*Facing Consequences* -- One of my most treasured gaming moments in one of Seth's games was the time we decided to use a golem to pull us over a lake of lava. The lake was 50 feet below us and, between us and the other side, there were these little islands in the middle (each just a few feet across) that poked up to the same height as us. Clearly, we were meant to attempt to cross this lake, but many of us didn't even remotely have the amount dexterity that would have been required to make it. The solution we finally agreed upon was that our most dexterous character would make the trip. He would then cast a golem on the opposite side. The player would then order the golem to take one end of the rope, leave the golem there and then make the trip back with the other end. Our spell-caster would then cast a magical box around the party (sorry, I don't remember the name of the spell... I lean towards playing archers... and idiots... often simultaneously). Anyway, with the rope securely attached to the top of the box, and all of us *totally impervious* to anything damaging us from the outside, the idea was simple... the golem would "safely" drag us across the lake and we would all arrive chipper, fresh and (most importantly) completely unmolested on the other side. We felt like geniuses... Seth was utterly emotionless. The order was shouted for the golem to begin its simple task. On the very first pull, our cage fell over and we tumbled about within it. A wry smile appeared on Seth's face as he immediately asked us to all role for damage, we of course complied but, I mean... no big deal... the cage had only fallen on its side... how big could the damage be from something as minor as... (!!!) *[the golem tugged on the rope for the second time, and the box inched forward]...* I think the thought dawned on all of us at nearly the exact same time, and then one of us (still in character) spoke it aloud as he commented to another player, _"Sir... uh... it has occurred to me that... we may have overlooked one... very serious..."_ *[the golem tugged on the rope for the third time, and the box inched forward]...* The precipice. Yes, we were completely protected from any of the outside elements... but falling 50 feet is exactly the same when you slam into each other, or the inner walls of your "impervious magical box" than if there were no box at all. We were now one tug away from the edge... we were all potentially about to die... and yet I've never seen a group of people (GM obviously included) more gleeful to watch the disaster that was about to unfold. We were already picking up our dice on the off chance that Seth would allow us some sort of saving throw as the golem pulled on the rope for the fourth time. We felt like such "geniuses"... ... it was glorious.
@@mattpace1026 I can see your logic, but the box didn't protect them from inside forces, only outside. It was mainly them slamming into the box and each other. Think of it less like a plane, and more of if you got a box of fragile, glass objects and shook them around, or dropped the box.
@@mattpace1026 -- As.... [underscore] said. It was us slamming into the side of the box and each other that did the damage. Seth is very, very practical. If it's something that would be a concern in the real world, like gravity, it's something that would be a concern in the fantasy world (hence why it's a really, really bad idea to shoot a fireball in a hallway, when you're also in that same hallway... just because the description says that explosion is only going to be so many feet in diameter... that number is going to get pushed way out if that explosion is being restricted by stone walls). During another game, we searched for the big bad all through a dungeon and finally found him in a room, with a couple of henchmen. After drawing it out, Seth asked us our intentions... I was the first to go and I said I was going to run, in the opposite direction. Everyone looked at me like I was crazy, and then stated they were stepping in to take him on... then we got to the player I was most concerned about (he is his biggest spell or biggest weapon). Give him a fireball, and he's opening up with fireball, every... single... time... After Seth drew out the room I realized it wasn't big enough for the diameter of the fireball, meaning it was going to blast back up the hallway we were standing in. I beat Mr Fireball's initiative and I was the only party member who didn't take damage.
@Matt Pace - Yes, the G-forces would be too great in a plane... If the plane accelerated from 0 to top speed instantly. Because it's soft acceleration over time, you only suffer a fraction of the G's. Regarding the box; A falling object increases it's speed with 9,82 meters (aprox. 30 feet) per second for every second it falls. A rough estimate gives us a fall time of 1.8 seconds and a speed of 18m/second, which is the equivalent of being hit by a car going 40mph!
If a player bothered to tell me they can't make it to a session, I would be falling over myself to thank them for being so considerate, and holding them up as an example for others to follow! I'm used to people not even bothering to come up with an excuse!
notoriouswhitemoth I got tired of a consistent flake player. Always no notice. I drew the line when he told me, day of, he would be able to make it, and then bailed with no response. His excuses were always vague and I would have been fine if he was upfront. Decided to stop inviting him to games.
If you run on Roll 20 you're bound to get zero notice...I don't begrudge the players because life does happen, but sometimes it's like do you want to play or not? So many players sign up for a campaign and then never make it past the character creation phase. I've never found it to happen as much in real life.
Consistency is always a problem with D&D, but your players should absolutely tell you if they can't make it; we have a group chat were we plan our next meet-up (which is typically bi-weekly with some irregularity), and none of us are amazing at communicating, but if one of my players didn't show up for a session, and did so without telling us that they couldn't make it, I would be quite annoyed. First time would be a warning, second time the boot. Don't stand for your players giving you the run around: It is an insult to you and the effort that you go to crafting an adventure for them; if they can't respond to that we the slightest bit of respect (and I would consider it a bare minimum) then you need to talk to them and if they still don't respect it you should kick them out of the group. You are not their servant, and they are not yours; everyone should have fun, everyone should respect each other and the time we put into this hobby. No two ways about it.
Life happens and people will have to miss sometimes. My issue is that doesn't excuse shitty behavior or disrespect. Not showing up to anything you committed to without communication or valid reason is incredibly disrespectful to the time and effort that the GM and the other players have put into the game.
I thought of a Game Master sin, but it might be a variation of the "Obvious Object." It's "Don't let the player do something his CHARACTER would know is stupid." I've seen DM's punish their players for making a decision that their character class should have been familiar with. Examples below: Here's an example. We were playing Rogue Trader and I was the pilot of a ship that was docked. Our team was locked out of the hanger, so I told the GM that I was going to shoot the door open with the ship's guns. The DM described the ship firing a blast so large that the entire hanger blew up. The idea being that "the guns on the ship are huge." That is something a PILOT IN THE 40K UNIVERSE would have known... even though, as a player, I didn't know the guns were that big. Another example. It was a Star Wars campaign and the party was on a space ship. One of the players who specialized in tech wanted to hack the ship's computers. He opened a panel in the wall and asked the GM: "are their wires in the wall?" The GM said yes. "I connect to the wires!" The GM told him his data pad fried and he took damage from connecting to power cables. The next part is what made me mad. The player said "wouldn't my character have known that these were power cables and not a data stream?" and the GM literally said "yes, wouldn't you have?!" That's not fair! I hate these kind of GMs. If you know something about the world that everyone in that world should know... TELL THEM! Don't let them do something stupid because they didn't know the lore. It's okay to cut them off BEFORE they make a mistake.
i once played someone from a gang (in some warhammer setting), we got into a fight in a bar with a gang. they shot at all of us, all of us at them. at some point, another player just rolled a die to determine what gang that was. it was the gang that i was part of. like, wtf. as if my character would not have realised that at the first instance. which is also one reason why i did not even think about rolling that die in order to realise it...
I think you phrased it wrong. It's not don't let them it's warn them not to. Like that 40k setting, the GM should have said beforehand they were massive and if you still wanted to, let them.
This is a highly underrated comment. I'm GMing for the first time in a Cyberpunk Red game and I was trying to find a way to balance character knowledge vs player knowledge and this really helps.
#3: Not Reading The Room. So, one time there was a D&D game at my apartment. (I was not the DM by the way). My roommate was in the kitchen starting to work on brewing a batch of mead. One by one people drifted into the kitchen. We got to a point where all of the players were in the kitchen literally watching water boil. Don't let this happen to you.
The throw a bone point made me think of one of the things Call of Cthulhu and some other games say about failing rolls like search or sneak, etc: if you fail the roll, you don't actually fail to do what you wanted (ie, find the secret door, sneak into the guardhouse, etc), it just takes you longer than expected, or there are unexpected complications to your subsequent actions. A failed roll doesn't need to grind things to a halt.
It isn't always rolls, however. If the obstacle is something like, "They need to talk to the guy in the lighthouse" but they never bother going to the lighthouse because they're talking to everyone else, or missed the hint, no Taking 20 or whatever is going to fix that. Some systems, like Call of Cthulhu, incorporate the Idea Roll, where a GM can put things back on track, but the problem is that it's a roll that announces, "You guys messed up. Let's fix it." Throwing a bone would mean either having the guy in the lighthouse walks into town for groceries and a beer and they bump into him there, or someone in the town says, "Oh, you should talk to my uncle in the lighthouse," or someone else in town now has the information to give as if they were the lighthouse keeper. There's no announcement that a mistake was made. The game simply adjusts around them and keeps going like nothing wrong happened. I keep Idea Rolls for those times we just can't adjust the game without announcing it, either because of a unique situation or when my brain just isn't coming up with a smooth solution fast enough.
This reminds me of a thing I saw in a rules-light game whose spirit can be taken even into crunchier games; the rule was "if nothing interesting would happen if the player were to fail the roll, then don't make them roll." While you obviously can't have players succeed at everything they try, the thing to take to heart is that *something* should happen as the result of the majority of rolls, good or bad.
@@ZvelHaj I think it's FATE Core that has a rule/guideline/whatever of "Say yes or roll the dice". In other words, don't make them roll for something that should be a gimme.
in terms of searching for traps, the only time it's an automatic failure is on a 1. if the trap DCs are 25 for 3 traps in the room and the best roll they get is a 19, i'll let them find 2 of the traps, but they miss the 3rd. sometimes a failed roll has to be a failed roll. as seth kinda points out, sometimes you need to just change the game or lower a difficulty just to keep the game moving.
@JoeRingo118 In all fairness - if there is no time pressure, then there's hardly a reason to roll at all. Only if you speculate on a fumbled roll or something. If you search for certain informations in the local newspaper archieves you eventually find them as long as they are there. If you want to repair the ship stranded on the asteroid you will get it back to fly eventually, even if you have to canibalise some less important systems to get the spare parts. It's another thing if the archive is on fire or the asteroid is one of those ship-devouring monstrosities from Star Wars...
I've gotta admit; I'm an inveterate loot fairy. Normally, I can easily adjust the CRs of my plot to compensate for my compulsive need to make it rain on my players, but I recently ran a session of Mutants & Masterminds (Marvel setting) where I dumped far to many XPs (power points) on my players for one encounter. Luckily, I owned my mistake, outright telling my players that I fucked up, though I didn't want to withdraw their rewards (it seems unfair for them to pay for my carelessness). Hopefully I'll take this lesson to heart (after 23 years as a GM, it's about time, right?). Also, love the skits, man. Great video!
one gm sin that I've seen is "being too real". it should be remembered that this is a fictional world. a gm does not need to figure out all the physics of how a trap works or the time it would take for a potion to hit the blood stream and take effect. the goal is to have fun, not have a science or math class.
I used to have this one player back in college who would grill me on weird specifics. Like a trap would go off and he'd say, "I want to study this and learn how it works." Then he'd start asking very specific questions about the counter balance systems of a dart trap or something and when he managed to get me into a corner he would pout because is just wasn't 100% realistic. Or he'd start digging into the economics and trade routs of random region they were just passing through and once he could poke a hole would become all pouty and make me feel like some worthless GM. Only later did I realize it was some passive-aggressive bullshit he did to intentionally set himself up for disappointment and others for failure. He was a great roleplayer. One of the best I've seen. But when he decided he wanted to make himself and everyone else miserable, he wouldn't hesitate.
Suspension of disbelief can be weird tho. I can believe Batman can fight super villains, go to outer space in his own mech suit but for some reason Gotham having a civil war between villains that the local police and military were incapable of dealing with was somehow too much for me to accept. The answer is always; It's Magic!
Super old comment lol But I wonder how Seth preps his skits Maybe just reaches for a random game? Honestly would love an explanation on his script process
I enjoy all of what you're doing in your videos. On "reading the room", a concept that might help is to classify your players as one of these three archetypes; The Wrench, the Gun, and The Walkie-Talkie. "Wrenches" are people like doctors, engineers, mechanics, magicians, pilots, farmers, chefs, thieves, blacksmiths - they build, they repair, they manipulate materials, they lay their hands on something. "Guns" are what they sound like: pure combatants. Warriors. Guards. Soldiers. Weapons operators. Brawlers. Hunters. Assassins. "Walkie talkies" are administrators, scholars, scientists, clerics, bards, lawyers, officers, leaders, merchants, academics, diplomats, salesmen, secret agents, cops. Maybe not realtors, depends on the game. They work indirectly thru the other two types to do/get what they need, they use words and ideas and are knowledge workers. A balanced game party has enough of all of three types in it. A party that's all one type is very limited and usually boring. When making NPC's this can also come in handy as a quick way to sketch out how they will react to situations, without scripting anything. The point of this is to say; if player one likes being a wrench and that's their character, they need wrenchie-things to do in the game from time to time to be happy and feel they get something out of it. Doesn't mean they do wrench stuff excslusively though, and the real fun begins when the archtypes have to work in one of the other two milieus. Like a Gun character who only fights, has to suddenly be a diplomat or a healer or a lawyer. Or a "wrench" engineer has to fight. An Engineer might not fight like a dedicated gunfighter: she might instead manipulate the ship's grav fields to ping-pong the bad guys between the deck and ceiling until they are pudding, or override an airlock and blow them out into space. The Walkie Talkie might fight by bribing you to leave him alone, or hiring a merc or assassin or thug, or fight you indirectly by planting rumors, messing with your credit, manipulating situations to get you into trouble thru the law or whatever. A walkie talkie can't fix your Jump Drive but will know who to get and where to get them. They are also your "face men" when you need to con someone, fast-talk them, whatever. Keeping each archetype player "fed" from time to time with Tasks related to their specialties satisfies their basic participation needs, then making them work "across type" makes for the fun and memories. You need all the types for successful gaming, and identifying their type gives you a handle on what would be fun to challenge them with.
