What are some of the biggest mistakes you've made as a GM?


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Silver Crusade

I don't even bother with minor encounters. I generally hand wave travel between two points. I like for players to feel they are getting right to the adventure and now a days when our play time is limited to 5-6 hours every two weeks every moment spent on non-essentials is time wasted.


Kamelguru wrote:

Mortagon wrote:

I am to kind to my players and fudge to much or give away to much information about the plot or what they could expect(my players are real control freaks and constantly fishes for information).

"Too kind and fudge too much"? 2 deaths before lv6 (would be 5 if we had not started with hero points), and for every nat 20s we roll as a party, you roll like 1d4+1. I would call hax on that die long ago if you rolled like that as a player.

I don't get the "control freaks" one. What information are we fishing for? Plot information? Enemy information? Weather forecast? The possibilities regarding whether or not 3 totally gear-dependent characters can hope to be equipping themselves adequately when you've banned item creation feats in a campaign hundreds of miles from anything resembling civilization?

I wasn't talking about our current Campaign, more on a general term.

Contributor

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It's funny to me that a couple of people have listed "allowing evil PCs" as their biggest mistakes. Mine was the opposite.

The hands-down worst game I ever GM'ed was when I was running a super heroic party (in the pristine morality sense, not the colorful-underwear-over-tights sense) and put them in a situation that was much darker and uglier than anything the previous GMs had done in that shared setting. There really was no choice their characters could make that would not leave them morally compromised one way or another. It was a total no-win for their characters, and not surprisingly they didn't have any fun.

I learned better, eventually, but it took a while. Anyway, to echo a sentiment already expressed, all my worst mistakes were the result of poor communication and, relatedly, having very different expectations from the players about the kind of game we wanted.


My worst mistakes are always letting players dominate the game for too long and especially letting them get away with spoiling the fun for other players. I always tolerate too much of this behavior, and it has led to other players becoming bored, irritated and even wanting to quit the game altogether.

Another mistake I still make regularly is forgetting some abilities of the monsters.


Not fully thinking through an encounter with an npc adept I had planned. Did not really think through more than he was a grumpy sort of crazy man that did not want you to pass on his property.


I won't go into mechanical mistakes I've made. I think everybody is entitled to at least a certain number of them each time a new edition or system is tried.

For me, giving away too much information was a long time problem with a long, slow arc in resolving. I tend to like seeing my friends succeed. And I also love sharing all the great stuff I've made up for them, so had to learn to keep things to myself and to let them miss out on stuff if they simply did not roll well enough or role play well enough to find it.

The trend began when I was 11, DMing for the first time, and for the first few sessions, would read each monster's stat block out loud. In that case, I thought I was supposed to do that. None of us had really played, so we didn't know. Finally, it began to occur to me that this stuff was crucial to keep to myself, and the other players agreed.

But so began my excitement at sharing things! Of course, over the years, sharing too much info nerfed the challenge and tended to make characters powerful. After all, they were finding all the best stuff, all the time. That is not to say that the game was all so easy: characters still died, puzzles still stumped them sometimes for hours. But there was enough power creep from it that keeping game balance was very difficult, sometimes nearly impossible, and that did make me miserable.

It really was just a matter of developing the discipline to keep my yap shut that stopped this. I learned to let the party miss things, and just take joy in the discoveries that they were able to make.

In the end, except for one problem player who loved to give me grief at the slightest provocation, and so really let me have it over stuff like this, everybody forgave me. I've been playing with some of the same people for years, so this didn't kill me as a GM.

One thing I would like to touch on, is the matter of your players still ribbing you for the scythe thing. I think you should gently put a stop to that now. See, even if it was a bad decision on your part, there will come a day when an NPC really does have some kind of power or skill or magic item, that makes them SEEM invulnerable. It will be part of the plot, but because your players have been given reign to think they know everything about your style, there's a chance they will accuse you again, for something that has a legitimate cause. Many arguments with my Problem Player could have been avoided if I had early on sat him down, explained to him that sometimes things might not make sense at first, but as the plot unfolds or he discovers more of what's going on, they will. Instead, I let him accuse me of Deus Ex Machinas, and he then felt he had free reign to lump any unexpected event into that category, even though these were legitimate tropes which he could discover for himself, if he just had the patience. Many game-delaying arguments ensued, and sometimes he tried to get other players to quit with him based on his wrongheaded assumptions.

