Your biggest screw-up as a DM?

[Taneel BrightBlade]

My worst DMing mistakes= over a third of the time i'm DMing

 

[Pbartender]

Player: "Ooo! Ooo! Ooo! Can we use stuff from [INSERT SOURCE BOOK TITLE]? Can we? Please? Can we? Can we?"

Me: "Yeah, sure, whatever."

 

[OakwoodDM]

My friends once told me a story of a game of Weird Wars they were playing in (this story was confirmed by the DM, too). They were a party of (I believe) 1st or 2nd level soldiers, and had just come through an incredibly tough fight with a blood mage and his zombie horde. After they were finished, the DM asked:

"What does CR 12 mean?"

He got stick about that for a while afterwards!

Anyway, on to my DMing mistakes. I haven't been DMing for long, so I don't have the stories of some of you, but I have allowed a couple of power gamers to spoil and (in one case) destroy campaigns. Also, there was a time when an unconscious PC was floating down a river and I allowed another, who was afraid of water, to jump in and rescue him. I was young, and too nice to be an effective DM.

 

[Inconsequenti-AL]

My biggest mistake. The last session I ran... been busy, so hadn't done any of my usual preparation. Tried to wing it. Suffered from total mental block. We all went to the pub instead, so it all ended well.

Next biggest mistake. Buying new books while running a campaign. They've always got better ideas in, that I can't quite shoehorn into my game.

Ah, Double Cross - that's funny!

A friend of mine did something similar - he'd taken great care to hide the name of the adventure he was running from his players. When he laid out the map to show us something - it had a little box in the corner with the name in it- something along the lines of 'Night of the Vampire'. PCs went and holed up in the local church, turned the pews into stakes and dipped them in the font.

 

[Greenstone]

A real corker, from the early days of a campaign that has managed to survive 10 years...

I'd had this great idea that the PCs would start the campaign with amnesia... which helped to explain their lack of knowledge of the world, and allowed the PCs to learn all the details of the setting (a homebrew) as their players learned them.

Since the characters had been in limbo for centuries, but were prophesised to return one day, they were named "The Sleeping Sword" (name stolen from somewhere in FR).

Once they realised who they were, the PC's eventually went about trying to recover all the great stuff they'd possessed in the past, before they were put in limbo... this included a magical war banner...

Player: "At last, we've found it, our war banner... so what's emblazoned on it?"
DM (me): "Five silver stars on a blue field, and the words siendas sarrocem"
Player: "Sounds like truetongue, which I know... whatsit mean?"
DM: "It means The Sleeping Sword"
Player: "OK, I... hang on... how come we were called The Sleeping Sword long before we ever 'went to sleep'... and before anyone even knew we would?"
DM: "Er, well..."

 

[Belen]

About 50% of my GMing career? At least, it feels that way.

Of course, that could be the burn out talking.

 

[rgard]

My worst DM flub was to do a total party kill. This wasn't just any TPK but it was in a campaign that had a definite ending, and the TPK was about 5 hours of playing time from the end of the campaign! So the players played the same characters for about a year, just to have them all accidently killed just before the finale. I felt like the biggest moron!

D.

My biggest goof was not doing a TPK. I was DMing the Hill Giant Steading (G1) in 1979 or 1980 and the players didn't put any thought into their attack...walked up, kicked the door in and started hacking. The giants eventually brought to bear the entire population of the steading and the PCs decided to 'run away'. They got out of the building/compound and found themselves stuck next to the compound looking at a 20' wide by 20' deep ditch with the draw bridge destroyed. I don't know if the ditch was in the original description or if I added it. Anyway, they were out of hit points and nearly out of spells. The magic user cast a phantasmal force spell that put up a bridge over the ditch and argued that if the PCs believed the bridge was there they could walk over it. After lots of discussion I let the PCs cross the bridge (the mu had some other way across, fly spell or something.) It didn't really matter as the giants were able to get across the ditch and catch them. I then had the cavalry show up (30 orc and half-orc mercenaries working for a benefactor of theirs) who scared the remaining giants back into the steading.

So I screwed up by letting them use the PF to get across the ditch, then saved them by DM intervention via the orcs. The players weren't upset by this, but some of the other players who weren't participating in that adventure were really annoyed with me. Looking back, I should have had the giants kill a couple of them, capture the rest then leave it up to the others players to come try to save the survivors.

 

[Will]

Friend's mistake (and probably everyone has done this):
Big encounter planned on road to X. We promptly teleport to X, thus skipping everything he had planned for the session. Woops.

Me:
Yeesh. Ok, so PCs were to encounter Iron Lord Plashency. He was one of the rulers of their hated enemies, but I had created him as a potential ally (he was planning on attacking his 'compatriots')

Party level was about 15, I think, Iron Lord was 20th and well-equipped. Had a ring of spell turning, on which a great many screw-ups transpire:

1) I didn't realize you could activate the ring in, say, the morning, and it would stay on until used. So I was relying on him activating it in combat...
PC wizard Disintegrates the Iron Lord on init 23, first round of combat. Iron Lord had SR ... but PC managed to get through SR. Also rolled a 3 for his Save. DUST.

2) Iron Lord had a Clone ready. So he Timestopped, teleported back in, grabbed his gear, and prepared for battle. Activate that damn ring of spell turning!
PC wizard Disintegrates the Iron Lord on init 23, third round of combat (when the IL appears). Again, failed every roll...

Screwup 2: Looking at spell turning, I realize it doesn't apply to Touch range spells. I then proceed to have a complete brain fart when looking up Disintegrate, reading 'ranged touch' as the same as 'Touch range.'

So IL dies a second time, this time due not to poor planning but momentary insanity/moronity on my part.

He appeared a third time, though this last time sent a Seneschal to treat with the (obviously formidable) party.


And the funny thing was, I had made an elaborate plan on what to do if the party attacked the Iron Lord so that they were captured and not killed. Didn't expect the party to, well, WIN.

Stupid stupid STUPID.

 

[hong]

Friend's mistake (and probably everyone has done this):
Big encounter planned on road to X. We promptly teleport to X, thus skipping everything he had planned for the session. Woops.

Actually, we've had the exact opposite happen to us a couple of times.

DM: "Okay, you want to go to this place on the other side of the continent. You cast teleport --"

Players: "That's boring. Let's walk there. Do we have any encounters?"

DM: "...."

2) Iron Lord had a Clone ready. So he Timestopped, teleported back in, grabbed his gear, and prepared for battle. Activate that damn ring of spell turning!
PC wizard Disintegrates the Iron Lord on init 23, third round of combat (when the IL appears). Again, failed every roll...

Screwup 2: Looking at spell turning, I realize it doesn't apply to Touch range spells. I then proceed to have a complete brain fart when looking up Disintegrate, reading 'ranged touch' as the same as 'Touch range.'

That's okay, because spell turning also doesn't apply to effect spells, of which disintegrate (effect: ray) is one.

 

[Will]

Oh really? That makes me feel moderately better.

Though, now, thinking the guy should have had rod of absorption.

Though he had rod of Greater Quicken. I was astonished by how little damage a double Meteor Swarm did. :/