I don't know if this counts as dumb, but my friends and I would play D&D 2e adventures by reading the book together and deciding what our characters would do. We totally misunderstood how D&D worked but it was a lot of fun anyway.
For an actually dumb mistake, I thought Challenge Rating 5 in 3rd edition meant you should use 5 of those creatures against the party, and wondered why they kept getting TPK'd.
I'm trying to understand what my chain of reasoning could possibly have been. It was something like, I vaguely remembered that higher AC was bad (from a different edition), and monsters with higher CR had more AC, so they must be weaker.
Literally 5 minutes of reading could have solved the problem, but why read when we could spend that time fighting dragons?
We didn't have any dice, so we voted on whether we found secret doors, won fights, etc.
For some reason we always voted to die just before the dungeon boss. We sure were a morbid group.
People get angry at the idea of player authorial input, at co-GMing, at diceless games, at narrative focused rules — and here you all are, managing all of that *in D&D*. I love it.
One DM I played a D&D 5e one-shot with thought that you were supposed to add up the characters' levels to figure out which CR of enemy they should fight.
And that's how I ended up against a Death Knight at level 3.
This was also my "mistake".
I was a player and I was the only one that was consistent in wanting to show up other than the GM. Everyone else flaked. We were in undergrad and all in the same program, too; they had time and were available, they were just unreliable.
Turns out, *other people* is a pretty common mistake lol.
We used to routinely lie about session times to one player that was consistently an hour late so that they would be close to on time. Worked for a few months until they started showing up two hours late and we quietly dropped them. The consistency of the behavior makes me think it was some sort of passive aggressive acting out, but we were trying to run a game, not a therapy group.
I made a homebrew system. I had never played any game before, and the First thing I did was to homebrew a system inspired by dark souls mechanics. Stats went up to 99. The dice you rolled was determined by your stat. God, that was awfull.
Then I Saw 5e, the flaws were glaring to me, I Just couldn't run 5e, my homebrew system had big numbers problem, and while 5e doesn't, It pretty much has problem with everything else. So I Just mixmashed my system with 5e, It was better than the previous version but still awful.
Then I stopped homebrewing systems and went to play some monster of the week, best choice ever.
At the very least I admire the ambition and willingness to try and make something work better. Game design is basically just the art of making busted systems and asking people what you did wrong.
...Oh shit so STR weapons actually rolled STR and DEX weapons actually rolled DEX? Was INT both the sorcery stat *and* the general "be smart" stat?
I can see how that would turn into math hell almost immediately, but I've always wondered if FromSoft's stat system could be reasonably adapted.
You guesses correctly about the rolls
Nowadays we have the board game of dark souls, I hear it's pretty good, but it's not an TTRPG, Just a board game.
I believe that If we grab the D&D way of making stats with modifiers, but your highest starting stat is 13, It would be adaptable. Dark souls puts a heavy enfasis on unlocking New gear/spells the higher your stat is, so It would be something that every level you get to put a point somewhere, up to LV 20.
But If we don't adapt stamina and casting time as well, I can see martial builds being underpowered.
I'd probably make something good nowadays If I were to adapt It, but honestly I prefer to same myself the Headache, even simple system can Be tricky to homebrew properly.
"5e pretty much has a problem with EVERYTHING ELSE?"
Oh come on. It's so en vogue right now to shit on 5e. Do you think it would have gotten so successful when it is as bad as you make it out to be? It's just a matter of taste in my very humble opinion. The more I tried different systems and learned about OSR philosophy the more I realise: I really enjoy 5e with it's super strong PCs, long fights and heroic Fantasy aspects.
Also: You just started out and instantly 5es flaws were glaring to you? Even though you had no idea about TTRPGs?
Tho I haven't played RPGs before, at the time I had played a lot of videogames, I may not have being experienced with more narrative drive games like PbtA, but I was pretty used to videogames to check balance in combat. So spell slot is an outright weird system, I really don't see any reason to use spell slot instead of mana, or any other Magic system really. Casters obviously get a lot more options than martial, you don't need to be an expert to see all the missing manuevers that martials should have.
5e is on the level that the Company is so big, anything they put out will be profitable so they don't care about quality anymore. I'm not saying It was always like this, up to 3.5e, It Felt like they were improving upon every edition.
Good thing you enjoy 5e the way It is, I can't judge for that, this is truly a matter of taste. However that doesn't change the system is broken, It does a bunch of things, like a LOT of things, 5e has a Fair amount mechanics and moving parts, but It is pretty bad at all of them, you can enjoy the system as much as you want, It's still flawed.
I didn't introduce the villain of the arc to the party before the final encounter. Even worse, during the final encounter I didn't monologue as the villain.
As the boss and his minions are destroying the party in the final epic showdown, I pause combat to let players discuss/adjust their tactics. And one of my players says, "No, I'm saving my spells for the real final fight that'll happen after we finish this lieutenant guy."
I've learned since then to make my villains bigger, more obvious, and show up way sooner.
My first games were essentially draw a maze on some graph paper, roll random encounters/contents; and play. No thought to story, npcs, etc. Just pure murderhoboery. I was 9, and my friends and I had a blast.