You need to clear that matter up, apologize for it if necessary, and let them know that sometimes weird things are going to happen, but they should have patience with them.


My biggest mistake was setting up an end to the campaign, but using the wrong BBEG. I had a re-occuring NPC resurrected in a near-end adventure, with the idea that the party would meet him the near to last encounter of the campaign, setting up the final BBEG. Problem is the party turned left instead of right, I was using a pre-prepared adventure, and sprung the final BBEG too soon because I wasn't 100% ready for them (couldn't think my way out of the situation).

After it was all said and done, one of players was lamenting they didn't get to fight the NPC before the end. The problem was I was burnt out on the campaign, eager to start fresh and couldn't come up with a decent way to put the NPC into the game without completely decimating the party (they were almost completely spent after the BBEG battle) and without it feeling too tacked on.

So, I should have thought through the possibilities near the end, and figured out a way to make it work the way I originally wanted it to, so that the party got the satisfaction they really wanted.

Greg


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Giving players to much and not giving them enough. Creating an impossible situation that they can not accept. Even though it is plot related. ( Facing a Beholder at 2nd level )

I once had a player throw his paladin character off a griffon that was 500' in the air because I told him that the griffon refused to be his special mount. I thing was i was going to give him a griffon mount but not that one. I let the dice rollout and their was a dead paladin. He rarely plays as he only likes 2nd edition which he is a great GM.

Sometimes players will not work out that is the hardest part knowing when to cut out players that just prevent you from having fun.

i agree if everyone is not having fun then there is problem that needs to be addressed.


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Xyll wrote:
I once had a player throw his paladin character off a griffon that was 500' in the air because I told him that the griffon refused to be his special mount. I thing was i was going to give him a griffon mount but not that one. I let the dice rollout and their was a dead paladin. He rarely plays as he only likes 2nd edition which he is a great GM.

That doesn't seem bad, just funny. "You won't be my special mount! I'm going to end it all!" It's like a manic depressive samurai turned up to 11.


Liane Merciel wrote:

It's funny to me that a couple of people have listed "allowing evil PCs" as their biggest mistakes. Mine was the opposite.

The hands-down worst game I ever GM'ed was when I was running a super heroic party (in the pristine morality sense, not the colorful-underwear-over-tights sense) and put them in a situation that was much darker and uglier than anything the previous GMs had done in that shared setting. There really was no choice their characters could make that would not leave them morally compromised one way or another. It was a total no-win for their characters, and not surprisingly they didn't have any fun.

I learned better, eventually, but it took a while. Anyway, to echo a sentiment already expressed, all my worst mistakes were the result of poor communication and, relatedly, having very different expectations from the players about the kind of game we wanted.

You don't happen to have that full story in detail, do you?

Xyll wrote:
I once had a player throw his paladin character off a griffon that was 500' in the air because I told him that the griffon refused to be his special mount. I thing was i was going to give him a griffon mount but not that one. I let the dice rollout and their was a dead paladin. He rarely plays as he only likes 2nd edition which he is a great GM.

Oh man. A group should all make Samurais, and then all just seppeku themselves at a crucial story moment. The thought of the DM's face at that moment is making me laugh way, way too hard.


@OP: Should said the guy had the Deflect Arrows Feat and rolled with it. ;)

For myself, I think there are two, one mechanics-wise that was a little embarrassing but not super bad, and one gameplay style one I intend to rectify as we go forward.

The mechanics one was when a paralyzed character was being coup de graced. I gave the nearby Barbarian his AoO, basically saying "Yeah if you don't kill this guy your Cleric is dead. Roll high!". I then brainfarted and let him do a full attack on this AoO for some reason (he didn't kill it in one shot. I think I forgot that it wasn't his turn, since he was next in the Initiative order anyway).

