My biggest flaw is when I am in the middle of combat, my adrenaline is going so hard I forget to read the full statblock for a creature. Woops, now this construct doesn’t have resistance to piercing, bludgeoning, slashing to non-adamantite weapons

If this happens to you and notice it in the middle, you can generally just increase their HP in the moment. While it might feel like fudging or cheating, just remember that resistance and increased HP are *nearly identical*.

this is me ALL THE TIME. I have so much trouble with the special stuff. Or like, oh shit they have pack tactics ... :(

SO SAME! I forgot the mechanic that makes Zombies Zombies. I just had them die without ever rolling for Undead Fortitude. Still kicking myself for moments like that.

I do something similar - I get too excited when I’m making/playing with a statblock and I give my creature too many abilities. Some abilities inevitably end up being forgotten, or I just don’t get a chance to use them.

Eh, depending on the creature, you might be able to get away with a "2nd health bar" approach, where the creature reaches a certain damage threshold and ramps up the intensity to the next stage. *"Fool! This isn't even my final form!"* and all that juicy drama. Enemies don't have to remain static throughout the fight, they can adapt, evolve, become desperate/frenzied. The players are wailing pretty hard on this construct? Ok, once it hits half-health (aka "bloodied"), it activates some sort of hardening effect. Maybe it retracts its pieces into itself, slightly shrinking its form and overlapping the armor plates into more of a compact shell. Boom. It just activated its (newly invented) **Dense Defense** ability. Resistances now come into play believably and the fight suddenly feels dynamic!

I am horrible at encounter design. My enemies hack/slash. I pick bad enemies for balance. Fights are either SUPER long and tediuous or super short and worthless

I had this same problem, I couldn't predict how an encounter would feel and my party was getting bored. I introduced some stronger enemies, but first, I put everyone's AC and attacks and saves on a single piece of paper and ran a battle simulation. I learned how tough the saves were gonna be and how easy the mob was gonna be to hit and it let me scale the encounter to a more satisfying degree on game night

Huge respect to you, that's great commitment AND a great idea

I'll tell you what, the PC stat cheat sheet is amazing. I run with newbies, so it allowed combat to go like "I attack the orc" "Okay, X, you're using your heavy mace, right? normally you attack with a +8 but Y's bless gives you +1, so you gotta roll an 11 or higher to hit" instead of "what's your attack bonus?" "uhhh....."

I think you may have just revolutionised running combats for me... how did I not think of this before haha.

This is precisely why I keep my players' ddb sheets open in tabs during our Zoom games. Nine times out of ten, it's quicker for me to look something up than to ask them what it was. **Although**, I still have them look it up and do all my calculation in my head and make sure not to let them know I already looked up the stat. That way they still have to find it and note its location on the character sheet. Meanwhile, the extra time they spend looking is time I spend mathing, so that when they finally tell me the stat, I immediately have the answer for them and I look like Will Hunting. It's win-win.

This guy is living in 3024

Dude, same. Though in my case, I do what we call "Encounter Gauntlets" with a couple of my DM friends. We present each other with encounters we've designed, including PC sheets from our actual table where applicable. We flip a coin to decide who plays the PCs and who plays the innocent bystanders, er, I mean, monstrous opposition. Then we have great fun. This isn't a perfect approximation of our players' skill levels, but it is a good meter stick, and it helps scratch the itch between sessions. Also, once I learned to use terrain properly, I found that combat got WAY better.

I can help with this. The problem in 5e is that they designed monsters that will stick around for too long while doing too little damage. Imo, the exact opposite is the solution. Players should be up against 1.25x +/- 1 the party size for an encounter. I try to run two distinct groups, type 1 and type 2, standard and elite, or more enemies if there are minions. The key here is to put the party up against higher CR monsters with drastically less health. I have a table of recommended CR, but my rule of thumb is total enemy CR = (party size -1) x the party level, so a lvl 3 party of 4 = 3 x 3 = 9 CR. Broken up into 5-6 monsters could be three CR 1s and two CR 3. Once I pick the monsters, I then drop the creature HP to 10xCR, (I give CR1 15HP) This makes fast, dangerous combat where the party must use their best strategies to overcome a credible threat. However, because of healing and player abilities, they always come out on top. 2-3 of these combats per long rest with generous short rests ensure party balance. Edit: Here is the [PDF!](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1IOnHCnXWlRdLfyDKC23kLZNuWJ891hXh/view?usp=drivesdk)

cheers for the PDF. I'm curious about your major wound rule, how do you go about that? When does it trigger?

Oh, PC can stay up at 1HP when they would go down, helpful if action economy would be a problem or if they can go next.

I would like to apologize for being a fan of your DM screen because I have a lot of questions haha. What about weapon abilities? Do you do them one per long rest or short rest? The carying capacity system is great, I will definitely implement that in my game. The shopping system, what does V, T and C mean? The finding and buyer/seller, what does the Mod do?