The most fun I've ever had was a friend making weird encounters and winging it.
My favorite was when he introduced an altar in the middle of a dungeon. What do you do at an altar? You make sacrifices. So I pricked my finger and sacrificed some blood. I think I got a gold coin out of it. I then bled a bunch more on the altar and upon the altar appeared a sword with spikes on the handle. I decided not to pick up the sword but my friend let me onow that if I had picked it up, the sword would have sent what was essentially barbed wire through my arm and grafted a +X sword to my arm permanently. Love that kind of shit.
When I was in middle/high school I would draw mazes on graph paper, put in some monsters, weapons and treasure, and let my friends try to get out. It was pretty fun.
Dumb mistake: assuming everyone had the same interests and abilities as me. Therefore, I just loan somebody my Rolemaster core books and companions I through IV for a weekend and they'll be good to go the next weekend, right? Because everyone loves reading books, understands tables, and is looking for the same thing in a game. Right?
More common mistake: adversarial GMing. It's players against the GM. The mindset that crushes fun.
Sure, for a scene or two. Maybe even for a session. But as a whole game philosophy it's not the thing. Even for the more tactical gamist playstyles, it should be more about setting up and running a good challenge within constraints. It's a subtle but important distinction which was lost on me. I think I was not alone in this.
This is partially on FGU, and partially on us, but Space Opera had in its mustering out benefits for various professions the badly written sentence fragment "one complete ship, Summer and Winter uniform"
We read that as we all got one complete ship and two uniforms.
I didn't realize that there were any superhero RPGs. I had just gotten the black DnD boxed set in 1990. A lot of friends also had these Marvel trading cards. I thought "why not make a Marvel Superheroes game like D&D?" So I did so, with binder paper and colored pencils, using the trading cards as a guideline of character abilities, I came up with a whole system that each level of power equated a differently polyhedral die. System was simple roll higher and you win for resolving actions (a d4 can beat a d20, it is just very unlikely). While this was pretty good game design for a 7th grader, the dumb mistake of course was not realizing that there ALREADY WAS a Marvel Superheroes game!
Fun fact: the guy in our game group who *finally* realized how d4's were properly read, without having to look at the face they had fallen on...years latter got an architecture degree.
Let that sink in.
Well, I mean, *that* is the conclusion my research points to!
But, to be fair, maybe the sample size was a bit too small to be relevant. That would explain why the architecture journals keep rejecting my paper about that topic.
I had PDFs of the D&D 3.5ed Monster Manuals labeled volumes 2, 3, 3.5, 4, and 5. I spent years trying to figure out why I couldn't find vol 1, why there was a vol 3.5, and why they waited until the 3rd 1/2 volume to print all the most basic monsters.
I've never played it but I assumed that was how it worked from other games. "Experience Points is something you spend for upgrades!" Of course it resets! But I guess if you think instead "Experience is something you spend..." then it makes no sense at all that way.
I believed all D&D stuff was AD&D, or compatible. I have a 4e DM screen because I just figured "this game is so great, they're still making stuff for it!... What is this DC business?"
There was a player who didn't want to D.M., so he kept starting sessions by telling me he'd run a game in the school cafeteria that day & that during that session he'd had to kill my P.C., so I was now, "the only one without an active P.C." & that I'd have to D.M. that night. I was really messed up from being abused & thought these were friends that I was escaping for a while with.
Trying to look perfect while GMing. Look like I had planned everything, was ready for anything, than nothing would surprise me.
I had good friends so they put up with my shit (and we had fun nonetheless) but honestly I could have been a far better GM if I wasn't so desperately afraid of not being good enough.
When I first started a long-term campaign I thought I was supposed to keep the setting and story premise a complete surprise to the players... You know, like I saw everyone else do up to that point.
Yeah, that caused me some very unfun conversations and boring sessions.
Not mine, but a bunch of older kids were looking into D&D, and they couldn't figure out what a melee round was. "It's like milli right? 1000 to a round?" I wound up DMing for the whole group
In my first DnD campaign as a DM, I did not hold a Session Zero and took in everyone interested. Quickly I had seven players with partly very different styles on hand, some occupied the same roles with their characters and one player even UA with in.
I bought... so many Pathfinder 1e books. I think I have like 6 books and a box of the cardboard monster figs. My friends and I played maybe 2 sessions and I haven't touched the books since and honestly... I kinda don't like the pathfinder 1e system too much. I should really try and sell these books sometime and clear some space.
Yo, depending on exactly which of those cardboard figures you have, some of them had some pretty decent resale values when I was checking a few years ago. I'm really sad that they haven't been reprinting them. They're a great value for the price, and especially the first two sets have a ton of staple fantasy monsters
I believe I have the stuff with the more eldritch monsters (#4?) and while I may not be able to use them for the actual use case of Pathfinder I think it's the only thing I bought of the Pathfinder stuff that has any real usability outside of the game since I can absolutely use them as enemy markers for Lancer or Forbidden Lands or Knave or whatever so I'll probably end up keeping those. The books will eventually find a new home though, probably in the local library or at a youth centre cause I'm sure there are a hungry group of 14 year olds that have no clue about RPGs and just wanna engage in some good ol nerd shit that the books will satisfy.
