2004 in-game regret

[RodneyThompson]

I'm probably going to offend someone with this one (i.e. a fellow writer), but I have to say it anyways.

My biggest regret of 2004 is as a DM. I've been running the Shackled City adventure path from Dungeon (which seems to be all I ever talk about anymore, oh well). My biggest regret is running The Demonskar Legacy unmodified.

Spoilers for The Demonskar Legacy, ho!







My players are among the most pop-culture attuned people in the world. Every gaming session is like a Kevin Smith or Quentin Tarantino movie -- Simpsons quotes, old commercial references, you name it. Everyone in the group is a pop culture junkie. We're geeks, it's what we do. So when my players are told of a giant, circular planar portal called the Starry Mirror, immediately the Stargate references begin. Since most of my players know I write for the Stargate RPG, things quickly degenerate into a good-natured ribbing about my adventure design skills (since I intersperse my own sidequests with the adventures in the path, they never know what is mine and what is written by someone else). OK, so, my players give me a hard time about that, and this pulls them out of the game world. It breaks the spell, so to speak, of having everyone thinking and speaking and acting in character, which disrupts the flow of the game.

Twenty minutes later, I introduce another group that is part of the module. The Chisel is an underground association of merchants with extensive connections and secret society-like rituals. Sound familiar? Stonemasons. Chisel. Stonemasons. Chisel. It's too much for my players, and we had to stop the session for almost 20 minutes while they made jokes and groaned at the poor coverup of a bogarted concept.

I mean no disrespect to the author of the module. Any other group probably wouldn't have thought anything of it. But my group...well, it just goes to show you that the DM must know his players as well as he knows the rules. From now on I'm scouring each adventure to be sure and keep everything believable and keep from breaking the fourth wall.

 

[Blue_Kryptonite]

As a Player... Um... Those are those guys that wreck my stories, right?
Seriously, that I didn't get to be, again, this year. In three decades, I've been a player in less than ten campaigns, none longer than four sessions, and often years apart.

As a DM, its the crawling horde of flesh-hungry zombie babies. Bad call on my part.

 

[Morpheus]

As a DM-The constant shuffling in and out of players in our group. I wish I had done a better job of recruiting.
Funniest screw-up by my players-The 1st-level battle sorcerer yelling, "Follow me!" as he chases some goblins that had ambushed the party. He runs, turns the corner, and is hit by 3 javelins from the 5 goblins hidden around the corner (he survived). Curiously enough, no one had followed him...

 

[Arkham]

Pushing that big red candy-like button.
I knew it was trapped, as a player. It just screamed TRAPTRAPTRAP.
My character, the very wise Dwarf fighter/cleric wouldn't have pushed it.
But I know that I, as a DM hate when the players don't trigger the trap. I mean, where is the fun in avoiding all the calamity and not even _knowing_ what could happen.
So I pushed it.
Set off the trap.
Got my hand caught, got scorpions dropped on my head and the exit locked while the walls started to close in.
But we survived, and it was fun.

But I still catch flack for it. So I guess I regret it.

But it was fun... :-D

 

[exile]

General
1.) Not being able to play/DM/GM during November or December (curse work/real life)
2.) Not DM/GMing more than I catually did

Player
1.) Few if any regrets...My cleric of Talona might have went a bit far when he raised the half-orc barbarian from the dead only to strike him in the face (almost killing him all over again) when the ingrate refused to accept Talona as his goddess and savior; the rest of the party didn't take that so well (but hey, we're one of the most neutral to evil, dysfunctional, mercenary parties I have ever been part of).

DM
1.) There was a goblin lair that included a cave with a giant spider. The party was so beat up from facing goblins, that I allowed them to kill said spider with arrows (from the entrance of its cavern) with no threat to themselves. I should have let teh spider lurk around a corner, anxiously awaiting their entrance.

Chad

 

[cmanos]

as a DM I made a situation where the characters were under no circumstances to get an item. It was going to be a feature of a later game. Unfortunately, I was so blinded by the fact that I didn't want them to get it, I didn't think of what would happen if they DID get it. In not letting them get it, I frustrated them to no end, and in turn they frustrated me enough that I stopped the campaign.

 

[ThoughtBubble]

Good stuff here.

Let's see....
As a DM, my biggest regret (Aside from having almost no sessions the last 3 months) is that last spycraft game we played. So, I suck at having guys be tortured for information, and they suck at torturing. What resulted was 40 minutes of out of game time spanning 4 hours of in game time (where the person being questioned was being waited on back at his base), with questions like:
"So, how is that new occupation treating you?"
"What the heck are you talking about?"
*PUNCH*
"Do you like your new job?"
"It's alright."
*PUNCH*
"Now, why don't you give me some information?"
"Well... It's saturday."
*WHANG* (the sound of a led box hitting the captive in the head, bringing him to -8 hp, and effectively ending the questioning)

That pretty much killed the evening.

As a player? Watching one of the games I quit the year previous fold upon itself and die, and hearing about the other one struggle. Or maybe just not getting to play in any games all year.

As a gamer in general? Trying to talk to some individuals about problems they bring to the gaming table, and expectations involved in games.

 

[Corsair]

As a player: When I suggested to the hound archon NPC that he should just teleport away with our heaviest loot and teleport back, not realizing the area we were in not only prevented teleports, but caused them to be shunted to a special place in the dungeon. This hound archon (who my character had the hots for) was then summarily sacraficed to summon a demon to the prime. Needless to say, my loremistress is now an emotional wreck.

As a DM: Writing out a big complicated series of machincations and behind the scenes info for my Eberron game which the players will never find out about.

 

[Kilroy]

As a DM: Cancelling my game after the 5th week of multiple players not being able to make it.

As a player: Breaking my groups newbie guest DM while the real DM was taking a break.

(Nothing says fun like Chained Empowered Sonic Chain Lightning.)

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

As a GM: Running a game with D&D magic. Yes, this is a broken record. Yes, it was a fun campaign. Yes, D&D magic is annoyingly complex and takes too long to look up.
Also, letting concerns about 'getting the world right' delay, delay, delay the start of my Ivalice campaign.

As a player: Not paying attention to what it meant when the GM asked about my Tactical Aid provoking an Attack of Opportunity. I don't lose many characters in a high lethality game, and that momentary loss of concentration, coupled with the lack of a map and minis at that point in the session, got one killed.