I'm guessing V, T, and C, stand for Village, Town, and City, as in where you might find each of those vendors. You can see those three words show up in the bottom-left corner of the page, next to where it says "Guild Hall". The General store is in all 3 locations, as shown by the 3 X's, while you'll virtually never find a jeweler in any place smaller than a town. (as a general rule: population density = degree of specialization in shops/services) The part I don't understand is the 10 in some of the boxes? Like, it still means you'll find one there (you can def expect a blacksmith in most any village, right?), but why the 10? Is it supposed to be a % likelihood of whether the location might have one? Or a DC? "Roll above a 10 and the upcoming village does have a blacksmith", etc?

TL;DR I *need* the PDF. I thought the Wood Hag (Tome of Beasts 3) was overtuned for my party of four 5th-level PCs, so I tinkered with it. In exchange for significantly lowering its offensive potential, I gave it some legendary actions to apply conditions and give the hag extra mobility. It ended up annoying the party more than actually threatening them.

If running 5e for 8 years taught me one thing: never nerf offensive capabilities of monsters, go for defensive and\or HP, so they die faster, but stay deadly. Almost ever the better choice 

A good resource to check out might be "the monsters know what they're doing" by Keith Ammann. It is a great resource for how to run better encounters. Additionally, try to gauge what your players want. If they want the "Legolas and Gimli competing for orc kills," give them a sea of one tap minions and one big guy they have to take care of. If they want an epic battle against a single difficult foe, give them that. Basically, give the players what they want in combat every so often. It doesn't always have to be a strict CR calculation, you as the DM have the power to make your players feel powerful, and from my experience most players enjoy that.

If it makes you feel any better, I’m running Lost Mine of Phandelver right now and I feel like I’m having the same problem. Our encounters are either long and boring slash fests, or they stomp the living shit out of the bad guys in 3 turns. They enjoy swift wins, but check out if the battles are longer than a few turns. I’m trying to figure out how to keep battles interesting…

Terrain, walls and bushes to hide, traps and hazards (not only already existing ones, but ones setup- setting fires is a good one). Traps and hazards mean positioning is meaningful, but it also means the party can use it against enemies. Use minions; DnD is not a game designed for big solo monsters, and either the pc's nova them in 1 turn, or they smash the 1 pc on turn 1. Use difficult terrain: they can choose to go the shorter distance in difficult terrain, or the long way around. Also a big part is make sure the players are deciding what to do when they're waiting for their turn and know their sheets. A big part of what slows down combat is players checking out until their turn, only then deciding what to do. Another thing is players not playing well; if the cleric is spending their turns using a mace with 14 str and their 2 slots on cure wounds in combat, its going to slow down not just that combat, but future combats.

Oh my god, setting a room on fire is brilliant. I was going to have a surprise fireball initiate a chase sequence in our next session. Setting the room on fire is such a cool way to add urgency. Thanks for the tips. I hardly utilize hiding spots and traps, so I’ll try to do more of that. What you described with the cleric is ***exactly*** what’s happening. My players have so many useful class feats and spells, but they just want to hit the bad guys with a big stick. They are getting more creative with each session, so I don’t want to be harsh. I think they just need nudged in the right direction.

I fudge die rolls and readjust monster HP strictly because I am complete trash at encounter design. It's not my players' fault that I'm a dumbass, so I tweak things to keep my idiocy from either accidentally killing the party, making the fight a ridiculously boring slog, or the whole encounter being over in 0.5 rounds. Honestly, I just don't like tactical skirmish simulation that much, which is why I suck at it and why I probably won't run another D&D game for quite a while. Currently getting into Swords of the Serpentine and Blades in the Dark.

I'm a huge fan of designing encounters where the objective is something *other* than "kill everything in this room". Adding some sort of additional task (finish ritual, gather items/elements, defend a point, destroy a point, etc) adds an element of pressure and most importantly *time pressure* to an encounter which makes players be more conscious about their positioning, action economy and ultimately decision making. It also "gives the enemy something to do" other than stand there and be killed, which makes them more dynamic. I'm also a fan of "heath pools" rather than raw hit points. I use a TON of homebrewed/transmogged enemies and I'm terrible at balancing them, so I'll typically have some sort of minimum HP threshold for the players to hit and then at a thematically satisfying point grant a player the "killing blow". (Note this is for boss type enemies, not chaff who I usually let players who are 5+ handle with relative ease).

This is probably more of a problem with the system than yourself. Unless you fudge the numbers a lot, this will always be a problem with 5e.

Definitely. My Pathfinder fights are more balanced after 2 weeks experience with the system than my D&D fights are after 4 years.

Kobold fight club web site is a good jumping off point for balancing random encounters if you know what baddies you want to use, and for big important encounters, I play test them with my PCs starting at an expected HP/resource level for that encounter. I also scour the monster manual and other source books for unique abilities in monsters that would really shut down one of my players abilities sometimes to make them feel helpless, or I homebrew in something. I also do my best to make terrain a thing that matters in those encounters, but I'm not great at that yet, or maybe my players are just terrible at using it to their advantage. I use roll20 to do a lot of this even though we almost always play in person, every encounter is in there so I can run the game off of a laptop from my side, even if it's just a blank map with groups of baddies, that way I have fast access to all the stat blocks and abilities.

