Hello! It's me again back at it with another horror story. So I had run a game where the players were prisoners sent into a shadowfell like world to be banished, the characters were supposed to be deeply flawed people who may or may not change their ways, and may or may not be good or evil. The idea being that like with any system false convictions happen and you may be a good person.

One thing I told my players in session 0 and 0.5 is that combat in this campaign is a tool to be used carefully and cautiously, most encounters are built with many ways to avoid it and taking it on is always an option albeit often the wrong option, so unless they're very confident or have formed a plan to never engage in combat with the creatures of this dimension.

Things started off with a tiny red flag during the character creation, she played a monk who was flawless when the campaign required you have at least one major flaw, with more flaws giving you rewards for RPing them in game. She built her character to be ultra noble, all about the greater good and doing the right thing and just generally being heroic. I allowed it because I thought that whether by choice or accident that was an amazing major flaw for her character (She didn't list it as a flaw and left the flaw area empty).

Fast forward a few sessions and the players are on a quest to find a shadow hag hut in the corrupted forests and recover an amulet that can be used to protect against the shadowfell like conditions of the dimension. When they get there they find that the hag is busy preparing people sacrifices for a ritual, it gave the players a chance to sneak in, cause some distractions inside the hut to occupy the hag, and steal the amulet. Sounds great! The players are doing awesome, the mission impossible theme is playing as they narrowly manage to grab the amulet.

This is when the player decides that she is going back for the hostages! I loved it, and gave her inspiration for role playing her flaw. The other players argued a bit in character but ultimately told her they'll help from a distance as at this point they were out of spells and tools to do a stealth again. She agreed and said not to worry, she has a plan.

Her plan? She walked out in the open and CHALLENGED THE SHADOW HAG!! I asked her twice if she was sure, once as a narrator "You consider it might be dangerous to do so, are you sure?" and another as a GM "Just to clear the air, Shadow Hags are extremely dangerous, CR13, are you sure you wish to challenge them in their lair?" Both were met with confirmation by the player. So they challenged the Shadow Hag. She got finger of death cast on her and died instantly.

The player went silent, and while I described her death and went to do my normal "PC died, what's next?" talk the player broke down and started insulting me, calling me sexist for her character dying. Apparently I didn't want to see women succeed in my game because "Why would the hag have such a powerful spell?!" She also said that I wanted to humiliate her because I narrated that her character dies and turns into a zombie. I explained that neither were true, other women in the game were not dead, and my feminine presenting NPCs often hold positions of power. I also had no intention to humiliate her, I described her death very briefly and reminded her that we have a safety card system she could use to make me stop and skip anything uncomfortable at any time.

In the end she wouldn't listen to me, she ended up leaving which I was disappointed with and I apologized to her for it not working out, asked for feedback and thought that was that... It wasn't! She harassed the two women still in my group and when they mentioned that she was crossing the line she called them awful names and leaped over the line by saying to the trans-woman CW:TransphobiaShe would've been mad about it if she was a real woman Safe to say I did not expect things to turn out this way, she was promptly added to my ban list of people I will never play with again.

Tangential Edit: This has nothing to do with the post but I think the way I worded the concept of the campaign has stirred up a few people and rightfully so. I am not very reddit-wise and honestly kind of suck at typing out what I mean sometimes (Some mental health stuff probably no one cares about).

For those interested, the campaign had combat in it I just showed them that combat often has to be very carefully planned and cautious. I am fully aware that a monk or fighter will feel like they don't belong otherwise. Prior to this their first combat encounter was about finding hidden passages that allowed them to get an ambush from height on a patrol instantly invalidating about half of the enemies who only had melee attacks and had to climb all the way up.

Combat still happened and did so with decent frequency, it's just that I considered finding ways to make the combat much easier to be "Avoiding it" and when I mentioned in the post "Taking it on" I meant like just saying screw it and jumping in with no prep. The latter of which I mentioned multiple times to be a completely bad idea often resulting in PC death or TPK. I told them there will always be ways to avoid the encounter or make it easier on yourself.

Sorry for the confusion and I understand the frustration of thinking I used D&D a system literally originally built and based around wargames and still combat focused today, to run a no-combat campaign, It was just a mistake by me not conveying information correctly. I deeply apologize.