Mistake 01 – Being a Killer DM
The topic for this month’s RPG Blog Carnival is:
Mistakes: It is focused on the mistakes you made learning to play, how you overcame them, and the mistakes you are still making that you might get help from the RPG Bloggers with.
I’ve given the subject a lot of thought and I have prepared a list of five mistakes, most of which I’ve made myself, some of which I’ve observed from the outside looking in. During September, I’ll present each of these mistakes as a separate post, beginning with today’s entry — Being a “Killer” DM.
Mistake 01: Being a “Killer” DM
I started playing tabletop RPGs in 1981, as a high school freshman. My first game was OD&D, which is relevant because the game was raw and new and the ruleset, despite the current wave of “old school” nostalgia, was … imperfect. I brought my imperfect understanding of the rules to my close knit crew of buddies in my rural hometown outside of Cincinnati.
Ranging from 13-16 years old, we took to the game like fish to the water. Like most groups back in the day, our weekend dungeon crawls were fueled by pizza and Mountain Dew. The first six months were awesome! I loved to write and everyone else loved to play, so I eventually emerged as the “go to” GM for our crew. Add to this mix the intrinsic one-upsmanship and posturing found in groups of teen boys and you have a near perfect recipe for my development as a killer DM.
Long story short, I quickly decided that my primary role as DM was to kill the player’s as quickly as possible. My adventures became brutal, unbalanced deathtraps. We lost our first player within 6 months and the rest lost interest within a year after that. I tried to change my tune to keep the game alive, but it was too late. The proverbial damage was done.
Here is the funny part. Every one of us retained our love for RPGs. As computer-based RPGs emerged, they were always the games we bought. We would still gather to play the CRPGs, but I could never get them back to the table after breaking them on “Tralfagar’s Wheel”. Of that enthusiastic initial crew, I was the only one who retained any real interest tabletop RPGs. In the ensuing years, I tried a few to find other groups on several occasions until an unfortunate incident (stay tuned for Mistake 02) took me away from the tabletop all together for fifteen years.
When MMOs came on the scene, my original crew were all adults well into our careers. Still the love of RPGs remained and soon we were all playing Everquest and then Dark Ages of Camelot with great abandon. One of our crew became an feared and infamous Hyborean Hunter in DAoC on the RvR servers. When we decided to stop playing, he sold that account for just over $5K. How is this relevant? It illustrates the passion each of us still retained for RPGs … all those years later.
In 2006, on a whim, I went to a local game store to look for a gaming group. That fateful afternoon happened to be Wizard’s Worldwide Gameday. My wife was out of town and I sat down in a pickup game. Three years later, I am prime mover in a local gaming convention (Neoncon), help organize local game days and this year was a volunteer GM for the Pathfinder RPG launch at GenCon. I’ve written a Living Greyhawk Interactive and am hard at work on a Pathfinder Interactive.
Along the way, I’ve learned how to present meaningful challenges without actively seeking to kill my players. PC death happens and any RPG that does not present real risk in the mix is really a cooperative story, not a game. While I do not believe in “nerfing” the game, I am no longer a “killer” DM.
Here is the real kicker. I’ve talked to my old crew about coming back to the tabletop. Technology like d20Pro and Fantasy Grounds would allow us to play despite the geographic distance that now separates us. Everyone politely declined. When pressed, most recounted my days as a “killer” DM and expressed little desire to revisit those days. Twenty-five years later, my reputation still proceeds me.
Don’t let that happen to you.
Great post, Doug; glad you found the topic stimulating. Yeah, the mistakes that haunt you are definitely the ones that linger. I can’t help seeing the parallels between your story and that of my third big mistake, which I’ll be posting as an ongoing part of the carnival late next week…
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