Not only did I wait for almost a month post-session to write it, I also asked the DM’s permission to post it, afraid that the rest of the group would hate me for it. I had him read it and approve it, and even then, I still thought they’d hate me. 

They didn’t. 

​But I never wrote another one. Then I sat down one day, and suddenly, I wanted to write about the team’s adventures. And I wasn’t scared anymore. A year and half later, I no longer considered myself just the DM’s girlfriend. Now I was a member of a team. Part of a group of friends.  

In fairness to my boyfriend and his group, it wasn’t necessarily their fault I didn’t feel welcome. For the most part, they all welcomed me into the group. (The other lady in the group was one of the first people I asked to join my all lady group. She now plays in both games, and we’re great friends.) But there was tension between me and some members. 

Some members bemoaned our party’s lack of a bard to do all our persuasion checks, or the fact that our party had three spellcasters. Sometimes complaints about the large party size were voiced, though never directed at me. But as the last person to join, these complaints (both about the lack of bard and the party size) often felt directed at me. Which made me feel guilty and anxious.

When I’d made my character, I didn’t know the make-up of my eventual party. The DM, wanting me to be happy, told me to play whatever I wanted for the one-shot. I didn’t know that I’d one day join an established group. I didn’t know that two of the five-member party were gnomes. I didn’t know that the party was made up of a Wizard, a Warlock, a Barbarian, a Monk, and a Rogue–or even what those classes meant. I didn’t know the party wanted a Bard. 

​I wanted to play a Sorcerer. (I still do, in fact.) But the complaints got so bad, I considered multiclassing. I even emailed the DM about it. A very long, sad, and pathetic email. We had a multi-day, multi-page conversation. 

He told me to wait. He said I’d be happy with my character eventually. Just wait till I was level 5, he said.  Everyone else in the group was already Level 5, but as a late addition to the game, I wasn’t. So I did wait. He was right. It did get better.

​Here’s part of that conversation:

And that’s where we left it. How the DM described my character only highlighted one thing for me: he thought I fit in the game. He wanted me there. That’s how he saw me, even if no one in the group saw me that way. So I decided to stick with it. I’d decided to give it 3 months—then I planned to quit. I just hadn’t decided how I’d break it to him.

Because the pressure to multiclass wasn’t the end of my problems in the group. There was also an ongoing undercurrent of “the DM’s girlfriend doesn’t know how to play.” Part of that is on me. I was too afraid to let everyone know that I did indeed know how to play—that I, in fact, DMed my own group and was well aware of how spells worked. I never spoke up in the group, afraid that I’d be shot down just for being the DM’s girlfriend. 

And when I finally did speak up, I was shot down. But looking back, it’s hard to tell if I was shot down because I was the DM’s girlfriend or because I’d spent so long not speaking up.

I remember the first time it happened. We were trying to decide what quest to take on next, and I suggested that fighting the dragon would be fun because I’d finally leveled up to 5 and had taken Lightning Bolt (a high damage spell). The response? One of the guys questioned why I’d take lightning bolt, when I was going for a “trickster” build. He told me between the other two spellcasters we already had enough damage spells. He ended with:  

I probably would have quit after the next game. I was so miserable—had so much anxiety over playing in front of a person I didn’t trust. But a mere week later, he and the DM got in a fight about an unrelated issue. That player ended up quitting, and I stayed.

And the player who quit is a good person. I don’t mean to tell this story out of anger or frustration—it’s just what happened. Would he have told me how to play my character if I hadn’t been a woman? Would things have been different if I wasn’t the DM’s girlfriend and was instead just a member of the group? Would it have made a difference if I’d been more assertive? I don’t know, but those are still questions I ask myself.

And to be clear, everyone in the group was/is a good person. They’re people who I don’t think meant to make me feel unwelcome. Had they been mean, hateful people, it would have been so much worse. I was lucky.

I’ve been playing in the same game for almost two years now. We lost two members to growing families, and I found the group a new member. We’re now a party of 5 instead of 6, and we even have the bard everyone always wanted. And the best part? It’s not me. I still play a Wild Magic Sorcerer, just like I wanted to from the start.

​When I sat down to do that session write-up a couple of months ago, I was happy. So happy. Everything had changed with the group. I was a member of it—not just there because my boyfriend wanted me to be. I’d worked with my team. I’d even been critical during the big fight, blocking the doorway and protecting the other members of my party. Most importantly, I’d played Finley exactly as I imagined her: worrying about the other party members; doing creative things during combat, not just attacking everything she saw; fearing she’s not good at magic, but trying her hardest anyways; having fun during the midst of the drama.

​My story has a very happy ending. I became a DM of an all lady group, and I found my place within my other group. But it so easily could have gone the other way. I don’t know what would’ve happened if the one player hadn’t quit. I don’t know if I ever would’ve found my voice. I hope I would’ve—I hope I would’ve played the character I wanted to play, the way I wanted to play it. But I don’t know if I would’ve found the strength. 

I want other people to find the strength I didn’t have. The strength to believe in their character. The strength to trust their instincts. The strength to say no when people tell you to not be yourself. Because it’s worth it. Having your ideas valued? Being a member of a group? Seeing yourself as a hero? It’s worth it.