A lot of DMs use these messageboards to talk about the problems they are facing in their games or different strategies they can use to make the PCs lives easier or harder. A few recent threads have made me wonder what makes a bad DM?
I'll start by telling you a few things that I have done in my past that have been bad DMing:
In the early days I used to railroad my players into decisions. If they didn't go in a particular direction or do something I liked I would force them into changing to suit me. If I created a gate that needed a specific magical key to open they would need that key and everything else they tried would inevitably fail. Now that was bad DMing!
I sometimes used to disallow rules or classes or races because I didn't like them. Some people might disagree with me, but unless you have a very good "in game" reason for doing it, this is bad DMing.
Recently (in my COC campaign), I focused on one group of PCs over another. This was a timing thing more than anything else, but it made me think about DMs who play favorites. It happens, and it's more bad DMing.
I used to think that because it was my game the opinions or criticisms of others were bullshit. I had to be right. Some of the my players are STILL like this when they DM (which is why I'm the main DM). A DM who can't take criticism or opinions about his or her game is a bad DM.
Now that last comment is really going to get up some peoples noses.
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A lot of the things mentioned above are good points about what makes a bad DM. The most important one, in my opinion, is the whole playing favorites thing. My original DM always played favorites with his girlfriends - it was very annoying.
The few times I've DM'd in the past I was guilty of the whole rail-roading plot thing. Hopefully, if I ever get the opportunity to DM again I can overcome that particular bad habit.
I think the important things to remember are that nobody is perfect, this is a game, and everyone is (hopefully) just there to have fun.
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I used to make npcs that hogged the spotlight when I was young. That was flat out bad.
Pretty much everything else that I have changed about the way I DM is more a question of style and preference change. YMMV
I have had many DMs who created a story and would not let us veer from it. I have frequently found myself in gaming situations wherein I was so desperate to change something that I had my character take extremely risky/suicidal chances to have an impact on the story. Frequently I would try things and tell myself 'either my character will die, or I'll beat the evil mastermind." Almost invariably, I would fail, and yet survive.
I think that this is terrible, not only because it steals the players' choices, but it steals their victories as well. How satisfying is it to beat the BBEG when you can't help but think that you only won because this was the point in the story at which the DM decided you would win?
These are the two main things I would tell any DM not to do. Don't make your npcs better than the PCs. Don't cheapen your PCs' victories by predetermining when and how everything will happen.
If you have players who are taking bigger and bigger risks to derail your plot, then you need to look at whether you are giving them any real choices in the game.
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Some signs of bad DM'ing:
(1) Running every session without a plan, making things up as you go along. I am not referring to DM's who's style is to leave the game open-ended but ones that simply can't tell any sort of story and who forget what happens session to session; everything becomes arbitrary after a while.
(2) Being ignorant of the basic rules of the game and their relationship to one another.
(3) Related to (2) above: making house rules or situational rulings that change core, expected mechanics or that lead to paradoxes when applied broadly.
(4) Placing obstacles in the way of player goals that far exceed the utility gained by obtaining the goal.
(5) Making mundane tasks difficult or risky without a good story reason
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A bad DM to me is also a person who decides that his perception of how reality works is how the rules should work in D&D. They will houserule and gimp and change anything in the game with the blanket statement of "It's more realistic this way!" and not understand that we are all trying to enjoy a FANTASY world! Not a real-life sim. It is OK to explain away how a several ton dragon can manage to stay airborne by saying "it's magic!" but a Rogue avoiding the blast of a fireball with his evasion is unrealistic.
BAD DM!!
A bad DM makes the game into another stresspoint in a person's already stressful life, when D&D should be a stress-release.
FH
A bad DM to me is also a person who decides that his perception of how reality works is how the rules should work in D&D.
I used to be guily of this.
