Worst & most common DM mistakes

[Afrodyte]

Worst and Most Common -- Failing to be descriptive. A symptom of this is when a player asks, "What's the room like?" and the DM draws it on the battlemat and considers the question answered.

When I ask this, as a player, I'm not looking for extemporaneous prose. I'm just looking for hooks that I can hang RP on ... stuff that will make this room stand out. By all means, draw it on the battlemat and list the contents, but then I'd love to hear something like, "There's a cold draft at your backs, wafting into the room. From somewhere beyond that far archway, you can hear faint, intermittent screams, and they sound humanoid. You can smell mineral-heavy water."

When I realize as DM that my players are bored, I always notice that I've stopped being descriptive. When, as a player, I begin to lose interest in what's going on in the game, I always notice that the DM is not offering description.

I'm of a different mind on this. I love description, but I hate rambling. If you're going to use description, I prefer it to be evocative more than verbose.

My general rule of thumb: What would the average person pick up on within 10 seconds? Anything more than that would call for appropriate checks.

If there's one thing I hate as a player, it's sitting on my thumbs. If I'm spending more time waiting than I am doing interesting things or participating in interesting interactions, I get bored. Really bored. Boredom makes me fidgety.

That brings me to one of the most common GMing "mistakes" I come across: not making the plot personal. Too often, GMs use generic motivators for PCs, which doesn't often make for compelling protagonists. As a result, it often takes me longer to engage with what's happening. I go along with the plot because that's what the group's doing and what the DM wants, rather than because it's what either myself or my character cares about.

As far as worst mistakes?

Every party being some variation of, "Your mission, should you choose to accept it . . . "

It goes back to what I said above about being too generic. Parties almost always begin as professional relationships. What I'd do for something a bit more personal. Why not have the PCs be members of the same family? Or be from the same city? Maybe they could have been abducted and experimented on by the same aliens. Y'know, give the PCs a relationship or experience to link them together aside from working for the same guy. Better yet, let the PCs think of it and do some work for a change.

 

[Pbartender]

The other is "mysteries" with no, or only very ambiguous, clues.

I used to have a lot of trouble with this... I realized that part of the problem was that, even if I did my best to visualize the mystery from the Players' point of view, I still had all the answers to the mystery floating in the back of my mind. Unconsciously, it made the clues seem easier than they actually were.

I've found a few solutions to this... First, begin with tough clues, and slowly feed in extra information, so that the clues slowly become more and more obvious.

Second... When the players are getting stuck, review the clues with them, "Okay guys, here's what you know so far." Often, they're stuck, because they've forgotten a clue or didn't notice a piece of information as a clue. Sometimes, they're just having troubles seeing all the clues together as a whole. Reminding them of everything they've discovered can often help them see the big picture.

Last... As someone mentioned above, pay attention to the players brainstorming over the clues. If they're way off base, but are coming up with interesting and feasible scenarios to fit the clues, then adapt and adjust. Rather than dashing their hopes with a wild goose chase, swallow your pride and change your plot to match the players' deductions, and save your current plot for another time. The game moves on, the players feel clever, and everyone has more fun in the end.

 

[Cadfan]

Unless they are trying to track down and recover some stolen buried treasure from a a Voodoo Witchdoctor on an island full of his horde of Zombi minions.

Island of the Damned, a free adventure from Green Ronin for Skull & Bones D20 setting.

Point taken, sir. Point taken.

 

[Graybeard]

That brings me to one of the most common GMing "mistakes" I come across: not making the plot personal. Too often, GMs use generic motivators for PCs, which doesn't often make for compelling protagonists. As a result, it often takes me longer to engage with what's happening. I go along with the plot because that's what the group's doing and what the DM wants, rather than because it's what either myself or my character cares about.
.

I agree. It's okay to start off with a generic motivation such as you all meet in a tavern or you are all hired by NPC X but make it personal quickly. In my current campaign, I had the BBEG send gifts to the PCs families and even to the PCs themselves. It let the PCs know in a non-threatening way that the BBEG knew where the PCs families lived. The players loved it because it make them paranoid about what the BBEG could or would do to their families. It gave them a personal reason to hate the BBEG rather than a professional one.

 

[Celebrim]

The most common mistakes are also the worst ones. Since I'm not good at brevity, you are getting a list:

1) Not learning the rules: This is the worst mistake and also the most common. I don't know how many times I've set down at someone's table and suffered through a session where we crammed 10 minutes of fun into 4 hours because the stupid referee hadn't bothered to learn the rules of the game he was running.

2) Thinking you can wing it: There are a few highly experienced DMs out there that can draw on thier past play experience, literary knowledge, imagination, and ideas that they've played with but never fleshed out to wing sessions, but YOU AREN'T ONE OF THEM*. Wing it only when you have to, not by design. The more work you've done, and the longer the campaign has been going, the easier it is to rely on the natural flow of the campaign to create story, but you always should have something worked out in advance to fall back on. All the best ref's I've played under did a heck of alot of work preparing for thier games. If you can get by with just one hour or preparation for each hour of play, you are doing good - and probably relying heavily on published modules. BTW, published modules need lots of preparation time to. If you don't want to put in the time, you probably aren't cut out for the job.

*(The more impressed by himself and the more a DM brags about his ability to wing it, the less impressed by them I've been in actual play.)

3) Not listening to your players: It might primarily be your game, but it isn't just your game. You might have this great idea for a combat light game of court intrigue, mystery, low magic and high simulation. If your players are all beer and pretzels gamers who just want to take things and kill there stuff, everyone is going to be much happier if you switch campaign styles midstream and give the players the game they want to play. That doesn't mean that you can't put your own stylistic spin on the campaign (you probably should), and it doesn't mean you can't write the adventures such that it challenges them to elevate thier play somewhat (you probably should) but it does mean that you probably shouldn't get in a battle of wills, or berate your players for not playing the game you want to play. Listen to the players, and in particular watch thier body language. If you've got consistant bored and distracted body language, you need to figure out what gets your players interested and give it to them.

