Your biggest screw-up as a DM?

[WizarDru]

Please, do share (with spoiler tags if necessary). I ran both for my group, and we had fun with both.

Personally I found the locales in Bastion quite intresting and pretty fantastic. Spire was more boring in the latter stages, but still a worthy crawl nonetheless. My players utilized a nice mix of spells, melee and SWAT tactics to prevail, so more power to them.

Nightfang Spire wasn't a bad module, per se, just full of lots of inconsistincies and my players stopped enjoying after the sixth session in, I think. By the 8th, they'd had enough, and like PC's group in 1e, basically said "Screw this. Our patron represents some powerful people...if it's so darned important to him, let him get someone more powerful for the job...we're through dying in this place." They would pass by the Spire's location a couple of adventures later, to find that it had been flattened, along with everything for a 2-mile radius. You can read some comments right here in my story hour. The words used by several players to describe the design was 'arbitrary'. You'll find Zad's comments, followed by mine, for a better idea.

Dissatisfaction and arguments over Bastion were severe enough to threaten the game. I should have calmed everyone down before tempers, flared over frustration at the module and it's setup boiled over. I retconned two to three sessions worth of material to clean up that mess, before it got really out of hand. The sad thing is, I should have seen it coming and prevented it, but I goofed, and let a situation develop in game that got players mad out of game. And we play to have fun, so I felt really bad about it for some time.

 

[Sejs]

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

Nah, the Lactation feat just lets you produce it as a move action instead of a standard, and removes the AoO.

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

*nod* Or they could take two levels in the Milk Lord prc.

 

[DaveMage]

Nah, the Lactation feat just lets you produce it as a move action instead of a standard, and removes the AoO.

*nod* Or they could take two levels in the Milk Lord prc.

Shouldn't that be "Milk Lady" or "Milk Maid" prestige class?

Then there's always the "Order of the Bossie"...

(Of course, now I'm just, *ahem* milking it, aren't I?)

(And that's no bull...)

Ok, I'll stop now.

 

[Evilhalfling]

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...

What if you gave her a potion of Bull Str - would you find traces of steroids in the milk?
If you used animal growth would the milk have bovine growth hormones in it?

Milk from the cow is pretty safe, w/o pasturization, you just couldnt store it, unless you used purify food&drink.

I guess profession farmer skill could be used by the milker, to determine the amount of milk produced.

Questions aside I think we need to Moo-ve on

 

[Voadam]

The gods aren't crazy, they just have dyslexia

The most fun DM screw up I've played through was when a friend of mine ran a module out of dungeon. He never put in any effort to create a coherent world, one day we'd have a plot with the FR gods, the next it was Greyhawk ones one town over. I was playing a cleric of the Native American Great Spirit. So it was a hodge podge campaign.

Anyway we agreed to help these scholar priests of the knowledge god Omega who had one of their library temples extradimensionally sealed off. There was a lot of neat roleplay with them praying to Omega and blessing us in the name of Omega, and so on. We went in using one way magic where we had to invoke the name Omega and then had to find various runes in the library that spelled out the gods name to unseal it. It was very cool, fighting wierd creatures and gathering the runes but something was not right, I kept asking "why is there an 'H' rune here? and we spent an hour scouring the place doubletracking trying to find the last missing rune, an 'E' finally I looked at the runes we had collected and turned to the DM "Wait a minute! Are you sure the name of the God is Omega? Are you sure its not 'Oghma' the Celtic god of language, runes, and poetry?" My friend the DM said "no, no, of course not. Its Omega." Then he looked at the module again carefully and flushed bright red/pink and his mouth sort of pursed up. Another PC shouted "He's blushing! It is Oghma!" and we all cracked up.

The joys of doing word puzzle adventures when the DM (and also one of the players) is dyslexic.

 

[hong]

Dissatisfaction and arguments over Bastion were severe enough to threaten the game. I should have calmed everyone down before tempers, flared over frustration at the module and it's setup boiled over. I retconned two to three sessions worth of material to clean up that mess, before it got really out of hand. The sad thing is, I should have seen it coming and prevented it, but I goofed, and let a situation develop in game that got players mad out of game. And we play to have fun, so I felt really bad about it for some time.

Interesting. What was it about the Bastion that made it so flammable? When we did it, we didn't really have that many arguments; but then we took the attitude that (nearly) everything in the Bastion was Eeeevil and therefore fair game.

 

[WizarDru]

Interesting. What was it about the Bastion that made it so flammable? When we did it, we didn't really have that many arguments; but then we took the attitude that (nearly) everything in the Bastion was Eeeevil and therefore fair game.

Bastion's opening, with the Cathezar, played out poorly, for a start. Cordell's weak 'plot twist' of throwing in a token super-NPC to save the group didn't sit well, so I abandoned it. However, the resulting slaughter that occured left a sour taste in the group's mouth, and in-game reasons led to a lot of loud discussions about different RP-issues. I was at fault as much as the module, not for deleting the NPC, but for not seeing how unhappy the party was at the setup letting the Cathezar do 26 melee attacks per round, and feeling extremely railroaded.

The rest of the module struck me as having some serious flaws, even if it had some interesting locations. The classic 'deny players any use of divination' strategy that Bastion employs was quite unsatisfying, as well. Presenting the PCs with moral 'no alternative' choices was another problem of several. We just clicked our heels, I informed them that a powerful NPC used some serious mojo, and the adventure effectively only half-happened, with only one of the party having any real recollection of the events.

We moved on, and have had lots of fun, since. I consider Bastion an example of how NOT to write a high-level module, and "Lich Queen's Beloved" from Dungeon # 100 to be a text-book example of the right way to do so.

 

[Schmoe]

My biggest goof occurred quite recently.

In my campaign, a barrier has been placed between the Prime and the Astral planes. The barrier was placed to cut the link between Durla Kryl, the god of oblivion, and the source of his strength, thereby binding him to restless slumber. However, it has the side-effect of also preventing the souls of the dead from reaching their final reward. The goddess of the dead, Danaan Mac Llyr, has therefore tasked her bastard son with bringing down the barrier to release the souls.

The party initially learned of a prophecy that told of a "Raven" who would break the barrier and unleash Durla Kryl. Through many sessions of adventuring and exploring, the party learned that the "Raven" was actually the son of Danaan Mac Llyr, and he was doing her bidding. As they are armed with an artifact that they believe can contain Durla Kryl, they are now looking to position themselves to be ready when the Raven completes the ritual and brings down the barrier.

It's been about 6 months since we've played this campaign, and so I was writing up a synopsis to refresh everyone's memories. Of course, my memory isn't so good either, and I let slip that the Raven is the progeny of an unholy union between Danaan Mac Llyr and Durla Kryl. Doh!

You see, the Raven has been doing his mother's bidding, but secretly making arrangements so that when the barrier falls, the souls of the dead will be siphoned to feed his father and strengthen him beyond any power of any artifact the party might hope to use against him. Instead of allowing the "Raven" to complete his ritual and bring down the planar seal, they should be rushing against time to halt the ritual. I had long imagined the looks on their faces as the knowledge of the "Raven's" true heritage came out in the game and realization of the ramifications dawned upon them. I suppose the party will have a much different outlook on the situation next time we play.

As with most things, it's a mistake I can work around, but it really bites to let slip a major plot twist long before it was supposed to show up.

 

[DungeonmasterCal]

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.

Good grief that was funny...I really hope I don't have to explain to any cube mates what I'm laughing at...

Got Druid?

 

[Storm Raven]

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..."

"It is a magical banner that displays the device and title of whoever is holding it at the time."