Rookie Mistakes as DM

I know you said it was years ago, but dude, you should have used that.

Make the golem have an epiphany, give him a story ar. The players tell him he can fight undead, he agrees, and sees himself as better able to help the living he admires by using his natural anti-undead abilities to protect towns or have him leave the party and go on missions to squash liches instead of just saying "oh fuck, I accidentally made an vampire destroying demigod, better never use undead ever again."

Would've been way cooler that way.

I don't really see what the problem is with this unless you wanted a difficult undead encounter. Your players found a cool loophole that made sense lore-wise. It seems like they were plenty invested in your game.

> grant gauntlets of ogre power and belt of storm giant strength in trove
> party comes to a corridor
> thief spots suspicious holes in the wall but doesn't know if they are a trap or not.
> fighter looks at wall, DM says it is a few inches thick
> fighter attempts to break through dungeon wall like Kool Aid Man
> OH YEAH.jpg
> starts pushing down all the dungeon walls one at a time
> avoids all the traps and ambushes
> DM panics, says "all the walls have suddenly become 10' thick, even the walls that you passed up earlier"
> game completely derailed at this point

Sounds ideal to me. Character motivation writes itself. The characters have effective tools to deal with the problems you'll provide for them, so you never have to pull punches. They'll occasionally stomp out lesser threats and be big god damn heroes, which is great for player morale.

>I don't really see what the problem is with this unless you wanted a difficult undead encounter

This, precisely.

The problem was that he was necessary for certain other endeavors that the players wanted to get up to, and having him wander off on some undead destroying crusade would have left them in a bit of a lurch.

>rewarding the players too much too early
I'm still trying to fix that mess.

Have them get captured.

Having a player use the Multiple Minions modifier for any Summon build in MnM whatsoever.

>Organization that killed dead guy has enough resources to banish his ghost as well. Or has reincarnated him into another body
>Dead man is spiteful bastard, blames someone else because he hates them

Resources easily gained are easily lost.
Obviously, don't just pull the full carpet out from them, but there's ways to do it.

I often end up giving my players too much money, but that means merchants they encounter just try that much harder to rip them off. Makes it a fun challenge each time to try and hold onto their fat stacks.

In terms of good equipment I'm still learning to deal with that without it feeling unfair to the party, but typically enemies will have a way to deal with anything accidentally broken I give them.

How is this a problem?

How can I be subtle about it? I've thought of nuking the place they're in, but since they've been doing so well in their efforts to protect it, it'd feel like a dickish low blow.

Is the joke that they were the demons?

Imagine you're going to a boxing match. Then, your buddy tells you before-hand that they don't check your gloves. So, you go ahead slip some lead breaks into them.

That's akin to what those players did after the DM told them.

Get a call to a nearby village.

Village has vampire and spawn waiting.

Sit back as your party wastes massive resources trying to survive the night or escape a previously sealed crypt they are now stuck in. Drains excess funds and makes them feel like they did something to protect themselves later.

Subtlety only matters if the PCs are being subtle with their wealth
See related tangent in another thread:

So what should the players have done? Completely ignored what the GM told them about the game and made something ill-suited to fighting demons?

Are you saying that if the GM tells you they want to run a political intrigue game you should show up with stabby mckill butcher the lowborn murderhobo, because showing up with a socialite would be cheating?

I've played enough Phoenix Wright to see a way around that.

No, it was the DM's fault, which is probably why the title of the thread is "rookie mistakes as DM"

He is saying that players should have read his mind, made level 1 warriors so they could get crushed three minutes in and begin sucking his cock.

>made level 1 warriors

Wait...You can make new characters higher than level 1?

Yeah, if the DM wants to run adventures involving experienced characters without doing the whole zero-to-hero thing first.