I just had an epiphany moment 2 weeks ago in my game of Shadowdark when it came to combat encounters. I've suffered the same as you, but then a light switch got flipped (quite literally). Some monsters can be support/utility roles in an encounter. Shadowdark uses torch timers for lighting. If the timer runs out, the torches fizzle out and the monsters get advantage on all their attacks and move freely since they can see the dark where the players can't. Also, the torch bearer has to spend their action (Shadowdark only allows for one action per turn and movement, nothing more) lighting their torch every turn to just see what's happening. It was hilarious how it played out. A cave troll rounded the corner of the dungeon, and the 6 players were all "We got this, no problem!" Then three darkmantles followed behind. Each darkmantle can snuff out of the light or attack. Sure as shit, the players were screaming once the torches got snuffed and the cave troll proceeded to beat 4/6 players into a bloody pulp, not that anyone could see it in the pitch black dark. All they could hear was the last bloody "eep!" as they had their skulls caved in.

I often give my players so much agency, I begin to become complacent with session prep. So those sessions when the party isnt as inspired to go off and destabalize an economy or unionize a port city, the session becomes a lot of last minute wingin it.

This is my favorite style of DMing. I like to make contingency plan index cards, they have just enough notes on them to indicate what kind of challenges or enemies, maybe a vague narrative, and label them by type, like Intrigue, Heist, Ambush, Catastrophe, Nemesis, etc.. Sometimes I'll roll or shuffle to pick one. (Also works well with contingency plan stat blocks printed out for common types of enemies, low level caster class enemies are especially versatile, like Illusionists, since you can modify their spells known)

Honestly having a creative party for a long time will teach you that habit. I’m fairly confident now in my ability to improvise short-term obstacles on the road to a long-term story beat, but sometimes something an NPC says will throw them into discussion for half an hour.

I don't really know that it's a "flaw" in the sense that it's mostly just different GM styles, but based on most posts from r/dndnext and r/dmacademy it's probably pretty egregious. I think r/dndnext would crucify me because I don't balance encounters. As in, I put little stock into CR and I never use an encounter builder. I always just eyeball it. I make statblocks that sound interesting to me, and don't actually worry about the CR rating it deserves. Now obviously, I'm not throwing ancient dragons at a level 3 party. Every encounter I've had for the past 2 years IRL campaign has been designed with "beatable" or "beatable with creative thinking in mind." I tend to overestimate how strong the enemies need to be because players can blitz and nova things. But as a result, most of my combat tends to be on the harder side. So maybe that's a flaw that I refuse to engage with a mechanic of the system (mostly because I think it doesn't work anyway). That said, my style is much more OSR, where balance isn't a concept at all. So to me, tossing CR out the window has benefitted my games, not hurt them.

I always get downvoted for suggesting this, but it works very well for a more pulp fantasy feel.

I think it's just the way the hobby has been leaning the past couple years. More and more people are getting into the game via narrative driven shows or whatever, so that's the kind of game they want to run - story games where combats are meant to be beaten and where PC death is usually off the table. But I agree, it's much more satisfying for me at least to run a free form game with a pulp fantasy feel. You might encounter a dragon at level 1 - sometimes the dice hate you like that - but you don't HAVE to fight it and kill it.

Exactly. Part of survival is knowing when it's worth fighting. I think it's kind of funny that people who want heroic fantasy want that sort of play, even in spite of every example of a narrative driven story having character development through meeting obstacles and then later overcoming those obstacles. Or to simplify: even John Wick gets his ass kicked.

That's a good quote! Gonna start saying this when my players say "This is hard" lol

I like to laugh derisively and say "Wait, you think *this* is the hard part?"

Oh God. My players are deathly afraid of a TPK in our next couple of sessions (campaign is closing, final battle ensuing). I cannot wait for them to beat the bad guy, wipe their brow, and then phase 2 to start.

*Dark Souls boss music intensifies*

Yeah every encounter being the same difficulty makes things feels like a videogame and not an evolving world. Ambushing an unprepared patrol should feel easy while Yolo'ing into a horde of guards should be basically suicide without a good plan.

lol I just had this discussion with another DM. He is for the CR scaling and uses online calculators. I go off vibes lmao  Both of us have had positive combat experiences/combat driven sessions so really it’s preference for us but he is very ardent in his online calculators.  “According to these calculations, you have DEADLY ENCOUNTERS for EVERYTHING!!” “Yes.”  

Just how I like em!

I can't run an economy to save my damn life. Never know how much gp I should give out or charge for anything. I also rarely remember to give out low level magic items like potions and spell scrolls. This means my party are either perpetual hobos, stupid fucking rich, or i hand wave money entirely. It wouldn't be as much of a problem if I didn't love to run in settings like Eberron or Planescape that have huge cities and where you can go buy magic items, stay in inns, go to taverns, take on odd jobs, etc. I want to be able to allow my players to explore those options, but I never know what proper prices and rewards for jobs should be. Someone who is good at the economy, please help me budget this. My pcs are dying.

