I've played D&D pretty casually from time to time, but always as a player and usually just short one shots and not big campaigns.

This year I started feeling the urge to play in a big campaign, and some of my friends were showing interest. I decided why not try my hand at DMing! I went all in, I bought 6 books (DMG, PHG, Xanthars guide, tashas, MM, and MotM) a ton of paint supplies, and some tiles/maps.

And I'm glad I did! We've had four sessions so far and it's going great. We are starting on the Lost Mine of Phandelver campaign, and afterwards we will be moving into homebrew, eventually reaching level 12+. I have already started changing a few things from LMoP to fit the homebrew campaign I am planning where the BBeG will be Atropus and its chosen Warlock who is trying to attract the elder evil to Toril.

I didn't have any experience running a campaign, or even painting, but there are so many useful resources on youtube that I feel confident I've got a handle on things!

If anyone has any tips or pointers for a first time DM I'd love to hear them! I am always willing to learn.

If anyone wants to see more of the figures I've painted, heres a couple of pics https://imgur.com/a/1SMF4jr?

This is a bit of a vent, I'm sorry in advance. I'm still a little bit triggered honestly. If this type of post doesn't fit for this community I apologize, I don't really have anyone to talk to about this.

Reddit has been pushing me away over the past year, mostly because of how antagonistic people are becoming.

The straw that broke the camels back for me was encountering a user with the "r" word in their username, being used in a derogatory way. I am autistic, and that triggers me based on my past experiences. It's a slur against autistic or ND people, and it violates the reddit content policy that states "Users that promote hate based on identity or vulnerability will be banned."

So it turns out on Reddit there is no way to report someone for using slurs in their username. I tried all the other avenues for reporting and nothing worked. I tried to contacting a handful of admins but was ignored over several weeks.

This was all very frustrating for me and I thought I would post about it on the autism subreddit, but I was met with rude responses that boiled down to "Get over it." or "Shut up." I posted on a few other autism related subs and was met with similarily harsh responses. Some of the subreddits actually deleted my post.

I honestly didn't expect that kind of response from other people on the spectrum, and its at this point I realize reddit is unhealthy, regardless of the subreddit.

I have deleted my account and wont look back. I am thankful that a place like beehaw exists, its a shame more spaces online don't try to cultivate a friendly userbase.

Some background - I am diagnosed with autism and it can be hard for me to just "ignore" the awful things people can say to me when I'm online.

The latest thing someone said to me really got me feeling down and depressed. Honestly having darker thoughts because of it.

I have IBS-D, which means there is an insane amount of food I cannot eat - if I do eat the things I cannot, my intestines get shredded and I bleed like crazy. Honestly the list is massive and my diet has basically been chicken green beans and potatoes every night for the past 3 years. I have lost over 60 lbs, and currently weigh 130lbs as a 5.11 male. Doctors have been trying to figure it out but they haven't been able to and say I may just have to live with it.

This person was calling me a monster because I eat meat, even though I have a medical condition that makes my diet extremely limited. Unfortunately meat is one of the only things that agrees with my stomach across the board. I'd like to be vegetarian but I literally will die from malnutrition and weight loss if I did try. I explained this to the user but they didn't care.

I explained my autism to them, and that what they were saying was making me depressed and they just continued with saying how I was a monster and killing myself wouldn't be as bad as killing all the animals I have to "enjoy" meat. They said my condition wasn't an excuse and compared me to the "sexual cycle of violence" of dracula.

This user made me feel really sad and crappy. Afterwards I cried for a while but I don't feel better.

The problem I have is that there are many people online who seem to get pleasure from being awful to others, and it gets to me every time.

Does anyone have any advice for handling these situations online? Often I hear people say you should just ignore these people and move on, but I end up ruminating on what they've said and it can make me feel bad for weeks on end. Sometimes I feel like I should just give up using the internet because of these people.