this instance, playing my very first character ever (Dragonborn Fighter). We were fighting a White Dragon, and I rolled a 7 to hit. I was sad, but content with my miss. However, my DM said “Wouldn’t that be more interesting if it was a Crit fail?” To be fair, they weren’t wrong. That fudged nat 1 caused the dragon to explode into ice shards, killing my character, a prominent NPC, and another player’s Legendary Character (a character with a lot of lore that he’d be playing for years). It changed the tide of battle and the session utterly. I was shocked, of course, and the other player kept shouting that I’d killed his character, not knowing the DM had fudged the roll. Judges, should I have spoke up for myself and not allowed this to happen? Or is this just how the game goes sometimes? 3.I present the case of the College D&D Competition. As the title would suggest, I was in a D&D competition in which a bunch of pre-rolled characters battled it out in a sort of battle royale, and you earned points to get prizes. I was one of three remaining players at the end, currently in second place, and the other two wouldn’t be able to, due to the few characters remaining, be able to earn enough points to get on the leaderboard. However, *I* had a possibility to get first. I pointed this out to the person next in initiative, saying that if he let me get that one more point I needed and didn’t kill me, I’d be eternally grateful, especially since he wouldn’t be able to get even third place if he killed me and the other player. He ignored me, and killed my character next turn. I did still get second place (and a small Wyrmwood dice box), but I still think about this interaction. Was I wrong (or even rude) to ask this of a fellow competitor, or should he have been cooler and helped me win? Alliances were encouraged in the game, if that helps. I throw myself upon your mercy and accept any ruling you see fit to pass down.

To the smokin’ hot judges and the boy next door bailiff, I bring forth the Case of Insults and Ice Knives. I am a forever DM, but had the opportunity to play once. I was playing a teenage chronurgy wizard in a medieval fantasy world crippled by tyranny, and I found my PC becoming rather angsty in such a restrictive world. One day we met a mercenary guild master. To be brief, the guild rules were exhaustive, convoluted, annoying, and we all thought the guild master was a greedy asshole. After completing a contract, we went back to the guild and My character asked the guild master for payment. There was an argument, ending with him asking if I was stupid. This is definitely personal emotion bleeding into the character, but for someone whose only thing is being the smart guy, to be called stupid is the worst challenge to receive. My character immediately attacked the guild master. Apparently, our DM was “gracious” to our level 5 party and the master, unphased by my spell, simply asked us to leave the guild without attacking back. After the session, the DM seemed legitimately upset, accused me of being a murder hobo, and said I knew we already got paid by the person that wrote the contract. I argued that my character didn’t know because the other PC that collected the money had purposely stated they did not distribute the money yet, and even if my PC did know, he probably would have wanted to squeeze some extra money from the greedy POS running this middle man guild anyway. So I ask, was I being the stereotypical annoying murder hobo? Or does a grievous insult from a person you believe is giving you the run around constitute violence (in a ttrpg)?

To the honorable judges and the bailiff lurking in the corner, I bring before you the case of the overpowered sword that wrecked our campaign. I play in a group of four. Our DM has a loose worldbuilding style and often borrows ideas from media they enjoy. Usually that’s fine, but lately the magic items have become increasingly overpowered. Recently, they introduced a sword inspired by the Stormlight Archive series. As described, it instantly killed enemies, ignored armor, and could cut through anything. I thought the whole concept sounded dumb when he explained it. Our cleric eventually found one, and combat quickly became one-sided. I raised my concerns, but the DM just shrugged and said, “It’s supposed to be that strong. There are only a few in the world. Just wait and see.” After the second session with the sword, I did something I’m not proud of. While traveling along a mountain ridge with steep cliffs and rushing water below, I asked the cleric if I could try the sword in the next fight. Reluctantly, they agreed. The moment I had it, my character threw it off the cliff and gave a half-hearted speech about how no one should have that much power. We argued briefly, then moved on. Nobody tried to recover it. The DM seemed annoyed but continued the session. A few combats later, we faced a boss wielding one of those same swords. Apparently, we were supposed to keep ours to stand a chance. The fight lasted two rounds and ended in a total party kill. Was I wrong for throwing the combat-ruining sword off a cliff, or was the DM wrong for effectively punishing the whole party for my decision?

To the magnanimous, intelligent, and 100% unbribeable justices and their pet hermit Jork - i bring the case of The PC Turned into Skeletor I will preface this by saying I am no longer at this table for a multitude of reasons, but it was my very first table, and my very first game, with a group of 5 other players, who i was joining mid-campaign. The DM had told me it was a more serious campaign, so I worked with her to make a serious character who would tie into the existing events of the game very well: a skeleton cleric, raised from the dead by their god to atone for past sins. I was very nervous about actually *playing* this character, but the DM assured me that if I wasnt comfortable just yet, I didnt have to do a voice for my character, and that the whole table understood id never played before and wanted to help me break the ice. Then I started playing, and every time I said something in character, the DM would rehash it, in a Skeletor voice, while throwing in as many skeleton puns as possible, and would proceed to RP in my place with other players. This was, admittedly, very hurtful, but at the time I felt that i couldn't play my own character well enough and that it would be more fun for everyone if the DM took over my speaking. I was the only player the DM did this for, and none of the other players had any issue with it, and actually got very excited whenever the DM spoke for my serious cleric turned comic relief gag character. I have been considering bringing this same character to a new table lately, and its had me thinking - was i at fault for not putting my foot down with the DM/not being "entertaining" enough with my character, or was it really fucking weird that she did that in the first place?

To the radiant shining lights of dice christ, I lay myself before you in penitence. I run a long running DND game for 6 friends over discord. In a recent session, a village was attacked while my PCs were away, so I had the resident magical merchant save as many people as she could and teleport away. The PCs came back to the village to find it destroyed with some villagers dead and many missing, including the shopkeeper's shop, which showed signs of having teleported away. Fast forward to the next time our PCs meet the shopkeeper, everybody is curious about what happened. The shopkeeper tells them she teleported the villagers away and dropped them off in a nearby city. One of my PCs (the bard) asked the shopkeeper (who had been very friendly up to this point) to teleport the villagers back to their village. She said she couldn't (she wasnt able to), but my bard kept insisting, then asked to roll intimidation. I was flustered, so I said yes. He proceeded to roll a 26. This is where my sin manifests itself. I rolled a wisdom save away from camera, got an 8, and said that she got a natural 19, saving against his intimidation. Decons, I know that I shouldn't have lied, but I really didnt want my bard's intimidation on a friendly NPC who had just saved a bunch of people to be successful. I know I shouldntve asked for the roll, but how could I have fixed it after having asked for the roll? I lay myself low in your awe-inspiring presence and beseech your forgiveness.

Greetings to the ever present judges and a crisp dab and knowing nod to the bailiff I bring you the case of being too annoying for the table. So this a case from many years ago, about 2011. It took many years to recover from and still gives me pause in games to this day. I was given a chance to run a game and ran something I came up with, (this was my second time dming and mistakes were everywhere but they helped me through it). The next time we were playing I got their early and set my map up, and the players seemed to engage for the most part but afterwards they said next week they wanted to play the other game we were playing, totally fine it was a fun game too. I get there and all of a sudden it turned into the final session of that game, we beat the big bad and everything felt really rushed. We were done in less than 2 hours and I was told there was no game next week. Weeks go by, I ask about the games and they said "oh we all just been too busy". I worked with one of the players and I ask about the games and he tells me that they are still playing, and that they already have to deal with one "annoying/difficult" player and don't want another at the table. This at the time broke me, they were the only group of friends I played TTRPGs with, It took me years to feel comfortable to roleplay again in fear of being kicked from a table again. It developed into Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria (RSD) which I still deal with to this day. I understand that I could have been annoying but no one ever told me and sometimes you don't know what your actions actually do. Judges is considered an acceptable way to kick someone from the party and I'm being too sensitive or are they just actual assholes? P.S I two very good groups of friends I now play DnD with who know my past and help me if I go quite in fear of rejection. So just a shout out to my very good friends Daniel, Madison, Breanne, Travis, Alec, and Chuck.

Dearest most respected Judges and that guy who for some reason refuses to be on 8 Bit Book Club, I present a case that may cause contention within the Crit: Just How Good is a Nat 20 Initiative? We set the scene to last year, when a friend ran a level 15 one shot in celebration of us graduating college. The premise was that we would be prospective teachers at Aguefort Adventuring Academy going through a dungeon crawl audition. I was wicked excited to play a high level character, so went all out building a multiclassed Sorcerer/Fighter/Bard. Most of the session I didn’t have too much of a chance to shine (puzzles were fun but I was most excited to unleash in combat), and then we got to the end where the final test was to battle Aguefort himself. I had spent all session readying myself for a battle, and oh my joy when I rolled that Nat 20 initiative. I was devastated to see, however, that the DM rolled an 18+6, which technically beat out my total of 23. The DM was dead set that the 24 would be the 23, so Aguefort went first, in which he used Time Stop to set the battlefield up perfectly for himself and use a Resilient Sphere on himself, so when I was up next I was nearly powerless to do anything to him. I was annoyed but ready to have a better second turn, but unfortunately justices when it was our clerics turn they successfully used Divine Intervention to defeat Aguefort and the battle was over without me being able to do much of anything. Justices I do not wish to punish my DM but simply set forth precedent that all Nat 20 initiative rolls result in the player going first no matter what, to prevent any other player from facing the same fate as I.

To the honorable judges Tanner and the Axfords and to jake who is here I bring you the case of the insane robot I ran a Star wars campaign a few years back using SW5e and it was a lot of fun, during character creation one of my friends (who is known for making insane characters) asked to play a droid specifically a magna guard barbarian, I hesitantly said yes. Com session 1 he had 6 reactions, resistance to all damage and 36 AC. was in fact concerned, this was a level 10 campaign but that's crazy. He explained that it is perfectly legal the rule book is just easy to abuse I said you have 22 AC and vulnerability to shock, he said that's fair and we had a blast, judges since the have razed him on it and he has exclaimed still that it's legal, so ask shall keep razing or is it just the systems fault? p.s. he said he's down to send an explanation of his build

forgive me, christ of dice, for i have sinned: a few years ago, i was playing in a campaign with my co-workers, and my friend joined us as a temp player for one session. He joined because he had a HUGE crush on the DM (DnD was a big part of the DM’s life and my friend had never played before). As an experienced player, i was charged with taking him under my wing and helping him play/learn the ropes. Much to his chagrin, his rolls were consistently low, and he kept failing ability checks and missing attacks in combat. i tried to help him make the most of his rolls and see the merits of failed saves, but as the low rolls stacked up, i could tell he was feeling down and he began to be less talkative and engaged. to try to lift his spirits, i committed an egregious sin: i told him i’d been wrong about his proficiency bonus and that it was actually a +4, not a +2 (a lie, as the characters were level three). I didn’t explain why and he didn’t ask. with this change, he was succeeding and failing on rolls in equal measure; he was clearly having more fun and started taking failed checks in stride. i’m glad he had fun and was able to connect with the DM over something she enjoys, and a couple months later, they started dating! they’ve now been happily married for two years (i was a bridesmaid in their wedding!), and to my knowledge, my proficiency bonus fudging hasn’t impacted his learning or current understanding of the game. with any luck, it was lost in the flurry on information that is playing dnd for the first time. However, i can’t shake the feeling that dice christ had a plan for my friend and his rolls, and my meddling interfered with His vision. can i be forgiven for blaspheming against dice christ in the name of love?

To the magnanimous bailiff Jakeolus and his cousin Murphily Tanner, I present my case: The Dad DM and Elsa. My dad dms a campaign with only me and him. (He insisted on dming). We run straight from an official DND book. I play a Druid tiefling. We have a half pc (paladin that I control during combat). We were level three, your honors, when tragedy struck. Low on spell slots, hit points, we explored this castle. No less than 9 stirges appear. After a few rounds, a stirge attaches to my Druid. I ask to cast thunderwave, even opting into taking the damage if it means damaging/removing the stirge from myself without wasting an action. We go back and forth on this for a while (over an hour, researching/ finding public opinion), with me eventually acquiescing. Judges, I humbly ask, Do you agree with him? This case will heavily influence razzing rights between us. The holy crit stands between chaos and peace. May Dice Christ be with you. Ps. I coined the “Elsa Defense” on his behalf, as he had no idea what I was talking about. In Frozen 1, she shoots ice out from her, similarly to the way my dad believes the spell works.

To the magnificent magnanimous judges and the mediocre bailiff, I humbly present the case of no “yes, and”, not even “no, but”, but just a flat “no”. I was playing in my first ever DND game last year. One of the other players, the warlock, was eager to roleplay about his backstory to the rest of the party, pointedly mentioning his dizzy spells and culminating in him collapsing in an alleyway. But the fainting incident happened right after our party split to do errands. While the cleric and the rogue developed their relationship, the warlock was visibly antsy and kept interrupting their emotional roleplay to talk about himself, even when we asked him to wait his turn. So after we reunited, the cleric and the rogue refused to even make the perception check to notice the missing warlock. I still felt bad for how disappointed the warlock looked, so I went and found him, healed him, and asked what was going on. At which point the warlock insisted he was fine and refused to respond to any of my questions. The player was still excited about his backstory, but he said his character didn’t want to talk about it. After that, the rift only deepened between the warlock and the cleric. The cleric’s character had always been taciturn, but every time the warlock tried to engage him in roleplay, the cleric just said some variation on “I stare at him silently.” It feels like an instance of the other players’ pattern of ignoring obvious DM plot hooks for the sake of their characters, without offering any alternative path to play instead. How can you roleplay secretive characters well without shutting down the game? I await your judgement.

I have an update to my pay to play case, where the DM was asking me to pay for his internet to join his table remotely. I ended up declining paying and asked if we could just try with the lower tier speed. The day comes and he tells me he can't get discord to connect at all because of the low speeds. Ok, fine. I tell him have a good session, send my apologies to the group. Several hours later, i get a message from one of the girls in the party saying "Hope you feel better soon." I ask her what she means and she says "(DM) said you had food poisoning and didn't feel up to playing" to which I replied, "No, he just couldn't get discord to load with his new slower internet." She said "He has great internet, we just watched a movie after thr session." So i explain the $25 thing and she says "Fuck that, I'm gonna investigate." Ultimately, what she discovered is that the DM did not like the remote set up and had only agreed to it because the rest of the party was so excited to have me join, which I completely understand and would have been fine if he had just told me that out right. He asked for the $25 in hopes that I would decline and leave the game, but also told her that if I had accepted, he could have put aside his annoyance with the remote setup if he was making money off of me. He also just did not like me as a player because twice I ended up solving puzzles too early and he was not great at pivoting, so the threat of not being able to guarantee my seat was him hoping that he could fill it and I would not be able to join their game once I moved up. Once it all came out, he reached out to me and apologized and said that I was still welcome at the table, but I declined. I told him that I appreciate the offer, but I don't really want to be at a table with a DM who can't communicate. I am still friends with the other people in the party and we have plans to hang out once I move, and maybe get our own game together.

