My Worst D&D Game EVER (Episode
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- Опубликовано: 29 сен 2024
- Professor Dungeonmaster tells the story of his worst D&D game. Yeah--it's THAT bad.
Worst GM Ever: • D&D Story: Worst. DM. ...
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I used to infodump on my players a lot. They banned me from DM duties for 2 years.
When they allowed me to run a game again, their characters left the pub as soon as the strange old man in the corner began telling the tale of the Rune Sword of Ko'Mar...
They went to the nearest dungeon, fought an army of traps, narrowly escaped some clever goblins... and returned to the pub having failed to find the sword.
As they entered, the strange old man in the corner was finishing his tale with, " and that's how my Grandpa retrieved the Rune Sword of Ko'Mar, and hung it over the mantle over there,"
Great story!
I love happy endings. ❤️
It all sounded fun until 10-page character sheet 😂 I recently watched that Secrets of Blackmoor documentary, and it sounds like what you attempted was very similar to some of the sessions that bridged the gap between war gaming and OD&D. Thanks for sharing this tale!
Thanks for watching it!
LOL, of course, I read your comment, after I posted. :) Yeah it sounds a lot like the Braunstein game.
I knew we would find Bob here soon or later. How long until we have a Bob Retro-clone Builder?
@@Giantstomp ahh I couldn’t recall the name-that’s the one!
My worst game started as a one-shot that turned into what I hoped would be an ongoing campaign. I had just come off of a string of good adventures I had ran but this game had: too many plot hooks, no resolutions, I thought by putting the characters in more and more shitty situations that the “drama” would be exciting when all it did was neuter the PCs to where they didn’t feel like playing after about 10 sessions. Put that together with the fact I once ran a session of that campaign where they literally sat on a boat floating to an underdark tower citadel but didn’t arrive until the end of the session. Looking back I cringe so so hard
Thanks for sharing your pain.
I'm pretty much a forever DM but the games I have had the opportunity to play I'm particularly sensitive to that flaw. I think because I'm so excited to get into a game, having it stall in meaningless travel drives me nuts, and I wind up acting like a kid in the back seat. "Are we there yet? Ok, when do we get there? I think we're done roleplaying on the road are we there yet?"
In the business world I often told entry level workers that nobody reads any documents longer than two pages. And make one of those pages an image.
Exactly.
I started off writing my campaign world in far too much detail, but then I started focusing on smaller details about either functions of the world or more important structures or organizations. I create a net from which I can improv off of. Still need to make a random encounter table, but I don't have anyone to play right now, so on the shelf it goes to work on when I have time and players.
Good ideas. Thanks for sharing!
do you play in person or online?
@@CaseyWilkesmusic This game was run online, but I strongly prefer in person.
Pfft the 'The Great Batsby', gets me every time. 😅
Yeah, I once created a huge maze for the PCs to navigate through. There was a colony of giant weasels in the North Eastern quadrant, but other than that is was JUST a TWISTY maze of 5ft corridors with one entrance and one exit, and a limited random encounter table, because the PCs were all low level. Drawing the maze was fun. Playing through it....well let's say I started offering "idea" or "inspiration" rolls to the group to get an idea of which way to go. Mazes - fun to draw, tedious to play. Lesson learnt
I remember I sent my players down to a plane of hell. I don't remember which plane it was, but it was cold. So, I researched on plants and trees that live in cold environments, read up on everything I could find both real and imaginary, remind you this is before Internet. Started the adventure and was so happily explaining the vegetation down there and they did not care at all about it. They were in hell that was the important thing, not what a tree looked like or why it could survive the cold.
I love the Clive Barker reference, especially the "I guess?" qualifier.
Thanks.
What Tidball ran sounds a lot like David Wesely's Braunstein game, which is what gave Arneson the inspiration to turn the Chainmail fantasy supplement into what would eventually become D&D after he partnered with Gygax. :-)
Intrigue in Crap? That's a little harsh.
My players are brutal.
I tend to be at my worst when I feel rushed for time during a game session. I was reminded of this 2 months ago. I run D&D and the other GM in our group runs Savage Worlds. I had alot of terrain on the table, and really didn't enough time to finish the session, but I needed to as the other GM was running before I would run again, and the terrain would have been an issue if left set up. Things went decent I guess, but after the game when I had time to reflect, I realized I missed several opportunities to have a few epic moments, missed a couple triggers and forgot some minor story points that the players would have liked to know more about what had happened behind the scenes to bring demons into the village.
Thanks for sharing.
This sounds like an awesome situation otherwise. Its hard to hit all the important triggers and mechanics in the heat of the moment
there's no link for the video that you mentioned
Thanks. I fixed that.
