GMing Mistakes You’ve Made in the Past

[Li Shenron]

If you play to really play an RPG.....it just about never works. Most of the time there are a LOT of relationship problems going on, and this causes the "want" or "demand" for the couple to be Stuck Like Glue.

Roughly 100% of the time the SO is not a gamer and just does not care about the game.

Ah yes the "common sense statistics", I suppose?

I gamed with plenty of couples where both of them were gamers, or where the invited SO wasn't a gamer but was still totally OK to play with the others for a session or more. In fact, in the last few years I have been almost always gamed with my own SO and with other couples of friends, and their kids. The only time I had someone whine at the table that they were bored and wanted to go home, it was one of their kids, and understandably so since he couldn't really play in English and was missing most of what was going on.

 

[Li Shenron]

Tell us about something you used to do that you have since determined was wrong/dissatisfying/mistaken.

How did you come to this realization?

What steps did you take to improve?

How have things gone since?

There is probably many more than these, but at least what comes to mind:


1) I used to grant individual XP based on personal player's performance (both in tactics/ideas and roleplay)

- I realized this was wrong pretty quickly as one of the players in my first campaign was much better than the others and I would always give additional XP to the same person, then felt I should give to others to compensate even if they weren't doing anything special; some players also tried too hard to roleplay only to get bonus XP, with terrible results

- I just ditched the whole idea quickly, and give everyone the same XP

- XP just feel more fair if shared equally without DM's judgement


2) I used to let PCs die without considering the consequences

- I realized this during a conversation in the first session at someone else's game, when a player asked if they could have their PC protected from permanent death, as the player was going through some difficult times mentally and was afraid of their own reaction if their PC had suddenly died after playing it for a long time; I had never considered the issue before

- I first just tried to make PC death less probable with house rules, but it doesn't solve the problem and can make the game feel too easy; eventually I just decided I wouldn't let any PC die permanently without player's approval, and figure out other sorts of penalties instead of death

- less stress for everyone


3) I used to create lots of house rules (in the sense of actual in-game rules modifications and additions)

- I realized I was forgetting some of my own house rules in our 3.0 game, which in fact had grown quite significantly and required time to be explained before starting a game with a new group; eventually I also realized house rules don't really make the game better, very few of your players care for them, and some of your players might even hate them

- next edition I DMed (5.0) I started off purposefully trying to avoid house rules

- since the beginning, I gradually added a few personal adjudication methods that someone might call house rules but in my mind they are just applications of "rule 0" or otherwise creating boundaries around certain abilities, otherwise I haven't felt the need to make changes to the game


4) I used to carefully explain the game and its rules to beginners in "session 0"

- I had someone never make it to "session 1" probably because we haven't really played anything in "session 0", the whole time of which was spent explaining rules, describing the fantasy world, or creating characters

- I tried to start playing the game on the first evening without explaining any rule until needed

- since then, I pretty much stopped having a "session 0" at all, and I just have everyone start playing very quickly


5) I used to do "top-down" worldbuilding

- I realized it was fun only for me, but most of it is irrelevant for the players, and only requires more work to adapt published adventures

- I started running published adventures as-is and make them determine the settings instead of viceversa; I started allowing players to choose freely their PC's background material (such as deity, region of origin, or memberships and affiliations) instead of picking from a predefined list, and then whatever they choose exists

- if the campaign is short, the fantasy settings matters little; if the campaign turns out to be long, the setting builds itself "bottom-up"

 

[aco175]

- since then, I pretty much stopped having a "session 0" at all, and I just have everyone start playing very quickly

I cannot recall having session 0 either. Granted I play with the same people for a while and just tell them to bring a new PC to the start of the campaign. We might spend 10 minutes going over characters and background and a rule of two that are in or out this campaign, but everyone wants to get into playing.

I have been starting each campaign with a combat since 5e started with Lost Mines of Phandelver (LMoP). It lets the players see how things work with the party and gets things rolling rather fast. The last box set, Stormwreck Isle started the same way, but with the option to run behind the walls to safety.