To the inestimable justices and the known quantity bailiff Jake, I bring forward the Sad Tale of the Mushroom-Eating Cleric. I run and DM a teen D&D program at my library. The party was traveling through the Underdark trying to save some myconids from the clutches of the Cult of Moander who were trying to resurrect their dead god. I styled the underdark after the Baldur's Gate III version, i.e. lots of glowing mushrooms and such. One of the players was playing a cleric, who decided early on that he'd cast purify food and drink as a ritual any time we came across a new (non-myconid) mushroom in the Underdark and eat it. We went a few sessions without me introducing any new mushrooms and, to be frank, I straight up forgot that his character did this. In the last session of the campaign, I had them fight against a group of cultists and an Avatar of Moander, which was a tough battle and they barely made it through, but they were victorious. We were running out of time and the room that we were playing in was booked for another group, so I was about to narrate them having a fun party with the Myconid circle whose people they'd saved, like the end of Return of the Jedi. The thing about the Avatar of Moander is that it was a reskinned Violet Fungus Necrohulk. A new mushroom. So before I could start narrating them leaving this temple, the cleric said his character cast Purify Food and Drink on the corpse of the Avatar of the God of Rot and ate some of it. In my brain, I couldn't justify this action not having dire consequences. Moments ago this was a shambling monstrosity that was the instrument of the God of Rot returned to Faerun. I gave his character several chances to not die. I asked him to do a Wisdom check to see if his character thought this was a good idea (he had a plus 7 to this), a medicine check to notice anything funny going on with his body (again, plus 7), and a constitution saving throw to have his character not die (I gave him advantage). Esteemed court, he did not roll above a 5 on any of the 4 rolls to save his character. So in full DM sweat mode, I narrated his character looking out in a field, looking at the sunrise, and a stalk of fungus emerging from his chest as his character died. The kid seemed to take it in stride, but he'd been playing this character all school year, so I do feel a little bad about offing his character out of combat. I guess what I'm here asking the court is: am I good?

Dear magnanimous Justices of the D&D Court and their fragile footed bailiff John My brother in law is a first time DM and because we play at his house, this truly is a literal house rule. Mid campaign, he announced that when a player goes down, the DM secretly rolls death saves behind the screen and the PLAYER does not get to know the result. Immediately, his former DM turned current player rose from the shadows to defend this practice as “great for suspense.” Now, I am a seasoned D&D player and in all my years I have never once encountered this rule. My argument was simple:Shouldn’t the tension come from the PARTY not knowing if I’m dying, rather than ME not knowing if I’m dying? I proposed a compromise where the player rolls privately with the DM so the table still stays in suspense while the player keeps ownership over the roll deciding their fate. Thankfully diplomacy prevailed and the DM agreed. Still, I ask the court:Am I wrong for thinking that taking away the only roll an unconscious player still gets to make feels less like tension and more like spectator mode for your own death? Signed,“Stabilized but Emotionally Bloodied”

To the honorable ones, please accept my petition from the hands of your scuttling, wretched bailiff. I am playing in a long term dnd campaign. My DM has issues with several dnd mechanics and has come up with some fun work arounds. Things like spell points are great. Things like hating long rests—less so. He claims that dnd wants there to be 6 encounters before any long rests. To account for this, he requires long rests to be a week of in game time. RAW, he is correct for encounter numbers, but I think dnd wanted that to mean “small squirrel battle” or “conversation with potentially hostile NPC,” not 6-10 absolutely life or death encounters that drain all our resources, one on top of another. It has currently been almost a year of weekly sessions since he’s allowed a long rest or level up. We have had three epic boss battles that spanned multiple sessions and a near apocalyptic event. We were also in an environment where healing spells required us to spend hit dice so things are especially dire. We are now out of that environment, but when we ask for long rests or level ups, he calls us broken records and asks what we’re going to do about it. Your honors, I ask, is this actually what RAW intends? Or is my DM refusing to allow our characters a sleep cruel and unusual punishment?

Hello Bailiff Jake, I seek judgment regarding the eternal struggle between player knowledge and character knowledge. Our campaign was a political fae game with secrets, spies, betrayals, and PvP explicitly encouraged (Very much inspired by ACOFAF). The issue arose when players began acting on information their characters had no reasonable way of knowing. Suddenly people were making suspiciously perfect decisions, avoiding traps they hadn't discovered, distrusting allies without evidence, and preparing for plans that had never been revealed in-character. The defense, of course, was: "My character is just cautious." The prosecution argues that there is a difference between a cautious character and a player who conveniently knows exactly where the danger is. Therefore I ask the Court: If your character has no in-world reason to know something, but you as a player do, what is your obligation? Must you actively ignore that information? Or is it acceptable to let it influence your decisions as long as you can invent a plausible in-character justification? Furthermore: How many consecutive correct guesses is a player allowed before "my character had a feeling" becomes evidence of first-degree metagaming? I await the Court's wisdom and respectfully request an Insight check on everyone involved

I would like to humbly present myself before the Church of Dice Christ for forgiveness and an exorcism. I fear I have been possessed by the Anti Dice Christ. In college, my friends were really into DnD and invited me to play. At that moment, I foolishly let Anti Dice Christ into my heart and refused because I thought I did not like DnD. I later discovered Dimension 20 and NADDPod and realized my horrific mistake, but it was already too late. You see, I moved to Japan and I have spent the past 7 years yearning to play from afar. My friends in the US are always talking about what amazing games they are playing that I can’t join because of time zones (not that I’ve ever been invited, despite constantly mentioning that I desperately want to play). I at last was invited to a Zoom game by a former coworker, but it quickly fizzled out after 2 sessions. At one point I convinced my husband, my brother, and his friend to play with me over Zoom, but it also fell apart due to scheduling after a few sessions (my husband doesn’t like to play but very kindly tried hard for my sake). I finally made friends with a coworker who plays DnD and often talked about her amazing games. After weeks of hinting that I would love to play, she said she could ask the group if they would be open to a new player. The very next week, she had a falling out with that group. She then tried to make a new group with me and two other people. After the first several planned dates for a Session Zero fell through, there was another falling out just a few days ago. I feel like Tantalus, with the fruit of social roleplaying games hanging just out of reach, and I fear that my curse is now spreading to those around me. If it continues unchecked, who knows how many tables could become blighted? For the sake of the world, I beg the Church to perform an exorcism and banish the Anti Dice Christ from my body.

To the justices of the crit and the pool boy in the corner, I bring to you the case of the birthday breakup. This happened years ago and centers around my longtime gaming group. One of our friends, the DM, was hosting a birthday oneshot with our regular gaming group and a girl he had been seeing for a few weeks. It was his birthday but he wanted to run something for us. Behind the scenes our friend group was working to organize cake/snacks, gifts, and some birthday beverages for our friend. We even had a plan to decorate his apartment while he was out the day of. All was going smoothly until our friend's girlfriend, let's call her Lucy, reached out to me to inform us that she was planning on breaking up with him a few days after the party. Judges, what the actual fuck. I had no idea what to do about this or with this information. I wish she hadn't told me! Our friend, let's call him Charlie, was super excited for this party and he really liked Lucy. I consulted with my other friends, Linus and Marcy, and told them what I had been told and after some discussion we all came to the conclusion to wait and not tell our friend until after his birthday session. The whole session Lucy acted as if nothing was wrong, but the rest of us were seething. Charlie had a really good time at his party but a dat later when Lucy broke the news he was pretty upset. Justices, I ask you despite the fact that it only tangently falls into the realm of TTRPG, did we make the right decision? Should we have told our friend before his birthday, or at least all had our characters at the table ruthlessly turn on her at the end of the session? I ask for your judgement on the matter keeping in mind that if I am to be punished I have already been sentenced in a previous ruling to be shackled in hell next to Lucy from the Peanuts and tortured for all eternity by Peppermint Patty and Woodstock with a *blushes* very human ass. Thank you

To the level 20 justices and the CR 1/4 bailiff Johnk, I bring the case of (sort of) honourable single combat. I was playing in a campaign with 2 other level 5 characters while I played a level 5 paladin. We were on an epic quest to obtain very rare level magic items so we could venture fourth and slay a young dragon holding a town captive. All pretty cool so far. During my quest, I had hunted down a troll with elemental powers who promptly challenged me to single combat (‘twas a talking troll). I had at that stage gotten the find steed spell and asked the DM if it was ok to use it within the bounds of ‘single combat’. He said no. Still ok with me. The troll then used a spell to summon woodland creatures and fairies proceeded to try and polymorph the hell out of me. I succeeded all my saves by a miracle and my paladin, in character, said “Since you introduced me to all your pals, meet Strider” summoning my wolf steed. I admit to being a bit steamed at the double standards so I went all out. The DM said I had broken the terms of single combat and I didn’t get the awesome shield I had been looking forward to after smiting the foe into oblivion on a Nat 20 which I got following advantage from flanking with Strider. Justices, should the rules of single combat have been maintained after the adversary broke them first or should a paladin have stuck more resolutely to the terms?

To Bailiff Jake- I mean the Supreme Crit Justices! If it pleases the court I present the case of DM Expectations. I am still DMing for my first ever campaign that started over 9 years ago (our anniversary was recently). The table has had players come and go over the years, from the audacious 8 players to the now more reasonable 4, only 1 of the original players remains to this day (Emily’s rejoice!) My case I bring is I’m not the naive first timer DM who started this campaign 9 years ago. We’re in our penultimate arc and I want to see it finished but I’m trying to deliver a beautiful present for my friends in the shape of a good story but I’m handing it to them in a wet paper bag because the foundations are ‘excuse my profanity’ not good. Thank you for your time.

Hello juicy Justices Jaxford, Jurphy, and Janner and to the bootylicious Bailiff Bake. May it please the court. I have brought to you a case of heartbreak and a stolen character sheet. About 9 years ago I was joining a new campaign that my then boyfriend invited me to. I had created a character that I was really excited about and had a lot of fun creating(a tabaxi trickster cleric). I grew very attached to this character. We had a session zero and at the end the DM asked to keep all our character sheets so he could learn more about them and figure out how he wanted to run the game, so I left it with him not expecting anything bad to happen. Before we could have a real session, I broke up with the boyfriend... Who was also my supervisor at work... And the DND group was made up of only his friends. As a retaliation for the dumping he not only made my life hell at work, he REFUSED to give me back my character sheet. He only stopped after catching me crying in the stockroom after one of his retaliatory actions lol. We eventually got on good terms but about a year after the break up, I asked for the character sheet(if it wasn't thrown away) back and he still said no. So my question for you all is, am I crazy? Do I have the right to be a little peeved so many years later and was he kind of being a dick? I await your wise judgment and I thank you for your time. PS I'm an Aquarius and he is a Libra if that helps. love y'all

To the vibrant and capricious Supreme Crit Justices and the iniquitous Bailiff Jerb; I bring a simple question that sparked a TPK. Does steam breath curve around corners? Several years ago, my friends and I played through the module campaign Prices of the Apocalypse. Our party, a sketchy Tiefling Warlock, a quiet Aasimar Bard, and my grumpy Dwarven Cleric who was the unwilling champion of the Dwarven goddess of love, had a great time murdering cultists, saving local villages, and engaging in do-goodery. However, our party came to an abrupt end during a dungeon crawl through the temple of an air elemental cult. During an encounter we were ambushed by a dragon turtle who put all of us on death’s door with one steam breath attack. As we were in a dungeon, and the turtle was a gargantuan size creature, we assumed that fleeing down a narrow 20ft hallway and into a previous room would see us to safely. We all managed to make it through the hallway and hid around the corner of the next room, figuring that this would prevent the dragon turtle from attacking us. Tragically, on the dragon turtle’s next turn, it recovered its breath weapon and breathed down the hallway through which we had fled. It seemed like an epic and cinematic moment where our party had barely made it to safety, until the DM asked us all to make saves. We argued that because the breath weapon was funneled down a 20ft hallway, that our characters, standing around the corner in the next room would be safe. However, he ruled that because the breath was a cone, it would spread out once through the hallway and still hit our PCs. Due to our low health, all our characters were knocked out, and through some terrible luck all died rolling death saves. We had a brief, but contentious argument over the ruling, but ultimately accepted the DMs ruling. While this story gave us the push we needed to move onto a fully homebrew campaign, and our group continues to go strong to this day, I still feel bitter about the demise of my first PC. Should my Dwarven Cleric have continued to grump another day, or was his sudden and untimely demise his rightful fate? I humbly submit to your supreme wisdom in this matter and patiently await your ruling.

To the Supreme Justices and Bailiff of indeterminate height. I present to you “Eyes of the Hawk vs DM refusing the L” Our party were traveling north when we encountered refugees heading south trying to reach the relative safety of the Queendom. They told us each night, no matter if they slept or kept watch, one of their party was gone by the next morning - leaving no trace. At this point there were only 4 left, of a party that started at 10 ore more. We offered what protection we could for the night, and set up watches both within and without camp: And lo- My champion, usually the least observant of our party, managed to roll a nat 20 on his perception test, noting that one of the refugees had woken and was leaning over one of our NPC party members. We have had a lot of problems with undead, so I sent a burst of positive energy (vitality lash in pathfinder) into the refugee - which had no effect other than a quick glyph in the air and a flash of bright light. Not undead then. A tense moment after as we dualed with deception and she made semi plausabile excuses. She went back to sleep but I had my familiar, a hawk named Lady, sit on her chest and stare directly into her face to make sure she didn’t move or take any hostile action. Here is where the DM could not take the L. He first tried to rule that she could cast an innate spell without alerting the bird. I said, as a fey sorcerer half the spells on my list are also labelled “innate” but I still have to cast them normally. So then he rolled a deception (behind the screen of course) and said that they were able to mumble out a sleep spell without my bird noticing anything untoward - promptly putting the bird to sleep so the blood hag could get a jump on the party. I cry fowl! This ruling just made me unexcited to play - was this the steamrolling I think it was? Am I now allowed to cast spells without anyone noticing as long as I make a deception check? (My deception is +14… so if so - wow!) is it a case of the DM just not being able to take the L or am I being too salty over nothing - as we ended up just killing the hag anyway. But I feel my cool move had been stolen!

Am I Too OP? Ahoy, mighty court of Jolly Judges and our Big Boss Baliff Jaques! I'm writing to ask if my PC is too OP. I'm tri-classing as a roguelockadin (rogue lvls 5, 3, &2 respectively). This was at the suggestion of my dm and I'm really enjoying it! I get to strategize and puzzle out the best way to use my abilities- but I'm worried it may be overpowered. My PC has a crown that lowers her crit threshold by 1, so if I cast Hexblade Curse, I'm able to crit on 18, 19, or 20. She uses special knives (1d10+6, and one free second attack if it hits) so if I crit and add the damage of the knife(s), sneak attack, and divine smite I'm doing a lot of damage per fight- last session I attacked the bad guy second to last (out of 5), did 93pts for 1 attack in round 1, and the last player didn't get to fight the dude) No one in the party really seems bothered by it so I may be overthinking, but I'd love to hear the court's opinion. Even the Baliff can chime in, if the court deems it fit I guess. Thanks bunches!