One game session, a PC wandered off at night without his group - they were sleeping/camping in the wilderness. I had a random encounter chart and rolled up what is the equivelant in DnD to "outdoor" Drow. I decided that they must be waiting in ambush for travelors down the road the PC was on. I made a secret to hit roll and achieved the DnD equivelant to a critical hit. Essentially the character was killed in an ambuch by snipers. I informed the player he was dead and offered no explanation other than in reality, people get killed like this all the time and never knew what hit them. I told everyone else what happened when they encountered his stripped body hidden by the road.
As you might imagine, I lost a player that day. I hadn't even learned my lesson that day - it took some time to reflect on the decision I made and came to this conclusion:
This is a game; never let reality (or the rules in some cases) get in the way of having fun.
Let me add that I'm still far from perfect; I'm a student of the art who embraces constructive criticism.
One hangup that I grapple with as DM today is: Finding the right balance between the campaign I think is fun and the campaign that each player thinks is fun.
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Let me add that I'm still far from perfect; I'm a student of the art who embraces constructive criticism.
One hangup that I grapple with as DM today is: Finding the right balance between the campaign I think is fun and the campaign that each player thinks is fun.
For me, I find that if I come up with a game idea that I'm enthusiastic about, my players will like it. But then, I try to avoid all the bad DM pitfalls above.
So I run what I want to, but I don't railroad the story. I set up a scenario, I envision at least one solution, and I present it, and let the players deal with it. They are largely happy to have me run whatever, because if I'm enthusiastic, I'll make it fun. And I leave a lot of options open to them.
But maybe I just have a good group of players for my DMing style.
One problem I do struggle with is getting caught up in something new. My players were encouraging me at the end of our last session that once our current campaign takes a break or finishes, we should go back to the Eberron campaign that I ran a few years ago. But now I want to run the Savage Tide and Rise of the Runelords. Plus at some point I need to let my brother finish running Age of Worms. And my players also sometimes ask me to revive my all-goblin campaign. And we've had a few others that got left hanging as well, although they are far enough in the past that no one remembers them but me...
Frankly, there isn't enough time to run and play all the stuff I want to, and I'm often tempted to ditch what we are doing for something new. I like to have coherent campaigns with conclusions, and my players like that too, but it does get harder to put energy into my current game when I'm gung ho for something else.
Some of my players also play in another group where every once in a while they hit an overwhelming encounter and get a TPK. They have come to recognize that this means that their DM has bought some new thing he wants to run.
For me, I find that if I come up with a game idea that I'm enthusiastic about, my players will like it. But then, I try to avoid all the bad DM pitfalls above.
So I run what I want to, but I don't railroad the story. I set up a scenario, I envision at least one solution, and I present it, and let the players deal with it. They are largely happy to have me run whatever, because if I'm enthusiastic, I'll make it fun. And I leave a lot of options open to them.
I run my game like that too. I have an overarching storyline, but every player has plenty to do to advance their character's personality besides what is going on in the storyline (though in some cases its directly related to the storyline). The storyline is just a framework and malleable too as it is only a general outline beyond what I currently have written up. That way I don't work myself into a corner.
There has only been one point in the game where I somewhat railroaded the players. Very early on in the campaign, they thought about going back to the main city after finding a special item they needed to continue. I had plans for events that would happen in the city when they got back, but none of the plans were ready as I hadn't had a chance to clearly define them yet. My wife noticed my fleeting look of terror when they were deciding what to do and convinced the rest of the party to continue on the way I thought they would.
I also try to foreshadow later events in the storyline which occasionally leads me perilously close to railroading as my party sometimes has a tendency to metagame. For example I recently introduced an ancient tower in the city that has lit up like a beacon. It's a foreshadowing of something that will happen quite a ways down the road, but the party decided it must be their next adventure. I had a very nice, pat reason why they couldn't get into the tower now, but they were still bristling about it a bit. It is sometimes difficult to get them out of the habit of believing that every foreshadowing event or red herring is somehow campaign related. Hopefully I can break them of that soon. :)
Railroading, inconsistent rulings (ruling on one thing in one gaming session, then doing a 180 the next session), railroading, making the NPCs more important than the PCs, railroading, not listening to suggestions (don't have to take them, just listen to them objectively), railroading, the "because I can" syndrome, railroading, throwing high-level creatures and NPCs at you when you're low-level, railroading...
