Author Topic: What was your biggest screw-up as a GM?  (Read 21582 times)

Offline Katarn

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Re: What was your biggest screw-up as a GM?
« Reply #30 on: May 24, 2011, 02:03:52 PM »
... switching from dnd3 to dnd4.

You have admitted your crime, so you are forgiven (although 3.5 is where it's at).


DnD 3.5: a 6-PC game (including my DMPC), set in a well-established campaign universe.  We had one game-breaking player- always an elven mage who got suspiciously high rolls all the time, and was able to get wish at level 6 (for those who aren't DnD fans, that's near impossible without stretching tangential logic and questionable loopholes).  Basically they ran through trial after trial without any difficulty.   This went too far when this PC dropped a city-sized asteroid on the city using wish, killing all the inhabitants so he could take their gold.  Sithis, god of evil and "conveniently" chief deity of the town, appeared and sent them to another plane, ending my campaign (but sparking off a better one...)

DFRPG: Maybe a lack of knowledge on the complete breadth of rules, but nothing hysterically funny yet.

Offline devonapple

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Re: What was your biggest screw-up as a GM?
« Reply #31 on: May 24, 2011, 03:57:39 PM »
Using a Construct as the damage-dealing part of a trap in a D&D 3.x game. The players were supposed to be intimidated enough by the Construct (perhaps after getting run over once or twice) that they would seek another way out. They never did. The Construct ground most of the party down to their deaths, and the remainder were captured by the enemy, which inadvertently ended that campaign, despite there being ready hooks for another band of adventurers motivated to rescue those captured.
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Offline Richard_Chilton

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Re: What was your biggest screw-up as a GM?
« Reply #32 on: May 24, 2011, 04:48:33 PM »
That's a very common mistake - setting up "and the PCs will have enough sense to run" encounters.  Most players assume that all encounters will be balanced so they have a good chance to win and even when things go bad many of them will fight to their last hit point/health level.

The only time they work is with narrative control and/or the GM pointing out "if you stay you will die - no I'm not joking" - and when that happens the railroading comments start.  "Here's my character sheet - since I'm not allowed to make any decisions why don't you play it?" type comments.

The worse mistake I've ever made? It involved saying yes to a plan piecemeal.  Saying yes to "Can I have X?", "Can I do Y?" type questions without knowing where things were going.  No one request was unreasonable or unbalancing (many were just slightly odd) but after 3 - 5 sessions of it we had an unstopable killing machine put together by some obscure rules.  No way to challenge that one PC without using things that would wipe out the rest of the party and if a fight was challenging for all the other PCs combined then the killing machine would stomp everything before the other PCs had a chance to do much.  It was like if a bunch of wannabee sidekicks were adventuring with Superman.

Now I say things like "Where are you going with this?" and "I'm not sure - what kind of end result are we looking at?"

Richard

Offline BumblingBear

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Re: What was your biggest screw-up as a GM?
« Reply #33 on: May 24, 2011, 05:37:10 PM »
To date, my biggest screwup was in the Dresden Files.  Near the conclusion of a session after my PCs had had their asses handed to them several times, a warlock unleashed a nightmare into the world through a ritual powered by the blood of children.  Seriously.

Out of the ground erupted fire and brimstone.  I told them it was effectively a 4 shift attack with a 20 shift weapon.  Everyone in the group was able to avoid the attack, but apparently the extremely high weapon rating made it very nerve wracking for them.

See, I was not going to let that huge attack hit any of them.  I did it to create some tension and increase the "big bad" effect.  But apparently, by neglecting to mention to my players that they were in no real danger, some of them got upset and called shenanigans by the randomly huge attack.

I don't make such huge attacks anymore. :P
Myself: If I were in her(Murphy's) position, I would have studied my ass off on the supernatural and rigged up special weapons to deal with them.  Murphy on the other hand just plans to overpower bad guys with the angst of her short woman's syndrome and blame all resulting failures on Harry.

Offline Team8Mum

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Re: What was your biggest screw-up as a GM?
« Reply #34 on: May 24, 2011, 06:46:09 PM »
Sitting down to run a con game having had no sleep and still hungover and opening my 'GM kit bag' to discover that all the pregened characters, the rule book and my game notes were in the other bag - which was now on its way down the motorway back home with my husband that had only been able to attend the first day due to work commitments- and all I had to run with was my husbands supply of underwear for the next week...

