WotBS WotBS DM Goofs and Evil Deeds

[John Doom]

I wanted to create a little thread where we DMs can comiserate about the mistakes we've made that are so blatant that the players themselves know you've screwed up. I also thought it would be fun to talk about some of the little evils we commit as DMs to our players.

This weekend I began Act 2 of the Part 2. I believe I was bad-karma repaid for a bit of tension I threw at them earlier.
As the players were crossing the bridge (2:1 - BridgeFort) I had them roll perception checks. Our Elf Ranger threw damn near 35 and I decided to give him some tension.
Me: "All of you hear the natural sounds of the river crossing below you some 10 feet down." *to the elf* "You hear a glopping noise like some kind of suction or swallowing at random intervals every couple of seconds."

None of the other players could hear it, so they hurried away from that section waiting for me to pop a troll or something onto the map. Of course, that is a natural sound of water going around a bridge support.

Later, the players were just coming into the Shrine of Annaiarial (sp) and I had a nice big goof. I put the map out, and started setting all of the monsters onto the map and then read, "round two, they pop outta the graves". Whoops. Remove all monsters and smile.

Its so much less fun when they know about the ambush!

Does anyone else have anything?

 

[Blackbrrd]

In the second session I ran I killed one of the characters because I had added a second wizard and the first one rolled high for damage and another critted.

I totally botched the encounter with Feris the sorcerer that happens just before you leave Gate Pass. It seemed such a nice encounter and when the players just looked another way I had the guards come back and try to restore order to the shop. I should have given the players more time to see it coming and able to stop the guards from entering the battle. Either that or just let Feris and his gang finish up and let the guards come in after wards. To my defense it was on a Friday after 8 hours of work and 5 hours of DM-ing.

Other than that there hasn't been anything that has seemed weird or out of place to the players. It's something I have commented about several times - the modules are solid and logical, which makes them easy to DM.

 

[EugeneZ]

I made a pretty big deal out of one of the minor NPCs in Shelter, Nelebekus/Brutus. I thought he was an interesting character, considering he's one of the first hints you get of the connection behind many of the events in that adventure. At one point the PCs went on a wild goose chase in order to find him. Eventually they met him at the Royale, and accidentally scared him. He got away. So the players really wanted to nab him. Finally, they nailed him aboard the ship and threw him overboard dramatically.

For some reason, I was focused on other stuff during this whole scene/encounter and completely forgot the build-up to this character, so I wasn't sure why everyone thought killing him was a big deal. So that was the minor goof -- I didn't really do a good job of dramatising him during the combat. But the really big goof was that when the PCs were clearing out the last of the Ragesians at the beginning of Banquet, I had thought, "Wait! What happened to Nelebekus? They never found him after he escaped at the Royale! Now's a great time to bring him back!" so I had him show up as the "final boss" in the awesomely confusing tunnel system. I said something like... "The knight laughs and you clearly recognize the voice of Nelebekus!"

... Yeah. Everyone was really confused and thought he had come back from the dead or something and after they reminded me that he drowned in the Ocean, I rescinded the laugh and said he was just some random Ragesian Dread Knight.