dm's, be honest: how often do you make mistakes?

[Desdichado]

1) A lot of that stuff, you can let the player's track.

2) The rest of that stuff, nobody will ever know about anyway.

3) Considering that my mistakes are often cooler than what I do intentionally, I encourage them.

 

[Iron Sky]

I rarely make mistakes, but some of the ones I have made were doosies.

For example, in the game my story hour covers, I misread a certain couple monsters(whose names won't be revealed on the off-chance that someone here is reading it) as summoning 1dx of creature A AND 1dx of creature B AND 2dx of creature C.

Those ANDs were supposed to be ORs... just a tiny, one-word misread that killed two characters...

Edit: killed two characters, not their players.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Mistakes in the encounter? Sometimes I forget entire plot points!
"Damn, If I had remembered this item in the treasure, the PCs would have gotten the clue!"
"Damn, I forget the scene with the Giant Guard!"
"Wait, wasn't this supposed to happen earlier?"

Of course, there also tons of minor stuff, too. "Oops, he should have taken ongoing damage this round." "Damn, this monster has Fast Healing 10, and I forgot to improve its hp the past 3 rounds!"

A comedy of errors, though sometimes I feel it is a tragedy of errors. "If I hadn't done this mistake, the adventure/encounter would have worked far better!"

I am such a bad DM...

 

[Ant]

Even though I voted "Comedy of errors" the truth is that, even though I make a lot of mistakes during a session, I give the impression I meant it all along. With a bit of practice and an air of confidence your players will rarely know the difference (and they won't care when they do).

 

[Slander]

I make a couple mistakes each session that the players catch, which mostly involve misremembering seldom used rules. I make plenty of other mistakes based on the way I planned to run the adventure, but unless I give them away with my "oh crap" face, the players never really pick up on those.

 

[the Jester]

How often do I make mistakes? Constantly.

How often do I make mistakes that matter? Very rarely.

 

[justanobody]

Due to the loaded choces, I was unable to vote.

As a DM I never make mistakes and always make mistakes.

I always tell the story that needs telling, but interpreting the player expectations at 100% flawlessness is impossible in both the story and working around/with the rules.

Rarely does a part of a D&D game go without mistakes, that are in part the DMs fault. To err is human.....

 

[EricNoah]

I make tons. I sometimes forget a monster's main schtick; I often forget special defenses or immunities. I almost never allow a do-over for either me or the players when such a thing happens. We just roll with it and learn for next round or next combat.

 

[Piratecat]

How often do I make mistakes? Constantly.

How often do I make mistakes that matter? Very rarely.

What he said. When I get caught, I generally see if I can turn my goof into a feature. "Good question. Why DID that troll forget to regenerate? Makes you wonder, huh?" And just like that, I have an adventure with a wizard magically sucking the regeneration out of trolls so that he can live forever.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I make tons. I sometimes forget a monster's main schtick; I often forget special defenses or immunities. I almost never allow a do-over for either me or the players when such a thing happens. We just roll with it and learn for next round or next combat.

A classic quote from one of the other players in my current group, when he was DMing a particularly ugly encounter with a very nasty critter and was re-scanning its MM entry:

"I didn't know it did THAT!"