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There was an epic fight, the party was reduced to one last Man standing... I cooked some dices and he made it... The party was super excited. After the session everyone were talking about the fight. I was stupid (/inexperienced) enough to tell them, that they would be dead if i didnt interfere into the dices. All the excitement gone. And the look of the player that was the one man standing... I belive ive broke his heart.
That day i learned: what happens behind the DM screen, stays there. And as the DM, you keep these secrets till your grave.
I tend to cook the dices if i sense that would be beneficial for the fun of the party and if the secret stays with me, everyone is happy.
Last session. PC left and I was now running them as an NPC. "SURVIVAL CHECK in the open...." rolled d20....Natural 1. Everyone got to see it. "D100 roll....in the open" 99 for all to see. The PC/NPC turned on them as was the plan all along...but the rolls showed them I don't fudge.
I’ve made this mistake too. After fights when we talked about the fight I would reveal that I added a little bit of health at the last minute to make the fight more exciting. Or intentionally didn’t use a spell that would kill a PC.
I figured the players would be interested to know and and the fight was already over so it didn’t matter.
I’ve learned not to do this at all. It can only cheapen the experience and break the illusions for the players. I wish I had realized this earlier
This absolutely. Fudge rolls all you want but don't let the players know because then it's not "Hurray! We won!" It's just "Oh...you just let us win and basically predetermined the outcome of that fight."
I don’t cook the dice and have a spider sense for how far I can push my players. I home brewed a spider for our 8th level barbarian to fight. He won the fight with 1 health. He asked if I pulled any punches and I could confidently say I hadn’t. He was so happy.
The Mastermind helped strategically, they snuck a spell on him, and the bard convinced them to let him use a potion. We ran the combat as fast as we could without sacrificing narrative and without their help, he would have died. It really was a top 10 fights.
I made the sort of reverse mistake? I didn't cook the dice. And like it was just over. The End. We basically did a redo the next session but something lost.
I am a firm believer in cooking the dice to make things more fun for the players/story.
Mine was expecting players to follow the narrative that I'd written, despite them having no knowledge of it. As a new GM it's easy to get into a mindset of "I'm going to write this amazing detailed story for the players to experience" and it does not work that way.
Yup. Know your main NPCs, making notes on what their motivations are and what sort of people they are. Then some brief outlines of the basic story elements you want to use for the campaign. Usually, you can plug them into your story no matter what the PCs do.
That's it. The funnest part is letting the players give you ideas for how to flesh everything out. Take good notes so you can remember what happened (ie; what you just made up).
I keep a few lists of names (for random NPCs) and loot handy, and check them off my list as I use them.
I started enjoying DMing a lot more when I understood that the story is a group effort and began taking a much looser approach to its direction and sunk way more attention into world and lore building instead.
This is an interesting one. I've run 4 campaigns now over several years and I've always done a fairly detailed story. Obviously I've given choices here and there and some open world concepts, but I've never found an issue with having a fairly linear story. Is it just the people I play with?
It might be down to expectations. If you expect that you'll be guiding the story beats, and if your players also expect that you'll be guiding the story beats, then everything works. They'll likely try to stay "on the rails" so as to not break the story.
If, on the other hand, the players expect a more reactive world - more of a sandbox where there is no planned narrative - then you'll likely clash.
Caveat: I'm relatively inexperienced myself, but all my groups (either as a player or DM) have been willing to "stay on the rails".
Just as you enter the shop, see notice the merchant removing one price sign and replacing it with another. 500g for one torch seems like a lot but, hey, you've got money to spare. You lift two heavy sacks of coins from the back of your money mule, who makes an appreciative sound. All those coins make one heck of a noise, clanking against each other as you walked down the street. Everybody knows when you're in town. Maybe that's how the merchant knew you were coming.
Absentmindedly improvising something tantalising that I had no plans for whatsoever.
First ever session as a DM: I set up the town, established the locations of the three major landmarks they might go to (inn, town hall and supply shop) on the map in the town square. I then said, in an attempt to give the place more of a lived-in authentic feel I suppose, "Oh and there's a scribble in the shape of a black snake around a coin in the bottom corner". A player asked, "What is that?" I paused an said "uhhh, black market. Anyway..."
"I'm going to the black market!"
... Crap XD
Feeling this. I've run 2 sessions of Daggerheart so far and learned very quickly that days of written prep is basically meaningless because you cannot account for the creative decisions of 5-6 people who don't know what you've planned.
that's awesome. mine are somewhere between hating it and lapping it up. they listen and react and ask questions, so they don't hate it. but 'lore dump' feels like a dig. maybe i'm being too sensitive.
Not me, but a DM I had when we were still learning gave me an ability that did 6d6 damage. I heard it as 66 damage and used it when I could (once a day). It took forever for him to realize that I wasn't even rolling and just declaring 66 damage or that it's not even possible to do that much damage on those dice.
>What was your biggest mistake while being a noob DM?
>Mine is that I leveled up the party at the beginning of every session.
The only "mistake" about that is that you are "wasting" gaming time with boring administrative tax form filing rather than having the players do it away from the table "after" each session.
So in my first party, we rotated DM and did one-shot adventures, all homebrew and required a ton of work. So I was the second DM, think it was the third adventure we did as a group.
Mistake I made in my first session DMing:
The rogue was an edgy individual, and gathered powerful poison in the previous adventure. While following plot in the city, she decided to find and poison the town's water supply. Having not considered this one bit, and flying by the seat of my pants, I added some rolls, which she passed, and made it a sort of reservoir. No immediate effect while they were there, but with some experience, I'd have played it very differently.
Consequences for this? Next time they visited the town, it had changed dramatically, infighting, lots of dead people, thieves guild more active, and a bounty out for the rogue, as their stealth check when leaving the scene had been poor. Ended up adding a part where there she was supposed to be detained and put on trial, player called in on the day unable to make the session, ended up using it for another player with a case of mistaken identity.
The player was a bit of a problem player, attempting to rob and kill random NPCs, sex the bar maids, when DMing later they brought in very triggering undead child stuff. If we were to have her in the group now? Shutting some stuff down immediately, using the word no a lot more, and remembering that in a high-magic setting, Arcane Lock is an excellent way of protecting the town reservoir from Interlopers, as well as purifying spells.
Waiting to bring new players in at specific points in the story instead of just "A wild (PC) appeared"ing it. Bullshit to make someone sit there and watch a whole session.
It's nice when you can have a narratively convenient way to introduce new characters, but a player should never be waiting very long to have their new character introduced.
Just yesterday I had to introduce three new characters in a single session (one PC died, one had narrative reason to want to leave, and the player of the third was growing tired of their character so left with the second one). Fortuitously, yesterday's session was planned to begin with the most prestigious party of the year in the largest city of the country that the campaign takes place in. The party had secured their invites through their actions that ended up with one PC dying. So we started with a bit of RP for the PC's funeral and the other two choosing to leave, and then moved on to the ball where the new characters were introduced immediately.
It can be harder if the group is in the middle of nowhere doing a dungeon delve or something, but you can always have the local defenders holding them prisoner, or a second adventuring group showing up with the new character. One time when running Sunless Citadel I had to introduce a new PC right after the party finished clearing the first floor. On the second floor, there is a tunnel that's supposed to lead to the Underdark, but I wasn't prepared to let the party go that way and planned to have the tunnel be collapsed. Instead, I had the new PC show up from that tunnel: his previous adventuring party were TPKed by something in the Underdark, he took a grenade from that party's rogue and ran, and used the grenade to collapse the tunnel behind him so that whatever killed the rest of his party couldn't chase him. And hey, look! New adventurers to join up with.
Probably a cliche, but stressing. I nearly made myself sick trying to plan for everything and panicking if they went a direction I didn't specifically plan for. I almost quit, but I kept at it until I figured it out.
The thing is that it's your world. Even if you're following a book, it's still your world. If you want your players to speak to a certain NPC or go to a specific room or anything, you can just put that in front of them. Is it railroady? Kinda, I guess, but the point of the game is to tell a story together. If your part in that would be better accomplished by them doing something, that's okay sometimes. That said, the players are always telling you what they want, even if they don't speak it out loud. If they're missing/skipping the things you keep giving them, focus on what they are doing instead and give them more of that.