>Give player a magical device that can open any door or gate for a limited amount of uses.
>Forget about it.
>Few sessions later, there is a problem.
>The adventure is starting to stall because the players don't want to go into the dungeon because they nova'd eailer.
>They finally enter but almost immediately try to leave.
>This dungeon was the linchpin of today's session, I don't have much prepared for them if they just leave.
>I try to trap them inside by having the entrance gate lock up.
>Player with the magical item calls me a bitch and uses the item.
>The session is nearly ruined because they escape and fuck around in the woods for almost the entire rest of the night.

Never forget the magic items you give out, and always have some quantum ogres on standby.

Not really my fuck up, nor a rookie gm mistake but I ended up ruining the campaign.

The gm, for thematic reasons for his campaign gave me

>wizard spell gaining but cast like a sorcerer
>casting of 1/2 my wizard level as a sorcerer
>no need for verbal, somatic, foci or components for spells
>+2 spell dc
>clerical domain of choice
>bardic music ability
>ignore xp cost and 1/2 gp on crafting, 1 week on time on anything more than a week

I to this day have no clue why I got all this shit. I tried to tell him I was going to be way too powerful. I kept asking if he was going to let me do things and he kept allowing me. He rage quit when he gave us down time before a siege we knew was coming in like a year and I made golems and made an army of undead after diverting a river.

How was that not him fucking up?

Player agency a shit.

As DM you can literally always pull anything out of your hat in a completely justified manner.

One thing you could've done was say that as your player uses the magical item, they receive a firm shock. It's then discovered that the gate has runes inscribed onto it which counter any magical effect used on them.

>hating someone else so fucking much you would rather see them suffer than the person who killed you

this is so great I want to DM a game now just so I can use it

What I would have done in this weird case as DM, after the walls had suddenly become 10' thick or whatever, I'd try to give clues that the dungeon was adapting to the things they were doing, try to lead them to the conclusion that the dungeon they were inside was a living creature adapting to them.

>Playing legal classes well suited for an adventure setting is the same thing as cheating in boxing.
You're a fucking idiot.

>An omnious rumble rises all around you
>Stones start to fall from the ceiling

Not getting enough sleep

kys

>not a cave-in blocking the way out
???

Did it end with the players forcing you to resign as game master because you logic'd yourself into a corner?

10/10

>not a cave that has ad-block installed

>murderer anticipated this and killed his faithful buddy with the promise of resurrecting him later (a lie) so that he could pose as the victim from beyond the grave
>end up being misled by an imposter throughout the whole investigation, s/he frames some other guy

>session 2
>probably a 15 session story arch
>reveal the juicy twist early for no reason
>people don't really give a shit about the campaign any more

This happened for years before I learned to control myself.

First time I ran a campaign I was really concerned my players would be muderhobos, like I was as a player, so I made several people in the small starting village really high level. The local bar was run by a level 7 gladiator and level 9 bounty hunter for example. The players ended up being alot better than I expected and they never did murderhobo much, but looking back on it I still think my preparations were really silly.

>that feel when I did this and succeeded
>never even occurred to me what a stupid this idea was until now
Everything just went perfectly.

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHHA

AHAHHAHAHA

AHAHAH

haha

ha.......

>I actually typed the words "that feel when"
Holy hell am I tired: I'm turning into a retard or something. Nap time.

Not my fuckup, but a rookie mistake by the DM nonetheless:

>level 3, outside some baddies' cave base. the doors are like 10ft high and wide
>ask if I can just Acid Splash the lock away since we don't have anyone with lockpicking skills
>"uhh no, the doors are adamantine!"
>work out the value, burn all my spell slots on various acid spells to etch out the hinges from the rock
>steal doors, sell doors for obscene amounts of money

I think we ended up with something like 25k per person even after the wholesale discount. DM just sorta called the game a couple sessions later because everyone was too well equipped for him to cope.