To the amazing, talented, beautiful justices and Jorb from J and A studios, I bring you the case of My Friends are Nice and Supportive. I am home brewing a D&D world in my free time during summer break. I play a campaign with my friends in college (I am a PC) but we aren’t playing now since we all live in different places. They want to be involved in this home brew world that i’m making. I would love to tell them all about it but I don’t want to spoil lore stuff in the case that we play. How can I involve my friends in the world building without having to scrap the whole thing because I told them the lore? Thank you!

To the magnanimous and wise Judges, and the Bailiff named “Jake” (allegedly) I bring the case of the busy player. I have been DMing a discord campaign for the last 4 years. We play every other week and are spread across 4 different time zones. There was a full year and a half where we played weekly but to accommodate schedules and life we agreed every other week. With 6 players, we agreed that if 1 person can’t make it, we continue forward but any more and we cancel. One of our players, let’s call him Slide, doesn’t seem as engaged as the other players. Whenever we play, he is usually on his phone and we only see the top of his head for 90% of the session. In combat, I have to constantly remind him of where he is and what has happened. Other players have brought up this concern as well. He is the one most likely to cancel. Sometimes even in the hour before we play. He will message everyone that something popped up and can’t make it. Here’s the thing: I am his roommate. I can hear him playing video games from HIS room. 2 sessions ago, I brought it up to the group that if this is a campaign that everyone still wants to play and if not, that it was totally ok to step away. He was the first to speak up and say yes and I even brought it up in person but he remained adamant that he wanted to play. But last session it was the same energy. Am I wrong for possibly kicking him out of our campaign? I leave it in the hands of the court

Case of the Wrongful(?) Watery Grave To the Jaunty Judges and the Bailiff Josh, the Pinch, the Gameboy, Master of the Golden Mic. We prostrate ourselves before the court for a ruling; an accusation has been made for wrongful razzing. I DM a long-term group; we've played for 8 years, completed a 1-20 campaign, and are well into our 2nd. The players are great; they're my best friends, and I love them very much. One of them, however, is a murderer. Early in our first campaign, back when the party was low-level and less concerned with saving the world and more concerned with lining their pockets, they arrived at Newbridge Town, a town built on a massive bridge over a large river. When our Wizard/Rogue (Wogue? Rizard?) was tasked with bartering for the party to buy some horses, he was met with a shrewd businessman in the form of the stable keeper, who refused to lower his prices. The Rizard, incensed that the man was trying to "rip him off," lured him behind the stables and cast sleep on the keeper with the intent to steal the horses. Then, panicking that he would wake up, alert the guards, and hunt down the party, he took his unconscious body, dragged it to the side of the bridge, and threw him from 30 ft into the flowing river below. They stole the horses and left town. Several sessions and levels later, when they returned to town, The Rizard wanted to lord his new powers over his horse-keeping nemesis, but I informed him that the horse keeper had died, and his teenage son had taken over the business. Either the fall or the raging river had killed him. As a 4hp commoner, he didn't stand a chance. The table began to razz The Rizard for his cold-blooded (unintentional) murder and orphan-making. As the campaign and years went on, we would regularly bring up this senseless act of evil. The Rizard argued that he should have been able to swim to safety and that I had been too harsh in killing him. We teased him so much that when the characters reached level 20, the Rizard teleported the Cleric back to Newbridge town to truly resurrect him. Had I been too harsh? Wouldn't falling 30ft into a river while magically asleep most likely kill a common man? We eagerly await your ruling, so the razzing may end or resume.

To the judges on Mount Everest and the Bailiff in the Dead Sea, I think his name is “Gawrsh” (hyuck!), I present the case of the “Alchemical Dragon Throat”. I am a brand new DM who has never actually even played DnD (just watch a lot of live play). Typical story, wanted to play but no one would DM so I volunteered as tribute. My table consists of two other newbies, two guys who play often and one who played 25 years ago but not since. My players are on a quest for the pieces of Fraz Urb’luu’s staff. One of their major NPC battles was against a Rouge Alchemist Oorog named Gelrugg who was trying to create a super race of Orcs (as one does) by experimenting with poisons and dragon blood. Half way through battle, Gelrugg used his part of the staff (a staff of command) to bind himself to an adult green dragon. The battle culminated on a narrow walkway over a 500 ft waterfall outside of Ironfang Keep. As they killed the dragon I narrated that his body, once devoid of life, slid off the gangway and plummeted into the water below. One of my seasoned players said he wanted to have taken the esophagus from the dragon. I told him the body would have fallen almost immediately but we could do a series of checks to see if his character (a tiefling sorcerer) could get down to the body fast enough, hold on to the giant adult dragon body as it sank, have enough dexterity to remove the esophagus, swim back up and make it back to the party. In total I proposed 5 checks of varying DC. He gave such resistance to this that I relented and just had him roll a straight up DC 19 luck check which he of course failed. We didn’t dwell on it too long and I gave him a chance to buy one in the next town at a good price but it still bothers me. Was I being “too much”, or was I right to up the stakes and give the attempt some flavor? I humbly await your verdict.

To the exquisite and immaculate judges and that one guy who hurt his ankle putting on his shoes (I think his name is Jimothy?). I bring to you the case of the unsolvable-solvable god machine. A few years ago my friends and I were playing a western style campaign. It was our longest running campaign to date (around two and half years). Our DM had us come across a town of harengon in the midst of a civil war over a machine that’s only function was to make a god. (Gods were inherently evil in this world) With multiple nat 20 investigation rolls (over the span of multiple sessions) me and several of the players explored the town for clues on what to do with the machine and our DM happily supplied us with multiple ways to tackle the machine. Sounds simple right? Wrong. We tried every single way and even consulted with our patron (the DM) who said we needed to destroy the machine only to find the machine is invulnerable. So, we concluded that we should make a harmless tiny little worm god so the machine would fulfill its purpose and become defunct. However, every NPC told us not to this, as it could bring on the apocalypse. This went on for 3 months. Our DM wouldn’t allow us to continue the story until we decided what to do with the machine. We asked multiple times if it was even solvable and he said “yes”. By the third month every player was so tired of following breadcrumbs left by the DM that lead nowhere that we ended the campaign. Only to be told months later that the solution was to leave the town and machine alone as there are some problems heroes can’t solve. So I ask you judges, were we wrong to follow the clues our DM provided us to destroy the machine and save the town from themselves or should we have just moved on even though our characters’ mission was to right the world of evil. I leave the punishment to you. PS You guys are the reason I started playing D&D!

To the two judges that wrote that book that one time, the judge that doodles and the bailiff that's been doing the same web series for over a decade, I bring to you the case of walking it back. I was in an ongoing Steinhardt's Guide to the Eldritch Hunt campaign with friends and coworkers having a ball roleplaying like we were Bloodborne characters and everything was going great! That was, until one session where I got cursed with permanent blindness and had to deal with it for the rest of the time we played that campaign. I didn't mind too much because I was playing a drow and had blindsight so it was no big deal. No, this case occurs when my coworker decides to do similar tomfoolery and touched a cursed item just to find out what happens. Well he fucked around and found out that he now also had permanent blindness! From here he immediately starts saying that's no fun and that he didn't want to make another character and might as well stop playing because his character is useless now. He was not happy about the results of his actions and was throwing a little bit of a fit because of it. This is when the dm decided to walk it back and say ok you only have temporary blindness then. To this I call OBJECTION! According to Fairness act 12b, Should this man not have kept the permanent blindness and live with the cards he was delt for wanting to be silly knowing full well something bad was gonna happen just as I had? Or was it right for the DM to immediately backpedal on what he just said like the coward he is instead of sticking to the will of the dice (it was up to a roll on whatever bad thing happened) and keeping it fair? He only made my coworker's blindness temporary while nothing happened to me. The dm actually doubled down and told me he wasn't going to make my blindness temporary because I had blindsight so it doesn't even matter that I'm blind cause I basically can still see. Was this the right call? Hate the show, love you, thank you for your time your honors.

To the honorable justices and the, frankly, handsome bailiff. I bring to you the case of the Reluctant Campaign Re-Invitation. I currently am the DM of a Curse of Strahd campaign whose players include a mix of family and friends. The campaign has been running for over a year now and on the whole, it’s been a great time. The issue I’m having is around one of my players who is amongst my best friends in life. What I’ve learned playing DnD with him however is that he does not jive with my or the rest of the table’s playstyle. His first character early on in the campaign frequently tried to skip plot hooks cause “his character wouldn’t care about them.” I talked with him about it and he agreed he’d be okay with the character dying and creating a new one but wasn’t comfortable changing the character as is. His second character has been better but still tries to rush the party through encounters and doesn’t want to engage with the story in the same way everyone else does. The campaign is approaching the end and have started having the “what’s next” conversation. I don’t think I want to play with my friend anymore but also am worried about harming that relationship because outside of DnD, it’s very good. Would I be in the wrong for telling him I don’t want him to play in our next campaign?

Howdy Justices and L.B.J, I bring to you the case of the ‘Fries Supreme Faux Pas’ I DM for a group of 5 players, one of my PCs had just bought a house with their girlfriend and they offered to host our session that month. 4 days before the session, his girlfriend (not in the party, but likes to silently watch) sent a message saying that she wanted to do a Poutine Night for our “get-together” and asked everyone to bring a gravy and cheese option. Justices, I don't really like poutine, plus cheese curds are the only option, so I told them in the group chat that I was going to bring supplies for tex-mex fries. On the day of the session I brought a pound of cooked taco meat, a tub of sour cream, diced tomato and green onions, shredded cheese and nacho cheese. When I got there I was met with an “oh.. you were serious” from the girlfriend. It turned out to be a pretty good night, but it was obvious that DnD was not the priority and more of an inconvenience for the hosting couple. To the point where I was talking with my PC the next day, he told me that his girlfriend was upset that I “didn't stick to the theme of their house warming party.” I'm fine, ya?

Yo, how's it hanging Judge's and Judgette? And wassup bailiff Jay Jonah Jameson. I come to you with a case of the unnecessary self murder. I've dm'd for a friend since we started playing 8years ago. He decided to start dming himself and asked me to play in his first long campaign. In a bid to set the stakes for the other players, he asked if I could make a 1 session character to be killed to show that 'death was on the table'. I eagerly agreed and built a dodgy yuan-ti rouge. Well the session went great, and we were in the final boss battle. My character selfishly goes for a treasure prompting the boss to jump out and knock me down in one hit. The party looks on as I lay under the foot of a master assassin. The party battles with me slowly bleeding out. Judges, it was my time, I had served m purpose. Each round, I waited for the assassin to stab my sacrificial character. Judges, he never did. My character rolled 3 saving throws and recovered. Waylon Slithers survived. The assassin decided to attack everyone else, leaving me unharmed. I was confused, he could have killed me outright like we planned. Instead, Waylon continued with his party until The end of the session, where my SECOND character was introduced. Long story short this resulted in my new character having to kill my old character in front of the table. I could tell everyone was weirded out but my friend loved it! Judges, I didn't really want to murder myself. But it had to happen for my real character to exist. I'm racked with guilt. Should Waylon have survived the ambush? Should I have pushed myself off a building? My friend said if Waylon survived he could become and NPC, but it felt weird giving up a character to be played by someone else. Cheers big ears. P.s. I've never watched your show

To the honorable Justices and weird guy who keeps sneaking into the court room, I present the case of the rope trick robbery. I was playing in a one-shot (the one with the rat gods) that ended with a PVP competition to win entrance to Heaven+, a premium afterlife. We had to find an unbreakable barrel on an island full of barrels and grab the Heaven+ gift card out of it in order to win. After the barrel was found, I grabbed it and climbed up a rope trick and pulled the rope up. It took 2 actions to open the barrel and then grab the gift card, so on the first turn I opened up the barrel and waited for the next round. One of the other players directed a kraken, which had followed us onto the island and had been attacking all of us, toward the area of the invisible portal in the sky in a last ditch effort to stop me. My brother, who was DMing, had the kraken use all of its movement to get directly under the portal, then said that it made a grapple attack with its tentacle through the portal, rolling to see whether it attacked me, another player that I had charmed, the open barrel, or just the air. I argued that it shouldn’t be able attack inside the portal because it wasn’t inside the portal and attacks can’t pass through rope tricks portal. He ruled that it could attack because he thought you would be able to punch someone through the portal even if you couldn’t shoot them. He rolled a 1 on a d100, which resulted in the barrel being grabbed and yanked out of the portal. I attempted to save my plan by saying that the gift card might fly out of the barrel when it was yanked. My brother agreed, but gave it better odds to come out outside of the portal than inside. The card ended up falling out outside of the portal, letting the next player in initiative walk up and easily grab the card to win. Did my brother make the correct ruling by allowing the kraken’s attack, or was I robbed of my well-planned victory?

To the honorable Justices and Snailiff Jark, I present the case of the barrel rider. I was playing in a one-shot (the one with the rat gods) that ended with a PVP competition to win entrance to Heaven+, a premium afterlife. We had to find an unbreakable barrel on an island full of barrels and grab the Heaven+ gift card out of it in order to win. After the barrel was found, I grabbed it and began climbing a rope trick with it under one arm. When I was one turn away from reaching the portal at the top, one of the other players attempted to misty step up to me. More specifically, he wanted to misty step onto the barrel, hoping that the extra weight would cause me to drop it. My brother, who was DMing, initially ruled that I would need to make a strength save to hold onto the barrel, and then the other player would make an acrobatics check to stay on the barrel if I held on successfully. After some further deliberation, he decided to reverse the order of the rolls, citing that the misty stepping player might just immediately fall off and make it easier for me to hold the barrel. He failed his check and fell off, which resulted in me having to hit a lower DC on my save due to only having to withstand the initial impact rather than having to hold a whole person’s weight continuously. I succeeded my save and was able to make it into the portal and pull up the rope on my next turn. The other player initially argued that he shouldn’t have needed to make a check to stay on the barrel because he teleported directly onto the barrel and that I was unable to move out of turn. My brother cited that he might fall due to the rope moving drastically at the fulcrum point of my grip, causing me and the barrel to tip because of the extra weight. The player then argued that my save shouldn’t have been easier even though he fell off, but was overruled due to the original justification for the lower DC. For the record, I rolled higher than the higher DC anyway, so the lower DC didn’t even matter. I’m glad things worked out for me, but did my brother make the correct rulings, or was the other player robbed of his cool moment?

To the noble justices and ignoble bailiff, I bring a preemptive case of campaign cross-reference concerns. I'm part of two TTRPG groups with some membership overlap: one group meets every Saturday, the other meets every other Wednesday. Previously, the Saturday DM ran an unfinished Werewolf the Apocalypse campaign that I think we are unlikely to continue (we now play L5R). I really liked that system and want to run a 5-part Werewolf the Apocalypse game for the Wednesday group. My question is whether I should integrate characters and events from the old Saturday game into the upcoming Wednesday game. Justices, would it be fine to include characters and events from the other campaign since that DM is probably not going to revisit them? Or, on the off-chance that the Saturday DM does revisit their Werewolf game, would my inclusion of those elements count as stealing their thunder? I humbly await your judgement. Thank you.