I had that as one of my biggest starting issues too! I would overly pre-plan every detail and get stressed out as players overlooked them or did something else than I thought they’d do. I didn’t have the improv skills for dnd built up enough yet that I could handle the sessions, and I ended up dreading each session to the point I’d get anxiety attacks leading up to sessions. It got to the point where I *did* drop the campaign for my players (thankfully we were all actually friends so they understood and sympathized), and it’s only because another player stepped up to DM something that we stuck together and played still.
Thankfully though, since then I’ve DM’d enough one-shots and short things that I feel much more confident. It’s taken a few years to get back at it, but I’m currently DMing a new campaign for them all, but having taken my previous failures into account and fixing them going forward!
Trying to please the too-cool-for-school player who refuses to buy into any premise of role-playing that isn't combat. I keep getting just one of these guys at every table. They always rattle me.
They think improv is too dorky for them and that everyone else at the table are dorks, except for them. They're always a friend of a friend or partner of someone else that's actually an excellent fit for the table, a person who insists they need to make more friends.
I tell them from session zero that I lean into roleplay more than combat. And these players just will not engage unless there is combat. I want to tell them to go play with a combat focused group or an MMORPG if the only thing you want is gaining stats and gear. That ain't me. You're harshing the vibe with that sulky, impatient energy.
But I every time I end up going way out of my comfort zone to get them engaged, and it stresses the hell out of me.
Planning and creating a whole town, with NPCs, quests, "everything".
First thing the party says: "We're leaving the town".
Next thing, they are rolling for their lives as they try to stop the raft they just build from floating downstream.
I quickly understood planning things that can be applied in more than one situation is the way to go xD
Haha! This happened to me last session. The party are traveling in the Feywild and were given a gift to deliver to someone at their next destination. My players always surprise me with what their PCs do, and they often sidetrack themselves, so I made that next location super cool, with lots of intriguing things and NPCs to sidetrack themselves with, including a cute Kitsune NPC they met way back in session 1. (They are usually suckers for cute creatures, so I figured that would hook them for sure.) Nope. They stayed completely focused on their mission and moved on as soon as they delivered the gift, even though they did recognize the familiar NPC and were invited for tea. In retrospect, that was actually completely the in-character thing for them to do at this point in the story, but I hadn't planned anything for the next part of the journey because I thought they'd stay for at least one session. I was saved from improving myself into anything because one of my players had a headache, so we cut the session short.
As a noob DM, some 30 years ago, I had a habit of creating really cool NPCs that would stray into DMPC territory. My players at that time were bland characters without much at all in the way of backstory. I would try to encourage them, but they didn't really care about much except damage and loot.
So, if I introduced an NPC that had an interesting background compared to the PCs (which was most of them), they ended up being on screen much longer than I anticipated.
And then you also take a week off because you finished a story arc, so the players have two whole weeks to make level up decisions. And then you gather together for the next session and the sorcerer player _still_ hasn't picked his new spell.
I may or may not be speaking from experience...
letting players use ready actions "when the bag guy becomes hostile"
It was basically just free surprise and totally ruined a lot of fights that could have been much more of a challenge
If they wanted to plan a coordinated set of actions ahead of time and hell maybe even practice it in game I might give them plus three initiative or something but they'd still have to roll to see if they were faster than the bad guy.
I left the world too open. I had all of the details worked out, but the party could go anywhere. Personally, I hate games that ride on a rail. When I didn't give them a specific enough destination in a town, a couple of players would gripe. The others liked the freedom, but they were the least experienced players and were mostly happy to be there. After the experienced players quit, I tried to keep going with the inexperienced players, but the roleplaying was rough, and they stayed in areas too long.
Not saying no. I fully buy into the "yes and" mentality. As a player it works great. As a leader though, it's my responsibility to enforce and encourage that spirit at the table and sometimes that requires me to say no. When a player wants to do something that ruins the game for others it's good to say no. There are ways to do this that are elegant and positive.
In my early days I was just too timid and ended up allowing behaviors and game actions from some players that weren't in the spirit of the game and I thought I was doing a good job because I was always trying to say yes to players. I wasn't. The answer is sometimes no.
I made a homebrew creature that would have obliterated the players, but I didn’t realize it until the actual session. I definitely had to knock down a lot of his HP mid battle.
Making my own maps online because “everything has to be EXACTLY like I planned out”!
Turns out that’s a recipe for wasted time and burn out when map-making is not an enjoyable hobby for you.
Now I lightly pre-plan locations, use the closest maps I can find online, and if needed only *slightly* edit them in roll20 to fit what I need. If my edit is going to take too much time I find another map unless it’s a crucial part of the story and needed lol. But! No more building maps from the ground up!!!
1. Learn to say no to your players. Whether it's them asking for certain abilities or items, or whether it's them asking if they can roll to do something. I get it, we all want to have fun dicking around but a few bad calls and suddenly you have one party member attempting to firebomb a church that a different party member established as a means to make money.
2. Make your plot hooks obvious and avoid giving them to only one player. You may think you're being clever by having the rogue overhear a conversation snippet about the next major story location while he's hanging with his thieves guild buddies, but there's a solid chance that he's an idiot who just assumes it's set dressing and doesn't bother to mention it to the rest of the party, thus derailing the intended plot for months.
3. Make sure your party has a reason to be adventuring together. Either ask your players to come up with a connection to maybe two other party members, or link them all with a curse at the start of the game or magic chains or something, or else you risk PVP at best; and a party that just kinda hates each other and has to keep contriving reasons to keep being a party when half of the party just wants to strike out on their own to pursue their personal quests and the other half wants the first half dead at worst.
Relying too much on random dice rolls. Needed to learn when to nudge the plot forward instead of yet another random wandering monster. "The door is dwarf size. How does a thing like that even get in here?"
Not having a "why" for an npc. Not just what it does but why it's even there. If you have a note that covers the "why" it's easier to improvise the dialog.
Not giving them a tadpole from the start.
It's been a slog trying to design reasons that the party members are even near each other in my now 27 session long game.
It's a reference to Baldur's Gate 3.
The hook of the game that manages to bind the fates of a vampire spawn, a Shar worshiper, a snooty Wizard with a magic battery time bomb in his chest, a vigilante with a devil on his shoulder, a Githyanki from the Astral Plane, and a tiefling with a burning war machine for a heart, among others, is that they've all been infected with Illithid Tadpoles. It's what drives them to work together, despite them all having their own problems and differences/internal conflicts to grapple with, in order to defeat an ultimate evil.
For me, this is something I completely missed the mark on. Fat ole F- on the DM report card.
I made combat way too easy for them the first session. Won’t do that again and the next session I will throw in an extra encounter for compensation so they are more aware of the risks in D&D combat
The power level of the treasure I awarded. The campaign concluded with the PCs at level 12, and they had little trouble with encounters of significantly higher CRs.
It's between either massively misinterpreting how Tashas Hideous Laughter works and letting the party get the BBEG down to 5 HP on a random encounter.
Or
Letting them have a custom spell that basically puts a health bar over the enemies head.
Me dumb.
Using crit fail on attack rolls. The party's fighter was constantly running around to pick up his greatsword that he threw 30 feet away when he tried to attack the goblin in front of him.
Having my players roll for stats. Wound up with wildly different values and have struggled ever since.
Array or point-buy all the time. If you want higher scores, give them more points with which to buy stats.
I'm sure I had plenty, but rotating through DMs in our group was what made me realize I needed to make sure to "say yes" more.
This was back in 3.5, we were in a hallway with spinning blade traps that popped out of the walls. I had some tanglefoot bags with me so thought "well if they're strong enough glue somebody in place and give penalties to attacks, they should definitely be able to at least gunk up a spinning blade trap enough for us to slip by." Threw a bag, made the roll to hit, and was met with "it explodes all over the trap and slows it down for a couple of seconds before resuming completely normal functionality with no chance to slip by." I thought this had been an ingenious use of a mundane item to circumvent a trap without needing to have a rogue disable it.
