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How I Overthrew The Dungeon Master By Becoming
Truly Divine
This story was submitted by our viewer, Dan!
Thank you!
In my campaign multiverse, there is a being
that oversees the cosmos.
He is creator and curator, carefully plotting
the movement of the stars and the streams
of time.
He works tirelessly
for eons behind the material veil, on the
incomprehensible cosmic math behind the clockwork
of
Reality.
His name is Richtoros (pronounced Rick-tore-row-s),
god above all gods, and the multiverse is
his machine.
He is not some product of my imagination built
for the setting, but the product of an ill-fated
game run by a DM who had little to no respect
for the system, and the free will of the players.
This is the story of a veteran DM dismantling
a charlatan.
This is the story that is closest to my heart.
This is the story of my greatest D&D achievement.
This is the story of the time I played a psion.
I began running 3.5e in my senior year of
high school, and continued my journey through
college and beyond.
In college, I would set up in the game room,
purposefully putting a gap in my schedule
long enough to run a pick-up session.
Since it was a great way to reduce stress,
this was a daily occurrence.
There were some repeat visitors to the game
room I ran in, one of which was a Rubik’s
cube obsessed individual.
Appropriately, we called him “Rubix”.
Instead of joining the session, Rubix observed
me and my players, making comments about how
their ideas were lifted from an anime no one
had ever heard of before, and insisting
on using its Japanese name.
If that was not annoying enough, he repeatedly
butchered any
Japanese words he would offer to the group,
deeming his opinions on any matter of ours
irrelevant.
Near the start of my spring sophomore semester,
he came in asking anyone if they want to play
a campaign he is running in 3.5e.
He walked in with no books, no campaign notes,
no character sheets or even dice.
All he had was his ratty bag, and a Rubik’s
cube.
I am sitting between two of my friends - we
will call them Bard and Barbarian, because
that is what they ended up playing - when
Rubix picks up a new player who has had an
interest in D&D.
We will call him Cleric.
They sit not far from us, since there are
few comfortable chairs in the room, and Rubix
hands Cleric a loose sheet of notebook paper
and tells him to start making a character.
Poor Cleric did not know the first thing about
making a character, but instead of helping
him, Rubix goes off to try and recruit more
players.
Bard, Barbarian and I start talking over facebook
messenger, poking fun at what kind of game
Rubix would run, and feeling bad for Cleric
and the weebanese infested nightmare of katanas
and schoolgirls that awaited him.
Barbarian wondered if Rubix even knew how
to run a game, saying in chat, “You should
go over there and show him a thing or two.”
Now, I knew Rubix had no resources, and Cleric
looked like a fish out of water.
With all of 3.5e available online, I thought
I would give Cleric a helping hand against
the nightmare to come.
I got up, walked over, and introduced myself
to Cleric.
Bard and Barbarian soon joined me.
As Rubix returned, Bard, Barbarian and I expressed
an interest in this game, simply to see what
would happen, and to show solidarity with
Cleric.
Bard and Barbarian created… a bard and barbarian.
I needed to know more about the world before
choosing my class.
Rubix told us it was a “science fictiony
fantasy world” that he made up.
I decided to branch out from my favored sorcerer
class and elected to play a Human Psion, using
a redeemed sith concept from a Star Wars game
that never got off the ground.
The level one character was already planned
out, allowing me to focus on helping Cleric
create his addition to the party.
My fears about the game were realized in a
way worse than I imagined the moment it started.
We started off as high school students (interesting,
seeing as most of our characters were 25+
years old, mine being in my early 30s) who
were working for the nationʼs king as his
“security club”.
We were an organization that acted as spies
and guards, that somehow also held more political
power than the king at times.
There were other absurdly powerful DM PCs
within the club, most of which were schoolgirls
in the 14 to 17 age range, and were somehow
more capable at their jobs than the adult
members of the club.
Furthermore, the few male DMPCs, that… oddly
resembled Rubix, seemed to be a hit with every
lady in the organization.