 

[Clint_L]

Oh geez...how long do you have? I could write a pretty comprehensive list - if there's a way that a GM can screw up, I've probably done it.

One I regret to this day is kind of vetoing a player's character concept, which involved wearing a super creepy mask all the time, everywhere (there player had good reasons why they wanted their character to where this mask). I told them it was fine, but to expect weird and hostile reactions from almost everyone they met, which could make interactions difficult. I was thinking in terms of "realism," like how a shopkeeper might react to a scary mask guy IRL. The player, discouraged, changed their character concept.

This was dumb, dumb, dumb of me. It was a fantasy setting, not real life, and I should have just rolled with it and tweaked my world concept so that sure, nobody gives a fig about your character's mask - you do you!

Honestly, I'm sure I could think of ways that I have screwed up every single time I've GMed, but on the other hand...it's okay to be wrong. As long as I learn a lesson, so I can find a new way to screw up next time.

 

[bloodtide]

Ah yes the "common sense statistics", I suppose?

I gamed with plenty of couples where both of them were gamers, or where the invited SO wasn't a gamer but was still totally OK to play with the others for a session or more. In fact, in the last few years I have been almost always gamed with my own SO and with other couples of friends, and their kids. The only time I had someone whine at the table that they were bored and wanted to go home, it was one of their kids, and understandably so since he couldn't really play in English and was missing most of what was going on.

I'm sure it can happen.....but why take the risk?

It's a huge red flag when someone just shows up on game day and they are like "oh...my wife is here can she play? Yuck Yuck Yuck". And unless this was decided (or demanded) by the wife like a second ago.....why did the player not ask before the game? If this was the players Big Plan....why not make her a character AND explain the game to her BEFORE game day?

But, no, goofy player will just saw up "Oh, my wife must play...lets waste hours making her a character and explain the game to her just so she can whine and force me to go home!"

Though, like I said, if you have a friendly casual game, you might not even notice as you just "hang out" around the game books and have a good relaxing time.

 

[Voadam]

Another one:

Letting girlfriends or boyfriend or husbands or wives play the game.

This sounds good....if your playing a board game. Or if your playing an RPG just like a simple board game. Or if your RPG will just be a casual fun time.

If you play to really play an RPG.....it just about never works. Most of the time there are a LOT of relationship problems going on, and this causes the "want" or "demand" for the couple to be Stuck Like Glue.

Roughly 100% of the time the SO is not a gamer and just does not care about the game. They might try and play a bit....like they would a board game....but mostly they will just sit there.

Worse, they will be a huge distraction....as they get bored sitting there and then disrupt the game with a story, joke or "watch this You Tube video".

And there is a better then zero chance that as soon as they "are not having fun" they will whine they they want to go home and they will take the player with them....

So....better to just say "no sos"

Just shows that experiences differ dramatically.

I've been in multiple long term game groups and ongoing campaigns that included spousal couples in the regular group and never encountered such problems or issues including at one point my now decades long face to face group being majority spousal couples when two of the players wed making it four married to players to three in the game group with either no SO or spouse interested in gaming and leaving it to our separate social activity.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I’m curious to hear about the lessons people have learned along the way as GMs.

Tell us about something you used to do that you have since determined was wrong/dissatisfying/mistaken.

How did you come to this realization?

What steps did you take to improve?

How have things gone since?

I think my biggest mistakes have been:

1) Not putting my foot down about unsuitable characters in Cyberpunk 2020 and Shadowrun in the 1990s, and failing to properly call out and stop actual, honest-god munchkin behaviour from one player (i.e. repeatedly derailing the game to show off his only-arguably-rules-legal character, to the detriment of everyone else). We had an issue in both games where often 1-2 players would make characters who were basically not going to work well with the rest of the group, either because they were:

a) Incredibly over-optimized compared to the rest of the group to the point where they could basically "solo" the missions (that's not why solos are called solos, dude!)

b) The exact opposite of that - completely worthless in any kind of actual "run", even though they were supposedly edgerunners/shadowrunners. Can't fight, can't sneak, can't hack, no engineering skills, unspectacular driver, why would your character actually be hired to go on the mission?

c) Had personalities which were just incredibly unsuitable - i.e. total loners, raging psychopaths (I know, a classic of the cyberpunk genre but let's keep that for one-offs!), actual pacificists who are inexplicably paling around with guys fire guns designed to turn humans into a bloody mist, etc. etc.

