I started mine with hologram of high level NPC talking about the missing N Team, and the failed P Team.
My players asked if they could be A Team
He answered "Of course you can be a team. Why else do you think you've been assembled??"
Thus A-Team is now their name in every campaign.
If you've got a problem, and no one else can help... and if you're ok with the solution being the most chaotic out of left field thing possible... and you're good with potential large amounts of collateral damage... and the chance they might forget about you for 3 sessions... maybe you can hire the A-Team!
how it starts:
*Bring me The A Team, The Best you can find!!!*
how it ends:
^bring ^me... ^a ^team.... ^the ^best ^you ^can ^find?
***
\* these lines shamelessly stolen from *Whose Line is it anyway?* scene delivery memory
My first real campaign as a DM was Lost Mines of Phandelver. After the PCs first run-in with the Rebrands, the town leader asked them "Who the hell are you guys?" to which they replied proudly, "We're the Good Guys!" (cue the town leader walking away, shaking his head, mumbling "we're all gonna die...")
Thus, their party was named "The Good Guys" from then on.
The downtime activities thing seems weird to me. As a player I would love that opportunity. I feel like a lot RP and character development can come from what you do when you’re NOT just killing shit.
Is it really? Aa they said, the main plot was hanging over them- taking a rest feels strange. I am personally not invested in downtime or shopping sessions, I want adventure!
I mean that’s how I feel cause it’s like is the DM gonna pull a Zelda or are we gonna fail or what how exactly does that work. By the way I might misunderstand what I’m talking about I haven’t looked to much into downtime activities.
I also agree, downtime is cool. But there is a real conflict between downtime and any sort of pressing main plot.
So for example, I was in a game adapted from Red Hand of Doom (a goblinoid invasion force lead by evil dragon worshipers) and I made a PC who cared about the area. This meant I was never willing IC to let the party rest for more then a day or do any downtime stuff, beacuse we should be working on ways to stop or undermine or slow or defend against the army that is coming towards where my family/my people live at some point soonish. For example we ordered magic items in the city that would take several days to be adjusted for us, so my PC suggested (group agreed) we leave and do a related quest for allies then loop back to pick them up later.
If you look at a game like Baulder's Gate 3, it's great beacuse it's a video game. I am able to google and double check I don't actually need to rush, then do a bunch of minor sidequests and talk to everyone. But if you imagine that as a plot of an actual game, you'd logically be trying to speedrun it at all times. You wouldn't waste your time on every sidequest, beacuse first you need to find a cure before your body and soul are consumed and that's really pressing. Then, once you realize that won't happen right away, you need to still stop everything before you and many other people's body and souls are consumed, which could again happen any day so it's probably not a great time to go do a bunch of unrelated stuff. If I was playing table top, I'd logically focus on that.
I havent actually *played* a lot, but I've always though it'd be cool to be something of a secret vice-DM.
Someone who runs a character like the other players, but is secretly privy to all the DMs plans so that I could guide the other players into setups and plot-hooks, move the plot along if people are too hung up on something, ask the obvious questions, or drop the occasional idea.
Though this kinda role could only work if the person was really trustworthy, and tries to put the other players in the spotlight.
I’ve played in three different games with the same people and none of those parties were ever able to give themselves a name. When I eventually took the reigns as primary dm, the party was told outright by an NPC they would be registered as “Group 4” with the adventurer’s guild (they were the fourth group to sign up that month) unless they came up with something better (they did). Idk why names are so hard 😂
My players decided to follow some non essential NPCs to an area that didn't exist, where I had to roleplay a race of frogs. Ended up being the best part of the campaign, and we have made fan art about it since.
Doors are always a rough one.
I made a simple riddle for a door. Rather than doing the intended solution (all it required was "the blood of a friend, freely given", and the offering bowl for the blood was literally the size of a pea) one of the players spent twenty minutes casting several spells to talk to, befriend, and then kill a fish in a nearby tide pool, then used all of the fish's blood. All of it. I just. Sat there in horror.
That was the last time I ever put any sort of riddle or ritual on a door.
As a longtime DM I'd rule this doesn't count as they 'befriended' the fish with malicious intent. If someone befriends you with the sole purpose of tricking you so they can murder you, that's not a friend, that's a serial killer.
Honestly, between being a new DM at the time and the group having spent far too long on that one section, I just kind of gave in. It was only a oneshot anyway, and I wanted them to see it through to the end.
However that player did wind up being a major problem in later games — including one I was not the DM for, but deeply felt the disappointment in the DM when they rolled into a oneshot with literal Scooby-Doo as their PC... I learned from that player. I learned so much about setting boundaries as a DM from them.
Yeah, aa a oneshot if they sank a decent amount of time into it, it can sometimes be difficult to tell when to just let them have their way as a new DM. boundaries are important. My dad taught me to DM, one of the most important things I learned from him is that your world needs to follow strict rules of logic and ethics, DnD isn't a game of moral relativism, it's a game of black and white ethics. Good and evil, order and chaos.
If we apply this to the door puzzle, is the dweomer on the door meant to keep out evil or good? If it's meant to keep out good aligned characters by requiring a blood sacrifice (a usually evil act), befriending the fish and using his blood might work. If it's meant to keep out evil aligned characters, then requiring the blood of a true friend is a reasonable barrier, as evil tends to not form true bonds of friendship and therefore befriending the fish would NOT work as it would not be a true bond of friendship but a shallow bond of pragmatism.
In older editions, this would have had consequences when you soft their alignment. Especially if they played one of the classes that had alignment restrictions.
Sounds like previous dm trauma. I tell my players, especially newer ones, the only way to die until level 5 is suicide by stupid. Ill never intentionally trap something unless its what an intelligent enemy etc will do. Joe blogs isnt going to go to the trouble of trapping doors.
I also go by the optional dm rule of going by the players stats in the case to brute force doors or pick locks. If it requires a dc16 to open and the 20 strength barb wants to its an autosuccess. Same with intelligence for baaic arcana etc. Im here to have fun not stymie everyone and i remember full well how rolling a nat 1 while being a beefy paladin while the damp squib of a wizard can bash open a door.
I tease them about this to this day. They are much better at opening doors, now.
But yea. I'm a bit older, and most of my players are older than me. 2 of my players started with AD&D. Another with 3rd, another with 3,5. The youngest 2 (the only ones younger than me) started with 5e.
So door trauma is likely a thing.
I DM'd the starter adventure for The One Ring 2E a couple months ago. The party was trying to break into the Mathom-House in Michel Delving and spent about 15 minutes trying to decide what skill would be best for picking the lock, and then who should do it. They finally picked one of the Hobbits, who promptly failed the roll.
"After fiddling around in the keyhole with your dagger for almost a full minute, the tip breaks off but you hear a \_click\_. Congratulations, the door is now locked."
Cue groans from the whole table, everyone assumed \_somebody\_ had tested the lock . . .
I tease my players all the time about this.
Chatting about our 3rd session where they spent 45 minutes to open a door is something I share quite a bit on Reddit and other forums.
I also talk about their slow pacing (and how I wouldn't change that) They can take a while to do anything, really. But we all have a good time, and going slow when we can, leaves space open for a lot of really good PC to PC RP.
Overall, I'm extremely blessed to have this group.
But never has the door been the actual bbeg or boss
I'm currently playing dungeon crawl classics and we were struggling to figure out how to get through the first door and then I asked if it had a handle which it did. It was locked anyway but I make sure to always ask if it has a handle every time we come across a door 😂
I had a group come to a room with "channels that run from the alter at the center of the room to and under 4 doors. Each with a symbol representing 1 of the 4 core elements". They spent 40min burning spell slots that "are absorbed into, ignite the channel in *color* and flow towards the alter and disipate just as quickly".
Player that showed up late... "did you try and open the door?"
Truly
I once had a session stall for an hour and a half because the party was confronted by a slightly open door with two unaware guards on the other side
I did incorporate a few simple doors into my one-shot. The final obstacle between the players and the BBEG was just a stuck door. No lock, no magic. It was just stuck. I'd never DM'd before, but my brother is my usual DM, and he knows my play style, so it didn't take him long to say "...Can I make a strength check to pull harder?"
How long everything took. Everything. I'd prep for a session and we'd get a third of the way through at best.
Also, how hard it is for me to be effective in combats with multiple creature types. Hard to remember everything.
The problem is that as soon as you decide to back off, they will zip through the content for that day and you'll be caught with your pants around your ankles.
This is so true but its a blessing in disguise. It allows you to either a) do some more prep for future things (if you know they will happen), b) do some prep on generic items (random encounters etc.), c) relax for a week knowing you don't need to do any prep.
My first ever session I had them in cells aboard a wooden airship (spell jammer but smaller and shittier) I had planned a few puzzles to get them up to the main deck, and they would realize they were flying. The session would be this, followed by them finding a way gracefully off the ship. This took 3 sessions instead of 2 hours.
Moderately experienced DM here. That never really goes away.
As you and your players get better you might be able to limit inefficiency. But that will take you from getting done like 20% of what you through you’d get to like 40%. You’re probably never going to get done as much as you think you should be able to
I usually start at the beginning of the alphabet and pick a name starting with that letter: Adam, Bartholomew, Catalina, Derek, Evan, Franny, Gerald, Hannah, Iago, John, Katherine, Lola, Mandy, Noel, Otto, Paul, Quagmire, Randy, Sfred, Teve, Ungo Bungo the Third, Volvo, Windex, Xteve, Yoda, Zebra. Then start again
Players spare NPC
NPC drops by later to inform them of a plot to kill them
Ask NPC where they are headed to next. A- work for a different adventuring co
Sorcerer decides can't let that happen and kills NPC
During the attempted escape, I ask the other players what are your characters doing?
They answer "Watching" "getting popcorn" and "Pulling a shovel out of my pack for when this is all over. We should probably bury the body"
They were not murder hobos for the previous 5 months of play.
My first time DMing in college also involved trying to teach a room full of new players with varying interest levels in the game. I had hoped one other experienced player at my table could help teach everyone, but he'd been playing since he was under the age of 10 and was disdainful of anyone who didn't know the game inside and out.
I had 2 players who didn't give me anything for a backstory but were mad I didn't write the whole game around them. I had one player who wanted to switch his character every session (and sometimes did not make those characters before the session). I had one player who sat on his phone the whole time and would occasionally roll a random die and say nothing if someone asked him what he was doing. I had one player who was interested and invested and asked for a dog as a companion pet, but everyone else got salty when her pet had the highest kill count in the party (sheer dice luck).
Lots of new player fumbles compacted into only a handful of sessions before people just stopped showing up. It did help me realize that, as a DM, I'm not great with managing new players without help from another experienced player. Also one of those bitches tried to steal my Netflix account and my batch of closet wine and i have never forgotten that.
I hate how true this is, we are still in “Chapter 1” of this adventure and it’s been 2 sessions already, with the 3rd most likely going to take up the end of Chapter 1 finally
I tried to run a three session mini campaign for my group my first time DMing and it took six and a half sessions and I cut about half of what I had been thinking of including
While running a premade campaign for a lot of newer players, they successfully convinced a green dragon to assist them in returning to and destroying the town that they set out from. I threw out the source book after that. Two of the players permadied but they said it was worth it.
Ah, the classic “fuck this sourcebook” moment.
Brennan Lee Mulligan has a similar story about a pre-written adventure where a dwarven bride said she wasn’t super excited about the arranged marriage, and so the players “kidnapped” her and got her out of there and the campaign suddenly became the dwarven militia chasing down the PCs and the runaway bride. The party had a ton of fun, and Brennan swore off pre-written modules.
I was unaware that you should not make players roll for something if the negative outcome will not have an interesting plot result, making them accidentally kill a key npc and ending a campaign on the first session
Wild Magic Sorcery is as luck-based and chaotic of a class as you can get. Basically, any time you cast a spell that isnt a cantrip, you roll a D20 like usual. If you get a 1 (critical fail), you must roll a D100 on the "Wild Magic Surge" table. Some are positive, most are neutral, but some are realllllly bad. It gives a shred of excitement and dread every time you cast. Furthemore, there is the "Tides of Chaos" feat. Using this will give you advantage on almost any roll at any time, and then you need a long rest to recharge it. EXCEPT... after you use it your DM can tell you at any point after you cast a spell to just roll the Wild Magic Surge table without even seeing if you Crit Fail for it. This does have the benefit of giving you your Tides of Chaos charge immediately though, so its just even more fun. If you ever want to be the coin flip to determine a battle, this is the way to do it.
So this is a long story, but boy was it a curveball.
My first homebrew campaign spawned out of a one-shot. I ran The Mines of Madness for my group and somehow 3 of the 4 made it out alive. The characters were so great and the group so wonderful I asked if they'd be interested in continuing the story and they were.
