These 20 Dungeon Master Mistakes Ruin D&D Games

Being a dungeon master in D&D isn't easy. A DM, novice or veteran, is likely to make mistakes; it's unavoidable. Some mistakes dungeon masters make are minor, and players barely notice; other mistakes are more grave; and then there are the dungeon master mistakes that can leach player fun in a heartbeat and destroy entire games. In this video, we discuss 20 dungeon master mistakes that leech fun, destroy comradery, and ruin D&D games.

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Editing ▶▶ Zack Newman
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#dnd #dungeonsanddragons

[zacchris]

I had a DMPC that I shoe horned into a campaign I was running. He talked big and was full of himself (saying he was a dragon slayer), but seemed to hold his own in a fight. The players grew to rely on his knowledge and skills but not really like him. 1 session later he is bitten in half by a Dragon in a scripted event and my players shit their pants as intended.

[dylank]

I have ONCE allowed a player to bribe me, he offered to grill steak for us all if I allowed him to switch his character next level up, who am I to say no to that offer? The steak was definitely worth it

[doms.]

I once was playing and I said "I wanna climb over this 2ft wall" I was a 6'5" half orc barbarian. They had me roll an athletic check. A little ridiculous but ok. The issue came when the DM told the other players to roll to climb over, even though they never said they wanted to. Our DM was big on not allowing us to split. Which I get to an extent but we could not enter a room and have someone keep watch. We all had to enter the room. Just my small example of taking our agency

[Moj]

About the DMPC, I once had that happen entirely by accident for me.

I was the DM, and I made a humble, bright-eyed NPC choirboy with a level in Cleric to act as someone to sweep the town chapel's floors while he studied his religion. For some plot-related reason or another, the head priest (who was actually the villain of the week posing as the priest via illusion magic) locked the main party in a crypt full of undead. Sadly, Douglas the choirboy was stuck down there with them - bad guy didn't want witnesses to his scheme after all.

The main party wound up saving Douglas the Hostage via defending him against the zombie horde. When they escaped, Douglas stuck with them simply because he felt indebted to these kind strangers.

When they confronted the villain a second time, Douglas, despite being level 1 while everyone else was 2, stuck around to help, even intercepting a melee attack against the group's caster by throwing himself in front of it, much to the players' surprise. He was due to die then, but the damage wasn't enough to kill him outright, and they spent one of the last few potions they had bringing Douglas back to his feet. He finished the fight alive, and helped save the town along with the heroes.

At the end of the session, the players in their downtime made it clear that they were going to ask Douglas to join the main party... partially for healing reasons, as he was the only Cleric, and partially because they grew attached to this dumb but well-meaning choirboy.

And so began the friendship between the players and Douglas Averness, Wielder of the Purifier Mace, Beacon of Greenside and Generally Nice Boy. Who just wanted to sweep the chapel floors.

[MrJjk]

Worst homebrew rule?
The DM was new, very new so i have to forgive him for this, but if you hit an attack of opportunity the creatures movement is interrupted and the creature could not move for the rest of the turn. This applied both for players and monsters. Basically everyone had the sentinel feat, always.

[nickwilliams]

"It doesn't _rule_ how I run my game, but it does _inform_ it."

See, that's why I like you, Luke.

[MasamiPhoenix]

So I once DMed for just two players, so I decided to give them a DMPC, but I decided to be clever about it.

They were a warrior and a paldin, so.they could use either a cleric or a wizard. Since it was a relatively silly campaign, I gave them both. A guide who would flip between two personalities: a friendly but dimwitted wizard or a clever but surley cleric.

Neither personality had a lot of agency, the wizard was just too airheaded to come up with any plans, and the cleric was too apathetic to take initiative. So the players were still forced to figure eveything oit themselves (I did occasionally use her to nudge them)

More importantly though, she was a powerful tool and an obnoxious puzzle they had to figure out. The rules on what triggered her to switch personalities and power sets were very defined, but hidden from the players. They had to figure out what they were and then how to implement them when they needed her to shift. The end result was a fun puzzle that actually gave them more agency rather than taking it away.

[MrGBH]

I've only take player agency in very limited situations.
A PC had been poisoned and had to be left behind whilst the others escaped. The villains captured him and used Ba Sing Se style brainwashing techniques on him. When he was rescued, the villain used a code-phrase to activate his brainwashing, and then I controlled the PC until it was fixed.
I had subtly set up the brainwashing beforehand, the PC being left behind was a decision from the others, and I explained what was going to happen to the player privately before it happened.
In other words, I put in a lot of effort to make sure that it was done in a way the players would appreciate, not just to advance a story.

[Guy_W]

A campaign I was in did have a great unexpected PVP moment, but it was handled well. A new PC joined (player was already a friend), and there were some poor insights and misunderstandings right off the bat with another PC. They were about to fight and our DM stopped, asked how they both felt about PVP, reassured us that he wouldn't kill a PC in a PVP fight, then allowed it to continue. The two PCs sorted out their misunderstanding through beating the crud out of each other, and me and the other PCs let them sort it out in some great RP-fighting, then we stepped in when one fell and tended to both of them. It was a unique bonding experience between those two PCs that I felt was well handled.

