hawkeyefan
Legend
Agreed.
The question then becomes: Do I quietly rearrange items, monsters, and other game elements behind the scenes or do I say that I messed up and figure out a way forward with the players? As I stated above, I would do the latter and have. That kind of transparency in my experience works for all players, including the ones that would have a real problem with the DM shifting things around to, say, reduce difficulty or keep the players on the plot.
Yes, but as I said, sometimes due to the nature of communication, no one is at fault.
What blame is there for the DM to take when it's just a matter of a communication breakdown? It could just as easily be on the part of the players, or more likely, a little of column A and a little of column B.
Trust me, I have no problem with transparency. If I've messed up, I have no problem owning up to it and discussing it with my players. I also don't mind if I have to do the occasional retcon. Last night, I described something to my players and left out a pretty important detail that I meant to include. A few minutes later, when I realized my error, I corrected it, and then we moved on. Luckily, the lack of that detail hadn't really impacted the course they took. If it had, I would have allowed for them to revise their actions if they wanted.
That's not the kind of thing I am talking about though.