0:52 #7 Loot Fairy 2:34 #6 Obvious Object 4:35 #5 Not Throwing A Bone 7:27 #4 Favoritism 9:55 #3 Not Reading The Room 12:21 #2 No Consequences 14:49 #1 Forgetting That Life Happens
Yeah, I'm bad for reading the room. Confession time (spoilers for OotA): Out of the abyss, final boss fight with Demogorgon, the party struggling to handle a demon Lord 10 levels over them. The rogue managed to grab the wand of orcus and strides in gloriously with an army of undead drow at his heels. Demogorgon sees a little mortal meatbag walk up holding the greatest weapon of his rival, uses that dominate person gaze to have the rogue wield the wand against the party, planning on taking it for his own after the party was dead. That rogue, with a wisdom save of +1, wasn't able to make those DC 23 saves, and the fight was drawing to a close before it dawned on me that he had controlled his character for all of one round that fight. I was so swept up by this against-the-odds epic level boss fight that I never realized, among all those players having the time of their lives fighting a worldending demon, one of them was sitting there waiting for me to tell him what his character did that turn. Not my proudest DMing moment, to be sure.
Usually if I "mind control" a PC, I let them do the heavy lifting of deciding what their character actually does with some guidelines from me, it seems to work and people seem to have fun with it regardless, though you do have to have players who aren't going to hold a grudge over it if they're attacked in this way. ( and I have had people who would, silly as it is ). In such a case I would still have them make some decisions but I would tell them who they are going to attack that round, or if multiple options make sense, I'll roll for it, randomly assigning numbers to potential targets. That way said salty susan can't hold it against the mind controlled player if they get hit.
Yeah, I'm *very* leery of mind-controlling my PCs. For me it's a question of why they come to my game, and they come in order to play. If I mind-control them then they aren't playing their character and I am. For something like dominate person, unless I'm mistaken, you can only give very simple commands, so give those to the player and let them interpret what their character would do with the overhead of wanting to fulfil that command as spoken.
I was once mindcontrolled and even though that GM was horrible in almost any other way, he just told me: You're dominated. The creature tells you to fight your allies with all your might. You decide the rest. I almost killed a guy when I unloaded my most powerful spell on him.
@@royal9743 I think that's the best way to do it. Still have to be a little bit careful as by having PCs fighting PCs you can no longer fudge die rolls to keep players alive if the dice are being a little-one-sided but, depending on the group, I can see your situation as either being pretty funny or super dramatic, either of which is really good.
I was a vampire hunter with the innate power to just feel vampires if they were close (feat) and another player thought it was a good idea to bring a vampire in. We were in a mansion of a powerful wizard who forbade any kind of violence in his house when this happened. Then the encounter began and I got dominated, so I of course targeted the vampire. Almost killed him too. He died the session after that anyway because he tried to dominate a Hobgoblin Matriarch wih who we already made a deal with and made her agressive. Seeing the only way to salvage that situation I burned the vampire-pc in front of her eyes and then burned the coffin. Don't worry, the player was a dick anyway. What I'm trying to say: I fucking loved the opportunity and nobody at the table would've been sad. (except maybe for the DM. The dick player was his favourite. Like I said, he was a horrible DM in any other aspect.)
I don't think I'm a Loot Fairy DM, but I was really caught off guard when one day the 5th level wizard in my party announced that she had 11 magic items. I'm, like, wait, what? Is that counting the potions and scrolls you've found? Nope. It turns out it was largely due two main things: 1. I'd been giving out a bunch of "common" magic items. Little technically magical do-dads that don't do much. For example, there was a tiny orb that functions as a compass, and a hat that sometimes lets you cast cantrips (with a skill check). Not super powerful items, but technically magical. 2. Often times when the party was finding magic items, they'd hand them over to the wizard to be identified, and if nobody wanted it, then the wizard would just hoard it. The wizard was also carrying the Bag of Holding, so there were a number of magic items being kept in there.
Over how long though of a campaign? 11 items, not counting scrolls, isn't terrible if you're counting those little do-dads you mentioned or if 4 players all have +1 weapons.
@@tiatrips It was surprising because the PCs were only around level 5 or 6. And that wasn't just magic items among the party. It was only counting things the wizard had.
I just had a game where I avoided #3. Created a challenge where the players were in a cave to fight kobolds, but found an underground river they could use to get behind them and grant them the element of surprise. To traverse the river, I created my own special rules for the occasion. Things were going only somewhat well. They made progress as well as taking some damage when they rolled poorly. However, things were beginning to drag and I could tell the table was beginning to get agitated as well as bored. Thankfully, they had round the last bend of the rapids bit and I decided to play it as a short cut scene that cuts to black and reopens with them coughing up water and reaching shore at the end. MY sin here that I realized is that I should've playtested my own creation before using it on the players.
I have a similar issue where sometimes I do manage to improv my way to something pretty decent when the player goes beyond what I've premade but then completely forget to write it down so that when it comes up again, I'm screwed.
PhyreI3ird I’ve done this so much, I had to find a solution. I forget which DM UA-camr suggested it, but in my new campaign I gave the PCs a patron who demanded written logs, samples, rubbings, etc of every scenario. When they returned, I’ve made it clear thru the patron, “You’ve told me so much, but where are your logs, your samples, anything as proof of your stories. I’m sorry, but I will only pay you for these that you have provided me proof.” Logs are improving, since the work is shared across all the players & I.
Quick tip: during downtime, make a list of names. Keep it on hand during a game. Then, when the players inevitably befriend Random Merchant #14, glance at the list and use one of the names, and male a note beside it who that NPC is.
Yes. This. Exactly. Up to not remembering the name of the made-on-the-fly NPC from the last session. You know that beared dude with the fur cap. That hunter guy. Let's... let's call him Dimitri...
I’m making my first foray into being a GM and, although I won’t be able to play for some time as my group already has 3 games going on, these videos give me SO much more confidence going forward. It’s all such good advice. Thanks so much Seth. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your stuff.
Not only will you have tons of fun running your game, but I’m willing to bet your current gm will enjoy playing. Sounds like you have a group where you may have multiple gms if you already have a couple games going on. It’s a great formula to prevent gm burnout.
ddesouz6 We do. One who’s DMed our first game (it was his first time and it was a lot of fun) and we found another later who has done much more. So, with both of them, these videos, and my own love of studying mechanics, it should be interesting.
This is one where I could see it being acceptable, depending on what the player said. If they said something like “I check the walls looking for a trap or sign of a hidden passage”, then an answer of “you don’t see anything where you are looking” is completely acceptable imo.
My rule as a DM is that if life gets in the way of gaming that week, have the decency to call and let me know. That way the rest of the group doesn’t end up wasting time waiting for you to show up and we can just continue the session without you.
"I was in a hostage situation!". I love these frigging videos. Please Seth don't ever stop. As a beginner Keeper you've taught me so much on how to keep my games fair and fun. Ran my first DC comic/CoC crosser game this past weekend with two players (Batman and John Constantine) and they had a blast! And your videos have already given me a good idea for the next case that they will NEVER see coming. Thank you for all the work you've put in to these videos. It has not gone unappreciated!
Here's one I'm guilty of...running the session too long. My friends dont always have the schedules to meet every week/month/etc. so i cram in as much as possible for as long as I can endure, when ending the session a few hours with an exciting cliffhanger prolly would have been better. Although this is something like not reading the room (mostly because we stream online), I am a new GM and trying to learn too...also i cant remember the points from the previous videos, sorry lol.
You start with "Loot Fairy", and I immediately see that I am exactly the opposite. My baddies only have the stuff on them that they need at that moment - a weapon or two, a bit of spare change maybe, and a bit of food. That's it. And abandoned ruins? Those have usually already been salvaged, so there's nothing of interest left.
A variation of the "Favoritism" sin are DMs that yield to demands of certain players (usually, but not always their spouses) because they fear that not letting them get that little bit extra benefit will result in them getting mad. I know that it's primarily a player sin, but I just wanted to mention it. Also to share a story. We once had that situation where our DM asked if his girlfriend can join our group since she wanted to get involved in his hobbies. She was new to roleplaying while we had been playing for almost 10 years, so of course we had to tone down a little to not overwhelm her, which was a little annoying but fine, everyone was a newbie once and she got the hang of it quite fast. Initially it was fine but then he started to break certain rules when it came to planning our next session. We had the rule that if 5 out of 6 could make a certain date, we would play and made the missing char catch up later. It was the only option to have a fairly regular schedule and we were all fine with it. However once she had joined the group our DM started to veto any date where his girlfriend couldn’t make it, despite him having time on that date, which means from playing about every other week we were down to playing less than once a month, since his girlfriend apparently had a pretty busy schedule. Things started to get ugly when she started to get annoyed or grumpy every time out DM attacked her. He was quite good at spreading damage out equally and in accord to the situation unless people almost demanded being hurt due to stupid playing and placement. However she still got mad when she got attacked about every 5th turn in a 5 player game, and it kind of got to our DM after a while, so he started to attack her less and less and if he did, he would miss her almost every time or do little to no damage. It was quite obvious. One event stuck out though: She was playing a wizard, so range attacks and very little armor to prevent or reduce damage in hand to hand combat. Yet she got so used to not being attacked that at one point she moved her char ahead of the fighter’s right in front of the big evil boss to get better coverage for an AoE spell. Knowing that EVERYONE would call him out if he didn’t attack her, our DM made the boss smacked her across the room and against a wall, not killing her but knocking her unconscious for most of the fight. This time she didn’t just grumble like usual but actually yelled at him, to which everyone responded that what she did was simply a stupid action and she basically offered her char to the boss asking to get hit. She was still mad but did shut up, but the mood was down for the rest of that session and we finished shortly after. The straw that broke the camel’s back was the very next session. She got us in some rule-discussion (deliberately in my opinion) and basically everyone agreed what the rule was (including the DM) while she refused to accept that, despite her interpretation not even make any sense except getting her char out of a bad situation she brought herself into. In the end our DM backed down and accepted her rule interpretation. We later called him out on that and he just told that he didn’t want to get in another big fight with his girlfriend like they did after the last session. Apparently she was so mad at him for attacking her that after the session she yelled at him for a couple of minutes and didn’t talk to him for almost a day. After hearing of that we voted unanimously to remove her from our group. We felt she was deliberately starting trouble to annoy us and that this was an issue, even though he didn’t agree. He wasn’t allowed to game with us after that because his girlfriend, as expected by us, forbid him to. They broke up a few month later. Apparently similar things happened with all groups she wanted to get introduced to. She just started trouble and annoy people so eventually they stopped inviting him in order to not having to deal with her, which was what she wanted to. We got back to gaming with him eventually and he apologized for being such an idiot and not realizing sooner what was going on. Sorry that got long, but I had the urge to share this.
LOL! Love the lame scenarios, Seth. Love the GM Sins series. Been guilty of every single one over the past 36 years, myself. Thanks for this series. Really well done, and on target. We all need a little reminding every once in a while. Cheers!
I’m right with you Seth on it being BS Dweebles “had to” miss the game because his stupid boss went and got his wife knocked up! That is HER problem, not too much of his boss’ concern and certainly not Dweebles’ or Seth’s!
@@mathunit1 I'd add, if you literally can deduct your dungeons, books and handouts from tax as it is your job, then it surely adds to your professionalism :D
Always have a one shot as a backup for when life happens. Ours are even in the same world so we don't have to worry about world-building or learning a bunch of new information. We each just have one simple character, and the one shot group can be moderated by any player who wants to step up to that role and give us a simple side-quest. ^_^
Nicely done. I especially liked the "No Consequences" part. I've seen too many games where the characters were never in any danger of anything bad happening to them. It seems like most of the online games on Twitch are like that, with DMs and GMs refusing to have consequences at all.
"And have some stupid skits!" Ha! I just discovered your channel and I love your skits. They're well thought out and fun. I feel like I'm at the table with you... and you, and you, and you 🙂
I can't believe I have been missing such great videos for, actually, years! Thank you Seth Skorkowsky! Your discussion of consequences reminded me of an incident in the first game I ran for my son and his 14 y/o friends. His character (only character in the group the had any knowledge of the arcane) was able to decipher the runes above a massive set of doors in the front a church in a low fantasy game. The runes were a warning! Skipping forward to that that night.....another of the characters (a thief) had "acquired" a dagger +1 by rolling a natural 20 while picking the pocket of an NPC that happened to have a dagger +1 on his belt! (and this was the first game the group had played together...). So, he gets the dagger and my son casts detect magic on it. Now, the method he derived to determine the dagger's special properties, was a bit unorthodox....but these ARE 14 year old boys.. The thief purchases 2 live chickens in town and proceeds to attack one of them and kills it. He attacks the second and rolls 1 under the helpless chicken's AC and hits. And I am starting to shake my head at the thief's luck. At which point my son's character has an idea beyond dinner for one of the feathered carcasses. "We go to the crutch!" Upon arriving, my son's character climbs the stairs, within throwing distance of the doors and chucks the chicken at the door. Luckily the character was outside of the full damage radius....so when I roll the 7d4 lightening damage (and I rolled pretty high!) from the trap for which the runes were a warning and divided that damage by half, then instructed my son to make a savings throw (he succeeded) and halving the damage again.....his 1st level character was reduced to exactly ZERO hit points! muhahahaha! As the large doors creak open, the thief bolts (which I thought was in character). The next day, this led to a little roleplay between the rest of the group and the priests within the church.....and I turned the situation into an opportunity to provide a "quest" that led them to another part of the adventure, which also would provide the payment for healing the not-so-smart character with the highest intelligence AND Wisdom in the group.
