First off this post might go long so apologies on that front, I think the context is reasonably important but it boils down to 2 main questions that I'd like advice on so feel free to skip downwards. The first is a question about a specific thing and whether I'm being a jerk for potentially having concerns about it, the other is more general situational stuff I want to figure out so I can keep it in mind in the future.

So I ran my first session the other day, went pretty well and everyone had fun (or said they did at least) so pretty good. I did the classic thing of over preparing massively, grabbed 8 or 9 maps and had a bunch of stuff potentially ready to go that ended up not being needed probably until session 3 at this rate. So I'm well prepared for the next few sessions at least.

We recently finished another campaign one of our friends had been running that went real bad near the end because nobody had set expectations at the start, there were pretty varying levels of experience of roleplaying games and one of the players basically played as Pierce from Community but the DM kept that he was working against us a secret and then let him kill most of us in a surprise attack, the campaign had felt like it was running out of gas anyway so it kinda just ended there as a bit of a damp squib. The people playing in my game who were all in that game as well were pretty onboard with us all agreeing to not do anything like that in our session 0 and I wouldn't indulge that as a DM myself in any case.

I've sort of had the idea for this campaign for awhile and then I really liked that Ravenloft book that came out in May so I took some stuff from that, I'm a person who wants to do all sorts of things in life but will delay and put it off until it's "perfect" to the extent that I'll basically never do it. So when I said I wanted to DM I asked them if they'd prefer I use one of the adventure books or use my own one and they all said they'd much prefer I do my own one and that pushed me to be like "ok, I'll use this idea", I'm very consciously making sure that I don't get too enamored with any aspect of it or do the whole "you're playing my baby wrong" DM thing. It's tonally kind of actiony horror I guess? Like the NPCs are in a terrible doomed situation and the players are going to be the big damned heroes rolling in, I don't think I can really try and scare them or make a truly oppressive atmosphere in that way so figured this would work best. 

So the players workshopped their basic character ideas together, rolled the stats and stuff, they sent me their background notes that I'm going to try and incorporate into my campaign if I can in a reasonable way (might have future questions for advice on that one). One of the players, the guy who was running that other game, he wanted to play an extremely dedicated pacifist and a couple of the other players expressed concern that if he really roleplayed that he could be as disruptive as the player in that other game in the opposite way almost? Like if he was refusing to fight an enemy that was killing them, using the first 3 or 4 actions in a fight trying to talk it down or inhibit others attacks on stuff or whatever. He assured them he'd punch stuff into unconsciousness if need be and stuff like undead and such he'd have no problem destroying. I mentioned Aang from Avatar as an example since he never killed, fought defensively but would still fight and he was like "yeah something like that". I think he'll also go down one of the healing subclasses as well or one that lets you move enemies around and stuff but that's obviously up to him. I was all for it cause it sounded fine.

When we came to playing, all of the group have gone for full comedy accents that I'm not sure they'll be able to keep up and also make me kinda crack up a bit when I'm trying to converse with them. 3 of them I think I can deal with but one has gone for a helium voiced North-western English accent and talking like that is forcing him to speak extremely slowly or he's choosing to. Like I said I'm not married to any one idea in my campaign but I would like to use some of my stuff that I was excited about and the idea of some of the NPCs having a conversation or the party doing any sort of fancy talk with this guy around is...... tough. One of my other friends who has DM'd a fair amount suggested I just have NPCs react to his accent like I am myself and basically get annoyed at him but that seems passive aggressive and not great.

Like I said, I won't address this until a bit further in if I think it is really breaking it for me but wanted to ask what peoples opinions are here? Maybe I'm just being an overly controlling DM already but I am going to be putting a lot of work into this instead of just playing videogames in the evenings and stuff and I want to enjoy it myself as well so I think it's fair enough for me to be concerned. I might just ask them to all tone down the accent work a notch cause it's making me feel like I have to do it for all the NPCS and I think I'll find that pretty stressful.