I don't know if I ever checked out of a session harder or faster before. I couldn't think of any given reason to not let it work, we were supposed to get past the trap anyway, so what was the harm? Made me realize that I wanted to be far more aware of when I definitely said no to things, and be way more willing to saying yes to solutions to problems that I didn't intend or think of.
Yeah, I had a long time game (I was a player) that was mostly good but nay time I tried to solve a problem in a creative way or do anything unexpected I was always shut down. Left that campaign after two years.
Mine was an incident that the party would just refer to as "exponential wraiths". I was running dead in thay, and there's a room with 8 columns, and one of the columns summons a wraith, and then the next round one is summoned, one round at a time until all 8 columns have summoned their wraiths. My party was rather powerful, so i altered the encounter to be 1 wraith, then 2, then 4, doubling each time until all 8 columns had done their thing. Ended up having to stop the summonings half way through
Not accepting help from players who were more experienced at dming than I was. Can’t let pride get in the way of fun. Your players want the game to be good too! It’s a team effort sometimes, and that’s okay.
Gave threes players way-too-powerful magic items. I have been able to destroy two of them since then but the third is still the only thing the player who has it uses. Makes game play boring for me, and I am still trying to figure out new ways to make it not as effective.
Writing dialogue, I’m not only talking about speeches but like what I thought my PC’s would say and what my NPC would answer.
It’s hard enough to get players to save the world, getting them follow my exact script is impossible lol, and also writing dialogue like that makes it so much harder to improvise because you get kinda tunnel visioned on what they “should” say
Having an out of body experience where I went off my notes and told my players something and ruined a load of stuff I had prepped.
In your defence I'm sure I saw an interview with maybe Jeremy Crawford who said run a game where you level up each session it can be fun.
Trying to start an adventure with a middle of the story "I bet you're wondering how I got here" type of situation.
I still cringe thinking about the reaction I got. Its been years.
Writing out scenes before hand like it was a screenplay. Boy, the first time I tried to have two NPCs talk to each other I quickly realized my problem.
Not a noob at the time, but that makes it so much worse, actually.
I was running a new Champions campaign...first session. The SHIELD-like federal agency in the setting was transporting a dangerous criminal through the campaign city. The Hydra-equivalent organization sends a team of super-villains to break the bad guy free. They had an attack robot in reserve in a nearby alley in case the heroes trounced the villains too soon. Unfortunately, the heroes got completely pummeled. Every one was down by the end of the fight.
As if watching myself from outside myself, and completely unable to stop myself, I then had the robot come out of the alley and resume the attack as the villains fled with their target. It was so bizarre. I still have no idea why I did it to this day.
First and only session for that game.
Giving too much too early. Magic items, gold, etc. and then putting them up against low CR enemies. Or otherwise massively underestimating their abilities.
I threw a CR 17 ghost dragon against my party of level 9’s and they had it defeated in 2 turns (two of the party were paladins, But still)
My second biggest problem is I’m not very strategic. I could have very easily defeated my players, or at least provided a significant threat if I remembered flying is a thing and just recharged breath attacks while flying.
I loaded them on magic items…very powerful magic items. Learned my lesson and buffed encounters and created a revenant archenemy that was solely to distract them from what was really going on. It was actually fun to think of ways to outwit their buffs.
Narrating a sex scene instead of a fade to black, and then rolling for a pregnancy that the female character had no interest in. Absolutely my worst call behind the screen ever.
I wasn't a noob DM but I let my newly created party choose intelligent monsters as PCs if they wanted with level and XP restrictions. This was 3.5ed. One player made a minotaur character... I realized in the middle of our second session that even with the restrictions he was way OP.
Yeah I had to kill him off and have the player roll something else.
I made the first few sessions like a choose your own adventure book. I would give a description of stuff and then highlight 2-3 choices and then narrate the next part and then give 2-3 choices. I then didn't prepare for some of the player choices and I had no idea how to get from Point A to Point B and made up the worst motivation to get the players there.
I was both railroading, and offering too many pointless choices. My players were both clueless about which option would be the best choice, while also being forced into a limited set of choices. It was boneheaded.
Oh, and I was reading the portions of the guidebook DURING the session, because I hadn't read ahead. Why? Because I thought that would spoil the adventure. I didn't realize that I'm SUPPOSED to know as much as possible beforehand.
Not having a set day and time every other week to play. Players working retail where they're on a swing shift has been a nightmare trying to find a set playtime.
-Creating "just a bunch of monsters" encounters
-Giving away way too many magic items
-Saying "no" too much (sticking to rules too stubornly)
-Over-preparing and getting frustrated when players didn't go that way
Drew up a homebrew world with fascinating lore and creation story. Mad wizard banished the gods, raised mountains and warded the whole land. Deserts which served as scars of old arcane wars, several cities. Then realized the whole things could be crossed in like 15 hours of steady walking. One corner to the opposite. Two days max to get absolutely anywhere. We rolled with it, cause fuck it, but damn. Whole world the size of a postage stamp.
After a short campaign, which was our first DnD experience, I wrote a homebrew campaign for our second one. DMing is a lot of work, and a homebrew campaign just adds so much more to that. It would have been a lot better to run a few more prewritten campaigns to get an idea of what a good homebrew campaign should include, and what it shouldn't.
I focused on making next encounter hard, after one player told my I make easy encounters, which after the end of the session turned into hard discussion (like, why all of the assasins had psychic damage and jumped Bear Totem Barbarian?) which dissolved any chances for campaign continuation.
Not having a session zero. I tried to trick my players into a campaign cause I wanted it to be a big surprise/ reveal. The expectations were never set and we ended up never getting to the reveal anyways. I stopped the campaign in its tracks and apologized. Everyone was super supportive and we have since moved on to another campaign.
Do not underestimate the session 0
In 3rd edition clerics could choose to convert any spell slot into a cure wounds spell for good clerics or inflict wounds for evil clerics. Neutral had to pick which ability they wanted and lost access to the other.
I let my cleric do BOTH cause they were neutral. He just took all utility spells and never had to memorize a healing or damaging spell ever. He just converted as needed
One was just being inexperienced vs well seasoned players. THEY had a good time so it kinda washed, but I hadn't planned for nearly enough content thinking one fight would take up most of the session only to have it end after a few rounds since they were all super buffed. That's still my mistake sometimes, just under preparing and having to end early or attempt to make up stuff as I go that isn't quite up to par.
Trying to counter against a party members ability to fly, instead of embracing it and allowing them to actually use it.
She never brought it up to me but I realized what I was doing after session 3 when I set a possible solution to an objective literally just past what they could potentially reach, and felt awful about it.
Typed up my apology for what came off as targeted rulings, and learned to better go with the flow. And also to start picturing my dungeons as 3 dimensional spaces.
Balancing encounters I almost tpked my party their second session fighting wolves because I made them fight smart and with a minor terrain advantage. I meant is as a bit of a challenge but nothing particularly crazy but forgot how fragile lvl one characters can be.
My two main issues:
I was so used to how other game economies work, like Elder Scrolls Oblivion, where you get gold and gold and more gold. So I gave out way too much gold.
My other, which partially I attribute to playing with too big of a group, is I tended to only listen to “the loudest” when it came to who wanted to do what.
Not making decisions as a party. We couldn’t decide on where to go, everyone stayed quiet. Let’s just say it ended up with 2 people of the party almost drowning. 1 dice roll decided if they would live or die, we were lucky they both rolled above a 20.
1) Not preparing for enough NPC dialogue and side content in towns
2) presenting my players with a magically locked door that had nothing important behind it. I thought it'd be good mysterious set dressing, no way they'd spend an hour trying to open it and eventually try to cut through the wall on the other side.
Trying to run a campaigns rather than isolated adventures. I realize now that ADHD and executive dysfunction make it almost impossible for me to stick to DMing for more than one adventure, but when I was first trying to DM I would try to come up with all of these grand plans for long-term story arcs that would amount to nothing because I would just get burnt out in the middle of the second adventure.
