When you first GM you are bound to make several mistakes. In fact it is guaranteed that you will, but practice makes perfect. One of the mistakes I made was “Dun, Dun,Dun!” forgetting about the NPC’s. I know, it’s sooo embarrassing, your probably saying, “how could you forget something that important”.
Well it’s not like I totally forget about them. They start out with the players, but then when it’s combat/encounter time, for some reason they disappear. Then when the players get to their goal the NPC magically reappears. I think this mainly happens if I have several players at my table. I’m more focused on what they do that I forget to make checks for the NPC’s.
This first happened with my first game that I ran (wrote about it in previous post) The players met a knight who escorted them to his King. The King sent the Knight to help the adventurers defeat an evil King who had been claiming land that was not his. The Knight started out on the journey with them, then poof, gone. I don’t think I even brought him back. I think it was after the game that I was like ” Oh my gosh I forgot about the Knight”. Oops!
There was another time I had forgotten about a NPC. The players were about to be sold as slaves and a group of outlaws (very robin hood like) came and saved them. The leader of this group then asks them for their help to get his love back. She was taken away and forced to marry this horrendous man. In the shadows of the night the adventurers “plus” the leader go and sneak into the city. Now you see me now you don’t.
The adventurers climbed up the walls of the city. While on top they had to keep their balance so they wouldn’t fall. They got to their destination and there were guards outside the mansion on patrol. The players had to deal with them in some way. They finally located the damsel’s chambers “and cue lovers reunite scene”. Then one of my players says to me “Uhh when did he get here?” and I responded “Umm he was with you guys the whole entire time” Again he was with them, but not. I totally forgot to role-play the NPC and do ability checks etc. during that time. Oops!
So yeah, super embarrassed by that, but that’s how you learn right? By now I’ve gotten several games under my belt, but I am still not there yet. I hope to run many more games and get better at GMing. I really enjoy it, creating the world, the people, etc. If you have not GM’d before I encourage you to give it a try. Yeah, you might have to do a little more work and it seems a daunting task, but it is absolutely fun. Just go for it, don’t worry about if it will be good or not. Also for those of you who are GM’s what sort of mistakes have you made? Let me know what things you’ve forgotten about.
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Desiree, I still do this all the time 🙂
I feel it is a pretty forgivable mistake because the story is really about the players characters but it is also true that the NPC’s should be multi-dimensional.
Might have to think about this issue and do a reply post 🙂