Hardest lesson to learn as a DM / GM?

[innerdude]

I'm curious---What's the hardest lesson you had to learn as a GM before you felt like you were having real success at it? This can be "hardest" as in, "took me the longest to figure out and implement," or "hardest" as in, "this was the harshest consequence of failing to learn the needed lesson, and it really screwed things up."

For me, my GM-ing career is actually relatively new, compared to my "RPG lifetime."

I've been playing RPGs since I was a kid in the '80s, but didn't play in a pen-and-paper group between about 1990 and 2003. In 2003, I became acquainted with a guy at work, and we got talking and he discovered that I played RPGs in the past. He was an active GM of 3.0 at the time, and I got invited into his group, which I played in almost exclusively until I left the area for a couple of years in 2008.

Well, at one point during this period, I offered to GM a "one shot," or maybe even "mini-campaign" (3-5 sessions) . . . but the first session bombed. I got trapped into thinking that it was my job "to tell a story," and it was the players' job to "make the story happen the way I saw it." And you can all imagine how that went over (when the session ended, my buddy pulled me aside and went, "Yeeeah. That wasn't so awesome").

So fast forward about four years, and I'm given an opportunity to try my hand at GM-ing again while another friend prepped for a GURPS campaign. Only this time, I made the conscious decision I wasn't going to have a "story." I was going to have a premise, and maybe a few scenarios, and whatever the players did, that's where the story would go. This didn't mean that the NPCs were going to be "static"; things were in motion outside the characters' viewpoints. It's just that what was happening was reacting to the players, where each scene played out in its own "frame," and then following scenes were based on the results of the last.

And wouldn't you know it, the campaign was a smashing success, so much so, that one of the players who'd been playing a long time said it was one of his top-5 campaigns he'd ever played.

So, in my mind, the hardest rule to learn as a GM is, You're not telling a story--you're building a scene, a set design, a "space" where your players create one. ​

My second hardest lesson to learn--playing to character's strengths in ways that satisfy the players. It's really easy to just assume, "Hey, Player X is playing a rogue . . . he wants to experience X, Y, and Z in the game." Edit for clarification--What I'm getting at with that, is that you SHOULDN'T assume that just because someone seems to pick certain "thematic" material in terms of class choice, backstory, etc., that that's really what they're interested in. Don't assume what players want, ask them, and then find ways to give it to them. That's still a challenge for me, even now.

 

[Nellisir]

I'd call it a tie between "shutting up" and "don't hold back".

The first is basically the same lesson as yours: don't lead the characters around by the nose, don't tell them what to do, where to go. Let them tell you.

The second is both campaign & encounter related. If you think of something cool, do it. Don't wait. If you think of a cool site, put it on the map. The close map, not the world map. No one will ever know how cool it is if they never go there.

My favorite encounter of all time was one I ran with a beholder. The characters were in no way ready for beholders, and they just about wet themselves when one appeared in the tunnel in front of them, with several of it's eyestalks amputated and capped with iron, and a metal chain bolted onto its body. They barely managed to finish it off...and then the ogre mage holding the other end of the chain came out of the darkness.

It was a fantastic image & encounter, and if I'd waited until the party was high enough to really fight beholders, it never would have happened. The playing group broke up a few months later, and I haven't had a party get that high since then.

(My second favorite encounter ever is any one that includes nixies. My nixies swan about, make googly eyes, and never say anything except " I loooooove you...". And when the PCs finally relax and start to ignore them, the sharp little teeth come out...).

 

[Manbearcat]

1) Learning how to best deal with problem players.
2) Admitting defeat with regards to trying to fit a square peg (problem player) in a round hole (a group with good chemistry and a coherent creative agenda).
3) Adeptly and gracefully dismissing said problem player with the least amount of hurt feelings possible.

 

[stevelabny]

As I was reading our post I was certain that your 2nd attempt at DMing was going to bomb as much as the 1st due to indecisive players who didn't know what to do without a major plot hook to push them forward or more than one plot hook to choose from. With some gaming groups, a complete lack of DM tracks or linearity is way worse than a straight railroad.

Even your last sentence "Its easy to assume a player controlling a rogue wants to experience these three things. " is usually an incorrect assumption. Lots of people like to play against type or add quirks, drawbacks to characters where other players would only put strengths.

So you're right that you should get to know the players and what they want and try to cater to them as much as possible. But you're wrong to assume that every group will be like the two you've DMed for.

 

[Dioltach]

One issue that I still have to consciously remind myself of is to tailor my adventures to the specific likes and dislikes of my players and to the features of their respective PCs. It's all very well to think of a cool setting and a challenging scenario and to add NPCs, monsters and traps, but the game is always much improved if I take the time to make sure that each of my players gets to do what they want. (Mostly this is a time issue, caused by writing down the details of the adventure at the last minute.)

 

[delericho]

A couple of things I've learned:

- It's okay for PCs to die, go mad, lose limbs, lose favoured equipment, be level drained, or whatever else. Just be sure to do it sparingly and, most importantly, make the loss entertaining.

The much-loathed level drain isn't bad because it's a bad mechanic (it's not), or because it's not fair (it's not), nor even because it steals away XP that the character has earned (though it does) - it's a bad mechanic because there's no way to make it entertaining - the PC just loses those things, and that's it. Even just adding a saving throw (even a near-impossible one) would make it better (but there are even better ways to handle the situation).

- Stop fighting against what the players want to do!

I have, on occasion, encountered problem players who will deliberately stretch or otherwise abuse the rules (or the GM's good nature) for advantage, and to the detriment of the game. Unfortunately, this has left me very wary whenever a player wants to try something cool. My default is much more "say no" than "say yes". However, I haven't encountered such problem players for quite some time now, and the simple fact is that I'm now gaming with an older, more mature, and wiser group of players (hence my occasional "play with adults" comments on other threads). The consequence of this is that when one of my current players comes up with something cool, it's almost certainly not because he's found an exploit; it's just because it's something cool. And so, my game is enriched by embracing such things, rather than fighting against them.

(On the latter point, it also helped once I fixed the three 'tiers' of 3e play in mind - as soon as I clearly fixed the notion that 6th level characters, even of the "non-magical" classes, are strictly superhuman, a whole lot of issues with versimilitude simply went away. Suddenly those impossible, superhuman things that characters would do became a non-issue - superhumans doing superhuman things isn't exactly a problem. )

 

[jasper]

Manbearcat came close.
DON'T PLAY WITH GOOBERS!

 

[Morrus]

That the game isn't the thing. The "doing something with your friends" is the thing. The game just happens to be what you're doing.

 

[billd91]

Finding the balance between saying yes and saying no. Too much of either is not typically a good thing. You want to give unexpected plans and player decisions a chance by reviewing them with an open mind, even if they lead the campaign in directions you never expected, because they can lead you places you never expected. Yet you want to figure out which choices or requests will distract the campaign without a payoff.

 

[Vyvyan Basterd]

The hardest lesson I had to learn is that antagonistic competition does not help the game. We were very much Player vs. GM when we were young and had more time to waste. I still have one player that manages to push my buttons occasionally, but I sat down with him and told him that we need to make an effort not to go down that path. It annoys the other players no matter who starts it because the other can't let it go. We've gotten better.

One thing that helped is my second hardest lesson to learn. I had to learn to say "yes, but..." instead of more often saying no. Even if the reason behind something is questionable I try to filter it into the game in a way that allows the player what they want while maintaining integrity in either mechanical balance or campaign background sense.