Dopey things DM's have done.

[Oryan77]

The word "golem" used to be my biggest enemy.

I would describe a room like this, "You step into a room with no windows, it's cold and dark, and there is nothing inside this room except for a large golem statue in one corner".

Then the players would say, "We know it's a golem?"

I'd play it off of course, "Yeah, because it started moving towards you". I don't know if they ever knew I screwed up

For some reason when I was younger, I always thought that any statue shaped like a man was called a golem. I didn't know that a golem is a magical monster. So once I started playing D&D, it took me awhile to shake that info out of my head.

 

[Evilhalfling]

with me its more tactics than anything else. Forgetting to assign Power attack levels to the dragon who can hit on a 3 when charging. Forgetting a pounce for something that has no reason to have it (like a shadow demon), a big one is not having NPCs carry cash, valuable spell components or minor utility magic items -(like a cloak of resitance)

Although sometimes I forget tactics on purpose to keep PCs from dieing, while letting the dice rolls fall unaltered.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

Heh, back when I was playing in 1978 the DM informed me that the innkeeper had served my a 'heaping mugful of mead'... Sounds delicious, doesn't it?

The Auld Grump, mead, chunky style...

 

[Nyaricus]

The first time poison was used I forgot about the secondary damage. I later realized the bard should have died.

Yep, that was me one time, 'cept it was a Barbarian

 

[Kae'Yoss]

For some reason, they're almost always beating down the PCs when I go 'Oh yeah, TOTALLY forgot about that!' The first time I did that, my players just like stared at me or something.

I often do that. On purpose. When, after one or two rounds, they still haven't harmed the enemy in any significant way, I say something like: "Oh, I forgot it can do that." and laugh my evil DM laugh.



But let's see: I myself described to the group the BBEG from the final encounter (which they didn't think would be right there, right then), and somehow forgot to mention that it was just a painting on the wall. It was like someone pushed the PANIC button.

Then, another DM had a couple very funny fux-pas(es?) we keep teasing him about even 5 years later: First, we heard that our home town would be attacked soon. When we asked how long it would take us to get there, he said "2 1/2 days if you hurry, otherwise 3". Of course, we went with 3, so we wouldn't be too exhausted. That threw off his plans. While we were supposed to be there just in time to witness the start of the attack in the evening, we arrived at noon and the siege was well underway. We fought our way through some enemies and finally ancountered the leader: A vampire cleric of Velsharoon. After we fought and destroyed it, and played on for about 5 minutes, it dawned on us: "Did we just fight a vampire in broad daylight???". The encounter was supposed to take place the night before, and noone remembered that little detail until after the fight - DM included.

In the same vein, we were (much later) in some city, and engaging in some late-night drinking in a tavern. Our druids, when asked what he'd do with his dire bear (which wouldn't fit through the door, and anyway, they might have something against dire bears in taverns...), he just said he'd leave it in front of the tavern.

Later that night, the player asked about the bear, what it was doing. DM: "Oh, I guess it ate some kids that were playing on the street." Of course, I had to ask: "Why are there kids playing on the streets at 2 frikkin' AM?" At least that cancelled out the daywalker.


The worst we had so far was the DM (not the daywalker-DM) throwing a frost worm at us (I think it was a frost worm, something like that in any case). He didn't see the death burst ability until the thing died. Noone made a check high enough to know about the death burst, so we were all right beside the thing. Many of us have also been subject to its breath weapon before, so we were not exactly fresh. It killed the party mage (he never even had a chance, the damage was far too high) and my character (because I failed the save). Of course, after he realized that he gave us an encounter that some of us could never have survived, he let us be resurrected without cost, but my character - being a shapechanger, which noone else knew until it reverted to its true form upon death - lost the main fun element at this point.

 

[wmasters]

Mine's similar to the daywalker Kae'Yross mentions. I was playing in this one, and we went into a big evil chapel of the "generic undead god who's name I can't remember".

We had a fantastic description of the room, with the sunlight bringing glorious colours shining through the stained glass window, before the vampire made it's apprearance. It should have been a tough encounter, possibly a TPK since we were relatively low level. Instead, the cry of 'shoot the windows' saved us, Dawn of the Dead style.

 

[Rystil Arden]

I've seen some dopey things from others GMs in my day. My theory is that they did this on purpose in an effort to keep me GMing all the time.

GM #1: He wanted help, so he came to me and showed me some basic plans he had. They were excellent and detailed. When it came time to run his adventure, it did not include any of them, and it was awful and random.

GM #2: He designed an entire dungeon based on the Baltimore Ravens defensive line. It was impossible to escape the dungeon without realising this and making use of bad puns with the players' names.

GM #3: He got bored during the BBEG fight and left, telling me to GM the rest.

 

[Dog Moon]

Oh yeah, forgot about the time when we were traveling along a plains or something. We saw some bandits in the distance and they were heading directly for us. They were on horseback and we apparently couldn't see them.

When asked for a better approximation of where the bandits were at [like how far away they were so we could prepare] than 'off in the distance' we were told 100 feet away.

I was like 'wait, off in the distance 100 feet away? How is 100 feet off in the distance?' We shared a laugh and the DM decided that they were a little father out than 100 feet.

Was a joke for a while. 'You appear naked in the middle of nowhere with all your equipment and in the distance about 100 feet away is a small village consisting of 100,000 people.'

 

[Chimera]

I was like 'wait, off in the distance 100 feet away? How is 100 feet off in the distance?' We shared a laugh and the DM decided that they were a little father out than 100 feet.

Reminds me of a similar issue with some players. People were vanishing from a small town without a trace in broad daylight. Always when they were alone. No tracks, no trace. See Bobby the child sitting on the steps. Look away. Look back. Bobby is gone.

So the players, after much Failure To Comprehend (and several failed Bad Plans(tm)), decide that one person will walk "alone", with the rest of the party following at a distance.

How far away?
"30 feet".
WTF??? How is this guy 'alone' with a whole group following 30 feet behind him???
"Ok, 50 feet."
Um....You don't get it, do you. Any observer with a non-negative Int score will figure this out.
(Much sighing, groaning and whining later...) "Ok, 100 feet".

And a bad time was had by all...

 

[Mark Chance]

Ages ago, I ran an adventure that included a game of Volleyball of Death. The PCs were one team. Monsters were the other. Every point scored caused damage to the opposite team. Game point required a saving throw against a finger of death effect.

Does that qualify as dopey?