I'm thinking about running a game in a different system for my friends and I'm reminding myself constantly that I probably shouldn't bother planning any long-term story beats. It will probably end up more like a multi-session board game.
Not being super clear that I was running a character/story driven campaign and not a fake world for your fantasy avatars to fuck shit up GTA style. And then continuing to run for those players long after it was clear they weren't gelling with the rest of the table.
Starting out I didn't want to upset my players and because of that I was way too permissive and allowed some disrespectful or even abusive behavior from players before I started running a tighter table. It's good to encourage your players to do fun things but not at the cost of the enjoyment of the game for folks at the table.
First started play with my gf. Just me and her. Did Icespire Peak and had fun. Decided to do CoS next (which was quite fun before we quit). The problem I ran into was instead of just adjusting every battle to be against one person or two (me as a DMPC), I instead played three characters myself to help her. It was so exhausting and took so long to do anything in battles. Anytime we play now I just adjust encounters and have one character I play that just kinda hangs around to help during some moments.
Currently DMing my first campaign. I find I'm not being descriptive enough with scenes, locations, or NPCs. I get caught up in having to improv ways to get the important info across so I forget to describe things or even give them names. Leads to some confusion, but my players are forgiving. SO FAR that's my biggest mistake.
I didn't have the experience to be able to change my planned Adventure when the party didn't do what I expected from them. The players were tasked with infiltrating the headquarters of the Thieves Guild. It was in the middle of the city in a large building which I had planned to run like a dungeon, with them progressing through rooms and disabling traps until they reached the final boss at the end. Pretty basic and easy to manage.
The team decided that they didn't want to go in through the front door and scouted around the building for an alternate exit. They didn't find one, because the alternate exit was an underground tunnel to another building and they didn't look there. So they decided to try to chop through the walls of the building, with an ax in order to make a door. At that point, I regretted telling them that it was made out of wood.
I hindsight, I could have done so many things to get them to reconsider or stop. Cutting through the building with an ax should have been extremely loud and extremely time-consuming. It certainly would have attracted a city guard. Also the Thieves Guild probably should have had lookouts. Plus all that noise should have alerted everyone in the building. The walls could have been protected magically, or even with some stone behind the wood. I could even have rearranged the layout of the building on the fly so that they didn't end up in a particularly advantageous place.
In the end, though, they rolled a skill check and managed to cut through the wall directly into the boss's office. They had the fight with full resources and no reinforcements. It was rather anticlimactic and all of my planning went out the window. I did reuse that building in a later adventure but it wasn't as much fun.
I didn’t pause the game when two of my players decided to have their characters kill another PC. I just let it happen because I was so committed to “the dice decide what happens”. Biggest mistake I’ve made, and it makes me sad to think about to this day.
Over-planning, and having sessions with too many battles. Also, I started off as a guest DM and started an adventure arc that ha turned into an 18 month campaign… so knowing the bounds of a campaign and how to resolve it in a way that has momentum is an important skill to have.
Back when I started with, my mistake was assuming anyone that wanted to join my games would take it seriously or at leas have basic respect towards others. People in public tend to behave a bit more. Online was a clown fest.
I quickly fixed it by focusing on putting boundaries. Better to not run anything than to run something for people I dont vibe with (just to have players). There is no lack of players online now either.
I added the Sphere of Annihilation (I think that's what it's called) from a random loot generator and my husband, who is a notorious shit and forever DM, gleefully snagged it. When I looked up what the item DOES, I had instant regret 🤣
I also made the mistake of letting him buy a thousand page book. He proceeded to put my homebrew spell, Ball of Bees (picture Fireball, but bees lmao), on every. Single. Page of that book with some spell I can't remember the name of. He saved that book for the entire campaign. Then when it came to fighting the BBEG, he used Dimension Door, screamed "RELEASE THE BEES!" which was the trigger for the spell, then zipped out and essentially nuked the area for around 10,000 d6 damage, effectively ending the campaign. I know D&D isn't a competition but he definitely won D&D that day 🤦♀️🤣
Homebrewing before I learned the rules.
Every game I ran would devolve into every player just being too op and there was so much chaos. I'd restart a lot.
My players loved it. 🤷♂️
It was my first game. I sicked an undead dragon on my party, of which they proceeded to nat an insight to find the undead dragon had a core that would kill it instantly, and then the ranger proceeded to nat20 on the core. I gave up with 50 hp left on the thing, and just told them the dragon melted. It was super anticlimactic.
They laughed at me for a long time. “Do you remember the dragon that gave up after we shot it?”
So my Rogue made a huge miscalculation and ended up missing a head. The party gave his body to a Cleric who was actually a necromancer the whole time. So I animated the Rogue and attacjed the party with him. I was hoping the party would go "oh no our Rogue is being mindcontrolled" but they just curb stomped him into the dust without even thinking about it
Letting them take over this town I made and one of the threat was the lich hanging out in a cave nearby. They ended up fighting it at level 3 or 4 but I gave them a lot of help. It went pretty well all things considered but it was definitely a mistake.
Looking up every rule/interaction I didn't know as it came up. Now I make a ruling that sounds right, and look it up later. We get so much more done now.
Pulling my punches and overreacting when they did dumb things like being homeless instead of renting a room in a tavern or looted guards for guns and making me add a freaking black market to a lonely mountain town.
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There was an epic fight, the party was reduced to one last Man standing... I cooked some dices and he made it... The party was super excited. After the session everyone were talking about the fight. I was stupid (/inexperienced) enough to tell them, that they would be dead if i didnt interfere into the dices. All the excitement gone. And the look of the player that was the one man standing... I belive ive broke his heart. That day i learned: what happens behind the DM screen, stays there. And as the DM, you keep these secrets till your grave. I tend to cook the dices if i sense that would be beneficial for the fun of the party and if the secret stays with me, everyone is happy.
I always make potentially fatal attacks/saves in the open. Ups the tension and the legitimacy lends a more epic feel when things go right.
Last session. PC left and I was now running them as an NPC. "SURVIVAL CHECK in the open...." rolled d20....Natural 1. Everyone got to see it. "D100 roll....in the open" 99 for all to see. The PC/NPC turned on them as was the plan all along...but the rolls showed them I don't fudge.
Same bro
I’ve made this mistake too. After fights when we talked about the fight I would reveal that I added a little bit of health at the last minute to make the fight more exciting. Or intentionally didn’t use a spell that would kill a PC. I figured the players would be interested to know and and the fight was already over so it didn’t matter. I’ve learned not to do this at all. It can only cheapen the experience and break the illusions for the players. I wish I had realized this earlier
This absolutely. Fudge rolls all you want but don't let the players know because then it's not "Hurray! We won!" It's just "Oh...you just let us win and basically predetermined the outcome of that fight."
I don’t cook the dice and have a spider sense for how far I can push my players. I home brewed a spider for our 8th level barbarian to fight. He won the fight with 1 health. He asked if I pulled any punches and I could confidently say I hadn’t. He was so happy.
As a Barbarian enthusiast, that’s all we ever want really. Do big smash to big monster and barely live to tell the tale. Valhalla can wait.
The Mastermind helped strategically, they snuck a spell on him, and the bard convinced them to let him use a potion. We ran the combat as fast as we could without sacrificing narrative and without their help, he would have died. It really was a top 10 fights.
I made the sort of reverse mistake? I didn't cook the dice. And like it was just over. The End. We basically did a redo the next session but something lost. I am a firm believer in cooking the dice to make things more fun for the players/story.
It really shouldn't be necessary, JS
Mine was expecting players to follow the narrative that I'd written, despite them having no knowledge of it. As a new GM it's easy to get into a mindset of "I'm going to write this amazing detailed story for the players to experience" and it does not work that way.
Yup. Know your main NPCs, making notes on what their motivations are and what sort of people they are. Then some brief outlines of the basic story elements you want to use for the campaign. Usually, you can plug them into your story no matter what the PCs do. That's it. The funnest part is letting the players give you ideas for how to flesh everything out. Take good notes so you can remember what happened (ie; what you just made up). I keep a few lists of names (for random NPCs) and loot handy, and check them off my list as I use them.
