Misadventures as a GM.

[Thierry-Advent]

I used to keep the PC sheets at my house because we played there and some players would forget their sheets at their house.

We decide to play at someone else's house because she is doing a BBQ for us. Of course I forgot all the PC sheets at my home! I believe we played Talisman instead, which at the time was fun!

 

[Thierry-Advent]

I have it under good authority that you don't need encounter design systems.

Joking aside -- I'm sorry your players reacted that way. That seems quite inconsiderate.

I didn't play with them again. One guy was invited to my new group because he was one of my regular players.

 

[Thierry-Advent]

AD&D 2e. Last encounter against an Ancient Red Dragon in an inactive volcano. They kill the dragon when he was flying over them. I decide they must make a save to avoid being crushed by the dragon. They all failed except the thief. TPK because they were all severely injured already. The thief took their stuff, activated the Paladin's ring of Pegasus and flew away. Campaign ENDs. Everyone is screaming at the thief, who finally got her revenge after years of stupid jokes, mistreatment and needless accusations, because she didn't want to resurrect the PCs.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I was part of a long-running group with 3 rotating DMs (I was one of them) running a single campaign world.* We ran several different groups of various levels through the setting, from newbies to high-level.

One of the other DMs was running an adventure for the high-level group, and we just got stuck at this incredibly dangerous magical staircase because we couldn’t find a way down. After trying for over an hour, we called the session for the night.

The DM was visibly annoyed at what happened and we were still mystified. As we were sitting there, finishing off our snacks & drinks, one guy just asked the DM point-blank what the solution was. He answered that we should have cast a particular spell, which would have completely neutralized the danger for a time. We looked at him kind of stunned.

“None of our PCs have that spell.”

There was some back & forth with him insisting that someone did, and us protesting. He even looked at our character sheets to see if we were simply misreading them. He didn’t find it.

Then, mystified, he looked at HIS highest level spellcaster. There was the spell. In fact, that character was the ONLY character in the campaign who knew it.

And the groundwork for this fiasco had been laid down years before. He played wizards extremely well. He had independently figured out a near perfect powergamer’s spell list. And he only cast spells when they were necessary, so he was rarely tapped out.

He was also somewhat stereotypical in playing their attitude: his wizards didn’t share anything magical. They grabbed up the best magic items suited for spellcasters they could; they didn’t share spells for transcription into multiple PCs’ spellbooks.

IOW, if one of his wizards got a tome or scroll, any unique spell was going into his character’s spellbook ONLY.

I will also note that he never changed this attitude. A few years after the events detailed above, we were both part of another game group that lasted over a decade. When we went through RttToEE, my first character** (a multiclassed Diviner) was the second most powerful wizard in the party after his. And because of his speciality, he didn’t have many offensive spells. I suggested we transcribed spells from each other’s spellbooks, essentially making them “backups” for each other’s while increasing overall flexibility and punch.

“You don’t have any spells I need. So no.”




* DMs PCs would not be part of the party of any adventure the DM was running; only used as NPCs.

** I retired him to fill the healer gap when 2 other players moved out of town

 

[jian]

My recurring bad habit as a GM (which I think I’ve mostly got over) used to be ending campaigns in a really unexpected way, such as changing systems for the last session or rewriting reality entirely. I hope I’m better now at asking permission and signposting such ideas well in advance or indeed not doing them at all, because they were mostly not good ideas.

For instance, I ended an Exalted campaign with a hopeless battle against the First and Forsaken Lion in the middle of Autochthonia, and had Autochthon turn up (in spirit form, obviously in physical terms he was already there since the city was made from him) just before this very unequal fight and even the odds by pointing out that the Lion’s enormous power was derived from having been made Solar Exalted centuries ago, and then revoking his Exaltation. This made the Lion suddenly just a very powerful ghost, whom the PCs killed in short order.

A better example was when I ended a Savage Worlds fantasy campaign by revealing the underlying time travel shenanigans that had created the setting; the PCs were then turned into much more powerful versions and had to use the MSH system for a session before resetting reality to what it should have been. This may have reflected my frustrations with the SW system.

 

[Jadelink]

'How I learned not to Railroad'. (I should post this elsewhere).

In the very early 90s. Sick of D&D, murderhobo styles. Had seen Dragonlance. I thought I could do a much better High fantasy and well plotted campaign with a system without a skyrocketing power level system. Real plot, stakes, and Heroic struggle. I decided on Fantasy Hero as a system.

Plotted an epic campaign. It centered around a world plagued by demons, an absence of gods, a pile of philosophical paths, and a deep belief in luck, fate and prophecy. There is a push by a demonlord to openly conquer the world, the PCs are trying to fill a prophecy in order to stop it. They are powerful Heroes, and all strongly motivated to work together to do this, despite some considerable cultural and ethical differences. 6 Players, make detailed characters and backgrounds.

I write the basis of the plot arcs, described in the prophecy, which they have, but is somewhat vague. The significant twists come through other, lesser demon lords, who really don't want the world takeover to succeed, as then they become vassals of the one that does the conquering. The demons have enough selfish, bickering politics that this can be used to let the Heroes succeed. One demon prince in particular, weaker but very cunning, has the complete prophecy, including the bit the PCs don't have, but doesn't want the other demon lords to know this.

