In Alternate Realities there's a thread for stupid PC decisions, but I thought to balance things by starting a thread for blunders made by the GM. Besides the other thread, I'm inspired by my most recent such blunder, from yesterday.

I'm using the Will in the Way adventure, and the PCs found the clearing in Shortren Woods. I had previously thought I wouldn't use the maps provided, but then changed my mind just before the session and quickly printed out those pages. Then, during the game, I gave the maps to the players as normal, and found them useful.

But then one of the players noticed the title in the top margin - I had forgotten to remove it! Perhaps not a huge blunder, but a shameful one in any case. They didn't understand its meaning yet, but it'll soon become clear. I just hate to give away information about adventures, and at best would've told them the name after they'd completed the adventure, if even then.

A worse blunder, for which I blame the 100BoR adventure module actually, was during the early sessions of the same campaign. Not realizing that the PCs (even the miner) would probably not recognize or understand what the mine was for, I simply told them it's a coal mine. AFAIK, medieval people did not know coal mines.

So, dare to tell us about your blunders as a GM? Or blunders by other GMs you've seen? I'm sure we'd all like to hear.

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Perhaps not a blunder, but anyway.

In a a Sci-Fi game called Wastelands (mad max combo with V, sort of) one of my players got shot, and on a subsequent round I asked him what he will do, and he answered "Nothing, I am down", so I assumed that he was so injured so he couldn't do anything, he was out.

My nasty big "boss" with a .454 gun walked by him (since he was down). So when my guy stood besides "the downed player" I told the other players that my "boss" searched for them (they where hiding) and I also said some fun mocking lines.

As most of you probably have guessed, during the next round, the "downed" player, told me that he take his shotgun and shoot my "boss" in the back at point blank range. I asked him "but you where down", he answered "I said down, not out".

I congratulated my player that he fooled me with one of the cheapest tricks in the book (how many movies haven't this been included in).

So sometimes you don't need to have the Acting or Bluff skill to act or bluff, sometimes all you need to have is a GM that thinks that he has the situation under control and good supervision.

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In a game (very long time ago) where I was a player, the GM gave a map of a town for us as normal. It was the original map that came with the scenario or campaign. We ran after some guy who suddenly disappeared, so we started looking at the map for where he might have gone. Around where he disappeared there was an "X" on the map, with text saying something like "secret door to underground tunnel". We asked the GM, because we thought we were looking at a player map, and assumed that had to be some kind of common knowledge. The way he blushed revealed it wasn't a player map. The GM should never be lazy with his maps, I guess. Always make a separate map for the players.

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I wonder if there should be a separate thread for bad designs in commercial products? Probably not...

D&D scenarios are pretty notorious, I think, in the way they have irrational and ridiculous combinations of monsters around in some ruins or dungeons. In Caldwell's Castle (? or something like that) there were kobolds near the entrance, wolves and bandits in the back (where they had no alternative entrances). So, how did situation come to be?

But even worse, I once saw (can't remember where, unfortunately) in a scenario for some other game, a dungeon, where some dragon (IIRC, there was very little point in there being a dragon there, but there it was) living in a room in the middle of the dungeon. The most ridiculous thing was that the dragon was big enough to nearly fill the room. And yet he had no way of moving in and out of the room, as the rest of the dungeon was too small for that, and there was no roof exit either!

So badly designed adventures, if not exactly GM blunders, give opportunities to newbie, unthinking GMs to make blunders, by actually using the adventures, or at least by using them as written. I'm not sure how much could be salvaged from such trash, though, even by a thinking, mature, experienced, good GM.

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This reminds me when I played DnD for the first time (early 80s) and there was a dungeon in that box. Since one level of the dungon where empty and ready for me as DM to fill. There where rules to randomize dungeons and its contents, so on fly I decided to use those rules "live" so to speak. In one of the rooms, 12 skeletons where generated, but when we looked at our map, eh, it was a one hex "closet" (talk about a skeletons in the ...). My brother made a joke about that skeletons don't take up so much place, they have interlooking "bodies". That was the only time I used the randomizer directly on a session and not how it was suppose to be used, as a help when you design your own dungeons.

I have also used those damn treasure table "live" and that usually ends up very badly, especially if you describe a dragon's hoard as a huge pile of coins and jewelry and then when you start roll the dice for everybody to see, not even a copper piece is generated.

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The most convincing rationale I ever heard for explaining this was that all dragons have the ability to teleport without error (or move through interdimensional space, or whatever you want to call it). So it's entirely possible for them to be located in such a small room, especially if it's where they hold their horde. Of course, this allows them to escape, if necessary.

As an aside, I *never* allow my players to kill an adult dragon. I've always felt that these beasties should be too powerful for *any* mundane player character. The only way to kill a dragon is if it's too young, too near to death from other causes, or it is the will of the gods (and the gods actually intervene and provide help).

Sorry, I've hijacked the thread. Back to the original purpose...


My biggest blunder was to stick slavishly to the dice rolls. I had the attitude "Whatever the dice says must be!" This resulted in the players almost never meeting anyone except farmers in any random encounter (the original HM1 encounter tables were pretty bad). It resulted in paltry treasures or overkill (in some cases, almost literally, for the party).

It was only after a particularly appalling episode where the players all complained that I realised that GM intervention in the random result often made far more sense, and produced better games, than allowing randomness to rule the roost. Now I've swung almost entirely in the opposite direction. Randomness plays no significant role in moving the game along; it's all storyline and what the players do. Randomness is only used in combat and certain other situations, and even then is heavily weighted.

The other major blunder I made as a GM was to create stories that were too tight, and railroading the PCs to follow the story, rather than providing a flexible framework of a story for the players to flesh out with their actions. It requires being able to adapt and alter things on the fly, but it makes for more fun overall.

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One time when I was Keeper (GM) in Call of Cthulhu, we were drinking while playing (a stupid thing we often did at the time). It was fun, although the map I drew (drew it, as I usually did, freehand, based on the GM map) about the place certainly looked terrible the next day. One of the Investigators (PCs) searched a newly found room in some ancient ruins, while the others searched hallways and other rooms.

The next day, the player started asking me questions about the statuette he had picked up in the previously secret room. I could not remember anything. It took a fairly long while until I recalled what it was all about, and at the same time, unfortunately, the player realized it was not important. What had happened was that when his PC searched the room, I told him pretty much everything the scenario description said about the room, including that it had statues and statuettes, and some other things in it. The player got interested in these, because at least some where of animals. As he asked questions, I winged more and more, and he was more intrigued, until the PC decided to pick up one such statuette that he'd been inspecting. It was a nice, off the cuff, red herring, and worked perfectly. Until the next day, by which time I had completely forgotten that drunken inspiration.

So, what did I learn? Looking back at following sessions, not much, but I guess what I should've learned by then, was to never drink alcohol (or at least not as much as I did) while GMing. It can even screw up the whole game. (I finally learned this in a much worse way some time later).

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Actully I think there should be


Or another words what do the mosters eat when there are no adventurers about

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Seeking Harn Players in Madison, Wisconsin

He had drawn out the level on the battlemat, we moved our characters down and through a door....

After much pausing, and "Oh Crap!", we realized that he had drawn a secret door.....

Well, we ended up doing the adventure in reverse, killing the boss first, and then mopping up after getting all of the powerful goodies....

I am a GM. That means I am the Omnipotent Deity of my campaign world and by definition cannot make mistakes.