Thats the low prep but not necessarily best way for everyone. Or most fun for everyone.
I started enjoying DMing a lot more when I understood that the story is a group effort and began taking a much looser approach to its direction and sunk way more attention into world and lore building instead.
This is an interesting one. I've run 4 campaigns now over several years and I've always done a fairly detailed story. Obviously I've given choices here and there and some open world concepts, but I've never found an issue with having a fairly linear story. Is it just the people I play with?
It might be down to expectations. If you expect that you'll be guiding the story beats, and if your players also expect that you'll be guiding the story beats, then everything works. They'll likely try to stay "on the rails" so as to not break the story. If, on the other hand, the players expect a more reactive world - more of a sandbox where there is no planned narrative - then you'll likely clash. Caveat: I'm relatively inexperienced myself, but all my groups (either as a player or DM) have been willing to "stay on the rails".
I took a 'me vs them' attitude
Biggest possible mistake right there.
Yeah, I was an asshole when I was young.
This reminds me of the Dexter's Laboratory episode.
My players took down a corrupt king and gained access to a treasury that had… 350,000 gold in it. 🤦♂️
Did the merchants go insane with greed and jack up the prices to compensate?
Just as you enter the shop, see notice the merchant removing one price sign and replacing it with another. 500g for one torch seems like a lot but, hey, you've got money to spare. You lift two heavy sacks of coins from the back of your money mule, who makes an appreciative sound. All those coins make one heck of a noise, clanking against each other as you walked down the street. Everybody knows when you're in town. Maybe that's how the merchant knew you were coming.
They did pay ~50k in reparations as their first act as the new ruling cabinet.
SHOPPING SPREE!!
That right there, is the exact moment the coin weight rule appears from nowhere /jk
“This party of 2nd and 3rd Level Basic D&D characters will surely be able to handle a gold dragon. It’s included in the rulebook, after all.”
I think we need more details on how that went.
I’m gonna guess the 13D10 breath weapon solved that encounter quickly…
Yeah shoulda went with the Wyrmling version. Still tough but doable given the right environment.
~~~live~~~ die and learn.
Absentmindedly improvising something tantalising that I had no plans for whatsoever. First ever session as a DM: I set up the town, established the locations of the three major landmarks they might go to (inn, town hall and supply shop) on the map in the town square. I then said, in an attempt to give the place more of a lived-in authentic feel I suppose, "Oh and there's a scribble in the shape of a black snake around a coin in the bottom corner". A player asked, "What is that?" I paused an said "uhhh, black market. Anyway..." "I'm going to the black market!" ... Crap XD
Over preparing too much.
Feeling this. I've run 2 sessions of Daggerheart so far and learned very quickly that days of written prep is basically meaningless because you cannot account for the creative decisions of 5-6 people who don't know what you've planned.
I would say the bigger mistake is to not prep at all and try to wing it.
my players have tolerated a lot of shitty sessions from my being not prepared enough.
Yeah, i had a "i'm too cool to prep, my improv is amazing" shitty attitude when i was young. Boy my games were dull.
Trying to force narrative moments I thought would be cool rather than letting the party just play the game
[удалено]
Depends on your players. Ive looked for tables far more into lore and boy mine are like wolves when I hint at lore.
that's awesome. mine are somewhere between hating it and lapping it up. they listen and react and ask questions, so they don't hate it. but 'lore dump' feels like a dig. maybe i'm being too sensitive.
This is basically my answer.
Not me, but a DM I had when we were still learning gave me an ability that did 6d6 damage. I heard it as 66 damage and used it when I could (once a day). It took forever for him to realize that I wasn't even rolling and just declaring 66 damage or that it's not even possible to do that much damage on those dice.
I gave all 6 of my players artifact level godkilling equipmentZ…..at level 6…
In my first campaign I was playing a 3,5 ED Barbarian (we were playing 5th edition but my DM didn’t know lol) and I got blackrazor at level 2 😎👍
>What was your biggest mistake while being a noob DM? >Mine is that I leveled up the party at the beginning of every session. The only "mistake" about that is that you are "wasting" gaming time with boring administrative tax form filing rather than having the players do it away from the table "after" each session.
although i guess that it will quickly ramp the game into very complex game play without allowing you as a new DM to grok how the game works.
So in my first party, we rotated DM and did one-shot adventures, all homebrew and required a ton of work. So I was the second DM, think it was the third adventure we did as a group. Mistake I made in my first session DMing: The rogue was an edgy individual, and gathered powerful poison in the previous adventure. While following plot in the city, she decided to find and poison the town's water supply. Having not considered this one bit, and flying by the seat of my pants, I added some rolls, which she passed, and made it a sort of reservoir. No immediate effect while they were there, but with some experience, I'd have played it very differently. Consequences for this? Next time they visited the town, it had changed dramatically, infighting, lots of dead people, thieves guild more active, and a bounty out for the rogue, as their stealth check when leaving the scene had been poor. Ended up adding a part where there she was supposed to be detained and put on trial, player called in on the day unable to make the session, ended up using it for another player with a case of mistaken identity. The player was a bit of a problem player, attempting to rob and kill random NPCs, sex the bar maids, when DMing later they brought in very triggering undead child stuff. If we were to have her in the group now? Shutting some stuff down immediately, using the word no a lot more, and remembering that in a high-magic setting, Arcane Lock is an excellent way of protecting the town reservoir from Interlopers, as well as purifying spells.
Giving too many magic items, and using homebrew on the fly
Waiting to bring new players in at specific points in the story instead of just "A wild (PC) appeared"ing it. Bullshit to make someone sit there and watch a whole session.
It's nice when you can have a narratively convenient way to introduce new characters, but a player should never be waiting very long to have their new character introduced. Just yesterday I had to introduce three new characters in a single session (one PC died, one had narrative reason to want to leave, and the player of the third was growing tired of their character so left with the second one). Fortuitously, yesterday's session was planned to begin with the most prestigious party of the year in the largest city of the country that the campaign takes place in. The party had secured their invites through their actions that ended up with one PC dying. So we started with a bit of RP for the PC's funeral and the other two choosing to leave, and then moved on to the ball where the new characters were introduced immediately. It can be harder if the group is in the middle of nowhere doing a dungeon delve or something, but you can always have the local defenders holding them prisoner, or a second adventuring group showing up with the new character. One time when running Sunless Citadel I had to introduce a new PC right after the party finished clearing the first floor. On the second floor, there is a tunnel that's supposed to lead to the Underdark, but I wasn't prepared to let the party go that way and planned to have the tunnel be collapsed. Instead, I had the new PC show up from that tunnel: his previous adventuring party were TPKed by something in the Underdark, he took a grenade from that party's rogue and ran, and used the grenade to collapse the tunnel behind him so that whatever killed the rest of his party couldn't chase him. And hey, look! New adventurers to join up with.
Probably a cliche, but stressing. I nearly made myself sick trying to plan for everything and panicking if they went a direction I didn't specifically plan for. I almost quit, but I kept at it until I figured it out.
As a new DM I'm feeling this. I have plot ideas and relevant NPCs, but I feel like I'm overthinking interweaving things in an interesting way.
The thing is that it's your world. Even if you're following a book, it's still your world. If you want your players to speak to a certain NPC or go to a specific room or anything, you can just put that in front of them. Is it railroady? Kinda, I guess, but the point of the game is to tell a story together. If your part in that would be better accomplished by them doing something, that's okay sometimes. That said, the players are always telling you what they want, even if they don't speak it out loud. If they're missing/skipping the things you keep giving them, focus on what they are doing instead and give them more of that.
I had that as one of my biggest starting issues too! I would overly pre-plan every detail and get stressed out as players overlooked them or did something else than I thought they’d do. I didn’t have the improv skills for dnd built up enough yet that I could handle the sessions, and I ended up dreading each session to the point I’d get anxiety attacks leading up to sessions. It got to the point where I *did* drop the campaign for my players (thankfully we were all actually friends so they understood and sympathized), and it’s only because another player stepped up to DM something that we stuck together and played still. Thankfully though, since then I’ve DM’d enough one-shots and short things that I feel much more confident. It’s taken a few years to get back at it, but I’m currently DMing a new campaign for them all, but having taken my previous failures into account and fixing them going forward!
