Your biggest screw-up as a DM?

[Piratecat]

One huge mistake I made back in the days of 1e:

The group had a bunch of plot threads to follow up, but I had just read a great module in Dungeon that I REALLY wanted to use. I dropped the plot thread in their laps and insisted that it was time-sensitive. The group grudgingly played along, but I didn't notice the dissatisfaction until well into the game session. The tough enemy had retreated to his inner sanctum when one player turned to the others and said, "You know what? Screw him. Let's just leave." The other players agreed unanimously, leaving me open-mouthed; that wasn't their style.

"But he'll succeed in making the golem!" I protested.

"So? Some other hero can deal with it. We have other stuff that we have to do."

I guess I should consider it a compliment that my other plotline was more interesting, but this taught me a great lesson about blatant railroading... even when the new adventure is "cool." I let them leave, and the group heard occasional rumors about the guy but never ran into him or his night golem again. Good riddance.

 

[DaveMage]

This isn't really a screw up, but it was an episode that I still can't live down. In order to perform a certain ritual, the characters needed a list of items, among them milk. As they were in a remote part of the world, it was going to be difficult to get the milk. One of the players got the bright idea to have the druid (whose player was blessedly absent that session) turn into a cow so that the party could milk her. Which led to my ruling that no one could milk another character when that character's player was absent.

Eris, you had my on the floor with this one - LOL!

My coworkers are looking at me suspiciously...

I think I'll let my players know as soon as we start this weekend's session that there is to be *NO* milking other players...*ROFL!!!*

 

[Ramien Meltides]

When it comes to worst DM screw-ups, I've got two:

Screw-Up #1: A long-running Birthright campaign had been doing just fine for over a year and I was getting ready to end one story arc and begin another. The idea was to have the PCs confront one of the main bad guys of the campaign setting (Rhoubhe Manslayer) and defeat him, only to discover that his grand plan had already been set in motion - an army of human-hating elves invading the PC's home nation from the coast. I had envisioned a desperate struggle to free their people.

Good idea, bad execution. The PC's had ruled their land fairly well for quite a while prior to the invasion. Things were JUST getting good - and I went and took nearly everything away in one fell swoop. This wouldn't have been so bad, but we were also dealing with fairly powerful PC's at the time - around 16th level - so the battles and the situations were, frankly, getting a little out of my control. I felt that if I really had this elven army fight and challenge the PC's, I was likely to overkill and slaughter everyone - not a good way to end a year-long game. The campaign eventually ended around this point, and I always think to myself that I could've done a much better job to wrap things up than to leave everything hanging like that.

Screw-up #2: So, I started a new campaign. I was excited, I was using my particular flavor of home-brew and things were going pretty well. My party was investigating a mysterious Elven tomb inhabited by a Goblin tribe when they stumbled into the main meeting hall and encountered: 12 Goblins (including some levelled goblin warriors) and a lesser Barghest in goblin form. This battle was tough, but the Barghest fled down a nearby hallway (where there's a really big door that seals it off) and shouted for help. The PC's were down one character (who was slain in the mass combat) and were, frankly in need of rest and recovery. My instinct was to end the game then and there and pick up next time. However, there was plenty of time left in our normal session length, so, reluctantly, I continued. I described the booming sounds coming down the hallway as whatever the Barghest had gone to awaken approached. The PC's all took up defensive stances around the main doorway as a Half-dragon Ogre (CR 4 in the old MM) walked out.

CR 4? HA!

The Half-Dragon Ogre proceeded to tear my party to pieces. I could do little but watch in a horrified stupor as the Ogre rampaged around, slaughtering each and every PC with impunity. From that moment on, I never used a monster based solely on its CR - I always made sure to check what kind of damage the critter can deal out before placing it somewhere the PC's could encounter it. This encounter ended in a TPK and ended the campaign, sadly. I nearly lost a friend over this encounter.

 

[eris404]

Eris, you had my on the floor with this one - LOL!

My coworkers are looking at me suspiciously...

I think I'll let my players know as soon as we start this weekend's session that there is to be *NO* milking other players...*ROFL!!!*

You should have been there for the discussion, whether the druid-as-cow could actually produce milk or not ("Is producing milk an extraordinary ability?").

 

[GoodKingJayIII]

The biggest mistake as a DM was my unintentional mistreatment of a friend who drove 2 hours to a game only to have him sit doing nothing for 3 hours because I couldn't find a convenient place to drop his character into the story.

I actually did the same thing. It wasn't a two-hour drive for the player, but we did play for about 5 or 6 hours. It was a city campaign, and he had created a Druid character. I felt awful I couldn't fit him in. He was understanding, but I knew I had screwed him over big time. It's definitely a mistake I will never make again.

 

[Coredump]

What I am amazed about.... is how many of these blunders end up with "They never played with me again" or "I almost lost a friend over this" etc.

Are players really that tempermental? If I had a really boring session, or died to a TPK for a dumb reason. I would tell the DM, but just leave? Drop a friendship? Wow... I must not be taking DnD seriously enough....

.

 

[Cor Azer]

Most of my major blunders have been as many mentioned - forgetting key NPC abilities during combats. Of note, in 2ed, my party took down a fairly old white dragon easily after hitting it with a paralyzation missle (myself forgetting that dragons are immune to paralyzation).

I've done a few of the accidental mystery spoilers - using the 'she' pronoun, revealing that The Princess is in fact a sword rather than a person, and the like.

Fortunately, for me, I don't recall any overtly disastrous rules blunders, although I'm sure there have been some.

 

[DaveMage]

You should have been there for the discussion, whether the druid-as-cow could actually produce milk or not ("Is producing milk an extraordinary ability?").

I'd say they couldn't. You'd need the Lactation feat.

For safe, drinkable milk, (or for milk used in spell components) they would require the Inherent Pasteurization feat.

Ah, I love D&D...

 

[Rel]

I once ran a campaign based loosely on a series of books that I'd read and thought were very cool. The problem was that none of the players had read these books, none particularly loved the author and all were very ambivalent about the whole genre. I had to drag them around by the nose as they cluelessly missed things that seemed obvious to me (remember, I had read the books). Much of the mystery required the use of research skills that were very boring to play out and I dumped big chunks of information on them that was above their heads and largely meaningless.

Then I iced the cake by foisting off the project of essentially setting up a government on the alien planet that I'd railroaded them into colonizing.

Finally one of my players thankfully took me aside and told me that he was having to work harder in order to play in this campaign than he was at his job. And that frankly it wasn't much more fun. I ended that campaign with an apology to the players and we quietly started something new a couple weeks later that turned into a big success.

Lesson Learned: If you want to try out some kind of new concept or genre that you're not absolutely certain the other players are into, try a one-shot game and guage their reaction.

 

[JimAde]

I've screwed up so many times I literally can't keep track

Just recently, my group rescued about 50 goblin slaves being held by some orcs (long story). Anyway, they needed to get the goblins to a safe location several days away. It was a few weeks between game sessions and I came up with several cool caravan/protect the innocents/manage the cranky goblins encounters. I figured it would last at least one, maybe two sessions.

I had forgotten that the PCs had foisted the job off on somebody else at the very end of the last session. I tried to disagree, but one of them had even written it on his characters sheet.

Oy.