I like these D&D confession videos, it makes me feel a lot better whenever I remember all the times I did really embarrassing sessions that no one (including me) found successful.
Worst game I ever run... Jeez, I was running my first 2nd Edition AD&D adventure where I had the PCs missioned with escorting a holy relic from Point A to Point B. A large amount of bandits attack and kill the priest, railroading the PCs to be captured (why didn't the bandits just kill them?) and eventually escape from a dungeon and eventually climb the tower to recover the relic.
As you mentioned before, there were no resources back then to teach someone how to be a DM and I used the outline of the only resource I had... D&D computer games which were a battle after battle where after the scenario, the PCs (4-5 of them) end up killing an entire army, resting in rooms and slogging through the dungeon. I remember the instant when I realized everything was so wrong: The PCs escaped the dungeon and instead of going to recover the relic, they were very quick to decide that they should just run away with their lives intact. One of my PCs became so bored that he let a monster kill him so he could jump on my SNES. It was embarrassing...
Thanks for sharing this embarrassing story. I feel for you.
During 2nd edition, “Dragon” magazine and the “Campaign Sourcebook and Catacomb Guide” gave useful advice on DMing more effectively.
On the topic of worst D&D game ever, can you make a video about introducing new players to the game? I want to introduce my friends to DnD and I don't want my incompetent to ruin their first DnD game.
I love your videos and the way you run games, it feels like there is no game mechanics get in the way to story telling.
(I haven't watched all of your videos so maybe I missed some of your tips for introducing new players)
I gotcha. ruclips.net/video/TriHiQlp9mI/видео.html
I got you. ruclips.net/video/TriHiQlp9mI/видео.html
I ran tons of crappy games, fortunately I was like fourteen years old, and so were my players, so I got off the worst ones pretty easy. Now I make mistakes, and the occasional slog, but its just a whole other ball game. A little advantage for us who started early, I guess.
For those GMs who absolutely feel the need to explain their world in detail: why not give your players a handout?
That way you don't treat them as captive audience at your table and you can get straight into playing the game. Those who are interested in that kind of stuff will read your lore on their own time for fun, and those who aren't wouldn't have listened you explaining it in the first place and would only become bored at your table. Everyone wins.
I know a few noob GMs I want to show this to :)
Please do.
a dude freaked out on me becasue I friendly addressed his gaming pace. Dude pushed us through every situation with no time to RP. "You are going a bit fast" and he went from 1 to100 with his rage.
Another time one of the players turned out to be the actual DM. His fdhy gf clearly wasnt it. I joined, was expected to basically be a minion to his characters decisions. As I didnt join a fight he started, his character threatened mine and even started combat.
One time I joined a game and wasnt a single thing on was was happening. I disconnected and dont think they even noticed
Another group had a player with a polarbear pet that itself was stronger than my charactter. Theat Druid also was so powerful that no one else was even needed. I was given a descroption of the setting I heavily used for my background after the DM told me to. It then was completely ignored "Why dont you use this magical item?" "Its from another deity. You clearly told me my god wants relics from other deities destroyed"
Almost every single of my experiences as a player was a horrific one.
Sorry for your experiences. I hope you're DMing now!
Well I can't speak of a real terrible main story plot I DMed however my third or so session that I DM'd ever had a random encounter that went like this:
The party found a bear cub in a rabbit trap, mother bear tried to protect it then wolves came that stalked the bear cub. Sounds fine right? Well I rolled initiative for EVERY SINGLE WOLF. It ended up to be 3 PC turns mostly consisting of running out of the bears range to calm it down whilst 5 wolves rolled attacks to kill the bear cub, which they eventually got whilst the party had to kill the bear that was rampaging at them. The whole encounter took like an hour+ with 5-10 mins of that my players doing there turns all whilst the encounter ended up accomplishing absolutely nothing cuz they didn't save the cub or the bear and the wolves ran off.
Yeah safe to say I learnt a lot from that encounter, mainly how NOT to do things.
It's kinda hard to get immersed into a world you know nothing about so, a world needs a backstory as much as every character does.
first time DMing was in 3.5 .... and the characters failed to pick the locked door...and the game ground to a standstill. i had no idea what to do.
i am happy to report as channels like this and Colville's came to life, i have learned exactly how to DM (the fix to that awful game was a fail forward, obv).
the thing clicked was "this is a theatre imrpov game...not a boardgame"
so now i "Yes And" my way to just throwing conflict at the characters and dont bother.coming up with a solution...thats the players job.
Good advice
I remember a game of twilight 2000 with like 15 players around a massive table at Origins. It took forever to play
That was one of my worst experiences gaming
Too many players.
As they say, we learn more from our mistakes than our successes. Thanks for sharing.
I once tried to run a tie fighter campaign 😅 it went horrible
no chain mail bikin's?
