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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kannik" data-source="post: 9649437" data-attributes="member: 984">A handful of GMing mistakes I have made:Getting everyone's backstories, working them into the campaign, writing up a personalized one-page intro for each player to read just as the game begins that brings them up to speed and brings their characters to the story, ready to dive in for some excellent in-media-res RP and then.... starting things off with a combat that drags on for hours and sucks the life out of everything and all that prep.  Which was compounded by that this was diving full-bore into a combat with brand-new high level characters so that the players were trying to figure out how to play them (didn't help that this was in 3e). Getting tied into knots ensuring everything is as perfect / best it could possibly be / airtight rather than getting it to 80% and knowing that'll carry the day.  Part and parcel to that is not recognizing that the/my players are on my side in wanting a great time and will both overlook small things and assist wherever they can!Not being willing to bring up the meta in telling the players "there's no cheese down that tunnel" or aiding in nudging by remembering something or ensuring additional information reaches them to avoid hours of wheel spinning (and boredom and frustration).  Bring it up, move things onward. Being fixated on making every encounter/combat "challenging."  It becomes both time consuming and monotonous.  Variety of challenge, negative-space quiet moments, and etc are all important.Not being present to the fact that not everyone comes to the table with the same gaming experiences and thus approaches the game in the same way.  Expectations can vary!  Which is totally fine... if you are, again, present to it and work it out, usually in a middle path and invitations kind of way.</blockquote>

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