The other question I had is about the pacifist roleplaying guy but it's more philosophical. So the first encounter they had was with some twig and needle blights which are plant creatures that are described as evil. Now I must admit I didn't really think of a great context for why they got attacked by blights other than I wanted a quick, simple encounter to get used to how combat actually works and they were in a forest. During the fight the pacifist tried animal handling on one of the twig blights after I had described them as being made of wood but he was set on trying it, so I let him, he rolled a 20 but the thing is a plant so I still had it do nothing and the thing just tried to hit him again, then he tried to not kill it, punched it for 4 non lethal damage so I described him as having knocked entire parts of it's body off, then he tried to comfort it when it had one hit point and then tried to get in between it and the party when they came over to finish it off. So potentially exactly what the others were concerned about, just didn't matter cause the twig blight literally had barely any chance of hitting him although he didn't know that.

Now in retrospect I'm thinking I should have given it a bit more juice, like I should have said "oh as a wandering monk who lives in the wilderness a lot (his backstory), you know blights are just manifestations of something wrong in a forest or wood and purging them is fine as long as you then try to resolve whatever is causing them" or something like that? Was only after the session that I looked up more about the blight enemies and found the Gurthias tree stuff cause I'd only looked at the twig and needle blight lore bits and neither of them mention it but they don't know anything about that so no harm no foul there. Or should I have stopped him trying to do animal handling straight out or had animal handling work for some reason I would have to make up since he rolled so high?

Any advice would be appreciated.

Let's see..

The easy part - no Animal Handling against plant creatures. First, they are not animals. Second, Animal Handling says it is about calming mounts and domesticated animals, or figuring out the intentions of a non-domesticated animal (say a wolf that is tracking you). It does not give you the ability to communicate with animals in any way. There is nothing in the animal handling description that says you can calm down anything that is not a mount or a domesticated animal. Angry blight plants fall into neither category. No roll should have been taken.

The pacifist - this depends on your campaign and table. The whole rest of the table disliking the idea is a red flag. If your campaign is mostly about diplomacy/problem solving, low emphasis on combat, it can work. If your campaign is going to have a lot of combat, it probably won't work unless the player is very good at what they are doing (focusing heavily on healing, buffing, etc.). I don't particularly see anything wrong with how he RPed trying to stop the party killing the blights, at least from a strict RP perspective, but there are limits. For instance, in Candlekeep a few weeks ago, my lore-loving character's friends got attacked by books. She told them to just retreat and was willing to stand there with the dodge action and hold attention while others got out, but when people were unable to make it and the books started doing damage, she took out her weapon and hit back (sadly, but she did it). There are limits to what you can do in RP, and RPing something that gets the other characters killed is, for most groups, over the line. I think given the rest of the table's hostility toward the idea, it is problematic. The group shouldn't stop him from RPing a character he wants to play, necessarily, but he doesn't get to ruin everyone else's fun either. 

The squeaky-accent-voice. It sounds like there is a disagreement in tone between you and the players in general, and this one in particular. You seem to want to have a serious campaign (just today I saw a post in a Call of Cthulhu discord announcing a game and the GM posted "Low levity please" -- i.e., keep the comedy to a minimum). They seem to want to have a comical campaign (you said, "all of the group have gone for full comedy accents" -- so it is not just squeaky-voice guy doing this). You need to have a conversation with the players about the desired tone. If they want a campaign full of comedy and hi-jinx and you want a campaign that is serious and deadly, you are going to have trouble. Discuss this with your players. There is nothing worse than one or more characters being "out of tone" with the campaign (or the campaign being "out of tone" with the characters).

I'm watching a YouTube series about a non-DnD RPG that I will not name here just as a matter of courtesy, and there are 4 players. 3 of the players I have seen before and are great. The 4th I have not seen before, and she is wildly out of tone (overly comical, goofy, silly, preposterous) with the rest of the group. One of the better players seems to be getting frustrated with the outlandishness of the player. I know this show went on for years so I guess they never had an actual problem with it, but as a viewer, I roll my eyes nearly every time she opens her mouth (though I will say, when it comes to combat she is an excellent tactician, which I guess redeems her a bit). I would be miserable playing at the table with this person, because literally every time something serious is going on, she interjects something ridiculous, the GM cracks up, some of the players do, and the whole scene is wrecked. Again, they don't seem to have a problem with it, but after 4 episodes I'm starting to question whether I want to keep watching this thing, even though I like the GM and the other 3 players.