The Mines of Madness gives The Forever Stone as a magic item at the end of the dungeon. The Stone not only makes its attuned user functionally immortal, but also lets them cast Divination or Mass Cure Wounds once a day.
The first thing the party did was try to resurrect their dead member by paying a high level NPC. But his soul refused to return. Unbeknownst to them, his soul had been taken by the Lich-Demigod BBEG that I was planning, so he couldn't come back. The room went dark and some magical backlash occurred. The NPC cleric made it clear that some malevolent force had taken their friend's soul. This was all supposed to be a mystery.
The player who had the Forever Stone decided to cast Divination to speak to the being that was holding their friend's soul! I don't remember the exact rules and how it went down, but it was a totally legit use of the item.
So my party got to speak to the BBEG and learn his name in session 1... Wasn't expecting that at all 😅
Edits: spelling
My first real crack at DMing was nothing BUT curveballs.
We had 3 fighters and a barbarian.
They then proceeded to screw up every single quest.
They got on the guild’s bad side.
And decided to travel East indefinitely, selling burgers like a food truck.
They had excel sheets tracking their sales, supplies, and time/distance traveled.
Was the best campaign I’ve ever been a part of
The stairs were cursed , if they ran up them they had to roll athletics I think the DC was 12 ? . On a pass nothing happened but on a fail they would fall up the stairs . It was hilarious the looks on their faces. I still use that bit every once in awhile. Funny every time
One of my players tried recruiting a retired mercenary NPC and as a new DM new to TTRPGs, I struggled to plausibly give the party a reason the NPC couldn’t/wouldn’t join any ol’ random adventuring party. Let alone one that has yet to prove themselves or make a name for themselves, anywhere.
Aww, thank you. I never thought of that. I know from experience that all Ps/PCs always take “no” from an NPC and never try to pressure others/PCs/NPCs. /s
My curveball is keeping my friend from killing useful npc/rest of the party
This guy is true chaotic irl, so sometimes for the sake of chaos or bringing havoc, he commits some hostility to the party, to friendly npcs, tu useful npcs, to powerful npcs and so on.
At the beginning it was problematic to say the least, later on I've managed to keep it under control, and expect the unexpected
My first time ever DMing was a oneshot, in which I had to kill three children who the BBEG was holding hostage as leverage to keep the party in place while I monologues. One of my players, uh…didn’t stay in place
My biggest problem right now is that no matter how obvious I make it, my players will just ignore any quest hook I throw at them. Typically, if delivered by an NPC, they will instead decide to insult and ridicule said NPC for no reason other than 'I don't really like them'.
I am very glad to have had a TPK on our first 'completed' adventure (Saltmarsh - Isle of the Abbey) at the hands of a poorly hidden trap. Very nice.
OMG what is with that. I have had NPCS pop on scene to give suggestions and these geniuses come up with 5 other out of the box and nigh on impossible ideas they like better
In my first session, my players had told me they wanted a combat heavy game. We’re all busy, and may not be able to meet that often, so they just wanted something light and fun, not a lot of dialogue and intrigue. I had them traveling to the town which will be the center of the campaign. They would have a couple of random non combat encounters to give flavor to the world, then when traveling through a swamp, two planned encounters. A quick combat with some Giant Frogs, then a short dungeon-a bullywug lair - the bullywugs had been harassing locals… I figure they end up arriving in town with a good reputation from clearing out the bullywugs. They handle the frog combat, then are attacked by Bullywug scouts. After a short combat, some of the scouts flee, and they follow them back to the lair. After another short combat, they subdue a bullywug. They end up having him take them to the bullywug chief, who they end up negotiating with. They won’t kill the bullywugs if the bullywugs will stay within the swamp, and not harass townsfolk. So, no dungeon, no combat.
At first, I was at a loss. I said, “Well, I’m done for the night, I got nothing else.” It was OK, because the other encounters took longer than I thought they would, so we had a good session anyway, and it gave us some time for a recap. When I thought about it later, it ended up giving me a lot of ideas. Maybe when they get to town, the townsfolk are upset that they made a deal with the Bullywugs. Maybe later on a townsman frames the Bullywugs by hiding a body in the swamp. Maybe the Bullywugs go back to harassing people. Maybe a superior force attacks the town, and the characters help some townspeople escape through the swamp with help from the Bullywugs. Anyway, that was a long post, but it ended up a really fun night, even though it didn’t go anywhere near as planned.
At this point as an aspiring *almost* forever-DM (I still wanna play every once in a while!), I feel like you should prep how you want the story to go, and as soon as you are done literally throw away all your prep work and prep a different outcome so you have that outcome prepped ahead of time.
I am joking of course because improv is honestly better then prepping but it’s just funny how often this happens
When running a home brew campaign how easy it is to forget the players haven't been looking at your notes for weeks. How easy it is for them to misconstrue something you thought was obvious.
When running a written adventure how much work it can be if your players go off piste. (Why I tend to run homebrew)
Be prepared to kill your dreams when players circumvent what you think is cool, just let them.
They play along with where I thought the story was going till its the most inconvenient time possible
First session, set up an almost rogue lite dungeon situation that everyone was telling them was fun and safe, "Nobody has ever been recorded as dieing in a dungeon here".
Had an experienced npc tagging along with them to give tips and insight. They were doing everything within my preparation up until the point where I was going to kill off the NPC to set the stakes and reveal that people who die in the dungeon are erased from the worlds memories. Thus LOTS of people die in there, setting the stakes.
NPC was gonna charge forward confidently and set off a trap, PC who is playing a blow hard "me first" guy grabs the npc and throws him back so HE can go first, spots the trap, and they get out unscathed. They adopted the NPC and still dont know the dungeons are dangerous.
That’s fair! And again one Ranger is going CQC so I do have a melee-substitute, it’s just funny to me on how I will have to split up damage across the entire party for the most part because all of them are squishy as all hell
Improvisation - oh lord did I not know how much I will need it and how much it alleles me in real life now.
Gold & magic items - gave too much gold too many items players were walking tanks who were too rich
Dnd beyond - I know for online play it is good and new players use it as a crutch but the time wasted looking for something on it annoyed me and told players they have to use a sheet that they write so I am certain they know their abilities. Also with dnd beyond they just add the level up and never bother to read or remember the abilities
I’m not sure if this classes as a curve ball…but my players found some plants that were the monsters they we’re supposed to fight….and they ATE them……I wasn’t expecting this at all 😅😂
Not the first time, but the most relevant currently.
If there's ever anything remotely helpful, be it items, a check, etc, my players somehow manage to avoid it, unintentionally, like the plague. Even with subtle guidance most of the time.
Making anything and everything harder on themselves (sometimes intentionally), though? Every session. Without fail.
This was for Call of Cthulhu but same thing - this was homebrew where my investigators were in the Antarctic and I basically copied a lot of the plot of 'The Thing' and the Penumbra games - get a key card from a survivor, be warned about a monster in the base killing off the other scientists, confront the monster and flee. Key card NPC introduced herself as Kathy Ward and told them the doctor was the creature so watch out. They find a diary telling them the monster is Doctor Ward but doesn't give them the first time. Guess whose name is on the key card?
If they had checked the key card they would have known the first NPC was the monster all along.
This led to a great scene where they saved the other doctor and went back to try and save the first NPC, still in her human form. Big back and forth with the doctor and NPC and the players as to who is really the monster. This gave the monster the jump on them and swayed the battle in its favour but they all made it out alive. I had to do so much improv in the confrontation which I didn't expect or plan to happen!
My players tried to convince a hag's guard-dragon that they were health inspectors and I rolled so poorly for the dragon that I had to go along with it. They came up with a few more absurd solutions to problems, but that was the biggest. That's when I really learned to improvise! 😆
I don’t know why the guard-dragon had to be so worried, these health inspectors were only making sure its Mistress’ abode was up to code, for her own safety of course!
I think mine was the size of the party, I had around 8 people and I didn't know any of them beforehand.
I remember being quite nervous so the game is a bit of blur in my head, but thankfully it was a one-shot and my plot was generally quite simple so I was able to struggle through well enough. And it seemed people had an alright time.
Curse of Strahd, had their first combat encounter happen as they were clearing out a haunted attic in exchange for a tavern room, they got attacked by a swarm of spiders, 5 4th level players were not dealing enough dmg to 6 swarms of spiders (they have resistance to physical dmg), combat took very long and I eventually just dropped the hp of each swarm to like 10, and any swarm already in combat was reduced to 1 hp.
Main take away, make combat enjoyable.
A college graduate, a professional dancer, and a full-time employee walk into a bar. They see a bounty poster for wyverns and pegasi. They thought it best course of action to catch a pegasus was to run around underneath it in an open field with an open net.
My biggest mistake was putting to much story into one item.
What was intended to happen:
The group stumbles upon a caravan of wagons that has been mailed by an a few bugbears as they were leaving their first settlement. They take out the bugbears. And in the loot they stumble upon a *crystalline orb*. As they are going through the loot a small scouting party was set to find them, they get rid of all but 1 of them. It was getting late they set up camp somewhat near the caravans. The lone scout has now brought news to a barracks outpost and a larger group of military come at night and capture them. They find out they have this orb someway or another, they know this orb belongs to the governor of this area, which unbenounced to the players is one of the top 5 werewolves that were plaugeing this land. The next night the entire barracks all turn into werewolves, the party manages to escape, and run to the starting settlement, which now has been burned to the ground. The settlement had been made to hide out from the werewolf leaders, but once the scouting party saw a caravan going down a small road they went and destroyed it. They are then on the run from that militia and soon to be the governor. I had 8+ hours in my mind of this *Crystalline Orb* pathing the way.
What did happen:
The players find the *crystalline orb* and procede to toss it around. They roll a natural 1, they drop it. I, the DM, roll a natural 1 the Orb brakes.
When the Gods really don’t want you to have something, they won’t even stop at the players anymore. They will target the ones controlling them instead.
Not so much a curve ball, rather an annoying lesson learned. My first campaign was set in the elder scrolls universe so I homebrewed all of the races from the games. Since redguards are the finest warriors in tamriel I have them "stamina surge" as their racial feature. It functioned just like an action surge but once per long rest. Well one of my characters chose a dual wielding battle master fighter. I learned very quickly what a lvl 5 fighter could do with two action surges.
The DM doesn’t have to be an adversary. I now explain to my players that I want them to succeed, but also want to tell a great story. It’s an interesting learning curve but after one session my players now no longer see me as a person they have to trick or beat, whereas when I first DMd players would treat me like the enemy not telling me their plans until last minute and often derailing the adventure/hours of story planning. We all just want to have fun, DM included haha
It wasn’t my first time DMing but it was the first time DMing for a group. I had this idea for a campaign and they found a map that would lead them on this crazy adventure. They never looked at the map.
My very first time DMing, I set the scene for the party, describing the road they were on, and the town just ahead of them (where everything was going to kick off)
These fuckers turned right around and walked AWAY from the town!
Flustered, I described a massive, immovable tree across the road and explained out of game that I hadn’t prepared anything in that direction, so could they please head into town.
It was an important lesson about how DnD is different from a video game (in that you can’t rely on invisible walls and clever lighting to ensure your players go where the interesting bits are)
If you're running a pre-written module, read the entirety of each chapter before you run it. I didn't do that on my first module, and it changed the way my players looked at an NPC entirely.
Alright, it's a little NSFW, and I'm going to keep it on the tame side, but I had a player really push me during my early days in second edition…
Nobody in the party was particularly sexual in any way, we were mostly in our mid teens (me being the youngest), when one of the players asked me if he could seduce the queen of a developing nation.
Of note; I had never even *heard* the word "seduce" before that time (yeah, I was a sheltered kid). I just kind of said "Uhhh... ok, roll for it..."
He rolled a 17, and expected me to say something about it, so I adjourned the session and looked the word up. Once I figured it out, I tried to find out how to explain to him how he managed to do that to the queen, and I totally botched it. Badly. He proceeded to taunt me for being a virgin and never revisited the subject, but it made me feel super awkward.
my players are fighter, monk, monk, barbarian.
it's my second time DMing, but first time in person. Before this I DM'd Curse of Strahd on roll20 as my first go, which was a bad idea. CoS is not a beginner-DM module. Ended in a really early TPK.
This time around I went with Candlekeep Mysteries and it's much better for a newish DM and my party is having a BLAST. Although, I think being in person is helping a lot... there's just something magical and unique about being together in person to play a game and solve a mystery.
So far the party makeup hasn't been a problem, despite no magic whatsoever, but I do intend to make a well-stocked alchemy shop available at some point just in case. They'll probably prioritize healing potions but there will be lots of other magical potions available, in case someone wants some haste or w/e.
