One night, when I was 20, I was bored and decided I wanted to play some D&D. I didn't have a group, so I started looking for one and was surprised when I found one on craigslist. I contacted the poster, named Harold, and we agreed to meet at a coffee shop and sort of see if I was a good fit for the group. I passed the criteria, I guess, and was invited to play 3.5e with the group that Saturday.

So, I show up to Harold's house that Saturday, and find out that I'm the only one who has arrived so far. He offers me a soda and asks me to help him carry some stuff down to his basement where we will be playing. So, we settle in down stairs and he looks over my character sheet while we wait. I ask him about the other players and he gives me their names and ages and a bit of a rundown on everyone. It turns out that everyone is like 35+ in the group, so I automatically start to feel a little nervous about being so young and how I'll integrate into the group. Will they respect my choices and cut me some slack for being relatively new to the edition and playing in anything more than one-shots and stuff? They end up showing up one-by-one as Harold and me shoot the shit.

There's Richard, a relatively nice look guy who seems a little out of place with the group because he's buff, tanned, and dresses like he is really up-to-date with fashion; Jonathan, who goes by Jonathan, who seems a little dismissive of me right off the bat for whatever reason; Jeff, a beanpole of a guy who has a massive beard, a shaved head, and quite a few tattoos and was really nice and excited to have a new player; and then there was Danny, a fairly obese man who kind of gave off this creepy vibe from the first moment I saw him. Danny wore a pair of those really big glasses that cover half of your face it seems and a full, light grey sweatsuit that did little to hide his profuse sweating issue. Danny also had this look in his eyes that hinted that maybe he wasn't playing with a full deck and seemed a bit twitchy at times for no real reason.

Everything went well for a few sessions, there were a lot of laughs, some great battles, some silly roleplaying, and these guys were even cool with me having a beer every now and then. I had a lot of time, but Danny always seemed to be perpetually annoyed with everything going on in the game. He also seemed dissatisfied with everyone's methods of playing and never seemed to laugh or smile, just stare at everyone for an uncomfortably long amount of time when he though they were fucking up or didn't do what he suggested. It started to really bother me one night and I pulled Harold aside during a short break and asked him why Danny seemed to hate everyone and never have fun. Harold told me that Danny had been his friend for about twenty years now and was always a great guy, completely a blast to be around, but he had been in a motorcycle accident about ten years back and had almost died from head trauma, even with a helmet on, and since then, Danny had just sort of changed in his personality and behavior. Harold was pretty sure that Danny suffered some irreversible brain damage, but nothing crazy bad that prevented him from still functioning well enough or caused him to be considered disabled. Harold was pretty much Danny's only friend anymore since Danny's behavior put everyone off, so Harold always invited him to play. Everyone else tolerated him, so they kept letting him come back. I had an answer, so I was satisfied and figured I'd just stop letting it bother me.

A few sessions later, we are getting near the end of a long quest chain and probably going to be facing the BBEG of this section. Everyone is excited, except Danny, and we head into the last dungeon. By the end of our first session inside the dungeon, Danny has almost died more than a few times from poor tactics on the group's part and the occasional crit at a bad time. He's getting more and more upset with us and has escalated from just staring us down to now mumbling to himself under his breath and glaring at whoever he is pissed at with a lot of anger in his eyes. Everyone is getting a little unnerved and Jeff has been passing notes to everyone but Harold and Danny every now and then to not draw suspicion that he wants to chat with Harold on our break. So during our normal break, Jeff and I pull Harold aside while Jonathan and Richard go outside with Danny. We express our concerns and Harold agrees with us that we might need to call it early and he will need to talk to Danny about his behavior.

Break ends and we go to start again, but Harold pulls Danny aside, basically goes up stairs to talk to him. We can sort of hear them talking but not everything they are saying. Danny is getting more and more upset in his wording and tone and is soon talking loud enough that we can hear everything. I'm not sure if it was intentional or he was just getting mad enough, but we hear Danny tell Harold that he's getting really fucking fed up with the rest of the group being a bunch of idiots and he knows that we are trying to get him killed so he can't play any more. Harold tells him that the party is more than capable of reviving him and if anyone dies, it will just be a quick fix and things will be OK. Danny refuses to listen to reason and he tells Harold that if his character dies, he'll fucking kill us. We all glance nervously at each other and continue to listen to the argument upstairs that eventually dies down before Harold and Danny come back down to play.

All the fun is suddenly gone and everyone is really on edge. We decided to do our absolute best to take Danny's suggestions into consideration and keep him safe and alive and just finish the last hour or two of the session. Things didn't go well though and a lucky critical hit ended up outright killing Danny in our next fight. As Danny struggled to find every excuse or way to avoid the Death, you could see the frustration and anger growing in his eyes and all of us started grabbing our shit and getting ready for an outburst. I only had my book, character sheet, and dice, so I was scooped up and ready to bail at the first sight of trouble. Danny finally had to accept that there was nothing he could do to stop the death of his PC and as we all waited for him to start screaming or threatening us, he did the exact opposite, he just start sniffling and began to cry. He went into full on sob mode and between sucking in breaths, he started to lay into us about how we were out to get him and treated him poorly because we didn't want him there. He just had an emotional breakdown and we decided to call it for the night. We all left Harold and Danny to have a talk since they were friends and Harold would probably be best at calming him down.

Danny never came back to our games and after the conclusion of the next section, I calmly excused myself from the group and stopped playing with them. I just sort of cut all contact with the group, double so when I moved a few years later. It still bothers the shit out of me and I'm extremely wary of new players or groups. I managed to find some people from craigslist and reddit for my new group that I have been playing with for over a year now, but I don't think I'll ever forget that whole ordeal.