GMing Mistakes You’ve Made in the Past

[aco175]

First one that came to my mind was 25-30 years ago when I was DMing and thought it would be better and faster if I just rolled all the dice. All the dice. Another player and I got into a heated debate for an hour and he threatened to quit and said that I thought he was cheating and did not trust him and such. I then realized how much of the game was rolling dice and feeling like you have control in the game by the outcome.

Today, I have the players roll most of the dice. They roll their stuff and even saves for the monsters against their spells otherwise some of the players would not roll much and watch me roll saves all the time. They even roll monster damage against their PCs. I basically just roll to-hit.

 

[MGibster]

Tell us about something you used to do that you have since determined was wrong/dissatisfying/mistaken.

I used to be so worried about exerting control over a player's control over their character that I would be indirect when telling them their character was about to do something stupid and/or ruin session or campaign for everyone else.

Star Wars (West End Games version): The PCs were on a planet and suddenly found themselves in the middle of an Imperial invasion. They were in their light freighter flying in atmosphere, and decided to fight their way out, get to space, and attempt to go to lightspeed out of the system. Not an unreasonable plan really. After a few waves of Tie Fighters, I explain that getting off the planet will prove difficult while describing just how much military hardware is in the sky. Most of the the other players gets the hint and suggest finding a place planet side to hide but the pilot refuses. I have more Tie Fighters show up and the ship is taking an increasing amount of damage, pilot still refuses to take the hint, and insists on continuing. Sessions ends with the ship being blown up while several PCs return planet side in escape pods. All this could have been avoided had I simply been more direct with the pilot.

Call of Cthulhu (Savage Worlds rules): The Investigators are meeting with some bootleggers in a flop house at midnight, but two of the PCs stay outside in their car. They observe some guys from the Italian Social Club (gangsters) who are heading into flop house when one of the PCs on watch honks his horn. Did he honk his horn to signal anyone in the tenement? No. He just wanted to get the gangsters' attention. Okay, fine. No problems yet. When the gangsters decide to find out why someone is honking at them at midnight, the hoking Investigator, the one guy who is actually good in a fistfight, just leaves his friend there alone to face the gangsters. I should have have just paused the game right there and asked him, "What the hell are you trying to accomplish?" The long and short of it is the player didn't like the campaign and just felt like stirring the pot. I should have just talked to him directly instead of just letting his character do whatever he wanted.

Don't construe this as me trying to control the actions of the player characters. But at times I find sometimes the player might not understand fully what I describe and it's probably best to talk about it. I don't mind when players come up with way to solve problems in an unexpected manner, even if it bypasses threats I've created, or even if their characters do something "bad" so long as it makes sense within the context of the game.

If you didn't want to read all that. My lesson is that you need to talk to your players directly if there's anything they're having their characters do that is disruptive in a way that isn't fun.

 

[Theory of Games]

Agreeing to run ttrpgs in the first place.

It's slave-labor for people who don't appreciate the work involved. Sure there's the occasional player who gets it and openly respects what a GM does but IME most players view the GM as a game console. After years of running games I took a long break and nearly quit altogether.

But I discovered a fresh, invigorating motivation that has renewed my enthusiasm for Game-mastering

 

[The Firebird]

My biggest issue recently has been improvising too much on the fly and then forgetting details of what I've improvised. It's hard when there's a lot that's new and I don't have the time to take detailed notes. No real solution but to improvise less and write more. As much as possible, as soon as possible.

 

[Nightfly]

I had a cool encounter where monsters on a roof pelted the party. There were ways to get up on the roof, but it was hard.

One of my players had just gotten a new ability upon levelling up that I didn't know about, which let him more or less fly up to the roof. (This was D&D 4e, where such super heroics were common). Frustrated, I ruled he couldn't do that.

Huge, huge mistake. Let your players do cool stuff. That's the whole point. I regret that to this day.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Not remembering to write down an NPC had died

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I made 2 mistakes in a small window in my oft-mentioned HERO 1900 supers campaign.

A new guy wanted to join, so I told him about the setting and let him design his own PC- a werewolf- without oversight or review. I thought he understood the tone was more heroic and “4 color”. But he didn’t…

So when he joined us the next session, everything went fine until the main combat. His werewolf was designed more in line with modern horror: lightning fast, extremely strong, and extremely bloodthirsty. His PC was zooming around the battlefield, slaughtering enemy agents everywhere. I finally hit him with an attack from a giant animated statue of Buddha, pinning him to the ground.

Mistake #2 was making it nearly impossible for him to get free; none of the other PCs moved to help him, either. So he sat out a big chunk of that battle. Understandably, he was cheesed off at me and didn’t return. I didn’t even get a chance to correct my errors.

 

[James Gasik]

Years ago, I placed a Deck of Many Things in my campaign.

-

Boy I wish I could stop there, but it gets worse.

I cut out the Deck of Many Things cards from an old Dragon issue. When the time came, I pulled out all the stops- I lowered the lights, lit candles, I pretended to be a fortuneteller. I thought it would be neat to, instead of drawing the cards one at a time, to place them on the coffee table in my friend's living room (we were playing at his house) in a Celtic Cross. Then I let the players draw cards from the ones on the table.

My friend went first. All good cards, leaving the bad ones on the table. I repeated the process for the next player. More good cards than bad. I was puzzled at this point.

By the time we were done, their characters were well rewarded, with very few bad cards drawn.

At this point my friend busts up laughing, and pointed out something I'd managed to miss entirely. The coffee table had a glass top. With the lighting conditions in the room, it reflected the reverse side of the cards as I put them on the table. The players with the better memories and eyesight were able to recall where the good cards were!

I felt like such a fool!

 

[DragonLancer]

Mine has probably been something simple like not paying attention to what the characters are capable of doing now, and then they run a little roughshod over things. Now I make a point of asking each player what cool new abilities and spells their character gained after they level. Makes things so much easier to plan for.

However, I will regale you of a mistake one of my friends made back in the hallowed days of 2nd edition AD&D...

Big Dave (as he shall be known) had become enamored with the Birthright campaign setting. He bought everything for it at the time and when time came up, we made our lowly future heroes and he started to run an introductory published scenario. Not long into it, we're travelling down the road and are set upon by a gang of bandits. We do a great job of bashing them down but two flee into the hills. One character decides he's going after them and also runs off alone into the grass. Big Dave asks for a minute and he starts flipping back and forth, bank and forth, and after a couple minutes just says well... you don't come back. We're all asking what happened and why, but all we get is "he doesn't come back".

After a short break it is revealed that the module never says what happens if a character were to run off after any fleeing bandits. As a first DM and assuming every eventuality was covered in the module, all Big Dave could think of was "you don't come back". Facepalm followed and then we explained how to handle such situations. But it does still pop up in conversation and jest from time to time.

 

[sevenbastard]

Classic Rookie DM mistake back in the early 90s.

Built an adventure with the only way to advance was a secret door. Everyone rolled and no one found it then I was to stubborn a kid to just let them roll again. 3 hours of wasted game time.

Now I know better. Never have a succeed to continue roll in the adventure.