D&D riddles in the Dark

Well apparently I might have sworn and cussed at some of my players last night, according to Natural20.  In my defense, I was reminding them what their powers were.  It feels like they were there, but not there.  That they did not know what their characters could do.  I felt that they had not taken an iota of preparation.  I might not have spent the amount of time that I would spend on an adventure either, I was coasting, but I was coasting on work that had been previously done.  The Characters were finishing the third level and they ran into a few things that were too easy for them.  But really they had in previous sessions battled some insanely powerful groups of creatures.  They had been ambushed in the forest and while the attackers had botched the attack, the players felt that they had won with only the skin of their teeth, the next adventure date they tracked the assaulters to their lair and fought two survivors and picked up a serious artifact and some potent magic items.  Next session they opened up an encounter and a single battle that nearly wiped out the entire party.  Then they decided to rest up in the carnage of the battle and were ambushed and forced out of the temple to rest.  So I felt that the party had gained enough experience and might need another level in the next little while.  So I granted them that level.  The single classed characters gained a attribute increase or a feat.  The fighter took Savage Attack, granting a once a turn reroll of damage dice.  The Druid tookLlucky, granting a thrice per long rest reroll of any dice, the paladin took Shield Mastery, allowing more better AC and other benefits.  The Cleric that missed most of the adventure to date showed up and took Alert, meaning he was immune to surprise and got a +5 to initiative rolls.   The multi classed characters gained in their second classes.  The rogue became an assassin and he was happy, but I was angry with him for some reason.  No, it was not him it was the ones I could not be angry at.  The Druid, who wants to play but doesn't wanted to look up the rules of her character class.  Who just picks spells out of the book that she could cast and says that she therefore had put them in her spells.  And then she plays on her phone all through the session.  The Absentee Cleric, also doesn't know his characters and will just say that he is comming and then say that he can't come.  Which is fine, but he should choose.  But it is me, right?  I should come to a game without my baggage too.

So.  The characters start off in the forest and head back to where they left off, go down the corridor that they bypassed for the door where the battle occured the day before, or head over to the secret door, the one the Druid forgot that she found the previous day, three weeks ago.  I am a good GM, so I remind her.  Nice GM.  They choose the secret door.  They find a troll in the next room and there is a chain in it, but it is broken and there is a key on the wall, but they tell me that the troll must be locked up in the room, the room's door is unlocked, but someone has already said the room is a jail cell, so now everyone is calling it a jail cell.  The room is 20'x20', the creature is 10' tall, but four of them could fit in the room.  The space that we were playing in was about 10'x10' and the were 7 people in it, but they would never call that a jail cell.  They kill the Troll.  They use fire, which kills it.  Then the Assassin pokes out of the room and that room is in darkness and so he is invisible as a Gloom Stalker.  He is sneaking through the room and he opens a door and he sees a creature, but he freaks out because I give a good description of a creature in the dark and he runs away to tell the party members. When he returns there are three trolls in the larger room and he decides to attack them as an assassin. He targets them and rolls to hit, he has surprise, becuase he is invisible in the dark as per Gloom Stalker.  He targets the first Troll and fires.  He hits. 

As an Assaassin he gets an automatic critical with every attack before the creatures first attack.  And so he rolls for critical damage using the wrong number of dice.  He casted a spell that adds a d6 to damage.  So he rolls a d8 for arrow damage, a d6 for spell damage, and a backstab damage for 2d6 but forgets that his backstab was just increased from 1d6.  So I remind him.  Then he doubles those dice for 2d8 and 6d6.  His second attack is a Gloom Stalker attack but he forgets this, it is 2d8, so he rolls 4d8 and 2d6 damage, and his last attack is for 2d8 and 2d6.  He literally killed the first target with three arrows.  Then he acts first in the non surprise.  A misread of the rules by the players says he gets automatic criticals if he acts first in e round and no one else has had an action.  I just re-read the rule, it is not so, but whatever.  The next troll is almost killed and the first troll gets up thanks to regeneration and then they bring out the fire and the game is over for the trolls.  They find the four keys, and then wonder aloud why the trolls were in Jail cells again.  Face palm.