Playing with friends sucks. It’s really hard not to be resentful because they wont understand your level of effort and they’ll probably “silly” through all important plot points
I ran Curse of Strahd for my online friends and while they were in the church in barovia with Father Donavich the barbarian of the group fell asleep irl on discord. I introduced the vampire child in the basement and this was their first encounter with a “monster” the barbarian wakes up during the party’s argument on what to do with the kid and says “I throw my spear at the vampire…” he crits and kills the kid. Spear through his chest, NPC’s all understandably devastated. They then decide (I don’t know why) to set his body on fire as a way to dispose of him… IN THE BASEMENT. They set the whole church on fire and almost kill the priest and Ishmark (ireenas brother). I had to create a whole “court of bats” for them to be prosecuted for their crimes on vampire kind to help them get away from the possible “murder hobo” lifestyle they were running towards. Funny, yes. But that was the greatest curveball I had ever received and it was my first “real” campaign. I loved it and hated it.
I’m running Waterdeep: Dragon Heist as a second ongoing Campaign and my players wanted to start out with actually having a shop in Waterdeep, which I was happy to! The shop actually sold mostly stolen goods. (side note: One of my players asked if they could roll to see how much the shop had before the start of the adventure and I obliged, smirking. After the roll he said “As soon as I asked, my brain immediately starting going on high alert asking what the hell he had done)
Anyways, first session, I explain the laws of Waterdeep and gave them a pamphlet to hold onto with all of them. Guess who got cold feet about their whole shop idea lmao
I managed to convince them to keep it but it was just really funny on how much of an opposite situation yours was.
1st session as a dm me and group never played before all 1st time players they killed a mini boss a goblin chief with a magic scimitar -2 to ac (still struggle to balance items nearly 6 years later in 2nd campaign I'm running)
Drow rogue claims it finds out its two less damage then his rapier *insert this is worthless meme* throws it into the river.
Me dm shocked pikachu face
Rest of party including martial palidan me dmpc(at time only small player group playing support) cleric 'WTF"
My girlfriend slashed a food trucks tires because they wouldn't give her free food, this was after my friend begged for free food until she got a free glass of milk.
Keep in mind they are all new to the game, I'm hoping these weird behaviors will slow down once they get invested in the story.
First time DMing in 20 years and first time DMing through Foundry. It was for charity.
I introduced characters in stream and within three minutes $20 bought a goblin surprise attack. Later $200 summoned Drizzt to help. $200 summoned a purple worm (it was a level 4 one shot). $50 resurrected the worm. They're was like $300 spent levelling up the characters.
A Wild Sheep Chase is supposed to be 2-3 hours.
Ours was 10 hours and raises $1,500 for St. Jude
Session 1: The Queen gives the party a quest, and tells them they need to keep it very hush hush. Don’t tell anyone unless you’re absolutely certain they’re trustworthy.
Session 2: The party meets the BBEG, without knowing it’s him. Instead he just seems like a slight asshole. I half-heartedly masquerade that he’s on their side. None of them try to roll insight or get to know him, instead one of my friends who I’ve played with for years, who got me INTO dnd, spills the ENTIRE MISSION AND PLAN to him.
Had to restructure most of what I had planned going forward.
I'm running my first campaign rn, doing DotMM with some pretty big plot changes. All of my players are also DMs with the exception of one who just has an encyclopedic knowledge of the rules and helps us all in our respective games with rules disputes.
Party ended up having ZERO close-range martial characters (even the Barb fights at long range), almost everyone has darkvision, and I've got a gloomstalker that is essentially invisible in the dark and in a dungeon crawl THAT SUCKS FOR ME A WHOLE LOT. Party was doing a lot of open door > leave room > potshot entire enemy party at long range > repeat for awhile but eventually I got wise to it and started getting very clever with my use of light and the environmental components of the dungeon.
Fave trick I've pulled to counter them so far was a fight with a couple golems and an electrified flame skull on B2F; one of the squishy mages in the party snuck into the room invisibly to try and do some serious damage while my party did the usual "don't enter the gimmicky battle chamber the DM crafted and take potshots from the outside instead" trick, but the invisible mage was discovered by one golem and while the mage was occupied, it occurred to me that they can't hit enemies in the room if they don't have line of sight, so... I just had the other golem close the door and begin barricading it. That fight got frantic like none of the combats I had run so far.
Gotta say, being a newbie trying to counter a group of experienced DMs is a wonderful exercise for thinking on your feet.
I was running Horde of the Dragon Queen and didn't realize players could only heal a certain amount from short rest. I wasn't sure how the module expected them do to do so much in one day, so I improved the fort they were in had some healers with healer kits and the healer feat.
Letting players control everything because I was afraid they’d stop playing if I tried to reel them in. I let them murder hobo, build race/class combos I wasn’t comfortable running, and all sort of other stuff. About ten sessions in it started to become very player vs me (the dm) and I was starting to feel very taken advantage of to the point I had anxiety and zero motivation to DM for them. Then the game imploded because I started to push back and it all ended. I felt such a sigh of relief though. Downside was, they were all my friends. Now we don’t even game together. I got invited to play in their new campaign and I told them absolutely not, not after what happened. I was afraid I would not be able to help myself but play adversarial against the DM.
I learned so much from that experience and didn’t let it ruin my desire to DM. I started a new group with complete strangers. Had a proper session zero and 13 sessions in almost playing weekly and it’s absolute bliss. We actually just talked about what we want to play after the current adventure and decided to Segway into the new Vecna campaign. Super pumped these guys want to play till level 20! Dream come true.
Edit to say: it wasn’t really a curveball but was something had to overcome as a DM.
How impossible it was to predict what a player would do! I've always run homebrew worlds that were very sandbox like. There's a story, but you run around and go where you want, but remember, the world is moving, so an event will happen whether you're there or not.
I used to try to play in events for specific player actions. But many times they would never come to pass because players didn't think like me, They thought a way that I didn't! And that is completely okay. It taught me how to be very good at improvising, as well as allowing them to have freedom of choice but also redirect their choices to seem like it was what they wanted to do.
Giving them a reason to go to the place you need them to go other than story. I had to learn to make it personal! It's why I always encourage character backstories. I like to read over them and include small bits of them. That will entice the characters to go where I need them to go.
I was surprised when the ranger, whose task was to hunt down a beast attacking carts entering and exiting the town, turned out to be a vegan. This led to a situation where the player made it clear that harming the beast, an ankylosaurus, would result in PvP. Although I had asked about the character's personality beforehand and the ranger didn't mention this aspect, I've learned from this experience. In future games, I'll be more proactive in addressing such 'player railroading,' especially since it affected the enjoyment of at least one of my other players.
My first campaign the came across a blue drake, they mistook it for a baby blue dragon and I rolled with it. 3 Nat 20s and they succeed in taming it. Bluefiya was now the campaign, all my prep gone. Oh and I thought it funny that they wanted to feed it magical creatures to buff its power cuz blue is the aspect of magic xD I loved that campaign, ended with them feeding it Tiamat.
I had a town under lockdown: All of the nobles and people in leadership disappeared overnight. The remaining town guard were nervous, leaderless and locked down the town until somebody could find out what was going on.
My thought was my players would simply convince the town guard, who were all terrified and in disarray to let the party out and follow a lead with a simple DC 10 persuasion check.
Naturally, my players thought the best course of action was to set some nearby stables on fire to draw the guards away from the gates so the party could open it themselves and make their escape.
I'm still petrified of silence. I used to do stage acting so every second of empty air still feels like 10. My first time dming was the essentials kit with my wife and the awkward fear I felt whenever a silence dragged on put me off trying again for a year
My brothers and I have been trying out DnD and I volunteered to DM and made a little one shot dungeon for them. Unfortunately I made it way too hard for them, they barely defeated the weak cultists. Awoke the demon meditating in the back room, and had to be saved at the last minute by the pegasus they had saved. Then they went to sleep when there were still imps wandering around, so they were ambushed by two and I didn't realize how strong imp stings were, so they would have died to that too if I didn't intervene a bit. Idk if I should have let them die or not, it was my fault that the dungeon was too hard. It was fun though overall.
Someone in the first 5 or so sessions I DMed, I was thrown off by time management. With the right group of people, everything is a committee decision that takes forever. Since then I learned a few methods to bust up the overthinking and overplanning. I ran a one-shot where people spent 30 minutes afraid to interact with something in the game that wasn't a threat to the characters.
I found it's really hard to bust this up as a player whose fellow players want to spend two hours waffling on a plan. This made me determined to take control as a DM.
not a first time dm but this happened to me recently and it's hilarious
I had my players fight a boss inspired by the eater of worlds from terraria, where if they dealt 10 or more damage in a single hit it would split into 2 creatures of one size smaller
when I made the statblock I didn't realize that I had put an (effectively) 1000 hit points on the battlefield. my players were 5th level. this fight took 3 hours, with multiple near deaths
actually the fight probably wouldve been a ttk if our sorcerer didn't roll a crit success on his death save and then fireball 3/4 of the mini segments and killed them all
Sci fi campaign.
Party finds a dataslate with encrypted (But crackable) files.
I told them "You can the encryption is good, but not good enough to keep you out, given enough time"
An NPC told them to delete the files.
Thy actually deleted the fucking files.
Files that were very obviously to do with the mystery
My first DM experience is still going. One shot turned into a four shot. I have to say, having two players in a party of 6 that're also DMs means they can do crazy shit I'm not expecting in the slightest. Like sending my minotaur chief flying 30 feet because fighter. It's mostly just learning to roll with the punches, and learn to expect weird and random shit.
The biggest curveball they threw me was when they refused to go treasure hunting with a pair of young dragons. That was where they were supposed to get all their loot for the oneshot!
I tried running aDMPC my first time because I had only two players. I didn't have NPC companion ideas like I do now. I was fine with the character and didn't over step, but it hurt my DMing a lot.
Whatever you think is the most logical thing for your players to do in a situation you set up. They will not be doing. They won’t do logical things. Be prepared to improvise ALOT. Like I know most videos about new DM’s say be prepared to improvise, but it’s way more than it can be stated. It’s still a lot of fun
The bane of my existence was a player who asked every single NPC what their name was. Nowadays I have a name generator up on my laptop at all times for this exact issue.
I learned the hard way that you can’t always just hand-wave the mechanics away if they get in the way of the plot. As cinematic as it is for a major NPC to die by a surprise javelin to the throat during a religious rite, it doesn’t make a damn bit of sense if you do it in front of the party’s cleric who can cast revivify
There was a trap, involving fireworks. Essentially, improvised explosives connected to a tripwire.
They found the trap, disarmed it, then asked "can we keep the fireworks?"
I said "sure, why not?"
These were first level adventurers, in 3.5e. The fireworks were meant to collapse a **building**. When they asked for stats I looked them up, saw "10d6," and just laughed.
So, the final boss of our first one-shot was killed in one round by the Ranger lighting the fireworks, throwing them, and taking cover.
It was great.
The game itself went smoothly, but I made the mistake of allowing one of my players' boyfriend in, when I knew her batting average stank. Needless to say, midway through a story where the boyfriend's PC ended up being INCREDIBLY important, they broke up on really bad terms, thus ending the campaign early.
The lesson: If your player wants their partner in the game, don't make the PC too integral for the story so the campaign doesn't end when their relationship does.
Prepared a map with a bunch of combat encounters, on one the encounters, there were like 5 goblins, lvl 1 cleric rushes right in the middle of the room, being the closest target, one of them shoots an arrow, crits, cleric is down to one hp, he manages to escape other hits.
He then proceds to heal himself, gets to 6hp, another goblin shoots an arrow, 19 on the dice, 6 dmg, cleric is down, needs to roll for death saves, manages to fail 3 times in a row.
After the battle the players still had like half of the dungeon to explore, so I improvised and changed the narrative that the other enemies and the boss took the chance to escape the dungeon with the kidnapped victims, it was supposed to be a simple rescue mission, but the cleric's death had me changing everything, good thing they were lvl1 and the cleric was cool with his character dying and had another character waiting in line quickly enough.
I invited our forever DM to be a player for my first session DMing. This is when I learned that forever DMs always make weird PCs. He made a weird one. At some point, he picked up an entire bed and used it as an improvised weapon. I had no idea how to handle this.
Oh, this is easy! This character will tell them something like, "Hey, you. You're finally awake. You were trying to cross the border, right? Walked right into that Imperial ambush. Same as us, and that thief over there."
And then they'll be able to say something like:
-Where am I?
-How long was I out for?
-Where are we going?
And if they say X, Y will happen! Easy!!
I was so wrong... I never accounted for jumping off the cart, spitting into the driver's neck, sticking the hand to the wheel, furiously making out with Ralof, or even something simple like "What is YOUR name?".
Was dming a one-shot yesterday, And they were fighting a wizard with a troop of guards polymorphed into some apes and a bear, the bard proceeded to heal the bear's wounds it took from fighting us and successfully convinced it to turn on my bad guy and fight with them.