Every time we talked to a DMPC, they were
implied to have just gotten done doing the
unspeakable with one or multiple underaged
girls.
As for the DMPCs that were women, their strategy,
invariably, was to seduce our target, or screw
their way through every obstacle.
Again, these were school children using their
bodies
as a frequent tactic to great success.
Mechanically speaking, Rubix did not know
how to build encounters.
Each battle was always a single opponent whose
abilities were heavily homebrewed, rendering
us unable to effectively strategize and actually
fight them.
We had to rely on throwing our DMPC companions
at the problem until they either killed it
or boned it.
Each encounter was woefully balanced against
us with enemies usually being 6 or more CR
above what would count as a boss.
Our first boss was a Marlith, a CR 19 demon.
We were level 2.
When confronted about how his characters seemed
to be our level, but able to do whatever they
wanted, Rubix replied, “If everyone is overpowered,
then no one is.”
We found out later that Rubix always had some
kind of hidden solution other than combat.
We would get one-shotted by the big bad evil
guy of the session, and he would shrug and
smugly tell us “Well, you should have researched
him a bit more.”
Unfortunately, “more research” was not
really an option.
Rubix did not have a firm grasp on the concept
of “player agency”.
We, as low ranking members of the club, did
not have access to the resources needed to
investigate any of our enemies.
We were handed a target, and a waifu, and
told to “take care of it now”.
We held fast, and survived for six levels
before I finally had it with Rubix’s garbage.
It was time to make some changes.
We had returned from a mission, and found
the castle in disarray.
The other members of the security club were
not answering their coms due to god knows
what, leaving us to take care of whatever
the problem was.
Turns out, our king was possessed, and attacking
security club members.
For the first time, our god-like companions
were incapable of attacking the king, not
wanting their excessive power to accidentally
kill him.
Thinking quickly, I used my pistol, the only
weapon I was proficient with, to shoot the
King in the legs, which worked after a few
quick psychic buffs.
I then physically pulled his sword out of
his reach when he dropped it.
The other club members, after the king was
subdued, were dispatched by our adolescent
higher up to clean up the rest of the castle…
Rubix, once again, left the rest of the party
floundering to figure out the next move.
That is when an idea came to me.
This idea was the beginning of the end.
While the group was distracted, I leveled
my pistol to the kingʼs head.
A gunshot rang out.
I executed him without fanfare or hesitation.
His throne now empty, I took his crown, and
his kingdom, for myself.
Rubix was surprisingly okay with this, accepting
my rule without even a modicum of resistance.
I suppose it was because the security club,
and the pubescent students within, held more
real power than the actual king, so not much
would have changed with my taking the Throne.
What that afforded me, however, were almost
limitless resources that I was free to use
as I saw fit.
Tapping into my love of Halo and Warhammer
40k, I spent ludicrous amounts of time and
resources constructing a suit of power armor
to enhance my lack-luster physical capabilities.
I also decided to invest in augments to adjust
my mental stats - primarily intelligence - and
commissioned mind flayers and other psions
to amplify my psychic prowess and imbue my
armor with other psychic nonsense.
Having already gone so far, I thought… why
not plate my armor gold and go full God Emperor
of Mankind on Rubix, flaming greatsword and
all.
In conjunction, I had made a point to start
replacing the security club with a real army.
This army was made up of psychic constructs
whose purpose was to fight and die, linked
to my now overwhelming psychic presence.
I will admit, Rubix impressed me with how
he rolled with the punches after I totally
derailed the campaign.
Assuming I would separate myself from the
party to go with the whole “running the
country and building a psychic army” thing,
our handler in the security club gave Bard,
Barbarian and Cleric another mission.
I dropped in on the conversation, said “screw
that”, and spirited away my party with promises
of riches if they aided in my global conquest.
I canʼt be The Emprah without taking over
all of mankind, after all.
They did not object, because by this point,
the party had defaulted to me as party leader,
being the most experienced player and a weathered
GM, and would much rather take over the world
with me than play the senseless story that
Rubix had.