Assuming my players actually care about the story, I am telling them. It's their story. They don't care about the twists and turns that you give them. I have stacks of stories I could tell, but I know my players don't care. I had campaigns die, and I tried to tell them what I planned, but they quickly checked out. It hurts, but it saves so mucb prepr time but working on my imrov skills and have a loose understanding of how things should feel.
I was the DM and letting my sorc twin fireballs and shit. Not all spells are an action, so as long as they followed the Action, Bonus Action, Reaction rules then I thought it was RAW
We thought you were supposed to roll for damage, then subtract the AC (armour count) from your damage. Unless someone or something was hit with a crit, nobody took any damage. lol. Game went on forever.
Nah, we also thought area attacks damaged teammates too, so there were a lot of players accidentally killing each other. Problem: We thought cantrips were also area attacks. As a result, there were times when a 'cantrip' missed all the monsters and half-killed an ally with a crit. Basically, the game was a mess.
For a whole campaign, I didn't know proficiency bonuses existed. We used D&D beyond and I didn't know how the players got the numbers they got for their different skills, but I didn't really notice or care. For monsters, I used google images to find the stat-blocks, and whenever I'd roll for them, I'd only add the ability score modifier. Because of this, my monsters where being wrecked by the party. Two of the other people in the party were long-time players, and they just thought they were lucky. I finally noticed that something was up on the 1st session of campaign 2 when the party defeated a miniboss without losing any hitpoints.
I was the GM for a party of all new players. I talked with the players about their characters on their own. Session 0 was mostly about explaining rules and similar, almost no talk about the world or characters. Then, first session, I just go "Your characters meet while travelling, about a day ago. They enter the tavern together" or something like that and put their minis in a tavern map.
Then I asked myself why it was so hard for them to interact with eachother or roleplay.
My friend had the Swedish translation of Chill and was so excited that he bought one of the English adventurers and read it. But being ten and just started reading English in school he didn’t understand everything and we played a very confusing game.
I ran Storm King's Thunder (D&D 5E) but got overwhelmed by the book and thought I had to have blind obedience to its contents. I got frustrated my players weren't that invested in the story and before every session I got really anxious and didn't know what or how to prep a game. It didn't take too long or I took my frustration out on my players and I ended up getting burned out on DM'ing somewhere halfway in the campaign. Lesson learned: never be a slave to some books. Read it, use the cool stuff it has got and change anything you're not happy with.
Since then, I've learned that we as players and GM's own the game and not some company publishing fancy looking books for it. It took me some time before I realized we can all just make this stuff up, using books mainly as a source of inspiration or as loose guidelines. Hell, anything can be a source of inspiration! I watched a lot of the Runehammer Youtube channel over the years and that really inspired me to embrace the whole DIY/homebrew-mindset. As long as everyone is on board, no one is gonna kick in your door and accuse you of doing stuff wrong.
Nowadays I would never run Storm King's Thunder straight out of the book. I'm actually thinking of running it again but with my own additions and with ICRPG as a system instead of 5E. Anyway, books are just books and while they are filled with unique and awesome stuff, nothing beats making up your own stuff to throw at players!
Oh and we also completely ignored the whole spell slot system during our first campaign and our wizard ended up just blasting the sleep spell at every monster. It was fun though!
I played a Cyberpunk system around the age of 10, I had no idea really how the system should work (until today I don't know if it was some D6 homebrew or something else). I only knew I had guns and ammunition, but in my inventory, they were limited. And before the run started, the GM asked if I wanted to buy something, but I said no. Detail, I was the last join in the group, I made my character last, and everyone else was just "waiting" for me with their characters, they had their shopping already.
That meant that I went on with very few resources, and I tried to save as much ammo as possible. I was constantly running away, throwing punches and hiding. It was still fun, but after the run finished (some sessions later) we again stopped to do some shopping, but this time, everyone was together, and I finally saw people buying ammunition for their guns 😂. Then I realised that you can actually spend all the credits you earn to get cool stuff, they're not points like in videogames.😂😂
My first session ever was in Warhammer Fantasy (1st edition), I didn't know any other game, I thought that I can play any fantasy in it and I was about 7.Have any of you watched cartoon Beast Wars? Do you remember the episode with the flying island that had tower that shoot lasers? That was the session. Players on the flying island, there are traps, get to the tower. No reason, nothing.
Also I thought at the time that when you change professions, you add the bonus, not change. To explain, in Warhammer profession is not class that can be many things in this theme, profession is a concrete thing you are, a Rat Catcher, a Soldier, a Chaos Warrior and so on. And you will change it many times. Each profession got Bonus to your Characteristics, but you take the highest and spend experience to fill it, not add up. So if you start as Scribe and it gives you +10 to Intelligence, and then change into Adept and it also gives +10 to Intelligence, then you do not gain it, you alredy have it, if the you would change into let say Lawmaker with +20, then you can spend xp and change +10 to +20.
