Worst & most common DM mistakes

[Edena_of_Neith]

Hi,

I remember reading several threads about this topic a few years back that were quite good, but don't remember where

Anyway, I want to improve my DMing skills so please tell - what is the worst mistake that you think a DM can do, and what is the most common mistake.

Please don't write worst mistake is not making the game fun for all since it is obvious that if you make a big mistake in running the game then the game is not fun. What I want to know is what that mistake is so that I can think about it and how to avoid it.

I list below my own opinion:
Worst - Running the NPCs as major characters while the PC take a back sit (Boringgggg DM ego trip - "and then the Uber super DM pet sweeps down from the heaven to save your sorry asses AGAIN, you are so lucky he is your guardian angel!").

Most common - Paying to much attention to the players who yell the most and ignoring those players more intimidated and shy, thus not letting them shine and show their skills. ("oh sorry mate that we skipped your turn again, why didn't you say something?")

Since you asked ...

I believe the worst mistakes are:

- Not talking to the players beforehand, and coming to an understanding with them concerning what they should expect in the game.
For example, *do* they wish to be challenged to their limit? Or *do* they wish a laxidasical game in which they mostly socialize? Or ... do they want something else?

- If the players wish to be challenged, then not challenging the players sufficiently. (If they ask to be challenged, then they - to use the proverbial saying - asked for it. So, since they asked for it, let them have it!)
Not challenging players who desire challenge leads to boredom, inattention, infighting amongst the players, quarrels over rules, and other undesirable things.

- Misusing NPCs. NPCs are just that: NPCs. They should not dominate the game. They should not play the major role in the game. Sometimes, they should not even play the minor role in the game.

 

[Engilbrand]

Not understanding what the players want is probably the worst and most common.
I just quit a game and took a few other players. (I should probably tell the DM I'm done, but anyways...)
I showed up to my first game a few games ago. 2 guys are older and like to RP. 2 guys are annoying. Everyone regales me with how they almost wiped the game before on Hellhounds. Yay? By the end of that session, we've had 2 or 3 fights against ridiculous numbers of weak crap. 15 guys to our 5. 9 CR 1 dinosaurs while we're asleep. Basically, multi-hour combats that we couldn't win without multiple people going down and barely getting lucky to survive. The DM gives us a fraction of the XP we should get. 3 of us tell him that it's annoying and we would like some stuff to be changed. We lay out the problem and give numerous ideas.
Starting the next game, we start facing bigger and badder stuff instead of a lot of stuff. The game was finished for 1 of the guys last week when we started the game late with a 2 hour combat that was a random encounter. We have 5 ECL 3 guys. He sends 2 CR 7 Hellcats at us because it's what he rolled. There was a point where he rolled for a minute or so while nobody said anything, then looked up, knocked his NPC over and said, "She goes down." That's it.
After we then took an hour to figure out just how much poison a character could find in a week- using a calculator, of course- I decide to screw the game.
We get taken to the next area where we see 50 bad guys walking. The leader has 2 of the world-saving artifacts that we need. I have one. Remember, we're level 3. "We're taking those." I think that everyone was tired of the crap, too, because they quickly jumped on board. We explained what we wanted to do for the next hour while he told us we'd die. We told him that we didn't care. We also knew very quickly that they were all level 5 or more.
Our perfect plan didn't work out so well as he started ignoring rules just to kill us. It was also the most fun we'd had at the table as one guy jumped out of a tree at the leader and had a cinematic battle. Of course, 3 of us dropped from CHA damage pretty quickly. Thankfully, his DMPC was there to save us and get us out of there.


The Problem: He never paid attention to what we wanted. Everything seemed so rigid in his mind that he didn't change as we needed him to. Plus, he spent a lot of time talking about his high level game that he was running. That's what the other 2 annoying guys were involved in.

 

[Pbartender]

Most common - saying no.

2. Saying NO to the players.

This should be revised to, "Not knowing when to say yes and when to say no."

Blanket approval can be just, if not worse, as bad as blanket denial. The difference is blanket approval is bad for the DM, blanket denial is bad for the players, and both are bad for the group.

 

[mjukglass]

This should be revised to, "Not knowing when to say yes and when to say no."

Blanket approval can be just, if not worse, as bad as blanket denial. The difference is blanket approval is bad for the DM, blanket denial is bad for the players, and both are bad for the group.

No. I disagree. Saying NO to a player is always bad. Saying NO to protagonist is ok if you just rolled some dices and let them decide.

 

[Ashrum the Black]

Originally Posted by: mjukglass
No. I disagree. Saying NO to a player is always bad. Saying NO to protagonist is ok if you just rolled some dices and let them decide.

I'd have to say that here I disagree very stongly.

It's the DM's job to judciate the game so that everybody has fun. To say no and enforce the rules when needed. And to say yes when the rules need to be broken to facilitate the fun.

The DM's job isn't simply provide cardboard XP cutout of creatures for the players to destroy. It's also his job to make the world a place that has its own internal consistency and is fun to adventrue in.