The second is not encouraging or "enforcing" being in character. We've mostly been playing it as just a game, with most of my players ignoring the RP part, since we're fairly new and everyone was uncomfortable with it. This makes a lot of potentially tense moments fall flat since nobody really cares what happens to the characters.


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Two year old thread dig. Nice, vamptastic.


SoldierSolidus wrote:
Going off-topic for my own thread, I apologize. The reason I created this thread was to hear of far more experienced GMs and players the mistakes they've made, both as a GM and even as a player.

While rules are important, placing more emphasis on the rules than on having fun or the story. The Pathfinder system for me is the perfect mix of enough rules to be interesting and cover most situations, but not enough to slow down play.

Allowing players to argue too much with me about rules before moving on.

Allowing broken rules into the game. Powerful PCs that just make every encounter unimportant.

Monte Hall on magic items. Less is almost always better. The amount of money and magic items in APs is the level that I find right for my games, and that amount is fairly thrifty I find.

Making every encounter too challenging. Some encounters should be easy. It’s not fun barely surviving each encounter, but I suppose it depends on the group.

Don’t allow too many solo missions, splitting the party: If it lasts too long, it’s boring for everyone else.

Allowing PVP interparty conflict: Sure, it’s entertaining for a few sessions, but eventually someone dies and then the entire campaign ends and all the work you’ve done is wasted. It’s not that I don’t allow it now, but I discourage it and ask the players to resolve it without violence.

^^^With some evil and some good PCs, maybe that’s what you have.

Make the group have a common goal and/or be friends at the start of the campaign: If there are relationships created between the PCs before the campaign starts, everything runs much smoother. It feels forced to try to keep a group of strangers together, especially if there is friction between PCs.

Using random encounters and wandering monsters: I never use random encounters anymore. Random encounters were much more acceptable in the 80s, when we didn’t have video games that made random encounters much faster (and more fun) to run. I sometimes use encounters from those lists, but they have meaning and aren’t random at all. And they are used sparingly. When the players encounter random encounters and I don’t want to run a combat, I just give a narrative. To me, combat for the sake of combat isn’t fun at all, video games do it much better.

+Plus more than I can count, I’ve been GMing 35 years.

The main thing is that you and your players have fun. That’s the most important rule of all. Second rule is to realize that you’re going to make mistakes, and after you make them, you fix them. And that’s pretty much it.


To give some preamble, I run a game at the local game shop.

The worst thing I've done as a GM recently occurred a month or so ago. On game day, four or five sessions ago, there were a couple guys killing time in the shop, waiting on a ride or something. They were willing to play, but had no previous experience. We were in the middle of a scene in the campaign, but one of the guys rolled up a character in HeroLab and the other one used a character I had on-hand that was previously generated. Rather than try to integrate them into the current scene somehow, I sent them back to the PCs' base of operations (a closed inn outside of town), where the PCs would encounter them after the scene. The players, having no previous experience, just wandered around the inn and kept wanting to kill the horses in the stable. They got tired of waiting for our scene to finish and didn't actually get to play at all. I think I should have made more of an effort to integrate them into the game that was actually running, so I might have been able to gain some players, rather than postponing their integration into the game until the next scene, and allowing them to get bored doing nothing in the meantime.

I've made some other various mistakes from time to time, but that's the only one that bothers me right now. I also spend too much time on the rules myself. I am something of a rules lawyer and continuity expert myself so even when my players would just accept a ruling and move on, sometimes I slow the game down by looking up the official game rule. (Just rules, I look up any continuity issues between sessions. I rarely run into those.) On the upside, I'm getting to the point where I know page numbers in the CRB for various things off the top of my head.


Never run a game with 11 PCs. It is a bloody nightmare and 1 combat will take 3 hours.


kmal2t wrote:
Two year old thread dig. Nice, vamptastic.