Utilizing a few more augments on my party,
I played a covert campaign, having Bardʼs
enhanced Charisma and heavy investment into
Bluff and Diplomacy infiltrate the courts
of each nation.
Cleric and Barbarian served as a two man strike
team, dismantling key infrastructures and
taking whatever opportunity Bardʼs intel
granted us.
Once a nation was significantly weakened,
I would swoop in with my unmatched psychic
might and army Psycho-bots.
While we had some close calls, it took us
four levels to conquer all but one empire.
On top of that, we were nearing the end of
the semester, so the story was supposed to
be coming to a conclusion soon.
During his infiltration of the last kingdom,
Bard met a being named Derabo.
That name sickens me to this day.
Of all the overpowered DMPCs in Rubixʼs game,
Derabo was the most broken.
He was a level 30 warblade/monk gestalt with
a scythe and black angel wings, overloaded
with dummy powerful homebrew feats, more than
any I had seen in any of his characters before.
On top of that, Derabo had the power to, basically,
cast Wish at will without paying the XP cost.
Mind you, we were only level 10, and we were
crossing paths with an epic level Gestalt
character akin to a PC god in 3.5e.
Now, Rubix liked to monologue.
It was sometimes impossible to tell if we
were playing D&D or listening to a parody
of DBZ.
So when Bard questioned Derabo about how he
was so absurdly powerful, he explained in
great, agonizing detail.
I blocked most of it out, but what it boiled
down to was that the universe we were playing
in was the “dream world” of the real world,
and our real world was the dream world of
the game.
If a being who lived in one world, managed
to cross over into the other, they had powers
to bend reality to their will, kind of like
how you can control a lucid dream.
It would have been a cool concept if it did
not come from absolutely nowhere, hitting
us with an “all your trials were meaningless”
implication.
Bard relayed the information to me, concerned
that we might not be able to defeat Derabo
and overtake the last empire.
I was more optimistic.
If I could cross the veil and come back, I
would be able to simply will the empire under
my control.
At the very least, that would force Derabo
into a stalemate.
Barbarian, Cleric, and I retreated back to
the palace and started to research our way
to my passage into the real world.
I invested all of my resources into research,
even halting the production of new soldiers
enough to defend my strongholds and quell
rebellions as I needed.
Derabo, strangely, was only concerned with
defending the last empire, so he did not interrupt
me.
It took several sessions of experimentation,
but with enough high roles and research, I
was able to cross the veil between worlds
and back.
A few more sessions passed.
Rubix granted me mastery of these reality
controlling powers, and gave me Reality Revision,
the psychic version of Wish, at will, for
free.
The session ended on that note, since most
of us had been playing for several hours at
that point, and we had to either go home or
to our night exams.
What that granted me was time to plan.
I went home that night and poured over D&D
documents and forums.
I knew you had to lawyer the crap out of wishes
so they do not go horribly awry, so I started
to draft a document.
The document, unfortunately, does not exist
anymore, since it was on a computer that has
since died and been replaced, so I can’t
reference specifics, but I still remember
the broad details.
I decided to take the angle of adding a new
psionic effect to the armor, seeing as how
it is a listed effect of Reality Revision,
and thus one of those things not included
in the part where it says a GM can screw with
it.
It, however, did not say exactly what constituted
as “additional psionic effects”, so I
ran with that, saying that the armor permanently
granted me things like: 30 levels in all classes,
all spells, arcane and divine, as psychic
powers, infinite power points, 20+ divine
ranks, basically anything that turned me into
something more broken than Derabo could ever
hope to be, and I guess that thing was God.
But I was not satisfied with “God”.
To ensure that he couldnʼt just “rocks
fall” me, or obliterate me with my own awesome,
which he should have, I ensured that the armor
granted me an immortality that specifically
said I could not be killed, destroyed, erased,
unmade or otherwise removed from existence
by any force, being, power or event that has,
does or ever will exist.
Just to be safe, I listed that one first,
so the following effects did not blow me up
before that one kicked in.
When I finished my document, it was 8 pages
long, front and back.
