The dungeon master of a 3-year campaign in Dungeons & Dragons had been working towards a very special moment for a long time. However, when it finally arrived, it lost all its impact because of a few seconds.
What kind of plot twist was it? A dungeon master (on Reddit Birdieisbest) had been waiting for 3 years for a moment in his campaign when a beloved and supportive character would reveal their true identity to the group. It turned out that this character was not some kind of savior against evil gods, but one of the evil gods themselves. A secret that would change everything upon revelation.
The dungeon master occasionally dropped small hints to ensure that the revelation did not seem like a spontaneous action and to give it meaning. However, when the long-awaited and hard-earned revelation was supposed to take place, everything unfortunately went very differently than the dungeon master had hoped. And no one at the table was even to blame.
“I’ve been waiting 3 years for this.”
How is the moment ruined? As the player group was in battle with one of the deities, their companion was preparing to reveal their true identity and to heroically confront the deity to allow the players to escape. However, just as the dungeon master wanted to speak their words, they were interrupted:
A roommate of one of the players entered the room to greet their friend with a hug. This not only interrupted the dungeon master’s dialogue but also broke the immersion for the other players. Since the group consisted mostly of introverted and, above all, shy individuals, they no longer felt comfortable reacting in character, causing the important moment to simply fizzle out. The fact that one of his players already had a suspicion didn’t cheer up the dungeon master either.
“I know it’s petty, but I had been looking forward to this moment for a long time and hoped for a stronger reaction, and I knew I would have gotten one if we hadn’t been interrupted,” the dungeon master explains in their post on Reddit, “I will get over it, but in the moment, I just wanted to scream into the void.”
The dungeon master received some comforting words from the community to help him feel better. It wasn’t his fault that the moment was ruined, and his group could be glad that some of them even had correct suspicions. Big moments in D&D are not easy to execute perfectly.
Have you had similar experiences in D&D? Was one of your moments ruined, or were you even to blame for it? A secret, feigned identity is just one of many possible secrets that your dungeon masters may want to keep from you. There are many more that they would definitely not willingly reveal, except to each other: Dungeon masters from D&D reveal their dirtiest secret that they would never tell their players
Your opinion is important to us!
Do you like the article? Then let us know!