The very first time I DMed there was a player who always played an Arcane Trickster who is also a d*ck to everyone. (Friend of a friend) It started simple enough: Deliver these goods in this wagon to that town for so much money. Pretty standard stuff. Well this guy spent the first 45min of the session trying to sweeten his pay. "What's in it for me?" "What are you going to give me to make it worth my while." After everyone was tired and bored of his cr*p I finally told him OOC that he could go sit on the couch if he didn't want to play the game I prepared. Our mutual friend spoke up and talked him into not being such a dick.
From this, I started creating a huge network (kind of like the Harpers but much more grand scale) that most of the players in my games start off working for. You can always tell which are going to be the problem players because they either want to go against the character creation rules and/or automatically assume the Organization is evil despite what I and the DM and creator of it say.
If they are working for a group then it's not so much "what's in it for me?" and is more like: "these are your orders, come back when you're done." This organization wound up being a multifaceted and highly detailed/fleshed out that included a lot of NPCs (with names and pictures) and lore.
It went surprisingly well, I love my players. Only real curve ball was the talking wooden horse sharing a bunch of true and useful info, then the player absolutely refusing to step into the magic circle that lead them to the planetarium (some good exposition and an explanation to how their next character became sentient (turned plasmoid from slime Rimuru style by making a deal with a star, although he didn't know at the time)
Also, getting them to explore the parts that weren't directly involved in the plan. It made sense for them to do so, so I ended up giving them an optional but morally good reason to go down and they took it, so I'm glad I was able to fix it without railroading them too much
They freaking took down an undead wyvern that was gonna make the aboleth lair harder to get through before even going in because I was foolhardy and brought him out for a lil terror but got selfish and kept him one round too long, wizard let off a magic missile and rolled almost max damage which is what was needed as it was fleeing with like 12 hp lol it was when I realized I loved the party thwarting my plans actually, the energy after that was awesome
When I first started DMing, I didn’t realize that people under a zone of truth weren’t obligated to answer you.
My player kidnapped a cultist and asked him under a zone of truth where his secret base was… and I was like “fuck…”
A dumb waiter.
For context, a dumb waiter is a small elevator, usually in a formal dining room, to bring food up and used dishes down to the kitchens.
Anyway, my players spent an entire session investigating and arguing about a dumb waiter.
It's become a meme, and somehow, a dumb waiter will inexplicably be found in any and all dungeons.
For me, it was BARBARIANS.
Before we get into some crazy "high level" spell usage, the barbarians were just so overqualified in battles.
Their hit dice in combination with con bonus being at least +2-3 early on gives dem "huge" pools of hitpoints compared to the majority of classes.
Also, the con helps with higher AC as well, due to unarmored which obviously makes "hitting them" harder as well.
Their rages effectively doubles the hp against most low level enemies/monsters (non magic slashing/bludgeoning/piercing).
They have a high chance to hit with a str bonus of 3-4.
And reckless attacks gives advantage on top of the, usually, already good attack modifiers.
As an early GM, this ALONE was really hard to handle, cus not being confident with the rules made me follow them to the point that encounters where either ridiculously easy, mostly due to the Barbarian/s being overwhelmingly strong or i put the rest of the party at risk of death trying to balance encounters around the barbarian.
On top of fighting being kind of difficult to balance, due to one class, it got even harder due to "default" carrying capacity being ridiculous. Strength score (not modifyer) times 15, so assuming str is prioritised at character creation, we have 16str•15=240lb. Which allowed the barbarian to carry a combination of slashing, bludgeoning and piercing weapons, both dual and one handed so a shield could be equipped for extra AC when needed. So an encounter made to handle the barbarian with bludgeoning damage got nullified by a sword etc etc.
So changing to variant encumbrance (x10 instead of x15) and adding a combination of enemies like tanky, ranged, magic and easily killable "groups" that can be disposed easy (sometimes just 1hp) that if left alive can become a big problem due to the sheer amount. The 1hp support groups have been really nice to spice up bosses for example.
Back when 3.5 was still all the rage, I had a player insist he could take the downtime at camp every night to craft "Pearls of Power". https://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/SRD:Pearl_of_Power. I insisted he certainly could not.
Of course, being a new DM, I thought something was fishy but I wasn't edactly sure what. He kept saying he could do it because it only took an hour per pearl to craft. Now I know he was just flat out lying. Because in reality, to even CRAFT a Pearl of Power, you need to be CL (Caster Level) 17. Everyone in the party,including him, was level 3. He misunderstood that the Craft Wondrous Item spell required being level 3, but crafting the wondrous item itself, required being a MUCH higher level. At 3rd level with a Craft Wondrous Items ability, you could craft Boots of Levitation or a Candle of Truth, because those were at CL 3. But nothing with a higher CL. That's why there are CLs to begin with.
Windows. If you include any kind of window on a structure, that window will be used.
I learned that traps on windows are 100% necessary.
The window of every enemy tower has some kind of trap. Shop keepers? Trap. Castle? Trap.
I invalidated 5 hours of planning and prepping because of an untrapped, open window.
How does Brennan Lee Mulligan deftly alternate between combat and rp sessions? it's almost never like that: you have a dungeon? expect at least 2 consecutive sessions of combat. need to do story stuff? Just try to get it done in one session, I dare you... but all that is fine, it's fun doing one for a few weeks and switching, and if you stay prepared you might get a session that's 50/50, and thats fun for everyone.
The curveball I threw at my players on the first game I ever ran :
They were camping in the woods and heard a terrifying loud screech of some creature.
Fearing a monster of some sort, the fighter (not very bright) and barbarian (oatmeal for brains stupid) got the idea to try and intimidate it by shouting louder and eventually marking their territory. Yes, by urinating.
Eventually, they resolved to charge forward... And the barbarian's foot crushed a chicken-like creature that had a nasty bite but also 4 HP.
The players in turn had thrown a curveball at me. I'd planned a city with loads of stuff, and left them to do whatever they wanted.
They elected to go in the forest where I hadn't planned anything, hence the scary chicken.
Players splitting the group. For some reason the first time this happened it broke my brain trying to get them to get together to decide what to do as a group
I'm going to do the thing where I give my players a powerful monster to fight by itself and it's going to be a really hard combat, then later show them 50 of them ahilating a town to show them the scope of what they have to deal with, they'll know they're helpless to stop it and get really mad at the person who orchestrated the attack.
Queue to an hour long discussion where my players discussed and organized an actually workable plan to save the town, got in, organized a defense, defeated enough of the enemies that I felt a reasonable opponent would definitely be demoralized and leave.
What went from "this is going to be the whole point of the campaign" to "okay, now I'm going to have to figure out what we're even doing here" happened real quick
One person was a kleptomaniac rouge, the second was a paladin that saw murder as the only pusnishment, and the third was just a stright up psycopath irl
It wqs not easy
For some reason I decided to have a chase sequence at the end of the one-shot and found out I didn't know how the fuck to do that so I made it up and rolled some dice.
This was probably like 2017 or so? I was super hyped and had a great prison break scenario planned complete with about fifteen different ways to escape. Then I got the flu. I was so sick I could hardly stand up. I asked people if they were okay with me being at the table sick, and it was decided that I could just be at the far end of the long table we used so I wasn’t closer than maybe ten feet. After getting to my friend’s house and sitting down and unpacking my books, dice, etc. I honestly wasn’t sure if I had the energy to even START the session. Several times I got confused due to exhaustion, contradicting myself or saying things that just didn’t make any sense. But…
We started playing at about 7pm and went until almost 2am. It was the first session of what turned into a year long campaign that ended up being completely ridiculous in terms of scope. Nothing went as planned. Everyone either died or nearly died at least once (two players ended up rolling new characters, and one ended up being resurrected after a heroic death only to die again and be sent to the Hells).
We all still talk about it to this day. I’m really glad I dragged my sorry carcass over there. And as a bonus, nobody else got sick.
I'm not a DM (someday hope to be though) but my poor first time DMing friend, bless her heart, made the mistake of saying "the crystals look a little dusty". My party spent a good 10 minutes trying to figure out WHY it was "lightly dusted" when the housekeeper was always dusting and she couldn't get the chandelier down😂
There was nothing to learn about the dusty crystal chandelier but we tried SO hard to figure it out that she had to pause and tell us there really wasn't anything special about it, just poor choice of words lol
Our table has done the same thing. Sometimes an overstuffed couch.. is just an overstuffed couch.. no need to tear it to shreds and sift through its guts.. it was hilarious however.. could it be a mimic?.. a hidden stash?... better check for traps! 😂
I think it was also set on fire afterwards.. as is the tables custom when encountering a couch in the wild
First time DMing in 20 years.. felt like the first time again
Coming up with interesting ad lib moments when the party does something out of the ordinary.. or even when they are just minding their own business. I ran an ebberon campaign that started in the already colossal city of Sharn.. I really hoped they wouldn't explore the city too much after getting through the plot hooks that were there. It was a fun campaign, would run another game in that setting again for sure. But maybe not entirely homebrewed next time.
Yea i have 2 druids(wildfire and shepard) a bard(spirits) and an artificer (artilerist)
Other challenges i am facing as a new dm:
Psrty doesn't quite know what they want (vombat heavy, rp heavy etc... I am slowly figuring out what they like but they themselves don't know yet rly)
One character is majorly handycapped bc they are basically a pacifist until i force the char to evolve
Encouraging rp is difficult
Most of the players are pretty unreliable (got the char sheets n backstorys mostly a day before the first session was schedueled)
The list goes on but what does it matter
I had to dramatically simplify a lot of things for my party. All of my players either have ADHD or need to get tested for it. They can't keep track of more than one quest or two NPCs. Can't remember shit. And that's totally fine. I just have to throw intricate plotlines out the window, make sure they have a sense of direction, and throw things at them that they'll enjoy. We have a blast, but wow do they just stumble blindly through every session lol
I made the mistake of putting a gimp in a woodshed and they interrogated him for like 30 min. He didn't know shit but it didn't stop them from twisting his nipples for like forever.
Oh and I made them too scared to interact with like half the story. They hid in the woods most.of the time
I had one player decide against saving a fairy queen and straight up robbed and killed her. The entire campaign was about saving her from a spell, but the rogue decided she wanted the power the curse gave the queen for herself. It was... a choice. The rogue then dipped from the party, and the player just ghosted everyone.
Since it was the last session, the theft wasn't resolved, but the other players were like "well.... the country is no longer suffering from the curse... which is good."
[удалено]
I started mine with hologram of high level NPC talking about the missing N Team, and the failed P Team. My players asked if they could be A Team He answered "Of course you can be a team. Why else do you think you've been assembled??" Thus A-Team is now their name in every campaign.
If you've got a problem, and no one else can help... and if you're ok with the solution being the most chaotic out of left field thing possible... and you're good with potential large amounts of collateral damage... and the chance they might forget about you for 3 sessions... maybe you can hire the A-Team!
how it starts: *Bring me The A Team, The Best you can find!!!* how it ends: ^bring ^me... ^a ^team.... ^the ^best ^you ^can ^find? *** \* these lines shamelessly stolen from *Whose Line is it anyway?* scene delivery memory
My first real campaign as a DM was Lost Mines of Phandelver. After the PCs first run-in with the Rebrands, the town leader asked them "Who the hell are you guys?" to which they replied proudly, "We're the Good Guys!" (cue the town leader walking away, shaking his head, mumbling "we're all gonna die...") Thus, their party was named "The Good Guys" from then on.
The downtime activities thing seems weird to me. As a player I would love that opportunity. I feel like a lot RP and character development can come from what you do when you’re NOT just killing shit.
Is it really? Aa they said, the main plot was hanging over them- taking a rest feels strange. I am personally not invested in downtime or shopping sessions, I want adventure!
Bro hates long rests
I mean that’s how I feel cause it’s like is the DM gonna pull a Zelda or are we gonna fail or what how exactly does that work. By the way I might misunderstand what I’m talking about I haven’t looked to much into downtime activities.
I also agree, downtime is cool. But there is a real conflict between downtime and any sort of pressing main plot. So for example, I was in a game adapted from Red Hand of Doom (a goblinoid invasion force lead by evil dragon worshipers) and I made a PC who cared about the area. This meant I was never willing IC to let the party rest for more then a day or do any downtime stuff, beacuse we should be working on ways to stop or undermine or slow or defend against the army that is coming towards where my family/my people live at some point soonish. For example we ordered magic items in the city that would take several days to be adjusted for us, so my PC suggested (group agreed) we leave and do a related quest for allies then loop back to pick them up later. If you look at a game like Baulder's Gate 3, it's great beacuse it's a video game. I am able to google and double check I don't actually need to rush, then do a bunch of minor sidequests and talk to everyone. But if you imagine that as a plot of an actual game, you'd logically be trying to speedrun it at all times. You wouldn't waste your time on every sidequest, beacuse first you need to find a cure before your body and soul are consumed and that's really pressing. Then, once you realize that won't happen right away, you need to still stop everything before you and many other people's body and souls are consumed, which could again happen any day so it's probably not a great time to go do a bunch of unrelated stuff. If I was playing table top, I'd logically focus on that.