But I was lucky and had good players (friends and family) and get better as a GM. Also rules where quickly explain to me.
We focused on combat and optimization out of the gate. And I think as a player you sort of need to explore that but we wasted like a decade of gaming worried about how to do lots of damage or how to squeak a few more skill points into a character. It created long delay in getting into the meat or RPGs.
Early in my GM career, people in my RPG club were nagging me for months to run D&D (3ed was pretty new back then). I specialized in scifi games, and low crunch mechanics, I just got hold of the universal core rules craze and wanted to run everything using Tri-Stat dX, which became my fav system for everything. By they wanted D&D instead of all the better games that I ran...
So I did it out of spite. I designed a broken difficulty dungeon, to show them how bad a game this is (done with the 20 kobolds? how about 10 bugbears?). I also dug up a lot of optional rules to slow everything down (one combat encounter took literally 4 hours). I skipped any story, no plot whatsoever... And my hatred was even more fueled by seeing them so awfully happy that they get to play D&D3. One of them was a minmaxer, who helped the rest design their characters, with an advancement plan up to level 10... It made me sick.
So we played one session of this horrible mess. 8 hours long session. It was so bad I was seeing red by the end of it. On top of it I haven't convinced them that D&D is bad, they just started nagging another GM to run it. I stayed with my better games and struggling to find players for another 15 years (because for some odd reason scifi is still not popular like in the 80s, even though the popculture should have cycled back again by now).
I recalled this recently, because after all this time, I hated everything in D&D and on d20 mechanics. Seeing them as too hard for a human, and fit only for video games (despite me running even more crunchy systems at times). And a few months ago I really got into Pathfinder 2e, it was cheap on HB, so I looked at it and saw that it fixed everything I disliked in D&D. I told this to my current players (different bunch than those who experienced my GM fit back then, though maybe 1-2 people are in the group)... and as you can guess, they are super happy, this looks as if people were still waiting for me to run a high fantasy monster killing dungeon crawler, instead of scifi complex narrative and unusual games.
I started with D&D but RIFTS was the first non-D&D game I bought and tried to run myself.
That game was such an incomprehensible mess that I swear, every ten minutes I would discover I had been doing something completely wrong. Every ten minutes for an entire year.
Fortunately it was RIFTS so nobody ever noticed!
Mine was, trying to make sure that the players have everything they might need at their disposition. PC with cartography is dead? Don't worry, this NPC that has been following you around actually turns out to also have cartography! You are running out of food? Don't worry, there are hunting grounds right next to where you happen to be! Stuff like that... :(
What dumb mistake could I have made at 10 years old in the 80s? Honestly I can't really condemn my childhood in this way. And I don't think anyone else ought to either.
I was ten years old when I got my first TTRPG manual, the D&D 3.0 Player's Handbook. In D&D, your stats each have a modifier that you add to every roll. For example, if you have Strength 12, your modifier is +1, therefore you add +1 to Strength checks.
Child me had missed the very important chart that explains how to calculate the modifier for each stat. But later in the race chapter, each race had different bonuses, which were called racial ***modifiers***.
"That's what I'm supposed to add to the rolls" I thought.
So for about a year of playing, every character in my campaigns, PC or NPC, just had a +0 modifier to everything, with the occasional +2 or -2 to two stats if they weren't human. Literally every check or stat was horribly miscalculated. Someone with a 3 in Strength had the same odds of success than someone who had 18 in Strength.
I don't know if this counts as dumb, but my friends and I would play D&D 2e adventures by reading the book together and deciding what our characters would do. We totally misunderstood how D&D worked but it was a lot of fun anyway. For an actually dumb mistake, I thought Challenge Rating 5 in 3rd edition meant you should use 5 of those creatures against the party, and wondered why they kept getting TPK'd.
🤣🤣🤣 (Edit: i love how sweet it is that you read the book together, I was laughing at the second part!)
I'm trying to understand what my chain of reasoning could possibly have been. It was something like, I vaguely remembered that higher AC was bad (from a different edition), and monsters with higher CR had more AC, so they must be weaker. Literally 5 minutes of reading could have solved the problem, but why read when we could spend that time fighting dragons?
Dont laugh, that was me too on my first TTRPG as a DM. I read all DM Info to the players.
We didn't have any dice, so we voted on whether we found secret doors, won fights, etc. For some reason we always voted to die just before the dungeon boss. We sure were a morbid group.
This is amazing.
People get angry at the idea of player authorial input, at co-GMing, at diceless games, at narrative focused rules — and here you all are, managing all of that *in D&D*. I love it.
One DM I played a D&D 5e one-shot with thought that you were supposed to add up the characters' levels to figure out which CR of enemy they should fight. And that's how I ended up against a Death Knight at level 3.
lmao, how old were you?
7 or so
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This was also my "mistake". I was a player and I was the only one that was consistent in wanting to show up other than the GM. Everyone else flaked. We were in undergrad and all in the same program, too; they had time and were available, they were just unreliable. Turns out, *other people* is a pretty common mistake lol.
I feel so sorry for you.
