Before we start, the title is not clickbait, I know parts of this are going to come off as r/thathappened, and that I’ll be blamed by some for engaging in “PvP”. I would defend myself by saying that I didn’t wish to roll up a new character from dying to an “ally”, which would have set me back many levels due to the homebrew leveling system we were using, and at the time, I had no other options for playing D&D, and was willing to deal with some bad D&D because I love the game. Sorry for the long post, and no tl;dr.

So, sometime last year, in a discord server (I was invited to the server by my then friend and boss, but we are no longer friends. They are still my boss, though), I was in a D&D campaign. We had a total of 12 players (but only 6 could attend a session. It was kinda West Marches-esque), and a DM who I should note was NOT the server owner, but the main focus are another player that we’ll call Gloria, who was playing an Inquisitive Rogue, and myself, playing an Assassin Rogue. Before you get any ideas about my character, I wasn’t too egdelord-y, at least I think, but tried to be a little mysterious to give myself some backstory and personality wiggle room. I wasn’t the type to brood.

During one of her first few sessions, Gloria picked up a cursed sword. This sword cast Fireball, at 3rd level, centered on the attuned, whenever the attuned landed a critical hit with the weapon. I assume the DM thought this would be a good hook to write a session around removing/destroying the weapon (as who wants to wield a sword that explodes you and the party?), but Gloria decided to keep the weapon, made it her primary weapon for combat, and would later admit to changing her plan for the character to instead build around the weapon (but this revelation prompted nothing from the DM or server owner, despite the fact that she ADMITTED to knowingly building her character around a dangerous mechanic/item).

This wouldn’t necessarily have been an issue for the party if Gloria would have placed her character strategically, so that minimal/no PCs, passives, and neutrals would be hit by cursed Fireballs whenever they may have appeared, but she refused this. So, over the course of the campaign, many Fireballs befell our characters, and we had become annoyed by Gloria and her cursed sword. To be clear: we, the players, asked many times, over the course of many sessions, for her to please use a different weapon or to be more strategic with her placement on the battlefield, but she would refuse. I don’t know why the DM did not speak with Gloria regarding her exploding sword and the safety of the party, as we’d brought this issue up MANY times in the text and voice chats during and after sessions.

So, during the last session I was a part of, the party took three Fireballs, and we were more frustrated than we’d been yet. I don’t think we’d had to deal with three Fireballs from Gloria in one session before, so it was especially frustrating, as you might imagine. Again, during and after the session, we implored her to swap weapons or engage in combats with more strategic character placement. To Gloria’s credit, she finally decided to put it up to a vote, letting the other players decide if she should keep the cursed sword or finally get rid of the weapon.

Despite the campaign chats being filled with chatter from almost all 12 group members and the DM, only 3 votes were made on the poll Gloria posted (2-1 in favor of getting rid of the cursed weapon). Due to the low vote turnout, it was assumed and somewhat implied that she’ll be keeping the exploding sword. It was during this time Gloria admitted to changing her plan for the character to instead build around the cursed sword instead. When this was revealed, the DM offered to let Gloria completely respec her character, but Gloria complained that she didn’t want to respec, and wanted to keep using the exploding sword.

I’m still in the voice chat with the DM and a few other players (this was some time after the session ended), so I tell the DM I’d like to steal Gloria’s cursed blade, take it a day and a half outside the city, and bury it. I should note that the DM made no effort to stop me. She didn’t hesitate, ask if I was sure, mention it being a bad idea, nothing. The other players in the voice chat also made no comments about it, for what it’s worth.

Seeing as Gloria did not expect to be robbed, the heist went smoothly. I stole only the cursed sword, and took it a day and a half outside town, burying it. The DM then privately informs Gloria about what has happened, instead of putting it in the character roleplay chat, where things like this would have normally gone. Obviously, it spreads to the other players, and the server owner, like wildfire.

Gloria then complained to the server owner (NOT the DM), and the server owner immediately removed me from the game. I should note, that up to this point, the server owner had NEVER done anything in regards to the campaign. They didn’t have a character, they weren’t a co-DM, they didn’t talk about the sessions, nothing. The server owner then messaged me privately (and I still have the screenshots from this conversation), informing me I was banned from partaking in D&D on the server, effective immediately. He said that I had made other players uncomfortable and I was making D&D toxic for several other players. I had never been spoken to about this by him or the DM before this point, and he is very proactive in handling situations, so I doubt this to be true. Not to mention that my fellow players never said anything to me about making them feel uncomfortable (why would they feel no bother to repeatedly inform Gloria about her issues but not speak with me about my alleged issues?).

I tried to reason with him by explaining the situation and telling him I had a screenshot of Gloria admitting to building her character around the problem mechanic/weapon, knowingly making others enjoy games less, but he was having none of it. He informed me he would now be banning me from the server because I “refuse to correct bad behavior.” and, apparently, I was “adamant about keeping bad behavior”. Then went on a small tangent about how he knows life sucks, he’s lost so many people over the last few years, but he doesn’t use it as an excuse to be an asshole? I don’t know what any of that had to do with what we had been talking about, but okay, I guess.

This is the most r/thathappened bit, but a few days later my boss informed me that the players and DM has decided to undo my thievery (gave Gloria the sword back), and that in the most recent session, she had killed 3 PCs (one of which was my boss’ character) due to getting several critical hits, Fireballing the party like there was no tomorrow. As you can imagine, I felt like I had received sweet justice upon hearing this.