>First session as DM
>Players decide to pour oil on a bad guy and set it on fire
>Have no idea how much damage to do
>uhhh 2d6 with a 15' radius?
>Wiped out an entire battle in 2 rounds
>Molotov cocktails become the party's new modus operandi
>Start giving enemies a Dex Save vs half damage, but my encounters are still getting slaughtered quickly if not instantly
>Party goes back to town to stock up
>Tell them the town's general goods store only has 2 vials of oil left
>They go to the temple
>Uhh 2 more vials. Nothing else in town.
>"That's okay, we'll just travel to the big city and stock up."
>ohgodwhathaveidone.jpeg

Fuckin molotov's probably inflicted 75% of all damage that campaign. I had no idea how to deal with it.

>everyone picks clerics and paladins
>"I fucking told you guys you were supposed to play demons!"

>GM plans one last hurrah campaign before he has to move away
>For the first time the party is going to include GM's Dad, who's been playing since Chainmail was new.
>The town is being attacked by aggravated dead who keep rising from the local cemetery
>Turns out a pissed off Lich raised an army of the town's brightest and best heroes/nobles of old and pressganged them into doing his bidding
>We have to spelunk a 30-floor mausoleum and defeat them so they can be at rest
>Five minutes into the first encounter
>GMDad: "Wait, I'm a Cleric, I cast Remove Curse"
>GM: .... *rolls behind screen* "The King's Son who died of plague stops trying to fight you, thanking you for stopping his awful servitude."
>Two in game weeks later and the party is sleeping on piles of gold, wenches, and ale while the town's bards are writing epics in our name because of all the tragically lost heroes we are returning to life or releasing to asgard, while the GM frustratedly attempts to give the curses progressively higher Will Checks.

Actually, the father of the victim had already gotten a priest to cast SWD on the body. That's how they know she was killed by a werewolf.

Thankfully, It was late enough to call the session right before I reached that point.

I think I'll give up trying to make the initial investigation difficult and then focus on finding the one who afflicted the killer with lycanthropy in the first place. He never got bitten, so the other possibilities include poisoning with werewolf blood or a good old-fashioned malediction.

I did a similar thing, with a bombing campaign (explosive runes in D&D by anonymous letter).

It worked because I kept the PCs literally running from scene to scene catching up, they had no time to really overthink things.

Speed is key to high-improv games.

"I don't know who killed me, I only heard a teleportation sound and someone whispering in my ear :"Pssh, nothing personnel, kid""

Agreeing to DM

have them fall into debt and repo there stuff then have a adventure of them getting there debt clear to get there stuff back

>Playing Pathfinder on roll20
>Game dies in two sessions since nobody fucking shows up.

More like
>Imagine you're going to a boxing match. Then, you buddy tells you before-hand that your opponent has a killer left hook. So, you practise whatever it is you'd do to mitigate or avoid a left hook which I don't know because I don't know a fucking thing about boxing

Or,
>"Hey we're going to have the party on the beach tomorrow at noon."
So you bring board shorts, flip flops and sunscreen with you instead of a heavy snow parka.

Yeah I like yours better.

If you do this please provide greentext afterwards. I'm building a one shot where the PCs play as any core non-caster class as repomen. Most will have a meaningful emotional choice which sidesteps combat so I don't kill off the party because lel no caster. I'd love to make this an encounter for fun, no story, just straight up rival party combat.

This is one of the PCs, feel free to use it as a repoman and if you want the rest just ask.

The town is under attack by fire giants when the players arrive. Angry at the human apathy towards the great gift of fire they decided to make humans respect their gift by burning their towns to the ground. This town also happens to be a major pitch producer in the region and the central store is lit on fire in the battle.

Molotovs will not work on fire giants, but a fire giant would crush them regardless if 2d6 damage is a problem. I'd suggest having guardsmen deal with the fire giants and hook the PCs in to sneaky breekiness by planting the idea that the town is lost but you can still save the babies from burning buildings. Side quest, eliminate the fire giant threat. Fire giants are a recurring enemy throughout the campaign and oil is in short supply until they are eliminated.

Alternatively just wait it out. 2d6 fire damage is not a big deal at level 3.

