I was introduced to D&D three months ago and really delved into the world. I had so much fun creating my character and tried very hard to roleplay him differently from myself.
I did my very best to play him as the stoic man I envisioned. His biggest trait, was his helpfulness to the party. In impossible situations he would save his friends, something I failed to do in my life.
During one quest I had to save my character. The only way out was to sacrifice the NPC servant of another player. (Let's call this player "Bob"). Bob is very racist, especially towards me and this didn't help. He seemed to shrug it off but I still tried to seek recompense. Flash forward a month and it's the final boss battle. I was so pumped I brought chips and soda and cleaned the whole area because I wanted my house to set the stage for an epic night.
We proceeded to fight this ridiculous boss the DM envisioned and it was tough but we finally killed him and he did a great death explosion. We narrowly escaped the castle before it collapsed. In the epilogue, we were about to get knighted when the DM said "You start to feel your lungs filling with water". After giving me one minute to think about it he said "You drown". Then the party laughed and looted my character's body.
Apparently the DM worked with Bob, who was extremely upset with me killing his lacky, and hatched this plan to poison the potions I used in the last battle with something they made based off a real fungus that makes you drown, to a lesser extent.
Is it wrong that I feel confused? One side of me really hates him for metagaming and having his character stab mine in the back after I had tried to make amends with him. The other applauds him for thinking of such a clever and well orchestrated plan to kill my character (The DM made the boss my specialty and Bob encouraged me to use everything I had while continually healing me to make sure I was alive).
After deep thought, I have decided to take this personally. I'm not mad because they killed my character; in truth I was planning for my character to die, albeit heroically. I'm mad because he knew this was my first character. He knew that and took advantage of it. And when I think back to how much they made fun of my character dying and how they apathetically mocked me while I sat in shock, this was clearly meant to stab me. I called these people my friends, drew their characters for them, and had them in my house as guests.
I'm invited to play another campaign with them with Bob now being the DM. This is where I see my chance. He is both DMing and playing a character. Also we have a time limit on this campaign of two months as Bob will be moving. I want vengeance. I want to utterly humiliate him the way he humiliated me. I don't care if I stoop down to his level. I can't kill him right off the bat so I'll wait till he gets attached to his character.
What are some good long term plans I can use under his nose to kill the previous DM and Bob's character in horrifyingly gratifying ways.
Best Answer
It's pretty reasonable you're annoyed. One of your fellow players secretly plotted to kill your character for revenge (and it worked), the DM - the one guy you pretty much have to be able to trust - was in on it, and your fellow players offered you no emotional support at a point when you clearly needed it and instead made things worse for you.
People have been annoyed over character deaths, but you also have the issue of a betrayal of trust.
Different groups (and different DMs) handle stuff like this in very different ways - some handle it well, some badly. You had a conflict within the party, and a conflict between two people, and some character death and secret plots on your hands. These are often things groups don't talk about beforehand, but should. As the DM, I wouldn't have allowed this secret plot and would've talked to you two outside the game to get this enmity settled at first signs.
(And honestly, if this was real out-of-game racism you were experiencing, I wouldn't have tolerated that either.)
So now the guy who betrayed you is the DM and you want revenge.
Don't do it.
A good plan is to decline the invitation, not play, leave, and find something else to do or another D&D group to play with. This is not advice for how to ruin Bob's day. This is advice for how to avoid having your own next two months ruined, and possibly several weeks or months after that as well, and instead have some degree of peace for yourself.
You're pissed off. But, proverbially:
So you're going to have several gaming sessions and two months in which you're busy being pissed off at Bob, stressed out working out how to get revenge, and suffering over the lot of it - and expecting him to suffer for it. Eventually. At some point. Maybe.
That's not working out in your benefit.
Here's how the next two months are going to pan out according to this plan.
This entire plan is toxic to you and you alone. It's going to be really unpleasant for you, and more likely than not won't get anything out of it - and if you do, it probably won't be very satisfying.
Don't do it.
But I really want revenge!
This is an issue between you and another person, not an issue D&D will help with. Don't try to solve it through D&D, and don't try to solve it by playing with this guy as a DM for a few months.
Deal with it out of the game somehow. Maybe talk to him and get stuff off your chest. Consider walking away and leaving it behind you rather than let this weigh on you. Different things work for different people. I don't know what will work for you, personally. But spend these two months of your life doing something else. Find peace, somehow.
A surprising option is forgiving him - and not for his benefit, but for yours. Forgiveness is just as often so you can stop holding onto the negative emotions you have - the ones which are affecting you much more than anyone else - and let them go and find some inner peace. You might not be prepared to do that, but I advise you try it.
D&D is normally not like this.
(But sometimes it can be.)
There are going to be groups more supportive of first time players. There are going to be groups where you can genuinely be friends with most people, get along with all of them, and reliably trust the DM and your fellow players. This wasn't one of them, clearly. I suggest you find a group that suits you if you want to keep playing D&D.
One thing that normally goes unrecognised is that several D&D players at the same table, playing the same session at the same time, are usually not even playing the same game. They have different expectations of what a good game constitutes, different ideas of what's OK and what's not, different understandings of the rules, and different opinions over how issues like loot and character death should be handled. Usually, they assume that everyone else shares a similar view, without realising that everyone probably thinks very differently - to each other, as well.
An analogy is having several people sitting around a table to play a game of cards, but they are playing different games: one person is playing Poker, another Hearts, and another Go Fish. That wouldn't work very well, but somehow that's how D&D gets played without anyone realising it.
This disconnect is the reason why someone authored the Same Page Tool - which, as its name suggests, exists to get people on the same page. Its author also wrote about The Roots of the Big Problems and A Way Out (from which I drew the card game analogy). All three of these links discuss this issue and the situations that arise from it, and how to deal with them.
This group was not on the same page as you, and were not what you were after. Another group might be.