Did I mention railroading? I despise railroading - if you're not gonna let me play my character and let me affect the story, I might as well read a damn book.
Something that's a really good read is Treasure Table's Write Your Own Naughty List - a list of your weaknesses as a GM. Identifying your weaknesses is a way to start fixing them.
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In the early days I used to railroad my players into decisions. If they didn't go in a particular direction or do something I liked I would force them into changing to suit me. If I created a gate that needed a specific magical key to open they would need that key and everything else they tried would inevitably fail. Now that was bad DMing!
I used to do that.
Also, I used to do something I like to call 'dungeon packing'-- how much stuff you can fit in a dungeon without making it explode.
Seriously, I once used about half the Monster Manual on ONE DUNGEON. I also packed much of the 'Minor Wondrous Items' table into the same dungeon.
Also, I made the mistake of giving a Deck of Many Things to a third-level party. They ended up drawing all red cards. End. Of. Story.
Director of Sales
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I would add to this list:
Playing against the players. Providing the challenge and conducting the story is one thing, however if the DM is seeking to win, if he/she is actually disappointed when the characters succeed... At that point a re-examination of the whole point of the game
this is a game, and everyone is (hopefully) just there to have fun.
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Railroading -- oh, wait. That's already been said...
Couple of examples...
1) 2nd edition rules. Our group was having a disagreement with a merchant (think 2nd level expert) in a bar. We were around 5th level at the time. Our resident dwarf said something that upset the merchant/DM and the merchant cast time stop on the party from a ring of spell storing. What did the merchant do with this 9th level, one-time spell? He shaved the dwarf and put the beard in the dwarf's mouth and stuck around to see what would happen. While perhaps a little comical, the dwarf was not happy. The merchant ended up dying, but the ring was toasted (according to the DM) because while it is ok for a 2nd level commoner to have a time stop in a ring, 5th level adventurers can't be trusted with this much magic...
2) We were out in the middle of plains and we were being pursued by the enemy army. There was a river in our path.
"Are there any trees in this vast plain?"
"Yes."
"We work at cutting some down."
"You can't."
"Why not?"
"It's a copse of redwoods."
"So in the middle of these plains is a small copse of giant redwood trees that we didn't happen to see?"
"Right"
"We cut one down anyway."
"There is a druid standing in your way preventing you from doing so..."
Making stuff up that doesn't make sense just because your players are going a direction you weren't planning on is very poor dming.
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Skipped Details...
Guilty myself from time to time, but the worst case I can remember was in a game of Rifts a few years back.
The "new" GM was given roughly 6 weeks to prepare the adventure, after approving characters, and we sat down to nothing... that is no prepared adventure, no notes, no plan it seemed...
So we set out on our vampire hunt into the southern wilds, and are attacked, by of course vampires. Not really odd, there are a lot of vampires in that area of the rifts world... a whole lot...
But, since it was day time, and we had yet to cross the rio grande, we were still rather surprised, to say the least.
Turns out, the sun had set, and we managed to all blink simultaneouly while crossing the much enlarged river.
ooops... skipped a bit, did we?
Needless to say, the band of well equipped and prepared vampire hunters had it handed to us, something about stumbling into their territory, at night, cause we didn't no better...
sheesh
Oh, and I quoted "new" earlier, since it was his first time GMing Rifts, although he played/ran a lot of other palladium games. So he knew the system, and the setting...
Then again, he did have another problem... he had both problems holding his liqour. Wouldn't put it down while there was any in the bottle, couldn't keep it down once there wasn't. So I guess, bringing booze is another good way to be a bad DM
Yoko Ono, anyone?
About 10 years ago my DM suddenly declared that his girlfriend would be joining the campaign--a group of guys that had gamed together RELIGIOUSLY for over 8 years..
Said girlfriend tried desperately to learn the rules, but even with his tutoring couldn't do it and we spent most of combat trying to help her with her rolls and figure out THAC0, etc.
