GMing Mistakes You’ve Made in the Past

James Gasik said:

At this point my friend busts up laughing, and pointed out something I'd managed to miss entirely. The coffee table had a glass top. With the lighting conditions in the room, it reflected the reverse side of the cards as I put them on the table. The players with the better memories and eyesight were able to recall where the good cards were!

I felt like such a fool!

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Yeah, fool for trusting your players to handle things in good faith rather than take advantage of your mistake. You may look back on this as being a bit cringey, but your players were the ones who were dicks.

hawkeyefan said:

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?

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The biggest mistakes that I've made in my GMing is letting terrible players into the games I run. Not just terrible players, but terrible people as well. Real bad seeds. You know the type I'm talking about?

Beyond that, one thing that I used to do wrong that I've fixed now is that I used to call PCs by their actual names. That was terrible and stupid and bad. So I've stopped doing that. Games are typically better if you just call PCs whatever the hell name you feel like in any given moment. Bonus points for calling one PC the name of another PC. Marked improvement on play.

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More seriously:

* When running map & key crawl type games, the first thing I think about when I'm generating the crawl is spatial dimension, in particular multiple ingress and egress points for most every room. It is infinitely easier to work out the rest of the details after you've nailed down a functional scheme of multivariate ingress/egress and connectivity relationships within the architecture. The theming, stocking, etc should be worked out after that.

* When a game possesses a Twist/Success w/ Complication or Cost scheme in action resolution, developing a good shorthand (either cognitive or physical) that indexes the needs of the game in question.

* Don't let perfect be the enemy of good. Obsessing over the perfect anything in gaming (whether it prep or in-situ exection) makes for either stifled play or unsatisfactory experience of play. You're going to have moments, sequences, sessions where you weren't at your best. Its ok. If you freak out about it or obsess over it, guess what? You're going to actually increase the frequency and magnitude of those less-than-stellar moments. You don't need to reduce your expectations for play. You need to reduce your unrealistic expectations for play.

Those are three ways I've improved my GMing execution or experience.

Don't pronounce "brazier" as "brassiere."

All kidding aside, I once had a PC die near the beginning of a session. While the character's demise was due to bad luck on the dice, my mistake was not finding something for the player to do for the rest of the evening (since the party was too low to resurrect their character), leaving him with nothing to do but sit there and not getting to participate.

After that, I've always had a handful of ideas for what to do if that happens again, ranging from the character spontaneously coming back as a non-evil sapient undead creature, to having him run a key NPC, to having them co-GM for the remainder of the session (after which we figure something else out, even if it's just them making a new character).

So many.....

1. Allowing anyone to play...though really letting anyone join any social activity. Once I would just say "everyone welcome". And have horrible times.

Soon I learned the actions of the gamers I did not like and even the key words that they use. And then filtered them out of my games.

2. Being Harsh. Once I was soft. Player Jack would be 2-3 hours late to every game...I'd say "okay-day best buddy". Phil would cheat constantly. Becky would steal things. Adam was always on his phone. and on and on.

Until I got harsh. Kicking these people out of my game, and often out of my life. It could be hard, but they made their choices.

3. Letting players lead the game. Wasting so much time just watching players just sit there are refuse to do anything....but being told to just sit back and they will be amazing. This almost never happens.

Until I took complete control of the game. Play the game, or go home.

bloodtide said:

Until I got harsh. Killing these people out of my game, and often out of my life. It could be hard, but they made their choices.

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It's gotten a little darker in here

Theory of Games said:

It's gotten a little darker in here

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People often forget what an important cultural phenomenon Dexter was...

Over the course of my RPG career I've made all the mistakes a GM could make...
I feel though in the last few years I've had a slow but gradual turning point and that's due to really listening to the advice by players (on this very forum and youtube) that have studied the art and theory of GMing.

I think the best hurdle I've overcome is to share in the responsibility of the campaign. As a Trad GM you can still prep, tinker and secret backstory as much as you want but when you invite players to participate in adhoc rulings, in fleshing fiction and you each become fans of each other's creations you build a much better play experience overall.

Bedrockgames said:

Not remembering to write down an NPC had died

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That could be an awesome opportunity for a story arc. Having a dead NPC inexplicably make an inexplicable return offers so many chances for the players to get hooked on figuring out what's going on, especially in a setting where resurrection just isn't a thing that happens, at least not for someone like the NPC. Was their death an illusion or hallucination or some kind of elaborate deceit? Did they actually die and somehow return, and if so how did they do it and who helped it happen? Is the "revived" NPC even who they appear to, or some kind of imposter? If confronted about their death, how do they react? How does the rest of world react to this revenant, and to the people (possibly the PCs) who claimed that NPC was dead for certain? Assuming they were buried, what lies in the NPC's grave now?

Sure, it was a mistake, but that's the kind of mistake you can really work with.

I've made quite a few in my time but I have learned from my mistakes and grown from them.

I think one of the most notable involves not communicating with the players about how far some raiders had escaped in an infamous session of Cyborg Commando, which ended with the raiders being experimented on before expiring.

Early mistake, waiting for an appropriate moment before letting a new PC or a replacement PC enter the game and the flow of the game situation not presenting one. I felt really bad about having someone sit around for hours as the group kept not getting to a meetup place.

I have since made it a priority to improvise an appropriate opportunity ASAP even if the group is in the middle of a dungeon or whatever.

The last new PC introduced was just as the group was going to face a BBEG so the new PC was a prisoner hanging from chains being tortured by the BBEG with his magic weapon on the table.

The party figured out new ally immediately and got him out of the chains and in the fight round one. If they hadn’t I was going to give him the opportunity to break out as his actions so he could be working on doing stuff from round one even if it took him a little to get free.

Better to be struggling in the scene than to be waiting to join the scene at all.