My point is, the tone has to be in alignment for everyone. If your desired tone and theirs do not match, someone's going to be unhappy (and since there are more of them than there are of you, it's probably gonna be you). Talk with the group about what tone you'd like, and see if you can come to some sort of agreement.

Quote from Gearmastery >>

Maybe I'm just being an overly controlling DM already but I am going to be putting a lot of work into this instead of just playing videogames in the evenings and stuff and I want to enjoy it myself as well so I think it's fair enough for me to be concerned. I might just ask them to all tone down the accent work a notch cause it's making me feel like I have to do it for all the NPCS and I think I'll find that pretty stressful.

If your players are really enjoying creating accents for their characters and using them, then I would say let them go with it. Players usually only get to control their own characters actions in the game, so I wouldn't limit this aspect very much...unless it really detracts from the ongoing game. However, just because your players want to create accents for their characters, you shouldn't feel that you need to do so for your NPCs. It's one thing to develop an accent for a single character, but it's a lot more work for a DM to create dozens of accents/voices for the various NPCs in the game.  

I wouldn't limit your players' creativity, but I also wouldn't allow them to pressure you into having to develop a bunch of accents/voices if you aren't comfortable doing so. If they're pressing you to do so, I would politely point out that you need to focus your time and energy on developing and running the game versus focusing on how your NPCs talk. Plus, you should be having fun as well, so it's perfectly reasonable to not do "voices" if that would be stressful and detract from your experience.

Quote from Gearmastery >>

 Or should I have stopped him trying to do animal handling straight out or had animal handling work for some reason I would have to make up since he rolled so high? 

Generally speaking, if a DM knows that a player's d20 roll cannot succeed no matter what they roll, then you shouldn't have them make the roll. If you allow them to make a roll (such as this handle animal check), then you should be prepared to potentially allow them to succeed based on the die role. Using the twig blight example you provided, I personally would have allowed the natural 20 result on the pacifist's check to meet with limited results; such as the twig blight going defensive (i.e., dodging attacks) versus aggressive (i.e., making attacks). Wouldn't make or break the encounter, but it allows the character to have a small achievement for a good roll versus resorting to violence that he's trying to avoid.

Cheers both of you. To address the first point, I think the entire party being concerned was mainly because we'd just played a game where someone had essentially ruined it by not understanding quite how a roleplaying dynamic should work since his main experience of an RPG was videogames or that D&D episode of Community. Then our pacifist friend addressed the concerns of the rest of us while still creating the character and assuaged us.

I think this guy gets it better and this was only the first session so I'm probably being premature. I'll hold off on mentioning anything and see how it goes going forward. I think getting more of his abilities and stuff will also give him more options to do stuff, he's going to be very dodgy so being a distraction will probably be valuable.

Same with the accent thing, the rest of the party are doing accents that I'd say are unusual but they're actually pulling them of really well I think so the "full comedy comment" wasn't really fair. I might ask him to tone it down very slightly just a bit if it still irks me in the next few sessions. 

I think tonally I'm fine with quips in the moment and stuff, like I said I'm thinking action horror rather than real horror but I'd like conversations with NPCs to be.... relatively serious. Wish I could think of a good example from other media, not quite Scream or Evil Dead but just below that in terms of tone. Maybe the first couple Romero zombie films where there's humor but also bad stuff is clearly happening.

The animal handling thing was just me wanting to keep things moving and not thinking enough about the enemy type in the first session I think, yeah I should have just said "hey these aren't animals so this isn't gonna work no matter what." I didn't want to be too restrictive and telling him what he couldn't do either I guess, ironic considering the other question I asked haha.

It is not being "too restrictive" to explain that a skill is not applicable in this particular situation. This wasn't a frightened horse that could be tamed with A.H. and you saying to him "No roll." It's him trying to use A.H. on a non-animal, which does not, and cannot, work.

I mean would you let him use animal handling on a goblin? No? Then there's no reason to feel bad about not letting him use it on a plant.