Like Bob I wonder if Prof. Dungeonmaster plays Miniature Tabletop Games or wild like to do it. 🤔
jjaja, every one sucks at times
Great stuff! Almost 100k subscribers
Batsby😁
lolol Great Batsby...omg dude
Zactly!!
The Great Batsby is a great pun. Never apologize.
It was bad. Very bad.
@@DUNGEONCRAFT1 I think a bit of self-aware humour is always good. Great Batsby could be great fun if the players and the DM are aware how goofy it is and are able to play characters who are unaware of how goody it is. This is just my opinion though.
Not better nor worst than "MacDeath"
@@DUNGEONCRAFT1 Id liken it to watching B grade movies , sometimes there so bad there actually good . The great batsby is for my taste in that so bad its good category but each to there own .
@@soulfirez4270 I like Captain Kronos and Yor--Hunter from the Future as much as the best dude--believe me--Batsby was not like that. It was bad bad.
Hey, thanks for putting yourself out there. No one starts out perfect, it takes trial and error.
(My own worst game was when, at fourteen or so, I corralled a bunch of relatives into running my dungeon. I had no skill whatsoever, I had just read the rules. They had no interest in this weird game, or even in the fantasy genre. Most painful three hours ever. They still talk to me, so that's something...)
Thanks for sharing.
I don’t know about other players but I personally enjoy reading about the lore of a place that I’m playing DnD in.
for me it always comes down to the group you're in, my current group of players (except one, but he doesn't mind too much as he just likes being there) all *love* my worlds I make and like to read about the lore, and honestly most of my preparation goes into just making the world (but maybe that's just down to how my games are more improv heavy then some other groups I've played with in the past)
Yeah it helps IMMENSELY with creating a character I can actually believe would be present in these situations. It also helps me take the events more seriously if I understand more about the context it's all unfolding in (and my character is acting in ffs).
In the great words Matt Easton: "Context. Context context. Context, context - context!"
I once ran a game where, instead of using dice to resolve combat, we used authentic medieval weapons. That one didn't end well for a couple of the players...God rest their souls.
I laughed out loud at that one.
“And to play the orcs, I’ve invited the local college football team’s defensive line… wait you’re suddenly saying you just want to negotiate with them? I thought they were ‘a blight upon this land that must meet steel and spell’?”
lol. Everyone needs to experience this. I have with 26 pages of notes and weeks of prep. Thanks.
In Junior high, back in the late 80s, I had this notion to combine the TMNT rpg with D&D. I spent days prepping a game for my friends, one that I assumed they'd just love (HA!)... an adventure wherein the players would get to play the Ninja Turtles thrown across dimensions to a D&D world and have to dungeon crawl to find the way home. Well, they didn't love it, and as the evening wore on, the attitude and disrespect towards my DMing finally frothed over and the game devolved into insults and fists. I lost four friends that night, making it my worst game ever.
I dunno weather to laugh or cry at this 😂😂😂
Wow! My condolences, man. A friend of us Directed us into a pretty much Stargate movie clone in the 90s and we hated it, made some jokes, but we never got so heated to go into a brawl. He just learned that railroading and copy-pasting is BAD! I always thought that forcing characters and settings on my players or railroad them hard was a bad idea, I'm always on the side of "setting freedom" (Doing what makes sense for that character in that world)
Kinda ironic you started playing as tmnt and ended it by actually fighting … much like the tmnt
Omg... I would have loved this. I could never get my group invested into any Palladium product.
Sorry for your loss. This story was even worse than mine.
Well i guess my worst d&d game was the final session of the first campaing i master...nobody came to the session
🥲
I used the batsby name for a BX Gangbusters campaign and the joke was wonderful
The Great Batsby... was the GM an unreliable narrator? Was there a flaming cart crash? A cart accident? A student of the English language and its literature creating (another) adventure based on literature? My BA is in Political Science. I try not to run intrigue because people's eyes glaze over. The body count rises the more 'clever' I get. I had one player tell me that he was just going to kill the next guy who asked for a favor in exchange for a favor. He followed through. I still need to work on reading the room, I guess. Not everyone values verisimilitude, I guess,
Regardless, always good to hear from you. Even better to learn from your failures as they remind me that even the professionals stumble from time to time.
Professor DM, you and your players suffered so we don't have to. Thank you for the advice. 😀
I'd like to think that's true.
“About your world…nobody gives a sh*t…” 😂
To be honest, I needed to hear that.
No offense intended. They don't care about mine either.
The worst game I ever ran was basically just me and a monologue. Needless to say, my players weren't happy.
I can imagine. Thanks for sharing!
