Having a Troll charge in and fall in the pit would surely have solved the party’s short term problem for sure!

Thanks for sharing that Noumenon.

Or I could have had a pirate come through the portal right there. Who cares if all the pirates detailed in the module were dead already or where exactly he got there? In this case it would’ve even made sense.

I’m seeing this as a general rule — check the wandering monster table and say “could it improve things if one of these showed up”? You could even design wandering encounters to be the kind of thing that would help break up deadlocks.

I would have given a stronger hint that throwing a pet while the PC was swimming was a great idea. If they didn’t take the bait, I would have described some sort of Cave Animal fall in the pool and described how some snakes were going toward there.

If all else failed (and I’m not saying I would have thought of it at the table, these things are not easy to do unless you have hindsight like you’re giving me), I would have a flayed humanoid appear over the pit and fall into it, attracting all the snakes away from the PCs. The flayed corpse being a potential hook for a later adventure… like maybe some villain later in the campaign had a trap that teleports a victim into the snake pit.

However, given my style, and depending how pooped people were, I’d have told them to use the Bag of Tricks again.

At this point, Laws’ suggests that you review your players’ preferences (Storytelling, Power Gaming, Butt kicking, etc) and drop a healthy dose of what they like urgently… to hell if it isn’t planned or makes no sense.

Okay, last week I saw that my players’ mood was slipping in the last room of the adventure. The McGuffin was across a pool of venomous snakes and they had tried luring them out of the water, sniping some, and throwing in pets from a bag of tricks to draw their attention away so they could sneak over to the McGuffin. Then they just sent someone in to swim across the pool (I didn’t give a good enough signal that throwing in pets was a brilliant solution I hadn’t thought of), and he was getting poisoned to death by the snakes, and it had been more than an hour and I knew everyone was pooped.

I chose to just keep pushing them because I knew even if the one PC died there was a resurrection mechanic in the adventure to make it worth it. But what could I have introduced into that tiny room under the ocean swimming with venomous snakes that would have got the attention of a Tactician, an Instigator, and a Lurker?

Vulcan Stevs last blog post..World D&D Day 2009 at The Core

I also forwarded a link to my friend who is about to run his first game.

Thanks again.

Those 3 books should form the core of any GM libraries.

@Vulcan Stev: Sadly no, he talks about metagaming knowledge but I think it’s mostly about the gaming group deciding how much is tolerated and such.

Plus, if you want my opinion, the concept of group leader is usually just an occasion to create player friction. Consensus politics is the way to go… especially oif siblings are playing.

Vulcan Stevs last blog post..A Hearty Thank You and Welcome to the Network’s Readers

This eBook’s going on my “to-read” list for sure…

Eric Maziades last blog post..Kobold Keep Remix Finale – Showdown

I’m not suprised that you rate yourself as a 50% Killer 100% Evil DM. I’ve read your stance on DMing and you are definitively of the tough love school of DMing. I’m pretty sure that your players try real hard to stay a few steps ahead of you.

As for your Stormbringer game… gah, if my mother had heard us say that she’d kicked us all out of my basement at lightspeed! But yeah, I’m sure it was a once in a lifetime intense moment.

Thanks for reading man!

I think what I find the hardest to do is reading the room. Especially with the current game I’m running. My current players are not the kind who speak up if something botters them. They have the FLAW of all being poker players and seems to put on their poker face anytime we play anything!

I did commit the crime once or twice of stopping the game to ask them if they were having fun. I ended up not knowing what they think and making them feel they were doing something wrong themselves. 2 or 3 games latter (I forgot to mention this happened when we started the game last year), I understood. What seemed like serious, silent and bored players were in fact VERY concentrated players worried of not playing their character correctly. I helped them feel more confident themselves after that. Sometime you just need to give it a chance. Time help adjusting.

And I could not end this comment without grading myself so here it is!

DM report.

Bad DMing: 1% (I wish I could say 0% but I think there’s always a moment in a DM’s life where he just get absorbed by his story and forget the fun of his players.)

Killer DMing: 50% (I’m sure you’re surprised I did not grade myself a 100%! It’s because to me the important part is to make sure my players see me has a killer DM. The fear… If there’s no fear, it’s like playing poker with fake money. If there’s no money involved you gonna do stupid moves that can ruin the game.)

Evil DMing: 100% (I’m guilty. My most memorable game on the evil side is one where a PC watched in horror a fellow PC getting pregnant, giving birth and dying by aging. The whole thing at super speed. We were playing a game of Stormbringer. For those who doesnt know the world of Michael Moorcock, it’s a very bleak and dark world. The only thing she could do to save her friends character was to kill the baby crying on the floor. There was yelling, several smashing fists on the table, tears, it was awesome. The mother of my friend got worried and got in the room just in time to see her crying girl raise on her feets to yell “I STAB THE BABY! I STAB THE BABY!” LOL It was awesome! They loved it by the way. I wish I could go back in time to take a picture of her mother face.)