Suddenly everyone in the party was being targeted by the BBEGs and the minions....except for ..... one guess.
Yeah. Needless to say that campaign lasted exactly 3 more sessions before the splintering began.
Now, we all still game together....except for the DM and his (now) wife.
The cursed DM is one who doesn't want to improve his or her craft. Learning from mistakes, learning from your players, learning by playing with other DMs is invaluable. Every one can teach a bit about Dmng, some are better at how to do it right, others are better at how not to do it.
Fortunately, I'm perfect.
I think the important things to remember are that nobody is perfect...
Uhm... which one is real?!?!
Okay, time to actually contribute something.
I've been guilty of railroading, inconsistencies, etc., etc. But that's been covered, and there's still one thing that I have been particularly guilty of that I want to rail against and warn all DMs about.
Time warps!
The worst example of this was in AoW, 3FoE, when the ranger had been pounding Theldrick with arrows for about 5 rounds and I suddenly remember he had protection from arrows. So, back in time we went and re-calculated all that based on this "new" knowledge.
No, no, no! Bad me! BAD!
Just like in theater, if you make a mistake, you just have to go with it! They'll never know if you never let on. Yes, your precious BBEG might go down like a sac of bricks because you forgot he had/had drunk a certain potion, but too bad. No going back in time, ever, with one exception: saving a PC's life.
If it is discovered that a PC has died but shouldn't have, something should be done to remedy the situation. Perhaps the gods sense the injustice and set things right, perhaps you just say he was knocked to negative hp but stabalized immediately, or, if the party's already left the dungeon or whatever, he mysteriously awakes sometime later (most likely from the above reasons), and slowly straggles back to his comrades (this is also particularly good if it's been a while since the transgression; if the player already has a new PV, he gets to pick which one to keep). Still doesn't require a "time warp," but sometimes, there's no other option.
One thing that stands out making a bad dm is someone who gets upset when pc's kill his monsters, sheesh, as if it was a competition between the gm and the players, bad gm's think that if pc's kill their monsters and solve the puzzles that is a personal insult to them or something. I just dont get that at all.
One other bad gm trait is a gm who spends an inordinant amount of time playing with one player and ignores the rest or only develops one characters plot lines; sometimes you just feel like an extra in these games as the two buddies must think everyone else is there just to support that one character. Good way to invite pvp death if you ask me.
The worst experiences I've had with GMs have involved setting encounters which are way too hard for the PCs, hinting strongly that the players have to go through with them anyway, then fudging to keep the PCs alive. I could probably live with one of those three things, but the combination of all three is particularly awful. The players don't even get the satisfaction of showing the GM that yes, the encounter is too hard.
After a number of bad experiences with this I developed an evil player habit: if the scenario looks like it's too hard, I play to lose. I'm fighting with this now as it's really stupid, but I think an understandable reaction to too many "wins" in ridiculously difficult scenarios.
Mary
Sometimes the players fail, either because the encounter is too tough, poor rolls, or the players just behave foolishly.
I had a GM for an L5R game and a tpk occurred because of a combination of the three. Whatever, it's part of the game. Then the GM decided it was time too lecture us on everything we did wrong or could have done right. He seemed pretty pissed that we didn't do exactly what he thought was right to succeed. More upset than we were to lose our characters.
As a GM you have all the answers right there behind the screen. The players only have their set of stats and an idea of how the character would respond to events around them. Mistakes will be made, but there is hardly a reason to lecture a group of friends about a game. And there is no reason the GM should be angry with how a challenging encounter, that he set up, is handled by the players. The only way they could know that their plans aren't the best is if they get some advice in game. A lecture after the fact is only degrading.
I have done railroading. My apologies.
I have done ultrapowerful NPCs. Sometimes using them to help in railroading. Ouch.
I still occasionally throw in those powerful NPCs, but more like story elements, they have their own agendas to pursue instead of just stealing PCs' thunder. So if you see one in my game, be very afraid...
