AITA? I’m a very creative guy who loves to create new characters, world’s, stories, powers, so recently I gravitated towards Dungeons and Dragons. Did a one-shot (sit down story thats last only two hours and some) and I fell in love. I started making new characters left and right, every race and age, every class. I was on a high and I needed my next fix so I downloaded Reddit and found a post of a guy starting a new DnD campaign around kintsugi (Google it) and he had an application of sorts online to fill out. I fill this thing out so fast with so much fervor that my fingers were practically flying. One of the questions was "If you were part of my campaign, what would your character be?". So I instantly went to work and made a 10 year old warforged (robot/ golem-esgue) artificer (wizard mechanic) named Daedul and his (statue) dog Patches (shotout to FromSoft).
I submitted this application for the campaign with this long story i made for Daedul where he unfortunately and mysteriously passes at the age of 10 and his brilliant sculptor father Smilis made a 1:1 statue of Daedul and put his urn containing his ashes in the heart of the statue. Daedul cracks over time, Smilis patches it again and again, goes mad from the repetition and shatters his son’s statue. Mom puts it back together while crying giving life to the ashes and kintsugi and leaves to find her husband who fled, Daedul wakes up as a statue and goes to find his parents yada yada yada. I submit this story and don’t change any aspect of it and the DM hits me up and loves it. Says its like a depressing Pinocchio met Humpty Dumpty. Immediately gets me on board for his campaign so I finalize Daedul and send it to him, Google Doc and everything.
A month goes by and its time for session 1 and I go as far as to buy a VoiceMod subscription to make a custom voice-changer to sound like Daedul when I speak (hollow, reverb, higher pitched, stone like). It all goes well, I rp as a naive funny kid, then I get messages how a member is leaving because they find playing with a child character makes them uncomfortable and two more party members chime in with similar responses. The DM asks me to change my character and I say no due to my love for Daedul and I get kicked out of the campaign I’ve been helping with for over a month now. Am I The Asshole?
NAH. I don’t find you to be the asshole, because I also like creating stories and worlds. But I find extremely disturbing of a “grown person” (assuming because you didn’t put your age) to want to roleplay as a child, so I don’t blame anyone not to want to interact with this type of character.
NAH
D&D is a cooperative game with agreed upon boundaries. If other players are uncomfortable with your character, it’s fine for them to say they won’t play with it. If you don’t want to play a different character, you can leave. That’s how it should work.
With that said… you’re giving off red flags in terms of how invested you got and mismatched expectations. Yeah, using the voice changing to sound like a little kid is unusual. Calling it a high and a “fix” sounds like some of the neurodivergent players I know who hyperfixate. Keep in mind your character easily could have died and you’d need to make a new character. Being that attached to a specific roleplay isn’t how the game generally works.
Agreed. It doesn’t sound like OP is a great fit for the collaborative, “yes, and” nature of TTRPGs.
YTA. The DM should have had a session 0 where things like that were addressed but DnD is a team game where everyone should have fun. Most of the players were not okay with a child PC so they spoke with the DM about it and he took the appropriate actions. It’s the DM’s table so if you tell him no when you are asked to change your character, then it’s clear you aren’t going to fit at the table. Your best bet is to look for a new table that would be okay with this character of yours.
YTA. It sounds like the main objection people had was with the voice modulation, which made you sound like a child and which wasn’t something the DM approved. You made no attempt to collaborate for a collaborative game. If you want complete control, go write a novel.
NAH. They want to have their characters do grownup things and are (thankfully) squicked out by having a child character watching/participating. You made a very in-depth character, but it’s not appropriate for that group. If multiple other people are uncomfortable with one person’s character, then it’s on the one person to adjust. You didn’t want to, so they dropped your character.
On a side note, you sound really intense. Are you sure that your character was the only thing bugging them? As one prone to hyperfixation myself, I would gently suggest looking up hyperfixation/ADHD/Autism and see if anything sounds familiar to you.
NTA.
DM here.
Some people are okay with children being in the party. Some are not. Both are fine.
Your DM should have gone over this in session 1 to make sure everyone is comfortable and looking for the same things in the game.
You didn’t do anything wrong. DM did.
I wonder if there was something in the way you were playing your character that was the issue, not just that it was a child character. Were you derailing things with shenanigans? Were you trying to make your characters story the center of the adventure? Or just staying in character too much (even when metagaming?)
There’s really not enough info but maybe ESH.
Slight YTA I can see why other adults would be u comfortable with someone roleplaying a child in the game. Especially when that person was acting very innocent childlike and using a voice mod to sound like a child.
NTA. But if you want to salvage the group it might be worth having a post-defacto-session-zero where you can see if a compromise can be reached.
It might be just as simple as upping your character’s mortal age to 16 rather than 10. 16 is a good and not a-typical age for fantasy hero stories.
YTA. This is a table by table thing, but I don’t allow kid characters at my table when I DM. It can get really uncomfortable for other players the play off of. The DM should have checked so that’s on him, but if the table is uncomfortable, you should change.
NAH – it’s a group setting. If the group is uncomfortable, then so be it. It’s not a personal attack on you, it’s just they don’t feel comfortable like they said. That’s all.
YTA
DnD is consensual. They don’t HAVE to play with you. They don’t want to play with you. You need to respect that.
I’m 47. I’ve been playing DnD a LONG time… A LOOOONGGGG time… Some thoughts?
>this long story i made for
Don’t do that. Super tragic backstories are… Ugh. Characters (and real people, frankly) are cool because of the things they DO, not for their tragic back stories. and just like real life, we all get sick of that one person that won’t shut up about their tragic back story. We get it, your family sucks, you’re all fucked up, stop talking about it!!!!
If I had a nickle for every character I’ve seen with dead parents, I’d… have a lot of money. At some point(long ago!), it ceases to be interesting.
>naive funny kid
DnD tables have tones… For instance, I don’t like high fantasy. I don’t really like playing DnD over level 10. It’s not my thing. It works fine for other people. I prefer heavy role playing. some folks prefer action. There is no One Right Way, there is (just like any real relationship), what works for everyone involved…
And having a naive funny kid probably wasn’t the tone they were looking for.
Note, they didn’t reject YOU, they rejected your character. YOU held on to the character. And that’s OK!… but now you have a character and no group…
You should probably reach out to that DM and ask them if there was any OTHER reason they booted you. You might have an annoying habit you aren’t aware of. Growth Opportunity!
There are specific things to be careful of in DnD… Did you attention hog? That’s the main one. 😀
But, yes, they don’t owe you squadoo and YTA here.