There is a list in the DMG that explains how to deal with different levels for starting games broken down into three levels of how magical the setting is (5 level and on in a high magical setting allows you an uncommon magical item).

>Okay, so your enemies planned an ambush for you in the forest, but in case you survived, most of them retreated to a farm house to the south.
>As you approach, you see they've heavily fortified the north side of the property.
>Can we go around to the other side and attack from the south?
>Well, yeah, you could, but the property is really big and that would take a really long time.
>So? We have no reason to hurry.
>Oh. Yeah.

Also pic related from the same session

I just throw a combat encounter at them whenever I feel like I'm mentally swamped and need to figure shit out.

The fix would be the demons belong to an evil trickster god and the party has to deal with a shit load of traps.
If a pc dies at the end of a session they will make a rogue for the next one. Then have the demons try and fuck with the rogue just enough that the clerics and paladins will have to stay vigilant in protecting their incredibly value skill monkey

>Second sessions of first ever campaign I thought up myself
>Think it would be cool and intimidating to have party fight a big bunch of guys
>PCs chasing bankrobbers
>Lure them into an ambush in the basement of a pub where 20 guys are waiting for them
>Occasional misses included, it takes the party like 15 turns of one-shotting mooks
>I'm losing track of innitiative allover

My friends are nice and say they didnt mind it but I consider it a lesson learned.

DMPT of the day: have all your mooks of one type move on the same initiative roll so instead of 20 values you have 3. When moving mooks always start from one side of the board to the other, and always the same sides so it's fair to players. When you move a mook mark it so you know it moved and continue with the leftmost unmarked mook.

Also you could break it up in to waves, which are still powerful but really keep the in game rolls manageable. Allows for interesting tactics too like having waves move to encircle the party and taking AoOs on them when they get too close.

This also adds huge tactical choices on your part allowing you to balance the encounter. Is the rabble chiefly a peasant mob? Well they don't get AoOs, they don't always see the best position to block off in a battle, they don't use any wave tactics and just rush in wave after wave giving the PCs time to heal between waves. Then a really well trained special ops ranger seals praetorian guard unit might have a wave step in to engage the front, dragging the martials in front of the caster, then they step out with a withdraw action and the other side comes in with a charge action to mow down the caster. In a straight up fight the elite guys would do things like fight down to 70%, step out and let another wave come in while they heal up and so on.

Don't ever make your PCs fight 2 waves at once though. It sounds interesting but unless you have solid choke points their buffer is going to die.

Missing out on arcane magics* and a traps expert is a bit foolish, but why the hell WOULDN'T an organised group of divine servants be sent to deal with some big demonic shit popping up?

*mythic theurge would be good.

>The problem was that he was necessary for certain other endeavors that the players wanted to get up to, and having him wander off on some undead destroying crusade would have left them in a bit of a lurch.
They are still his friends and he's willing to stick to the plans they've made together.

And really all you'd need is rather than "no undead appear anywhere" you should've went "oh there's some more undead, we can timeskip while Silvers squashes them" - the amount of effort is about equal on your part, but it lets the players actions have impact.

Depending on your style this may not be as bad as you seem to think. If you didn't tell them, as soon as one of them died and had to reroll he'd probably become a Cleric or Paladin and then one player would be noticeably better off in most fights. As is, they're all at an advantage, so just up the difficulty of the fights a little.

I've got a better one for you.

>try to run a murder mystery
>cleric revives the victim
>party disguises him as a hot cougar to toss his murderer off the trail

There went my night of serious murder mystery-ing...

Look mate it's either
>the dungeon is time-sensitive and they can't have time to take a rest
>it isn't and you should just fucking let them

>tell everyone we're gonna be running a political intrigue campaign
>everyone picks characters who are good at diplomacy

What's wrong with this?

This is when you make your session into Game of Thrones and have the PCs start stabbing eachother in the back.

My personal hell.