I have done inconsistent ruling. It happens but sorry.
I have done rulings based on game balance but I do try to inform my players about these beforehand (and several people I have played with also themselves stay away from more atrociously unbalanced rules) but that I don't consider being a bad DM.
Sometimes I slip into "vague" mode, giving little information, little details or explanations and nothing really happens unless the PCs initiate it. This I think is the worst offense I am still struggling with. "There is a corridor. What do you do?"
As far as good DMing goes, I can say I listen and welcome comments of players, they are always welcome to discuss and also suggest ways to resolve situations in most sensible way ("rule talk"), which I know some DMs don't allow...
Oh, I've definitely seen some bad DMing - frequently while I was the DM. Here's my advice on how to be a terrible Dungeon Master, and why you shouldn't.
1) Railroad your players. This is a terrible idea. Don't restrict your players to only doing what you want them to. Remember the fifth door rule: If you put your players in a room with four exits, be prepared for them finding or making a fifth, and adapt to that.
2) Try to beat your players. You should provide your players with a challenge, but playing with the intent of winning against them is bad. You need to get out of the player mindset.
3) Throw in your own tag-along characters. Again, a dungeon master needs to let his players do their own thing - you must remember that you're the Dungeon Master this time around, not the player. Giving the players too much help cheapens their victory.
4) Hand out too much loot. If you give out too much in the way of magic items, they lose their value.
5) Meddle with rules before you understand them. As a wise man once said, you need to know the rules so that you can know when and how to break them.
6) Fudge combat readily. The worst use of this is when you stage encounters that are too difficult, then fudge rolls blatantly to save from a TPK. Less awful but still a bad habit is refusing to let player characters die when something should rightly kill them, because this makes the game risk-free and boring. If you do fudge, your players should not know when you do, and should not be able to expect it.
7) Kill off peoples' characters without a fighting chance. 2nd edition rules for unescapable situations said that sometimes, your character is doomed and there's nothing they can do. 3ed rules for the same say you should at least give them a chance. It's poor form for a character to be killed outright by bad luck. On the other hand, if they're reckless AND unlucky, or stupid AND unlucky, they have only themselves to blame. Avoid insta-kill effects without at least a subtle warning.
8-10) Deck of Many Things, Sphere of Annihilation, Hand and Eye of Vecna. Don't.
A lecture after the fact is only degrading.
...and highly entertaining (for the DM).
One thing that stands out making a bad dm is someone who gets upset when pc's kill his monsters, sheesh, as if it was a competition between the gm and the players, bad gm's think that if pc's kill their monsters and solve the puzzles that is a personal insult to them or something. I just dont get that at all.
SOB ... My poor Dragon ... SOB ... I think I better go to my special place ... SOB.
*****
Man, I serously hate loosing Dragons! Its mitigated if the dragon ate one or two PCs before dieing, but I'm finding it tougher to keep the things alive in 3.5. I did not loose a single one through all of 2nd edition. Used to loose them by the dozen in 1st but it does not count if they are utterly wimpy and it did not bother me then.
8-10) Deck of Many Things, Sphere of Annihilation, Hand and Eye of Vecna. Don't.
The Head of Vecna, on the other hand, is fair game. ;)
Wow, I guess Mr. Drain will be rewriting a few things in a certain AP if he ever runs it . . .
I've seen a number of the above mistakes, and committed some of them.
I'm not sure I'd say it's an inviolable rule to run "DMPCs"--it's situational and you have to be careful with them, though. I run a one-on-one campaign with my son, and that usually involves him running two PCs and me running one to three DMPCs to fill out the party. I try to work things so that the PCs are the ones in the spotlight and the DMPCs are supporting cast, but I don't want the DMPCs to be bland golem-esque figures either. And sometimes, I use this method to allow bad guys to infiltrate the party . . . When there are more than two players, I'd minimize the use of DMPCs, though, except as a device for dealing with player absences. (Although I now find myself in a situation with a party of six PCs and three DMPCs of various sorts in a PBP game I'm running. Sometimes it takes a little bit of game time to invent plausible reasons for DMPCs to go away, once established, if you dislike deus ex machina).
Speaking of deus ex machina, well . . . the DMG warns you against this one, but old habits die hard.
A couple of DM no-nos I've discovered through my own errors and by being irritated with other DMs are:
1. Messing with the core rules. When you join a group, core rules are what you expect people to play by. One or two small house rule modifications can be learned and lived with, but it's annoying to join a group that's playing a wildly variant game--it throws your calculations of how to play your character tactically all off and often leads to situations where you thought something would have one effect but doesn't end up doing so. If this is a result of the player not knowing the rulebooks well enough, that's one thing, because player and DM can sit down and go over the pertinent rules after the game and one or both can be enlightened. Otherwise it ends up being, "well that's not how I play it, and I am the DM!" It's fine to make up your own supplementary rules (PrCs, etc. etc.) and to allow or disallow stuff from published supplements, but it's annoying if for example you make significant changes to the mechanics of combat or spellcasting as described in the PH.
2. Wasting too much time rolling dice, or allowing players to do so. (This kind of goes along with #1 above). I play with a group that has carried the 2nd edition rule of rolling inish every round into 3E, and it's driving me nuts--takes twice as long to do a combat because you have to stop every round and tally up who goes first. (Plus makes some of the combat and spellcasting rules not work as designed.) And then there is the thing of the fighter with iterative attacks rolling three or for attack rolls, damage rolls, and the extra d6 of energy damage for the flaming weapon all separately. That's 9-12 separate rolls that could easily be consolidated into three, and that takes up a lot of time.
3. I'm also starting to think it may be a bit of a bad idea to integrate a new player into a long-running campaign when the plot is already focused on the pre-existing PCs. It leads to a situation similar to the DM trying to teach his girlfriend to play the game by integrating her into his longstanding gaming group--some people are left out. There are probably ways around this, such as the DM working hard with the new player to brief him on story and setting and working with him to develop a backstory that weaves the new character into the ongoing quest. (On the DM's girlfriend problem--best to initiate your sweetheart into the game in a one-on-one campaign first, then bring her into group play if she enjoys it and when she's grasped the rules well enough so that she knows which dice to pick up when.)
4. This isn't a DM no-no so much as a DM suggestion--rely on your players to help you run the game better. Appoint your resident wannabe DM rules lawyer to help you look stuff up when a debate about the rules comes up. Encourage an experienced and mature player to act as party captain to help prompt the others to be ready on their initiative count and lead the party to a consensus when an important decision is called for. I.e. the game works better if you are more facilitator of story development than dictator of the gaming table.
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RPG Superstar 2011 Top 32
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Sometimes the players fail, either because the encounter is too tough, poor rolls, or the players just behave foolishly.
I had a GM for an L5R game and a tpk occurred because of a combination of the three. Whatever, it's part of the game. Then the GM decided it was time too lecture us on everything we did wrong or could have done right. He seemed pretty pissed that we didn't do exactly what he thought was right to succeed. More upset than we were to lose our characters.
As a GM you have all the answers right there behind the screen. The players only have their set of stats and an idea of how the character would respond to events around them. Mistakes will be made, but there is hardly a reason to lecture a group of friends about a game. And there is no reason the GM should be angry with how a challenging encounter, that he set up, is handled by the players. The only way they could know that their plans aren't the best is if they get some advice in game. A lecture after the fact is only degrading.
IMO, this is the worst "sin" a DM can commit. I have refused to play with people who regularly made a point of doing this. I came to play, not to be lectured on what I did wrong in a GAME. I assume my players feel the same.
If characters are foolish, they can die. That's one of the risks. Sometimes dice rolls don't go your way - it just makes it that much sweeter when they do. DO NOT lecture your players about how they could have solved your little riddle. This might also be the sign of a bad DM - one who has so carefully constructed a scenario that there is only one way of solving the problem. Essentially then, the game becomes an attempt by the PCs to read the DM's mind. There should be more than one way to skin a cat, as it were. Some ways are just going to be more effective and possible than others.