This is probably my favorite channel for table top rpgs. Ofc I like a lot of others, but I like your content and appreciate the time you take to make funny skits to make a point
Hey, Seth! Enjoyed this video like all the others! Don't know if you put it in your last video but I was kinda like the loot fairy during my Dark Heresy campaign but with exp. Dark Heresy was more free-form in giving exp than most other systems and could be spent on upgrades and traits/skills in between level ups which would unlock more traits and such when you level up. I gave WAY too much exp way too fast. It was mostly because I had a GMPC in the group and wanted to see him get stronger (a GMPC the players actually liked despite being a psychic blank) It didn't take too long before I toned it down lol. That campaign lasted a crap ton of sessions so much so the players were almost on the cusp of becoming Ascension level characters. And my friend enjoyed it so much he still maintains it's the best P&P campaign he's ever played.
For #1, I only ever became a loot fairy in once for a Christmas-themed game. It was near the end of the campaign, and I gave our rogue a luck dagger with a single charge. Before the final boss, he used the one wish to protect his friends, which gave everyone except him a +5 boost to AC and it led to a lot of emotions (in-character and positive). That was the end of my first campaign.
I always make sure to check on how my players are doing every couple of sessions. Ask them for critques on current plot threads and what not. It always helps me improve. But life does happen and I understand that too. The videos really help me make sure to check myself before I end up messing up my campaign. Thanks Seth :)
What I find weird is that while I certainly made many of those mistakes in the past, I don't do any of them anymore (except in some fluke sessions, we all have our bad moments. It's just that I feel that is hard going away from my specific style of GMing in spite of wanting to bramch out. My players have said that I run the most intense combat situations they've ever experienced in a game, it's always high stakes and it's always rewarding due to that. The roleplaying parts are also competent, but I just can't seem to stray away from solving most problems the players having with combat instead of actually giving them other methods most of the time, it's mostly on the players initiative to actively avoid combat and find alternative ways to solve it. I think I'll take your advice and actually read some modules with a different focus. Great video as always, Seth!
We all have a bad day when we either mess up as GM or fall into some bad habit we'd shaken years before. But it's definitely a good sign that you can say you don't do the sins anymore. Another method is to try a totally different game/system, even if it's just a side-game for a few sessions. If you do High Fantasy, try some modern-day or sci-fi, or something like that. If you switch to a different system, but in the same genre, the players might not play it different, even if the game mechanics are different. Changing games can totally shake it up and get them out of their comfort zone and evaluating problems in a new manner. Then you can go back to the regular game, while your players and you are in this new mindset, and they will play differently.
Hammond's harvesting handbooks are great for the loot fairy DM's in D&D as alot of it is monster parts for spells, potions and crafting gear. It means players can make use of any tools they have making their own gear and creates natural side adventures instead of just handing out random over powered items, keeping those for Mugginfin rewards for dungeon crawls or NPC payment rewards.
Just one thing to note when it comes to avoiding being a Loot Fairy: Make sure you know the game system you're running because a lot of people are far too stingy with loot and with some games that can mean that your campaign is set to Nightmare difficulty where even basic encounters will eventually be mathematically impossible to beat without some serious min maxing. Seriously, those recommended tables are the minimum you should give to each character. If you find it hard to give them loot then just give them money and access to a magic item shop and let them buy items that are up to couple of levels higher than their current level, which they usually can't afford unless they choose to ignore some important level appropriate items for the sake of just having a better weapon. Messing up that way is perfectly fine, let players make mistakes like that.
With information or clues, I apply a 123 rule, after people check the third time I either throw them s bone or shepherd them in a new direction for them to come back later if needed. It saves some time at least and gives some meat for later games.
One reason Call of Cthulhu is so good: the idea roll. The Keeper can first try their best to throw a bone in regular play.. but if it still isn’t helping and play is just getting bogged down, boom, ‘if you like, you can make an idea roll.’ CoC is such a great system.
I struggle with #6 in my current game, playing a post-post apocalyptic game were information and understanding of old technology and items (the stuff we have) is hard to come by, so describing items too much reveals it automatically, and the game really hammers home the comedic moments that come from misunderstanding an item or its use. It can be obscured on purpose to trick players, but also being upfront is good and we can trust the players to do what makes sense out of the perspective of the characters and not use metagaming knowledge. I try to do the former, but it's hard to not come across as needlessly obtuse. My players still talk about the time I described an umbrella in a Mad Max-esque game though years ago, so I guess it's not all bad!
Not reading the room. Guilty as charged. 12:06 hit me especially hard, so often my nose is buried so deep in notes, maps, rulebooks etc. that i forget to look at my friends who came over to play. I am trying to do better, or will when we are able to get together again.
One I've been guilty of is the Keeping It Real/Not Keeping It Real extremes. A couple examples would be playing alignment and carrying treasure. You can have unrealistic expectations about what a certain alignment means (thinking of AD&D here), and require too much adherence to it from your players. OR, you can pay no attention whatsoever to it and allow decisions and actions that a character of, say, Neutral-Good alignment would never do. When it comes to treasure, you could nitpick over every GP of weight the party is trying to carry back from an adventure, OR you could turn a blind eye to physics and reality, as four halflings transport 30,000 GP (plus items) a hundred miles on foot, and over mountains, to their hometown.
I love you, Scott Brown. All 21 of these are very on point. The bit at the end w/cancelling was priceless. The DM version of you just turned into the worst kinda human being on the phone. Lol. How about a vid on what appeals the various games you play (Cuberpunk, CoC, D&D, etc.) could have to players who may only play ONE of those games. I'm a hardcore D&D nerd because I love it, but I also wonder what those games might have that I can't already get from my go-to.
I once plaid LARP in Star Wars universe, and our GM "totaly forgot" to inform us that Sith Empire Fleet was caught on the radar. Yes, it was an honest mistake but we were informed about it with the following words " Oh, I just forgot to say that Sith Empire Fleet was caught on the radar a few minutes ago, and now they started the orbital bombardment." And after ours "WHAT?" He said, "So any last words?". And it was not even the worst thing in that particular game.
I may have committed a selfish act by canceling a session in order to see Endgame before the spoiler embargo ended. I also cancelled sessions before when the college students in my group had finals but that is more a courtesy thing.
Is really Not Reading The Room always a sin? I have a personal issue of concentrating on one thing I am doing, so much so that sometimes I do not notice what others say. Do not know if it is even overcome.
Regarding the Loot Fairy: Also be careful of giving the players abilities that allow them to craft their own loot. A party I played in for a very long campaign ended up with my character who was an alchemist, able to craft very powerful healing potions, poisons, antidotes and ACTUAL FANTASY NAPALM (It was glorious). Another character, through years of downtime and training, became a master dwarven smith, able to craft us all the top of the crop armors and weapons. Finally, the wizard of the party could create powerful magical artefacts like rings that allowed us to cast anything from detect magic to fireball to summoning a minor demon (those all had a limited amount of uses, but still) Granted, we all had an enormous amount of fun with these characters and played them for almost four and a half years, and this power level was very much earned through years of adventuring and experience. But in the last third, we did start to lose some of that sense of danger that was so exhilarating, because it was becoming very unlikely for any of us to actually die. Most ailments could quickly be healed with potions, and the DM was having to get very creative to throw things at us that could actually be a feasible threat. We did eventually add a few house rules to nerf some of the items, especially the healing potions (like for example making it impossible for an unconscious or dying character to be given these potions because they were, you know UNCONSCIOUS). This helped add back some of that sense of danger. The other thing the DM did was take the characters out lf their comfort zone by taking us on adventures where we couldn't get access to our equipment like the smithy or the labs, so we had to ration our stock. With these few tweaks, we added back that thrill of danger.
One game I remember where the gm was inexperienced was when in a political intrigue game, he let us shift the plot to become traveling merchants/Mercanaries. Unrelated to the main video, just saying inexperience allows some interesting shifts from player wants, and a general be more flexible in your gaming group. Also, play a wandering merchant/mercenary game, it was fun, and you might find a new favorite gimmick.
I remember a ludicrous "Obvious Object" situation from when I played Curse of Strahd(spoilers) - - - - I used the Yester Hill Axe to kill the Gulthias Tree without recognizing it as a weapon. I thought it was a convenient tool belonging to somebody who tried and failed to fell it.
Following the lead of the players, that is an art that I think takes time to develop, but if a gamemaster develops this skill to a descent level a game master can build downtime scenarios which can bring great enjoyment to the players, but can also create new subplots in your game. In my personal game sessions I did this most successfully in my L5R game. The shadowlands became an interest to my players so I took the lead on that and instead of political intrigue I switched the sessions to hunting down shadowland creatures in small provinces in my game. This worked out great and the campaign took on a life of its own. One character started to explore the crab clan towns making crab clan allies, and the other character started collecting jade in small provinces hiring local smiths to make specialized jade weapons to kill shadowland creatures.
While part one and two where nice peaces of entertaining knowledge, thiss one felt more like a wakeupcall. I like this, as i feel like these are ones wich i might have falen for already ... or am about to (fifth session in my first campaign as GM) Keep this bal roling. This might have potential aas aa slow-ish series wich also covers the ones people don't alwhays highlight. Well done.
Your obvious object one makes me sad. It makes me feel old because it wasn't that long ago(in my perception of time) where I was driving vehicles with ignition keys that if 'worn down' enough so you couldn't see the car makers logo wouldn't be super obvious as a car key. Non-transponder keys after all could just be a simple metal stamped/cut key. Basically this here was my car key up until about 5 years ago. mysecuritypro.com/GeneralMotorsB44KeyBlanks.aspx Except mine originally had some kind of logo on it that by the time I got it was worn to the point of being unreadable. Old vehicle that was nearly as old as I was. Anyways point being I can still easily remember handing my keys to someone and them not knowing which one was the car key(let along the gas tank key or the door key, both of which were different keys).
Okay, the first longish running game I was ever in, I usually had to leave just a little early. I had made an agreement with my girlfriend to call her every night after 9 because that was when my minutes were unlimited (I was in college at the time, so we were long distance). This wasn't a problem until the GM decided to move the game up an hour, so now I was leaving halfway through the weekly sessions and, because of the way the GM had it organized, pretty much always missed all the combat. I didn't get too much grief for it, although I was often asked if I really had to leave. Was I a flaker for that? I had explained it to the GM before joining the game (from the start btw) and I was actually one of the few to stick with it for the entire duration (about 5 players came and went for one reason or another by the end)
Death is real, before running my L5R game I read the rules twice and really studied the rules of the game. L5R has a very original dice mechanic and in my first session I did not pull any punches. I ran the combat and a player made a mistake and the whole party was wiped out. I thought my game was over and we went out and watched a movie. What happened next was a big surprise. I received phone calls from several players all at different times wanting to play in my L5R world, and I had 2 groups, One group I ran on Saturday and One group I ran on Sunday. It was one of the best campaigns I ever ran, and I think it was the player death that happened in my first session that gave my game some validity, After that game, both groups where very cautious, especially when it came to combat and as long as I did not pull any punches, the players where happy. Wow, in this game I had a character actually loose a hand and we made some house rules where he replaced that hand with the hand of a shadowland creature.
The one I was thinking of is shooting down an idea publicly, example is big gun shoot down barrel of a tank cannon, gm says why bother, you can’t do that, I say a six inch hole at 200 yards I can do that my self but my special forces trained toon can not, and gm says yes you can not, so if I say gonna try any way the gm just says ok you fail next person, if the gm doesn’t think it’ll work then just let them try and say you missed don’t destroy the planing sessions or tactics cause you don’t want the player to even try. Let the game sort it out.
The first encounter my players had was a lead to find Princess Gotharima in a cave to acquire their beginning armor, weapons and funds to begin the adventure. After transverse of this massive cave they encountered a huge pool of crystal clear water festooned with gold, armor, weapons and trinkets, as well as bones, skulls and long dead skeletons of many races. Luckily they did not touch or loot any of it because Princess Gotharima appears from the far side of the pool as a gargantuan gold dragon. Some exposition occurred and negotiable dialogue later and she allowed them to take what they needed to begin. It was that first encounter that gave them the clue that nobody appears as they would seem and bad action will have immediate concequences. It scared the crap out of them to not be pillaging murder hobos from the beginning and to role play when necessary. To be aware of things. But it also made them kind of paranoid, which I feel bad for.
Princess Gotharima was also a powerful scryer and in my game the players could invoke her wisdom to solve problems or acquire leads, however the players who did so took 2d10 psychic damage because she was a powerful fricken dragon. It was a useful tool for them to utilize to keep the game from coming to a crawl. Was that a good thing?
Good video, I’ve had to deal with a gm before that refused to give out appropriate consequences before and it really brings down the game because one player was ignoring contextual warnings.
