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Biggest DM regret
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<blockquote data-quote="Blue" data-source="post: 7786006" data-attributes="member: 20564"><p>Biggest DM regret. Okay, I'm not going to reach back to when dinosaurs still covered the earth and I was a newbie DM, let me go for something that I should have known better.</p><p></p><p>I was running a long-running campaign in 3.0. (Total was about 5 years). I was light on giving out permanent magic items, and for some reason the high-Charisma sorcerer (who loved them in-character) ended up with the vast majority of them. Other players (but not characters) knew, and had no complaints.</p><p></p><p>Anyway, that player needed to take a several month break (birth of first child?) so with his permission I wrote him out. He ended up being captured, and rescuing him would end up going against a bunch of NPCs armed with all the magic items he collected to rescue him prior to his return - and would also have a bunch of additional ones so it would be a windfall for him and the party. </p><p></p><p>But unexpectedly in the middle of his break he was able to return for two sessions and then would be back out. So I worked up that who he was playing wasn't really him, it was an unknowing clone of him (that made sense in the plot but I don't remember why) that would break down soon. So his character returned - without any of magic items. So it looked like I just took them all away.</p><p></p><p>My regret was not bringing the player in on it and both (a) doing something cooler with the fact he was back and (b) leaving him thinking I took away all of his toys permanently. Instead I trying to keep the player firmer on the player side of the DM screen and missed out on making more fun and letting a player know it's all good.</p><p></p><p>I now try to run with player narrative a lot more, and invite them to conspire with me. Definitely leveled up my games.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Blue, post: 7786006, member: 20564"] Biggest DM regret. Okay, I'm not going to reach back to when dinosaurs still covered the earth and I was a newbie DM, let me go for something that I should have known better. I was running a long-running campaign in 3.0. (Total was about 5 years). I was light on giving out permanent magic items, and for some reason the high-Charisma sorcerer (who loved them in-character) ended up with the vast majority of them. Other players (but not characters) knew, and had no complaints. Anyway, that player needed to take a several month break (birth of first child?) so with his permission I wrote him out. He ended up being captured, and rescuing him would end up going against a bunch of NPCs armed with all the magic items he collected to rescue him prior to his return - and would also have a bunch of additional ones so it would be a windfall for him and the party. But unexpectedly in the middle of his break he was able to return for two sessions and then would be back out. So I worked up that who he was playing wasn't really him, it was an unknowing clone of him (that made sense in the plot but I don't remember why) that would break down soon. So his character returned - without any of magic items. So it looked like I just took them all away. My regret was not bringing the player in on it and both (a) doing something cooler with the fact he was back and (b) leaving him thinking I took away all of his toys permanently. Instead I trying to keep the player firmer on the player side of the DM screen and missed out on making more fun and letting a player know it's all good. I now try to run with player narrative a lot more, and invite them to conspire with me. Definitely leveled up my games. [/QUOTE]
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