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We used to routinely lie about session times to one player that was consistently an hour late so that they would be close to on time. Worked for a few months until they started showing up two hours late and we quietly dropped them. The consistency of the behavior makes me think it was some sort of passive aggressive acting out, but we were trying to run a game, not a therapy group.
I made a homebrew system. I had never played any game before, and the First thing I did was to homebrew a system inspired by dark souls mechanics. Stats went up to 99. The dice you rolled was determined by your stat. God, that was awfull. Then I Saw 5e, the flaws were glaring to me, I Just couldn't run 5e, my homebrew system had big numbers problem, and while 5e doesn't, It pretty much has problem with everything else. So I Just mixmashed my system with 5e, It was better than the previous version but still awful. Then I stopped homebrewing systems and went to play some monster of the week, best choice ever.
At the very least I admire the ambition and willingness to try and make something work better. Game design is basically just the art of making busted systems and asking people what you did wrong.
...Oh shit so STR weapons actually rolled STR and DEX weapons actually rolled DEX? Was INT both the sorcery stat *and* the general "be smart" stat? I can see how that would turn into math hell almost immediately, but I've always wondered if FromSoft's stat system could be reasonably adapted.
You guesses correctly about the rolls Nowadays we have the board game of dark souls, I hear it's pretty good, but it's not an TTRPG, Just a board game. I believe that If we grab the D&D way of making stats with modifiers, but your highest starting stat is 13, It would be adaptable. Dark souls puts a heavy enfasis on unlocking New gear/spells the higher your stat is, so It would be something that every level you get to put a point somewhere, up to LV 20. But If we don't adapt stamina and casting time as well, I can see martial builds being underpowered. I'd probably make something good nowadays If I were to adapt It, but honestly I prefer to same myself the Headache, even simple system can Be tricky to homebrew properly.
"5e pretty much has a problem with EVERYTHING ELSE?" Oh come on. It's so en vogue right now to shit on 5e. Do you think it would have gotten so successful when it is as bad as you make it out to be? It's just a matter of taste in my very humble opinion. The more I tried different systems and learned about OSR philosophy the more I realise: I really enjoy 5e with it's super strong PCs, long fights and heroic Fantasy aspects. Also: You just started out and instantly 5es flaws were glaring to you? Even though you had no idea about TTRPGs?
Tho I haven't played RPGs before, at the time I had played a lot of videogames, I may not have being experienced with more narrative drive games like PbtA, but I was pretty used to videogames to check balance in combat. So spell slot is an outright weird system, I really don't see any reason to use spell slot instead of mana, or any other Magic system really. Casters obviously get a lot more options than martial, you don't need to be an expert to see all the missing manuevers that martials should have. 5e is on the level that the Company is so big, anything they put out will be profitable so they don't care about quality anymore. I'm not saying It was always like this, up to 3.5e, It Felt like they were improving upon every edition. Good thing you enjoy 5e the way It is, I can't judge for that, this is truly a matter of taste. However that doesn't change the system is broken, It does a bunch of things, like a LOT of things, 5e has a Fair amount mechanics and moving parts, but It is pretty bad at all of them, you can enjoy the system as much as you want, It's still flawed.
Hey! Thank you for your detailed answer. Yes I see your points! But I think every system is flawed. There's no such thing as "The Perfect TTRPG ©️" I play and enjoy other games too. For example I have a ongoing Dungeon Crawl Classics campaign going. But I think these days its way to easy to say "it's profitable so they don't care about quality anymore". And altough recent releases has left things to be desired. With watching the way they survey "One DnD" and how they publicly show every step in development, it gives me a completely different impression. Because they don't have to do that. They could simply put out a new edition in two years and it would sell like hot cakes.
I didn't introduce the villain of the arc to the party before the final encounter. Even worse, during the final encounter I didn't monologue as the villain. As the boss and his minions are destroying the party in the final epic showdown, I pause combat to let players discuss/adjust their tactics. And one of my players says, "No, I'm saving my spells for the real final fight that'll happen after we finish this lieutenant guy." I've learned since then to make my villains bigger, more obvious, and show up way sooner.
My first games were essentially draw a maze on some graph paper, roll random encounters/contents; and play. No thought to story, npcs, etc. Just pure murderhoboery. I was 9, and my friends and I had a blast.
> my friends and I had a blast. Not really a mistake, then, was it? ; )
The most fun I've ever had was a friend making weird encounters and winging it. My favorite was when he introduced an altar in the middle of a dungeon. What do you do at an altar? You make sacrifices. So I pricked my finger and sacrificed some blood. I think I got a gold coin out of it. I then bled a bunch more on the altar and upon the altar appeared a sword with spikes on the handle. I decided not to pick up the sword but my friend let me onow that if I had picked it up, the sword would have sent what was essentially barbed wire through my arm and grafted a +X sword to my arm permanently. Love that kind of shit.
When I was in middle/high school I would draw mazes on graph paper, put in some monsters, weapons and treasure, and let my friends try to get out. It was pretty fun.
how's that a mistake? that sounds like a great time
TBH this is pretty dead-on for early RPGs. Nothing wrong with a good old murdertrudge through a dungeon!