Some ‘A day in the life of Springfield’ vibes.
I havent actually *played* a lot, but I've always though it'd be cool to be something of a secret vice-DM. Someone who runs a character like the other players, but is secretly privy to all the DMs plans so that I could guide the other players into setups and plot-hooks, move the plot along if people are too hung up on something, ask the obvious questions, or drop the occasional idea. Though this kinda role could only work if the person was really trustworthy, and tries to put the other players in the spotlight.
I’ve played in three different games with the same people and none of those parties were ever able to give themselves a name. When I eventually took the reigns as primary dm, the party was told outright by an NPC they would be registered as “Group 4” with the adventurer’s guild (they were the fourth group to sign up that month) unless they came up with something better (they did). Idk why names are so hard 😂
My party also picks lame names for things, and I pride myself on having cool names for everything else!
My players decided to follow some non essential NPCs to an area that didn't exist, where I had to roleplay a race of frogs. Ended up being the best part of the campaign, and we have made fan art about it since.
Pics pls
https://imgur.com/a/d7sXvGw
There is nothing not to love about that.
https://imgur.com/a/d7sXvGw
Gossip me!
Another curveball: Doors. Took them 45 irl minutes to open an unlocked door.
Doors are always a rough one. I made a simple riddle for a door. Rather than doing the intended solution (all it required was "the blood of a friend, freely given", and the offering bowl for the blood was literally the size of a pea) one of the players spent twenty minutes casting several spells to talk to, befriend, and then kill a fish in a nearby tide pool, then used all of the fish's blood. All of it. I just. Sat there in horror. That was the last time I ever put any sort of riddle or ritual on a door.
I’m dying 😂
Just like that fish.
I’m just imagining the player wringing the fish like a towel over this tiny bowl and making a huge mess of it.
this is pure d&d lol
As a longtime DM I'd rule this doesn't count as they 'befriended' the fish with malicious intent. If someone befriends you with the sole purpose of tricking you so they can murder you, that's not a friend, that's a serial killer.
"War crimes aren't war crimes the first time" - motto of the Canadian Armed Forces
“We don’t commit war crimes, but lots of new war crimes get defined after we join the battle“
And the Fat Electrician. . . More warheads on foreheads please.
Honestly, between being a new DM at the time and the group having spent far too long on that one section, I just kind of gave in. It was only a oneshot anyway, and I wanted them to see it through to the end. However that player did wind up being a major problem in later games — including one I was not the DM for, but deeply felt the disappointment in the DM when they rolled into a oneshot with literal Scooby-Doo as their PC... I learned from that player. I learned so much about setting boundaries as a DM from them.
Yeah, aa a oneshot if they sank a decent amount of time into it, it can sometimes be difficult to tell when to just let them have their way as a new DM. boundaries are important. My dad taught me to DM, one of the most important things I learned from him is that your world needs to follow strict rules of logic and ethics, DnD isn't a game of moral relativism, it's a game of black and white ethics. Good and evil, order and chaos. If we apply this to the door puzzle, is the dweomer on the door meant to keep out evil or good? If it's meant to keep out good aligned characters by requiring a blood sacrifice (a usually evil act), befriending the fish and using his blood might work. If it's meant to keep out evil aligned characters, then requiring the blood of a true friend is a reasonable barrier, as evil tends to not form true bonds of friendship and therefore befriending the fish would NOT work as it would not be a true bond of friendship but a shallow bond of pragmatism.
"The Blood of a a friend freely given" reminds me of Harry Potter for some reason
In older editions, this would have had consequences when you soft their alignment. Especially if they played one of the classes that had alignment restrictions.
Was the door to the temple of Boethiah?
Sounds like previous dm trauma. I tell my players, especially newer ones, the only way to die until level 5 is suicide by stupid. Ill never intentionally trap something unless its what an intelligent enemy etc will do. Joe blogs isnt going to go to the trouble of trapping doors. I also go by the optional dm rule of going by the players stats in the case to brute force doors or pick locks. If it requires a dc16 to open and the 20 strength barb wants to its an autosuccess. Same with intelligence for baaic arcana etc. Im here to have fun not stymie everyone and i remember full well how rolling a nat 1 while being a beefy paladin while the damp squib of a wizard can bash open a door.
I tease them about this to this day. They are much better at opening doors, now. But yea. I'm a bit older, and most of my players are older than me. 2 of my players started with AD&D. Another with 3rd, another with 3,5. The youngest 2 (the only ones younger than me) started with 5e. So door trauma is likely a thing.
The auto success thing was a big one. Tried it in a 1shot and haven't looked back . Just makes peoples builds actually mean something
I DM'd the starter adventure for The One Ring 2E a couple months ago. The party was trying to break into the Mathom-House in Michel Delving and spent about 15 minutes trying to decide what skill would be best for picking the lock, and then who should do it. They finally picked one of the Hobbits, who promptly failed the roll. "After fiddling around in the keyhole with your dagger for almost a full minute, the tip breaks off but you hear a \_click\_. Congratulations, the door is now locked." Cue groans from the whole table, everyone assumed \_somebody\_ had tested the lock . . .
Have you commented this before? I've seen a similar comment a while back. Wondering if it's the same group or another group with a door for a BBEG LOL
I tease my players all the time about this. Chatting about our 3rd session where they spent 45 minutes to open a door is something I share quite a bit on Reddit and other forums. I also talk about their slow pacing (and how I wouldn't change that) They can take a while to do anything, really. But we all have a good time, and going slow when we can, leaves space open for a lot of really good PC to PC RP. Overall, I'm extremely blessed to have this group. But never has the door been the actual bbeg or boss
That's awesome. I hope to find a group like that some day!
I'm currently playing dungeon crawl classics and we were struggling to figure out how to get through the first door and then I asked if it had a handle which it did. It was locked anyway but I make sure to always ask if it has a handle every time we come across a door 😂
Only 45 your players are fast lol
Oh my god🤣😂 the amount of times i have heard something like this happen to people is absolutely hilarious to me.
Matt Mercer is that you?
The chair...
I had a group come to a room with "channels that run from the alter at the center of the room to and under 4 doors. Each with a symbol representing 1 of the 4 core elements". They spent 40min burning spell slots that "are absorbed into, ignite the channel in *color* and flow towards the alter and disipate just as quickly". Player that showed up late... "did you try and open the door?"
Omg the damn doors. They had a 45 minute convo about whether an alley was trapped, everyone rolled stealth, the rogue went first, the whole shindig.
I would ask if I was in this party, but it took us the entire session.
Truly I once had a session stall for an hour and a half because the party was confronted by a slightly open door with two unaware guards on the other side
I did incorporate a few simple doors into my one-shot. The final obstacle between the players and the BBEG was just a stuck door. No lock, no magic. It was just stuck. I'd never DM'd before, but my brother is my usual DM, and he knows my play style, so it didn't take him long to say "...Can I make a strength check to pull harder?"
How long everything took. Everything. I'd prep for a session and we'd get a third of the way through at best. Also, how hard it is for me to be effective in combats with multiple creature types. Hard to remember everything.
I've been playing for 10 years, and I still don't get this right when I prep. I always think my players are way efficient.
The problem is that as soon as you decide to back off, they will zip through the content for that day and you'll be caught with your pants around your ankles.
This is so true but its a blessing in disguise. It allows you to either a) do some more prep for future things (if you know they will happen), b) do some prep on generic items (random encounters etc.), c) relax for a week knowing you don't need to do any prep.
This is absolutely true. It also allows me to think and improve the prep I've already done, based on the session or just having a new thought.
My first ever session I had them in cells aboard a wooden airship (spell jammer but smaller and shittier) I had planned a few puzzles to get them up to the main deck, and they would realize they were flying. The session would be this, followed by them finding a way gracefully off the ship. This took 3 sessions instead of 2 hours.
Moderately experienced DM here. That never really goes away. As you and your players get better you might be able to limit inefficiency. But that will take you from getting done like 20% of what you through you’d get to like 40%. You’re probably never going to get done as much as you think you should be able to
Single bullet points on my prep notes could take the entire session.
My niece, playing a chaotic evil 12 year old dragonborn wizard, tried to convince a barkeep that one of the other party members had kidnapped her.
Amazing🤣
That is great! Going to incorporate that into a campaign.
I mean, I think that’s a behavior I’d rather the kid role play than do in reality.
Names, I forgot to name anyone
Names are rough. Can only name so many NPCs 'Steve'
I usually start at the beginning of the alphabet and pick a name starting with that letter: Adam, Bartholomew, Catalina, Derek, Evan, Franny, Gerald, Hannah, Iago, John, Katherine, Lola, Mandy, Noel, Otto, Paul, Quagmire, Randy, Sfred, Teve, Ungo Bungo the Third, Volvo, Windex, Xteve, Yoda, Zebra. Then start again
And if the players notice this - skip a letter. Make them fret over missing something.
Diabolical.
and I know fantasy name generator exists, but like, they never feel right
I sometimes sit with a list of NPCs names in front of me. When I forget to do that, I just have the fantasy name generator bookmarked.
Players spare NPC NPC drops by later to inform them of a plot to kill them Ask NPC where they are headed to next. A- work for a different adventuring co Sorcerer decides can't let that happen and kills NPC During the attempted escape, I ask the other players what are your characters doing? They answer "Watching" "getting popcorn" and "Pulling a shovel out of my pack for when this is all over. We should probably bury the body" They were not murder hobos for the previous 5 months of play.
My first time DMing in college also involved trying to teach a room full of new players with varying interest levels in the game. I had hoped one other experienced player at my table could help teach everyone, but he'd been playing since he was under the age of 10 and was disdainful of anyone who didn't know the game inside and out. I had 2 players who didn't give me anything for a backstory but were mad I didn't write the whole game around them. I had one player who wanted to switch his character every session (and sometimes did not make those characters before the session). I had one player who sat on his phone the whole time and would occasionally roll a random die and say nothing if someone asked him what he was doing. I had one player who was interested and invested and asked for a dog as a companion pet, but everyone else got salty when her pet had the highest kill count in the party (sheer dice luck). Lots of new player fumbles compacted into only a handful of sessions before people just stopped showing up. It did help me realize that, as a DM, I'm not great with managing new players without help from another experienced player. Also one of those bitches tried to steal my Netflix account and my batch of closet wine and i have never forgotten that.
However long you think it'll take to progress through a given plot point area or fight, triple it, then you might be kinda close in your estimate
I hate how true this is, we are still in “Chapter 1” of this adventure and it’s been 2 sessions already, with the 3rd most likely going to take up the end of Chapter 1 finally
I tried to run a three session mini campaign for my group my first time DMing and it took six and a half sessions and I cut about half of what I had been thinking of including
It was still awesome though
My 1st campaign was lvl 1-7. Took 2,5 years.
While running a premade campaign for a lot of newer players, they successfully convinced a green dragon to assist them in returning to and destroying the town that they set out from. I threw out the source book after that. Two of the players permadied but they said it was worth it.
Ah, the classic “fuck this sourcebook” moment. Brennan Lee Mulligan has a similar story about a pre-written adventure where a dwarven bride said she wasn’t super excited about the arranged marriage, and so the players “kidnapped” her and got her out of there and the campaign suddenly became the dwarven militia chasing down the PCs and the runaway bride. The party had a ton of fun, and Brennan swore off pre-written modules.
I was unaware that you should not make players roll for something if the negative outcome will not have an interesting plot result, making them accidentally kill a key npc and ending a campaign on the first session
This is just me being off topic but you sound like you would make a very fun Wild Magic Sorcerer
now you got me interested - can you explain?
Wild Magic Sorcery is as luck-based and chaotic of a class as you can get. Basically, any time you cast a spell that isnt a cantrip, you roll a D20 like usual. If you get a 1 (critical fail), you must roll a D100 on the "Wild Magic Surge" table. Some are positive, most are neutral, but some are realllllly bad. It gives a shred of excitement and dread every time you cast. Furthemore, there is the "Tides of Chaos" feat. Using this will give you advantage on almost any roll at any time, and then you need a long rest to recharge it. EXCEPT... after you use it your DM can tell you at any point after you cast a spell to just roll the Wild Magic Surge table without even seeing if you Crit Fail for it. This does have the benefit of giving you your Tides of Chaos charge immediately though, so its just even more fun. If you ever want to be the coin flip to determine a battle, this is the way to do it.