That's my secret, kmal. I'm always nice.


Yar!

For game mechanics, the worst thing I ever did (in 3.x) was allow a player to create a demiplane with the morphic time trait.

Nothing quite like having an epic fight where resources are being spent, tactics are being used just to survive, everyone is on the edge of their seats, then *BAMF* ... All the PC's vanish, to re-appear 6 seconds later fully rested, fully healed, back at full power, and sometimes with reinforcements as well.

Every encounter after that disregarded all tactics, all planning, all cinematic movement, all rational thought, and simply turned into the PC's walking up and battering-ramming everything because they knew resource management meant nothing anymore. That even dying was acceptable because it would mean they would get revived in the demiplane and healed back to full fighting power before returning, all within the span of one round.

Beware the morphic time trait! BEWARE!!!

~P


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Spending three hours writing a dragon up, to watch it get obliterated in the second round because I underestimated the ECL of the party.


My biggest mistakes involve telling the players what to do, and not giving them the freedom to do what they want.

I am a big fan of sandboxes now, multiple parts to an adventure, not a railroad, but it took me a while to learn this.

Give them a great game, but also give them choice and the power to change things. Learning this after playing in some crap games, which I don't want to replicate.


Cranefist wrote:
Spending three hours writing a dragon up, to watch it get obliterated in the second round because I underestimated the ECL of the party.

Ha ha, same, the last one of those situations I was in, it was a high level Athach fighter. Total beast, would have been a great fight.

The party warrior (yes the npc class) shot him to death, on his second shot, 20, 20.


3.5 Loyalist wrote:
Cranefist wrote:
Spending three hours writing a dragon up, to watch it get obliterated in the second round because I underestimated the ECL of the party.

Ha ha, same, the last one of those situations I was in, it was a high level Athach fighter. Total beast, would have been a great fight.

The party warrior (yes the npc class) shot him to death, on his second shot, 20, 20.

That's funny.

I'm half expecting it in the pbp I'm running right now. They are about a round away from encountering a big shot, but I have this sneaking suspicion they are going to turn him out.


Use illusions. Old school, but can be used to good effect.


I've been playing for 28 years and find myself making more mistakes now than ever before. Forgetting whose turn it is in combat (even with the initiatives written in front of me), forgetting the foe's abilities and allowing my players to walk all over them, forgetting...forgetting all the time. And I'm becoming lazier; for a DM that's a horrible thing. I find myself just using monsters as is from the books, etc without changing hitpoints or anything at all.


DungeonmasterCal wrote:
I've been playing for 28 years and find myself making more mistakes now than ever before. Forgetting whose turn it is in combat (even with the initiatives written in front of me), forgetting the foe's abilities and allowing my players to walk all over them, forgetting...forgetting all the time. And I'm becoming lazier; for a DM that's a horrible thing. I find myself just using monsters as is from the books, etc without changing hitpoints or anything at all.

Does this forgetfullness expand to other parts of your life? Might want to get that checked out.


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Worst mistake? Trying to maintain "the storyline." Look, sometimes you get a very clever (or lucky, or insane gung-ho) player who takes the campaign off the rails and onto a different direction. Roll with it! Never try to force them back onto "THE story line," because when they derail it, that's a clear sign it's time for you to step up as GM and improvise a new one.


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The words of Bruce Lee are very relevant:

"Be the water my friend."

Because stone breaks and railroads rust and buckle, water moves and adjusts, it is whatever it needs to be.


HarbinNick wrote:
DungeonmasterCal wrote:
I've been playing for 28 years and find myself making more mistakes now than ever before. Forgetting whose turn it is in combat (even with the initiatives written in front of me), forgetting the foe's abilities and allowing my players to walk all over them, forgetting...forgetting all the time. And I'm becoming lazier; for a DM that's a horrible thing. I find myself just using monsters as is from the books, etc without changing hitpoints or anything at all.
Does this forgetfullness expand to other parts of your life? Might want to get that checked out.

