My great blunders of recent memory happened when I was really tired. It was after midnight, and the game was dragging on. The PCs were tracking a primitive druid across a prehistoric valley. Finally they come across the guy and his dinosaur companion. I put some minis out to represent their foes. Realizing I'm not using the T-Rex mini, they ask if the dinosuar is a velicoraptor. I saw no it is different, and then proceed to call for initiatve. We fight the battle. The adventure ends. Next day I realize my mistake: "No it is different" is not a description of a dinosuar! Argg!!! I should have lost my DM license that day.
The DM Hall of Shame
- Thread starter demiurge1138
- Start date
I can't think of my biggest blunder, but I can think of a few recent ones:
- Telling a PC that the accent of a particular dragon is female. The PC replies, "But it hasn't said anything yet...."
- Telling a PC the DC of a skill check he has tried multiple times, and having him say, "But I made that with my roll 2 rounds ago."
Duh. Duh. Duh.
- Telling a PC that the accent of a particular dragon is female. The PC replies, "But it hasn't said anything yet...."
- Telling a PC the DC of a skill check he has tried multiple times, and having him say, "But I made that with my roll 2 rounds ago."
Duh. Duh. Duh.
Metus
First Post
Heh, I'm rather enjoying these stories.
The biggest one that comes to mind for me is with Shadowrun. Brushes with death were (and are) extremely common in all my games, including D&D and other systems. One of my players constantly bitched about how hard my adventures were. "Okay," I thought, "I'll go ahead and run a published adventure, instead of my custom one, and I'll run it with absolutely no tweaking." Published adventures always have an air of credibility for me, especially with Shadowrun where all the adventures are "official".
So I run Corporate Punishment, the party gets into Tir and is ambushed by some Tir Ghosts. They are decimated to the point where I, a GM from the school of hard knocks, was left grimacing and feeling rather pathetic. And of course the problem player went into an even bigger bitchy tirade.
Thankfully, no major D&D flubs come to mind.
The biggest one that comes to mind for me is with Shadowrun. Brushes with death were (and are) extremely common in all my games, including D&D and other systems. One of my players constantly bitched about how hard my adventures were. "Okay," I thought, "I'll go ahead and run a published adventure, instead of my custom one, and I'll run it with absolutely no tweaking." Published adventures always have an air of credibility for me, especially with Shadowrun where all the adventures are "official".
So I run Corporate Punishment, the party gets into Tir and is ambushed by some Tir Ghosts. They are decimated to the point where I, a GM from the school of hard knocks, was left grimacing and feeling rather pathetic. And of course the problem player went into an even bigger bitchy tirade.
Thankfully, no major D&D flubs come to mind.
shadow
First Post
Some years back in high school I ran a GURPS: Cyberpunk game which was TOTALLY ripped off of various movies and video games. For example, it had a corrupt government performing experiments on children to unleash their psychic potential (from Akira) and villain clad in a black trenchcoat who weilded a katana (Sephiroth from Final Fantasy VII) who was "the next stage in human evolution" (and used a number of quotes stolen liberally from the video game Parasite Eve). Naturally, my players became aware of how much of the plot was stolen from various movies and games, and never let me live it down. It wouldn't of been so bad, except I ran out of creativity and let the game turn into a complete railroad adventure with little player freedom.
DragonLancer
Hero
I once ran a homebrew low level murder mystery. Near the end of the evening I was getting rather tired and I made quite the lame mistake.
The party had suspected that a member of the nobility was to blame, and decided to take matters into their own hands. They kicked in the front door of his home and ran into the manservant who for some reason shouted: "But I don't know anything about a murder!"
To which the players replied, "Who said we were here about a murder?" and promptly arrested the manservant (who had been the real killer).
:\
The party had suspected that a member of the nobility was to blame, and decided to take matters into their own hands. They kicked in the front door of his home and ran into the manservant who for some reason shouted: "But I don't know anything about a murder!"
To which the players replied, "Who said we were here about a murder?" and promptly arrested the manservant (who had been the real killer).
:\
Sholari
First Post
In high school I got tired of running the current campaign and decided I wanted to start from scratch with a new campaign. I intentionally killed off all the characters but tried make it look like it was their fault. Suffice to say I wasn't as clever as I thought. No one showed up for the next game session as I waited around for 20 minutes trying to find out where everyone was.
Granted I am older and wiser now, but that was indeed my moment of shame.
Granted I am older and wiser now, but that was indeed my moment of shame.
fourthmensch
First Post
The Black Egg appears in Dungeon 106.Hawkeye said:
