GM Confessional
- Thread starter Reynard
- Start date
James Gasik
We don't talk about Pun-Pun
I have a few in particular, but my main one, I feel, is the inability to Keep It Simple, Stupid. No matter how many times I tell myself I'm not going to create some grand, sweeping epic adventure, run wild with world-building, lore, and copious amounts of house rules- I always end up doing it. Everything gets way too complex when I'm sure everyone would have had fun with an adventure as simple as "go to this system of caverns full of monsters. Kill monsters, loot, and return."
Many of the things I want in a campaign world I know are impossible to achieve, but I keep trying anyways. Economies that make sense? Politics? Having the players gather not just personal power, but temporal power, in the form of influence and followers? Interesting NPC's the players want to engage with and care about? Lore that players actually remember?
A campaign that spans for many years, and possibly multiple generations of player characters?
Yeah, I set my expectations way too high, and I always come crashing down to earth.
Many of the things I want in a campaign world I know are impossible to achieve, but I keep trying anyways. Economies that make sense? Politics? Having the players gather not just personal power, but temporal power, in the form of influence and followers? Interesting NPC's the players want to engage with and care about? Lore that players actually remember?
A campaign that spans for many years, and possibly multiple generations of player characters?
Yeah, I set my expectations way too high, and I always come crashing down to earth.
Xamnam
Loves Your Favorite Game
Emergency? Obviously unavoidable. You tell me a week before there's a concert you want to go to that night? Absolutely.
An hour before the session, "I'm just not sure I'm feeling up to it today." I...wouldn't want someone to force themselves through playing if they couldn't be present and enjoy themselves, but god does it feel like a gut punch. Even worse is when someone else chimes in, "I'm glad you said something, I was debating it myself." I'm not mad at them, but I sure am just generally disappointed.
I would just want the same courtesy as if we were meeting somewhere for lunch. You can't control getting sick, but just send me a text calling off our plans so I'm not waiting around for you.
MNblockhead
A Title Much Cooler Than Anything on the Old Site
I have gotten worse about acting out the NPCs and describing areas outside of set-piece locations. In my current campaign, it tend to tell rather than show or act out. Part of it is that I'm not great with improv acting and descriptions, but when it works I enjoy it, and you don't get better at something if you never do it.
monsmord
Adventurer
Whatever my sandbox intent, I wind up trying to force a greater, grand narrative on the game, telling a story I want to tell. Ultimately this railroads the players. It doesn't help that I don't improvise well - more than once, my players have destroyed my narrative/game/world/work with choices I didn't foresee and couldn't accommodate. GMing just isn't what I was really trying to do, I guess. And I don't anymore.
payn
Glory to Marik
I have a hard time occasionally reaching players. The type that has a pretty specific playstyle and interest. If they are not buying what I'm selling, its hard for me to adjust. So, I have an awful tendency to let spotlight hounds run the show since they are the ones proactive enough to move things along.
overgeeked
Open-World Sandbox
Oh, man. So many. Where to begin...
I cannot stand power gaming. I ban multiclassing and several feats just to be rid of the worst power gaming builds. 5E is already easy mode, if the player is so desperate to win then they shouldn't be playing a game with dice and random chance.
I cannot stand metagaming and think it's cheating. It goes against the spirit of the game and ties into players so desperate to win they have to cheat to do so. Again, play a different game if the thought of not winning all the time is abhorrent to you.
I homebrew all my monsters because of the above two. Players can't build toward beating a given monster if they don't know what its stats are and they can't look it up in a book if it's not written down anywhere they can access. It was a lot of work at first but it's easier and easier as time goes on, I have more experience doing it, and I've found or built tools to make it a snap.
It bugs me how attached players are to their characters and if I never read an epic backstory of a 1st-level character with zero XP ever again it will be too soon. I get the level of work involved in making a character now. I get that the rules are stacked so utterly and thoroughly in favor of characters not dying it's laughable, but without risk of loss, without risk of the ultimate loss, there's no possibility for challenge, to say nothing of those awesome story moments so many claim to want. There's no story without conflict*. There's no conflict without the risk of failure. You want a story? Then you have to lose sometimes. Things have to be hard.
I couldn't care less about "story" in games. Whatever story happens as a result of the referee's prep, the players' decisions, and the roll of the dice is the story we end up with. Pure emergent storytelling. I tried to run a set story once when I was new. Within the first five minutes of the first game session the players when left instead of right and I had to improv the entire rest of the four-hour session. Never bothering with running set stories or modules again. Too much work to prep and then try to force the players back onto the rails. I'd rather spend that same energy building sandboxes.
* Yes, I'm aware of Kishōtenketsu.
I cannot stand power gaming. I ban multiclassing and several feats just to be rid of the worst power gaming builds. 5E is already easy mode, if the player is so desperate to win then they shouldn't be playing a game with dice and random chance.
I cannot stand metagaming and think it's cheating. It goes against the spirit of the game and ties into players so desperate to win they have to cheat to do so. Again, play a different game if the thought of not winning all the time is abhorrent to you.
I homebrew all my monsters because of the above two. Players can't build toward beating a given monster if they don't know what its stats are and they can't look it up in a book if it's not written down anywhere they can access. It was a lot of work at first but it's easier and easier as time goes on, I have more experience doing it, and I've found or built tools to make it a snap.
It bugs me how attached players are to their characters and if I never read an epic backstory of a 1st-level character with zero XP ever again it will be too soon. I get the level of work involved in making a character now. I get that the rules are stacked so utterly and thoroughly in favor of characters not dying it's laughable, but without risk of loss, without risk of the ultimate loss, there's no possibility for challenge, to say nothing of those awesome story moments so many claim to want. There's no story without conflict*. There's no conflict without the risk of failure. You want a story? Then you have to lose sometimes. Things have to be hard.
I couldn't care less about "story" in games. Whatever story happens as a result of the referee's prep, the players' decisions, and the roll of the dice is the story we end up with. Pure emergent storytelling. I tried to run a set story once when I was new. Within the first five minutes of the first game session the players when left instead of right and I had to improv the entire rest of the four-hour session. Never bothering with running set stories or modules again. Too much work to prep and then try to force the players back onto the rails. I'd rather spend that same energy building sandboxes.
* Yes, I'm aware of Kishōtenketsu.
Just a reminder that this thread is not about stuff players do that you don't like, or rules you don't like, or playstyles you don't like. It is about your weaknesses and sins as a GM.