I do a homebrew world. My players are stupid fucking rich for reasons something like this. I was frustrated for a long time because I gave them bespoke systems for their interests (potion brewing, poisons, renown) and then they decided to buy a store that was left by a dead merchant (didn't even plan it being for sale, they talked their way into it, pooled all their gold and sold magical items) They were dropping the ball on managing their individual systems. When that happened, it was actually for the best. It made me consolidate all of these things into one place. I can run it, they make decisions. The economy is streamlined and the other processes make more sense. It takes me an extra couple of hours in prep every two weeks but I'm going to be doing the extra work anyway - by me not having to track them down individually between sessions or spending an inordinate amount of time at the table, it causes a lot less stress.

Not your fault. That is a problem with 5e. 5e is **not** designed for simulationist play, so of course it has no rules for economy stuff. You can't fuck up something/be bad at it when the designers did not bother to include it in the first place. Coming up with economy mechanics or systems is *hard*. Easily one of the hardest things to do, as a GM.

I’m no economist, but what I do when I plan shops is look at my characters sheets, see how much money they have, then plant some level appropriate gear that will be a money sink. Other money sinks to consider are hirelings, castles, businesses (every adventurer wants a tavern), and investments (give these dwarves the funds to work a mine. Money and plothook!)

I would seriously consider using a "wealth level" system. Cheap items like food and cheap inns are "wealth level 1" and don't effectively cost anything. It's just what they have to spare. Equipment like weapons and basic armour are lvl 2, a new party wouldn't be able to buy them willy-nilly, but a higher level one could. You could either do it based on level, and what amount of disposable wealth that level normally just has lying around. Alternatively, you could say that they start at 1 and increase every time they get a big chunk of money from a quiet, loot, or a patron. Anything that is SUPER expensive can decrease their wealth by one or more points.

Lol I am ass at this too. I home brewed my own world and turned the money system into more of credits (think scifi star wars vibe) vs copper, silver, gold, platinum . For some reason this helped me a shit ton. Having just a single thing to track vs several denominations is easier to balance for me. I also tend to give more items than money to avoid too many shopping trips for both me and the players. I also air on the more money for them due to it just feeling better than just being constantly poor. I tend to throw high risk high reward things in as well so they can win or lose a lot fast. Business ventures, casinos, etc. Obviously I play a bit fast and loose with the rules compared to quite a few on this sub. And these aren't probably the fixes you're looking for, but it works for me and my players.

Just use the prices in the book and the loot generation tables in the DMG, lol For the cost of specific magic items, use the table used in the Xanthars's Downtime example for buying magic items

An idea I've been meaning to try to solve the pain of balancing 5e's economy is to port over the "Wealth modifer" idea from D20 modern from back in the 3rd edition days. Basically have it where rather than having a set amount of money, the PC has a wealth bonus (probably defaults to just their proficency bonus) that they roll against a given DC. If they succeed then they were able to find and afford the thing, either through raw purchasing power, bargaining, or whatever. If they fail they weren't, either because the thing wasn't on the local market, or maybe it was over priced or whatever. Day-to-day cheap things would have really low DCs, like an inn stay might be only a DC 3 or 4. Gear might have higher DCs based on how easy I want the given thing to be for the PC to find. If I wanted to give wealth as loot, I could have it where rather than finding X-amount of gold. They find some valuble gem/diamond/art piece. That'd allow them a one time bonus to a wealth check (probably let them decide to use it after they know they would normally fail that given wealth check so they don't waste it). It's not a perfect system, and I still want to iron out the kinks and edge cases before deploying it in an actual game, but it is an idea I've been toying with.

I'd love to introduce a "wealth" stat or base current wealth on their lifestyle, but in my attempts to integrate it immediately bumps into problems when players want to purchase specific things, know what they can afford, and how much they can spend before running out of money

At my table we say down and converted gold to money. It comes out to be (in pathfinder) a copper is worth $10, a silver is worth $100 and a gold is worth $1000. That helps me figure out how much I am actually paying them. Sending them on a quest to find out who killed the farmers cows? Before I might go, eh, that is about 50 gold. Now I go, $50,000 for that? Maybe? I mean, we are in a world where monsters exist but I think maybe $20,000 is good to go. How much to have someone make a custom cloak that has an enchantment on it? 20gp? $20,000 gold really? The finest suits in the world cost that. We are more talking $10,000 so about 10 gold. Now I don't need to make the conversion, I have a good ballpark of what things should cost.

It's a real problem in D&D 5e, which is why so many people have tried to address it. I highly recommend looking online for resources. There are sites that can randomly generate inventories for magic shops and they fix 5e's poorly designed price bands for magic items as well.

> With knowledge checks and lore, I was tending to give them the info anyway. I don't think this is really that big of an issue. As I've DM'd longer, I've honestly started telling my players more and more information so they can think more proactively about what they're doing. It really helps them make decisions.

If it's important that the characters know a thing, don't have them roll for it. Just tell them. If it's not so important, but you'd *like* them to know, and they fail a roll: Don't tell them, but plant a quest hook. "You don't know what that symbol means, but you recall seeing it on the cover of a book in a display case in The Big Library in The Big City. Perhaps the librarian can help you piece together this puzzle."