It does, indeed. And I do, on a regular basis. It began becoming apparent about 7 years ago and worsened after I had a breakdown in early 2007. And the meds I'm on FOR the problem can be a hindrance sometimes, too.

I think one of the things that would help in my case would be if we could play more than once a month anymore. Shoot, we go as often as 4 months between sessions, sometimes. Back when we could play every week, or even every other week, there was "collaborative" world building, frequent input from players on character motivations, and I was challenged to keep things fun, balanced, and well...fun.

Now we barely get together because of being our middle aged selves with jobs and families, etc. I have more free time than anyone in the group but just can't seem to force myself to put a lot of work into something that's not going to be really appreciated or used.

**Pushes on lever to put the tracks back in place before the derailment gets worse**


Made them all, twice or more, still having fun, still learning. As long as that happens WITH the groups I play in, everything should be fine.


Over the years I have found myself in the position of DM more often than not, not because of any particular aptitude for it, but rather I am usually the only one willing to take on the role. That being said, I have been alright for the most part at running the games, but I know I have made too many mistakes to count here. The two that come most readily to mind are several TPKs based on underestimating/miscalculating the ECL and a habit of getting excited when my guys (ie: the monsters/NPCs) roll well against the PCs. For the latter one, its not that I gloat exactly, but after having most of the beings I control get slaughtered by the dozens, it's nice when one or two get a good hit in. I have found however that many players don't tend to like it when the DM just cackles over a particular nat 20 roll.


I once killed (but then deus-ex-machina'd back to life) a PC that I was frustrated at for making a choice that MAY have killed him, but would not have CERTAINLY killed him.

Long story short: The fight with zombie pirates at sea was over, this guy decided to run onto the sinking ship in order to "loot it", while the rest of the party was safely aboard their own ship telling him to come back.

I based my decision on a mis-remembered Mythbusters episode about sinking ships and killed him, when it was entirely plausible he could have made it out alive, albeit it would have taken another 30 minutes or so of roleplaying most likely.

Ultimately, I brought him back, but the rest of the party still thought he was dead, and the player-in-question brought in a new character for awhile that turned on everyone else at the end of the session, just before their old, reckless buddy managed to make it back alive.


^I remember that thread!


Yep. That one got fairly divisive.

Suffice to say, it's now a funny memory we bring up anytime someone new comes to the table.


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James Martin wrote:

The best lessons I've learned are:

- Always give each player a chance to feel like a hero. Set aside a moment each game for them to feel like they're something special. Never forget them. If you do this, they'll forgive you a lot of stumbles.
- Always admit your mistakes. Be open, apologize if necessary and ask your players' advice and input. It goes a long way.
- Before you start a game, always ask the players what they're looking for out of the game. What's fun to you might not be fun to them.
- When everything goes wrong, let it. Some of the most memorable moments from games I've run came right after I lost control of the plot and just went with the flow.
- You don't have to have a game planned out to the end; you just have to be a page in front of the players. In fact, I find I work much better when I come to the game with a starting point and let the flow build itself and see where the players take it.
- Never be afraid to pull numbers out of your rectum. "Roll a d20 for me. Add a +2 to that roll. Good idea, roll a perception check with a +5 bonus." Or, if you don't know the AC of a specific creature, make one up. Just never make them terribly high or terribly low unless there's a good reason for it.
- You're there to have fun. When it stops being fun, take a break. Everyone will thank you for it later.
- When in doubt, take a deep breath and smile. It throws the players for a loop and their pause will give you time to figure out what to do next.

Some of the best advice I've seen. James is dead on.

I'll add a quick bit of wisdom and it's one I have a very hard time following.

Let players come to their own conclusions. Never give unsolicited advice. :)

Sovereign Court

You know, my mom yells your screen name every time she swats a bug. She read the Hobbit and the Chronicles of Narnia to us when we were kids. Her favorite video games are StarCraft and Dragon Age. All her RPG characters are dwarf fighters. She's the main football fan in our family, and she personally stared down a wife beater and child abuser and chased him off his own property when he came after the kids again while my dad took the wife to the police to help her report him.