4) Making things too big: The first impulse of any new DM is to create enormous mega-dungeons, massive cities, and globe trotting super adventures to save the world. What you end up creating is a combination of pointless repetition in a low detail non-engaging environment, incomplete maps you never really finish, and lots of random encounters. The eighth pointless fight against ghouls, or the tenth fight against darkmantles is not going to be nearly so fun as the first. The twelth identical 20'x30' room containing 3d6 orc gaurds is going to create something of a player revolt in anyone over the age of 11. Start small. Poor some creativity into smaller environments. Detail some NPCs. Come up with some plots with twists. Let the huge dungeons and massive cities grow organically as your campaign continues. You'll have plenty of time to add another layer to the onion and detail the real ultimate BBEG when your players have leveled up a few times.

5) Waiting to hash out any potential problems during play rather than dealing with them during character creation: This is a whole subcategory of problems that derail campaigns early. Everyone wants to get play started. You should want to get play started. But take some time to talk with the players (privately if need be) about thier characters, and what they think character is going to be like in play. Check off all the following points:

a) Is the character going to be a viable build, capable of contributing in the adventures you have in mind and which won't be outshone by the other players?
b) Does the character have a good hook which will consistantly get them involved in adventures? 'I'm a stay-at-home cowardly xenophobic loner' is probably not a viable character concept.
c) Is the character socially functional and capable of interacting with other PC's and NPC's with only managable friction? Is the player good enough of a roleplayer to entertain himself and others in the role?
d) Is the player committed to playing the character in an anti-social manner? 'My character concept is an assassin that secretly plans to kill all the other characters' is not a viable character concept.
e) If the character is some sort of idealist (Paladin being the most common, but lots of things apply), do you and the player have a common agreement and understanding about what code or standard of behavior this implies?
f) Is it possible for the individual characters to be a cohesive party? You may want to get players to work out ahead of time how they are going to handle intraparty conflict, especially if there are clashing character concepts. The question of 'Why should this group stay together' is extremely important. Don't leave it to chance.

Don't blame the player(s) for your failure to foresee obvious problems in intraparty dynamics. It's alot easier to work this out ahead of time than wait and hope for an argeement to be arrived at during play.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Threads like this remind me why ENWorld is such a great place. You just have to listen to all this experienced guys and you'll learn a lot.

After that, you only have to apply it in game.
Some things you actually might have already learned or known. But seeing it repeated reminds you keep looking out for it...

 

[Rackhir]

1) EN World is a resource use it.

Read story hours for plot, BBEG and NPC ideas. Pay particular attention to SHs that are using your setting. Even if it isn't a good read, it may still have ideas you can use.

Some DMs have suggestion threads for their campaigns, where people suggests encounters, monsters and challenges for the players. You may wish to start one for your campaign. This is particularly valuable for mid to high level campaigns, where it can take a substantial amount of time to create monsters/npcs and there are lots of people who will happily create and stat out that advanced half-Daelkyr beholder strike team for you.

There are also "Rogue's Galleries" where characters and sometimes NPCs are described. You can file off the serial numbers and retread them for your campaign.

2) Talk to your players and solicit feedback. Very few campaigns have failed because people discussed what they liked and didn't like or because everyone was on the same page as to what to expect from the campaign.

3) If your "House Rules" get much past a page of text, you need to seriously think about if you should be using a system other than D&D. If you have to substantially change the rules of the game, then another system might be a better fit.

4) Actions have consequences - This doesn't mean punish the players for doing or not doing something, just that what has happened in the past should have an effect on what happens in the future. Have NPCs show up repeatedly (where it makes sense). If the PC's are kind or helpful to an NPC, they may return the favor down the road. Helped out the halflings rather than the elves, maybe the elves's villiage is a smouldering ruin the next time they pass that way. Just avoid making everything a dammed if you do/dammed if you don't choice. They have their place and PCs can't do or be everywhere at once, but they shouldn't be screwed over by every choice they have to make.

 

[Doug McCrae]

That brings me to one of the most common GMing "mistakes" I come across: not making the plot personal. Too often, GMs use generic motivators for PCs, which doesn't often make for compelling protagonists. As a result, it often takes me longer to engage with what's happening. I go along with the plot because that's what the group's doing and what the DM wants, rather than because it's what either myself or my character cares about.

I think that's expecting too much of the DM. The typical D&D campaign has a variety of adventures and situations. It can't be solely focused on killing the BBEG who killed all the PCs' fathers for example, that's too limited. You need more general motivations like a desire for gold or fame or altruism to get the PCs down monster and trap-infested holes.

 

[Serensius]

As far as clues for a mystery game go, it depends on your players. Most of my players are highly intelligent and I quickly found out that the clues I was giving were too easy for them.

True. Also, something I learned last session: be careful what you mention to the PCs in terms of how they will interpret it. They talked to an NPC, and he mentioned The Ruby Cave casually, I don't even think it was related to what the PCs wanted to find out (which was to find out who has the divine focus item that has caused perpetual rain over the valley yadayada), and suddenly they are all like "dungeon! Let's go!", even though I had anticipated that they'd investigate first and discover where the item came from (and subsequently the plot which would foreshadow the heroic tier act). Because I said something that was misunderstood by the players, I had to restructure the entire adventure (not that I was particularly prepared, au contraire), and I have to find some other way to introduce the plot. So, I guess my advice is: Be careful about what you say to your players

 

[Afrodyte]

*nudge*