It was perfect, easily the single most airtight
wish I had ever seen.
I added a nice little cover page, printed
it off, stapled it together and tucked it
away in my bag.
I fell asleep that night with a devious smile
on my face,
waiting to see what would happen.
I was the first one there the next morning.
I exchanged my pleasantries with Bard, Barbarian
and Cleric when they arrived.
The party felt my excitement, but they were
not sure what for.
Rubix arrived, started the session, and asked
me what I wanted to do with my new power.
It was here that I opened my bag and placed
the packet on the table.
I am not sure if I slammed it down, or slid
it over to him menacingly.
All I remember was saying, “I do this.”
I had a suspicion Rubix would let me do it.
“If everyone is overpowered, no one is”,
after all.
Rubix, in response, declared that my sudden
and overwhelming presence did a number to
the fabric of both realities, and thus it
all came collapsing down, with a smug look
on his face.
Everything was destroyed, no one survived.
Reality was erased from existence and the
game was over.
Congrats.
This was, I believe, his attempt at trying
to punish me for taking so much power.
Derabo was his bait; I took it, and paid the
ultimate price, taking my players down with
me in my hubris.
I will give him credit, it was a smart play.
Or… so he thought.
His biggest mistake was only skimming my packet,
having assumed his way would be
had in the end.
When he told me I was destroyed, I pointed
out to him the first line of my Revision,
you know, the one that kept me from accidentally
deleting myself?
The thing that made me immune to every kind
of “you stop existing” by anything that
has existed and ever will exist?
“Yeah, so what?”
“That includes me.
I, technically, cannot delete myself.”
I do not think anyone was prepared for my
surviving a total collapse of reality in an
empty
void of absolute nothingness, where not even
time existed.
Yet, I did.
I did with all of my powers
still in tact.
I was in a blank canvas, ready to establish
the machinations of my will on a grand,
cosmic scale.
And I did just that.
Using my infinite power, I built a new multiverse.
I made new gods, NPCs, planets, stars,
histories: I even reconstituted my old party
so they could experience this new world where
they
were powerful and prosperous kings, as a thank
you for helping me in my ascension.
I was in
the middle of describing how I planted a tree
from which the multiverse would grow and
whatnot, when Bard piped up, “Hold on…
Did you just become the DM?”
Everyoneʼs jaw dropped, even mine.
I guess I had not noticed it, but since I
created the
multiverse, it was technically my campaign
now.
Rubix was not happy, to say the least.
“It is still my campaign guys!
I am the one that
created this game!”
“You deleted your game,” Bard added, “You
did it when he made his Wish thing.
That
you did not make the Universe we are in right
now.
Psion did.”
“You canʼt just overthrow a DM!
Thatʼs not how D&D works!”
“You do not even know how D&D works!”
Barbarian added.
“You canʼt run a game for
crap!”
The back and forth went for a while, Cleric
and me staying out of it, but it boiled down
to the party having more fun when I was taking
them along than when we were playing Rubixʼs
story,
so they would rather I run this group.
Rubix declared that we just did not understand
his story, like we were not smart enough or
something, and stormed off in a huff.
The other players were still hyped to play
some D&D, and
Cleric was super excited to play a game I
ran.
We spent the rest of the day in that room,
playing
a one off, and having a good time screwing
around in a randomly generated dungeon.
That group lasted until I graduated the next
summer.
I have since moved away, built a Pathfinder
group and made a fledgling GM out of my girlfriend.
I still keep in contact with Cleric, Bard
and Barbarian, and every now and again they
ask when I will be back in town, so we
can play a game like old times.
I do have to pay some tribute to Rubix, though.
For all his faults, he did create a memorable
campaign, even if it was for all the wrong
reasons.
And in the end, if it were not for him, Richtoros
would have never ascended to his rightful
place as the progenitor of the multiverse.
What an incredible twist, a DM deleting his
own game to be usurped by a player!
I guess next time you give a player a wish,
have your lawyer look it over before granting
it!
Have you ever pulled a fast one on the DM?
Please let us know and comment below!
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