There is another door and stairs the warlock takes the stairs and finds a secret door and he comes back down.  The characters were litterally seconds from going on the greatest journey of their lives, but they decide to go through the door.  They head down into a hallway but wisely send the assassin through first.  He enters and sees a large giant with two heads arguing with himself and he decides to assassinate it.  It was an ettin.  It died, because the combination of assassin and gloom stalker is really broken.  Fine.  

The gloom stalker forgot how much damage his backstab did again.  His player complained that he is playing two games and has to keep two characters in his head.  I deadpaned him and told him I have to keep track of all the six characters, the Npcs characters, the monsters, the rooms, the world and all the other things.  It is hard, but try to keep track of just your character.  Which is what I wished to say.  I was annoyed, I might have actually said it; I can't remember.  Natural20 says that I swore at him.  

The rogue thinks to try the four troll Keyes on the four large locks and looks behind each door and finds stairs leading up behind each and he locks each door in turn back up again before preceding down the hallway and ignoring the doors.  Fine.  They hear water bubbling from the right, but head left.  Before them is a large room but the Elf detects a secret door and they take that they find themselves in a jail cell with two humans and some small and medium sized bad guys, they are all emaciated but the humans claim there was more humans before, but the bad guys ate him.  The discussion begins as always with found prisoners and they let the bad guys go and take the humans with them.  They cut e locked door down, because the lock is on the other side of the door.  They get out and see that they are on the other side of one of the locked doors that the troll keys unlocked, ere is another door and they open it and find four emaciated monster prisoners.  They kill them.  They then decide that each of the iron doors, that the troll keys unlock must be securing prisoners and they must investigate, they back track.

The party is travelling in darkness.  All the main Pcs has Darkvision.  The NPCs do not.  They send the Gloom Stalker ahead, because he is invisible to Darkvision.  He scouts out the rooms quietly and calls the rest in.  Someone makes a lot of noise and some creatures enter the area attracted by the sound.  There are 16 shadows, which are undead, but cannot be seen without light, because they are shadows.  In the darkness they can see the people except for the gloom stalker, becuase he is invisible in the dark, but so are the shadows.  The shadows attack the characters, except Korin e Gloom stalker and many of them hit and they drain strength.  An argument, minor argument that when they do initiative I should tell them the name of the creature that they are fighting, becuase they are going to find out eventually, I decline on the grounds that if I tell them they are Shadows, they will know how to find them …. All the characters are confused, cheating may have been mentioned.  The two prisoners die right away.  The NPC cleric casts light spell and all the shadows become visible.  The PC absentee Cleric is going to fight the shadows, but the kind DM suggests that his character might want to do something else.  

It feels that people are just showing up and expecting me to play their characters for them.  I am clearly getting super annoyed at things.  It might, probably is something else outside the game.

It might be e plight of the DM.  Always the DM, never the player.

In the past three years I have had about eighty sessions, seventy-five of them where I was the DM and five where I was the player and they were one shots.  Two of those were with my friend who is dying, so my prospect of playing in any games again seems unlikely.  But, it would be nice if my players showed up wanting to play.  Might ask Natural20 to bring a game next time and we can play that instead of roleplaying.

There was more stuff, the players started talking about capturing some trolls and cornering the market in Troll Penis medicine, chaining down some trolls and lopping off their penises every minute and allowing them to regrow, drying the member out and powdering it for sale.  The Gloom Stalker Assassin got mad at the silliness and stalked off and killed things.  He could have been seriously killed but, as I said the combination is broken.  they got back together and went into one last room and it was the one that the riddle that they got a ten days previously and about three months ago.  

They solved the riddle with a lot of help.  Mountains.  It was a hard riddle, but I feel that They were not trying.

On three, in six, lies nine.

Vile good cloaked by fair evil for eternity,

Will you answer Answerer where is your power pray?

With the welp of Jarda and there until doomsday.

On the third level, in a six sided room

Good cloaked with evil.

Key, to location and object.  In a room that looks evil good is cloaked, but also an evil chamber cloaked with a chamber of good.  The six sided chamber was hidden by a false temple to good in an evil temple.  Not in the least bit suspicious.  A vampire in a coffin, an illusion covering the good paladin.  The rest was just window dressing.  

Next session I have to say that the paladin heiress to Greysteel, the rightful heir gave three of them tokens, a medallion, a belt of gold, and a dagger to the three most help ful characters.  They also get the Blessing of the unspeakable Goddess, one spell of a greater level than their character could cast.