It was an interesting adventure to say the least.
« Last Edit: May 24, 2011, 07:37:59 PM by Team8Mum »
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Offline jadecourtflunky

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Re: What was your biggest screw-up as a GM?
« Reply #35 on: May 24, 2011, 08:39:15 PM »
Telling one of my players that a character he eliminated in favor of another would be coming back as an NPC. I then later changed campaigns, figured out that one wasn't working, then switched to a small-fish-in-a-big-pond type game... where he made his character his old character's son. Now I have to bring back the were-bear. Ugh.

Offline Sanctaphrax

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Re: What was your biggest screw-up as a GM?
« Reply #36 on: May 24, 2011, 08:49:47 PM »
Everything about the first D&D game I ran. That was back when I was in middle school if I recall correctly.

Ignoring that, I screwed up pretty badly running the Enduring The Apocalypse PbP a while ago. A former poster here (Tbora) cast a spell that was completely wrong by the rules and very messed up flavourwise. I wan't paying much attention since he was using it in a very easy encounter, and I didn't read it carefully enough. So I said it was alright. When it was called to my attention, I went over it again and misread it again. So I said it was alright again. This offended another player (MijRai) so much that he quit the game. Tbora also quit soon after, but I have no idea if it had anything to do with this.

So yeah, that was dismal.

Offline admiralducksauce

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Re: What was your biggest screw-up as a GM?
« Reply #37 on: May 24, 2011, 08:51:20 PM »
Quote
and all I had to run with was my husbands supply of underwear for the next week...

Did you use them as FATE chips?

Offline Lanir

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Re: What was your biggest screw-up as a GM?
« Reply #38 on: May 24, 2011, 09:17:48 PM »
Probably trying to run for a group that decided they didn't want to do anything. This was a GURPS game although the system didn't matter. We were swapping off who was running and as far as I could tell, the other players wanted me to run an "adventure" where they went around shopping and took a vacation where nothing bad happened. Right there I should have stopped and asked if everyone wanted a break, maybe watch a movie or something. Instead I kept at it and eventually  found something that motivated them. Unfortunately it didn't motivate their characters to do something, it motivated the players to rant at me. Yes I eventually railroaded them (local nobility stole their airship) but I didn't feel bad doing it because this was after an hour or two of trying to tease them into various different adventures, plot hooks, and even just outright asking them what they wanted failed. And frankly they'd been the ones who asked me to run in the first place.

Got a couple more that ran into the PC invincibility theorem where players just expect to go toe to toe with anything you throw at them and win, largely by hiding behind numbers on a character sheet even in games and game systems where that's discouraged.

Two mistakes that ended up being fun in the end:

1. Amber Diceless RPG - If you're not familiar with Amber, suffice to say it's a setting where the players are among the few who can walk between worlds. And they're all pretty much as tough as your average action movie star or Greek hero. With a moment's thought you can see how just about any character can easily upset your average adventure. But that wasn't my mistake, that's just what's built into the system and setting. I could handle that. My mistake was letting someone have a bag that let them gate in things from another world. It was a pretty cheap item (Amber is a points system). The issue was the player, who was new. He decided to go megalomaniac on us and pull troops in to assault the castle where all of the PCs lived along with other people who could walk between worlds. I should have said no but I thought I'd be nice and let him run with his idea. In the end, his guys had overrun the place but were being pushed back until he eventually surrendered. Everyone had a lot of fun and just kind of ran with it. Among other things watching the thin, pale sovereign walk down the halls in a bathrobe carving up gorilla space marines with a sword while ranting at the top of his lungs about people making a mess in his damn castle amused everyone.

2. Earthdawn (original FASA system) - My group was two PCs who couldn't have been more different. One had very little health and mediocre damage but could hit anything and was very difficult to hit in return. The other was more of a brick. So I made a slug monster Horror with a big maw and a tiny but accurate pea shooter type appendage to challenge each of them. I thought I made it tough enough but it was the big bad for that session and... it would have died in like 2-3 rounds. Fast rounds. So on the fly I described an odd glow and figured the thing had more health. And then they killed it twice over. And then a third time... and I finally let it die. Afterward they ended up using part of it to make an item and the players thought it was awesome that one of their first adventures had contained an epic battle.

Offline Team8Mum

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Re: What was your biggest screw-up as a GM?
« Reply #39 on: May 24, 2011, 09:32:55 PM »
Did you use them as FATE chips?

Actually it was a long time ago and I was running Cthulhu.
So it was more a case of SAN loss.
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Offline kihon

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Re: What was your biggest screw-up as a GM?
« Reply #40 on: May 25, 2011, 05:22:48 PM »
AD&D - leaving 3.5 for 4...which sucks (imho).