I feel like this is a Confession. Should I Have realized my Ex was Emotionally Unavailable when they choose their in person DnD group over the online one we Met through and Not made the Move. I guess in Hindsight I put a lot of trust in their words/excuses when I should have been trusting ny Feeling about the Patern of behavior i was observing. Oh And Jack my Brother has Been Dming a game for me and some friend Back in Jersey I I did listen to your advice about Leaning on Friends when I told you I was in an IRL Tucker Situation. I don't regret moving to Phoenix though and leaning on Family Online helps while making friends in person

To the lowly, lowly, lowly Justices Murphy and Tanner, the ethereally beautiful Supreme Justice Axford, and the actually-kinda-cool Baliff Jork, I bring you the case of the Dim Light Dilemma. I've played a halfling shadow monk named Kithri in a campaign with three of my closest friends since 2018. It was my first real campaign and I didn't know them very well at all when I first joined, but we've become very close since, and the campaign has persisted even after I moved across the country and three time zones away. The DM is wonderful and I love them all very much. My question is a simple one: do shadows cast by people and objects count as dim light? The shadow monk class has an ability called Shadow Step that allows the character to teleport to an area of dim light or darkness within 60 ft as a bonus action, giving them advantage on an attack they make that turn. The DM ruled early on that a shadow cast by a person in daylight doesn't count for this ability, but I argued that the ability is named Shadow Step for a reason and the spirit of the move is to appear in an enemy's shadow to surprise attack them. I ultimately conceded, because obviously the DM has final say, but it's always irked me that one of the key abilities of my character was nerfed so hard. I've since whomped him several times and have had my (friendly) revenge, including a time when a clever silence spell basically took his queen arch mage out of a big boss fight entirely, so there's no hard feelings. But I want to know- was I right? Thank you for your time, and may the light of Dice Christ guide your judgement (in my favor, obviously 😋) Driplessly yours, Chloe P.s. that sign off made me cringe, too

To the Most Jawsome Supreme Crit members and to the lowly wife worm pulling doubble duty for the last guy is still out of action from his previous grinching. I honorable present the case/my complaint of misplaced fatherly need. My collage friend (lets call him Scrooge) and I been in serval campaigns off and on for serval years. Its been this previous year where after life events disrprurtrd a game I was dming that he was a player in, we reached to our other collage friends and made a new group. Since I was short on ideas I offered the DM seat to two other friends whom also dm. We were deciding what system to play, when Scrooge called me out the bule and asked if he could play a thrid party class called the monster hunter. I was confused since I was not Dming and we havent decided on if we were doing dnd or something else. I asked him why he asked me, to which he replied "I wanted your thoughts on the class." I told him looks interesting but he should talk to the DM for thier approval and that picking a class before we even decided the system is a waste of time if we play pathfinder or somthing. He then went silent hurt by statement and preceded to excuse himslef from the conversation. About week later we all final decided on dnd, to which Scrooge then reached out again asking the same question. To which I responded "ask the DM." He then replied "but I want your thoughts on the class." I gave it a quick read and told him "looks fine get DM approval." He said he would then 2 weeks before session 1 he reaches out to me again asking if he got approval for the class. In our group chat the DM said yes. Which I relayed to him after asking if he hasn't talked to our mutual friend in the 3 ish weeks since he last asked me. He said yes. After I talked with the DM he said hasn't heard a peep out of Scrooge since he asked in the gernal chat if he could play the class. The start of next week Scrooge messages me asking for my help with building his character (it was at this point and from previous experience that I knew he simply wanted me to leran how to play his charcter so he could just ask me what to do.) I said "yes but im not going to leran how to play yoyr charcter, but this would be better if you talked to and worked with the DM." He didnt reasoned to that so I told him tomorrow but he will need to know what his class does. On the night of character creation he was uttler at a lose at what his stats should be and what he should do as a build. Since I had no interest in learning a class I wasnt going tk be playing, I gave him gernal building advice. Which went out the window when I realized he never did talk to the Dm. Our DM what's happening has make level 20 characters and instead of us leveling up normally we unlock the high level abilities as we play. It was at this point I told him, talk to the DM or make a character that you can easily play. I suggested barbarian, and he made a barbarian. After that, I told him to tell the DM that he that he chose a different class. I informed the DM two days before game, the DM rescheduled out to get more info and Scrooge remained radio silent, till day of, where the DM couldn't naturally implement any of the random character eccentricities and backstory, since he did have any of that before we got started. So judges I humbly ask, was I justified for not investing the time and engery into Scrooge's nonsense since he was seeking my approval like I was his disapproving father, or was I being to harsh In my refusal to assist more. I radically await your judgement. Ps. I have talked to Scrooge about this behavior and its been meet with more emotional shut downs and withdrawals.

To the triumvirate of truth and the lowly liar, I bring you a case of “it’s what my character would do.” In my first campaign as a player, I played a Tempest Cleric Goliath, Dumok of Chu, who worshipped the Bitch Queen Umberlee after being struck by lightning and feeling the raw power of her oceanic fury. The end of the party’s first arc took us into a forest inhabited by one of the Babas (yaga or otherwise). In what would become our campaign’s end, we were given a choice: submit to her authority and become her warriors, or fight. Justices, the choice was first given to me and I refused her, as I had only one Queen and was given a brief and potentially ambiguous vision from her. This led to a difficult fight, a TPK and a brutal end to a 2-day irl session. I ask you this, was I wrong to commit to the character and doom my party, or can I relieve myself of this guilt knowing I did right by Dumok. P.S. I later dm’d a cathartic one shot where the other party members escaped from the lowest parts of hell while combatting the literal and figurative demons of their short campaign.

To the resplendent justices and the... what was i saying? I bring to you a tale of stolen joy, and throw myself to the mercy of the court. I am usually a forever DM, but had a chance to play in a game several years ago. Most of the other players were new to the game, and I had a few years' DMing experience by that point. We were exploring a spooky haunted forest in the game when we stumbled across a Shambling Mound, which attacked us and began combat. Now, having previously thrown a shambling mound at my own players, I knew that lightning damage would heal it, but my DM didn't know that. When the combat hit my turn, I was flummoxed. My character had JUST levelled up to a third level warlock, and picked up her first second level spell: Witch Bolt. In any other situation, I wouldn't hesitate to cast the spell, except that... I knew it would heal the mound. In the moment, I made the decision to just cast the spell and pretend to be surprised by the reveal that it healed the creature, but I've thought about it since then. Did my actions deprive the DM of the joy of the reveal? The other players? Should I have simply cast Eldritch Blast? I humbly await your judgment.

I present myself on hands and knees adjacent to the holy arbiters of dice Christ to beg for her forgiveness. I am a long time DM and I fear I may be misusing/mistreating the glorious 5e as a system. I run an ongoing dark western southern gothic campaign and it’s been going wonderfully my players love the world, their characters, and the NPCs and I too am having a great time. My sin comes in the form of the many sessions we spend in a row with zero combat, normally this wouldn’t be an issue but in those combat free sessions often the only check rolled are persuasion checks from my players (which I don’t even properly contest I simply vibe out a DC after they roll). Oh glorious representatives of dice Christ, do I deserve her forgiveness? Or should me and my party find a new system? (p.s. I was at dungeon court Chicago and at the end Emily threw her gavel right into my lap, so if our star crossed nature could earn me some forgiveness points I would really appreciate it!)

To the Honorable Justices Axford, Murphy, and Tanner, as well as the less honorable, but no less solid, Bailiff. I am the primary DM of a group of 7 that has played weekly for nearly the past 5 years. I DM 9mo out of the year and our other DM covers the other 3 to give me a break. After his last short campaign he approached me with the concern that one of our players was fudging dice rolls and had in secret kelps track of said players rolls to find that they rolled an average of 17 across the entire campaign. I then revealed that due to the same suspicions I had developed as DM, I had tracked the rolls of the same player as well as one other during that campaign, and we came to the conclusion that both players (who are good friends to us both) are dirty cheaters. We leave this case in the capable hands of the court.

Oh most immaculate popes and popette, I come to the confession booth for I am contemplating murder. I have been a part of an online group that spans countries for 5 years now. With the blessings of Dice Christ, we completed a full level 1-20 epic campaign. The DM is top class and us players fully invested ourselves in the world. It was truly magical. Everyone wanted to keep playing so a mini campaign was started, but times have changed. We can never get our schedules to line up anymore due to everyone's lives becoming busier. I myself started a family and time is more precious than ever, so I'm tired of blocking off the calendar only to have sessions canceled last minute. However, I know that if I tell the group I'm done, it would be the final nail in the coffin and we all would likely never play again. Counselors of the cloak, I ask you, which is the greater sin? Should I kill the group? Or should I let it slowly die out naturally at the cost of my calendar? Praise be, and Hallelujah to you all.

To the gigantic, towering, mighty, gorgeous lords of the earth, sea, and sky, also known as the supreme crit justices, as well as the tiny lil baby boy Bailiff Jermaine, I present the case of the abrupt withdrawal. I’ve been playing with a long time group of friends in a new campaign. Shortly into this new campaign the dm’s partner decided to join our adventure. For the most part the decision was fine but there have been a few instances of them seemingly not caring about the campaign despite the huge amount of effort the DM has made to include them. Last week during a climactic session where the partner’s character helped lead the party through a blizzard she abruptly decided to leave without warning. Most people acted out of concern when she left but didn’t think too much of it bc the DM who they are dating didn’t seem to react to much to it. Come to find out the two of them came together and the one who left completely abandoned the DM who drove with them to the session. The DM doesn’t seem to act like this is a problem but most of the group is starting to seem uncomfortable when she shows up to sessions, which is also at a inconsistent rate with varying degrees of paying attention. I ask of thee, should we bring this up to our DM? Maybe tell him how derailing moments like that can feel especially when their character is the focus of the session and then just dips suddenly? Thank you lovely justices. I request at least a small peppermint patty based punishment for someone, even me, please.

Dearest Judges and respected disciples of dice christ. Also the violent zealot Germ. I come to you with a question. Do I use guidance too much? I am playing a kalashtar Alchemist Artificer in a group with a Gunslinger, Barbarian, and a Rogue. We do not have a Bard so I am often casting Guidance to make up for us not having bardic Inspiration. However, I do know the dm does not love hearing me say "I cast guidance" every time I am doing a check. However, no one in our party has a Charisma score higher than 12. Sometimes it is the only way we could ever hope to pass certain checks. I don't want to ruin our role play and the suspense of some moments with having to say it over and over. Should I continue to provide guidance to my party? Or should I accept it and continue to cast it?

To the jubilant, jocular, jazzy justices and…there’s no one else right? I am putting myself on trial for potential railroading. My players are currently in the midst of trying to prove an NPC’s innocence before the NPC’s execution at dawn. In short, a druid order in the city was framed for a series of murders and after an assassination attempt on a member of the King’s cabinet, the King targeted all members of the Druid order and had them arrested. Luckily, most had escaped except NPC and about 15 graduate student aged young people, as my party had realized earlier that the circle was being targeted and had worked out a plan to get most of the druid order evacuated out of the city. Those arrested were caught as they were trying to flee. The NPC confessed to the crimes and said he cursed the students into helping him, as the King had been overheard saying he wanted all the druids killed and he didn’t care about the right to trial. The students were released, and initially my party forgot about the students and ensuring their safety when making their plans for the NPC’s innocence. I gave my players a wink wink nudge nudge about it given the King’s fury and they quickly corrected. I’m just wondering now if I should’ve done that. I guess I could’ve let the students get to the meeting point uninhibited, but given the King’s irrationality, I felt the stakes were appropriate narratively. But I’m worried I railroaded them, because getting the students to safety also does take an hour of their time before dawn. They are splitting the party to action all their plans, so there is time for everything they want to try that they came up with together, but leaves limited room for any 11th hour last ditch efforts. I’m sorry this is so long winded, but I would love some judicial perspective!!

Honourable Justices, Jake my boy, I come to you with the case of the Bed Shit Deception. It's frankly crass, I know, but to whom else could I turn? I am playing in a Star Wars 5e campaign. We fought some eldritch horrors in a spaceship. One of my party (let's call him 'Cake') failed a constitution saving throw, and the DM narrated that he felt the sudden urge to shit. Playing along with this crass chicanery, he found a spaceship tube of some sort and shat into that. The DM asked us to roll a D4, and narrated how the shit was sucked through the tube and spattered over Cake's bedroom. We laughed like the dipshits we are. He's where it get unjust. After we defeated the eldritch horrors, Cake asked if he could deceive my character into thinking we had accidentally swapped keys and that his bedroom was actually my bedroom. The DM said yeah, and told him to roll with advantage, and that I should roll insight. Cake beat me, and the DM said I fully believed the shit covered room was mine. I mean, what the fuck? I ask you to ignore our shit-stained shenanigans and rule on an important constitutional question: can you roll to deceive another player of something absolutely unhinged? Does everyone have to just play along if they roll bad on insight?

To the sweet sweet Deacons of Dice Christ and, oh shit is that Jake? How are you doin? I come seeking guidance. Years ago I played in a game with a guy who I found out would pre roll his rolls in a digital dice roller until he got a high number. When called upon to make a roll he would announce the roll he had saved. He never failed a check. When I questioned him about it he openly admitted to it and suggested I do it too. My question is this: should I have struck him down where he stood? Have I failed Dice Christ by letting this evil fester? I await your judgment. -M

Dear Most Agreeable Justices and Jay “The Bailster” Hermits, I bring you the case of the resigned jester. This past semester, a friend of mine invited me to a game. The concept was that we were employees in a castle, who following the old king’s timely but suspicious death, were attempting to prevent his villainous son from taking the throne. One player, the DM’s roommate, asked to play the late king’s jester, a bard that was desperate for laughs and “never broke character”. Throughout the campaign, this clown’s antics took significant play time from other players and the game as a whole, as he would attempt to talk to whoever he came across trying to get his old job back. Needless to say, by the time the campaign needed to end for the summer, we had accomplished very little. So, with our final session, made a plan to pull off the plan in one night. Our knight would cause a strike among the guard, our noble woman would gain the support of the prince’s spurned suitors, and my wizard would attempt to courier favor with the dragons. After our plans were finalized, our jester complained that he had nothing to do in this plan, as he had only ever managed to annoy various characters, and never endeared himself to any faction. In the end, we went with the plan as it laid out, and the jester doodled in their notebook until it was time for the final combat. Justices, were we as the other players wrong for not finding more for the jester to do in the final, time-limited session, or is this just desserts for taking too much of the spotlight in previous sessions? I could go either way so you guys figure it out.

Justices of the supreme crit and honorable defenders of the dice gods, Murph, Axford, and Tanner, oh and also no one in particular. I have a confession to make. I find it egregious and it has torn my soul for quite a few months now. I started a new dnd party with some neighbors, we all live within the same block. I am the DM of a party of six, two of the players have never played before. I had an encounter on the first session to get them used to combat. I had them fight some measly skeletons. I had some extra skeletons also prepared for backup just in case they dealt with the first group quickly, which they did. However when the second group of enemies appeared the group began to roll poorly and they got several of them low on health one of which was a brand new player. Then a I rolled a nat 20 to hit this new player. Judges it knocked him down to zero and on his first death save he rolled a nat 1. Another round went by without any of the other players being near him and on his turn he rolled low killing his first character ever on session one of the first game he ever played. He laughed when it happened and said he had a blast playing and was excited to play a new character (best case scenario i know). However I cant help but feel responsible for this new players death by adding maybe too many skeletons to the fight. Judges am I guilty for killing off a new PC or is it possible to let this weight go? I bow myself before the court and beneath dice Christ's feet. P.S. His character was a ranger named Sal Monella. He now plays a path of the zealot Goliath barbarian and he is loving the new character.

