The life of a Dungeon Master is not an easy one. You have your mind constantly thinking of outcomes, what to do next time to impress your players, balancing encounters, what voices you can do properly… all kinds of stuff. But it’s still a fun ride and a type of experience you don’t get from many games. After all, you’re not a player. You’re the game itself.
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Many things can happen during aDungeons & Dragonscampaign, and it falls to the DM to keep the show going. And we’re here just to think of these moments, and maybe laugh about them.
10Forgetting Or Not Having Time To Prepare
You know, life happens, and DMs are people too. Sometimes you just don’t have time to go over the things you needed for the next session, or you were so busy that you only remembered to do it on the day of the session.Preparing for a sessioncan be complicated.
Well, time to either prepare something extremely fast or just wing it with your (hopefully) amazing improvisation skills. And speaking of improvising…
9Making Long Fights So You Can Stall
Not everyone is super quick to improvise, and not everyone is good at improvising in the first place. But hey, if there’s one thing that consumes a lot of time in a session, it’s a powerful boss fight. You could lose an hour or more there, which is plenty of time to think about the aftermath.
If your players enjoy fighting, you probably won’t be getting any complaints there. After all, for a fight to last this long, it means they’re fighting a strong opponent, who can even be a memorable villain in the future. If they survive, of course.
8Accidentally Making Overpowered/Weak Enemies
Your players used all of their powers, magic items, spells, and abilities, but they’re still having a hard time. They’ve started to talk about whether they should keep fighting or run away. You maintain your evil smile, showing them they’re screwed against this powerful boss. But deep down, you’re thinking, “Okay, maybe I made this dude way too powerful.”
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The opposite can be the case too. You believe you’ve made a powerful enemy, only to see your players obliterate them because of some spell or ability you forgot to consider and that was coincidentally way too useful against your boss. Oh, well.
7The Forever DM
Many of us love to DM. However, that involves learning a lot about the game, which makes you want to test your builds and characters too. Or maybe you just want the variety of being the player too. Sadly, it’s not always that simple.
Sometimes it’s because you’re the best at it, and your group wants you to DM. Sometimes it’s because when someone else is the DM, they never end up completing their campaigns, and it all ends abruptly. You get stuck in this position because at least you ensure there will be a campaign to play. you’re able to always turn your character ideas into NPCs though.
6Players' Theories Being Better Than Your Story
You drop hints of what the villain wants. The players pick up your clues. Now, they start to talk about what they believe is going on, all the while looking at you to see if you’ll break your poker face and give a hint by accident.
However, as they share their theories, the only thing that crosses your mind is that these theories are actually better than what you had prepared, and now you’re thinking about whether it’s worth changing your plans and stealing these ideas. Your players will be happy that they’ve “guessed it” at least.
5Unexpected Cancelations
And now, a sad one. The day of the session is sacred. Everyone saved a time of their week for this, especially if the game isn’t online, as you and your friends are actually meeting for such an event. And then, someone, for some reason, calls and says they can’t go.
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As the DM, the responsibility now falls to you. Cancel the game or not? Worst of all is when this particular session required this specific player, which makes their absence even more aggravating. And now you have to think about how to proceed if you still do the session without the player. Because let’s face it, canceling because of just one person is not fun for everyone else.
4Low-Key Manipulation
Don’t you love those moments when you trick your players so well with your smoke and mirrors that you even question whether you’re a good person or not? Sure, forcing and railroading players is bad. But as long as they don’t notice, is it really railroading?Yes, it is.
Destroying the path you don’t want them to take, having people they would prefer to avoid on the said path, or whatever you can come up with to discourage them with their current idea — it’s all part of the game, right?
3Fudging For The Sake Of Drama Or The Players
A risky and divisive technique, but it can be very helpful. You’ve prepared a powerful foe to make intense combat, but for whatever reason, the Dice Gods do not want you to roll anything higher than five. Good thing you have a DM screen, huh?
Or, when you realized you’ve exaggerated on the boss. Well, do you really need to tell your players you’ve just rolled a natural 20 and instantly killed one of them? Maybe you just missed it, why not? Or maybe your damage wasn’t that high. You want their characters to suffer, sure,but do you want them to die?Don’t answer. It’s rhetorical.
2Re-Skinning Unused Content
Your players love taverns. You’ve decided to prepare a very special tavern just for them. But, for whatever reason, they didn’t go there, and they’re now heading to another city, leaving your precious tavern behind. Well, time to move this tavern to another city.
We are not letting our hard work go to the trash can. If a villain wasn’t used, their sheet will be passed to someone else. If a city was ignored, its content will be used for another. Adapt to the situation and overcome its issues. Don’t let yourworld buildinggo to waste.
1The Evil DM Facade
As the DM, players hate you. You are a force of pure evil whose goal is to strike their characters down with ultimate gore and malice, preventing them from ever being happy. Their suffering is your joy, and their deaths are your blessing. At least, that’s what the players think when you keep your evil smile during the fights.
In truth, you spend a lot of time creating fun content for them, and you want them to achieve their happy endings. But you can’t just give it to them: you have to let them reach it. And you don’t want them to die because you know what they’ll lose. But players can’t know that the God of this world is in favor of them, so you must keep being “evil” for their sake. All the while you wait for the players to finally see what you’ve planned for their characters.
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