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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Fenrir" data-source="post: 94309" data-attributes="member: 401">I had a Face to Face group for a long time that was less than stellar, and so often I had to resort to railroading and creating DM PC's to help guide action and such. In essence, they couldn't live up to my dream, so I made it for myself.They had fun with it, and I did too, but it's carried over into my current game, an online one with some stellar roleplayers. I still produce hordes (compared to other DM's I know of) of NPC's (Highest total in this campaign- 4 to 5 at one point) and I found myself hard pressed to develop them all aptly. So, I've cut down to two, and even now, it's hard to maintain them as full characters and also run a compelling story for the actual players. It works out, but the stress on me (and my typing skills) is a definite pitfall. Perhaps I make so many characters because I almost never get to play (DMing is and has always been my business), but either way, there are situations which it's destructive.I also develop a definitive plot in my head, but I don't force them to adhere to it. I drop in hints and subtle prods in certain directions, but I can name many times where the actions of my players have been a huge surprise. Often, it actually helps me, as the unexpected turns open up entirely new vistas of creativity in my head. I also don't plan enough. I have a naturally expansive memory, so I usually prefer to store everything in my head, from scripts for important descriptions to events and connections and such. All too often, it gets cluttered, and once in a while there's some inconsistency in my world as some such things get mixed up. I've been actively trying to remedy this for a long time, forcing myself to take some campaign logs and at least do stats for some generic NPC's beforehand, so at least I don't have to pause for any length of time to prepare something I really should have prepared days ago.Finally, I'm also very easy on my players. VERY easy. I've always put story and fun factor above strict rules adherence, often too much so. I've let players in my campaign restructure their characters entirely a few times (rearranging feats and such), as long as it's within general reason (i.e., they havent used it yet or rarely have in the past). The worst I've ever done in this regard is allow a character to erase and exchange a level of Psion for something else after he realized he really wasn't into it. It's worked me into a number of pickles where I want my players to be happy, but there are some things that just don't work and I have a hard time saying no. I'm worried sometimes that my players may think I show favoritism because I say no to some people more often than others (out of necessity), and so I too often cave when I should stand my ground.So there's my pitfalls. Geez, that's a lot ;-)</blockquote>

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