Unless a player comes to you in private and asks what he could have done to have avoided "X", do not lecture. Even when asked, give several opinions/options (and stress that they are just those) of what could have been done.
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RPG Superstar 2010 Top 32
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I haven't been Dm-ing for years and recently found a group and I'm DM-ing STAP. I'm so enthusiastic about it I've been guilty of ... not railroading exactly, but not reacting the same way when the players say they're doing something that's a bad idea.
Like, they wanted to question a jeweler and when he opened the door they saw he was a gnome. One of the players had a back story where he was looking for a gnome who'd robbed him. He assumed this was the guy and said that he was attacking him. Instead of just saying "Roll to hit" I said "What, seriously?" and the rest started to talk him out of it. He switched to non-lethal damage and we went on.
Oops. I mean, the story would have went differently afterwards but not disastrously. Or is it okay to hint like that?
I suppose if it felt wrong afterwards it was wrong - they're big boys now.
RPG Superstar 2013 Top 32
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Instead of just saying "Roll to hit" I said "What, seriously?" and the rest started to talk him out of it. He switched to non-lethal damage and we went on.
Oops. I mean, the story would have went differently afterwards but not disastrously. Or is it okay to hint like that?
I suppose if it felt wrong afterwards it was wrong - they're big boys now.
I don't really think of that as 'railroading.' What you did is exactly what I would have done in such a scenario. When players just start randomly attacking NPCs based on some hideously unlikely impulse, I usually make them take a moment by asking "Are you sure you want to do this?" I won't flat-out stop them, but I'll make them think twice (which is usually a hint that they might be trampling a plot point, but not always). I think what you did is fine. If your players just wanted to run around killing everything they came across, why would they ask you to run a game? You don't need a DM for senseless violence.
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One of my player's is currently pissed at me for killing his druid's animal companion. Somehow, in the space of 5 seconds, he forgot that I asked him 3 times, "Are you sure you want Raji to go swimming instead of riding in the boat with everyone else?"
Its not my fault there was a seven-headed hydra at the river. That's Richard's fault.
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RPG Superstar 2010 Top 32
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Thanks Fatespinner. Maybe it's just because it's been so long since I DM'd and I want to, y'know, run a tight ship and make a good impression with a new group.
I had second thought like "If I'd let it all go wrong this time they might not try and pull fast ones when it really matters :)"
I'll take a chill pill and then play rough in the caves under Parrot Island on Wednesday :)
I don't really think of that as 'railroading.' What you did is exactly what I would have done in such a scenario.
Likewise. Especially appropriate for a character with at least decent Wis stat (and GURPS even has an available advantage, Common Sense, for things like this :)).
Sometimes it is because of a plot point and sometimes it is just because it is rather stupid thing to do, isn't it?Then it is a question of the character if he follows the hint...I have seen and also played characters who are rather...impulsive, so they do things regardless of it being a bad idea (and sometimes the player points out that "I know this is a bad idea but this is what my character would do").
3. I'm also starting to think it may be a bit of a bad idea to integrate a new player into a long-running campaign when the plot is already focused on the pre-existing PCs.
And we ran couple of times to a problem that after you have messed the players up with those sneaky villain DMPCs the players don't trust any new characters. Which can bring interesting new dynamics in the group but usually is very disruptive...and at least one campaign ran into halt because of couple of established characters died or otherwise left the rest of the group and the remaining characters didn't trust anyone anymore...
And I agree on relying the players to help you. At least as long as you are not playing with kind of players who are always looking to squeeze unfair advantage from anything...
Found this post on Treasure Tables. Fun read.
A lot of DMs use these messageboards to talk about the problems they are facing in their games or different strategies they can use to make the PCs lives easier or harder. A few recent threads have made me wonder what makes a bad DM?
This reminds me that i need to address the place your rant here thread once again with my poor DM attributes list...Thanks Phil!
As ever,
ACE