Meanwhile, as a GM I've made my players mad. I can't remember if my mic cut out or if I just forgot to mention one of the context clues, but the players opened a secret door thinking there'd be loot. It was actually a trap with three particularly deadly monsters that proceeded to brutally TPK the party. Now, this was part of the module, and they knew that the traps were very deadly.Some of them even just outright killed the PC if they failed the check, but I feel I should have modified it with at least one less of that monster. Either way, make sure everyone understands their surroundings.
There are a lot of reasons I accept to excuse a player, but I do expect that I get a heads up (sickness is an exception of course), we have to reschedule the session after all. Most of the time however it's just some unimportant stuff that I myself just move to another day, but some of my players don't. Also not only the reason but also the way you tell the group why you can't make it is important. That and a few more aspects are the reason why my sister is currently banned at my table. The group never even got an apology from her.
The sin of a favorite player I found is very easily avoided by simply deciding in advance what perks each player will get when luck favors them. And making sure its balanced. If a player exhausts all their perks well ahead of the others, their luck just ran out and we move forward as if it didn't happen.
Played in a game where the DM was never shy about throwing unfair odds our way that could potentially kill us. We had had a higher level cleric NPC with us for awhile, through a few character deaths and he never had a resurrection spell. DM made a point to mention he didn’t anytime a character died. Then one game suddenly his daughters character dies and she gets all pouty and wants to be done playing. Now suddenly that NPC cleric had found a resurrection scroll somewhere that allowed her to be brought back to life.
I actually have 2 sins if you ever make another one of these videos Seth I really enjoy them #1 the deja vu campaign this when a Dm always goes back to favorite campaign for a system by default and only slightly changes the story adventure hooks and the like and for some reason takes place parallel to the first time you played in the campaign and never lets character backstory have any foot hold for adventures. Not only does that limit the Dm but makes every player bored and lose interest it sucks as I can tell you from personal experience #2 the magic biased Gm Now there’s nothing inherently wrong with hating certain things about a game system whether it’s how the rules are worded or if parts of play are unbalanced or maybe the setting doesn’t work for you. The magic biased GM however takes their own magic bias and uses it to strip something away that kind inherent to the system they usually say it breaks the game or something to that extent and it is IMHO completely wrong because if you remove one kind of magic then why not another and then another ad nausem until you have no schools of magic left because now the players have solve problems without magic and if you’re playing a caster divine or arcane you now get stiffed because the GM has decided that because it “solves problems” that you can’t use it I have a GM that says conjugation is broken which I think is ridiculous because I can name at least 5 spells more broken than the conjugation school If you had experience with this please reply I want to know if other people have dealt with this
Love these videos! Just got received my CoC books in the mail yesterday. I started reading the PDFs but there’s nothing like having the actual hardcover in your hands and reading it. Can’t wait to run a game! My recent gm sin has been dealing with a player of mine who’s character has an 18 pp. I had a cool gelatinous cube encounter planned and he ended up flying his owl familiar right into the cube. He debated with me for a while saying his rouge should have noticed the cube with his 18 pp, but I simply told him sorry. You’ll have to summon your familiar again when you can. In hindsight I made have erred on that. It’s just tricky when a pc walks into a room and automatically notices everything without even a die roll. Suggestions on how to deal with a situation like this would be great.
I'm probably not the best to ask here. I personally dislike the Passive Perception mechanic. It's one of those things that I really dig in theory, but just don't care for it in practice. When faced with how to handle that and my other issues with D&D, my solution was changing to Call of Cthulhu. Now, as far as a "Sorry I screwed that rule up" answer, it depends. When ever we start a new game system or have evolved into a game system to where more and more advanced options are being unlocked at higher levels, I regularly go through the rules after every session to see what we did right and what we did wrong. Then we have a chat before the start of the next game, saying where we had mistakes. I never punish players for doing an honest mistake in a previous game. I simply say that going forward we'll be doing it correct. My players, in turn, understand when I make a mistake and come back and say, "My bad." Sometimes during a game a GM needs to make a call and keep the game moving. Sometimes that call is wrong. It happens. It happens to the best of them. If you wish to apologize by replacing the familiar, that's your call. My natural inclination is to say that the gelatinous cube was a special case creature, but they'll never come across the super-snaky version like that again. But the specifics of that situation and your group's dynamic should determine how you want to handle it. Either way, coming clean on your error is still the best option in my opinion.
You know... I was super-close to naming it 7 Game Master Sins: The Return, but decided against it because I figured no one would get my sense of humor. I can see now that I was mistaken.
Things of which to be mindful (my notes on all 3 GM sin videos): EXCESSIVE WORLDBUILDING (don’t make your ‘darlings’ and ‘exposition’ into tedious, drawn-out info-dumps. Work it into their explorations and interactions as flavouring where it is sought, not a monologue) TOO CONTROLLING/RAILROADING (they are not going to do what you have planned for them to do, NEVER outright work to stop them, adapt around their successful and failed attempts, in response to them. Why even ask them what they want to do, otherwise?) THE CRITICAL PLAYER CHARACTER (if the story hinges entirely on one or less than half of the characters, the stakes are lacking (PLOT ARMOUR) and the other, non-essential characters are just that: non-essential. It doesn’t feel good. IT’S THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE GM TO MAKE THE EXPERIENCE FOR EVERYONE. The freedom of possibilities means the possibility of death.) COMMON RESURRECTIONS (there should always be consequences. If a player character comes back from the great beyond, there needs to be a story surrounding it; a price to pay, a challenge to overcome, a flaw, etc. Otherwise, the players will not learn, and the GM will not learn. Furthermore, if one character gets a second chance when another doesn’t, it generates a severe imbalance, creating a vacuum) KNOW YOUR TABLE’S MAXIMUM PLAYER LIMIT (talk about it with your table of players. You may feel guilty if it means that certain players are excluded, whatever that might look like, but subpar and stressful experience for everyone, including the GM, is not a sustainable way to play. If it must come to it, SET YOUR LIMIT in a way where everyone has the chance to listen, respond, and discuss the matter in a reasonable manner in order to come to an understanding/solution) UNPREPAREDNESS/THE MOMENT IS MY MUSE (find the BALANCE. Too much planning locks you into a rigid mindset. Chill out. This is for fun. Conversely, no planning can result in a mishmash of half-realized ideas, stressful halts in pacing, nonsensical incentives, and floaty-white-noise-space-where-nobody-knows-what-to-do-next. Regardless, a good GM adapts to the players’ choices) HAVE FUN, NOW! (If you are not having fun, if your expectations are so high or so low that they bleed through into the players’ experience, it doesn’t feel good. Be kind to yourself, be kind to the people at the table, be in the moment) OVERRULED, AT PAINS (if the players’ experience/ story opportunity / perfectly plausible attempt to do something would be hindered by the rules, be flexible. THEY’RE MORE LIKE GUIDELINES. Rigidity is the path to regret) NOT KNOWING THE RULES (it can take away from the pacing of the game-it’s boring. It limits the awareness of the extent of the possibilities available to you and your players. They may not be judging you per say, but if it is a consistent enough problem, they might not necessarily feel confident in your verdicts when it really counts) TOO EAGER TO ASSIST (let them figure it out. Don’t jump in and solve the puzzles for them. FIND THE BALANCE BETWEEN CHALLENGE AND TRUST. They will not feel as confident or else they may not even try if they know the solution is always an easy handout. Only advise when a direct and clear question is asked or if there is a problem emanating from a single player that is holding up the game for everyone) MURDER HAPPY (comes down to intent. Accidents and misfortune happen. GM vs party, well, the game was rigged from the start. Where’s the fun in that?) PLACATING EVERYONE (need I say more) COMMITMENT ISSUES (your most important session is your next one. Don’t lose sight of the experience before you for ‘greener pastures’. Your responsibility is to the setting, system, player characters, and your friends' experience) SCHEDULING RESPONSIBLY (the real final boss…) LOOT FAIRY/LOOT FAMINE (find the right balance for reward and incentive. Loot is special. Plan out what items and abilities are reasonable and rewarding and fair when taking into account each player) OMITTING CRUCIAL DETAILS/OBVIOUS REALIZATIONS (if you lock something behind a skill check when it is obvious enough that they couldn't possibly miss out on it, the immersion is broken, the story progression becomes finicky, and objections run amok) which ties into... THE MISSING LINK (if the party misses something that is necessary for the plot to progress, change things up so that it presents itself differently; don’t stall the game because of an out of sequences event or poorly actualized revelation) BLOODY FAVOURITISM NOT READING THE ROOM (close in on the things that interest them, change pace when everyone is obviously not enjoying themselves. Ask questions. Learn about what they would like to do and experience within your own feasible capabilities to deliver. Don’t get tunnel vision. LOOK AT EACH OF THE PLAYERS) A LIFE WITHOUT RISK/ NOTHING I DO MATTERS/ NO CONSEQUENCES (there should always be an element of uncertainty, risk, cause and effect, and expectations expressed by showing and not telling. Death, imprisonment, lost belongings, tarnished reputation, madness, lasting injury, etc. Excessive lack of consequences reduces feeling of accomplishment) LIFE HAPPENS, LIFE CARRIES ON. (remember to have empathy for the people at the table. It can be hard not to take it personally sometimes, especially when you have high expectations riding on it, what with preparation and scheduling among every other stressful thing that you have to manage. They have their own stuff. Everybody is going through something. Talk about it, but never blame. Adapt to their not being there accordingly (see p.g. 235-236 of the D&D 5e DMG for advice on mitigating player absences). If the problem persists, again talk to them, be curious. If it transpires that they are avoiding playing because they are not enjoying themselves, they are anxious, or there is another problem but they don’t want to hurt anyone else’s feelings, make a decision about what to do next, holding them accountable and able whilst respecting their boundaries. Whatever the reason, include the other players in the decision about what to do next only if the absentee is open to it, or has gone completely silent)
as a gm this is what I do when a player can't make it. the game we play most is rifts and how we handle a missing player is to say they fall into a hidden rift or is captured by an enemy and the goal that week is to get the players to recue the missing player.
"You never asked me what it looks like" yeah that has started a lot of warranted rage at tables ending with "But I am holding it! I am holding the item! Even if I can not see it I still generally know what it looks like"
I can't believe how selfish Dweebles is, bailing out for his "Hostage Situation"
That kind of unreliability is just not tolerable in a player
Not to mention the funeral. What, did he think missing the game would miraculously give him the secrets of necromancy?
@@doomguy19931 And now we ALL get to mourn Mi-ma.
@@deepqantas ...and shift the story to a heist.
@@deepqantas ... and create characters for the robbers.
*Facing Consequences* -- One of my most treasured gaming moments in one of Seth's games was the time we decided to use a golem to pull us over a lake of lava. The lake was 50 feet below us and, between us and the other side, there were these little islands in the middle (each just a few feet across) that poked up to the same height as us. Clearly, we were meant to attempt to cross this lake, but many of us didn't even remotely have the amount dexterity that would have been required to make it. The solution we finally agreed upon was that our most dexterous character would make the trip. He would then cast a golem on the opposite side. The player would then order the golem to take one end of the rope, leave the golem there and then make the trip back with the other end. Our spell-caster would then cast a magical box around the party (sorry, I don't remember the name of the spell... I lean towards playing archers... and idiots... often simultaneously). Anyway, with the rope securely attached to the top of the box, and all of us *totally impervious* to anything damaging us from the outside, the idea was simple... the golem would "safely" drag us across the lake and we would all arrive chipper, fresh and (most importantly) completely unmolested on the other side. We felt like geniuses... Seth was utterly emotionless.
The order was shouted for the golem to begin its simple task. On the very first pull, our cage fell over and we tumbled about within it. A wry smile appeared on Seth's face as he immediately asked us to all role for damage, we of course complied but, I mean... no big deal... the cage had only fallen on its side... how big could the damage be from something as minor as... (!!!) *[the golem tugged on the rope for the second time, and the box inched forward]...* I think the thought dawned on all of us at nearly the exact same time, and then one of us (still in character) spoke it aloud as he commented to another player, _"Sir... uh... it has occurred to me that... we may have overlooked one... very serious..."_ *[the golem tugged on the rope for the third time, and the box inched forward]...* The precipice. Yes, we were completely protected from any of the outside elements... but falling 50 feet is exactly the same when you slam into each other, or the inner walls of your "impervious magical box" than if there were no box at all. We were now one tug away from the edge... we were all potentially about to die... and yet I've never seen a group of people (GM obviously included) more gleeful to watch the disaster that was about to unfold. We were already picking up our dice on the off chance that Seth would allow us some sort of saving throw as the golem pulled on the rope for the fourth time. We felt like such "geniuses"...
... it was glorious.
I'm glad that they're like me and has a shit eating grin whenever the players screw themselves over
@@mattpace1026 I can see your logic, but the box didn't protect them from inside forces, only outside. It was mainly them slamming into the box and each other. Think of it less like a plane, and more of if you got a box of fragile, glass objects and shook them around, or dropped the box.
@@mattpace1026 -- As.... [underscore] said. It was us slamming into the side of the box and each other that did the damage. Seth is very, very practical. If it's something that would be a concern in the real world, like gravity, it's something that would be a concern in the fantasy world (hence why it's a really, really bad idea to shoot a fireball in a hallway, when you're also in that same hallway... just because the description says that explosion is only going to be so many feet in diameter... that number is going to get pushed way out if that explosion is being restricted by stone walls). During another game, we searched for the big bad all through a dungeon and finally found him in a room, with a couple of henchmen. After drawing it out, Seth asked us our intentions... I was the first to go and I said I was going to run, in the opposite direction. Everyone looked at me like I was crazy, and then stated they were stepping in to take him on... then we got to the player I was most concerned about (he is his biggest spell or biggest weapon). Give him a fireball, and he's opening up with fireball, every... single... time... After Seth drew out the room I realized it wasn't big enough for the diameter of the fireball, meaning it was going to blast back up the hallway we were standing in. I beat Mr Fireball's initiative and I was the only party member who didn't take damage.