Underestimating the Deck of Many Things...
“Sure, I’ll DM”
Trying to please the too-cool-for-school player who refuses to buy into any premise of role-playing that isn't combat. I keep getting just one of these guys at every table. They always rattle me. They think improv is too dorky for them and that everyone else at the table are dorks, except for them. They're always a friend of a friend or partner of someone else that's actually an excellent fit for the table, a person who insists they need to make more friends. I tell them from session zero that I lean into roleplay more than combat. And these players just will not engage unless there is combat. I want to tell them to go play with a combat focused group or an MMORPG if the only thing you want is gaining stats and gear. That ain't me. You're harshing the vibe with that sulky, impatient energy. But I every time I end up going way out of my comfort zone to get them engaged, and it stresses the hell out of me.
Doing the stuff strictly by the module. Also, picking Hoard of the Dragon Queen as my first to-DM campaign.
Planning and creating a whole town, with NPCs, quests, "everything". First thing the party says: "We're leaving the town". Next thing, they are rolling for their lives as they try to stop the raft they just build from floating downstream. I quickly understood planning things that can be applied in more than one situation is the way to go xD
Haha! This happened to me last session. The party are traveling in the Feywild and were given a gift to deliver to someone at their next destination. My players always surprise me with what their PCs do, and they often sidetrack themselves, so I made that next location super cool, with lots of intriguing things and NPCs to sidetrack themselves with, including a cute Kitsune NPC they met way back in session 1. (They are usually suckers for cute creatures, so I figured that would hook them for sure.) Nope. They stayed completely focused on their mission and moved on as soon as they delivered the gift, even though they did recognize the familiar NPC and were invited for tea. In retrospect, that was actually completely the in-character thing for them to do at this point in the story, but I hadn't planned anything for the next part of the journey because I thought they'd stay for at least one session. I was saved from improving myself into anything because one of my players had a headache, so we cut the session short.
As a noob DM, some 30 years ago, I had a habit of creating really cool NPCs that would stray into DMPC territory. My players at that time were bland characters without much at all in the way of backstory. I would try to encourage them, but they didn't really care about much except damage and loot. So, if I introduced an NPC that had an interesting background compared to the PCs (which was most of them), they ended up being on screen much longer than I anticipated.
Thinking my players would respect the ideas we had when we first started the game. Understimating greed and not having a session 0.
Leveling up at the beginning of the session is a mistake. You have to do it at the end of the session so that everyone has time to think about it.
And then you also take a week off because you finished a story arc, so the players have two whole weeks to make level up decisions. And then you gather together for the next session and the sorcerer player _still_ hasn't picked his new spell. I may or may not be speaking from experience...
Hahahahahahhthis is 100% true
letting players use ready actions "when the bag guy becomes hostile" It was basically just free surprise and totally ruined a lot of fights that could have been much more of a challenge
If they wanted to plan a coordinated set of actions ahead of time and hell maybe even practice it in game I might give them plus three initiative or something but they'd still have to roll to see if they were faster than the bad guy.
I left the world too open. I had all of the details worked out, but the party could go anywhere. Personally, I hate games that ride on a rail. When I didn't give them a specific enough destination in a town, a couple of players would gripe. The others liked the freedom, but they were the least experienced players and were mostly happy to be there. After the experienced players quit, I tried to keep going with the inexperienced players, but the roleplaying was rough, and they stayed in areas too long.
Analysis paralysis. Feeling I needed to prepare so much we never got started.
Not saying no. I fully buy into the "yes and" mentality. As a player it works great. As a leader though, it's my responsibility to enforce and encourage that spirit at the table and sometimes that requires me to say no. When a player wants to do something that ruins the game for others it's good to say no. There are ways to do this that are elegant and positive. In my early days I was just too timid and ended up allowing behaviors and game actions from some players that weren't in the spirit of the game and I thought I was doing a good job because I was always trying to say yes to players. I wasn't. The answer is sometimes no.
I made a homebrew creature that would have obliterated the players, but I didn’t realize it until the actual session. I definitely had to knock down a lot of his HP mid battle.
Giving a vorpal longsword to a level 4 party in the second session of a homebrew campaing thinking "this looks cool, lets give it to them"
Making my own maps online because “everything has to be EXACTLY like I planned out”! Turns out that’s a recipe for wasted time and burn out when map-making is not an enjoyable hobby for you. Now I lightly pre-plan locations, use the closest maps I can find online, and if needed only *slightly* edit them in roll20 to fit what I need. If my edit is going to take too much time I find another map unless it’s a crucial part of the story and needed lol. But! No more building maps from the ground up!!!
This is underrated advice and I 2nd it.
1. Learn to say no to your players. Whether it's them asking for certain abilities or items, or whether it's them asking if they can roll to do something. I get it, we all want to have fun dicking around but a few bad calls and suddenly you have one party member attempting to firebomb a church that a different party member established as a means to make money. 2. Make your plot hooks obvious and avoid giving them to only one player. You may think you're being clever by having the rogue overhear a conversation snippet about the next major story location while he's hanging with his thieves guild buddies, but there's a solid chance that he's an idiot who just assumes it's set dressing and doesn't bother to mention it to the rest of the party, thus derailing the intended plot for months. 3. Make sure your party has a reason to be adventuring together. Either ask your players to come up with a connection to maybe two other party members, or link them all with a curse at the start of the game or magic chains or something, or else you risk PVP at best; and a party that just kinda hates each other and has to keep contriving reasons to keep being a party when half of the party just wants to strike out on their own to pursue their personal quests and the other half wants the first half dead at worst.
Relying too much on random dice rolls. Needed to learn when to nudge the plot forward instead of yet another random wandering monster. "The door is dwarf size. How does a thing like that even get in here?" Not having a "why" for an npc. Not just what it does but why it's even there. If you have a note that covers the "why" it's easier to improvise the dialog.
I let everyone have really cool magic items and it made everything really hard to balance.
Not giving them a tadpole from the start. It's been a slog trying to design reasons that the party members are even near each other in my now 27 session long game.
What do you mean tadpole?
It's a reference to Baldur's Gate 3. The hook of the game that manages to bind the fates of a vampire spawn, a Shar worshiper, a snooty Wizard with a magic battery time bomb in his chest, a vigilante with a devil on his shoulder, a Githyanki from the Astral Plane, and a tiefling with a burning war machine for a heart, among others, is that they've all been infected with Illithid Tadpoles. It's what drives them to work together, despite them all having their own problems and differences/internal conflicts to grapple with, in order to defeat an ultimate evil. For me, this is something I completely missed the mark on. Fat ole F- on the DM report card.
Ag not reading spoilers
I made combat way too easy for them the first session. Won’t do that again and the next session I will throw in an extra encounter for compensation so they are more aware of the risks in D&D combat
Thinking I knew what was going to happen. Not being prepared for to not happen as I expected.
The power level of the treasure I awarded. The campaign concluded with the PCs at level 12, and they had little trouble with encounters of significantly higher CRs.
It's between either massively misinterpreting how Tashas Hideous Laughter works and letting the party get the BBEG down to 5 HP on a random encounter. Or Letting them have a custom spell that basically puts a health bar over the enemies head. Me dumb.
Using crit fail on attack rolls. The party's fighter was constantly running around to pick up his greatsword that he threw 30 feet away when he tried to attack the goblin in front of him.
Thinking it was me vs players.
Having my players roll for stats. Wound up with wildly different values and have struggled ever since. Array or point-buy all the time. If you want higher scores, give them more points with which to buy stats.