>Group of inexperienced roleplayers
>Only game they ever played was a fairly hardcore PF game
>Core only, low Magic item occurrence, lowest point buy, slowest exp track, etc.
>Breaks up after a dozen sessions or so
>Horizon broadening time!
>Try to talk them into anything but 3.PF if they want me to be their new forever DM
>Hard no. They want PF and they want it EPIC
>After months of craving any pnp at all, come up with a devious plan.
>FINE! Have everything you want and see how fucking lame it is.
>PF, Epic Point Buy, all Paizo anything allowed, write your own edgy king shit of fuck hill backstory, whatevs.
>They're basically various flavors of Superman but crazy animal races
>Steamroll creatures twice their CR, roll their way out of any and all actual RP, "I roll int to solve the puzzle, LETS GET MOVING"
>They love it. Hard.
>They think PF is gods dick with peanut butter cum.
>I suggest something more Sci-Fi next, the response is "Dude! There's some AMAZING spaceship conversions for PF! It can do anything!

And now for the punchline: Their my friends and family, so fucking leaving is a no go.

On the upside, my Noose Tying and Wrist Razor Smithing skills are coming along nicely.

Yes, I actually plan to give the PCs a bunch of mooks to fight with them as they're gonna do whats basically a police riot and I had already planned to do a lot of what you talked about.

>Throw about random clues
>Take inspiration from the guesses the party makes
>When their conclusion is interesting enough make it "canon"

They felt so smart I couldn't bring myself to tell them it wasn't premeditated.

On the one hand, at least you can run a game where all your players are having a blast...

On the other, I know all too well what it's like to have players who disappoint you on every level and I only have to put up with one or two of them in a group that's otherwise kinda okay!

Are fire-resistant/fire-loving monsters not a part of your setting? Have them run into a nest of Salamanders, see how much use their molotovs are then.

>Tells players that we're going to be crusading. Going full Deus Vult!
>2 of the 5 players make a holy class, the others don't really care.
>Going up against an empire of demons
>Start having moral conundrums whenever I show a bit of nuance.
>have to throw in an irredeemable artifact of slaughter to get them focused

I just don't know..

you did the right thing, morally grey gets boring, most players love having straight up bad guys.

What's wrong with that?

Good shit would read again

This

That fucking filename, wtf

telling players the DC on accident
letting players run wild, with no consiquences
poorly built encounters
over powered magic items
reoccurring villains that arent actually that intelligent because the group is better at the game than you.

>want to force my fetish in a subtle way
>players find out and beat me up

Fuck.

> Be 3.5
> My first time as DM
> Yeah I'm gunna run an evil capaign
> Yeah you can play any level adjusted race

> Play Traveller
> They ask if their chargen retirement armor can be that 10DR armor against lasers
> SureWhyNot?.jpg
> Read the rules on stacking armor
> Laser weaponry is absent the entire game

I have a story about this:
>GMing a homebrew SciFi campaign in GURPS
>Around the year 211x EU and China are the two superpowers of the world
>The four players are all sent from different branches of the corrupt EU government. The branches doesn't always get along.
>They have been given control over the first FTL ship ever created and have gotten the mission to explore nearby star systems
>The first part of the campaign is all about getting to the edge of the solar system, and there are several adventures on different human colonies
>On the last adventure they left a doomed colony just in time to survive. On this adventure they had used an untrustworthy contact.
>This contact doesn't know about the nature of the mission or the ship. But he does know that the colony is doomed and that the players will probably be the last people leaving. So naturally he sneaks on.
>For several reasons the players realise that this is the last time they could actually land, so placing the contact on another colony is out of the question. After a heated discussion they decide to leave him on, but only allow him in certain rooms and not let him in on what the mission is about.
>Since it's time for the first test of the Warp Drive they shelf it as a problem to deal with in the future.
>Now I try to encourage improvisation and world building from the players while we're playing and they hit a skill check failure when using the FTL drives the first time. This prompts a short discussion about what should happen.
>One player comes up with the idea that the characters blacks out during the journey. So while the Warp travel takes a few hours, they don't experience it at all, just suddenly waking up where they ended up at the end of the journey.
>We decide that this is a side effect of the primitive Warp Drive, and something they'll have to deal with in the future too.