[alucardthespy]

10:08 My DM had a similar situation in which he introduced "The Tavern Brawl". During the Brawl everyone roles initiative as normal and, unless stated otherwise, hits with the intent to knock out, not kill. If you fall to 0hp, you are stable. It lead to fun moments where we got to let out our frustrations with the other characters, team up, and even fight to see who's plan we went with. I didn't win... but I gave it my all. In the first brawl my character (rogue) got knocked out by his aunt (barbarian) who got defeated by his adoptive daughter (rogue). Fun times.
All this to say, I think it can be done well, but be clear with your players there is a line to not cross.

[josefwiggins]

I wanted to drop a HUGE thank you to Luke and this community.

I binged this library of videos and read comments before building and running my very first game as a DM last weekend.
I had almost crippling anxiety it would flop horribly.
Instead, a planned 3 hour session turned into a 12 hour session. At the end, they all wanted to know when we play again.

They did not follow the expected path, just like I was warned.
They tried to do things I never considered, just like I was warned.
They missed huge sections that I had spent hours preparing, just like I was warned.
But they also noticed the subtle hooks I put in related to their backgrounds (we rolled their characters a week early so I could mix them into the setting) and they ate it up.
And the setting preparation made it surprisingly easy to adapt when they went directions I hadn't planned out.

It became obvious very early in the adventure I would not be coddling them. The first encounter, the sorcerer stepped on a stick, gave away his position, and almost died to a hail of goblin arrows. And that set a wonderful tone.
When they leveled to 2 about 8 hours in, it felt like the party had really earned it.
We had one scene where good RP by my players almost degenerated to PvP, but my players resolved it on their own before I had to flip to my notes on "How Luke stops PvP".
And when they faced the BBEG, a hobgoblin Iron Shadow with a Goblin Boss flunky and 5 goblin grunts, the tension was real.
Thankfully, they all survived, but they failed to capture the Iron Shadow, killing her instead. And the party knows that is a problem.
Working on Adventure Setting 2 now.



So thanks again to Luke and all that comment here.
What could have been a horrible disaster, ended up being really fun.

[kodiakthebear]

Dear YouTube, Luke does not suck.

The worst "homebrew" rule I had was when a DM ran a story with our characters from 5e in an Advanced D&D ruleset. Don't ask me how it works, because it didn't. What it amounted to is all of our characters losing class and race features and other things, like my cleric, having to assign one spell per spell slot (while only using 5e spells). I went down to 5 spell slots for some reason (level 11 cleric). It was miserable.

[waffleswafflson]

Im guilty on anti-favoritism. I had a player who lawyered for for advntage on almost every roll he made. Have to slap him down occasionally to make him stop

[CidGuerreiro]

I'd like to add another big one: thinking that something that is obvious to you as the DM is also obvious to the players.

I don't even remember the context, but years ago I ran a game where there was a next step that seemed pretty obvious to me, yet the players simply couldn't figure out what to do next. I also remember unwittingly saying something that gave them an entirely false clue and led them into an even further direction from the expected path. I ended up slapping some supernatural intervention to help them as I was desperately trying to avoid showing up from behind the DM curtain and telling them they were going into the wrong direction.

This is very similar to "removing player agency", when there is only one thing players can do that will push the story further, and anything else will lead to a dead end. You think it's obvious but it usually isn't. Our current DM has admitted to this mistake as well, thinking the next step to take was obvious, while from our POV there were a million story hooks that never led anywhere.

[Wordweaver]

To number 7: "Winning" for the GM is telling the story from beginning to end (and the players will shape the ending, too - sometimes even writing a completely unexpected ending). If the GM "wins" through TPK before that, the story has not been told and not all the GM's prep work has actually paid off.

[pika]

So, I’m currently in a campaign with a couple of friends, and since we were such a small group, our DM added in a DMPC, who was actually meant to be a story important character (we had all agreed to this decision). However, eventually our DM realized that playing as both a PC and a DM was extremely difficult, so they decided that Fenwyn, the Halfling Barbarian, would no longer be an important character. So, they had Fen disappear for a session, and then they got rid of him in the most cleverly cruel way possible. So during an adventure, our group was walking to a nearby town through the woods, after having to leave the previous town cause our Bard became a wanted criminal. On the way, we realized we were being stalked by someone, and eventually, they attacked. We THEN realized that it was Fenwyn, who heard that we were all criminals (cause we helped our Bard escape jail), and had come to kill us. We were eventually forced to kill our former friend, and let’s just say that my character is probably traumatized

[thaisteezy]

One of my dms had a homebrew rule where if you tried to heal someone with a spell and rolled minimum healing, they instead took damage. You want to cast cure wounds? Alright, roll for healing. You rolled a 1? The barbarian loses 4 hp. Made my cleric useless

[DrexisEbon]

I can completely attest that a good "sandbox" requires WAAAAY more prep. I'm a worldbuilder type DM so I definitely prefer to run by the seat of my pants once the characters are in the world, but I built a world with tons of characters and places well in advance so now it's time for me to play around in that world some more, just as much as it is for my players.

[hayleylingenfelter]

I have seen PvP done well once. In the campaign I currently play in, we had a player who died to save the party, and his death was turned into an opportunity for him to take on the entire party, as he turned into an abomination. This was discussed ahead of time with the player by our DM, and was a really fun send-off.

[willmena]

I've been following this channel for a few years already and I'm sure I have avoided ruining my games thanks to Luke's advices. Most of what you say has happened in a lot of my games (as a player) and it always ended up poorly.
I decided to follow your advice when I started DMing and I'm 100% sure my both groups are still alive because I didn't make those big mistakes. It takes a lot of work to keep the groups together yet it's so easy to ruin everything. Thanks Luke :D