@Matt Pace - Yes, the G-forces would be too great in a plane... If the plane accelerated from 0 to top speed instantly. Because it's soft acceleration over time, you only suffer a fraction of the G's.
Regarding the box; A falling object increases it's speed with 9,82 meters (aprox. 30 feet) per second for every second it falls. A rough estimate gives us a fall time of 1.8 seconds and a speed of 18m/second, which is the equivalent of being hit by a car going 40mph!
@@mattpace1026 Umm...an airplane doesn't negate g-forces. I'm thinking you don't know how physics works.
"Dude, the last time was a funeral! My meemaw died!"
"And did missing the game for her funeral bring her back to life?!"
well now i'm dead
And now the other party members are gonna have to mourn you too, you're such a selfish D&D player
"I was in a hostage situation!" - That line. That was the one that had me dying.
He was taken hostage by a Scott Brown Agent of course!
Same. My sides took 3d6 damage
and as we all know hostage situations with a single pc are bad
If a player bothered to tell me they can't make it to a session, I would be falling over myself to thank them for being so considerate, and holding them up as an example for others to follow! I'm used to people not even bothering to come up with an excuse!
notoriouswhitemoth I got tired of a consistent flake player. Always no notice. I drew the line when he told me, day of, he would be able to make it, and then bailed with no response. His excuses were always vague and I would have been fine if he was upfront. Decided to stop inviting him to games.
It poses the question, then: how do you find players who *aren't* total flakes?
If you run on Roll 20 you're bound to get zero notice...I don't begrudge the players because life does happen, but sometimes it's like do you want to play or not? So many players sign up for a campaign and then never make it past the character creation phase. I've never found it to happen as much in real life.
Consistency is always a problem with D&D, but your players should absolutely tell you if they can't make it; we have a group chat were we plan our next meet-up (which is typically bi-weekly with some irregularity), and none of us are amazing at communicating, but if one of my players didn't show up for a session, and did so without telling us that they couldn't make it, I would be quite annoyed. First time would be a warning, second time the boot. Don't stand for your players giving you the run around: It is an insult to you and the effort that you go to crafting an adventure for them; if they can't respond to that we the slightest bit of respect (and I would consider it a bare minimum) then you need to talk to them and if they still don't respect it you should kick them out of the group.
You are not their servant, and they are not yours; everyone should have fun, everyone should respect each other and the time we put into this hobby. No two ways about it.
Life happens and people will have to miss sometimes. My issue is that doesn't excuse shitty behavior or disrespect. Not showing up to anything you committed to without communication or valid reason is incredibly disrespectful to the time and effort that the GM and the other players have put into the game.
I thought of a Game Master sin, but it might be a variation of the "Obvious Object." It's "Don't let the player do something his CHARACTER would know is stupid." I've seen DM's punish their players for making a decision that their character class should have been familiar with. Examples below:
Here's an example. We were playing Rogue Trader and I was the pilot of a ship that was docked. Our team was locked out of the hanger, so I told the GM that I was going to shoot the door open with the ship's guns. The DM described the ship firing a blast so large that the entire hanger blew up. The idea being that "the guns on the ship are huge." That is something a PILOT IN THE 40K UNIVERSE would have known... even though, as a player, I didn't know the guns were that big.
Another example. It was a Star Wars campaign and the party was on a space ship. One of the players who specialized in tech wanted to hack the ship's computers. He opened a panel in the wall and asked the GM: "are their wires in the wall?" The GM said yes. "I connect to the wires!" The GM told him his data pad fried and he took damage from connecting to power cables. The next part is what made me mad. The player said "wouldn't my character have known that these were power cables and not a data stream?" and the GM literally said "yes, wouldn't you have?!" That's not fair!
I hate these kind of GMs. If you know something about the world that everyone in that world should know... TELL THEM! Don't let them do something stupid because they didn't know the lore. It's okay to cut them off BEFORE they make a mistake.
i once played someone from a gang (in some warhammer setting), we got into a fight in a bar with a gang. they shot at all of us, all of us at them. at some point, another player just rolled a die to determine what gang that was. it was the gang that i was part of.
like, wtf. as if my character would not have realised that at the first instance. which is also one reason why i did not even think about rolling that die in order to realise it...
I think you phrased it wrong. It's not don't let them it's warn them not to. Like that 40k setting, the GM should have said beforehand they were massive and if you still wanted to, let them.
This is a highly underrated comment. I'm GMing for the first time in a Cyberpunk Red game and I was trying to find a way to balance character knowledge vs player knowledge and this really helps.
"Why should WE suffer because of HIS baby?!?" LOL
My philosophy on all children summed-up pretty succinctly.
Because "Screw the Rules, I Have Money" ?
This feels like a jojos reference and I just can't put my finger on it
Kota Why modern society will fail in a nutshell.
*Walks into a confessional*
Forgive me father Skorkowsky, for I have sinned...
Casts Eldritch Blast through the grill, incinerating the box entirely. Take 2D12 damage.
Avoid favoritism AND the Gm's Spouse in one fell swoop! Just date all your players at once.
Or... just discriminate everyone! X)
Or, and hear me out, you just murder your players. Problem averted
(facepalm)
I really wonder how a d&d/tabletop game between a 5-way polyamorist relationship would play out.. I suddenly want this to be a movie xD
PhyreI3ird I imagine favoritism would be a lot more likely to lead to murder
#3: Not Reading The Room. So, one time there was a D&D game at my apartment. (I was not the DM by the way). My roommate was in the kitchen starting to work on brewing a batch of mead. One by one people drifted into the kitchen. We got to a point where all of the players were in the kitchen literally watching water boil. Don't let this happen to you.
This is hilarious
The throw a bone point made me think of one of the things Call of Cthulhu and some other games say about failing rolls like search or sneak, etc: if you fail the roll, you don't actually fail to do what you wanted (ie, find the secret door, sneak into the guardhouse, etc), it just takes you longer than expected, or there are unexpected complications to your subsequent actions. A failed roll doesn't need to grind things to a halt.
It isn't always rolls, however. If the obstacle is something like, "They need to talk to the guy in the lighthouse" but they never bother going to the lighthouse because they're talking to everyone else, or missed the hint, no Taking 20 or whatever is going to fix that.
Some systems, like Call of Cthulhu, incorporate the Idea Roll, where a GM can put things back on track, but the problem is that it's a roll that announces, "You guys messed up. Let's fix it." Throwing a bone would mean either having the guy in the lighthouse walks into town for groceries and a beer and they bump into him there, or someone in the town says, "Oh, you should talk to my uncle in the lighthouse," or someone else in town now has the information to give as if they were the lighthouse keeper. There's no announcement that a mistake was made. The game simply adjusts around them and keeps going like nothing wrong happened.
I keep Idea Rolls for those times we just can't adjust the game without announcing it, either because of a unique situation or when my brain just isn't coming up with a smooth solution fast enough.
This reminds me of a thing I saw in a rules-light game whose spirit can be taken even into crunchier games; the rule was "if nothing interesting would happen if the player were to fail the roll, then don't make them roll." While you obviously can't have players succeed at everything they try, the thing to take to heart is that *something* should happen as the result of the majority of rolls, good or bad.
@@ZvelHaj I think it's FATE Core that has a rule/guideline/whatever of "Say yes or roll the dice". In other words, don't make them roll for something that should be a gimme.
in terms of searching for traps, the only time it's an automatic failure is on a 1. if the trap DCs are 25 for 3 traps in the room and the best roll they get is a 19, i'll let them find 2 of the traps, but they miss the 3rd. sometimes a failed roll has to be a failed roll.
as seth kinda points out, sometimes you need to just change the game or lower a difficulty just to keep the game moving.
@JoeRingo118 In all fairness - if there is no time pressure, then there's hardly a reason to roll at all. Only if you speculate on a fumbled roll or something.
If you search for certain informations in the local newspaper archieves you eventually find them as long as they are there.
If you want to repair the ship stranded on the asteroid you will get it back to fly eventually, even if you have to canibalise some less important systems to get the spare parts.
It's another thing if the archive is on fire or the asteroid is one of those ship-devouring monstrosities from Star Wars...
I am simple man.
I see Seth Skorkowsky, I click Seth Skorkowsky.
^^^ same
S A M E
deus Npc ex machina
I've gotta admit; I'm an inveterate loot fairy. Normally, I can easily adjust the CRs of my plot to compensate for my compulsive need to make it rain on my players, but I recently ran a session of Mutants & Masterminds (Marvel setting) where I dumped far to many XPs (power points) on my players for one encounter. Luckily, I owned my mistake, outright telling my players that I fucked up, though I didn't want to withdraw their rewards (it seems unfair for them to pay for my carelessness). Hopefully I'll take this lesson to heart (after 23 years as a GM, it's about time, right?). Also, love the skits, man. Great video!
one gm sin that I've seen is "being too real". it should be remembered that this is a fictional world. a gm does not need to figure out all the physics of how a trap works or the time it would take for a potion to hit the blood stream and take effect. the goal is to have fun, not have a science or math class.
I used to have this one player back in college who would grill me on weird specifics. Like a trap would go off and he'd say, "I want to study this and learn how it works." Then he'd start asking very specific questions about the counter balance systems of a dart trap or something and when he managed to get me into a corner he would pout because is just wasn't 100% realistic. Or he'd start digging into the economics and trade routs of random region they were just passing through and once he could poke a hole would become all pouty and make me feel like some worthless GM. Only later did I realize it was some passive-aggressive bullshit he did to intentionally set himself up for disappointment and others for failure. He was a great roleplayer. One of the best I've seen. But when he decided he wanted to make himself and everyone else miserable, he wouldn't hesitate.
Yeah, I love realism and add as much as I can but in the end, it’s just fantasy.
@@SSkorkowsky That's for the list of Deadly Players' Sins.
I guess what I'm saying is that there needs to be a balance and that balance of realism/ fantasy / suspension of disbelief is dependent on the group
Suspension of disbelief can be weird tho. I can believe Batman can fight super villains, go to outer space in his own mech suit but for some reason Gotham having a civil war between villains that the local police and military were incapable of dealing with was somehow too much for me to accept.
The answer is always; It's Magic!
I love how in the skits the game screen always tells us what game they're playing.
Super old comment lol
But I wonder how Seth preps his skits
Maybe just reaches for a random game? Honestly would love an explanation on his script process
"I WAS IN A HOSTAGE SITUATION!"
See, this is why you hold onto those luck points for emergencies.
I enjoy all of what you're doing in your videos.
On "reading the room", a concept that might help is to classify your players as one of these three archetypes; The Wrench, the Gun, and The Walkie-Talkie. "Wrenches" are people like doctors, engineers, mechanics, magicians, pilots, farmers, chefs, thieves, blacksmiths - they build, they repair, they manipulate materials, they lay their hands on something. "Guns" are what they sound like: pure combatants. Warriors. Guards. Soldiers. Weapons operators. Brawlers. Hunters. Assassins. "Walkie talkies" are administrators, scholars, scientists, clerics, bards, lawyers, officers, leaders, merchants, academics, diplomats, salesmen, secret agents, cops. Maybe not realtors, depends on the game. They work indirectly thru the other two types to do/get what they need, they use words and ideas and are knowledge workers. A balanced game party has enough of all of three types in it. A party that's all one type is very limited and usually boring. When making NPC's this can also come in handy as a quick way to sketch out how they will react to situations, without scripting anything.
The point of this is to say; if player one likes being a wrench and that's their character, they need wrenchie-things to do in the game from time to time to be happy and feel they get something out of it. Doesn't mean they do wrench stuff excslusively though, and the real fun begins when the archtypes have to work in one of the other two milieus. Like a Gun character who only fights, has to suddenly be a diplomat or a healer or a lawyer. Or a "wrench" engineer has to fight. An Engineer might not fight like a dedicated gunfighter: she might instead manipulate the ship's grav fields to ping-pong the bad guys between the deck and ceiling until they are pudding, or override an airlock and blow them out into space. The Walkie Talkie might fight by bribing you to leave him alone, or hiring a merc or assassin or thug, or fight you indirectly by planting rumors, messing with your credit, manipulating situations to get you into trouble thru the law or whatever. A walkie talkie can't fix your Jump Drive but will know who to get and where to get them. They are also your "face men" when you need to con someone, fast-talk them, whatever.
Keeping each archetype player "fed" from time to time with Tasks related to their specialties satisfies their basic participation needs, then making them work "across type" makes for the fun and memories. You need all the types for successful gaming, and identifying their type gives you a handle on what would be fun to challenge them with.
0:52 #7 Loot Fairy
2:34 #6 Obvious Object
4:35 #5 Not Throwing A Bone
7:27 #4 Favoritism
9:55 #3 Not Reading The Room
12:21 #2 No Consequences
14:49 #1 Forgetting That Life Happens
You're doing Gods work man
@@theomegapotato370 True, but which pantheon?