I actually recommend playing in a Vampire larp to any D&D player. I still went back to tabletop fantasy, but the larp setting gave me a very different perspective on playing a character. I like to think my D&D characters are a little bit more interesting because of my years playing in a larp.
Yes! As a gm, and larp staff, i 100% think larp makes your dnd better. I can imagine scenes in 3d instead of 2d, and always can imagine how a fight should FEEL with people moving about, and it makes it a lot easier to make combat more interesting because larp always has extra objectives during combat.
@@daveshif2514 My big takeaway was having a more motivated character. Since a larp (or at least my old one) is 100% player-driven, I had to have a character who would have goals to actively go out and pursue. That doesn't work exactly the same in a tabpetop game, but now my D&D characters have much more clear reason to get up and do something.
I've played in great LARPS. But when they're bad, they're really bad.
Gross. I don’t like serial killing undead at all. In my games, we don’t play vampires, we slay vampires.
I had created a huge map and set the players as the Council of the king who had to manage the empire and gave them special abilities based on their back story. It was essentially a Model UN crisis committee with dnd elements. Anyway, my players don't want to play dnd anymore and some even hate each other for the political backstabbery that occured. My lesson learned: it was a really neat concept as a session 1, give the players an empire to manage and have some threats to it, but then I would switch to a pure dnd system that takes the players into combat rather than keeping the action in the throne room the whole time. Since I didn't give the players enough threats to deal with, they spent almost 3 hours debating on whether people outside of the council room (who went to deal with the threat themselves) should be able to cast votes on empirial policies. Mind you, this all came from the fact that everyone was super burnt out on dnd combat and I wanted to really shake things up for my players to keep em interested. But as a fellow DM said, dnd is a specific game that does some things very well (combat lol), political council room intrigue is not the intended use of the rule set, that's just a different game at that point.
People read a book to get lost in the world
People play RPG's to get immersed in their characters.
One of the best lines ever which should be at the cover of the next version of the Dungeon Master Guide.
Settings are for the DM. 1000 years of history is so the DM can fix their campaign in a reality that they can dig the now out of. However, you are correct no one cares about a DM's writing aspirations.
It sounds like you were writing a novel or a script. How far you've come.
I've done every dumb thing I warn viewers about.
@@DUNGEONCRAFT1 I've learned preachers and teachers teach best when partially speaking to themselves. Thanks for the warnings and channel.
A world's history helps alot because its what you can do with it. Some players love depth others don't, so balance.
The worst thing I have ever done is bring (as a game master) my character from a different game I was a player in, to save the dying characters from a wyvern... I thought I would be so cool... Boy oh boy was I wrong... I still cringe when I remember this moment, and it was like 17-18 years ago...
It _can_ work though.
Thanks for sharing!
Or, as Ginny Di or I say, make your players world build.
Mmm, thank you for teaching us thru your mistakes. RUclips really wants me to stop watching your videos and watch Ginny Di's videos
She's good too. If you like music videos, watch this: ruclips.net/video/7x4u3BsBGFg/видео.html
"Dressed like Dracula saying 'I'm invisible!'"
Ah, early Dork Tower. We all have a little bit of Igor in us!
yep. Clasic cartoons.
It wasn't the worst game I ever had, most of the campaign was great, but definitely the worst idea. I was running a game of AD&D in Highschool that was going great. It was centered around the idea that a chaos entity thought banished was returning to end the world and had a lot of interaction with demonic and celestial entities as things were coming apart. A major reason for this story hook was because motivating my players to do anything was always a major problem for that group so the "you'll all die unless you prevent this" angle was genius, or so I thought. The party had done some really epic stuff and despite many player character deaths and setbacks had risen to somewhere between levels 12 and 15. We had a big climactic battle with an aspect of the chaos entity, and then, because I didn't like high level campaigns and hated the idea of trying to come up with story hooks and encounters for such powerful characters, I allowed them to discover the true nature of the world as they escaped the apocalypse.
The world they inhabited was actually the incredibly detailed fantasy of a powerfully psychic child. The child, however, was dying. The chaos entity returning was a brain tumor. In his last moments the child had fantasized his heroes destroying the thing that plagued him, and having played out his fantasy, was able to use his powers to manifest the imaginary friends that he loved into reality as he himself perished. My players loved the twist... until I dropped them back to level 1. The game went on for a few frustrating sessions and then ended as we switched to a White Wolf mash up (Vampire, Werewolf, and Mage initially) and to date that's my longest running game. I wish I'd just sucked it up and come up with some ideas for high level characters.
I feel your pain.
I completely agree that players don't care about your world. I've had the same world setting for my fantasy games since the early 1986 or so. People who have been playing with me for three decades will always question what God is over which domain what empires and kingdoms are around etc. And has a game master I've just learned to accept that the player is care about their characters and what is happening to those specific characters at that specific time. Then when somebody does actually remember something from a previous game set in the world and links something together I can be happy
Been using my PANTHEON and RACE CHOICES since the mid nineties.
