From accidental party kills to evil campaigns that went … well, evil … we’re only Wise DMs because we’ve made all the mistakes more times than we care to remember. What happened, what did we do about it, and what do we wish we’d done differently? We get into all the details and what we’ve learned from them in this episode. And maybe the real treasure was the TPKs we made along the way.
1:00: What do we really consider “DM mistakes”?
3:00 TPKs: Epic memories, The Red Cap Incident, and how to save your game
10:00 When the party should really know better
14:00 Monty Hall and mistakes that warp your campaign in the long-run (the campaign where Thorin had to start breeding Tarrasques)
17:00 Adamantine Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out: When your villain gets unfun
21:00 Continuity: If the super villain keeps showing up, why wouldn’t he just kill the party?
24:00 When the party TPKs themselves
27:00 Casting the wrong players as your epic “heroes” (especially in the Marvel Heroes RPG)
31:00 Aligning player character expectations with the game you’re running
39:00 When EVIL campaigns go bad
42:00 The dangers of DM-player side communication
45:00 How to run a successful EVIL campaign
48:00 DM burnout: When you get tired of trying to make your game work
60:00 The 6 trillion credit mistake
65:00 The fun of giving players unlimited resources
66:00 Final thoughts
A good episode! I’m glad that the “Redcap Incident” made it in. 🙂
Hasbin is still traumatized. He was so worried about losing his spell book that even now he always prepares “Find Familiar” just in case. 🙂
Thanks Scott! I feel like that incident has come up in a few episodes, but we went more deeply into it here.