>Now I've been playing the contact during this time. He didn't really notice the first jump, but he has been doing his best to gain some leverage.
>He managed to dig up some shit on the ships technician and promptly sends an email to him, telling him about what the contact knows and asking questions about the mission, the ship and the crew as well as wanting to get dropped off.
>The Technician is a character that the rest of the crew doesn't really trust (for several reasons, but that's another story)
>The player leans back in his chair and zones out for a few minutes, working on his master plan
>The rest of the players do their shit, prepping for another "jump" that evening. The Technician isn't really in on this, occupied with thinking.
>The player playing the Technician wants to talk to me one to one, so we go to another room and he goes to talk to the contact.
>After a bit the Technician walks down to the contact and tells him the "truth" (rolling well on bluff). After that the Technician tells him a bit of a sob story of how the rest of the party can't know about the compromising information and that he can't just let the contact of the ship for no reason.
>So he presents his plan: They are to pass by Mars this night (Another successful bluff roll) and together they will sneak to the hangar. The Technician will give the contact a shuttle which he can drive down to Mars and they'll split for good.
>The Technician also plants a sleep gas grenade in the shuttle.
>Now the game continues for a bit with the other players doing their shit. When they're about to jump everyone is on the bridge except for the Technician who is in the engine room. The rest of the crew activates the FTL without warning the Technician.

>So with a huge shit eating grin I look at my players and say "So you wake back up on the bridge. You can quickly read of the monitors that the journey has taken a few days."
>The Technician says "Oh shit" and pulls me out again to tell me all parts of the master plan.
>Turns out he would've dropped the gas grenade in his own room before the contact came over. Using a hidden gas mask to fake out. If this didn't work he would've taken him down to the shuttle and tried again. If this didn't work he would've shot. He didn't really want to lose one of their two shuttles.
>I write that shit down and rolled maybe 8 or 10 dice rolls to decide what happened during these day. The first plan failed and the contact turned violent, prompting the Technician to shoot him. When the rest of the characters came down to investigate the Technician managed to convice them he was innocent and together they carried the corps to a decomposer.
>The players knew nothing of this and woke up to some blood on some clothes, causing alarm. The non-Technician crew were especially alarmed.
>When they climbed down they saw a trail of blood from someone dragging a body.
>A few rolls and investigation of the ship taught them that: The contact had been all but decomposed, he was killed with a bullet to the head in the Technicians quarters, at least two people would've had to pull the body and some other shit I don't remember.
>This turns into a huge drama between the characters with the Doctor wanting the Technician to be arrested, the Technician wanting the same the Doctor (Since his plan didn't go at all as planned and the body was decomposing in the medlabs decomposer).
>The Doctor and the Technician is getting more and more heated while the Captain tries to meddle. Meanwhile the scientist, who is the only one not having any evidence pointing her way has locked herself on the bridge "Until things calm down".

>After slowly putting together piece by piece of what happened, learning exactly how the murder happened and that the Technician probably did it they finally get the idea to check the cameras.
>After yet another long discussion they finally get to the conclusion that the Technician should not be executed or put in the brig (Much to the dismay of the doctor).
>They see exactly what happened. The Doctor is a bit pissed, thinking that he would never have acted like that. (Funnily he was mostly upset that they didn't use the incinerator).
>He reasoned that the blackout must be acting intoxicating.
>And that's how my players came to always tie themselves down before using the Warp Drive.

I did that with a ghost island and a lich lady, I jumped on accidental foreshadowing when they were reading the stockpile and found only dusty arrows and empty containers. Despite it being a supposed trade stop.

That sounds like a fairly epic game.