Offline ryanshowseason2

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Re: What was your biggest screw-up as a GM?
« Reply #41 on: May 25, 2011, 07:58:19 PM »
First game I ever ran was new wod Hunter The Vigil. I had previously played in only two games that were quite short lived, but I had the bug of gaming by then and no one was running anything so I decided to give it a shot. I'm told my story was excellent if a bit railroaded, but my balance issues were atrocious. I wanted to give each player a strange unexpected power they didn't know about beforehand and have them adapt to it and learn about it and from it. It got out of hand really quick.

One character regularly rolled around 30 dice on attack rolls. The average being 8-12.

Another had 13 defense, the average being 2-5.

Another could avoid damage almost entirely at will.

Sure they power gamed to get there, but I gave them the tools to and allowed it. By the end of it anything I threw their way either was far too powerful for some members or far too weak for others. It did lead to some interesting moments though.

-Throwing a regular mook into the blades of a flying helicopter
-Father of all werewolves killed in 3 rounds by a 2 dimensional frisbee

Me: Theres a locked ( wooden office )door in front of you, you don't have the key.
Player: I have ten strength ( Olympic bodybuilder would have 5 )
Me: Ok the door is unconscious.

Mind you Hunter is supposed to be a game for mere squishy mortals against things far more powerful than them...

Offline Bruce Coulson

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Re: What was your biggest screw-up as a GM?
« Reply #42 on: May 25, 2011, 08:55:06 PM »
Having the supervillains win in a long-running Champions campaign.

It wasn't entirely my fault.  One of the PCs was investigating the plot; unfortunately, the other PCs were investigating each other, convinced that one of them was 'up to something'.  So, because the group remained unfocused, the villains managed to reset time, take over the world, and banish all the heroes.

This was the same campaign I had one of my most awesome moments as a GM, though.  Just a bad ending, though.
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Offline sinker

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Re: What was your biggest screw-up as a GM?
« Reply #43 on: May 25, 2011, 11:10:19 PM »
I'll share one of my friend's SNAFUs. We were playing heavy gear for a while and we stumbled on some piece of tech that we couldn't identify. Finally after a while of trying to figure it out the GM says "Ok, a technician comes by and says that looks like Earther and it says this on it." (heavy gear focuses on some colonies that have been disconnected from earth for a while, it's been long enough that the language is different and the two societies have developed in completely different ways. Now the Earthers are now trying to retake the colonies) For a second we all move on, but then we look at him and go "Wait... That technician speaks Earther!? Why do we have a technician that speaks Earther? Get him!" The GM's immediate response is "He trips on a random live wire and is electrocuted to death."

To this day we still give him crap about it. "Hey Greg, maybe we should go find that technician that speaks Earther."

Offline Shecky

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Re: What was your biggest screw-up as a GM?
« Reply #44 on: May 25, 2011, 11:56:34 PM »
You have admitted your crime, so you are forgiven (although 3.5 is where it's at).


DnD 3.5: a 6-PC game (including my DMPC), set in a well-established campaign universe.  We had one game-breaking player- always an elven mage who got suspiciously high rolls all the time, and was able to get wish at level 6 (for those who aren't DnD fans, that's near impossible without stretching tangential logic and questionable loopholes).  Basically they ran through trial after trial without any difficulty.   This went too far when this PC dropped a city-sized asteroid on the city using wish, killing all the inhabitants so he could take their gold.  Sithis, god of evil and "conveniently" chief deity of the town, appeared and sent them to another plane, ending my campaign (but sparking off a better one...)

Um... HOW did he get that spell at 6th level? He's got to be 17th level MINIMUM to cast it. There are no feats or spells that let you cast spells from a higher level (yes, they can make it so you're able to cast spells you ARE eligible for as if you were a higher-level caster - e.g., longer duration, more HD damage, etc. - but nothing gives you spells that are exclusively for higher-level casters).

One cure for suspiciously high rolls: make players make rolls out in the open.

Using a Construct as the damage-dealing part of a trap in a D&D 3.x game. The players were supposed to be intimidated enough by the Construct (perhaps after getting run over once or twice) that they would seek another way out. They never did. The Construct ground most of the party down to their deaths, and the remainder were captured by the enemy, which inadvertently ended that campaign, despite there being ready hooks for another band of adventurers motivated to rescue those captured.

Answer: morale checks. Look it up. You can basically railroad a party into running if that's what you think should happen.
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