When you bullshit your way through a DM session and the players don't notice

>when you bullshit your way through a DM session and the players don't notice
>when the players start to argue over some convoluted puzzle where everyone claims that they figured out how to solve it and it results in heated discussion between everyone involved on the clues they picked up
>you don't know the solution to the puzzle and basically just wait till some guy comes up with a clever solution to a problem that never existed in the first place and was just some random gibberish you threw out because you needed to buy time when the players decided to fuck up the entire script because they managed to kill the one NPC in the entire adventure that wasn't supposed to die

>Party finds a statue of an angel holding a bowl in each hand
>One bowl contains a rosary
>Spend a half an hour trying to figure out this puzzle
>Takes the rosary out of the bowl and put it into the other bowl; nothing happens
>Try putting different objects of equal weight into the bowls; nothing happens
>Try filling the bowls with holy water; nothing happens
>Try putting an unholy object into the other bowl to balance out the holy object; nothing happens
>"Guys, this isn't a puzzle. The rosary is just treasure."

>start "who's the murderer" adventure
>don't know who the murderer is
>just bullshit whatever comes to my mind into every scene
>they think they just found carefully hidden clues whenever they ask specific questions and I give them a specific description of an item
>I basically just describe whatever the fuck I spot in the room
>entire party amazed at how clever they are when they finally figured out who the killer is who was literally determined by me choosing the person they are currently zeroing in

>players actually think I write anything on that fucking piece of paper I have in front of me the entire game
>it's just squiggly lines and other bullshit
>they actually think I wrote a script for the story to guide them through
>I didn't even know the fucking setting when I woke up that morning

>when the players make a bunch of leaps of logic and conclude a vampire is after them

>ask everyone what their perception scores are
>roll dice behind the screen
>ignore the result and say "You don't notice anything"

>When you leave the GMs game because he thinks he's fucking smart with his unclever bullshit, but really its just trying your patience

I call this "red button DMing". You offer the players a red button to push. They will assume it will do something significant, it's a red button afterall. The DM must have his reasons. And they will argue and argue about the dangers of the red button. You instilled fear in them without actually giving them a complex scenario. They think they are being tested, they are in the spotlight now and the DM is their master. But the red button is just that, a red button. It's useless and only becomes important as soon as the players voiced their thoughts of paranoia.

This sort of thing needs to be done in moderation, but I fucking love it. Good-natured meta-gaming about the mysterious rolls the GM is making can be some of the best interactions for the players.

"Oh, shit! He asked us to roll again. But our characters have to keep going into this dark and forbidding cavern. They don't know the GM is grinning. "
"Bruh, he's got the Call of Cthulhu book right there. This is D&D. Is he just messing with us, or are our characters failing to spot shoggoths?"

>Level 1 adventure: Catch the murderous psychopath or kill him
>Only witness is a young woman who hid during one of the murders
>Players assume that the psychopath is Batman because he must have been saving her from being raped
>Murderer strikes again, killing some random old woman
>Players still think he's Batman and the woman must have been a criminal of some kind
>Psychopath is literally just a murderous psychopath

>Create a frightened innkeeper who avoids talking to anyone and sends his daughter to deal with the party (secretly: because people are hunting him and he is paranoid)
>Players start to get paranoid themselves and decide to go sleep outside on the ground instead
>Have town people literally notice and come offer to have them stay at their houses
>Too late, they're spooked
>Literally sleep outside all night
>Wake up and go directly on their way to the next fucking leg of the journey, not even dignifying the obvious hints of adventure
>yfw your group is so into roleplaying the realism of the situation that they avoid adventures and suffer penalties
>yfw the innkeeper is brutally murdered and tortured in his bed while the heroes walk away from the town feeling safe

>Yfw they press the red button without voicing their paranoia.

>smug about being shit at something
>smug that your players are also too shit to notice you're bad

You have a very low bar for raising your self esteem, kiddo.

Don't touch it! It's the history eraser button, you fool!

>describe the degenerate, misshapen ogre the players have to fight
>players kill it and start wondering about what the cause of this horrible mutation might be
>they get the idea that the monsters ahead are mutated by something horrible
>they voice their suspicions to me, asking what awaits them in the dungeon ahead
>quietly laugh to myself in front of them

I had simply put a different, mutated ogre because of CR balance and environment diversity and now they suspect inimaginable horrors await them
also now I have some more complex adventure hook

Smug is it's own reward.

We should compile a database of all the irrational little shit that players latch onto so we can make the most effective hooks

>Too depressed to come up with any ideas for campaign
>Never roles stats for NPCs just make it up as I go
>Boss fights are just whatever sounds cool at the time
>Players know I'm depressed and tell me they really appreciate me putting all the effort into the sessions

I feel like a shit DM every time I do it but at least they're having fun..