Seriously? Man, I must be a lucky guy, but half of my players do remember those things, and that was when we were teenagers. Now everyone is all in on the setting, but just to get "intelligence".
10-page character sheet back story?
Funny the GM created it - because usually, GMs hate a 10-page back-story.
Looks like a bad attempt at writing a novel.
Very funny and thanks for sharing!
You are welcome!
I've spent tons of time working on RPGs only for my work to go unused and, eventually, into the trash. Tough to spend a lot of time working on something that you find out only you give a damn about.
Oh I've been there (If I'm honest with myself, I'd say I'm still in recovery). I'm one of those GMs that loves world building, to the point I once caught myself fretting over the migratory routes of the birds! That's when I sat myself down and had a little chat.
Now I confine myself to relevant details only, that will impact, and be experienced by, the heroes and their adventures. I've found it very liberating.
Players, for the most part, don't want to hear about soil-conditioning techniques, they just want to visit and enjoy the garden.
Making a some absolute statements that really are your opinion and truths.. Some of us also want to get lost in the world and explore that world. I want to immerse myself in the world and my character.
That’s cool. But my characters & world sucked. If your DM is really good, mileage may vary.
Sounds rough, how long into the battle did you realize that you had made a horrible mistake? I did the same thing back in the early 90's, I ended the campaign with a large scale combat using the Battlesystem rules, the players were all high level peeps with followers/hired armies/etc. About 1/3 of the way through the battle everyone including me was bored (except one guy, he was nuts for stuff like that). So we skipped the rest of the battle and just played out the combat between the protagonists/antagonists. So luckily we pulled it together and saved the fun of the night, some of our better memories are about that final battle. One of the players had been rolling around in armor of vulnerability, that didn't pay off until half way through the final battle. He'd been wearing that armor for at least 10 sessions without taking a crit hit until then. Hilarious (for everyone except him)!
What you say about world building is true, the players don't give a crap about any of it unless it impacts them directly. That's why it is so funny to read through those old adventures from the 70's/80's, there is SO MUCH information there that is pretty much just for the DM to slog through. The majority of players don't care who is married to who or how the various goblin tribes are getting along with each other.
Thanks for sharing. To answer your question--way too late.
@@DUNGEONCRAFT1 Lol! Love your videos, even after having played for 30+ years you are always teaching me something new!
My first game had similar mistakes, notably the world I was trying to make.
It started well as I had the PCs in the brig of a pirate ship where they had to fight their way and take the ship for themselves.
Sadly what I did not realize was that I basically railroaded the players using the ship as there was no map to give the players a means of choosing their destination.
There was a high point where the PCs got to fight a boss and destroy their fortress, but after that, the players lost interest and we moved to a new campaign.
Thanks for sharing!
Love this video. We never know we are making mistakes until after we made them. Live and learn.
I remember watching the previous video and I loved the candidness of it all. As well, this video shows the behind the scenes which is great. Thank you for your transparency not only did it teach you but it is now teaching us. Thank you!
CASABLANCA for a D&D game in the World of Greyhawk! What could go wrong? BAD! BAD CHOICE! The poor choice of a story to base a game on was exceeded by worse planning and then magnificently failed execution on my part. -- I got so caught up in mood theatrics I forgot everything else... A total failure in all regards I luckily did not lose friends over.
ONCE AGAIN TO THE PEOPLE WHO WERE THERE. I AM SORRY!
(What did work better in D&D was using a Community Theatre production of RLS's, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.)
This was a nifty reflective piece. I kept hearing "Harn" (but with a weird symbol above the a, not an umlaut) at first.
Let’s go!! 100k just around the corner!!
Lol. Thank you. I have a feeling this last 11k will be like crawling up Mount Doom.
I must be in a big minority. The Lord of the Rings and A Song of Ice and Fire are fine and all, but diving into the deep lore and world-building is where I find the most interest. Not in the story being told.
But still that doesn't mean I want to read a 10-page pamphlet of mind-numbing details.
My worst game was running a pickup game for new players where nobody cared about fantasy. Terms like “falchion” and “braziers” were met with “what’s that?!” It was abysmal, but led to the best DM tactic I ever learned the hard way and that was to focus less on flowery medieval jargon and more on the phrase, “as players it would look like…”
For example, “The large castle outer wall appears massive and gargantuan! In player terms, it’s about the size of Walmart.”
