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<blockquote data-quote="steeldragons" data-source="post: 5594746" data-attributes="member: 92511">hmmmm...there've been a few.I know I've told this story in other threads, but it does tend to stick out in my memory...Player: PC is a gnome illusionist-thief. We are at a tentative truce with a vastly superior force of drow in the underdark. Our wizard attacks (via a spell from her staff) one of the wounded drow and kills him...after we've managed a truce and are trying to talk our butts out of it (possibly more foolish than my PCs role, but regardless...). When questioned why we attacked if we wanted to parlay, she answers &quot;The staff misfired.&quot;My gnome, always something of a &quot;know it all&quot; blurts out, &quot;Staves don't misfire!&quot;Yeah, my character had someone's hand clamped over his mouth at most future negotiations.As a DM?...I think, possibly, what I would consider my &quot;stupidest&quot; move as a (very young/fresh/new) DM was to have a ring of ice devils appear, surrounding the party, who were engrossed in a lengthy argument (began in character and then moved out of character and was STILL continuing, flipping back and forth from PCs to players to PCs...after a half hour of no progress in the game, I had had enough.I figured it was the easiest/most direct way to get their attention and back into the flow of the game. A few brutal rounds of combat later, now having everyone's attention, I had the ice devils *blip* out.I got their attention, but NONE of the players were overly pleased. Several of them said later that night that they would not suffer me as DM if I pulled another stunt like that/they would walk. Completely understandable, in retrospect, and plain old BAD DMing on my part. But, as I said, I was young and stupid. Now, I make sure to have a plot reason for the devils to appear. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":P" title="Stick out tongue&nbsp; &nbsp; :P"&nbsp; data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":P" /> I KID! I KID! --SD</blockquote>

[QUOTE="steeldragons, post: 5594746, member: 92511"] hmmmm...there've been a few. I know I've told this story in other threads, but it does tend to stick out in my memory... Player: PC is a gnome illusionist-thief. We are at a tentative truce with a vastly superior force of drow in the underdark. Our wizard attacks (via a spell from her staff) one of the wounded drow and kills him...after we've managed a truce and are trying to talk our butts out of it (possibly more foolish than my PCs role, but regardless...). When questioned why we attacked if we wanted to parlay, she answers "The staff misfired." My gnome, always something of a "know it all" blurts out, "Staves don't misfire!" Yeah, my character had someone's hand clamped over his mouth at most future negotiations. As a DM?...I think, possibly, what I would consider my "stupidest" move as a (very young/fresh/new) DM was to have a ring of ice devils appear, surrounding the party, who were engrossed in a lengthy argument (began in character and then moved out of character and was STILL continuing, flipping back and forth from PCs to players to PCs...after a half hour of no progress in the game, I had had enough. I figured it was the easiest/most direct way to get their attention and back into the flow of the game. A few brutal rounds of combat later, now having everyone's attention, I had the ice devils *blip* out. I got their attention, but NONE of the players were overly pleased. Several of them said later that night that they would not suffer me as DM if I pulled another stunt like that/they would walk. Completely understandable, in retrospect, and plain old BAD DMing on my part. But, as I said, I was young and stupid. Now, I make sure to have a plot reason for the devils to appear. :P I KID! I KID! --SD [/QUOTE]

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