So, no, you can't play a gun wielding, cigar chomping fighter in our high fantasy game. But yes, you can when we're playing Iron Kingdoms. Now if the player has their aboslute heart set on the gunfighter archtype, we'll work to come up with a substitute, such as a knife fighter that fulfills the same function, or a wand weilding rogue. But full on gun bunny, no.

Yes the example is a bit extreme, but it's there to illustrate the point that sometimes the players requests are extreme and a no is appropriate.

On the other hand saying no out of hand just because it is a player request is also out of line and is definitly the mark of a bad DM in my book.

-Ashrum

 

[Pbartender]

No.

You just said no to a player.



But my point is, as Ashrem illustrates, while denying the player should never be the default answer, there are times when it is entirely appropriate to tell them no...

"What's the DC to swim across a lake of boiling hot lava?"
"Do you have a resistances to protect you from the heat?"
"No..."
"Then you can't... Or rather you can try, but you'll quickly and painfully die in cloud of barbecue-scented smoke and flame."
"Oh. Maybe the Wizard has couple of fly spells prepared."
"Yeah, maybe he does."

 

[Roger_the_jolly]

I'd have to say that here I disagree very stongly.

It's the DM's job to judciate the game so that everybody has fun. To say no and enforce the rules when needed. And to say yes when the rules need to be broken to facilitate the fun.

The DM's job isn't simply provide cardboard XP cutout of creatures for the players to destroy. It's also his job to make the world a place that has its own internal consistency and is fun to adventrue in.

So, no, you can't play a gun wielding, cigar chomping fighter in our high fantasy game. But yes, you can when we're playing Iron Kingdoms. Now if the player has their aboslute heart set on the gunfighter archtype, we'll work to come up with a substitute, such as a knife fighter that fulfills the same function, or a wand weilding rogue. But full on gun bunny, no.

Yes the example is a bit extreme, but it's there to illustrate the point that sometimes the players requests are extreme and a no is appropriate.

On the other hand saying no out of hand just because it is a player request is also out of line and is definitly the mark of a bad DM in my book.

-Ashrum

Thanks, I agree with you on this.

 

[N0Man]

From a recent game I played in, I'll list some bad mistakes, and some examples of the mistakes in action... all from one play campaign.

Being railroaded into stories with no ability to change what is going. - In my game, we were jumped by a small army in a forest, but yet nobody was allowed to see them coming. When we did see them, I said I wanted to attempt to try to persuade the leader to hear us out, and the DM responded with a club to my head that knocked me unconscious instantly, with no Save or anything.

Don't play favorites - In this same scenario, the DM's best friend wanted to put up a fight. While everyone else was knocked unconscious, this guy at least got a chance to fight back before being taken prisoner.

Don't arbitrarily render your players powerless and impotent - When our party awoke, we were in a dungeon. My social-skilled, smooth takling, acting, disguising investigative bard who had a voice related performance skill had his lips sewed shut. The fast monk had his achilles heel cut. The extremely charismatic and beautiful moonelf bard awoke with a gash across her face and one removed.

Don't create a BBEG with ridiculous combinations of powers that make him totally unthwartable - So our party manages an escape attempt. The the use of disguise magic, the bluff skill, my acting ability, action point spent and exceptionally lucky rolls, I impersonate the BBEG to the captain of the guards. The guard asks where our party was, and I respond something like, "How should I know? It's your job to capture them! Stop wasting my time and get to it!". Suddenly the whole moment was ruined, because the Guard knew something that the party didn't... The BBEG, in addition to being half-drow and half-giant, was also a psionicist, and would have ESP-like knowledge of where we were. They instantly disbelieved the illusion.

Let the players tell you what they are doing, don't force decisions on them. - Despite that setback, we manage to get free. We made our escape through a network of tunnels and caves. As we made our way through them, the DM says, "you enter a chamber filled with a green bubbling smoking liquid on the floor. You continue to run through the liquid and it burns. You realize it's acid." A player exclaims, "Wait! No, I would NOT run through that!"

Here are just a few examples of bad DM'ing

 

[Imperialus]

One that I haven't seen mentioned yet that used to be a big problem for me.

Don't ignore rules for the sake of the story.
Rules provide consistency, they let players know what can and can't be accomplished. It's important that your NPC's follow those rules too. Sometimes you'll need to bend them, very occasionally you'll need to break and depending on the system you'll often find yourself making them up on the fly but don't change things constantly to suit your needs. Rules are the physics of the D&D world. Just like how it would irritate you if suddenly gravity stopped working, it will irritate your players if they come across NPC's who can do things that break the rules.

This is not to say, don't houserule or don't overrule things that don't make sense to you but keep it consistent and make sure you discuss any rule changes with your group (or at least inform them of them) as early as possible.

 

[Doug McCrae]

Mary Sue NPCs and railroading.

The former is an NPC who is much more powerful than the PCs and either travels with the party or shows up a lot. All problems are solved by Mary Sue, rendering the PCs irrelevant.

Railroading is when the GM's plot is fixed and the players can't deviate from it no matter how hard they try.