Instantly every player is now on the same page. My wife now enjoys our D&D campaigns 👍🏻
Also in the 90s (I suspect my age and play history is similar to PDMs) I ran a medieval tournament as a backdrop to a political intrigue scandal/murder frame job. If the players won the contests of skill they entered they would get bonuses to their role-play schmoozing. It all went ok for the players, but for "realism" I generated a 100 NPCs and took a day off work to by hand with dice run the brackets of the tournament until the final round at which point I would know who the players were up against. What was I thinking? Today I would just rip off the players stats have them compete with rivals of comparative skill instead of rolling dice all day for hours.
My worst game was a 2.5 year-long Eberron campaign in 4th Edition. The players and I were all late teens-early twenties, and I was lazy to an extreme fault relying 100% on improv with zero prep. The players, too, were lazy and most of them only showed up for combat. Puzzles, roleplay, and anything else that didn't require an initiative roll were completely ignored by them. This was sort of okay because, in 4th Edition, a single combat with some goblins takes an eternity. I started railroading hard and, to my surprise, my players loved it.
For whatever reason, I didn't correct course or act on my own dissatisfaction so I got my only jollies out of this game by shoving in a bunch of overpowered superhero-level NPCs, who were clearly ripped from popular video games and anime of the time, and taking the party on a tour of what I thought was Eberron (remember: 100% improv). Players began dropping off when college happened, finally leaving only 2 of the original 8. I can't remember how or why I did it, but I fell into a pattern of rewarding these wallflower boring-as-hell players with level-ups at the beginning and end of sessions just to get them to max level and claim the accolade of having finished a 1-to-30 campaign.
This game was easily the most nothing, boring, unmemorable slog of whole days wasted on rolling dice while spamming the same attacks for a double-digit number of turns by every player and myself. No music, no recreational substances, no fun personalities. Just a bunch of nothing.
It is an embarrassment and serves as my Before picture to my current After, which is a 5th Edition Eberron game that has been going on for a year and is some of the best fun I've ever had in the hobby in the 22 years I've been in it.
We've all made mistakes, and an unfortunately high number of them come from Parlour LARP. It's very easy to get wrapped up in your immersive intrigue and overlapping conflicts -- especially when you're handing out prewritten characters -- and forget that the game actually needs to be *played*. The biggest problem I've found is when writing conflict "groups" of 2-4 players whose characters make up a plot... and then one or more drop out last minute, leaving one person stuck without any of their relationships there.
Like for Deathbringer's ending zinger!
From a philosophical point-of-view, it's probably good habit to consider your last game as the "worst you've ever done", even if your players lauded it. As a DM you know where you messed up - this fight too challenging, this other fight not challenging enough, this trap too deadly, that puzzle too complex or the clues too subtle for your players, etc.
I recommend that being a good DM is not a destination, but a craft that can be continually honed and made better. Mercer has off-nights. Brenegan has off-nights. If the "pros" can have off nights, so can us amateurs. Just so long as we work at getting better.
"No one cares about the world"
You might want to check out the german The Dark Eye community.....
(TDE is the buggest pen and paper RPG in germany)
"...Really into live Barkwr at the time. I guess" I read Imajica in the 90-s foe Summer reading in Hogh School. Never considered looking for a sequel. Loat some respect for the author after his positive remarks about "Jeepers Creepers"
“Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.” ― Winston S. Churchill
“There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.” ― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist
Thank you for your advice and education in game mastering and development 👍
There is something deeply charming to me about a project which takes huge amounts of creativity, but which is also a complete boondoggle. It reminds me of so many of my own plans, projects, and machinations. The difference appears to be that you, dear Professor, learned something from your misadventures. 😅
As a GM your setting, history, and major socio-economic events is important as to provide verisimilitude. However 1000 years of background of vast sprawling empires is meaningless outside of Emperor Dunderhead's scepter was an ancient artifact that powered his reign. (I wrote that last idea off the top of my head and it is all the players want ... usually.) Most sprawling histories are for the GM, but the GM is so excited about what they wrote they inflict it on their players.
25 years ago, I wanted to run a campaign that was very immersive. I decided on the Night Below boxed campaign due to the foreshadowing and player handouts. Unfortunately, I made the mistake of wanting to design my own campaign world, and set about doing it using the 2nd edition World Builders Guidebook. I spent many hours building a complete world and slowly zooming in to the campaign region. 3rd edition had just come out, and a couple of my players insisted that I use those rules. They used the rules to make powerful characters and encouraged the other players to do the same. They argued with me when I asked them to compromise on role playing reasons for their characters abilities. I ended the campaign around level 5 over irreconcilable differences. I learned several lessons from that experience. The only parts of my world that mattered to my players were the parts they were experiencing; the rest of it was lost. I didn’t do a good job of incorporating my PC’s back stories into the world and adventures. Lastly, what my players wanted from the game was fundamentally different than my interests, and they were unwilling to meet me in the middle. I’m a better GM today because of the painful lessons of my past
TLDR: Yeah Like a ten page character sheet that wasnt ROLE MASTER.
