Well, I figured we needed a thread here to just talk about those moments in GMing that were utterly horrible or utterly awesome. I've mostly had bad experiences with running games, even the one I'm currently co-running.
To start off, I'll talk about my first GM experience. It was a few years back, and I was trying to make a 4th Edition D&D game with a Norse theme. First time running a game, and with a newly formed group. I plan out the initial meeting place as the oft used tavern. I put it in a port town. There I had the players describe themselves as total strangers, since much of this group really didn't know one another. The barkeep pointed out 3 individuals who might have work for the group, making sure to point out that these people have asked. The individuals were a Bard, a Swordmage, and a 4th edition Avenger. Each one I had a very rough outline of where they'd lead the party. The Avenger would have lead them out to sea, the Swordmage would have lead them to the northwest, and the Bard to the northeast.
So what does the party decide to do? Head out the door without talking to anybody but the barkeep! Quickly scrambling to salvage this initial clusterfuck, I rolled my d6 to determine which of the 3 would stop the group from completely walking off of the adventures. I rolled the Bard, who needed help delivering a package for someone. So we head off, fighting wolves, bandits, and more bandits. I wanted to keep the typical D&D races out of it because I was using a Nordic setting. Don't remember Kobolds there myself.
Now the composition of the party was the horrors of legend. Proof of my inexperience as a GM, we had a wizard who modeled his character after his actual WoW character and was more or less from Azeroth. I know I should not have let this happen, as putting him in was just as bad as a previous game I had played in where someone convinced a GM to put a Jedi in Eberron. We also had a fighter named Hawkfeather, but whose player said it so fast we all heard "Cockfeather." There were many jokes on that fighter's expense. The wife of Hawkfeather's player was a rookie player who chose a changeling rogue. She tried playing it as if she were a ranger, or hid all day. The last player was my own sister, who I believe was a Warlord healer.
Anyway, each session tended to be "shoot the shit, recap, wait for others to stop shooting the shit, one encounter, queue a player headache, wrapup." In the end, I just made shit up for it to wrap up. I couldn't enjoy the game I was effectively forced into running. Needed a year to build the world just so it had proper geography and a breakdown of what to expect heading out into the wilderness.
To start off, I'll talk about my first GM experience. It was a few years back, and I was trying to make a 4th Edition D&D game with a Norse theme. First time running a game, and with a newly formed group. I plan out the initial meeting place as the oft used tavern. I put it in a port town. There I had the players describe themselves as total strangers, since much of this group really didn't know one another. The barkeep pointed out 3 individuals who might have work for the group, making sure to point out that these people have asked. The individuals were a Bard, a Swordmage, and a 4th edition Avenger. Each one I had a very rough outline of where they'd lead the party. The Avenger would have lead them out to sea, the Swordmage would have lead them to the northwest, and the Bard to the northeast.
So what does the party decide to do? Head out the door without talking to anybody but the barkeep! Quickly scrambling to salvage this initial clusterfuck, I rolled my d6 to determine which of the 3 would stop the group from completely walking off of the adventures. I rolled the Bard, who needed help delivering a package for someone. So we head off, fighting wolves, bandits, and more bandits. I wanted to keep the typical D&D races out of it because I was using a Nordic setting. Don't remember Kobolds there myself.
Now the composition of the party was the horrors of legend. Proof of my inexperience as a GM, we had a wizard who modeled his character after his actual WoW character and was more or less from Azeroth. I know I should not have let this happen, as putting him in was just as bad as a previous game I had played in where someone convinced a GM to put a Jedi in Eberron. We also had a fighter named Hawkfeather, but whose player said it so fast we all heard "Cockfeather." There were many jokes on that fighter's expense. The wife of Hawkfeather's player was a rookie player who chose a changeling rogue. She tried playing it as if she were a ranger, or hid all day. The last player was my own sister, who I believe was a Warlord healer.
Anyway, each session tended to be "shoot the shit, recap, wait for others to stop shooting the shit, one encounter, queue a player headache, wrapup." In the end, I just made shit up for it to wrap up. I couldn't enjoy the game I was effectively forced into running. Needed a year to build the world just so it had proper geography and a breakdown of what to expect heading out into the wilderness.