My mom is pretty darned cool.

...

Ahem! Topic!

My biggest mistake was to forget a large component of damage when I had an assassin attack a character. This led the player to underestimate the danger his character was in, and when I remembered to use the full damage the second round, he died. I gave the party a round to stabilize him at -Con,because it was my fault he misjudged how bad the situation was. I had to fess up the whole mess up to the group. Some gave me a lot of grief for my decision, but I don't want to kill a player's character because of my screwup. If the dice are against you or you do something dangerous, whatever, but it's not fair if a GM's mess up kills you, in my opinion.

:)

But mostly I just wanted an excuse to talk about how awesome my mom was. Thanks, Muad'Dib.


Jess Door wrote:

You know, my mom yells your screen name every time she swats a bug. She read the Hobbit and the Chronicles of Narnia to us when we were kids. Her favorite video games are StarCraft and Dragon Age. All her RPG characters are dwarf fighters. She's the main football fan in our family, and she personally stared down a wife beater and child abuser and chased him off his own property when he came after the kids again while my dad took the wife to the police to help her report him.

My mom is pretty darned cool.

She certainly does sound cool. What a great digression. :)

-MD

Shadow Lodge

Having too many players.

6 players is the typical "maximum", but I think even that's too many for both regular campaigns and PFS.

In regular campaigns, you need the same 7 people (including yourself) to be available every week/fortnight for that game, and aligning schedules is a pain. Even in the game, not everyone is able to take the spotlight (even in the longterm).

In PFS, again, not everyone is able to take the spotlight. That can be good sometimes, like when newer players who are still getting to grips with the game are tagging along, and class variation in the party exists, so this helps to make up for it.

I think the ideal number of players in a party is 3; 4 pushes it.

Shadow Lodge

Ooof, that's the truth. Five is the max I prefer, six in a pinch.


Ellis Mirari wrote:

I once killed (but then deus-ex-machina'd back to life) a PC that I was frustrated at for making a choice that MAY have killed him, but would not have CERTAINLY killed him.

Long story short: The fight with zombie pirates at sea was over, this guy decided to run onto the sinking ship in order to "loot it", while the rest of the party was safely aboard their own ship telling him to come back.

I based my decision on a mis-remembered Mythbusters episode about sinking ships and killed him, when it was entirely plausible he could have made it out alive, albeit it would have taken another 30 minutes or so of roleplaying most likely.

Ultimately, I brought him back, but the rest of the party still thought he was dead, and the player-in-question brought in a new character for awhile that turned on everyone else at the end of the session, just before their old, reckless buddy managed to make it back alive.

I remember this one. It is entirely fine they died.


Six is the best number, seven plus is getting un-wieldy - the loss of one player to other commitments is not such a blow and it gives a greater degree of freedom for people that want to try less than optimised characters. Less than six means the party has weaknesses and there is less scope for playersto experiment.


I never go above 5, except in rare cases where we do a one-shot and everyone is very experienced. In addition to large parties slowing down the progress of the game, there's a higher chance of party members being absent, which can be rife with problems.

My policy for that is handling levels based on attendance: every 2-3 sessions you attend, you gain a level. If you repeatedly miss sessions, you will be further and further behind.

Silver Crusade

I DM with Eight currently. Fortunately, my total nigh disregard for CR, WBL and 'appropriate encounter designs' (they're guidelines, not rules) let me develop encounters for them.

My biggest mistakes. Man..

Not having sufficient control over the 'rules' people started bringing into a game and then "misinterpreting." From this sprang my 'Dead Tree on the Can' rule where nobody can use anything unless I have my own physical copy of it that I can check stuff while in the can.

Failing to deal with problems in the group. Apparently a duty of the DM is armchair conflict resolution and diplomat, which I admit is not a fun job, and one I try to shirk.

Utilizing the Middle Earth fumble charts until I bought the paizo fumble deck.. Alright no, I don't feel guilty about that one, muahahaha.

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