To the notorious SCJ and the great AND terrible baliff, I present the case of the twist that turned on me. I'm DMing a homebrewed sci-fi mini campaign with 2 friends and my partner. So far the PCs woke up in a laboratory with strange powers (stylized from 5E classes) in a town overrun by myconids, and discovered the lab is home to a massive, sentient mega-shroom that wants to expand to new towns. Everything has been going great until in session 3 I revealed the twist: all the PCs had died in the myconid attack, and they were actually all fungal reconstructions grown using their bodies and samples of the mega shroom. In response, my friend playing an 17-year-old paladin decided that it wasn't safe for him to leave the lab at all, and he would have to figure out how to honorably sacrifice himself and kill the mega shroom (instead of exploring the town & meeting up with his PC's dad as planned). Immediately, I could see the rest of the party looked bummed: they didn't really want to split a 3-person party, but seemed to be disappointed to be stuck at the lab—especially our friend playing an 80-year-old rogue who was loving her new powers. Afterwards, my partner suggested I just ask our paladin to retcon his character decision so the rest of the party could enjoy the rest of the world and the storylines I'd planned for them. Esteemed justices, would it be a wrong in the eyes of the court to ask this paladin to change his mind and go against his character choice, or should I let the story play out? I await your merciful wisdom.

I don’t have a case, but please ask Justice Tanner to make a compelling case to the people for why Frozen 2 is better than the original Frozen. The world needs to know

To the magnificent crit justices and cuck juck, I bring forward the case of the refusal of planned allegiance. Years ago, I was DMing a home game for a few friends and two new players. Upon character creation, one of the new players, a Monk, told me that he wanted to have an internal struggle with Eldath, the dnd God of Peace and Khorne, the Warhammer Blood God. I thought it was interesting so I worked with him on it. Fast forward, right before our 13th session, the Monk told me that he would be siding with Khorne for power. I told him “cool, we can work together and make that happen.” That session, the party was sailing and got bombarded by Pirates. Two hours of combat and things were looking rough. One ranger was tossed overboard, another was down and the rogue was too far away. The Monk was surrounded and it seemed like all hope was lost. I began to narrate how the Monk heard the deep and gravely voice of Khorne in his mind, asking the Monk to accept a gift from him to be powerful enough to save himself and his companions. Judges, the Monk, out of character, looked me in the eyes and said “Why the fuck would I do that?” I was taken aback. I thought I was giving the Monk exactly what he wanted but it seemed like I offended him. I told him “you don’t have to accept if you don’t wish to.” He, in fact, did decline and proceeded to keep a slight attitude to not just me, but the rest of the table as well. In the end, the Ranger made it back aboard the ship and with some great timed natural 20s from Dice Christ themselves, the party was victorious. But the mood was entirely soured and I could feel a slight sense of hostility. That was our last session for that game but even after all this time, I still do not have a clue what I could have done wrong to make the Monk turn a 180 on what he wanted and feel offended. Could I have been better at reading body language to see that wasn’t something they wanted to do anymore or am I simply overthinking it? I humbly await your word on the matter.

To the most perspicacious of potentates and the bootylicious bailiff, I present for your consideration the case of The Thief vs His Own Trap My group’s first D&D campaign was 10 years ago in an office conference room, after work at a tech company where we all worked together. We were playing Out of the Abyss, with all brand new players (myself included) and our friend who was a Forever GM of older editions, but was also new to 5e We were cautiously picking our way through the dungeon and came upon a snare trap in the middle of the hallway. The thief in our party approached the trap, attempted to disarm it, and rolled a nat 20 The GM said that he had disarmed it so well, that he could choose to re-arm it, and it would catch anyone else that comes through this way – to which the thief said: yep, sounds great. Cut to the next session a week or two later, that same Thief is being chased by some duergar, hastily retreating back through that section of the dungeon. As he dashed through the corridor, the GM asked him to roll a DEX save to avoid his own trap, because, according to the GM, he forgot that it was there and did not ,say he was explicitly avoiding it. The argument prior to the roll lasted about 20 minutes, an abridged version of which follows: GM: You re-armed the trap and forgot about it. There’s a live trap in the hallway, so of course you have to roll to avoid it Thief: On a nat 20, I feel like my character would’ve remembered that it was there and avoided it GM: You were moving at maximum speed, not being careful, and you moved through the exact square where it was located Thief: Dude, it’s been like two weeks since that happened for me, but it’s only been like an hour for my character. They would have remembered. It was a nat 20! Ultimately, it became clear that the GM was standing his ground, so the Thief rolled the check, and failed. An encounter ensued, which we all survived, but to this day, the Thief contends that they should’ve been able to avoid their own trap. As far as the rest of the campaign, we had a few PC deaths but eventually we were able to successfully make it Out of the Abyss (TM). Players have joined and left over the years and others have started GMing, but four of us from the original group still meet weekly to play. Please, judges, make thy judgement and lay to rest our table’s oldest dispute. Also, if it matters, the Thief was the GM’s boss at the time.

To the illustrious judges and that guy who played Tread Nevers, I humbly come before you with the case of the Level 1 DM. After learning that several of my fellow cast members in a community theatre production of Hunchback of Notre Dame were also fans of DND (shocker) I got everyone's numbers and made a groupchat for a one-shot, planning to DM something related to the show. A guy from the group created his own separate groupchat (with all the same people), said he would be DMing, and started organizing details. I assumed I hadn't been clear enough that I had hoped to DM and said nothing. He asked us to make our characters level 1, knowing two people in the group were first-timers. We had a goofy one-shot, mostly silly conversation and one combat with our level 1 characters. We all agreed it would be fun to play again — several of us, with more DND experience, suggesting that we play at level 3 next time. He is convening the next one shot in the group chat and I asked if we could be level 2 this time. He said no, we're only playing at level 1. (He is new to DMing and there are 7 of us playing, so I assume he is worried about us whomping his monsters, but couldn't he just give us harder challenge ratings?) Am I right to be frustrated with this DM, or should I chill out and just enjoy the chance to hang out with cool new theatre friends? -riley (she/her) - Riley (she/her), friend of Sammy (PS, to sway Justice Axford to my side: I named my kitten Moonshine!)

To the erudite judges and the erethic bailiff: I present the case of the impossible puzzle. In the first D&D campaign that I played, the DM ran a campaign in a setting of her own making (to my knowledge). In the process of collecting npc allies, we found one as a ghost trapped in a haunted mansion. Nothing we tried could allow the ghost to exit the building, including my paladin using Turn Undead which just made the ghost slam into some kind of force field. I spent multiple sessions trying to find answers to this puzzle and the time between sessions racking my brain for options. Eventually, I asked the DM via discord if this was a puzzle that could be solved, and if so was there just one answer or would any potentially viable answer work. Basically, am I wasting my time trying? And do I need to find specific clues? She said any potentially viable solution would work. After more weeks of going over every bit of information and my skills and spells, I presented the ghost the option of possessing my Steed from the Find Steed spell, then dismissing the steed so that it returned to the celestial planes and re-summoning outside the barrier. This worked! I was ecstatic. However, later, the DM mentioned that no other groups she'd run this campaign for had found a way to free the ghost until a much higher level when more skills and spells were available. This campaign eventually ended due to other issues and I ran a full Dragon Heist campaign for two of the other players plus some additional friends, but it still bugs me that I wasn't told that the problem wasn't supposed to be solvable at our level when I specifically asked after spending so much time working on it. I think I'm the only player who enjoyed puzzles, so no one else was helping me. Am I right to think that after multiple sessions without progress I should have been told it could be revisited at a higher level? Or should I just be happy that I found a solution no one else had and let it go?

(This case has been given to me by my best friend Kate!) To the Most Honorable Justices and the Cool Cool Bailiff Jeff (Geoff?), I have been playing dnd with the same group for about four years. Our usual set up is three players and a DMPC to help balance the party. One of our players was really new to dnd when we started so we tried to go out of our way to cater to them. We let them drive the party choices most of the time, we regularly bent rules that were too complicated for them, and we had to institute a no pc death policy since they found the idea of their character dying really upsetting. This special treatment has persisted to this day. Recently we finished a campaign, and that player asked if he could try DMing a one shot before our usual DM started a new campaign. We agreed, and he told us all to roll level 7 characters. As soon as we started playing it became clear that our Interim DM had not prepared. We were supposed to spend five nights in a haunted hotel, fighting the monsters. Instead we were subjected to a long, incoherent, and confusing shopping episode in the town around the hotel. This happened multiple times and stretched the “one shot” into six sessions. When we tried to go back to the hotel at night to fight the monsters, we were not allowed to fight them. They instead made idle threats but ran away and vanished once the party tried to fight them. And we got the feeling that the Interim DM didn’t have any stat blocks prepped. We tried to be patient since this was the first time he was DMing, but then came the final fight. Despite telling us to roll level 7 characters, he had us fight: a bone devil, two nagas, four skeletons, and four ghasts all at the same time. He kept targeting my Paladin because I was the only one with healing abilities. He never attacked his own DMPC, claiming that he “forgot he could do that”. The fight resulted in a TPK where only his DMPC survived, and the DM was both smug and gleeful about killing all of our characters. Judges, I know that DMing is difficult, but was this unreasonable? He literally cackled when our characters went down. I humbly await your verdict. [Jake, please wait until the moment you think it’s funniest to reveal this] PS: Our Interim DM is my 10 year old nephew.

help! i’m getting chased by patty peppermint in a field of corn!! jkjk im actually fine. i bring to you the case of the unrolled perception check. my boyfriend and I were in a campaign with his longtime friends, he was playing a war forged artificer. i will not lie on the stand, my boyfriend is a problem player. he’s previously bought an entire orphanage to turn them into a child army to assist in fighting the bbeg. in this case though, i feel he was wrongly attacked for simply using his characters abilities. his warforged was built with no arms, and used his humunculi to create new arms, with the intention of becoming an eight armed beast. in a session where we were invading a cave and there was a wall in the way, the party could hear the dwarves on the other side and needed a way passed. he deattached his homunculus arm to send it to the roof to look over and see what was going on. justices, the dm stated that the dwarf stationed at the wall saw the dismembered limb and shot it down, triggering an attack from the dwarves that could moved through the rock wall. myself, my boyfriend and another player at the table (our usual dm) all said that this was ridiculous. he didn’t get the warforged to roll a deception or stealth check, nor did the dm roll for anything. when questioned, he said homunculi don’t have good stats, and the dwarf has dark vision so it doesn’t really matter anyway. we pushed, he said that a dismembered limb is a bad spy, and anyone in their right mind would shoot one if they saw it. we dropped it and entered the fight where my lovers dear warforged was killed and then melted down by the dwarf for scrap. frankly, i see this is as a great miscarriage of justice, and an example of previous tomfoolery being used to punish a valid move. please dole out justice fairly, and spare me from the harshest as i am just a little guy. P.S. this was the last session of dnd we all played as a group and our old dm isn’t super keen to get back into it, so maybe the last experience we have of dnd in person

To the jubilant justices and the jester Jakin' it in the corner, if it may please the court I bring the case of modless rolls In a campaign im in I play a Martian hacker monk that can use ki points to cast certain computer based spells. On our last session our city was invaded and hit by a viris that made every Cyborg in the city become violent, after working at the issue for an hour it culminates in a hacking check, I burned all my ki which I had saved throughout the session to make sure my check would succeed and I rolled 30+, the dm didn't reply if id passed or failed, instead asking for the number on the die which was a 17, the dm said "you're lucky, you needed a 16 on the die" I asked him to elaborate and he clarified he didn't care about modifiers and just wanted a hard roll. Justices, is it okay for a dm to disregard modifiers and caracter skill level, allow me to burn every resource i had for the sole purpose of boosting the roll just to judge success based on the no modifier die roll? I leave my fate in your bug strong sexy palms

For CAKE HURWITZ! Two years ago, in our weekly campaign over Zoom. One of our members was getting bogged down with work and at the end of a session told us that he was leaving. At the beginning of the next session Our DM role played his wizards death, we mourned, and moved on. That same session we were sneaking into an evil church’s courtyard which ended in a TPK. After the game our DM revealed that this was supposed to be an easy encounter that was geared twards the wizard and had lumped the enemies together in large groups at the beginning of the fight to make full use of his AoE spells. But our wizard told the DM he was leaving after he created the encounter and didnt feel like changing it. So i ask the Judges, Should our DM have switched up his battle tactics to better suit that of a Ranger, Barbarian, and Rouge? or did we just get good ole fashioned whomped? either way no shade to our DM! LOVE YOU MIKE!!!!

To the croissantly justices and bailiff Cake Horwitz, I bring you case of the Lackadaisical Level-Up. I have been DMing various groups online for 5 years now and have been yearning to get an in-person game together to get that classic D&D experience. I've finally wrangled 4 friends to play. They are all fairly new to D&D but are avid gamers and genuinely seem excited to play, even investing in dice and leather bound note books. My issue is that two players seems to be struggling with the manual nature of D&D when it comes to leveling up compared to the video games they are used to playing. They were supposed to move up to level 2 a few sessions ago but haven't leveled up their characters. I have sent them resources, including online tools and even offered to level them up myself. Before each game they say they will finish leveling up but when they arrive they are still level 1. I offer to help them up before we start but they say not to worry about it and they will just do it before our next game. In the last game they got enough experience to reach level 3 right before this arch's mini BBEG fight. I'm wondering how to plan for the BBEG fight. Also, I get the feeling it bothers the other two players who come prepared, enthusiastic and want to enjoy the game with a properly levelled party. I beg the justices for their wisdom and will humbly accept the blame and punishment if I have let down this party. P.S. to be transparent and fair one of the lackadaisical players is a real life bailiff and has to deal with a lot of lackadaisical judges.

Dear Justice Wife Worm and colleagues of divergent esteem. I bring you the case of the ‘new hire fopar’. My workplace recently hired a new staff member, and he quickly made it known he was interested in DnD. Trying to be friendly, I recommended the podcast to him. Justices, at this stage I submit to the court that I work in a fairly high profile industry. A lot of money changes hands, and my career is very important to me. So you can understand my horror, when the new guy comes into the office on his second day and announces in front of everyone “I listened to that podcast you recommended. They started talking about dragon pussy. Haha!” Justices, is it my fault for not anticipating that he would start with Campaign 1 Episode 1 and subsequently announce his findings to the whole office? Or was it reasonable of me to expect he would be more demure? May your judgement be swift, and may dice Christ have mercy on my soul.