>you find a strange [anything]
That's all you need, I think.
Or perhaps sometimes it's the repetition, like in this one.

>>Try putting an unholy object into the other bowl to balance out the holy object; nothing happens
At this point you should have improvised and had a hidden treasure compartment open containing an identical rosary.

>actually a werewolf lich

>spend all night brainstorming ideas for a new set of players I go to work with
>plan out what I will do at almost every major leg of the story in case of derailment (i.e. what if they just murder X, decide to join BBEG, chose to go north instead of south ect.)
>players just follow the railroad

The Kobayashi method of DM'ing.

It's actually a pretty solid anti-metagaming tool.

If you frequently ask the PCs "what do you do with your shield while you open the door", or "do you leave your gauntlets on while you pick the lock", etc, then you don't give away ambushes, tramped door handles, etc.

Have you tried asking them why they are playing adventurers when they are actually not seeking out adventures?

Did you try asking them if they just want to play farmville or maybe the sims, since they want to live a safe as fuck life or someshit?

Dunno why you think the players did something wrong. There's nothing wrong with adventurers out for an easy profit, who will shy away from especially dangerous or dirty work.

If there's a group of zealots rounding up and torturing a group of people to death, and they're offering easy coin to anyone who brings those people in, I won't blame the party for not wanting to do that kind of dirty work, even if they are a bunch of greedy, dick-ass thieves.

Maybe, but when I think of adventurers I don't really imagine people who assess risks very well.

You may have the odd man out who tries to calculate risk and reward for the quests they get, but becoming so paranoid that you do not accept any one quest because you're afraid that you might die...

Fuck, what are you going out adventuring for, at that stage?

I approach it more like the adventurers are capable of realizing when they're in over their heads. I don't know what exactly the group in the original story were afraid of, but suppose they thought the town was full of vampires. If they don't have silvered weapons, holy water, and stakes on hand, I can understand just wanting to get out of Dodge.

Then again, once players get it into their minds that they're going to be attacked, any ideas for a preemptive strike go out the window. It's something so determined by the individual character of the players that creating general rulings doesn't work. Some groups will chase down threats no matter how suicidal. Others will retreat.

Is either really bad?

Thinking that you are outmached and making a run for it is actually admirable: I rarely see any player who would do that.

My group also attacked some guy who was stronger than the whole party combined: it got so bad that my guy, the Leroy Jenkins of the group grabbed the guy that the enemy was after and just made a run for it.

My point is this: if the characters chicken out because they are approached by a lonely girl who says that her "father has some gang/people who want him dead please help", they are probably too chickenshit to go kill a couple dozen kobolds in a dark scawy cave. They should just go back to sucking on their mothers' tits and get rid of their diapers before they finally grow a fucking pair and man up to risk their life to kill some blasted zombies 'n shit.

That has become my typical response to it

Oh, fuck that would have been great.

Fuck, batman is way more interesting than a simple psycho.

>pulling some meme-tastic "if your characters are too weak" in a game of make-believe

Also, fuck man, stop being stupid. Players aren't necessarily chickenshit for not playing dumb characters, or characters not out for random fights without a profit. The players suspected danger they might not see as profatible, or danger they thought to be above their heads, they feared an unknown factor. Which is only normal, for the unknown is as scary as you make it out to be.

>when you shitpost yet another am i cool gm yet topic
>adding the players are so dumb meme
>shit that never happened
>cliche smug anime pic

Hi, cancer!

...

I'm the GM of the situation you guys are discussing. The actual situation was the very first town they came across in the whole campaign. It was described as being a friendly, hard-working lumber/forestry town, and the players were also pretty new to RPG games. It wasn't D&D, it was my own non-magic game where they didn't create "epic hero classes" to start, so I think realistically they were looking at their normal human adventurers and getting into that headspace of being vulnerable and unsure.

I told them that their characters were tired and it was getting late in the day, otherwise they might have looked around and investigated.

My idea was that of course they would stay at the suspicious inn, even if it was a bit risky, because ... well, I didn't really give them choices. That all backfired.

Honestly, I think this is a case where my setting and their characters suggested a greater level of vulnerability and fear than I wanted. The D&D method of making sure every character "feels badass" and has some dependable traits for taking on risks, is good for ensuring that they won't shy away from adventure.

If I had told them they they are badass mercenaries who carry special weapons, they would have probably faced the danger. I give them credit for taking the internal logic of the scenario seriously, even though I was blown away by it.

And now as a positive:
>when your players force you to improvise by going off rails and you still manage to make the session enjoyable for them
>when your players get so involved in your campaign that they come up with amazing twists and turns even you did not think of; in order to reward their amazing ideas, you decide to go along with it, as it does not contradict anything previously established

See, you can do all those things you mentioned without being that guy. You should try it!