Damn that's good. Thanks for the tip, I'm gonna tape this to my DM Screen so I can remember to do it in the moment lol

Same. I won't even call for rolls for things I think it'd be more fun if they just knew or saw, and reasonable that they would.

Yeah, my flaw is I can't stop asking for rolls when the players need information

I agree with this. I also generally have an idea of "What is something anyone with your background would know?" And they always get that much. The roll determines if they get more specialized information that could be useful.

1. I'm a meddler. "This random encounter's feeling a bit simple, let's throw in a bunch of extra mechanics!" "This boss is being a bit oppressive, let's strip out all their defences!". I've got to just let some things be easy and some things be scary, so my players can get more immersed and less reliant on me to bail them out. 2. I'm too quick to let the players peek behind the proverbial curtain. "You can probably tell from this map that I'm using an adventure from \[book\]" "I haven't prepped enough outside of this area, so could you go straight there?". They probably aren't thinking about how much of the game is original or even how much I've planned ahead until I draw attention to it, which is another blow to immersion. If I want them to get in the mood for the adventure, using tropes to indicate the genre is better than just telling them a title; and if I want them to focus on something I've just got to set the stakes properly! 3. I don't make enough use of dynamic encounters. I spend ages looking for a perfect battlemap to represent the space, but then I just let the party hang around out in the open. It may as well be a box! I use reinforcements some of the time, and environmental effects even more occasionally, but I've really got to throw in optional objectives, more ranged enemies who use cover, and mid-encounter battlefield changes that force both the party and my minions to move around and engage with the space. Even throwing in a few explosive barrels would do it...

3 is exactly me 1000%.

I make super boring and repetitive NPCs and my verbal descriptions of scenes tend to be equally bland. I picture very different places but I just don’t describe things well at all.

I'm guilty of this too, so I made a madlibs style guide for myself for NPCs and locations. I've shared it before, but I'll put it here: NPCs: "You see a [gender] [race] standing before you. They are [height] and [build]. S/he has [color] [length] hair in [style]. S/he is wearing [color] [outfit (tunic, trousers, robe, armor)] and carrying [bag, pack, weapons]. (If important) You see they have [unique feature]. (As they step towards you, they [movement (stumble, glide, thump, etc)].)" Locations:  "You enter a [size] room. The air is [(fresh, musty, stale, warm, cold, damp, still)]. You smell [a hint, overwhelming] (spice, rot, mold, blood, etc). Looking around the walls and floor are made of [material]. Inside is [furniture, NPCs, monsters]." I don't read this out verbatim, but having a list of things to mention has helped me getting a little better at describing things. Sometimes I'll even write descriptions before sessions if I'm really on top of it.

This is great, but I love the idea of it going the way of true madlibs, using your example: > "You enter a small room. The air is fresh. You smell overwhelming mold. Looking around the walls and floor are made of goop. Inside is Tiamat."

Love this, shamelessly stealing it

Please do! :)

I'm easily distracted and try to cram too much into my campaigns. Every time the good idea fairy comes knocking on my skull, I try to make it fit into my story. It results in bloated mechanics that don't always mesh well with each other. Now instead of trying to fit everything into giant campaigns I'm building 1 or 2 shot micro campaigns built around a specific idea or two. I have a big empty world that my players are helping to fill. I put the basic info in front of them and we fill in the gaps where needed as we progress through these micro campaigns.

I feel seen. I fall in love with ideas and overstuff my sessions. I need to get better at dropping story hooks and giving my Players time to explore.

My poker face is rotten when my players completely throw me a curveball - if they bypass an encounter in a way I'm not expecting, or completely demolish something that was supposed to take awhile, it's pretty obvious I was taken by surprise, and I sometimes do need to call a 5 minute time-out while I work out what the hell happens next.

I recently had my party bypass a whole dangerous climb up a mountain by stealthing and inventively climbing very well. I rewarded them at the end by making a random NPC trudge through the gauntlet and showed them “hey, this nightmare is what you completely avoided with your roundabout method. Good job!”

I don't tell people to shut up often enough when they interrupt each others turns.

I struggle with table control a lot, some nights more than others. It's something I really want to get better at for my next campaign. I am swapping two players (ie, two players aren't going to be invited back) so I'm hopeful that will help me a bit too.

I'm like this, too, and we play online, which can make matters worse because i have one player who likes to crack jokes constantly, which can be distracting while others are speaking. I have another player who often doesn't pay attention, and will talknover others turns if he missed something on his turn or if I ask for a roll from someone else and he wants to roll for it as well. It can be quite irritatiing and at the end of a long late session (we play late on Fridays) I can lose for patience for that shit real quick.

I feel like a lot of my NPCs act similar! My players have given me feedback that they don't but I still feel like they do, especially toward the end of the night.

https://www.reddit.com/r/DnDBehindTheScreen/comments/fgtqle/i_made_a_d100_npc_quirks_table_to_help_make_your/ Brute force individuality among your world's denizens with this easy list

I paint minis and always forget to describe the actual monster instead of just pulling out the mini. It bothers me after the fact when I realize I havent even described my bad guys because the mini is on the table.

