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Message: <blockquote data-quote="hawkeyefan" data-source="post: 8274963" data-attributes="member: 6785785">My last session of 5E D&D was mostly good, but there did come a point where the the PCs were in a situation that basically relied on skill checks, and the entire game ground to a halt.The GM is overall a good GM. We’ve been rotating GMs because I’ve been the persistent GM for everything but the occasional short game, so I asked my group ifI could get to play more. So it’s been this GM’s turn for the last four sessions. He’s maybe a bit rusty, but overall solid.  But last week, after some combat with some sahaughin (or however the hell you spell that) our PCs were pursuing some Dagon worshippers who had kidnapped some townfolk, including one of our friends. We entered their underground lair after beating the sahag...sauhag...fish people, the stakes were high, we had momentum....and then the game ground to a halt. The lair was kind of a maze. We’re playing over Discord, theater of the mind, so no maps or visuals. He seemed to have a loose idea of using skills for us to navigate the maze. And our dice went cold. We failed the first few checks, and I could tell he then struggled with how to proceed. He eventually just skipped ahead and put us in a weaker position upon arrival, basically ruling that our failed checks meant we arrived later and the bad guys had more time to prepare. And that was fine, in my opinion.We played out the rest of the session (another combat with a cool environmental danger) and it all went well. After, he apologized for the part in the maze. And while I think he ultimately handled it fine....I respect when a GM realizes something’s not quite working and adapts...I knew he was hoping for something more engaging. And although I think there are several factors at play....his rustiness, possible lack of preparation, mazes being problematic in any game, our cold dice....I think a big part of it is simply the lack of structured rules and processes for this kind of stuff.Now, I know many GMs here could rip this example apart. They could offer amazing advice on how to structure the scene and make it compelling and all that. They have years, no...decades of experience. I just think it’d be better if the books offered that advice and people were able to learn this stuff without the years and years of trial and error that so many others had to spend.</blockquote>

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