I apologize for lashing out. One of my players threw themselves in acid after they were fully aware it was in fact acid. I did not and still do not know how to deal with that.
In the very first D&D game that I ever played, our party was standing right outside the entrance to a dungeon. Part of the area was covered in a red energy field. Inside the red energy field, all of the grass was dead, and right on the border between the area inside the energy field and outside of it, there was a collection of dead animals, insects, and other forest creatures. As we watched, a little bunny came hopping up, hopped into the red energy field, and, the moment that it entered the field, instantly dropped dead.
Guess what one of our players decided to do next. Take a wild fuckin guess.
Our DM literally set up a colour block puzzle for us and by the end of it one PC was stranded in the astral plane and we’d permanently lost one of the four Mystical World-saving MacGuffins.
In one of our very first campaigns the villain put our group into a labyrinth and told us some ominous shit about he we miiight get out of there.
We were in the labyrinth for at least 4 hours. Probably more like 5 ½.
We had tried everything, following intructions, doing the opposite of the instructions. The mages had analysed the labyrinth, and found that it had SOME KIND of magic in it. We had questioned the npcs inside the labyrinth, tried to force them to us what they knew. Nothing worked. Every player was this close to losing it, one was standing at the windows, staring off into the distance. Our DM was both amused and incredibly done with our bullshit.
We had no idea what to do, our DM was giving us little hints, which we didn’t get. It was awful. Until one of our dwarf mercenaries proclaimed that he would now smash his head against the wall out of frustration.
And guess what. The Labyrinth shattered and our group stood in a 10x10 room. It had been a magically enhanced mirror labyrinth. We had been walking in circled the last couple of hours.
[griffin mcelroy voice] “yeah this is not a fucking puzzle, it is essentially a junior jumble”