To the fickle high court and Tuckers friend Chalk. I come with less of a grievance but more searching for guidance. I’m running a Curse of Strahd campaign, a had a plot point where the players would have to cure Dimitri Krezkov’s son of his lycanthropy. Hoping they would use this opportunity to explore the Abby and speak with the Abbot. However, the wizard in the party immediately cast remove curse (she had prepped it Incase one of the party had contacted something in their adventure). I had this resolve the issue, and they had a nice dinner at the Burgomaster mansion. This brings me to my issue. My gut reaction was to reward them for having the solution to the problem at hand, but I also dont want every issue to be resolved as soon as it’s introduced just because I’m not fully aware of what spells my players have prepared. Judges, do I study my players spell sheets to know how they could womp me? Or do I bow my head and accept the wompings at they come. Thanks for all the amazing work guys!

Dear Magnanimous Members of the Supreme Crit and the bailiff whose wife’s boyfriend uses a magnum, I present the case of the underwhelming arcana check. I am playing a level 6 Community Domain cleric who worships Eldath in a homebrew 5.5 campaign set in Faerun. I was asked by other members of my order to oust a gang of street toughs who had taken over a fountain/community garden dedicated to our goddess. Because of the time of night and supposed easy threat, a pc and several key NPCs stayed home. Justices, these were not some young hooligans but instead a full blown vampire and his two spawn. The fight was tense from the beginning and this was only made more so when our rogue got charmed by round 1 and was essentially out of the fight. I asked my DM if the charm was a magical effect to which he replied yes. I then used my turn to cast dispel magic on the charm and rolled a 23 only to be told “actually dispel magic only works on spells, but you can roll me an arcana check.” I was elated that my plan would be allowed to work even though it’s not rules as written. I rolled a 17 on a dc 15 check. My dm said “ok you can have your turn back but you lose your object interaction”. I was bummed because I thought the arcana check meant the charm was going to be dispelled. A little annoyed I instead said “fine, my character just shoots a guiding bolt.” To which my DM asked “do I sense a little bit of sass because we can have your dispel magic do nothing.” Justices, we ended up winning the fight due to a combination of a high damage barbarian, my sun staff which produces daylight and some tactical tackling into the holy water fountain. However, I can’t help but feel a little salty my dispel magic didn’t work. I ask the court, should my DM have let the dispel magic work or at least let me know beforehand that the arcana check was only to redo my turn? Or should I be thankful I have a DM that creates such amazing stories and encounters and gives me dope magic items. I leave my fate in your hands

Dear infallible justices and the irreverent bailiff Cronk. I come to you with the case of the Four Hour Battle. I’m running Strahd for a group of 5 of my friends who were at level 4 at the time. Slight spoilers for Vallaki, I guess. They had went to the coffin maker’s shop in Vallaki to retrieve some bones for a priest. In the attic was a nest of 6 vampire spawn as per the book. They got the bones with ease but couldn’t help themselves to look into the crates the spawns were hiding in. And thus, a slog of a fight commenced. For four hours these guys fought, went down, got healed, and fought again. Only twice did running away come up and only 2 out of 5 people thought it was a good idea. Justices, they did not run. Miraculously, not a single one of them died by the end and all of the spawns were defeated. My players then proceeded to complain how much of a slog that fight was and said I made it too hard for them. They still razz me about it at least once a session and at least twice when we’re hanging out not doing DnD. Justices, I ask, am I in the wrong here? I only ever imagined they would run once the first person went down, or even as soon as they had the bones. Should I have made it easier for them once I realized they weren’t going to retreat, or let them (and me) suffer a four fight? I await your perfect judgment. Thank you.

To the honorable justices and bailiff Jan Hurwich I present to you the case of the abandoned crew. In a 3 and a half year long 9 person campaign, I played Francis, the underwhelming captain of a rag tag crew of space pirates. About halfway through the campaign, Francis was teleported away from the party to face off against 4 other pirate captains for the title of pirate king. After his humiliating defeat, Francis sent a letter to the party resigning as captain and decided to fake his death and go into hiding. I ran my plan by the dm between sessions and he was on board. For the next 13 sessions the party was split and the dm (may dice Christ bless his soul) would go back and forth between 3 concurrent storylines with some players playing npcs along the way (another pc had split from the party a session earlier and was on a quest to find a home for her people with a new player that joined the following session) Upon reuniting with his crew, Francis had his prominent nose permanently broken by a brick to the face and was repeatedly beaten up in his hospital bed by his former crew mates. I maintain that this led to a more interesting story but some of my fellow players still razz me for splitting the party. This also started a trend for the rest of the campaign where, for one reason or another, the full party was hardly ever in the same place at the same time except for arc finales. Was I right to abandon my friends or am I a terrible excuse for a captain who doesn’t know the meaning of a collaborative game? I humbly await your judgement

To the esteemed crit justices and the steamed bailiff Jake, I bring forward the case of The Name Change Domino. I have been DMing for my 9 year old son and 4 of his friends for over a year now. One of his friends approached me before our last session started and asked to change the name of his character. I wanted him to feel connected to his character and permitted the name change. At the start of the session I gave a recap of our last session and then gave the floor to him to announce his new name. It was Seizure Salad Lord…(His father has recently been hospitalized with unexplained seizures, so I assume this is coping mechanism with humor) The table of 9 and 10 year olds erupts with uncontrollable laughter. Then every single one announced they were changing their names to ridiculous joke names. I ask judges, was I wrong in allowing the initial name changed since we’ve been playing for over a year with these characters or should I just roll with the punches of ridiculous elementary aged humor?

Our dice daddies who art in the celestial plane, I come to you with a confession of a jealous manifestation. I have been listening to Naddpod and other ttrpg actual plays for close to 8 years. In college, I tried many times to get my best friend to listen or watch some with me, as I found enjoyment in the format and thought they would too. However, they said they "don't like listening to people just talk," and I left it like that. When I would talk about it in passing, they would again brush it off as being disinterested in D&D as a whole, and I accepted that I would never get my college friends along for a game. It has since been a few years since we graduated and we live in different states, but they told me a few months ago that their home friend would be running a campaign with them. I immediately had to subdue the immense jealousy I felt. In all these years, I had never gotten enough friends interested enough to play even a session and now I knew they would be playing without me. However, my true confession is that I fear my envy may have manifested in a malicious way. One of their party members will not be able to play for a few months and others are moving soon, and the campaign will probably end unsatisfied. My friend is upset about this, as they were beginning to really enjoy their character and mechanics, but there is now a possibility that their game will move online and I would be able to join from out of state. I throw myself at the feet of Dice Christ for feeling jealousy towards my friend and for the future sin of benefitting from their campaign falling apart. I accept what punishment he sees fit. 

Good morning, day, and evening to the honorable justices and Jark. I present to you all the case of intimidating tree shakes. I am the DM for a group of hoodrats who recently set off on a sidequest to hunt and harvest resources from a brontosaurus. During their fight, they were ambushed by a couple of predator dinosaurs (allosaurus) who started attacking them. In an attempt to scare them off, one of my players wanted to cast thaumaturgy to mimic the sounds of a t-rex, as well as use his hands to shake two trees to make it seem like it was approaching. I let him make an intimidation roll for the thaumaturgy which he failed, but he then insisted that shaking the trees should give him a bonus, to which I disagreed, because his character couldnt possibly shake a tree that large to any effect, let alone two at once. Judges (and Jork), this player has sent me videos of him personally shaking trees to show that it's very possible to recreate this effect, yet he only ever picks skimpy ones and even tried to prove his claim with a topiary! Surely, a dinosaur-ridden forest would have hearty, thick trees like a redwood or pine instead of something like a birch. Was i wrong to deny a little extra somethin' somethin' for his attempt? I humbly await your judgment.

To the Judicial Jessica Rabbits and that little weirdo they are married to. I submit the case of the Overly Refined Pallete. I have been DMing a 5e game for a little over two years for some amazing people. I host, and almost always bake every session. Cookies, cake, pie, donuts... it's therapeutic for me and hopefully delicious. I have been working on perfecting a Cinnamon Bun recipe, and decided to make it along with some cookies for a recent session. As the kitchen was heating up, my glasses were slipping around so I took them off just before reaching in to my pantry for more cinnamon. I shook it over the rolled out dough and immediately noticed it was a lot more green than it should be. I had inadvertently grabbed an Italian Spice Mix instead of the cinnamon. But with only a single shake I was sure it wouldn't be that noticeable. I told my players and offered Inspiration for whoever got the Cinnamon Garlic Bun. Unfortunately garlic is a lot more pervasive than I had anticipated and it soon became clear that every piece of caramelized and icing soaked flour and sugar was infused with the the exotic flavours of Domino's bread bites. I fear I have traumatized my players and they will never be able to trust a Cinnamon Bun again. Despite frantically handing out Inspiration throughout the game I'm not sure I can ever be forgiven.

Yo, sup justices and loaf? I come to you with the the case of murdering a party member's possible familiar. It was my first campaign with my friends 6 or so years about and I was playing a ranger. My friend, we'll call him Elmo, rolled to persuade a deer to become a familiar one night we were going to sleep in the forest. Me, being the ranger that I was, thought that my character would want some fresh meat since it had been a while since I hunted. When I rolled to stab his deer, I crit. What ensued was a derailment of the session where he chased me throughout the forest and into town, completely throwing off our DM's plans for the evening. (Sorry you had to put up with so much, Kesli). Elmo still brings up this story occasionally to razz me. Justices, must Elmo forgive my lonesome ranger for simply looking for a meal or am I in the wrong for misunderstanding how to play my character in this moment? I humbly await your decision. - Korey T

To the rare shiny versions of the maganimous representatives of Dice Christ, I bring you a confession. In a campaign with a friend of mine and his family, including his two teenage sons, I have fudged a roll and I fear, accidently stole the spotlight. I play an Tiefling Kensei Monk. During a battle with several baby dragons, we were struggling to fight the enemy surrounded by a darkness I had cast (to protect a wounded NPC). To try to whittle down while supporting enemies by moving, I voluntarily moved close to a dragon to get an opportunity attack on me to cast a hellish rebuke. Being Mobile, he had disadvantage and I am already hard to hit. The dragon stil hit me, if I ignored my agile parry, which I did, fudging my AC, with no shame. I didn't think much of it, but to my surprise, it finished the dragon, and moving to the next target 90 feet away, also downed it with surprising damage roll. With the darkness, the rebuke, and finishing more than half of the very hard targets we had, I feel like I ended up stealing the spotlight, from a group where i'm supposed to be the support Forever DM. I ask for Dice Christ's forgiveness and hope I can move back to my support role without shame.

To the Infinite Justices and their Finite bailiff this was years ago but I was reminded of it today. The first time I tried adventure league my wife and I rolled up some characters, her a cleric me a warlock. the hook was we were providing security for a caravan though a well patrolled and relatively safe area. The convoy head asked my character (lvl 1) to stay outside and cover first watch. Fine whatever Then he sends an assassin after me (CR5). He gets by my perception check and double attacks me before I can get even move and then wins initiative and finishes my off. I was pretty shocked and said "ok well that happened do I just become my identical twin cousin?" he said "no you have to wait for another session" so was like I'm out, and we left. He seemed upset that my wife left too which is why Im pretty sure he wanted to hit on her or something My question is should I have made complaint to the shop owners ?

Greetings to the most fair, honest, and justices and … wait, don’t tell me… is it… Jonk? I’m going with Jonk. I bring you the case of the Dimension don’t. I play a level 6 College of Eloquence Bard, named Derik Dohard, in a cyberpunk world where technology is very prominent and every person has a smartphone. In one of our party's recent missions, we were following a GPS tracker to reach an abandoned hideout of a detective who knew info about our current mission. The GPS could only tell us the general direction to go and not specific instructions because this part of the city was abandoned and basically run by unhoused drug addicts. While exploring and following the GPS, an NPC informed us that multiple scary monsters lay ahead. So the artificer in our party cast invisibility on herself to sneak ahead and scope out the area. Lo in behold, our party accidentally discovered the fastest route to the hideout, and our artificer only had to sneak past 2 very scary mutated monsters. But justices, this is where all hell broke loose. Once there, I asked my DM if our artificer could send us a picture of the location she was at, and I could dimension door with the barbarian to the artificer. But justices, he ruled that I couldn’t. He claimed that this would not work because you cannot dimension door to an insanely realistic painting, which is similar to a photograph. I tried to argue that this is a cyberpunk world with high tech everywhere, and that on multiple occasions we have Google people and locations to get information, so a picture should be good enough to dimension door to. After around 20 minutes of this argument, I decided to pull up the exact wording of the spell and noticed that I could alternatively just say the amount of distance I would like to go and the direction, but he still ruled that I couldn’t. We then bickered for another 20ish minutes, until I decided to just accept his ruling and not use the spell. The session was fine after that. We explored the rest of the alleyways together, found a ton of fun loot, fought some very scary monsters, and even met a beloved NPC who was lost in there. So, justices, I humbly ask, was I wronged? Should my spell have worked? Or should I have just accepted his ruling the first time and trusted that there was a reason he wouldn’t let the spell work? I patiently await your ruling. Also ps. My party agreed that the spell should have worked, but they were slightly less engaged during the actual argument I had with my dm.

To the beloved crit, I bring not a case but a query. I have a one shot coming up that is themed after Hot Boy Summer. From the beautiful Justice Axford, I ask for tips on how to set up something that even idiots can solve but is still slightly difficult. From Justice Murphy, how does one manage to be a party guy and still so unchill? From Justice Caldwell, how does Dave stay so relaxed while everyone else is falling apart? From the benevolent bailiff jake, how does one stay moody and acting like a victim while also trying to be funny? I await your guidance with bated breath

To the preternaturally clever, extremely sharp-witted, MENSA-level intelligent judges (and the L.L Bean model they hired for diversity,) Please hear my most disgusting confession. It was my first-ever campaign, and the player vibes were… tense, to say the least. At one point, at the end of a session, I asked to roll for something fairly minor. Forgive me, I do not remember what it was. The important thing is this: the energy was so hostile, I felt in my gut that failing this roll would have real life consequences for me. I got a low roll, so I vamped and kept re-rolling until I got a moderately acceptable roll. I believe it was an 18 on my third attempt. With my modifier, this was enough to move the plot along as planned. This would prove to be my final move in the campaign, as things got so heated behind the scenes I did not return. However, this weighs heavily on me. My next d&d experience was a disaster that ended after one session, and I haven't had any since. I fear I have been permanently cursed by a dice deity. Please help, dear clergy!

To the judges, I raise the case of the prepared bonus action. I was in a role20 campaign, where we all got a bunch of Homebrew powers. One character had a power called Ragnarök, which let them do a massive cone of damage, but sacrificing most of their HP. We were facing one of the villains, a necromancer, who was a pc from an old campaign in the world, played by his player. At some point, Ragnarök was used, but to our surprise, the necromancer misty stepped, although he had already acted that round, making it miss! We argued, and he said that he texted the DM before the round, saying “if they have homebrew powers, I should be allowed to do this”. Some PCs died, and he ended up running away. Judges, was it fair to give him a homebrew power on the spot, or was our anger righteous? I humbly await your ruling.

