Admit it. Who else did this?

[Mouseferatu]

I mentioned the following in the "Rate Keep on the Borderlands" thread:

Of course, I was a kid, and I ran it wrong. I didn't use the map; I just assumed that the encounter numbers represented the order in which the PCs came across the rooms.

I have to ask. Was I the only person to do this? Or did others of you, in your earliest childhood attempts at running modules, do the same thing?

(And for that matter, what other silly goofs did you make that seem blatantly obvious in retrospect, but were made under the excuse of youth? )

 

[Geron Raveneye]

Nah, luckily I had a lot of experience with all varieties of "Choose Your Own Path" fantasy adventure books before I started on roleplaying, be it the D&D booklets, the ones from Steve Jackson games, or the Silver Star series. As such, a module was not hard to get through.

 

[Gothic_Demon]

I used to play with floor tiles, and mapped out my entire first dungeon for the PCs in floor tiles on the table, so they knew exactly where they where, and I marked all the rooms with monsters, so they could find them easily. Sure enough, they skipped all the monsters and went for the treasure room!

 

[Eternalknight]

Nah, luckily I had a lot of experience with all varieties of "Choose Your Own Path" fantasy adventure books before I started on roleplaying, be it the D&D booklets, the ones from Steve Jackson games, or the Silver Star series. As such, a module was not hard to get through.

Took the words right out of my mouth!

 

[Spud]

I used to play with floor tiles, and mapped out my entire first dungeon for the PCs in floor tiles on the table, so they knew exactly where they where, and I marked all the rooms with monsters, so they could find them easily. Sure enough, they skipped all the monsters and went for the treasure room!

Ha, one of our DM's started using floor tiles, set the entire Dungeon up, but then put blue tack over where all the secret doors were... Id like to say we were all just starting but we'd been playing several years when this happened.

 

[Keeper of Secrets]

Hmmm. Of all the stupid things in my gaming past, that was actually NOT one of them, interestingly enough.

 

[Whisper72]

Hah... not myself, but a DM made a silly mistake. He thought it would be cool to tease the PC's with the following setup:

- a room filled with tons of magic items (about 60-80)
- the room is a sort of 'sensory deprivation room':
- you cannot see the items
- you cannot feel the items

The idea was to tease us: there are all these nice goodies, but you can't get them out, cuz you wouldn't know what/how to grasp them.

We went in with large sacks held open, and kept sorta 'vacuuming the whole room....

Oops.... oversight...

Lesson learned: don't assume you are smarter then your players. Just as there is such a thing as RBDM, there is also the RBPC!

 

[diaglo]

nope. must of just been you, Ari.


B1 came in my boxed set for Basic. my first purchased module.

but i had been making my own adventures for my OD&D set already.

 

[Quasqueton]

(And for that matter, what other silly goofs did you make that seem blatantly obvious in retrospect, but were made under the excuse of youth? )

I started with BD&D.

We thought giant rats were, well, *giant*; like the size of vans. We killed one and it blocked the hallway so we couldn't go further.

When our first PC died on the steps into Quasqueton (In Search of the Unknown), the DM rationalized that since a 2nd level cleric could heal 2-7 hit points (more than any of us had anyway) with a single spell, a 1st level cleric could raise a dead character with one hour of prayer. [1st level clerics couldn't cast spells in BD&D.]

We didn't know the purpose of a "silver dagger" (the only silver weapon listed in the book), so the DM said they automatically hit.

The ogre encounter in the Caves of Chaos did not mention any kind of weapon, so we thought he did 1d10 damage with his fists.

Quasqueton

 

[Quasqueton]

Lesson learned: don't assume you are smarter then your players.

Yep. I always work under the concept that my Players are smarter than me. I have many times created a "room" that I didn't know how to "solve", and figured the Players (4+ brains) could figure it out.

Ironically, if I make a "room" with the simplist "solution" (push the button), the Players spend half the game session trying to figure it out, and then somehow manage to TPK themselves.

Quasqueton