@@michaelfoye1135 Yes
Yeah, I'm bad for reading the room. Confession time (spoilers for OotA): Out of the abyss, final boss fight with Demogorgon, the party struggling to handle a demon Lord 10 levels over them. The rogue managed to grab the wand of orcus and strides in gloriously with an army of undead drow at his heels. Demogorgon sees a little mortal meatbag walk up holding the greatest weapon of his rival, uses that dominate person gaze to have the rogue wield the wand against the party, planning on taking it for his own after the party was dead. That rogue, with a wisdom save of +1, wasn't able to make those DC 23 saves, and the fight was drawing to a close before it dawned on me that he had controlled his character for all of one round that fight. I was so swept up by this against-the-odds epic level boss fight that I never realized, among all those players having the time of their lives fighting a worldending demon, one of them was sitting there waiting for me to tell him what his character did that turn.
Not my proudest DMing moment, to be sure.
Usually if I "mind control" a PC, I let them do the heavy lifting of deciding what their character actually does with some guidelines from me, it seems to work and people seem to have fun with it regardless, though you do have to have players who aren't going to hold a grudge over it if they're attacked in this way. ( and I have had people who would, silly as it is ).
In such a case I would still have them make some decisions but I would tell them who they are going to attack that round, or if multiple options make sense, I'll roll for it, randomly assigning numbers to potential targets. That way said salty susan can't hold it against the mind controlled player if they get hit.
Yeah, I'm *very* leery of mind-controlling my PCs. For me it's a question of why they come to my game, and they come in order to play. If I mind-control them then they aren't playing their character and I am. For something like dominate person, unless I'm mistaken, you can only give very simple commands, so give those to the player and let them interpret what their character would do with the overhead of wanting to fulfil that command as spoken.
I was once mindcontrolled and even though that GM was horrible in almost any other way, he just told me: You're dominated. The creature tells you to fight your allies with all your might. You decide the rest.
I almost killed a guy when I unloaded my most powerful spell on him.
@@royal9743 I think that's the best way to do it. Still have to be a little bit careful as by having PCs fighting PCs you can no longer fudge die rolls to keep players alive if the dice are being a little-one-sided but, depending on the group, I can see your situation as either being pretty funny or super dramatic, either of which is really good.
I was a vampire hunter with the innate power to just feel vampires if they were close (feat) and another player thought it was a good idea to bring a vampire in. We were in a mansion of a powerful wizard who forbade any kind of violence in his house when this happened. Then the encounter began and I got dominated, so I of course targeted the vampire. Almost killed him too.
He died the session after that anyway because he tried to dominate a Hobgoblin Matriarch wih who we already made a deal with and made her agressive. Seeing the only way to salvage that situation I burned the vampire-pc in front of her eyes and then burned the coffin. Don't worry, the player was a dick anyway.
What I'm trying to say: I fucking loved the opportunity and nobody at the table would've been sad. (except maybe for the DM. The dick player was his favourite. Like I said, he was a horrible DM in any other aspect.)
Love this video so much! Excellent advice sir.
Thank you much, sir.
I don't think I'm a Loot Fairy DM, but I was really caught off guard when one day the 5th level wizard in my party announced that she had 11 magic items.
I'm, like, wait, what? Is that counting the potions and scrolls you've found?
Nope.
It turns out it was largely due two main things:
1. I'd been giving out a bunch of "common" magic items. Little technically magical do-dads that don't do much. For example, there was a tiny orb that functions as a compass, and a hat that sometimes lets you cast cantrips (with a skill check). Not super powerful items, but technically magical.
2. Often times when the party was finding magic items, they'd hand them over to the wizard to be identified, and if nobody wanted it, then the wizard would just hoard it. The wizard was also carrying the Bag of Holding, so there were a number of magic items being kept in there.
Over how long though of a campaign? 11 items, not counting scrolls, isn't terrible if you're counting those little do-dads you mentioned or if 4 players all have +1 weapons.
@@tiatrips It was surprising because the PCs were only around level 5 or 6.
And that wasn't just magic items among the party. It was only counting things the wizard had.
@@sk8rdman Rereading that, I misread it when you mentioned 11 magical items. I thought that was the whole party. My error.
I LOVE the idea for that hat BTW. Totally yoinking that for my next fantasy campaign
@@jonskowitz It's a common magic item from Xanathar's Guide to Everything.
Instead of favorite player, how about least favorite? Haha 😅
“The trap misses everyone, except you. You take 12 points of damage.”
Oof yeah.
I just had a game where I avoided #3. Created a challenge where the players were in a cave to fight kobolds, but found an underground river they could use to get behind them and grant them the element of surprise. To traverse the river, I created my own special rules for the occasion. Things were going only somewhat well. They made progress as well as taking some damage when they rolled poorly. However, things were beginning to drag and I could tell the table was beginning to get agitated as well as bored. Thankfully, they had round the last bend of the rapids bit and I decided to play it as a short cut scene that cuts to black and reopens with them coughing up water and reaching shore at the end. MY sin here that I realized is that I should've playtested my own creation before using it on the players.
You deserve more subs, and FAST. Currently one of the best new RPG channels on the platform.
My biggest GM sin has consistently been not taking sufficient notes on details. Had led to a lot of, "wait, it was what?"
I have a similar issue where sometimes I do manage to improv my way to something pretty decent when the player goes beyond what I've premade but then completely forget to write it down so that when it comes up again, I'm screwed.
i mean... so much of what you say is pure improv on spot.
PhyreI3ird I’ve done this so much, I had to find a solution. I forget which DM UA-camr suggested it, but in my new campaign I gave the PCs a patron who demanded written logs, samples, rubbings, etc of every scenario. When they returned, I’ve made it clear thru the patron, “You’ve told me so much, but where are your logs, your samples, anything as proof of your stories. I’m sorry, but I will only pay you for these that you have provided me proof.”
Logs are improving, since the work is shared across all the players & I.
Quick tip: during downtime, make a list of names. Keep it on hand during a game. Then, when the players inevitably befriend Random Merchant #14, glance at the list and use one of the names, and male a note beside it who that NPC is.
Yes. This. Exactly. Up to not remembering the name of the made-on-the-fly NPC from the last session. You know that beared dude with the fur cap. That hunter guy. Let's... let's call him Dimitri...
I’m making my first foray into being a GM and, although I won’t be able to play for some time as my group already has 3 games going on, these videos give me SO much more confidence going forward. It’s all such good advice. Thanks so much Seth. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your stuff.
Glad to be of service. Good luck on your foray into Game Mastering.
Not only will you have tons of fun running your game, but I’m willing to bet your current gm will enjoy playing. Sounds like you have a group where you may have multiple gms if you already have a couple games going on. It’s a great formula to prevent gm burnout.
ddesouz6 We do. One who’s DMed our first game (it was his first time and it was a lot of fun) and we found another later who has done much more. So, with both of them, these videos, and my own love of studying mechanics, it should be interesting.
I literally noped out of a game after a 20 perception didn't reveal that a room was full of sturges because "you didn't look up"
WaveShock007 Woah, now that’s a new one! That GM sounds like he had it out for you, “you didn’t look up” that’s so messed up and flat out bs
This is one where I could see it being acceptable, depending on what the player said. If they said something like “I check the walls looking for a trap or sign of a hidden passage”, then an answer of “you don’t see anything where you are looking” is completely acceptable imo.
I laughed so damn hard during this video. Seth, you should be a comedy writer for sitcoms. You are hilarious. Thanks for the laughs!
My favorite series! Helps immensely
My rule as a DM is that if life gets in the way of gaming that week, have the decency to call and let me know. That way the rest of the group doesn’t end up wasting time waiting for you to show up and we can just continue the session without you.
Your skits are so good xD
"I was in a hostage situation!".
I love these frigging videos. Please Seth don't ever stop. As a beginner Keeper you've taught me so much on how to keep my games fair and fun. Ran my first DC comic/CoC crosser game this past weekend with two players (Batman and John Constantine) and they had a blast! And your videos have already given me a good idea for the next case that they will NEVER see coming. Thank you for all the work you've put in to these videos. It has not gone unappreciated!
Here's one I'm guilty of...running the session too long. My friends dont always have the schedules to meet every week/month/etc. so i cram in as much as possible for as long as I can endure, when ending the session a few hours with an exciting cliffhanger prolly would have been better. Although this is something like not reading the room (mostly because we stream online), I am a new GM and trying to learn too...also i cant remember the points from the previous videos, sorry lol.
You start with "Loot Fairy", and I immediately see that I am exactly the opposite. My baddies only have the stuff on them that they need at that moment - a weapon or two, a bit of spare change maybe, and a bit of food. That's it. And abandoned ruins? Those have usually already been salvaged, so there's nothing of interest left.
A variation of the "Favoritism" sin are DMs that yield to demands of certain players (usually, but not
always their spouses) because they fear that not letting them get that little bit extra benefit will result
in them getting mad. I know that it's primarily a player sin, but I just wanted to mention it. Also to share
a story.
We once had that situation where our DM asked if his girlfriend can join our group since she wanted to get
involved in his hobbies. She was new to roleplaying while we had been playing for almost 10 years, so of
course we had to tone down a little to not overwhelm her, which was a little annoying but fine, everyone
was a newbie once and she got the hang of it quite fast.
Initially it was fine but then he started to break certain rules when it came to planning our next session.
We had the rule that if 5 out of 6 could make a certain date, we would play and made the missing char
catch up later. It was the only option to have a fairly regular schedule and we were all fine with it. However
once she had joined the group our DM started to veto any date where his girlfriend couldn’t make it, despite him
having time on that date, which means from playing about every other week we were down to playing less
than once a month, since his girlfriend apparently had a pretty busy schedule.
Things started to get ugly when she started to get annoyed or grumpy every time out DM attacked her.
He was quite good at spreading damage out equally and in accord to the situation unless people almost
demanded being hurt due to stupid playing and placement. However she still got mad when she got
attacked about every 5th turn in a 5 player game, and it kind of got to our DM after a while, so he started
to attack her less and less and if he did, he would miss her almost every time or do little to no damage.
It was quite obvious.
One event stuck out though: She was playing a wizard, so range attacks and very little armor to prevent
or reduce damage in hand to hand combat. Yet she got so used to not being attacked that at one point
she moved her char ahead of the fighter’s right in front of the big evil boss to get better coverage for an
AoE spell. Knowing that EVERYONE would call him out if he didn’t attack her, our DM made the boss smacked
her across the room and against a wall, not killing her but knocking her unconscious for most of the fight.
This time she didn’t just grumble like usual but actually yelled at him, to which everyone responded that what
she did was simply a stupid action and she basically offered her char to the boss asking to get hit. She was
still mad but did shut up, but the mood was down for the rest of that session and we finished shortly after.
The straw that broke the camel’s back was the very next session. She got us in some rule-discussion
(deliberately in my opinion) and basically everyone agreed what the rule was (including the DM) while she
refused to accept that, despite her interpretation not even make any sense except getting her char out of a
bad situation she brought herself into. In the end our DM backed down and accepted her rule interpretation.
We later called him out on that and he just told that he didn’t want to get in another big fight with his girlfriend like
they did after the last session. Apparently she was so mad at him for attacking her that after the session she
yelled at him for a couple of minutes and didn’t talk to him for almost a day.
After hearing of that we voted unanimously to remove her from our group. We felt she was deliberately starting
trouble to annoy us and that this was an issue, even though he didn’t agree. He wasn’t allowed to game with
us after that because his girlfriend, as expected by us, forbid him to. They broke up a few month later. Apparently
similar things happened with all groups she wanted to get introduced to. She just started trouble and annoy
people so eventually they stopped inviting him in order to not having to deal with her, which was what she wanted
to.
We got back to gaming with him eventually and he apologized for being such an idiot and not realizing sooner
what was going on.
Sorry that got long, but I had the urge to share this.
LOL! Love the lame scenarios, Seth. Love the GM Sins series. Been guilty of every single one over the past 36 years, myself. Thanks for this series. Really well done, and on target. We all need a little reminding every once in a while. Cheers!
I’m right with you Seth on it being BS Dweebles “had to” miss the game because his stupid boss went and got his wife knocked up! That is HER problem, not too much of his boss’ concern and certainly not Dweebles’ or Seth’s!
I watched an entire 1.5 minute tiktok ad for you Seth, that's how much I enjoy your content.
"No game master is perfect" Whaaaaat? This is an outrage, and I will not have any of that slander. Good day, sir! I said, goooood, DAY! :)
shush,,We *have* to say that, because -you know- the players
Matt Mercer exists
@@WolfBerserker13 Yeah, he's pretty good. Not the best, by any extent, but a good GM and also hyped up, so he brings more people to rpg - double good.
@@jakubjanicki3989 I'd say he's one of the best, not just pretty good.
@@mathunit1 I'd add, if you literally can deduct your dungeons, books and handouts from tax as it is your job, then it surely adds to your professionalism :D
I wish my DM knew about point 3, before constantly throwing only Undead monsters, when I played a Bard.
Have you tired playing Thriller?
What's wrong with bard vs undead?
"Aaaaaaaaand YOU get an invisibility cloak, and YOU get an invisibility cloak..."
Always have a one shot as a backup for when life happens. Ours are even in the same world so we don't have to worry about world-building or learning a bunch of new information. We each just have one simple character, and the one shot group can be moderated by any player who wants to step up to that role and give us a simple side-quest. ^_^
Yes the master of masters is back.