Greetings honourable judges of the Supreme Crit, and noble bailiff famous for action surging on a naughty pistachio, I present to you the case of the chatterbox. I have recently started playing an online game of Mothership with some friends from college. It was a fun enough game, but one huge problem. I barely had opportunity to speak. It's the first time I've ever had the issue of another person talking so much in character that I've felt like I could barely engage with the game. The other players didn't seem to mind it, but the few times I could actually engage in the game it took twenty minutes to resolve my rolls because she kept talking. Nobody wanted to be rude, and interrupt her because we're all friends, and didn't used to have the issue when we played in person years ago. But I was frustrated, and I think the other players were as well. Am I right to be a little annoyed or should I suck it up and accept that that's how it goes sometimes. It doesn't help that Mothership has a less clear order of player agency than some games. I am at your mercy.

To the Supreme Crit and the Bailiff who lives in a shopping kart down at the local big Y, I present to you the case of the “Destiny Dice.” It was my first campaign, and our DM had a home rule— the party could use a destiny die (a d6, 1-3 bad outcome, 4-6 good outcome) to try and out-of-game influence the story. It, they told me, had hilarious precedent. Judges, the one and only time I experienced this Destiny Dice was when my brother rolled to see if a barrel was full of gunpowder. He rolled a 1. The DM deemed it was, in fact, full, but was volatile, and blew up in our faces, causing an instant TPK. No rolls, no chances, just a fully decimated dungeon and bloodmist where my player once stood. The DM went out for a smoke break. The rest of the party nonchalantly rolled new characters. I alone was dumbfounded and feeling unfulfilled, wishing I could have at least dove away. I dropped out of the campaign a few weeks later, mostly out of fear for this chaotic bolt of a concept killing my next character Judges, is the Destiny Dice a bad idea? Or did I simply fail a real life saving throw on the Fear spell?

To the illustrious justices and bailiff, is it Tucker? I present a scholastic question rather than a case. I am currently DMing the module Vecna: Eve of Ruin, where without spoiling too much, a relic called the Crown of Lies comes into play. A specific property of this relic has become intriguing to me: RAW says “any lies you tell always seem to be true, no matter what magical or mundane methods are used to detect the falsehoods”. My question is this: how would it measure up against Zone of Truth? I find it hard to believe one of the properties of this wondrous artifact could be completely neutralized by a second level spell. Oh wonderful justices, please come down harshly and with impunity on this theoretical question that has literally no impact on the game I’m running because nobody is playing a paladin or a cleric.

Hello, esteemed justices of the court. If we are being mean to Jake today, please read line A. If we are not being mean to Jake today, read line B. A) hi Jork B) hi Jake I’m writing on behalf of a friend who may have a plausible case for wrongful razzing. My friend is playing a minotaur barbarian in his long-running campaign. At the end of a session, the DM introduced that they would be fighting a dragon and left them on a cliffhanger, having everybody roll to see if the dragon's frightful presence impacted the party. Only one member of the party failed their save (not the barbarian friend). The DM ended the session there and said that they would pick up the fight next time. My friend, the barbarian minotaur, reminded the DM that he was unable to attend the next session. The DM smartly said, " Oh, we'll just switch it so that your Minotaur is the one affected by the fear and say that he ran out into the hallway, so we have a canon reason for why you're not here this session”. It all worked out, and without the barbarian, they still beat the dragon handily in one session. The next session, when my buddy returned to the table, the DM narrated the barbarian coming out from hiding after the fight. All of the players, both in and out of character, started making fun of what a coward his minotaur was for being scared by the dragon and running away. My friend is now trying to figure out how to handle the fact, both in and out of character, that he was forced into role-playing a coward when his barbarian has been your classic tough guy. Are my friend and his character being wrongfully razzed based on a decision he didn't have any agency in? Or does he have no recourse except to “yes, and” and go along with this and integrate it into a part of his character? We humbly await your decision.

Greetings to the esteemed honorable judges and the slightly less honorable bailiff Jonk, I present to you the case of the Beleaguered Barbarian. I am currently playing in a campaign where I my level 3 Barbarian is the only melee character in a party that has 4 other spell casters, I knew this going in and designed my character to be as effective a tank as possible with the idea that I would protect the mages while they did most of the damage. This plan and all the characters were made together with input from the DM. The problem has been that every single combat encounter for 8+ sessions the enemies have exclusively done damage types that ignore my various resistances rendering me unconscious by the 2nd round of most combats and the mages all scrambling to barely survive. At this point it feels like the DM is purposely designing encounters to make sure my character can't do the one thing it was designed to do. I wouldn't really be annoyed if we hadn't talked about the concept for the character and the party with the DM beforehand and he said it was a cool idea. Am I being unfairly targeted or is this just what I should have expected?

Mr Jack, I have come to plea for summary judgement from specifically Judge Murph. In a SW5e game my character was named Mike Dukakis (Spelled Meek, Duke Akakis) and, of course, named after the 1988 presidential candidate. I thought this was a good bit, but Murph’s noted hatred of references to Anchorman has me doubting it. For context, I did not play him like Mike Dukakis, since I don’t really know much about him other than he was the 1988 presidential candidate and cousin of Olympia Dukakis. He was just the alleged senator from the fictional planet, Massa Chooseets (if asked Meek would say “oh it’s really far away and small you probably haven’t heard of it”). We left Coruscant pretty early in the campaign so the backstory didn’t factor in much. Am I good?

Honorable justices, I am a dm for a pathfinder campaign that is coming to a close, and I want to switch systems to dnd or call of cthulu, but my players keep saying they dont want to switch systems, but also that I have final say. I should stay with pathfinder right?

My Esteemed and Well-Endowed Judges, and the It’s-perfect-to-me Bailiff; I bring forth the case of the Insta-PVP Flute. In our journey, there are two players (of 5) who have an intertwined backstory. The Goblin Bard owns a magical flute, once owned by a warlock that murdered the Dragonborn Paladin’s father. Essentially, the Goblin insists on playing the flute in every combat session we’ve had so far; which triggers an immediate reaction of PVP (mid combat) where the Paladin uses everything in his power to take down the goblin (Completely ignoring anything that’s happening on the battlefield). There are no saves the paladin can make to avoid, or exit the “blind rage” he goes into UNWILLINGLY. Ultimately judges, this “story arc” is loved by the Goblin and the DM, annoys the Paladin, and any attempt to reason on mechanics (like using a reflavored Crown of Madness spell) has been refuted; despite my pleas for something. All players are new to the game, except for the Goblin, the DM, and myself. Please, help your local Sunset Eladrin Circle of Stars Druid bring peace amongst his companions, to hopefully save the world. PS: the flute’s power isn’t understood. It has one-shot centaur with no save when traveling in the Fey Wild, and has done nothing at all as well. The Goblin doesn’t roll to use it, nor are there any rolls associated with the flute. Any attempt to investigate/identify have immediately failed without rolling as well.

To the Hallux Jake and the Judges, I was DMing LMoP and the party was almost to the BBEG. The cleric asked for a Talisman of Pure Good, that would basically insta-kill any evil aligned character if it failed a save. I said I was fine with them having it as long as it wasn’t used on the BBEG. They agreed. The party busts into the BBEG’s room and the cleric uses the amulet and insta-kills the BBEG. I could tell the rest of the party was upset, so behind the screen I changed the character that died to a doppleganger that was supposed to be part of the fight. Once the party says the BBEG again, the cleric was pissed and the party was ecstatic. Should I have allowed the cleric to have their kill or did I save the fight?

To the honorable justices, and the other guy I give a knowing, but respectful, nod to. I bring you a case in which Murph is gonna be pissed. I am a player in an online discord campaign with a couple of my friends. We are in my character’s (Nakudama Cleric) hometown, and go to investigate a nearby bandit camp to find it already abandoned. As the party sprints into town, the DM asks everyone for everyone to roll perception checks. The Aasimar Paladin doesn't say a word. We continue on, assuming that she is running to the bathroom or getting a drink. Finally, my Cleric rushes to his home, where he finds his wife dead in the road and his kids in the rubble! After giving my all to this scene, where I was actually crying while playing, The DM asks for initiative. The Paladin never says a word. The session ends, and shortly after, like 10 minutes of after-session talking, she leaves the current call and joins another one with her just her boyfriend without saying a word. Afterwards, the DM asked her what happened. The paladin claims that she was tired from work, fell asleep mid session, and had texted the DM’s partner to see what she missed! Are my DM and I right to be peeved? Is being tired a good enough excuse to fall asleep halfway through a 3 hour session? I await your judgement.

Good afternoon to the freshly dry cleaned justices and the wrinkly Bailiff Ekaj. I bring before you the case of the of screen training arc. A few years ago I was Dming for some of my friends and very early in the campaign they adopted an NPC who was working a shitty retail job. They did put in the effort during downtime to train him with a sword so I gave him levels in fighter (always 2-3 levels below their own). Eventually as we neared the end of the campaign I figured I would need to buff their NPC buddy for the final battle, but since the players had no time to train him more i decided to have him get injured while saving a critical NPC, and tell the party he’d catch up with them later. I had planned to have him show up to turn the tides of a tense battle but ever since my players asked me every session when their favorite sad boy will be returned to them. Justices, should I just have this NPC show back up seemingly out of nowhere to appease my friends or is it better to make my players wait for the “right moment”. I await your decision with 0 humility or humbleness

Dearest Honorable Crits, and the lowly yet possibly higher than i baliff: The party needed to steal a gem of planes-shifting from the villains. One player accidentally triggered one, and was warped to hell, where they began to rescue NPCs important to the party from personalized hells. The other PCs encountered a villain, who offered them a gem. Because one of the NPCs i mentioned was one of their husbands. The player was so intent on getting to that scene that she didn't ask any questions, and they were consequently trapped in their own personal hell and missed it entirely. As DM, did i utterly fail to reinforce this self-admitted villain may be lying, in seperating the party at all, or does the fault lay in another aspect?

To Big Jake, big Murph, Big Emily, Big Caldwell and Little Jake sorry got it wrong before, I bring you the case of the two cults. I was hosting a house DND for my uni flatmates, and one of them was very excited to play for the first time. I reccomended everyone keep it simple as it was their first ever time playing One player (Let's call him Icarus) decided he was going to multi class sorceror rouge, and was going to be half aasimar, half Tiefling, and be part of a cult who were trying to ressurect a dead god. He gave me about ten different backstory characters and a whole document of lore on the cult. I was more than happy to indulge, and planned some interactions with some of these characters. However, when his character met one of the other cultists who had also fled after being a failed vessel, the player loudly told me above table that I was getting his lore wrong, and pointing out all the mistakes I had made. Judges and Little Jake, I was doing by best, but there was too much information for me to keep track of, made especially complicated as the cult of the dragon was the main big bad of the campaign, leading me to get overwhelmed and cancelling the game soon after. Should I have spent more time integrating his backstory into the plot? Or should he have calmed down a little? P.S if Jake were a MLP character he would be spike P.p.s I don't talk to Icarus anymore

Bjorn barrelbelly a drunken master monk is pursuing litigation against an emerald dragon for stealing his recipe that even hanseath loved and is calling the god as witness to get back his family’s recipe.

dearest clergy of dice christ. i write, not with a confession of wrongdoing, but with a plea. i am a numbers bitch. i love data and a good graph is a sight to behold. so i created a spreadsheet to track and graph my dice rolls. i only count rolls made in a session, called for by the dm (ie sitting and rolling a d20 50 times in a row doesn’t count), and when rolling with advantage or disadvantage, both numbers rolled are counted. while i continue to have faith in dice christ and her benevolent omniscience, i fear she has forsaken me. in 2025, i rolled 353 d20s across my campaigns and one shots, and only 7 of those were nat 20s. yes, that is less than 2% of my rolls (1.98% to be exact). in 2026, only 1.6% of my rolls have been nat 20s (6.5% nat 1s though). what must i do to regain dice christ’s favor so that i may crit once more? thank you for your holy wisdom.

To the Supreme Crit and Bailiff Jake (or add something mean if that's what we're doing this time): I present a case of questionable NPC (former PC) death. Okay here it is: We have a 2014 5e campaign in which we are thieves attempting to infiltrate the Strixhaven campus to steal an item. We took on aliases as a way to infiltrate the college without raising any suspicion and also had an NPC advocating for us as a "notable alumni" of the university. This NPC, named Jason, was a favorite of the party and a legendary dragon slayer. Jason was ALSO the first DND character I have ever played, as I did not have a character sheet when I joined this campaign, and I have since developed my own, which added more to the sentimental attachment to the character. Another player joined our campaign during this session, coming off as a bright eyed and bushy tailed student entering their first year of college. At the end of the session, however, when we all parted ways for the night, this new player went off with Jason. They stopped to watch the sun set on the main bridge on campus. As they did so, this player used Puppet (from UA),to make Jason walk off the side of the bridge, thus killing himself. The DM did roll a save, but I know Jason’s stats. Unless he got less than a 5, I don’t think Jason could’ve failed. Judges, I ask you, was it fair for the DM to allow this to happen, when there's no way Jason could have failed this roll with the stats I know he has? (Thank you for your wisdom)

To the beautiful voluptuous judges and the bailiff that will be banished to one of 4 different dimensions for the rest of the episode (roll 1d4) 1.The Grinch Dimension 2.McDonalds Land 3.The Crick 4.Jens’ Apartment I formally present to the court the case of the annual asshole. Me and my group of friends have been playing D&D together for over 10 years now and ever since in almost every campaign one person has been known to play a single archetype of character, the smart mouthed asshole. Rude, untrustworthy and constantly putting other characters down. So much so that they have betrayed the party multiple times, one of these times killing multiple party members including one that they bullied and threatened to kill on multiple occasions, leaving the player detached for the rest of the session. This even got to the point where one party member left the group completely to form another. I have thought of talking to them about this but they are very much the type of person to get super emotional when presented with any sort of criticism. Am I taking this too personally? Or is this player at fault for constantly using their D&D character as an excuse to be a dick? PS, NADDPOD wrestling campaign WHEN. ive seen fan animations for it

Hello to the “Upward-Nod” Justices, and the “avoiding eye contact” Bailiff, I bring you the case of I Royally messed up - After playing Baldurs Gate 3, I thought it would be cool for my party to have about 4 NPCs that they could pick from ,one for at a time, for missions/quests while the others “guard” camp or whatever. Well, you’ll never guess it, but I made the quest too “world-ending” so my party is always like “well we’re fighting a world ending threat - we should find a way to bring all of them” And from rolls and convincing arguments - find a way they do. Anyways, help.