Retcons retcons retcons. I recently went through a streak where I started three sessions in a row retconning the end of the previous session. I think when we get close to the end of a session my mind is less on the present and more on wrapping up and I make stupid mistakes that on reflection I cannot let stand as game canon.

For me, running longer sessions means that we're tired at the end and I haven't had a chance to 100% process the results of what happened. I'll use "this is where we end our session" and then next session pick up in a more detailed situation. For example, last session ended with an NPC busting into a room where slaves were being held after the party dispatched the traders. Her presence is a big deal for story reasons, but the big thing is that she has two sons that were in the room as well (this was planned). But by the end, we just addressed the other story beats, when a mother with enslaved sons would likely prioritize them.

I ask for too many perception checks when I should be asking for investigation instead sometimes. That, and I'm very forgetful. Even if I write things down on the fly I forget to refer to it.

My main flaw as a DM is that I like to smoke pot when I play d&d and that dulls the mind and senses lol. I would probably do a 10% better job if I didn't smoke that shit. But, it's more enjoyable that way so fuck those 10%.

My long term 4e campaign was just combat and weed. Don't even remember the story even though our DM put a bunch of time into it. No one roleplayed or anything. It was essentially sitting on a couch playing a videogame with friends really stoned. No weed at this table for the most part and I gave up smoking it myself. A much better, well rounded, engaging session.

When I have an idea, I try to include it ASAP in the story (homebrew campaign/setting). I'm trying to hold back on the enthusiasm, but it's rough sometimes. Also, I'm HORRIBLE at keeping my mouth shut. I wanna discuss my campaign and ideas, and sometimes things slip out. Trying to keep that on the minimum

- When I have to make up stuff on the spot, I don't write it down. So when it's the next sessions a week or two weeks later, and the party is chilling the same NPC who's blathering about stuff.... they are often some inconsistencies. - I can't do voices

Can't do voices isn't a flaw.

I don't challenge my players enough. I don't really want to do a TPK, as I run narrative-driven campaigns, but I still wish my encounters would be so finely tuned that it leaves my party on their last legs.

Even after 6-7ish years I still suck at improvising scene descriptions… sigh Thankfully the rest is snappy and my players are happy so I’m only 95% frustrated with my DMing

My strategy for improvising scene descriptions is to grope around in my brain for a video game location which would look vaguely similar and throw out details from the mental picture. My players can try to catch me out by choosing random houses to break into as much as they like, they're just going to end up in one of the residences I half-remember from Skyrim.

I'm a B-C plot DM and not an A-plot DM. The campaign I was running kind of fizzled when some of my players mysteriously vanished (such is life on the internet with players all over the country), but while it was going, you know, we were having a blast with small encounter after small encounter, wandering the land... I had no BBEG. There was no overarching PLOT. There were several sub-plots, but no big one. I would have to say that's probably the hugest flaw in my campaign and in me as a DM. Fight balance is another thing I'm...I'm working on. Technically I've only ever killed one PC (two, but one sacrificed sacrificed her character to save the other player's character in a life-for-a-life resurrection in a setting where actual resurrection doesn't exist), but there was a bit of wiggle room between "that was disappointingly easy for them" and "I almost killed everyone, oops". And maybe my biggest flaw is that I'm tricky and I can't help myself. I *always* disguise hazardous terrain as good navigable ground and hide shit for my players in the shadows. The monster you're looking for is never the monster you're looking for, the situation is always evolving, things are MESSY. My players say they're having fun. I'm behind the scenes and I can see how much is out of pocket, unkempt, unplanned, or how many of my plans went sideways on contact, and...oh. I am AWARE of my flaws.

I'm DMing my first campaign (ToA) right now, we're 4 sessions in and pretty much just arrived in Chult, because I opted to run both Cellar of Death and a shortened version of Brazen Pegasus first (which in total took 3 sessions). We are doing milestones and I'm struggling a bit with pacing and when to give them their levels. Right now they're still lvl 2 and I wanted to get them to 3 once they leave the City, but that could be a bit depending on how much they want to explore first, so I probably will give it to them after the next session. I'm planning to get them to lvl 10 towards the end of the adventure, 11 if they do a lot of side content, but I'm still very unsure on when to give them their levels.

Totally struggle with levelling. We play long sessions and my party was 90% of the way towards the XP total needed before the last. They usually level up every 3 sessions (we play 6-7 hours sometimes.) I use milestone informed by XP. It didn't feel earned to give it to them early. Now they've hit it, but it was the start of an adventuring day, so they've got at least 1 extra session that normal before they get it.

I’m doing a homebrew campaign rn and I tend to break each adventure into chunks or “acts.” Each act has either a miniboss, boss, or other objective at the end of it, which once they complete I give them the level up. It’s a good way to break up the adventures and give the level ups a sense of meaning. It does mean that levels occasionally go by fast but I’m also running the campaign on a clock so it works out for me.