We could have just a lot more fun if we'd just cut out those characters (by saying "No, rethink that" to the players), and right at the end of the 1990s, that's what I did, and in the games we played after that, we had a much better time.

2) Starting a completely abortive Mage: The Ascension game at university RPG club. This was mostly on me. There were already VtM and WtA groups (multiple of the former), but a lot of people didn't want to play those, they wanted to play Mage, but no-one wanted to be Storyteller. So I really foolishly offered to be the Storyteller for an MtA game with EIGHT players. Just absolutely dumb. Not only was I nowhere near as keen on MtA as most of the players, I didn't realize that I just didn't have the enthusiasm to run this campaign, and further, I should have said "No" to some of the players, like, limited it to 4-5 players absolute max (we could have drawn lots or something). I'd run AD&D for large groups, including relative strangers before, and I didn't really think through how MtA isn't AD&D.

If I'm being 100% real, I was doing it to look cool in front of girls.

Not a common reason for DMing a campaign, but there we are! There a number of girls at the RPG club and whilst it wasn't conscious, I know I was trying to look good and appear responsible and capable.

Anyway, I thought it'd be cool, but even session zero took like two long sessions, and I think we got maybe two sessions in beyond that before I just gave up entirely due to just not having any idea where to go with the campaign, and the fact that eight players is waaaaaaaaaaaay too many and I couldn't even given everyone a real opportunity to play. I actually just stopped going to the RPG club because I couldn't handle it. I felt really bad because all eight PCs were extremely cool, and had great and unusual ideas behind them (I particularly remember the Hassidic guy who has a really cool Celestial Chorus mage).

What did I learn?

a) Don't run RPGs you aren't really into.

b) Make sure you have the right number of players for an RPG, and be willing to come up with ways to cut numbers if you have to.

c) Don't do things just to impress the gender(s) you're into.

Okay I totally failed to learn (c) but I should have learned it!

So....better to just say "no sos"

Wow, my experience is the exact opposite. SOs have been huge assets to the group so long as they actually enjoy TTRPGs.

That's what the problem is that you're describing, really - making people play who don't like TTRPGs - and that applies to people well beyond SOs. But that's easy enough to deal with - if they've never played RPGs before, run a session that you explain is a "taster" session with say, just them and their SO, and you'll quickly see if they're actually interested.

I have seen the problems you're describing, but always with people's non-romantic friends who are supposedly "gamers" (ugh) but aren't actually into TTRPGs (I've also seen such friends be super-cool too of course).

 

[payn]

Its interesting how this is trending towards, "my mistake is not anticipating others mistakes"

 

[Campbell]

I think the biggest thing for me was being more selective about both the games I would run and who I would run them for. Early on I run games that I thought people wanted to play in the way I thought they wanted to play them and like largely recruited from tabletop RPG meetups and game stores. But I basically lacked passion for it, struggled to put in the prep, struggled to motivate myself to run games. Almost quit the hobby for a minute - actually sort of did while I was in the Army.

Then one day I just decided I would just run the games I wanted to with friends from my anime club, some of the people I went to art school with and some of the people I know just like the same things I like creatively. Then found a group for people who wanted to do a bunch of one shots of different non-D&D games and kind of found my people.

 

[Ath'kethin]

Like many of us, I've been GMing so long it would be shorter to list the mistakes I HAVEN'T made.

The one that comes to mind though is from a very early campaign I ran - one of the first if not THE first - back in 1995 or so; this would be AD&D 2nd Edition. The party came acoss a cache of elven weapons, and I decided that it made sense for elven weapons to have grown more powerful over time. And that's how a party of low level characters ended up with swords and axes and whatnot randing from +3 to +6 in enchantment, plus armor and various other miscellaneous magicks.

Combat got much easier for them after that, to say the least.