Every single time I spend lengthy hours toiling away on something for a game it always falls flat. Player reaction never meets the lofty standards I place on my commitment to whatever it is. Beautiful maps, Hand drawn character portraits, Power Points full of pictures and effects, Painted miniatures, and table top scenery all have their places and get some applause. But NO amount of carefully worded text does anything. Most things placed into a typeface even gets a cursory glance if its more than two sentences long.
The thing I get to most WOW for my time is a carefully chosen and implemented tactile mini game inside the real one. Here is what I mean, and I should probably make a video it would be easier. I ran a game once where there was this escape from a flooding dungeon. Players had to ascend an old spiral staircase to get out but there were only ten solid steps made of brittle limestone and each had to be taken from the bottom most slot and carried up to the top most and inserted into a new slot. Meanwhile skeletons down on the bottom would pelt the players with arrows as they made their way out. To build tension in the scene I made the group play a round of JENGA. Yeah you read the right. The wood stacking game. The players had to take turns removing and placing the blocks on top of the stack. Trying to get the whole thing to 40 layers without it toppling over. Once a round the skeletons would shoot at them and anyone who was hit has to put take their JENGA turn with their eyes closed. Everyone could help so long as only the active player touched the bricks.
They made it out, and let out a CHEER when they finally did. It was so very exciting and successful that I have implemented other tactile stress mini games into other scenarios. And I always make the game match the challenges in order to not ruin immersion.
Hey now. Matt Colville actually did cover how he ran a game so terrible it made his friend quit forever!
Damn. Which video is that?
@@DUNGEONCRAFT1 ruclips.net/video/8Q8bVPpc84A/видео.html this one I think?
I ran a Champions game years ago. The first session involved the characters learning that the evil agency Viper was planning to intercept a prisoner transport moving an unnamed villain through the city. Viper had hired a group of mercenary villains, as well as sending several henchmen to back them up. They also had a giant robot hidden in a nearby alley to cover the villains retreat.
Everything went fine until the villain was accidentally freed from the transport vehicle. It was revealed to be Grond, who was the Champions Universe’s equivalent to the Hulk. He smashed one of the PCs and then leapt away. Then the mercenaries proceeded to wallop the other characters. It was a total beat down.
So, there we have all the PCs beaten and defeated, the villains retreat, and Grond has escaped…did I end it there? Nope. I still remember, like I was standing outside myself screaming “No!” at the top of my lungs as I watched myself describe the giant robot emerging from the alley and proceeding to continue the attack on the heroes. It was like I couldn’t stop myself. I can’t fully remember what, exactly, happened, but I’m pretty sure one died, and the others just got pummeled. Then the robot clomped off into the night.
A palpable silence descended on the table, and we all kind of stared at each other. Then everyone packed up their gear and went home. We never played that game again.
Honestly the older I get, the faster I get to the point. Even describing dungeon rooms needs brevity, I tell my players that I'm like a ZORK game, if they want a more evocative description, ask for it!
The worst campaign I ever ran remains when I tried to run The Fellowship of the Rings by the book.
I was playing in a group where the DM did the same thing you talk about here: huge, planned out world, pages of information, game mechanics that were of his own design and other things. If our PCs wanted to leave the main town, the DM would tell us that it wasn't possible. We also spent around 12 game sessions to just get to level 3. My husband and I left the group because we were having problems with some of the homebrew concepts and it wasn't fun.
So I had a very unique session yesterday but my players brought up 2 valid questions that are gross but are unique enough I gotta ask.
Humanoid-eating Goblinoids. Is that Cannibalism and is it wrong? I mean, we all see death as sad and wrong; somebody getting eaten by a shark is sad but it's natural. If a Goblin kills and eats a Human or elf or what have you, should it have the same repulse as a human eating a human or is it something else? It's not actually a Humanoid, so if you do extra curricular with a goblin is that beastialitity or not? My players didn't do anything with the man eating goblins so don't get concerned for their mental health 😂 but they raised those questions and I don't have answers for them
A friend of mine gm'ed a march on an army under arrow fire and thrown stones. We were in our heroic Homer phase (ah to be young) and he described the situation with homerian comparison that lasted like 5-8 minutes. All the players hated it so much, haha. "Stones fall like the snow onto you, like when it reaches the salt wetness in the midst of the worst winter ,when the cloud gathering Zeus brings sorrow to the sons of man, he covers the huts on of godlike Achaens with the cold stufff, and so on and on" Man, that was the worst night. My buddy was pissed off because the players didn't appreciate his genius, the players were angry because the GM was such a pompous, wanna be intellectual.