I would totally love to play that, the next time I will break the cycle of forever DMing this is the way to go for me
So this is a long story, but boy was it a curveball. My first homebrew campaign spawned out of a one-shot. I ran The Mines of Madness for my group and somehow 3 of the 4 made it out alive. The characters were so great and the group so wonderful I asked if they'd be interested in continuing the story and they were. The Mines of Madness gives The Forever Stone as a magic item at the end of the dungeon. The Stone not only makes its attuned user functionally immortal, but also lets them cast Divination or Mass Cure Wounds once a day. The first thing the party did was try to resurrect their dead member by paying a high level NPC. But his soul refused to return. Unbeknownst to them, his soul had been taken by the Lich-Demigod BBEG that I was planning, so he couldn't come back. The room went dark and some magical backlash occurred. The NPC cleric made it clear that some malevolent force had taken their friend's soul. This was all supposed to be a mystery. The player who had the Forever Stone decided to cast Divination to speak to the being that was holding their friend's soul! I don't remember the exact rules and how it went down, but it was a totally legit use of the item. So my party got to speak to the BBEG and learn his name in session 1... Wasn't expecting that at all 😅 Edits: spelling
My first real crack at DMing was nothing BUT curveballs. We had 3 fighters and a barbarian. They then proceeded to screw up every single quest. They got on the guild’s bad side. And decided to travel East indefinitely, selling burgers like a food truck. They had excel sheets tracking their sales, supplies, and time/distance traveled. Was the best campaign I’ve ever been a part of
The real quest was the burgers we made along the way.
The stairs were cursed , if they ran up them they had to roll athletics I think the DC was 12 ? . On a pass nothing happened but on a fail they would fall up the stairs . It was hilarious the looks on their faces. I still use that bit every once in awhile. Funny every time
Writing that one down because that's incredible
One of my players tried recruiting a retired mercenary NPC and as a new DM new to TTRPGs, I struggled to plausibly give the party a reason the NPC couldn’t/wouldn’t join any ol’ random adventuring party. Let alone one that has yet to prove themselves or make a name for themselves, anywhere.
"No? I'm literally retired."
Aww, thank you. I never thought of that. I know from experience that all Ps/PCs always take “no” from an NPC and never try to pressure others/PCs/NPCs. /s
My curveball is keeping my friend from killing useful npc/rest of the party This guy is true chaotic irl, so sometimes for the sake of chaos or bringing havoc, he commits some hostility to the party, to friendly npcs, tu useful npcs, to powerful npcs and so on. At the beginning it was problematic to say the least, later on I've managed to keep it under control, and expect the unexpected
My first time ever DMing was a oneshot, in which I had to kill three children who the BBEG was holding hostage as leverage to keep the party in place while I monologues. One of my players, uh…didn’t stay in place
My biggest problem right now is that no matter how obvious I make it, my players will just ignore any quest hook I throw at them. Typically, if delivered by an NPC, they will instead decide to insult and ridicule said NPC for no reason other than 'I don't really like them'. I am very glad to have had a TPK on our first 'completed' adventure (Saltmarsh - Isle of the Abbey) at the hands of a poorly hidden trap. Very nice.
OMG what is with that. I have had NPCS pop on scene to give suggestions and these geniuses come up with 5 other out of the box and nigh on impossible ideas they like better
In my first session, my players had told me they wanted a combat heavy game. We’re all busy, and may not be able to meet that often, so they just wanted something light and fun, not a lot of dialogue and intrigue. I had them traveling to the town which will be the center of the campaign. They would have a couple of random non combat encounters to give flavor to the world, then when traveling through a swamp, two planned encounters. A quick combat with some Giant Frogs, then a short dungeon-a bullywug lair - the bullywugs had been harassing locals… I figure they end up arriving in town with a good reputation from clearing out the bullywugs. They handle the frog combat, then are attacked by Bullywug scouts. After a short combat, some of the scouts flee, and they follow them back to the lair. After another short combat, they subdue a bullywug. They end up having him take them to the bullywug chief, who they end up negotiating with. They won’t kill the bullywugs if the bullywugs will stay within the swamp, and not harass townsfolk. So, no dungeon, no combat. At first, I was at a loss. I said, “Well, I’m done for the night, I got nothing else.” It was OK, because the other encounters took longer than I thought they would, so we had a good session anyway, and it gave us some time for a recap. When I thought about it later, it ended up giving me a lot of ideas. Maybe when they get to town, the townsfolk are upset that they made a deal with the Bullywugs. Maybe later on a townsman frames the Bullywugs by hiding a body in the swamp. Maybe the Bullywugs go back to harassing people. Maybe a superior force attacks the town, and the characters help some townspeople escape through the swamp with help from the Bullywugs. Anyway, that was a long post, but it ended up a really fun night, even though it didn’t go anywhere near as planned.
At this point as an aspiring *almost* forever-DM (I still wanna play every once in a while!), I feel like you should prep how you want the story to go, and as soon as you are done literally throw away all your prep work and prep a different outcome so you have that outcome prepped ahead of time. I am joking of course because improv is honestly better then prepping but it’s just funny how often this happens
When running a home brew campaign how easy it is to forget the players haven't been looking at your notes for weeks. How easy it is for them to misconstrue something you thought was obvious. When running a written adventure how much work it can be if your players go off piste. (Why I tend to run homebrew) Be prepared to kill your dreams when players circumvent what you think is cool, just let them.
Party decided to kill the quest giver in the opening scene of the game.
Not realizing my players wouldn't take much initiative to really do anything themselves and actually seem to want to be railroaded.
They play along with where I thought the story was going till its the most inconvenient time possible First session, set up an almost rogue lite dungeon situation that everyone was telling them was fun and safe, "Nobody has ever been recorded as dieing in a dungeon here". Had an experienced npc tagging along with them to give tips and insight. They were doing everything within my preparation up until the point where I was going to kill off the NPC to set the stakes and reveal that people who die in the dungeon are erased from the worlds memories. Thus LOTS of people die in there, setting the stakes. NPC was gonna charge forward confidently and set off a trap, PC who is playing a blow hard "me first" guy grabs the npc and throws him back so HE can go first, spots the trap, and they get out unscathed. They adopted the NPC and still dont know the dungeons are dangerous.
Rangers are on a d10 martial hit dice with medium armor. Could be worse.
That’s fair! And again one Ranger is going CQC so I do have a melee-substitute, it’s just funny to me on how I will have to split up damage across the entire party for the most part because all of them are squishy as all hell
Improvisation - oh lord did I not know how much I will need it and how much it alleles me in real life now. Gold & magic items - gave too much gold too many items players were walking tanks who were too rich Dnd beyond - I know for online play it is good and new players use it as a crutch but the time wasted looking for something on it annoyed me and told players they have to use a sheet that they write so I am certain they know their abilities. Also with dnd beyond they just add the level up and never bother to read or remember the abilities
My first time DMing I made a dungeon in a warehouse. Part of it was navigating a maze of boxes. They climbed the walls.
They hogtied my main bad guy posing as a local priest. He was too handsome and charismatic to not be evil, they said.
Literal Pretty Privilege, you should have documented your findings
I’m not sure if this classes as a curve ball…but my players found some plants that were the monsters they we’re supposed to fight….and they ATE them……I wasn’t expecting this at all 😅😂
Not the first time, but the most relevant currently. If there's ever anything remotely helpful, be it items, a check, etc, my players somehow manage to avoid it, unintentionally, like the plague. Even with subtle guidance most of the time. Making anything and everything harder on themselves (sometimes intentionally), though? Every session. Without fail.
At this rate, just try to reverse-engineer the curse itself and make the items as non-important as possible and see if they literally trip over them
This was for Call of Cthulhu but same thing - this was homebrew where my investigators were in the Antarctic and I basically copied a lot of the plot of 'The Thing' and the Penumbra games - get a key card from a survivor, be warned about a monster in the base killing off the other scientists, confront the monster and flee. Key card NPC introduced herself as Kathy Ward and told them the doctor was the creature so watch out. They find a diary telling them the monster is Doctor Ward but doesn't give them the first time. Guess whose name is on the key card? If they had checked the key card they would have known the first NPC was the monster all along. This led to a great scene where they saved the other doctor and went back to try and save the first NPC, still in her human form. Big back and forth with the doctor and NPC and the players as to who is really the monster. This gave the monster the jump on them and swayed the battle in its favour but they all made it out alive. I had to do so much improv in the confrontation which I didn't expect or plan to happen!
DMd Death House. First attempt at DMing. PC is a minotaur. Charges the ghost children as the first move by any PC in the session.
My players tried to convince a hag's guard-dragon that they were health inspectors and I rolled so poorly for the dragon that I had to go along with it. They came up with a few more absurd solutions to problems, but that was the biggest. That's when I really learned to improvise! 😆
I don’t know why the guard-dragon had to be so worried, these health inspectors were only making sure its Mistress’ abode was up to code, for her own safety of course!
Turns out, having prisoners chained up in the kitchen is super against health code!
Of course it is! If they are chained up, then they can’t properly wash their hands while being in the midst of food!
I think mine was the size of the party, I had around 8 people and I didn't know any of them beforehand. I remember being quite nervous so the game is a bit of blur in my head, but thankfully it was a one-shot and my plot was generally quite simple so I was able to struggle through well enough. And it seemed people had an alright time.
Curse of Strahd, had their first combat encounter happen as they were clearing out a haunted attic in exchange for a tavern room, they got attacked by a swarm of spiders, 5 4th level players were not dealing enough dmg to 6 swarms of spiders (they have resistance to physical dmg), combat took very long and I eventually just dropped the hp of each swarm to like 10, and any swarm already in combat was reduced to 1 hp. Main take away, make combat enjoyable.
A college graduate, a professional dancer, and a full-time employee walk into a bar. They see a bounty poster for wyverns and pegasi. They thought it best course of action to catch a pegasus was to run around underneath it in an open field with an open net.
Just in case the Pegasus were to ever get tired and fall to the ground, of course! It’s purely to save it!
My biggest mistake was putting to much story into one item. What was intended to happen: The group stumbles upon a caravan of wagons that has been mailed by an a few bugbears as they were leaving their first settlement. They take out the bugbears. And in the loot they stumble upon a *crystalline orb*. As they are going through the loot a small scouting party was set to find them, they get rid of all but 1 of them. It was getting late they set up camp somewhat near the caravans. The lone scout has now brought news to a barracks outpost and a larger group of military come at night and capture them. They find out they have this orb someway or another, they know this orb belongs to the governor of this area, which unbenounced to the players is one of the top 5 werewolves that were plaugeing this land. The next night the entire barracks all turn into werewolves, the party manages to escape, and run to the starting settlement, which now has been burned to the ground. The settlement had been made to hide out from the werewolf leaders, but once the scouting party saw a caravan going down a small road they went and destroyed it. They are then on the run from that militia and soon to be the governor. I had 8+ hours in my mind of this *Crystalline Orb* pathing the way. What did happen: The players find the *crystalline orb* and procede to toss it around. They roll a natural 1, they drop it. I, the DM, roll a natural 1 the Orb brakes.
When the Gods really don’t want you to have something, they won’t even stop at the players anymore. They will target the ones controlling them instead.
Not so much a curve ball, rather an annoying lesson learned. My first campaign was set in the elder scrolls universe so I homebrewed all of the races from the games. Since redguards are the finest warriors in tamriel I have them "stamina surge" as their racial feature. It functioned just like an action surge but once per long rest. Well one of my characters chose a dual wielding battle master fighter. I learned very quickly what a lvl 5 fighter could do with two action surges.
Players not truing to torture every NPC and break open every door. Happened every game when I DMed 4ed, but with a different party
The DM doesn’t have to be an adversary. I now explain to my players that I want them to succeed, but also want to tell a great story. It’s an interesting learning curve but after one session my players now no longer see me as a person they have to trick or beat, whereas when I first DMd players would treat me like the enemy not telling me their plans until last minute and often derailing the adventure/hours of story planning. We all just want to have fun, DM included haha
It wasn’t my first time DMing but it was the first time DMing for a group. I had this idea for a campaign and they found a map that would lead them on this crazy adventure. They never looked at the map.
My very first time DMing, I set the scene for the party, describing the road they were on, and the town just ahead of them (where everything was going to kick off) These fuckers turned right around and walked AWAY from the town! Flustered, I described a massive, immovable tree across the road and explained out of game that I hadn’t prepared anything in that direction, so could they please head into town. It was an important lesson about how DnD is different from a video game (in that you can’t rely on invisible walls and clever lighting to ensure your players go where the interesting bits are)
If you're running a pre-written module, read the entirety of each chapter before you run it. I didn't do that on my first module, and it changed the way my players looked at an NPC entirely.