To the judges who I pay full reverence to and the bailiff who constantly messes up their paperwork. I present you the case of The Most Deadly Dodge. In a home campaign that I played in, another PC named Rebel was a war-forged eldritch knight fighter from a desert kingdom. After returning by himself to his homeland in order to find his creator, he eventually found his sort of Dad and had a heart to heart about his creation and purpose. Rebel had been struggling with the fact that he possessed an incredibly powerful magical hammer imbued with the spirit of an earth god but despite his best efforts, he couldn’t draw out the weapons magical power. We at some point learned that the hammer works similar to Thor’s hammer and will only lend its power to someone who it considers worthy or virtuous. After sometime the town came under attack by an evil wizard (my character’s brother). The wizard was able to take control of the minds of the other war-forged and had them attack the people of the town. Rebel sprung into action to defend the people of his homeland and eventually he is all that physically stood between a group of children and his mind controlled metal siblings with crossbows. With his shield raised, Rebel assured the children that he was prepared to defend them with his life. The DM let the player know that the war-forged were about to open fire on him and in an attempt to brace himself and get some bonus to his defense the player said “I take the dodge action”. The DM then described how as the bolts fired towards Rebel he dodged out of the way at the last moment, allowing the bolts to fly past him and into the group of children killing them all. This lead to a morose end to the session and the hammer still not seeing Rebel as worthy. The player protested that he was just trying to take some kind of defensive stance in order to take less damage from the oncoming attacks. I ask you judges, was the DM right to interpret the players words literally or should there be some way to increase your AC without pin cushioning bystanders? I throw my friends, and definitely not myself, at your mercy

May it please the court, its divine judges, and the bedeviled balif. I come before the crit for a ruling on whether PVP is allowed if it saves another PC’s life. One of my players invited me to join in a game he was starting and I,as a forever dm, jumped at the chance. We ran the game more mission based rather than a single large overarching story, which allowed us to run basically a bunch of short stories in different locations. The big bad for this mission was an evil wizard who sent a group of guards to hold us off while she went to find an artifact. While she was leaving the evil wizard cast a spell on our Assassin rogue which put a flaming crown of razor wire over his head. I (a divination wizard who ran an illegal casino) knew this was probably crown of madness, but didn’t want to metagame and let the others know without checking first. Through pure luck I was first in the initiative, and asked the dm if I could roll arcana. He allowed it, I rolled high, and was told that this was not only a crown of maddness but one that would cause any attack made while under its effects to add an extra 4D6 to the attack, but instead of being on one person continuously it bounced around to anyone in the fight, including enemies. Our Assassin was now a ticking time bomb and he was standing right next to our cleric. As I was only level 4 I didn’t have dispel magic, and so I decided to cast hold person on the assassin. I used one of my portent rolls to force him to fail, and watched his face fall. While not a brand new player he had only started playing with this group and we were only about 8-10 sessions in at the time. He enjoyed doing big damage so I could tell he wanted to use the empowered strikes. But I didn’t want to take the risk of him potentially killing the cleric. On his turn he dejectedly said “I guess I do nothing” and I released the hold person on my next turn when the crown had disappeared. After that fight I had the idea of stocking crown of madness to try and get in the way of the enemies spell next time it happened, but it never came up again and I fear I may have dampened the mood for the rogue, and possibly the dm as I may have scared him off of using the spell again. I appoligized above the table and the rogue said he was ok with it, but I still feel bad. Was I in the right for taking away this players turn in the attempt to save another’s life?

To the svelte, tanned and toned judges, and my boy bailiff Jake, who I refuse to bully despite how much he may deserve it. I bring you a case of cringe character communication. I've been part of an RP heavy campaign for the last 2 years and it's genuinely been one of the best I've ever played in.. until recently. A few months ago a new player joined our game, she was fairly shy and newish to D&D, but fit in quickly playing a little kobold artificer named Glip. At the beginning all was well, until a couple sessions in when she finally got comfortable and found Glip's voice.... and Judges, it was one of the worst things I'd ever heard in my life. Unfortunately, I suffer from misophonia, which makes me incredibly sensitive to certain auditory triggers, so I'm not exaggerating when I say that what came out of her mouth almost literally made me want to fold up into my own ass like some kind of anal ouroboros. Initially I thought I could power through, but it's gotten to the point where I'm seriously considering killing off my character and bowing out of the campaign just to escape from this verbal torment. Judges, I humbly seek your boundless wisdom, would I be wrong to ask this innocent player to change a core part of her beloved character for my own comfort, or should I resign myself to suffering in silence until my chest caves in from cringing so hard? Thank you, and may your rolls always be interesting.

To the various court members (cant really tell you guys apart) I present the case of the Eternal Surpise round A DM of mine presented a new house rule: all enemies get a free round of actions before ours because "they ready their actions beforehand". When I tried to do the same I was denied. When I pointed out that obviously both sides would try to be ready for combat and the point of initiative is to determine who is actually quicker, he would change the subject. Whenever I pointed out that this is mechanically just a free always on surprise round he would become despondent for a couple minutes before moving ahead with the session. In these surprise rounds my PC was also coincidentally targeted and downed invariably. Court guys, this was wack right? He eventually dropped the rule without saying anything but I just need to know I wasn't crazy. Please.

To the most exalted justices and the most eviscerated bailiff, I appear in court today to advocate pro bono on behalf of another in need of justice. My friend's boyfriend's sister's boyfriend was recruited to play in a DnD group by a guy who was teaching him how to lift at the gym (charging $400 per session, should the court find this relevant). The guy DMed for the group, and the Boyfriend had never played before. In their first session, the DM looked visibly upset after Boyfriend introduced his paladin character and ended up killing him mid session, saying afterward that they hated the character and instructing him to make his next character a fighter. Boyfriend kept playing with them, but recently the DM asked if they could play on Wednesday instead of Saturday. Boyfriend said that would work for him better anyway, and after being questioned by the DM said it was because he had a conflict that Saturday. The DM decided that it was unacceptable that he would have wanted to prioritize real life, cursed his cat, kicked him out of the group, and blocked him. Boyfriend has not played DnD since. May the court also note that prioritizing DnD has not previously been an issue in this group, as during a previous session they didn't play until hours after the start time because some of them were playing Magic the Gathering instead. Your Honors, I implore you to deliver justice for this innocent new player, lest he lose his spark for the game just as quickly as he discovered it.

To the honorable justices Axford, Murphy and Tanner and Jeff I humbly bring to you the case of the attempted laying down of party rules. I was running a homebrew campaign for some photographers I had worked with and a few friends of theirs after they had expressed interest in playing but didn’t have a DM and I had a world built and no current campaign. All was well and it was me with 6 players of varying levels of experience. After a mini-arc to get people’s feet wet and have them start to get into their characters we started to move out into the larger story. Here is where things start to go south, I couldn’t get these fuckers to do any amount of talking. Not to each other, not starting conversations with NPCs that were around and with a ‘kill first we will loot the bodies to find the secrets later’ mentality from some of them. Now I’m happy to let people ease in to RP because it’s new and nerve wracking to some people but when I broached it with my more experienced players they pointed out that their characters were more broody and didn’t find talking to others to be their forte, so I had nobody on the other side of the table putting anything forward. After keeping going (with some improvement from my newer players) we finally got to the 1 year mark and one of my PC’s wanted to run a campaign for a new module he had gotten. As a forever DM I jumped on the chance and we had reached a natural pause point to take a break for a one-shot. That’s when we get a message on the discord from the person who created the group with some “new rules” we were going to be playing by. These included: limited RP (we just want to fight I don’t know why we have to act out finding the clues), not wanting to meet interesting NPC’s (no shopkeepers with silly accents) and not wanting to have to have backstories. Me and the next DM both left the group immediately and I got a message from one of the more experienced players calling me a bad dm for not being able to work with their rules. So I ask the court am I in fact a “Bad DM” or is it kinda the point of a TTRPG to have the RPG portion. P.S. don’t worry Murph I have new friends.

To the stylish justices and will somebody get that stinky man out of here thank you. I bring to you the case of The DM’s Secret Sessions. I’ve been playing in a D&D campaign for almost 2 years now, and most of us are new players. We are all friends from college, and the DM and one other player are especially good friends. This player’s character fell in love with one of the NPC’s, and as a party we worked together to get them to go on a date; the two characters are now dating. The relationship has been really beneficial to help develop this player’s character. I have no issues with this relationship, however… I have recently found out that the DM and this player have hooked up, and are now dating. This would not be weird if not for the fact that they are roleplaying as these characters in the bedroom. Your honours, I am uncomfortable with this, but as far as I know they have not brought any of this to the table. Are they in the wrong for what they do in the private of their home or should I just get on with it and try not to think about their (hopefully) non-canonical private sessions. I leave the judgement up to you.

May it please the court and leave the bailiff feeling satisfied but not too satisfied and maybe a little wet, I present to you the case of permanent disadvantage. One time I was playing an Ancestral Guardian Barbarian, mainly for the purpose of using the Ancestral Protectors subclass feature. In our first session, my friend who was playing a Cavalier Fighter discovered that their Unwavering Mark feature applies the same effect (disadvantage against everyone other than the PC that applies the mark). He then suggested that we use both of these features against a single enemy, ensuring that they have disadvantage on EVERYONE (ourselves included). Though the Ancestral Protectors feature doesn't use the language of "applying a mark", I tried to argue that though RAW that could work, it definitely shouldn't be allowed RAI. Ultimately, our first-time DM decided to allow it and we cheesed the final fight of the session so bad that we never played in that campaign again. O just and impartial court, how do you read and interpret these rules and mechanics? Should we have been allowed to carry out this campaign-killing whomp?

Hello to the Esteemed Justices and a side-eye the cowardly baliff Jim. I bring the case of the Terrible Teammate. Back in my college days, I agreed to DM for a few of my friends as a first-time DM running the Lost Mines of Phandelver. A few sessions in, and one of my buddies asked to join as a first time player, wanting to play an oath of devotion paladin "because I looked it up and they were the strongest". What followed were all the stereotypes of a problem player(describing in-depth torture, threatening PCs and engaging in PvP over disagreements, as well as threating to kill our beastmaster ranger's familiar after a fight for taking the loot he wanted). Me and the two more experienced players at the table agreed that something had to change, but everyone at this table played for our college football team, including the problem player. I was also the captain of the team. While we wanted a change, we didnt see a world where this was turned out well for the team's chemistry, especially with me as the teams leader. In the end, we had him change subclasses as his actions didn't much fit an oath of devotion paladin, but all these years later I wonder if I should have done more? So judges, was I right to resign my football friends to a toxic teammate, or did I commit a 15-yard penalty by allowing unsportsmanlike conduct at the table?

To my good friends Justices Axford, Tanner and Brian, and also jake Hurtwirtz - bike thief, i know it was you. I bring you the case of the misplaced prize money. A couple of years ago i took it upon myself to organise my friends bachelor party after the best man failed to do so in time. With limited time and resources, i prepared a pirate themed one shot, i made dinner for everyone (ramen, from scratch), i bought an expensive bottle of scotch and cigars, and to round the night out, a Super Smash Bros tournament. I presented this plan to the group chat and added “id appreciate if anyone is able to chip in any money for dinner and drinks” - this is foreshadowing. One groomsman said he would put up some prize money for the smash bros tourney. The night went well. The players chose from characters I had prepared, while the groom played a swashbuckler rouge, with added legendary actions that allowed him to control the pirate ship and command the npc-crew. I even bought him a captains hat resembling Luffy’s strawhat from One Piece. At times, i was DMing while preparing dinner, leading to the best compliment ive ever received “i dont know how you made a meal that good while DMing a game that fun”. However in classic dnd fashion, the game ran long and there was no time for the smash bros tourney. The groomsman who offered up the prize money had to leave, and as he did pulled out his wallet, produced the 50 Australian dollars intended to be won, and handed it to the groom with a ‘congrats mate’ and promptly left. Justices, i thought he was going to give those Australian dollars to me. No one chipped in. To make things worse, one groomsman is a chef, but i made dinner. One guy worked at a tobacconist, but i bought the cigars. Justices, in lieu of a smash bros tournament, who should have received 50 Australian dollars, me or the groom? Ps. If you’re lost for a punishment, may i suggest lethal injection.

Hello honorable justices who can not be bought unlike the Supreme court and the Bailff Justin who gives Florida energy (in the bad way) or if we are being nice future cake conisour Baliff Jake or Wife Worm Baliff Emily. I bring you the case of the Attempted Warhammer Hoodwinking, I am a long time DM who has started to introduce friends to the game that haven't had the ability to play before. Recently they have been having such much fun that they are surprising me with their friends (which I take as a compliment) this is not the case I present tho. I have run multiple books (which I alter significantly to kinda make my own campaign and just use the book for assistance with timing) and we were halfway through Out of the Abyss when one of these "new additions" asked if he could DM the next campaign. I was super supportive and excited to be a PC. This is when problems occurred. We have been running combat heavy comedic campaigns for the most part but the more we all keep listening to him planning (which he did very loudly during break times and forced conversations in that direction) he is planning a super serious Warhammer 40K political roleplay campaign and got super defensive anytime we tried to Crack anytype of joke. The other PCs and I had discussions that we didn't want to play that and voiced that to him but he just kept saying trust me yall will have fun. During the final session we all told him that another of the "new additions" wanted to run a Fallout new vegas esc combat heavy comedic campaign and that is the direction the group is deciding to go this was met with a "OH we'll see about that". The epic conclusion I had designed in my campaign was that the Demogorgon offered them a wish if they sabatoged a simple wedding and killed the Groom. What I didn't tell them and they didn't roll high enough to know is that the grom was Graz'zt and the bride was Juiblex (in a human form I made). They hijacked the systems to keep the wedding secure and weaked everything before rushing in the finish the job (kick ass right?). They all formulated the plan to finish off the the bride because she was significantly weaker. This is when "new addition number 1" (let's call him Corey) breaks formation as a monk and uses insane movement to barrel rush the groom way across the castle 1000's of feet away while saying at the table "I'm getting that fucking wish so I can wish us all into my 40K campaign, y'all will have to play it then". While the rest of the party was struggling to finish off the bride he rolls a higher initiative and gets first round of combat against the groom greatly weakening him (putting him on deaths stoop). I see that the rest of my party was about to defeat the bride, so I cheat and use Graz'zt teleport ability and just move him into the room with the rest of my party problem solved. That's when from across the table I hear "Um, Actually his ability only let's him move 120 ft" so I bullshit and say "Correct but he is using the spell which allows him to go anywhere he is very familiar with and since he was planning on getting married in the ballroom he would be very familiar with it". This gets me a sigh and his turns become I run 180ft while the rest of my party are slaying the groom getting the wish and using it to wrap up the campaign where they all either go back home or set themselves up with the life they were seeking. He refused to narriarate his ending and even took a six pack home that wasn't his. I await my sentencing for if my crimes of bending the rules to prevent someone for hoodwinking future campaigns.

To their excellencies, Dice Christ's hands and gestures, Axford, Murphy and Tanner, and the communion wine stealing choir boy Jake. I would like to confess before the light of Dice Christ, and have my sins wiped clean. I was playing a modified version of Descent into Avernus with an online group of friends. In the first battle against a group of cultists, my level 1 paladin went down. We rolled death saves privately and showed the DM to maintain tension. I rolled a natural 1 on my first death save, though managed to survive. I went down again in the next fight, being the only front line martial in the group. Instead of rolling my death save, I put my dice on the 1, and sent a photo to the DM. I was addicted to the rush of danger and adrenaline of the moment, but frankly I don't feel particularly guilty about it. However, as a mentally ill person who was raised Catholic, this seemed like a good forum. P.S: Caldwell, thank you for your pity laugh at my burger joke before the Sydney show.