Probably my worst DMing experience - we had only just begun what I figured was going to be an epic campaign, the characters met and I let there be a fork in the road. One way was were the adventure led. The other? I didn't create anything for that way. So when one of my players asked what was down that way, I said nothing and no one ever came back from that way. Well, of course the players wanted to know what it was that caused people to never come back. So I led them to a giant hole in the ground where nothing happened. Just...nothing. If ever a D&D campaign could have a "this space not created yet" sign, this was it. Eventually my players threw in the towel and headed the direction I wanted them to go, but the damage had already been done and the campaign died at the end of that session. I certainly learned a lesson from it, and I hope my games are much more engaging.
My memory of a worst game ever involved far too many players at the same time (just over 30 players I don't remember how many nor do I remember more than maybe 5 of their names ...)
the players were in theory investigating a slavers camp at old (partially) ruined castle ... so of course with so many players they split into various factions (at least 2 or 3 main ones and some others, I got the impression some of the players were hedging their bets in multiple factions at the same time) and went off on different paths around the castle (basically the Against the Slave Lords module series .. where the first module was resolved incompletely and way too fast .. and the 2nd module had started)
The slavers ended up not being the main threat to the players, but instead it was the groups of griefers than instigated pvp while the other players had started combat with some monsters and guards ...
end result - we ran out of the session time and the combat wasn't resolved - several players were already dead - and the next session was cancelled due to lack of interest from the bulk of the players - many were novice players and this had put them off ever returning to a RPG.
did I mention combat rounds took age
one of the things bout it was the dm allowed players to pick evil alignments ... which to many of them meant they could be murder-hobos (also explains the pvp events)
I played in this game. Unimind was Ralph and Dan. They wore wireless headsets so they can talk to each other whenever a rules question came up. I remember how asking the simplest thing would cause a pause as Ralph would try and get Dan’s attention. *sigh*.
Your DnD game has essentially "instant replay" like football? Thats awesome
My wife is great about telling me, "If you have to give me a TED Talk for me to start playing, you have too much information" . To keep myself from falling into this lore trap I have started my games in medias res, that way if the story is needed the players discover it more organically.
I made the mistake once of attempting to run a Mutants and Masterminds homebrew scifi/fantasy campaign. I had the idea of roleplaying out these scenarios which would help guide the players through the final portion of their character creation. I made the mistake of not telling them this to "keep the players immersed". What transpired was a very embarrassing moment for me later when I realized that the only gameplay I had actually given my players was a railroad from hell as their characters were hazed and beaten into submission by the military training they were receiving. It just wasnt fun for them. In retrospect, I should have just glazed over the details and ran them through everything I intended stat-wise and the narrative reasons why in the session zero but instead I gave them 3 game sessions of torture and railroading.
Details about the world are fairly easy to make up on the spot as needed. My prep time is spent making sure my players have plenty to do. They want to mess with NPCs, explore dungeons, and fight monsters and keep things moving - to get stuff done and feel like they accomplished something by the end of the session.
For me, one of the worst games I ran was at the end of camp. I expected the players to attempt their own ideas yet they kept asking NPCs what they could do and checking their sheets for ideas. While it likely wasn't as bad for the players I know my frustration bleed over.
I ran a world of darkness game that was set in silent Hill and it just didn't work. Everything just went wrong.
To elaborate while I did run a session zero, only one player actually came so we didn't really get a chance to do any of the things you would do in a session zero, my first session where people actually did come, because they didn't want to come to the sessions here because they didn't want to come to a game they wouldn't be playing, they all played grizzled military types after I established in session zero and in the notes that they didn't read that they were regular individuals who were caught up in a purgatory that was an analysis of their own inner psyche. But it just didn't work because they didn't buy into that kind of game. We also had a rotating cast of characters with people not coming to sessions and new people coming in to replace them who weren't in on what had previously happened. It just didn't work.
It was meant to be a psychological and sociological drama but the requisite things that would need to happen for that just weren't there and the players were not interested.
Pretty much every game I ran in high school was generally terrible, but people kept coming back again and again, regardless.
I've run some really awful games. But I never stopped being willing to learn and change. These days I feel like a flop if my players aren't hooting and hollering the whole time.
eh Ive done some terrible things too .. I once managed to mess up original Ravenloft .. even tho Ive GMed it like ten times! and its perfectly designed so a 10 year old couldnt F it up too! *ahem* .. but somehow I managed it lol
🤣 "I'd like to personally apologize to everyone on this list." Hilarious.
This game reminds me of going to see The Phantom Menace in the theater. Way more detail than I wanted, like watching paint dry, as you said, but George HAD to bring his world to life. What a great lesson for us GMs. Thanks for sharing.
I also find it amusing that you still have it.
I like the Phantom Menace.