Session Zero went well. Session 1 has the PCs perform a ritual in an old city in an ancient wasteland, and begin the quest. Someone has ratted them out, and their location is known to the BBEG. A column of wyvern mounted scout troops attacks them, wounds one badly, but the party kills several and the rest realise they are outclassed and fly off. From a high bluff in the wastes, they see the scouts flying off towards a huge marching army. 20 wyvern troops, they win easily. They know there is no way they can fight this army, and several have played with me before and know my style of 'stupidity tests' which start early (if you are dumb enough to think the 7 of you can smash that army single handed, we can just have you die now, establishing the genre and tone).

The Heroes try to hide and flee. The airial scouts make hiding not a great solution in the fairly open semi-desert wastland. They try to flee. The problem is that there are demonic and undead troops, that need no sleep or rest. Short term they are faster, long term they are run down. It looks grim, then the sneaky Demon lords lieutenant rocks up with retineue (on wyverns) and signals to parley. He offers them a free ride out of there, to whereever in wyern range they would like. Questioned, he replies about his lords motives for this present. Party lore guy confirms this does make sense.

Problem... In session 0, two characters had made 'no compromise with demons' fanatics. Made sense in lore. The RPed their characters well. One refused to touch the deal. The second killed the emissary...

Oh naughty word, my party is up a creek without a paddle in a barbed wire canoe, and my deus ex machina was just shot down by some good RPing. My (fairly good) GM improvising brain had in mind letting the lore master in the group 'remember' some underground tunnels from the city they were in, that lead out a long way (great adventure, a 'forced double time' dungeon crawl, persued by foes, and having to cover their tracks, sounded great fun). Problem was, the whole freaking plot relied on 'deals' with demon lords that were not going to happen... I naughty word the whole grand campaign, on session 1.

I did the only thing I could do, appologised to the players, and ended the game. It was my mistake. But I learned, that day, why railroading is bad, even 'the party doesn't care if they are on a railroad as long as it goes to awesome' railroading.

 

[cranberry]

I sent a bunch of newbies into a dungeon with an NPC champion that was meant to be their deus ex machina should things go south.

That NPC died in the first room of the dungeon.

I also set up encounters with monsters with various abilities and effects that I didn't fully read up on, and I've drawn a blank on rules every now and then.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I've had a tendency to not always see the implications of opponents I put out against players until we were in the middle of it. The most recent was the Shadow Dragon and Shadow Thieves in 13th Age 1e. This was what taught me to watch out for monsters that had too many strong effects triggered by good attack rolls (a general mechanic used in places in 13A), especially when they're mooks...

 

[Blue]

Two from the same world, though different campaigns.

First was in 3ed. One character, a sorcerer, somehow talked the others in the party into getting almost every magic item that they could use. Then that player had to take an extended absence (birth of a child?) and we worked together to write him out of the story.

A few months later he had an opportunity to come back for a few session, but would then still be gone for an extended period. There were these goop duplicates of people they were in the process of discovering, and instead of having the real PC come back and then have to have another reason for them to leave, I made him a duplicate to be discovered.

Without telling the player.

So the player shows up, and has none of his arsenal of gear. He was a good sport about it, but later I realized this was his vacation to come back and I took away all of the toys he'd been accumulating. I wish I hadn't.

Second was in a big final battle. It was in a banquet hall in a palace, and the high level monk wanted to race along the chandeliers to get past various blockers to dive down on the BBEG. This was before I had realized just how bad of a word "realism" was when I should have been shooting for high fantasy. I worked out that she needed some high acrobatics DC, which she was quite good at so she needed to roll a 7 or better, but it was for each chandelier. Well, a ~2/3 chance of success to the power of five for the number of chandeliers works out mathematically to about a 13%. Yes, she fell before getting there. Really, she was a high level monk and I should have just hand-waved it.

 

[Dessert Nomad]

So this is one that I thought was players being dumb but actually was a GM mistake:

Back in the day I was running a RIFTS pickup game. I had a Coalition (the big bad guys) armored company following and protecting a robot that seemed to be homing in on a signal. An armored company is a military force that's absolutely out of the league of first level characters - one squad of guys in an APC or one of the large mechs would be a rough fight for the party, the company consists of something like a dozen of those squads, half a dozen of the big mechs, and dozen smaller mechs. The idea was PCs would see this group of guys that's completely impossible for them to fight and be sparked to do some investigation to either get some allies to handle the enemy or try to get to the robot's destination before the slow-but-steady robot did.

Instead, the party talked to the company briefly, then decided to attack them! I had the Coalition forces 'try to conserve ammo' and scare them off by almost blowing up the two toughest PCs in a round and the players ran off. At the time, I thought 'man, sometimes players will just try to kill anything', but on later reflection I realized the problem was me. I had just said 'there's an armored company moving here,' and since I was familiar with wargames (so know how big a company is) and had seen the source book, I know that the group massively outnumbered and outgunned the PCs. But the thing is, I didn't describe their numbers or equipment in detail, and none of the players were wargamers who'd instantly realize '6 starting PCs vs a company sized unit' is not a winnable fight. So really they just heard 'some guys from a group that hates all of us weirdo magic users and non-humans' and figured they should fight it out.

The takeaway for situations like this and things like Dannyalcatraz's story above is to always be sure that DM and Players are working with the same information about the situation. In Danny's story, the DM 'knew' that the party had a particular spell, but they didn't actually (only his PC did, and his PC was never in the party when he was running), in my story the DM knew how overwhelming the enemy was but didn't actually convey to the players what they were facing off against. Sometimes players will forget obvious stuff or make a dumb attack, but a lot of times what's obvious to the person who wrote the situation isn't actually obvious.