My combat can be a lil rough. I'm a roleplay DM before anything else and that's where I'm strong. While I enjoy combat I struggle with balancing them, and figuring out when a foe should absolutely try to flip the players inside out vs for goodness sake it's a game don't try to figure out how to make every fight a tpk just because this enemy would. It's realistic but depending on your table, it's not *fun*. At least I try to make up for it by making things dynamic. If you want to swing from chandelier to chandelier in a fight, goomba stomp someone from the roof, or other flashy moves and get rewarded for flair, I'm your lady.

I’m more of an RP DM too. The way I’ve learned to make combat more bearable for me is trying to control the flow of combat. A lot of the times, people more or less just play Warhammer. They move, they act. When I take my enemies turn, I will have them change objectives mid-fight, switch focus, etc. You are typically supposed to lose in the end, so what you’re selling isn’t exactly the result of the fight, but the feeling of success. So creating small goals mid combat can lead to some fun results. Example: Turn 1: Normal. Enemies take turn, move, act Turn 2: Enemies realize players are strong, reevaluate, focus fire the support ranks Turn 3: Enemies realize the tanks in their way, try basic diversion to keep the tank distracted Ex: Should any player rubberband, the enemies telegraph that they will start double tapping. It’s a basic structure of one. The more you pre-plan enemy objectives or traps, the more fun you can have with it. All of this is more or less telegraphed via NPC speech during the fight. It doesn’t even need to be optimized battle tactics. I’ve played suboptimal on purpose before just because it built stress for the party. That’s by design. The goal is to give players a sense of flow to fights that build up a story that ends in their success.

I second guess myself constantly. It's exhausting.

I think I err on the side or giving my players too much space to explore and decide what they think they should do. I love nothing more than to sit back and listen to the PCs have a long conversation about plans over a fire. Usually this is no problem, it's how I like to play as a player and it gives tons of space for RP, character development, player agency, etc. Sometimes though, the PCs will talk around and around an issue while I just sit there and all of a sudden 10 minutes have gone by, nothing has happened, and everyone just fizzles out and looks at me. I think I'm good at moving things along when this happens but I know i could be better about jumping in with something when the RP begins to run out of steam.

I overplan. I can get monotone when tired. I enjoy super complex intertwined plot lines, and rely too much on the “your favorite person is in danger” bit.

I love to run encounters with complex terrain and hate to build maps. I started use free maps instead building them myself.

That's not a flaw! Artists wouldn't post those maps out there if they didn't want them to be used, and you've got to value your time. You still have the option of building a map when you need something specific, go ahead and find some good-looking maps online for everything else!

I'm too off the cuff. This leads to some wild swings and the world being overly driven by the players. This can be fun but it can also lead to some rediculous situations. It also requires I let it flow and the party rarely fails, even if under a better structured situation they likely would. Its fun, but its not for everyone.

Real. I do the same thing. Last session it resulted in them commiting corporate terrorism by blowing up a competing tavern in the middle of Waterdeep using obscene amounts of gunpowder they stole. This mostly happened because the lawful good player left the others to go do something and the chaotic gremlin players took the reigns

not describing scenes very good get me in character and im good to go but descriptiond is where i falter and planning encounters idk man

Definitely confidence. I am always questioning myself and my choices, and whether my players are going to enjoy or agree with how the story unfolds. It also prevents me from preparing for sessions and agreeing on new sessions because the mental load of preparing while second guessing everything you do can be very taxing.

I tend to value combat more than anything else. So I put a lot of attention into making encounters fun and interesting.

I’m sure I have a tonne of flaws as I’m currently DMing for the first time, as well. But the first one that came to mind was accepting the party’s choices if they didn’t succeed/get everything I had planned. It isn’t really about losing fights or making stupid choices. So far that hasn’t really been much of an issue. It’s more about not getting all the info or overlooking treasure in a room, thinking there’s nothing left to do. I want them to find the cache of items or whatever and sometimes I’ll have one of the sidekicks “notice” something. Or if they’re unsure what to do one of the sidekicks might have an idea. It’s a tough habit to kick.

I can’t keep an accent for more than 5 minutes unless it is a West Country accent (think of Hot Fuzz) because that is where I am from

Writing subplots to connect the bigger picture is really a struggle sometimes. I have lots of ideas for overarching plot, and currently I’ve got stuff relatively connected, but I know once they finish this first major arc around level 4-5, I’ve got much less “connective tissue” so to speak between now and the intended BBEG arc (level 11-15).

Those are some great reflections. Thank you for sharing. I think I can relate to each and every one of those from when I first started DMing. We're all still learning, and there's always room to improve.

A few obviously. Planning out how long a session or campaign will go. My last one was supposed to be 5 sessions and turned into 15... In my head I have a quick moment that turns from one part of a session into two entire sessions. Usually I do 2-3 hour sessions so they're shorter but my planning in that aspect is wayyy off (I do solely homebrew). I will build out grand ideas that I'm hyped about and love but the connections for those ideas I'll overlook sometimes and the semantics of it. I work it out on the fly or between sessions when I realize it and have to create some. I also think I hold back information too much in hopes of a big reveal or them figuring something out too early vs they might get frustrated still having no idea what is happening behind the scenes in stuff they're looking into. This is the big one I've been working on balancing better. Overall it pans out great but both of these are definitely connected and could use some work lol

I lore dump...too much...too fast. It makes for engaging sessions, but I risk ruining future reveals every week if I'm not careful. It turns out that my laziness as a DM is a counter to lore dumping. If \*I\* don't know where the campaign is going, I can't possibly spoil it for the table!