Nicely done. I especially liked the "No Consequences" part. I've seen too many games where the characters were never in any danger of anything bad happening to them. It seems like most of the online games on Twitch are like that, with DMs and GMs refusing to have consequences at all.
>Matt Mercer
I'm pretty sure that you hear it all the time, but your skits, man! They are the only skits in the Universe that are actually funny.
"And have some stupid skits!" Ha!
I just discovered your channel and I love your skits. They're well thought out and fun. I feel like I'm at the table with you... and you, and you, and you 🙂
I can't believe I have been missing such great videos for, actually, years! Thank you Seth Skorkowsky!
Your discussion of consequences reminded me of an incident in the first game I ran for my son and his 14 y/o friends. His character (only character in the group the had any knowledge of the arcane) was able to decipher the runes above a massive set of doors in the front a church in a low fantasy game. The runes were a warning!
Skipping forward to that that night.....another of the characters (a thief) had "acquired" a dagger +1 by rolling a natural 20 while picking the pocket of an NPC that happened to have a dagger +1 on his belt! (and this was the first game the group had played together...). So, he gets the dagger and my son casts detect magic on it.
Now, the method he derived to determine the dagger's special properties, was a bit unorthodox....but these ARE 14 year old boys.. The thief purchases 2 live chickens in town and proceeds to attack one of them and kills it. He attacks the second and rolls 1 under the helpless chicken's AC and hits. And I am starting to shake my head at the thief's luck.
At which point my son's character has an idea beyond dinner for one of the feathered carcasses. "We go to the crutch!"
Upon arriving, my son's character climbs the stairs, within throwing distance of the doors and chucks the chicken at the door. Luckily the character was outside of the full damage radius....so when I roll the 7d4 lightening damage (and I rolled pretty high!) from the trap for which the runes were a warning and divided that damage by half, then instructed my son to make a savings throw (he succeeded) and halving the damage again.....his 1st level character was reduced to exactly ZERO hit points! muhahahaha!
As the large doors creak open, the thief bolts (which I thought was in character).
The next day, this led to a little roleplay between the rest of the group and the priests within the church.....and I turned the situation into an opportunity to provide a "quest" that led them to another part of the adventure, which also would provide the payment for healing the not-so-smart character with the highest intelligence AND Wisdom in the group.
Yes! I am finally caught up in Seth's videos. Keep up the great work. I too am from north Texas and believe in supporting locals.
This is probably my favorite channel for table top rpgs. Ofc I like a lot of others, but I like your content and appreciate the time you take to make funny skits to make a point
Hey, Seth! Enjoyed this video like all the others! Don't know if you put it in your last video but I was kinda like the loot fairy during my Dark Heresy campaign but with exp. Dark Heresy was more free-form in giving exp than most other systems and could be spent on upgrades and traits/skills in between level ups which would unlock more traits and such when you level up. I gave WAY too much exp way too fast. It was mostly because I had a GMPC in the group and wanted to see him get stronger (a GMPC the players actually liked despite being a psychic blank) It didn't take too long before I toned it down lol. That campaign lasted a crap ton of sessions so much so the players were almost on the cusp of becoming Ascension level characters. And my friend enjoyed it so much he still maintains it's the best P&P campaign he's ever played.
For #1, I only ever became a loot fairy in once for a Christmas-themed game. It was near the end of the campaign, and I gave our rogue a luck dagger with a single charge. Before the final boss, he used the one wish to protect his friends, which gave everyone except him a +5 boost to AC and it led to a lot of emotions (in-character and positive). That was the end of my first campaign.
These three vids have been great to watch. You are obviously a very experienced GM and I really enjoyed all the skits too! Keep up the great work.
Love the video, as always. So many of your points hit home and I see happening with my own DM. He's always stingy with loot though. :)
I love your videos, and as a new GM myself I find your advice super helpful and insightful.
I always make sure to check on how my players are doing every couple of sessions. Ask them for critques on current plot threads and what not. It always helps me improve. But life does happen and I understand that too. The videos really help me make sure to check myself before I end up messing up my campaign. Thanks Seth :)
What I find weird is that while I certainly made many of those mistakes in the past, I don't do any of them anymore (except in some fluke sessions, we all have our bad moments.
It's just that I feel that is hard going away from my specific style of GMing in spite of wanting to bramch out. My players have said that I run the most intense combat situations they've ever experienced in a game, it's always high stakes and it's always rewarding due to that. The roleplaying parts are also competent, but I just can't seem to stray away from solving most problems the players having with combat instead of actually giving them other methods most of the time, it's mostly on the players initiative to actively avoid combat and find alternative ways to solve it.
I think I'll take your advice and actually read some modules with a different focus.
Great video as always, Seth!
We all have a bad day when we either mess up as GM or fall into some bad habit we'd shaken years before. But it's definitely a good sign that you can say you don't do the sins anymore.
Another method is to try a totally different game/system, even if it's just a side-game for a few sessions. If you do High Fantasy, try some modern-day or sci-fi, or something like that. If you switch to a different system, but in the same genre, the players might not play it different, even if the game mechanics are different. Changing games can totally shake it up and get them out of their comfort zone and evaluating problems in a new manner. Then you can go back to the regular game, while your players and you are in this new mindset, and they will play differently.
Hammond's harvesting handbooks are great for the loot fairy DM's in D&D as alot of it is monster parts for spells, potions and crafting gear. It means players can make use of any tools they have making their own gear and creates natural side adventures instead of just handing out random over powered items, keeping those for Mugginfin rewards for dungeon crawls or NPC payment rewards.
Just one thing to note when it comes to avoiding being a Loot Fairy: Make sure you know the game system you're running because a lot of people are far too stingy with loot and with some games that can mean that your campaign is set to Nightmare difficulty where even basic encounters will eventually be mathematically impossible to beat without some serious min maxing.
Seriously, those recommended tables are the minimum you should give to each character. If you find it hard to give them loot then just give them money and access to a magic item shop and let them buy items that are up to couple of levels higher than their current level, which they usually can't afford unless they choose to ignore some important level appropriate items for the sake of just having a better weapon. Messing up that way is perfectly fine, let players make mistakes like that.
With all these zoom gameplay streams these days, it would be awesome to see your characters from the sketches in a live stream.
With information or clues, I apply a 123 rule, after people check the third time I either throw them s bone or shepherd them in a new direction for them to come back later if needed. It saves some time at least and gives some meat for later games.
One reason Call of Cthulhu is so good: the idea roll. The Keeper can first try their best to throw a bone in regular play.. but if it still isn’t helping and play is just getting bogged down, boom, ‘if you like, you can make an idea roll.’ CoC is such a great system.
Your skits make me so happy.
I see a video from my friend Seth and I like and watch the video. I'm a simple man.
I struggle with #6 in my current game, playing a post-post apocalyptic game were information and understanding of old technology and items (the stuff we have) is hard to come by, so describing items too much reveals it automatically, and the game really hammers home the comedic moments that come from misunderstanding an item or its use. It can be obscured on purpose to trick players, but also being upfront is good and we can trust the players to do what makes sense out of the perspective of the characters and not use metagaming knowledge. I try to do the former, but it's hard to not come across as needlessly obtuse.
My players still talk about the time I described an umbrella in a Mad Max-esque game though years ago, so I guess it's not all bad!
Not reading the room. Guilty as charged. 12:06 hit me especially hard, so often my nose is buried so deep in notes, maps, rulebooks etc. that i forget to look at my friends who came over to play. I am trying to do better, or will when we are able to get together again.
One I've been guilty of is the Keeping It Real/Not Keeping It Real extremes. A couple examples would be playing alignment and carrying treasure. You can have unrealistic expectations about what a certain alignment means (thinking of AD&D here), and require too much adherence to it from your players. OR, you can pay no attention whatsoever to it and allow decisions and actions that a character of, say, Neutral-Good alignment would never do. When it comes to treasure, you could nitpick over every GP of weight the party is trying to carry back from an adventure, OR you could turn a blind eye to physics and reality, as four halflings transport 30,000 GP (plus items) a hundred miles on foot, and over mountains, to their hometown.
I love you, Scott Brown. All 21 of these are very on point. The bit at the end w/cancelling was priceless. The DM version of you just turned into the worst kinda human being on the phone. Lol.
How about a vid on what appeals the various games you play (Cuberpunk, CoC, D&D, etc.) could have to players who may only play ONE of those games. I'm a hardcore D&D nerd because I love it, but I also wonder what those games might have that I can't already get from my go-to.
Love these pal, each one gets better!
I once plaid LARP in Star Wars universe, and our GM "totaly forgot" to inform us that Sith Empire Fleet was caught on the radar. Yes, it was an honest mistake but we were informed about it with the following words " Oh, I just forgot to say that Sith Empire Fleet was caught on the radar a few minutes ago, and now they started the orbital bombardment." And after ours "WHAT?" He said, "So any last words?".
And it was not even the worst thing in that particular game.
Man, being in a hostage situation and having a funeral two games in a row - seems suspicious...
Or related
Yeah. Definitively related. Someone should ask Scott Brown if there was any showing recently
@@SarahAndreaRoycesChannel That's unneccessary dark...
I may have committed a selfish act by canceling a session in order to see Endgame before the spoiler embargo ended. I also cancelled sessions before when the college students in my group had finals but that is more a courtesy thing.
Is really Not Reading The Room always a sin? I have a personal issue of concentrating on one thing I am doing, so much so that sometimes I do not notice what others say. Do not know if it is even overcome.
Regarding the Loot Fairy: Also be careful of giving the players abilities that allow them to craft their own loot. A party I played in for a very long campaign ended up with my character who was an alchemist, able to craft very powerful healing potions, poisons, antidotes and ACTUAL FANTASY NAPALM (It was glorious). Another character, through years of downtime and training, became a master dwarven smith, able to craft us all the top of the crop armors and weapons. Finally, the wizard of the party could create powerful magical artefacts like rings that allowed us to cast anything from detect magic to fireball to summoning a minor demon (those all had a limited amount of uses, but still)
Granted, we all had an enormous amount of fun with these characters and played them for almost four and a half years, and this power level was very much earned through years of adventuring and experience. But in the last third, we did start to lose some of that sense of danger that was so exhilarating, because it was becoming very unlikely for any of us to actually die. Most ailments could quickly be healed with potions, and the DM was having to get very creative to throw things at us that could actually be a feasible threat.
We did eventually add a few house rules to nerf some of the items, especially the healing potions (like for example making it impossible for an unconscious or dying character to be given these potions because they were, you know UNCONSCIOUS). This helped add back some of that sense of danger. The other thing the DM did was take the characters out lf their comfort zone by taking us on adventures where we couldn't get access to our equipment like the smithy or the labs, so we had to ration our stock. With these few tweaks, we added back that thrill of danger.
That Lord Soth print at Dweeble's place is so 🔥🔥🔥
One game I remember where the gm was inexperienced was when in a political intrigue game, he let us shift the plot to become traveling merchants/Mercanaries. Unrelated to the main video, just saying inexperience allows some interesting shifts from player wants, and a general be more flexible in your gaming group. Also, play a wandering merchant/mercenary game, it was fun, and you might find a new favorite gimmick.
I remember a ludicrous "Obvious Object" situation from when I played Curse of Strahd(spoilers)
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I used the Yester Hill Axe to kill the Gulthias Tree without recognizing it as a weapon. I thought it was a convenient tool belonging to somebody who tried and failed to fell it.
Still a good repeat watch in December 2023
Following the lead of the players, that is an art that I think takes time to develop, but if a gamemaster develops this skill to a descent level a game master can build downtime scenarios which can bring great enjoyment to the players, but can also create new subplots in your game.
In my personal game sessions I did this most successfully in my L5R game.
The shadowlands became an interest to my players so I took the lead on that and instead of political intrigue I switched the sessions to hunting down shadowland creatures in small provinces in my game. This worked out great and the campaign took on a life of its own. One character started to explore the crab clan towns making crab clan allies, and the other character started collecting jade in small provinces hiring local smiths to make specialized jade weapons to kill shadowland creatures.
I can't tell who my favorite character on this show is. The Hostage Situation guy is golden.
While part one and two where nice peaces of entertaining knowledge, thiss one felt more like a wakeupcall.
I like this, as i feel like these are ones wich i might have falen for already ... or am about to (fifth session in my first campaign as GM)
Keep this bal roling. This might have potential aas aa slow-ish series wich also covers the ones people don't alwhays highlight.
Well done.
Your obvious object one makes me sad. It makes me feel old because it wasn't that long ago(in my perception of time) where I was driving vehicles with ignition keys that if 'worn down' enough so you couldn't see the car makers logo wouldn't be super obvious as a car key. Non-transponder keys after all could just be a simple metal stamped/cut key. Basically this here was my car key up until about 5 years ago.
mysecuritypro.com/GeneralMotorsB44KeyBlanks.aspx
Except mine originally had some kind of logo on it that by the time I got it was worn to the point of being unreadable. Old vehicle that was nearly as old as I was. Anyways point being I can still easily remember handing my keys to someone and them not knowing which one was the car key(let along the gas tank key or the door key, both of which were different keys).
I had a big example of trouble throwing PCs a bone in my online game. When in doubt? NINJAS ATTACK!