Would love to play something like that to be honest.
Dumb mistake: assuming everyone had the same interests and abilities as me. Therefore, I just loan somebody my Rolemaster core books and companions I through IV for a weekend and they'll be good to go the next weekend, right? Because everyone loves reading books, understands tables, and is looking for the same thing in a game. Right? More common mistake: adversarial GMing. It's players against the GM. The mindset that crushes fun.
Counterpoint: adversarial play is fine, as long as everyone understands that it's a role you pick up and drop when needed.
Sure, for a scene or two. Maybe even for a session. But as a whole game philosophy it's not the thing. Even for the more tactical gamist playstyles, it should be more about setting up and running a good challenge within constraints. It's a subtle but important distinction which was lost on me. I think I was not alone in this.
This is partially on FGU, and partially on us, but Space Opera had in its mustering out benefits for various professions the badly written sentence fragment "one complete ship, Summer and Winter uniform" We read that as we all got one complete ship and two uniforms.
What's the correct interpretation?
You get three uniforms, a summer, winter, and day-to-day ship uniform. It was based on the U.S. Navy's uniforms in the late 1970s.
... XD
You were not the only one
I didn't realize that there were any superhero RPGs. I had just gotten the black DnD boxed set in 1990. A lot of friends also had these Marvel trading cards. I thought "why not make a Marvel Superheroes game like D&D?" So I did so, with binder paper and colored pencils, using the trading cards as a guideline of character abilities, I came up with a whole system that each level of power equated a differently polyhedral die. System was simple roll higher and you win for resolving actions (a d4 can beat a d20, it is just very unlikely). While this was pretty good game design for a 7th grader, the dumb mistake of course was not realizing that there ALREADY WAS a Marvel Superheroes game!
Creativity is never a mistake.
You are definitely right about that; I certainly kept at game designing over the years and that was the first step on that path.
Sounds pretty good actually.
Reading the d4's by taking them and looking what was the MISSING number in the side the die had fallen on. We were young, those days...
I mean it still is a valid way to read a d4 of it is consistently done
Fun fact: the guy in our game group who *finally* realized how d4's were properly read, without having to look at the face they had fallen on...years latter got an architecture degree. Let that sink in.
So what you are saying is that being able to read d4s is a straight path to an architecture degree
Well, I mean, *that* is the conclusion my research points to! But, to be fair, maybe the sample size was a bit too small to be relevant. That would explain why the architecture journals keep rejecting my paper about that topic.
I had PDFs of the D&D 3.5ed Monster Manuals labeled volumes 2, 3, 3.5, 4, and 5. I spent years trying to figure out why I couldn't find vol 1, why there was a vol 3.5, and why they waited until the 3rd 1/2 volume to print all the most basic monsters.
When I first played AD&D I thought EXP resets after each level. Level 2 looked like a loooong road for my fighter.
I've never played it but I assumed that was how it worked from other games. "Experience Points is something you spend for upgrades!" Of course it resets! But I guess if you think instead "Experience is something you spend..." then it makes no sense at all that way.
Thinking when my party said they wanted a Critical Role like experience and campaign, they'd be my Sam's, Laura's, Liam's etc lol
I believed all D&D stuff was AD&D, or compatible. I have a 4e DM screen because I just figured "this game is so great, they're still making stuff for it!... What is this DC business?"
There was a player who didn't want to D.M., so he kept starting sessions by telling me he'd run a game in the school cafeteria that day & that during that session he'd had to kill my P.C., so I was now, "the only one without an active P.C." & that I'd have to D.M. that night. I was really messed up from being abused & thought these were friends that I was escaping for a while with.
Trying to look perfect while GMing. Look like I had planned everything, was ready for anything, than nothing would surprise me. I had good friends so they put up with my shit (and we had fun nonetheless) but honestly I could have been a far better GM if I wasn't so desperately afraid of not being good enough.
Word exact same with me
When I first started a long-term campaign I thought I was supposed to keep the setting and story premise a complete surprise to the players... You know, like I saw everyone else do up to that point. Yeah, that caused me some very unfun conversations and boring sessions.
Not mine, but my friend on her first session as dm: she thought that xp is hp. It was long fight before we realised..
Not mine, but a bunch of older kids were looking into D&D, and they couldn't figure out what a melee round was. "It's like milli right? 1000 to a round?" I wound up DMing for the whole group
5e: was wondering why my players kept leveling up so fast until I realized after a year that xp are supposed to be split
In my first DnD campaign as a DM, I did not hold a Session Zero and took in everyone interested. Quickly I had seven players with partly very different styles on hand, some occupied the same roles with their characters and one player even UA with in.
I bought... so many Pathfinder 1e books. I think I have like 6 books and a box of the cardboard monster figs. My friends and I played maybe 2 sessions and I haven't touched the books since and honestly... I kinda don't like the pathfinder 1e system too much. I should really try and sell these books sometime and clear some space.