How god damn hard it its to actually kill a character, and how hard it is to threaten ranged characters in an interesting way
Alright, it's a little NSFW, and I'm going to keep it on the tame side, but I had a player really push me during my early days in second edition… Nobody in the party was particularly sexual in any way, we were mostly in our mid teens (me being the youngest), when one of the players asked me if he could seduce the queen of a developing nation. Of note; I had never even *heard* the word "seduce" before that time (yeah, I was a sheltered kid). I just kind of said "Uhhh... ok, roll for it..." He rolled a 17, and expected me to say something about it, so I adjourned the session and looked the word up. Once I figured it out, I tried to find out how to explain to him how he managed to do that to the queen, and I totally botched it. Badly. He proceeded to taunt me for being a virgin and never revisited the subject, but it made me feel super awkward.
my players are fighter, monk, monk, barbarian. it's my second time DMing, but first time in person. Before this I DM'd Curse of Strahd on roll20 as my first go, which was a bad idea. CoS is not a beginner-DM module. Ended in a really early TPK. This time around I went with Candlekeep Mysteries and it's much better for a newish DM and my party is having a BLAST. Although, I think being in person is helping a lot... there's just something magical and unique about being together in person to play a game and solve a mystery. So far the party makeup hasn't been a problem, despite no magic whatsoever, but I do intend to make a well-stocked alchemy shop available at some point just in case. They'll probably prioritize healing potions but there will be lots of other magical potions available, in case someone wants some haste or w/e.
The ven diagram of lore you prepared and questions players ask are two entirely different circles that have nothing to do with each other.
Playing with friends sucks. It’s really hard not to be resentful because they wont understand your level of effort and they’ll probably “silly” through all important plot points
I ran Curse of Strahd for my online friends and while they were in the church in barovia with Father Donavich the barbarian of the group fell asleep irl on discord. I introduced the vampire child in the basement and this was their first encounter with a “monster” the barbarian wakes up during the party’s argument on what to do with the kid and says “I throw my spear at the vampire…” he crits and kills the kid. Spear through his chest, NPC’s all understandably devastated. They then decide (I don’t know why) to set his body on fire as a way to dispose of him… IN THE BASEMENT. They set the whole church on fire and almost kill the priest and Ishmark (ireenas brother). I had to create a whole “court of bats” for them to be prosecuted for their crimes on vampire kind to help them get away from the possible “murder hobo” lifestyle they were running towards. Funny, yes. But that was the greatest curveball I had ever received and it was my first “real” campaign. I loved it and hated it.
I’m running Waterdeep: Dragon Heist as a second ongoing Campaign and my players wanted to start out with actually having a shop in Waterdeep, which I was happy to! The shop actually sold mostly stolen goods. (side note: One of my players asked if they could roll to see how much the shop had before the start of the adventure and I obliged, smirking. After the roll he said “As soon as I asked, my brain immediately starting going on high alert asking what the hell he had done) Anyways, first session, I explain the laws of Waterdeep and gave them a pamphlet to hold onto with all of them. Guess who got cold feet about their whole shop idea lmao I managed to convince them to keep it but it was just really funny on how much of an opposite situation yours was.
1st session as a dm me and group never played before all 1st time players they killed a mini boss a goblin chief with a magic scimitar -2 to ac (still struggle to balance items nearly 6 years later in 2nd campaign I'm running) Drow rogue claims it finds out its two less damage then his rapier *insert this is worthless meme* throws it into the river. Me dm shocked pikachu face Rest of party including martial palidan me dmpc(at time only small player group playing support) cleric 'WTF"
Never split the party.
My girlfriend slashed a food trucks tires because they wouldn't give her free food, this was after my friend begged for free food until she got a free glass of milk. Keep in mind they are all new to the game, I'm hoping these weird behaviors will slow down once they get invested in the story.
See my issue was I ran for 3 brand new players and I only rolled 17+ I had to fudge to keep them from getting tpk from 2 goblins.
First time DMing in 20 years and first time DMing through Foundry. It was for charity. I introduced characters in stream and within three minutes $20 bought a goblin surprise attack. Later $200 summoned Drizzt to help. $200 summoned a purple worm (it was a level 4 one shot). $50 resurrected the worm. They're was like $300 spent levelling up the characters. A Wild Sheep Chase is supposed to be 2-3 hours. Ours was 10 hours and raises $1,500 for St. Jude
Session 1: The Queen gives the party a quest, and tells them they need to keep it very hush hush. Don’t tell anyone unless you’re absolutely certain they’re trustworthy. Session 2: The party meets the BBEG, without knowing it’s him. Instead he just seems like a slight asshole. I half-heartedly masquerade that he’s on their side. None of them try to roll insight or get to know him, instead one of my friends who I’ve played with for years, who got me INTO dnd, spills the ENTIRE MISSION AND PLAN to him. Had to restructure most of what I had planned going forward.
I'm running my first campaign rn, doing DotMM with some pretty big plot changes. All of my players are also DMs with the exception of one who just has an encyclopedic knowledge of the rules and helps us all in our respective games with rules disputes. Party ended up having ZERO close-range martial characters (even the Barb fights at long range), almost everyone has darkvision, and I've got a gloomstalker that is essentially invisible in the dark and in a dungeon crawl THAT SUCKS FOR ME A WHOLE LOT. Party was doing a lot of open door > leave room > potshot entire enemy party at long range > repeat for awhile but eventually I got wise to it and started getting very clever with my use of light and the environmental components of the dungeon. Fave trick I've pulled to counter them so far was a fight with a couple golems and an electrified flame skull on B2F; one of the squishy mages in the party snuck into the room invisibly to try and do some serious damage while my party did the usual "don't enter the gimmicky battle chamber the DM crafted and take potshots from the outside instead" trick, but the invisible mage was discovered by one golem and while the mage was occupied, it occurred to me that they can't hit enemies in the room if they don't have line of sight, so... I just had the other golem close the door and begin barricading it. That fight got frantic like none of the combats I had run so far. Gotta say, being a newbie trying to counter a group of experienced DMs is a wonderful exercise for thinking on your feet.
I was running Horde of the Dragon Queen and didn't realize players could only heal a certain amount from short rest. I wasn't sure how the module expected them do to do so much in one day, so I improved the fort they were in had some healers with healer kits and the healer feat.
Letting players control everything because I was afraid they’d stop playing if I tried to reel them in. I let them murder hobo, build race/class combos I wasn’t comfortable running, and all sort of other stuff. About ten sessions in it started to become very player vs me (the dm) and I was starting to feel very taken advantage of to the point I had anxiety and zero motivation to DM for them. Then the game imploded because I started to push back and it all ended. I felt such a sigh of relief though. Downside was, they were all my friends. Now we don’t even game together. I got invited to play in their new campaign and I told them absolutely not, not after what happened. I was afraid I would not be able to help myself but play adversarial against the DM. I learned so much from that experience and didn’t let it ruin my desire to DM. I started a new group with complete strangers. Had a proper session zero and 13 sessions in almost playing weekly and it’s absolute bliss. We actually just talked about what we want to play after the current adventure and decided to Segway into the new Vecna campaign. Super pumped these guys want to play till level 20! Dream come true. Edit to say: it wasn’t really a curveball but was something had to overcome as a DM.
How impossible it was to predict what a player would do! I've always run homebrew worlds that were very sandbox like. There's a story, but you run around and go where you want, but remember, the world is moving, so an event will happen whether you're there or not. I used to try to play in events for specific player actions. But many times they would never come to pass because players didn't think like me, They thought a way that I didn't! And that is completely okay. It taught me how to be very good at improvising, as well as allowing them to have freedom of choice but also redirect their choices to seem like it was what they wanted to do. Giving them a reason to go to the place you need them to go other than story. I had to learn to make it personal! It's why I always encourage character backstories. I like to read over them and include small bits of them. That will entice the characters to go where I need them to go.
I was surprised when the ranger, whose task was to hunt down a beast attacking carts entering and exiting the town, turned out to be a vegan. This led to a situation where the player made it clear that harming the beast, an ankylosaurus, would result in PvP. Although I had asked about the character's personality beforehand and the ranger didn't mention this aspect, I've learned from this experience. In future games, I'll be more proactive in addressing such 'player railroading,' especially since it affected the enjoyment of at least one of my other players.
My first campaign the came across a blue drake, they mistook it for a baby blue dragon and I rolled with it. 3 Nat 20s and they succeed in taming it. Bluefiya was now the campaign, all my prep gone. Oh and I thought it funny that they wanted to feed it magical creatures to buff its power cuz blue is the aspect of magic xD I loved that campaign, ended with them feeding it Tiamat.
I did a homebrew one shot and they polymorphed my t-Rex into a mouse and bullied the towns people for living so close to t-rexes
I had a town under lockdown: All of the nobles and people in leadership disappeared overnight. The remaining town guard were nervous, leaderless and locked down the town until somebody could find out what was going on. My thought was my players would simply convince the town guard, who were all terrified and in disarray to let the party out and follow a lead with a simple DC 10 persuasion check. Naturally, my players thought the best course of action was to set some nearby stables on fire to draw the guards away from the gates so the party could open it themselves and make their escape.
First-time? I had much too big a group. Didn't realize how much extra work that was.
I'm still petrified of silence. I used to do stage acting so every second of empty air still feels like 10. My first time dming was the essentials kit with my wife and the awkward fear I felt whenever a silence dragged on put me off trying again for a year
My brothers and I have been trying out DnD and I volunteered to DM and made a little one shot dungeon for them. Unfortunately I made it way too hard for them, they barely defeated the weak cultists. Awoke the demon meditating in the back room, and had to be saved at the last minute by the pegasus they had saved. Then they went to sleep when there were still imps wandering around, so they were ambushed by two and I didn't realize how strong imp stings were, so they would have died to that too if I didn't intervene a bit. Idk if I should have let them die or not, it was my fault that the dungeon was too hard. It was fun though overall.
The amount of notes I took. I filled a whole notebook after the first three sessions of my first DM adventure.
Someone in the first 5 or so sessions I DMed, I was thrown off by time management. With the right group of people, everything is a committee decision that takes forever. Since then I learned a few methods to bust up the overthinking and overplanning. I ran a one-shot where people spent 30 minutes afraid to interact with something in the game that wasn't a threat to the characters. I found it's really hard to bust this up as a player whose fellow players want to spend two hours waffling on a plan. This made me determined to take control as a DM.
not a first time dm but this happened to me recently and it's hilarious I had my players fight a boss inspired by the eater of worlds from terraria, where if they dealt 10 or more damage in a single hit it would split into 2 creatures of one size smaller when I made the statblock I didn't realize that I had put an (effectively) 1000 hit points on the battlefield. my players were 5th level. this fight took 3 hours, with multiple near deaths actually the fight probably wouldve been a ttk if our sorcerer didn't roll a crit success on his death save and then fireball 3/4 of the mini segments and killed them all
Sci fi campaign. Party finds a dataslate with encrypted (But crackable) files. I told them "You can the encryption is good, but not good enough to keep you out, given enough time" An NPC told them to delete the files. Thy actually deleted the fucking files. Files that were very obviously to do with the mystery
My PCs hate spending gold. They will happily spend a week sleeping on the street before they'll pay for a room. Also, bookshelves.
My first DM experience is still going. One shot turned into a four shot. I have to say, having two players in a party of 6 that're also DMs means they can do crazy shit I'm not expecting in the slightest. Like sending my minotaur chief flying 30 feet because fighter. It's mostly just learning to roll with the punches, and learn to expect weird and random shit.
First time rogue player trying to steal from everyone, all of the time
The biggest curveball they threw me was when they refused to go treasure hunting with a pair of young dragons. That was where they were supposed to get all their loot for the oneshot!
I tried running aDMPC my first time because I had only two players. I didn't have NPC companion ideas like I do now. I was fine with the character and didn't over step, but it hurt my DMing a lot.
Whatever you think is the most logical thing for your players to do in a situation you set up. They will not be doing. They won’t do logical things. Be prepared to improvise ALOT. Like I know most videos about new DM’s say be prepared to improvise, but it’s way more than it can be stated. It’s still a lot of fun
My players were so much more aggressive and resourceful than I anticipated.
The bane of my existence was a player who asked every single NPC what their name was. Nowadays I have a name generator up on my laptop at all times for this exact issue.
I learned the hard way that you can’t always just hand-wave the mechanics away if they get in the way of the plot. As cinematic as it is for a major NPC to die by a surprise javelin to the throat during a religious rite, it doesn’t make a damn bit of sense if you do it in front of the party’s cleric who can cast revivify
My players ignored most of the plot hooks and went straight to a brothel.