Okay, the first longish running game I was ever in, I usually had to leave just a little early. I had made an agreement with my girlfriend to call her every night after 9 because that was when my minutes were unlimited (I was in college at the time, so we were long distance). This wasn't a problem until the GM decided to move the game up an hour, so now I was leaving halfway through the weekly sessions and, because of the way the GM had it organized, pretty much always missed all the combat. I didn't get too much grief for it, although I was often asked if I really had to leave. Was I a flaker for that? I had explained it to the GM before joining the game (from the start btw) and I was actually one of the few to stick with it for the entire duration (about 5 players came and went for one reason or another by the end)
Death is real, before running my L5R game I read the rules twice and really studied the rules of the game. L5R has a very original dice mechanic and in my first session I did not pull any punches. I ran the combat and a player made a mistake and the whole party was wiped out. I thought my game was over and we went out and watched a movie.
What happened next was a big surprise. I received phone calls from several players all at different times wanting to play in my L5R world, and I had 2 groups, One group I ran on Saturday and One group I ran on Sunday.
It was one of the best campaigns I ever ran, and I think it was the player death that happened in my first session that gave my game some validity, After that game, both groups where very cautious, especially when it came to combat and as long as I did not pull any punches, the players where happy. Wow, in this game I had a character actually loose a hand and we made some house rules where he replaced that hand with the hand of a shadowland creature.
Regarding the "Loot Fairy", we used to call this kind of gaming Monty Haul.
Ah, those Jeff Easley's DM/Player's 2e Screen attached. That's old school right there.
god i love the stupid skits. keep doing you seth 😊
The one I was thinking of is shooting down an idea publicly, example is big gun shoot down barrel of a tank cannon, gm says why bother, you can’t do that, I say a six inch hole at 200 yards I can do that my self but my special forces trained toon can not, and gm says yes you can not, so if I say gonna try any way the gm just says ok you fail next person, if the gm doesn’t think it’ll work then just let them try and say you missed don’t destroy the planing sessions or tactics cause you don’t want the player to even try. Let the game sort it out.
The first encounter my players had was a lead to find Princess Gotharima in a cave to acquire their beginning armor, weapons and funds to begin the adventure. After transverse of this massive cave they encountered a huge pool of crystal clear water festooned with gold, armor, weapons and trinkets, as well as bones, skulls and long dead skeletons of many races.
Luckily they did not touch or loot any of it because Princess Gotharima appears from the far side of the pool as a gargantuan gold dragon. Some exposition occurred and negotiable dialogue later and she allowed them to take what they needed to begin.
It was that first encounter that gave them the clue that nobody appears as they would seem and bad action will have immediate concequences.
It scared the crap out of them to not be pillaging murder hobos from the beginning and to role play when necessary. To be aware of things. But it also made them kind of paranoid, which I feel bad for.
Princess Gotharima was also a powerful scryer and in my game the players could invoke her wisdom to solve problems or acquire leads, however the players who did so took 2d10 psychic damage because she was a powerful fricken dragon.
It was a useful tool for them to utilize to keep the game from coming to a crawl.
Was that a good thing?
Good video, I’ve had to deal with a gm before that refused to give out appropriate consequences before and it really brings down the game because one player was ignoring contextual warnings.
Meanwhile, as a GM I've made my players mad. I can't remember if my mic cut out or if I just forgot to mention one of the context clues, but the players opened a secret door thinking there'd be loot. It was actually a trap with three particularly deadly monsters that proceeded to brutally TPK the party. Now, this was part of the module, and they knew that the traps were very deadly.Some of them even just outright killed the PC if they failed the check, but I feel I should have modified it with at least one less of that monster. Either way, make sure everyone understands their surroundings.
There are a lot of reasons I accept to excuse a player, but I do expect that I get a heads up (sickness is an exception of course), we have to reschedule the session after all. Most of the time however it's just some unimportant stuff that I myself just move to another day, but some of my players don't. Also not only the reason but also the way you tell the group why you can't make it is important.
That and a few more aspects are the reason why my sister is currently banned at my table. The group never even got an apology from her.
The sin of a favorite player I found is very easily avoided by simply deciding in advance what perks each player will get when luck favors them. And making sure its balanced. If a player exhausts all their perks well ahead of the others, their luck just ran out and we move forward as if it didn't happen.
Played in a game where the DM was never shy about throwing unfair odds our way that could potentially kill us. We had had a higher level cleric NPC with us for awhile, through a few character deaths and he never had a resurrection spell. DM made a point to mention he didn’t anytime a character died. Then one game suddenly his daughters character dies and she gets all pouty and wants to be done playing. Now suddenly that NPC cleric had found a resurrection scroll somewhere that allowed her to be brought back to life.
I actually have 2 sins if you ever make another one of these videos Seth I really enjoy them
#1 the deja vu campaign this when a Dm always goes back to favorite campaign for a system by default and only slightly changes the story adventure hooks and the like and for some reason takes place parallel to the first time you played in the campaign and never lets character backstory have any foot hold for adventures. Not only does that limit the Dm but makes every player bored and lose interest it sucks as I can tell you from personal experience
#2 the magic biased Gm
Now there’s nothing inherently wrong with hating certain things about a game system whether it’s how the rules are worded or if parts of play are unbalanced or maybe the setting doesn’t work for you. The magic biased GM however takes their own magic bias and uses it to strip something away that kind inherent to the system they usually say it breaks the game or something to that extent and it is IMHO completely wrong because if you remove one kind of magic then why not another and then another ad nausem until you have no schools of magic left because now the players have solve problems without magic and if you’re playing a caster divine or arcane you now get stiffed because the GM has decided that because it “solves problems” that you can’t use it I have a GM that says conjugation is broken which I think is ridiculous because I can name at least 5 spells more broken than the conjugation school
If you had experience with this please reply I want to know if other people have dealt with this
Love these videos! Just got received my CoC books in the mail yesterday. I started reading the PDFs but there’s nothing like having the actual hardcover in your hands and reading it. Can’t wait to run a game!
My recent gm sin has been dealing with a player of mine who’s character has an 18 pp. I had a cool gelatinous cube encounter planned and he ended up flying his owl familiar right into the cube. He debated with me for a while saying his rouge should have noticed the cube with his 18 pp, but I simply told him sorry. You’ll have to summon your familiar again when you can. In hindsight I made have erred on that. It’s just tricky when a pc walks into a room and automatically notices everything without even a die roll. Suggestions on how to deal with a situation like this would be great.
I'm probably not the best to ask here. I personally dislike the Passive Perception mechanic. It's one of those things that I really dig in theory, but just don't care for it in practice. When faced with how to handle that and my other issues with D&D, my solution was changing to Call of Cthulhu.
Now, as far as a "Sorry I screwed that rule up" answer, it depends. When ever we start a new game system or have evolved into a game system to where more and more advanced options are being unlocked at higher levels, I regularly go through the rules after every session to see what we did right and what we did wrong. Then we have a chat before the start of the next game, saying where we had mistakes. I never punish players for doing an honest mistake in a previous game. I simply say that going forward we'll be doing it correct. My players, in turn, understand when I make a mistake and come back and say, "My bad." Sometimes during a game a GM needs to make a call and keep the game moving. Sometimes that call is wrong. It happens. It happens to the best of them. If you wish to apologize by replacing the familiar, that's your call. My natural inclination is to say that the gelatinous cube was a special case creature, but they'll never come across the super-snaky version like that again. But the specifics of that situation and your group's dynamic should determine how you want to handle it. Either way, coming clean on your error is still the best option in my opinion.
I had one GM who had a favorite, add on top of that a hierarchy of who they would pick on, having constant negative events.
On the flip side of favoritism, I've seen GMs target a particular player for no good reason.
Game Master Sins III: the Warrior’s Revenge!
Game Master Sins 4: Season of the Witch.
You know... I was super-close to naming it 7 Game Master Sins: The Return, but decided against it because I figured no one would get my sense of humor. I can see now that I was mistaken.
Things of which to be mindful (my notes on all 3 GM sin videos):
EXCESSIVE WORLDBUILDING (don’t make your ‘darlings’ and ‘exposition’ into tedious, drawn-out info-dumps. Work it into their explorations and interactions as flavouring where it is sought, not a monologue)
TOO CONTROLLING/RAILROADING (they are not going to do what you have planned for them to do, NEVER outright work to stop them, adapt around their successful and failed attempts, in response to them. Why even ask them what they want to do, otherwise?)
THE CRITICAL PLAYER CHARACTER (if the story hinges entirely on one or less than half of the characters, the stakes are lacking (PLOT ARMOUR) and the other, non-essential characters are just that: non-essential. It doesn’t feel good. IT’S THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE GM TO MAKE THE EXPERIENCE FOR EVERYONE. The freedom of possibilities means the possibility of death.)
COMMON RESURRECTIONS (there should always be consequences. If a player character comes back from the great beyond, there needs to be a story surrounding it; a price to pay, a challenge to overcome, a flaw, etc. Otherwise, the players will not learn, and the GM will not learn. Furthermore, if one character gets a second chance when another doesn’t, it generates a severe imbalance, creating a vacuum)
KNOW YOUR TABLE’S MAXIMUM PLAYER LIMIT (talk about it with your table of players. You may feel guilty if it means that certain players are excluded, whatever that might look like, but subpar and stressful experience for everyone, including the GM, is not a sustainable way to play. If it must come to it, SET YOUR LIMIT in a way where everyone has the chance to listen, respond, and discuss the matter in a reasonable manner in order to come to an understanding/solution)
UNPREPAREDNESS/THE MOMENT IS MY MUSE (find the BALANCE. Too much planning locks you into a rigid mindset. Chill out. This is for fun. Conversely, no planning can result in a mishmash of half-realized ideas, stressful halts in pacing, nonsensical incentives, and floaty-white-noise-space-where-nobody-knows-what-to-do-next. Regardless, a good GM adapts to the players’ choices)
HAVE FUN, NOW! (If you are not having fun, if your expectations are so high or so low that they bleed through into the players’ experience, it doesn’t feel good. Be kind to yourself, be kind to the people at the table, be in the moment)
OVERRULED, AT PAINS (if the players’ experience/ story opportunity / perfectly plausible attempt to do something would be hindered by the rules, be flexible. THEY’RE MORE LIKE GUIDELINES. Rigidity is the path to regret)
NOT KNOWING THE RULES (it can take away from the pacing of the game-it’s boring. It limits the awareness of the extent of the possibilities available to you and your players. They may not be judging you per say, but if it is a consistent enough problem, they might not necessarily feel confident in your verdicts when it really counts)
TOO EAGER TO ASSIST (let them figure it out. Don’t jump in and solve the puzzles for them. FIND THE BALANCE BETWEEN CHALLENGE AND TRUST. They will not feel as confident or else they may not even try if they know the solution is always an easy handout. Only advise when a direct and clear question is asked or if there is a problem emanating from a single player that is holding up the game for everyone)
MURDER HAPPY (comes down to intent. Accidents and misfortune happen. GM vs party, well, the game was rigged from the start. Where’s the fun in that?)
PLACATING EVERYONE (need I say more)
COMMITMENT ISSUES (your most important session is your next one. Don’t lose sight of the experience before you for ‘greener pastures’. Your responsibility is to the setting, system, player characters, and your friends' experience)
SCHEDULING RESPONSIBLY (the real final boss…)
LOOT FAIRY/LOOT FAMINE (find the right balance for reward and incentive. Loot is special. Plan out what items and abilities are reasonable and rewarding and fair when taking into account each player)
OMITTING CRUCIAL DETAILS/OBVIOUS REALIZATIONS (if you lock something behind a skill check when it is obvious enough that they couldn't possibly miss out on it, the immersion is broken, the story progression becomes finicky, and objections run amok)
which ties into... THE MISSING LINK (if the party misses something that is necessary for the plot to progress, change things up so that it presents itself differently; don’t stall the game because of an out of sequences event or poorly actualized revelation)
BLOODY FAVOURITISM
NOT READING THE ROOM (close in on the things that interest them, change pace when everyone is obviously not enjoying themselves. Ask questions. Learn about what they would like to do and experience within your own feasible capabilities to deliver. Don’t get tunnel vision. LOOK AT EACH OF THE PLAYERS)
A LIFE WITHOUT RISK/ NOTHING I DO MATTERS/ NO CONSEQUENCES (there should always be an element of uncertainty, risk, cause and effect, and expectations expressed by showing and not telling. Death, imprisonment, lost belongings, tarnished reputation, madness, lasting injury, etc. Excessive lack of consequences reduces feeling of accomplishment)
LIFE HAPPENS, LIFE CARRIES ON. (remember to have empathy for the people at the table. It can be hard not to take it personally sometimes, especially when you have high expectations riding on it, what with preparation and scheduling among every other stressful thing that you have to manage. They have their own stuff. Everybody is going through something. Talk about it, but never blame. Adapt to their not being there accordingly (see p.g. 235-236 of the D&D 5e DMG for advice on mitigating player absences). If the problem persists, again talk to them, be curious. If it transpires that they are avoiding playing because they are not enjoying themselves, they are anxious, or there is another problem but they don’t want to hurt anyone else’s feelings, make a decision about what to do next, holding them accountable and able whilst respecting their boundaries. Whatever the reason, include the other players in the decision about what to do next only if the absentee is open to it, or has gone completely silent)
as a gm this is what I do when a player can't make it. the game we play most is rifts and how we handle a missing player is to say they fall into a hidden rift or is captured by an enemy and the goal that week is to get the players to recue the missing player.
"You never asked me what it looks like" yeah that has started a lot of warranted rage at tables ending with "But I am holding it! I am holding the item! Even if I can not see it I still generally know what it looks like"