MATT: Hello. My name is Matthew Mercer. I'm a voice actor and the dungeon master for Critical
Role, here at Geek & Sundry, and welcome to today's episode of GM Tips, where we discuss
fixing GM mistakes.
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MATT: Being the game master for an entire world, guiding heroic players through stories from inside
your mind, can be an incredibly fun and rewarding experience. However, you are not infallible.
Mistakes do happen. Perhaps a misinterpreted note led to a conflict in story resolution, or an NPC
you designed to be integral ends up killed by the party, you let slip a tiny tidbit of secret info
that undermines your big reveal, or you gift a player with an item that is far too powerful than
you thought, throwing party in-game balance entirely out of whack.
How do you correct these unintentional errors to maintain the game you want to run? Well, let's
discuss a number of solutions to these challenges.
Let's say you're running an encounter that isn't intended to be that difficult. Either you
miscalculated the power of the enemies or the luck was so against the party that a whimpering,
anticlimactic TPK is imminent. Here some examples of how to correct that situation. You could
suddenly have an arrow or spell fly in from out of nowhere, rocking one of the more dangerous foes,
and have an allied NPC enter the fray to save them from the claws of defeat. You could also consider
that if it's an intelligent foe, perhaps they see the PCs' terrible situation and see them worth
more alive and enslaved than dead. Have them fight not to the death, and instead knock them
unconscious or force them to their knees and swear themselves to the foe. This could even lead to a
cool escape or revenge-type mission in the near future. You could also have a terrible, screeching
roar blast across the sky, and your enemies suddenly look more frightened than they've ever
been before. They quickly assess their situation, decide to flee, leaving you to the fate
of some possibly scarier creature. The wounded party now has to hide from this mystery creature
to survive. Or you could just have them TPK and explain how the darkness-- or the light, possibly,
as well-- fades as they awaken in a stone room, shackled and held down. Suddenly, it appears that
a powerful mage has resurrected the party. Who knows what plans he has for them? All he knows is
that they are a party of skilled heroes and they have utility for such a powerful mage. (chuckles)
Now, mind you, if the encounter is intended to be dangerous, challenging, and possibly deadly, let
the dice fall as it may. That's part of the game. You don't want to undermine the ever-present
danger and tension of the game. However, you also don't want to completely end the story that you
and your players have put into for months and months due to just an unexpectedly shitty scenario.
Another situation is you've given clues and information and hints as to where to discover and
follow the main plot, but no one is figuring it out or picking up on your nudges. The game is
quite literally going nowhere. Don't be afraid to be a little more blunt with your additional
information. While some hints may seem like obvious reveals to you, you also already have all
the information in your head. A PC getting these hints in a vacuum might end up either completely
confused or misinterpret the vague info and extrapolate an entirely new and entirely wrong
plot. If it goes on too long, drop more direct hints via NPCs they encounter, or have more clues
found as they go, or just reveal information as part of the terrain as they progress forward.
You can tailor and reshuffle your intended plot points and plot NPCs to be a little more direct
with their info, or even appear in unintended, more convenient areas if the PCs aren't as focused
or driven as you expected. Moving the plot along for everyone's benefit is more important than
adhering to a theoretical structure that you created in your own little headspace.
Here's another example of a situation: you've offered information about your plot throughout the
game, and the players discover an accidental, fairly large contradiction in your storytelling
that confuses them or undermines your entire plot's direction. First off, let them discuss the
confusion while you consider options and how to retroactively disprove one side of that info. Pick
which side of the plot conflict is more interesting to pursue, and let them seek answers
in-game as to which side is false. Perhaps an ally who provided some of the info can now be revealed
to be a saboteur or a mole, or information was planted by an unseen antagonistic force trying to
throw off the scent.
No reveal is immediately necessary. You can stall for time between sessions to unravel your mistake
and make it work for you as opposed to against you.
Another possibility is you accidentally spill a lead, like an info leak or secret about your main
plot and spoil a grand surprise you'd been looking forward to dropping down the road. First
off, don't admit the mistake. Own it. Let the party think you intentionally did so and follow
their lead. If needed, take a break shortly thereafter, or, if possible, even between
sessions, and brainstorm a way to alter your current story to enhance the reveal, or even
change it to be a bait-and-switch so you can still surprise them later on. If it was indeed info
revealed by an NPC, you can also have that NPC feed them a bunch of additional misinformation to
confuse the players into perhaps not believing anything they've said. You can later play out that
they were either not in their right mind, like being mentally controlled by some crazy witchcraft, or
perhaps a doppelganger trying to misinform the party. Doppelgangers are always fun. Make your
party real nervous. Trust no one.
If the reveal was largely due to a very clever player connecting the dots, don't punish them for
being clever. Let them enjoy that victory. Just do your best to not show any confirmation of their
deduction until it's put into action, leaving them to possibly second-guess their own idea in the
interim. Then, if they stick to it, reward them. I mean, few moments for a PC really beat figuring
out the villain's plot and watching it unfold accordingly. Unless there's nothing they can do to
stop the plot, and they're fucked, in which case, (nervous laugh).
Another mistake-based situation may involve you giving a magical item or items to the party that
quickly appear to be way more powerful than you anticipated. It completely wrecks your intended
game balance and can sometime cause the other PCs to resent that unfair advantage that player now
has. Well, here are some suggested ways to handle fixing that scenario. You could perhaps introduce
a very powerful entity who lost that magical item or object and has been actively seeking it. They
stumble upon the PCs and offer, in exchange for the item, other grand rewards and the favor of a
powerful being that they can keep in mind for future use. Or the item can slowly be revealed to
be cursed: the longer they use it, the more dangerous or penalizing it becomes. Now they must
quest to cleanse it, and while doing so lessens its abilities, in the end, it can now be used
without issue, and they've earned that item's true use.
Another way would be: perhaps the enchantment was unstable due to strange, arcane experiments and
the item shatters. It must now be reforged using safer components, which produces a comparable, if
possibly lessened version that lasts indefinitely. Or, by the time they repair the item, the party
has reached a power level where it seems to befit the current game balance.
Not all these options are possible, and there are many other awesome possibilities you can use to
fix these issues that you can find and research online, but I hope these tips have at least been
somewhat helpful if one of these scenarios does find its way into your campaign.
Thank you so much for watching. My name is Matthew Mercer. You can find more GM Tips here at
GeekandSundry.com, and I'll see you on the internet.
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