Lol, that reminds me of my first DM session …

Anyways, my actual first DM session — everyone loved the memes. Like the classic “hitting a gazebo with a sword” one. The meme they really liked was the “forever DM,” so everyone was joking like, “Not me, you have to come back from vacation just to DM!” etc.

I, on the other hand, jumped at the opportunity to be DM. I had no idea what I was doing. When I was designing the enemies, I was a bit annoyed that our regular DM’s encounters were so easy, so I thought I needed to get a gauge on how much damage they could take before dying.

So, I invented a boss. What it was — was a creature that, when you hit it with a sword, would psychically protect itself. I knew my meme-loving players couldn’t resist hitting it, since that was the meme of the week.

They had no idea it was the gazebo.

So the gazebo kept spawning more and more enemies. I waited until they were almost dead so I could see how much they could take. My initial plan was to wait until they were entirely dead, but they started getting angry that my first session was about to be a TPK.

So I gave them a hint to kill the gazebo. They didn’t understand what I was doing, and I got some very strong pointers about the encounter being too hard. The rest of the night was… a bit bitter.

I hope you like the beautiful punctuation you hypocrites just made AI take my job

This would be my take.

Make them roll a strength check and and on a natural 19 or 20 an extreme random act of fate allows them to pick up the fork in the road. It also tears a hole open in the prime material plane fucking their current objective sideways.

PERIODS. Use them. And paragraphs. Please and thank you.

“you pick up the concept of a forking road, reaching into the fabric of reality and ripping it asunder grants you a mercifully swift death as the narrative underpinning your existence unravels and the DM thwacks your motive spirit over the head with a giant inflatable hammer.”