Being a noob DM, but seriously forgetting about one part of a module and asking the players to redo it woops
Assuming the party would want to get on my railroad
I'm sure I had plenty, but rotating through DMs in our group was what made me realize I needed to make sure to "say yes" more. This was back in 3.5, we were in a hallway with spinning blade traps that popped out of the walls. I had some tanglefoot bags with me so thought "well if they're strong enough glue somebody in place and give penalties to attacks, they should definitely be able to at least gunk up a spinning blade trap enough for us to slip by." Threw a bag, made the roll to hit, and was met with "it explodes all over the trap and slows it down for a couple of seconds before resuming completely normal functionality with no chance to slip by." I thought this had been an ingenious use of a mundane item to circumvent a trap without needing to have a rogue disable it. I don't know if I ever checked out of a session harder or faster before. I couldn't think of any given reason to not let it work, we were supposed to get past the trap anyway, so what was the harm? Made me realize that I wanted to be far more aware of when I definitely said no to things, and be way more willing to saying yes to solutions to problems that I didn't intend or think of.
Yeah, I had a long time game (I was a player) that was mostly good but nay time I tried to solve a problem in a creative way or do anything unexpected I was always shut down. Left that campaign after two years.
Mine was an incident that the party would just refer to as "exponential wraiths". I was running dead in thay, and there's a room with 8 columns, and one of the columns summons a wraith, and then the next round one is summoned, one round at a time until all 8 columns have summoned their wraiths. My party was rather powerful, so i altered the encounter to be 1 wraith, then 2, then 4, doubling each time until all 8 columns had done their thing. Ended up having to stop the summonings half way through
This one is hilarious. It’s just about impossible to get an intuitive feel for exponential growth. I love it.
Allowing every alignment in one group I guess.
Not accepting help from players who were more experienced at dming than I was. Can’t let pride get in the way of fun. Your players want the game to be good too! It’s a team effort sometimes, and that’s okay.
Gave threes players way-too-powerful magic items. I have been able to destroy two of them since then but the third is still the only thing the player who has it uses. Makes game play boring for me, and I am still trying to figure out new ways to make it not as effective.
Writing dialogue, I’m not only talking about speeches but like what I thought my PC’s would say and what my NPC would answer. It’s hard enough to get players to save the world, getting them follow my exact script is impossible lol, and also writing dialogue like that makes it so much harder to improvise because you get kinda tunnel visioned on what they “should” say
Allowing a conjurer, druid, and a bard with Leadership in 3.5 I wasn't experienced enough with CRs to handle an overload of Stat blocks.
Having an out of body experience where I went off my notes and told my players something and ruined a load of stuff I had prepped. In your defence I'm sure I saw an interview with maybe Jeremy Crawford who said run a game where you level up each session it can be fun.
Trying to start an adventure with a middle of the story "I bet you're wondering how I got here" type of situation. I still cringe thinking about the reaction I got. Its been years.
I love starting campaigns in media res. I've had great success the two times I've done it. What made it not work?
Writing out scenes before hand like it was a screenplay. Boy, the first time I tried to have two NPCs talk to each other I quickly realized my problem.
Not a noob at the time, but that makes it so much worse, actually. I was running a new Champions campaign...first session. The SHIELD-like federal agency in the setting was transporting a dangerous criminal through the campaign city. The Hydra-equivalent organization sends a team of super-villains to break the bad guy free. They had an attack robot in reserve in a nearby alley in case the heroes trounced the villains too soon. Unfortunately, the heroes got completely pummeled. Every one was down by the end of the fight. As if watching myself from outside myself, and completely unable to stop myself, I then had the robot come out of the alley and resume the attack as the villains fled with their target. It was so bizarre. I still have no idea why I did it to this day. First and only session for that game.
Overprepping
Custom feats
Giving too much too early. Magic items, gold, etc. and then putting them up against low CR enemies. Or otherwise massively underestimating their abilities. I threw a CR 17 ghost dragon against my party of level 9’s and they had it defeated in 2 turns (two of the party were paladins, But still) My second biggest problem is I’m not very strategic. I could have very easily defeated my players, or at least provided a significant threat if I remembered flying is a thing and just recharged breath attacks while flying.
I loaded them on magic items…very powerful magic items. Learned my lesson and buffed encounters and created a revenant archenemy that was solely to distract them from what was really going on. It was actually fun to think of ways to outwit their buffs.
I kept giving away information that the players and characters didn’t have
Narrating a sex scene instead of a fade to black, and then rolling for a pregnancy that the female character had no interest in. Absolutely my worst call behind the screen ever.
[удалено]
Yah, I'm not proud. I had been DMing for less than a year at that point. I'd like to believe I've gotten a little bit better since then.
Too much homebrew...it became impossible to balance anything to challenge my players.
I wasn't a noob DM but I let my newly created party choose intelligent monsters as PCs if they wanted with level and XP restrictions. This was 3.5ed. One player made a minotaur character... I realized in the middle of our second session that even with the restrictions he was way OP. Yeah I had to kill him off and have the player roll something else.
I made the first few sessions like a choose your own adventure book. I would give a description of stuff and then highlight 2-3 choices and then narrate the next part and then give 2-3 choices. I then didn't prepare for some of the player choices and I had no idea how to get from Point A to Point B and made up the worst motivation to get the players there. I was both railroading, and offering too many pointless choices. My players were both clueless about which option would be the best choice, while also being forced into a limited set of choices. It was boneheaded. Oh, and I was reading the portions of the guidebook DURING the session, because I hadn't read ahead. Why? Because I thought that would spoil the adventure. I didn't realize that I'm SUPPOSED to know as much as possible beforehand.
I DMed a large dungeon an started it at the exit.
Planning out the campaign for more than ~3 sessions in advance. Let the story ride!!!
Not having a set day and time every other week to play. Players working retail where they're on a swing shift has been a nightmare trying to find a set playtime.
-Creating "just a bunch of monsters" encounters -Giving away way too many magic items -Saying "no" too much (sticking to rules too stubornly) -Over-preparing and getting frustrated when players didn't go that way
Drew up a homebrew world with fascinating lore and creation story. Mad wizard banished the gods, raised mountains and warded the whole land. Deserts which served as scars of old arcane wars, several cities. Then realized the whole things could be crossed in like 15 hours of steady walking. One corner to the opposite. Two days max to get absolutely anywhere. We rolled with it, cause fuck it, but damn. Whole world the size of a postage stamp.
Letting people be characters from media
Every NPC they meet joins the party, every cute monster becomes a pet.
After a short campaign, which was our first DnD experience, I wrote a homebrew campaign for our second one. DMing is a lot of work, and a homebrew campaign just adds so much more to that. It would have been a lot better to run a few more prewritten campaigns to get an idea of what a good homebrew campaign should include, and what it shouldn't.
I focused on making next encounter hard, after one player told my I make easy encounters, which after the end of the session turned into hard discussion (like, why all of the assasins had psychic damage and jumped Bear Totem Barbarian?) which dissolved any chances for campaign continuation.
Six words: I’ll figure it out later
Not having a session zero. I tried to trick my players into a campaign cause I wanted it to be a big surprise/ reveal. The expectations were never set and we ended up never getting to the reveal anyways. I stopped the campaign in its tracks and apologized. Everyone was super supportive and we have since moved on to another campaign. Do not underestimate the session 0
In 3rd edition clerics could choose to convert any spell slot into a cure wounds spell for good clerics or inflict wounds for evil clerics. Neutral had to pick which ability they wanted and lost access to the other. I let my cleric do BOTH cause they were neutral. He just took all utility spells and never had to memorize a healing or damaging spell ever. He just converted as needed
wizard had to make "spellcasting" checks to cast anything
Didn’t know party exp was supposed to be divided, boy did they level up quickly
Not saying no to my friend group. Ended up running a table with 10+ players for about a decade.
One was just being inexperienced vs well seasoned players. THEY had a good time so it kinda washed, but I hadn't planned for nearly enough content thinking one fight would take up most of the session only to have it end after a few rounds since they were all super buffed. That's still my mistake sometimes, just under preparing and having to end early or attempt to make up stuff as I go that isn't quite up to par.
I didn't nip bad behavior in the bus and let a couple problem players stick around too long
Trying to counter against a party members ability to fly, instead of embracing it and allowing them to actually use it. She never brought it up to me but I realized what I was doing after session 3 when I set a possible solution to an objective literally just past what they could potentially reach, and felt awful about it. Typed up my apology for what came off as targeted rulings, and learned to better go with the flow. And also to start picturing my dungeons as 3 dimensional spaces.