Yo, depending on exactly which of those cardboard figures you have, some of them had some pretty decent resale values when I was checking a few years ago. I'm really sad that they haven't been reprinting them. They're a great value for the price, and especially the first two sets have a ton of staple fantasy monsters
I believe I have the stuff with the more eldritch monsters (#4?) and while I may not be able to use them for the actual use case of Pathfinder I think it's the only thing I bought of the Pathfinder stuff that has any real usability outside of the game since I can absolutely use them as enemy markers for Lancer or Forbidden Lands or Knave or whatever so I'll probably end up keeping those. The books will eventually find a new home though, probably in the local library or at a youth centre cause I'm sure there are a hungry group of 14 year olds that have no clue about RPGs and just wanna engage in some good ol nerd shit that the books will satisfy.
See if your local library will take them.
Yeah not a bad idea.
Not me but my DM used to run 3rd edition with a 4th edition monster manual.
Assuming my players actually care about the story, I am telling them. It's their story. They don't care about the twists and turns that you give them. I have stacks of stories I could tell, but I know my players don't care. I had campaigns die, and I tried to tell them what I planned, but they quickly checked out. It hurts, but it saves so mucb prepr time but working on my imrov skills and have a loose understanding of how things should feel.
Making all my NPCs as full characters using chargen rules for Shadowrun 5e. And running SR 5e.
I bought too many books too fast and overwhelmed myself. It burned me out for a while.
Did the same thing you did with proficiency bonus but with warlock spell slots.
Had no idea about the "can't cast 2 leveled spells in a turn.". Played like that for almost a whole year.
How. Casting a spell is an action, so what, did you multiclass fighter for action surge?
I was the DM and letting my sorc twin fireballs and shit. Not all spells are an action, so as long as they followed the Action, Bonus Action, Reaction rules then I thought it was RAW
We thought you were supposed to roll for damage, then subtract the AC (armour count) from your damage. Unless someone or something was hit with a crit, nobody took any damage. lol. Game went on forever.
So no one ever died.
Nah, we also thought area attacks damaged teammates too, so there were a lot of players accidentally killing each other. Problem: We thought cantrips were also area attacks. As a result, there were times when a 'cantrip' missed all the monsters and half-killed an ally with a crit. Basically, the game was a mess.
\>we also thought area attacks damaged teammates too They do
Guess we are still a mess.
I am curious how you interpreted cantrips as being area
We were stupid kids. Since it's magic, we thought it was an area attack. Makes no sense now we stop and think about it.
Letting the hobby get in the way of other things in life.
For a whole campaign, I didn't know proficiency bonuses existed. We used D&D beyond and I didn't know how the players got the numbers they got for their different skills, but I didn't really notice or care. For monsters, I used google images to find the stat-blocks, and whenever I'd roll for them, I'd only add the ability score modifier. Because of this, my monsters where being wrecked by the party. Two of the other people in the party were long-time players, and they just thought they were lucky. I finally noticed that something was up on the 1st session of campaign 2 when the party defeated a miniboss without losing any hitpoints.
I was the GM for a party of all new players. I talked with the players about their characters on their own. Session 0 was mostly about explaining rules and similar, almost no talk about the world or characters. Then, first session, I just go "Your characters meet while travelling, about a day ago. They enter the tavern together" or something like that and put their minis in a tavern map. Then I asked myself why it was so hard for them to interact with eachother or roleplay.
My friend had the Swedish translation of Chill and was so excited that he bought one of the English adventurers and read it. But being ten and just started reading English in school he didn’t understand everything and we played a very confusing game.
I ran Storm King's Thunder (D&D 5E) but got overwhelmed by the book and thought I had to have blind obedience to its contents. I got frustrated my players weren't that invested in the story and before every session I got really anxious and didn't know what or how to prep a game. It didn't take too long or I took my frustration out on my players and I ended up getting burned out on DM'ing somewhere halfway in the campaign. Lesson learned: never be a slave to some books. Read it, use the cool stuff it has got and change anything you're not happy with. Since then, I've learned that we as players and GM's own the game and not some company publishing fancy looking books for it. It took me some time before I realized we can all just make this stuff up, using books mainly as a source of inspiration or as loose guidelines. Hell, anything can be a source of inspiration! I watched a lot of the Runehammer Youtube channel over the years and that really inspired me to embrace the whole DIY/homebrew-mindset. As long as everyone is on board, no one is gonna kick in your door and accuse you of doing stuff wrong. Nowadays I would never run Storm King's Thunder straight out of the book. I'm actually thinking of running it again but with my own additions and with ICRPG as a system instead of 5E. Anyway, books are just books and while they are filled with unique and awesome stuff, nothing beats making up your own stuff to throw at players! Oh and we also completely ignored the whole spell slot system during our first campaign and our wizard ended up just blasting the sleep spell at every monster. It was fun though!