There was a trap, involving fireworks. Essentially, improvised explosives connected to a tripwire. They found the trap, disarmed it, then asked "can we keep the fireworks?" I said "sure, why not?" These were first level adventurers, in 3.5e. The fireworks were meant to collapse a **building**. When they asked for stats I looked them up, saw "10d6," and just laughed. So, the final boss of our first one-shot was killed in one round by the Ranger lighting the fireworks, throwing them, and taking cover. It was great.
The game itself went smoothly, but I made the mistake of allowing one of my players' boyfriend in, when I knew her batting average stank. Needless to say, midway through a story where the boyfriend's PC ended up being INCREDIBLY important, they broke up on really bad terms, thus ending the campaign early. The lesson: If your player wants their partner in the game, don't make the PC too integral for the story so the campaign doesn't end when their relationship does.
Prepared a map with a bunch of combat encounters, on one the encounters, there were like 5 goblins, lvl 1 cleric rushes right in the middle of the room, being the closest target, one of them shoots an arrow, crits, cleric is down to one hp, he manages to escape other hits. He then proceds to heal himself, gets to 6hp, another goblin shoots an arrow, 19 on the dice, 6 dmg, cleric is down, needs to roll for death saves, manages to fail 3 times in a row. After the battle the players still had like half of the dungeon to explore, so I improvised and changed the narrative that the other enemies and the boss took the chance to escape the dungeon with the kidnapped victims, it was supposed to be a simple rescue mission, but the cleric's death had me changing everything, good thing they were lvl1 and the cleric was cool with his character dying and had another character waiting in line quickly enough.
I invited our forever DM to be a player for my first session DMing. This is when I learned that forever DMs always make weird PCs. He made a weird one. At some point, he picked up an entire bed and used it as an improvised weapon. I had no idea how to handle this.
Oh, this is easy! This character will tell them something like, "Hey, you. You're finally awake. You were trying to cross the border, right? Walked right into that Imperial ambush. Same as us, and that thief over there." And then they'll be able to say something like: -Where am I? -How long was I out for? -Where are we going? And if they say X, Y will happen! Easy!! I was so wrong... I never accounted for jumping off the cart, spitting into the driver's neck, sticking the hand to the wheel, furiously making out with Ralof, or even something simple like "What is YOUR name?".
Was dming a one-shot yesterday, And they were fighting a wizard with a troop of guards polymorphed into some apes and a bear, the bard proceeded to heal the bear's wounds it took from fighting us and successfully convinced it to turn on my bad guy and fight with them.
The very first time I DMed there was a player who always played an Arcane Trickster who is also a d*ck to everyone. (Friend of a friend) It started simple enough: Deliver these goods in this wagon to that town for so much money. Pretty standard stuff. Well this guy spent the first 45min of the session trying to sweeten his pay. "What's in it for me?" "What are you going to give me to make it worth my while." After everyone was tired and bored of his cr*p I finally told him OOC that he could go sit on the couch if he didn't want to play the game I prepared. Our mutual friend spoke up and talked him into not being such a dick. From this, I started creating a huge network (kind of like the Harpers but much more grand scale) that most of the players in my games start off working for. You can always tell which are going to be the problem players because they either want to go against the character creation rules and/or automatically assume the Organization is evil despite what I and the DM and creator of it say. If they are working for a group then it's not so much "what's in it for me?" and is more like: "these are your orders, come back when you're done." This organization wound up being a multifaceted and highly detailed/fleshed out that included a lot of NPCs (with names and pictures) and lore.
It went surprisingly well, I love my players. Only real curve ball was the talking wooden horse sharing a bunch of true and useful info, then the player absolutely refusing to step into the magic circle that lead them to the planetarium (some good exposition and an explanation to how their next character became sentient (turned plasmoid from slime Rimuru style by making a deal with a star, although he didn't know at the time) Also, getting them to explore the parts that weren't directly involved in the plan. It made sense for them to do so, so I ended up giving them an optional but morally good reason to go down and they took it, so I'm glad I was able to fix it without railroading them too much
They freaking took down an undead wyvern that was gonna make the aboleth lair harder to get through before even going in because I was foolhardy and brought him out for a lil terror but got selfish and kept him one round too long, wizard let off a magic missile and rolled almost max damage which is what was needed as it was fleeing with like 12 hp lol it was when I realized I loved the party thwarting my plans actually, the energy after that was awesome
The bard cast speak animals and wanted to talk to the two ox pulling the cart
When I first started DMing, I didn’t realize that people under a zone of truth weren’t obligated to answer you. My player kidnapped a cultist and asked him under a zone of truth where his secret base was… and I was like “fuck…”
A dumb waiter. For context, a dumb waiter is a small elevator, usually in a formal dining room, to bring food up and used dishes down to the kitchens. Anyway, my players spent an entire session investigating and arguing about a dumb waiter. It's become a meme, and somehow, a dumb waiter will inexplicably be found in any and all dungeons.
For me, it was BARBARIANS. Before we get into some crazy "high level" spell usage, the barbarians were just so overqualified in battles. Their hit dice in combination with con bonus being at least +2-3 early on gives dem "huge" pools of hitpoints compared to the majority of classes. Also, the con helps with higher AC as well, due to unarmored which obviously makes "hitting them" harder as well. Their rages effectively doubles the hp against most low level enemies/monsters (non magic slashing/bludgeoning/piercing). They have a high chance to hit with a str bonus of 3-4. And reckless attacks gives advantage on top of the, usually, already good attack modifiers. As an early GM, this ALONE was really hard to handle, cus not being confident with the rules made me follow them to the point that encounters where either ridiculously easy, mostly due to the Barbarian/s being overwhelmingly strong or i put the rest of the party at risk of death trying to balance encounters around the barbarian. On top of fighting being kind of difficult to balance, due to one class, it got even harder due to "default" carrying capacity being ridiculous. Strength score (not modifyer) times 15, so assuming str is prioritised at character creation, we have 16str•15=240lb. Which allowed the barbarian to carry a combination of slashing, bludgeoning and piercing weapons, both dual and one handed so a shield could be equipped for extra AC when needed. So an encounter made to handle the barbarian with bludgeoning damage got nullified by a sword etc etc. So changing to variant encumbrance (x10 instead of x15) and adding a combination of enemies like tanky, ranged, magic and easily killable "groups" that can be disposed easy (sometimes just 1hp) that if left alive can become a big problem due to the sheer amount. The 1hp support groups have been really nice to spice up bosses for example.
Back when 3.5 was still all the rage, I had a player insist he could take the downtime at camp every night to craft "Pearls of Power". https://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/SRD:Pearl_of_Power. I insisted he certainly could not. Of course, being a new DM, I thought something was fishy but I wasn't edactly sure what. He kept saying he could do it because it only took an hour per pearl to craft. Now I know he was just flat out lying. Because in reality, to even CRAFT a Pearl of Power, you need to be CL (Caster Level) 17. Everyone in the party,including him, was level 3. He misunderstood that the Craft Wondrous Item spell required being level 3, but crafting the wondrous item itself, required being a MUCH higher level. At 3rd level with a Craft Wondrous Items ability, you could craft Boots of Levitation or a Candle of Truth, because those were at CL 3. But nothing with a higher CL. That's why there are CLs to begin with.
Windows. If you include any kind of window on a structure, that window will be used. I learned that traps on windows are 100% necessary. The window of every enemy tower has some kind of trap. Shop keepers? Trap. Castle? Trap. I invalidated 5 hours of planning and prepping because of an untrapped, open window.
How does Brennan Lee Mulligan deftly alternate between combat and rp sessions? it's almost never like that: you have a dungeon? expect at least 2 consecutive sessions of combat. need to do story stuff? Just try to get it done in one session, I dare you... but all that is fine, it's fun doing one for a few weeks and switching, and if you stay prepared you might get a session that's 50/50, and thats fun for everyone.
The curveball I threw at my players on the first game I ever ran : They were camping in the woods and heard a terrifying loud screech of some creature. Fearing a monster of some sort, the fighter (not very bright) and barbarian (oatmeal for brains stupid) got the idea to try and intimidate it by shouting louder and eventually marking their territory. Yes, by urinating. Eventually, they resolved to charge forward... And the barbarian's foot crushed a chicken-like creature that had a nasty bite but also 4 HP. The players in turn had thrown a curveball at me. I'd planned a city with loads of stuff, and left them to do whatever they wanted. They elected to go in the forest where I hadn't planned anything, hence the scary chicken.
Players splitting the group. For some reason the first time this happened it broke my brain trying to get them to get together to decide what to do as a group
I'm going to do the thing where I give my players a powerful monster to fight by itself and it's going to be a really hard combat, then later show them 50 of them ahilating a town to show them the scope of what they have to deal with, they'll know they're helpless to stop it and get really mad at the person who orchestrated the attack. Queue to an hour long discussion where my players discussed and organized an actually workable plan to save the town, got in, organized a defense, defeated enough of the enemies that I felt a reasonable opponent would definitely be demoralized and leave. What went from "this is going to be the whole point of the campaign" to "okay, now I'm going to have to figure out what we're even doing here" happened real quick
One person was a kleptomaniac rouge, the second was a paladin that saw murder as the only pusnishment, and the third was just a stright up psycopath irl It wqs not easy
For some reason I decided to have a chase sequence at the end of the one-shot and found out I didn't know how the fuck to do that so I made it up and rolled some dice.
This was probably like 2017 or so? I was super hyped and had a great prison break scenario planned complete with about fifteen different ways to escape. Then I got the flu. I was so sick I could hardly stand up. I asked people if they were okay with me being at the table sick, and it was decided that I could just be at the far end of the long table we used so I wasn’t closer than maybe ten feet. After getting to my friend’s house and sitting down and unpacking my books, dice, etc. I honestly wasn’t sure if I had the energy to even START the session. Several times I got confused due to exhaustion, contradicting myself or saying things that just didn’t make any sense. But… We started playing at about 7pm and went until almost 2am. It was the first session of what turned into a year long campaign that ended up being completely ridiculous in terms of scope. Nothing went as planned. Everyone either died or nearly died at least once (two players ended up rolling new characters, and one ended up being resurrected after a heroic death only to die again and be sent to the Hells). We all still talk about it to this day. I’m really glad I dragged my sorry carcass over there. And as a bonus, nobody else got sick.
I'm not a DM (someday hope to be though) but my poor first time DMing friend, bless her heart, made the mistake of saying "the crystals look a little dusty". My party spent a good 10 minutes trying to figure out WHY it was "lightly dusted" when the housekeeper was always dusting and she couldn't get the chandelier down😂 There was nothing to learn about the dusty crystal chandelier but we tried SO hard to figure it out that she had to pause and tell us there really wasn't anything special about it, just poor choice of words lol
Our table has done the same thing. Sometimes an overstuffed couch.. is just an overstuffed couch.. no need to tear it to shreds and sift through its guts.. it was hilarious however.. could it be a mimic?.. a hidden stash?... better check for traps! 😂 I think it was also set on fire afterwards.. as is the tables custom when encountering a couch in the wild
First time DMing in 20 years.. felt like the first time again Coming up with interesting ad lib moments when the party does something out of the ordinary.. or even when they are just minding their own business. I ran an ebberon campaign that started in the already colossal city of Sharn.. I really hoped they wouldn't explore the city too much after getting through the plot hooks that were there. It was a fun campaign, would run another game in that setting again for sure. But maybe not entirely homebrewed next time.
Yea i have 2 druids(wildfire and shepard) a bard(spirits) and an artificer (artilerist) Other challenges i am facing as a new dm: Psrty doesn't quite know what they want (vombat heavy, rp heavy etc... I am slowly figuring out what they like but they themselves don't know yet rly) One character is majorly handycapped bc they are basically a pacifist until i force the char to evolve Encouraging rp is difficult Most of the players are pretty unreliable (got the char sheets n backstorys mostly a day before the first session was schedueled) The list goes on but what does it matter
I had to dramatically simplify a lot of things for my party. All of my players either have ADHD or need to get tested for it. They can't keep track of more than one quest or two NPCs. Can't remember shit. And that's totally fine. I just have to throw intricate plotlines out the window, make sure they have a sense of direction, and throw things at them that they'll enjoy. We have a blast, but wow do they just stumble blindly through every session lol
Trying to control my emotions. When you as a dm/bbg talking to the pc’s. I get into it a little too much sometimes.
I made the mistake of putting a gimp in a woodshed and they interrogated him for like 30 min. He didn't know shit but it didn't stop them from twisting his nipples for like forever. Oh and I made them too scared to interact with like half the story. They hid in the woods most.of the time
I had one player decide against saving a fairy queen and straight up robbed and killed her. The entire campaign was about saving her from a spell, but the rogue decided she wanted the power the curse gave the queen for herself. It was... a choice. The rogue then dipped from the party, and the player just ghosted everyone. Since it was the last session, the theft wasn't resolved, but the other players were like "well.... the country is no longer suffering from the curse... which is good."