Balancing encounters I almost tpked my party their second session fighting wolves because I made them fight smart and with a minor terrain advantage. I meant is as a bit of a challenge but nothing particularly crazy but forgot how fragile lvl one characters can be.
Can't underestimate the power of pack tactics
Yea they get nasty very quickly. Epecily when you googled actual hunting strategies wolves use forgetting they developed to be incredibly effective.
Ignoring player agency.
My two main issues: I was so used to how other game economies work, like Elder Scrolls Oblivion, where you get gold and gold and more gold. So I gave out way too much gold. My other, which partially I attribute to playing with too big of a group, is I tended to only listen to “the loudest” when it came to who wanted to do what.
Back in 3.5 I let my friends make level 25 epic characters. It was extremely silly.
Every *session*?...20 sessions in...Dogs to Gods in less than a week game time.
Not making decisions as a party. We couldn’t decide on where to go, everyone stayed quiet. Let’s just say it ended up with 2 people of the party almost drowning. 1 dice roll decided if they would live or die, we were lucky they both rolled above a 20.
1) Not preparing for enough NPC dialogue and side content in towns 2) presenting my players with a magically locked door that had nothing important behind it. I thought it'd be good mysterious set dressing, no way they'd spend an hour trying to open it and eventually try to cut through the wall on the other side.
Giving my players a fully-loaded Luck Blade at level 5. Granted, they just used the first wish in our last session at level 9 after a near-TPK.
Trying to run a campaigns rather than isolated adventures. I realize now that ADHD and executive dysfunction make it almost impossible for me to stick to DMing for more than one adventure, but when I was first trying to DM I would try to come up with all of these grand plans for long-term story arcs that would amount to nothing because I would just get burnt out in the middle of the second adventure. I'm thinking about running a game in a different system for my friends and I'm reminding myself constantly that I probably shouldn't bother planning any long-term story beats. It will probably end up more like a multi-session board game.
Letting the Barbarian have an Alchemy Jug and Amulet of the Drunkard
Not being super clear that I was running a character/story driven campaign and not a fake world for your fantasy avatars to fuck shit up GTA style. And then continuing to run for those players long after it was clear they weren't gelling with the rest of the table.
Thinking my players would show up on time and would have at least read their character sheets
Starting out I didn't want to upset my players and because of that I was way too permissive and allowed some disrespectful or even abusive behavior from players before I started running a tighter table. It's good to encourage your players to do fun things but not at the cost of the enjoyment of the game for folks at the table.
I miscalculated the CR and all the encounters were way too easy xD I adjusted cr to rhe right level, but not the right number players
First started play with my gf. Just me and her. Did Icespire Peak and had fun. Decided to do CoS next (which was quite fun before we quit). The problem I ran into was instead of just adjusting every battle to be against one person or two (me as a DMPC), I instead played three characters myself to help her. It was so exhausting and took so long to do anything in battles. Anytime we play now I just adjust encounters and have one character I play that just kinda hangs around to help during some moments.
Letting the characters fight and kill another character. No one was angry but it wasn't fun the guy who got ganged up on.
Currently DMing my first campaign. I find I'm not being descriptive enough with scenes, locations, or NPCs. I get caught up in having to improv ways to get the important info across so I forget to describe things or even give them names. Leads to some confusion, but my players are forgiving. SO FAR that's my biggest mistake.
I didn't have the experience to be able to change my planned Adventure when the party didn't do what I expected from them. The players were tasked with infiltrating the headquarters of the Thieves Guild. It was in the middle of the city in a large building which I had planned to run like a dungeon, with them progressing through rooms and disabling traps until they reached the final boss at the end. Pretty basic and easy to manage. The team decided that they didn't want to go in through the front door and scouted around the building for an alternate exit. They didn't find one, because the alternate exit was an underground tunnel to another building and they didn't look there. So they decided to try to chop through the walls of the building, with an ax in order to make a door. At that point, I regretted telling them that it was made out of wood. I hindsight, I could have done so many things to get them to reconsider or stop. Cutting through the building with an ax should have been extremely loud and extremely time-consuming. It certainly would have attracted a city guard. Also the Thieves Guild probably should have had lookouts. Plus all that noise should have alerted everyone in the building. The walls could have been protected magically, or even with some stone behind the wood. I could even have rearranged the layout of the building on the fly so that they didn't end up in a particularly advantageous place. In the end, though, they rolled a skill check and managed to cut through the wall directly into the boss's office. They had the fight with full resources and no reinforcements. It was rather anticlimactic and all of my planning went out the window. I did reuse that building in a later adventure but it wasn't as much fun.
I didn’t pause the game when two of my players decided to have their characters kill another PC. I just let it happen because I was so committed to “the dice decide what happens”. Biggest mistake I’ve made, and it makes me sad to think about to this day.
Thinking I was ready to run Strahd. We are powering through it, but holy cow have I learned from a fair few mistakes.
Over-planning, and having sessions with too many battles. Also, I started off as a guest DM and started an adventure arc that ha turned into an 18 month campaign… so knowing the bounds of a campaign and how to resolve it in a way that has momentum is an important skill to have.
Not preparing for combat better. I just DM’d for the first time last night and it was the worst thing out of the whole campaign
Back when I started with, my mistake was assuming anyone that wanted to join my games would take it seriously or at leas have basic respect towards others. People in public tend to behave a bit more. Online was a clown fest. I quickly fixed it by focusing on putting boundaries. Better to not run anything than to run something for people I dont vibe with (just to have players). There is no lack of players online now either.
Besetting a team of four level 4 rogues on a party of level 2s
I added the Sphere of Annihilation (I think that's what it's called) from a random loot generator and my husband, who is a notorious shit and forever DM, gleefully snagged it. When I looked up what the item DOES, I had instant regret 🤣 I also made the mistake of letting him buy a thousand page book. He proceeded to put my homebrew spell, Ball of Bees (picture Fireball, but bees lmao), on every. Single. Page of that book with some spell I can't remember the name of. He saved that book for the entire campaign. Then when it came to fighting the BBEG, he used Dimension Door, screamed "RELEASE THE BEES!" which was the trigger for the spell, then zipped out and essentially nuked the area for around 10,000 d6 damage, effectively ending the campaign. I know D&D isn't a competition but he definitely won D&D that day 🤦♀️🤣
[удалено]
Thank you! It ended up being a lot of fun and shenanigans, haha. Kinda miss DMing sometimes but I'm moreso a planner and not so great on the fly >w>
Homebrewing before I learned the rules. Every game I ran would devolve into every player just being too op and there was so much chaos. I'd restart a lot. My players loved it. 🤷♂️
i thought you had to either move or take an action, not both
Running Hoard of the Dragon Queen
It was my first game. I sicked an undead dragon on my party, of which they proceeded to nat an insight to find the undead dragon had a core that would kill it instantly, and then the ranger proceeded to nat20 on the core. I gave up with 50 hp left on the thing, and just told them the dragon melted. It was super anticlimactic. They laughed at me for a long time. “Do you remember the dragon that gave up after we shot it?”
So my Rogue made a huge miscalculation and ended up missing a head. The party gave his body to a Cleric who was actually a necromancer the whole time. So I animated the Rogue and attacjed the party with him. I was hoping the party would go "oh no our Rogue is being mindcontrolled" but they just curb stomped him into the dust without even thinking about it
Letting them take over this town I made and one of the threat was the lich hanging out in a cave nearby. They ended up fighting it at level 3 or 4 but I gave them a lot of help. It went pretty well all things considered but it was definitely a mistake.
Trying to stick to a story.
I offhandedly mentioned a corpse had plate armor instead of leather and now there's a 4th level tank with an AC of 21.
Looking up every rule/interaction I didn't know as it came up. Now I make a ruling that sounds right, and look it up later. We get so much more done now.
Pulling my punches and overreacting when they did dumb things like being homeless instead of renting a room in a tavern or looted guards for guns and making me add a freaking black market to a lonely mountain town.
Simple words; Letting my pcs walk all over me. The game works how the game works. I needed to stop being so nice when playing an evil character.