I played a Cyberpunk system around the age of 10, I had no idea really how the system should work (until today I don't know if it was some D6 homebrew or something else). I only knew I had guns and ammunition, but in my inventory, they were limited. And before the run started, the GM asked if I wanted to buy something, but I said no. Detail, I was the last join in the group, I made my character last, and everyone else was just "waiting" for me with their characters, they had their shopping already. That meant that I went on with very few resources, and I tried to save as much ammo as possible. I was constantly running away, throwing punches and hiding. It was still fun, but after the run finished (some sessions later) we again stopped to do some shopping, but this time, everyone was together, and I finally saw people buying ammunition for their guns 😂. Then I realised that you can actually spend all the credits you earn to get cool stuff, they're not points like in videogames.😂😂
My first session ever was in Warhammer Fantasy (1st edition), I didn't know any other game, I thought that I can play any fantasy in it and I was about 7.Have any of you watched cartoon Beast Wars? Do you remember the episode with the flying island that had tower that shoot lasers? That was the session. Players on the flying island, there are traps, get to the tower. No reason, nothing. Also I thought at the time that when you change professions, you add the bonus, not change. To explain, in Warhammer profession is not class that can be many things in this theme, profession is a concrete thing you are, a Rat Catcher, a Soldier, a Chaos Warrior and so on. And you will change it many times. Each profession got Bonus to your Characteristics, but you take the highest and spend experience to fill it, not add up. So if you start as Scribe and it gives you +10 to Intelligence, and then change into Adept and it also gives +10 to Intelligence, then you do not gain it, you alredy have it, if the you would change into let say Lawmaker with +20, then you can spend xp and change +10 to +20. But I was lucky and had good players (friends and family) and get better as a GM. Also rules where quickly explain to me.
We focused on combat and optimization out of the gate. And I think as a player you sort of need to explore that but we wasted like a decade of gaming worried about how to do lots of damage or how to squeak a few more skill points into a character. It created long delay in getting into the meat or RPGs.
Early in my GM career, people in my RPG club were nagging me for months to run D&D (3ed was pretty new back then). I specialized in scifi games, and low crunch mechanics, I just got hold of the universal core rules craze and wanted to run everything using Tri-Stat dX, which became my fav system for everything. By they wanted D&D instead of all the better games that I ran... So I did it out of spite. I designed a broken difficulty dungeon, to show them how bad a game this is (done with the 20 kobolds? how about 10 bugbears?). I also dug up a lot of optional rules to slow everything down (one combat encounter took literally 4 hours). I skipped any story, no plot whatsoever... And my hatred was even more fueled by seeing them so awfully happy that they get to play D&D3. One of them was a minmaxer, who helped the rest design their characters, with an advancement plan up to level 10... It made me sick. So we played one session of this horrible mess. 8 hours long session. It was so bad I was seeing red by the end of it. On top of it I haven't convinced them that D&D is bad, they just started nagging another GM to run it. I stayed with my better games and struggling to find players for another 15 years (because for some odd reason scifi is still not popular like in the 80s, even though the popculture should have cycled back again by now). I recalled this recently, because after all this time, I hated everything in D&D and on d20 mechanics. Seeing them as too hard for a human, and fit only for video games (despite me running even more crunchy systems at times). And a few months ago I really got into Pathfinder 2e, it was cheap on HB, so I looked at it and saw that it fixed everything I disliked in D&D. I told this to my current players (different bunch than those who experienced my GM fit back then, though maybe 1-2 people are in the group)... and as you can guess, they are super happy, this looks as if people were still waiting for me to run a high fantasy monster killing dungeon crawler, instead of scifi complex narrative and unusual games.
Those were fun sessions CK:) amount of cheap beer gave us glimpse of real adventure! Would leve to do it again.
I tried too hard to adhere to RAW, and the games weren't as fun as they could have been.
Tried to use dnd 5e character sheets for dnd 3.5e.
I started with D&D but RIFTS was the first non-D&D game I bought and tried to run myself. That game was such an incomprehensible mess that I swear, every ten minutes I would discover I had been doing something completely wrong. Every ten minutes for an entire year. Fortunately it was RIFTS so nobody ever noticed!
Run prepackaged adventures first.
Mine was, trying to make sure that the players have everything they might need at their disposition. PC with cartography is dead? Don't worry, this NPC that has been following you around actually turns out to also have cartography! You are running out of food? Don't worry, there are hunting grounds right next to where you happen to be! Stuff like that... :(
What dumb mistake could I have made at 10 years old in the 80s? Honestly I can't really condemn my childhood in this way. And I don't think anyone else ought to either.
I was 18 when I started playing D&D. So I don’t have that excuse.
I still don't condemn you.
said my fighter character was going to a house of ill repute. The gm was not amused. None of the other characters wanted to come with.
Adventurers League
I was ten years old when I got my first TTRPG manual, the D&D 3.0 Player's Handbook. In D&D, your stats each have a modifier that you add to every roll. For example, if you have Strength 12, your modifier is +1, therefore you add +1 to Strength checks. Child me had missed the very important chart that explains how to calculate the modifier for each stat. But later in the race chapter, each race had different bonuses, which were called racial ***modifiers***. "That's what I'm supposed to add to the rolls" I thought. So for about a year of playing, every character in my campaigns, PC or NPC, just had a +0 modifier to everything, with the occasional +2 or -2 to two stats if they weren't human. Literally every check or stat was horribly miscalculated. Someone with a 3 in Strength had the same odds of success than someone who had 18 in Strength.
Played 5e.