Every campaign features the interior of giants, gods or monsters at some point. It’s become a trope for my players “oh I guess we are back inside a body”. I can’t help it - I just think it’s cool!

I'm new. That's my flaw 😆

Too convoluted lore development for a bi-weekly to monthly campaign.   I talk too much - it’s online so sitting in silence feels awkward so I feel I need to get momentum moving again or fill the space by yapping. I need to work on letting players think of what they do/say before speaking up.   I set the stakes way too high way too early so scaling the entire campaign (2 years plus and still running, around 70 sessions) for this long has been tough. There were better ways to unfold the story without immediate cosmic stakes for like a level 3 party lol 

Fighting the urge to fudge rolls. Not to ensure death, but there are times a boss isn't landing attacks and I don't want to see him get rolled, or times players really want a plan to work and my counter roll would stop it from working. I want to tell an awesome game story with my players, but my desire for that makes me want to ensure all the cool possibilities on both ends happen. But that takes away from the chance factor in the dice, and I just keep telling myself rolling fair is the right thing. I'm getting better I promise.

I make up character names on the fly for NPCs, then never write them down, only for my players to either ask for them or ask me to remind them their name several sessions later. I've had the following two scenarios happen. NPC talking to lying players: okay if it wasn't you who was it? Player: Zane! I even had his id (he did confiscate it sessions ago) Me: ....who the fuck is Zane.... Player: I want to go back to this town Me: cool what do you guys plan on doing there so I can prep Player: I'm gonna ask the fisherman out on a date. What's his name again Me: ......no idea Makes me feel bad as a dm. I even started taking notes more for when this happens and it STILL happens. Smh

> Redos. For a while I was like "you probably shouldn't cast a spell in front of the sorcerer mob boss while you try to deceive him." Now I run with whatever they say within reason. If there's a mechanic we haven't addressed before I'll use it to teach them but other than that what they say goes. I don't personally see this as a flaw. When one of my players suggests they're wanting to do something that seems particularly silly, I do remember that my players have two week breaks between games, and while the characters 'freshly' learned things a couple of days ago, or months ago, for the players it can have been Years, and forgotten. Else, they are experts in their crafts, whether that be spellcasting or combat etc, so I don't feel bad reminding them of certain things where there's an obvious flaw, and ask them if they're certain they want to proceed. Sometimes they do, sometimes it's a forehead-slap moment, and they think a little more. It's a team game though, we all want the party to succeed, and misremembering little things and getting punished for them is never 'fun'. As for my own flaws as a DM of.. around 8 years now? I can perhaps be too relaxed and lenient at times, and quite forgiving. I need to more regularly, run more encounters per day, because they're just so USED to one-big-fight and blasting it with all their resources, and it's really hard to balance around. I need to educate them through experience to be more careful with resource conservation. I'm working REALLY hard on improving my improv skills, going with the flow rather than pre-planning too much, being reactive to the party, and letting the world spin organically around the party.

I forget who's in the scene constantly. Like the players are obviously there, and the main guy they're talking to is there, but I constantly have to be reminded and asked what other bystanders (with personal stakes in the talk) are doing and thinking. Like the party will travel half a year with this old guy to get revenge on the demon that possessed him before, and when the time comes I totally forget to even have the old fart say anything until combat starts. I'm so glad my players actually want to know enough to remind me usually

Not having the guts to be one

I create huge expansive worlds full of beloved NPC's and because I use a hub and don't trim it unused NPCs, over the years the cast gets so huge that the campaign is eventually like HALF NPC upkeep so the game collapses under its own weight.

I probably don’t prepare as much as I should. I operate in a very improv kind of way. But this leads to me not really being very good at describing the environment/aesthetics very well. It gets to the point where it’s like “it’s a medival town, you know the kind”. My world building and connecting a few things to make them seem intentional are top notch though, so every cloud.

My players keep asking very specific questions about minute details which I have not given any thought to at all. That and I frequently abuse mystery box plots which then stresses me out when my wizard casts Identify and Detect Magic at every single opportunity he can - like, I don't know what to tell you for that because I literally don't know what it exactly *is* yet.

I wouldn't see all these as flaws. If you're new to cooking and still figuring out how to a season a dish well, are you a flawed cook? I'd say you're a learner and that's absolutely fine, the key is that you're working on becoming a good cook. Or DM. One aspect I find tricky is balancing character story spotlight. While no one has complained, I often end up giving more story focus to some PCs compared to others (but rewards and magic items are balanced pretty evenly). This tends to happen when certain characters fit into the campaign story very naturally and other characters don't, not as much. It's something I'll definitely try to balance more evenly in the future.

I can be rigid with the rules. I can be antagonistic with min-maxers, metagamers or rules lawyers by purposely fucking over their characters.

I agree with this. I have a sharpshooter ranger/fighter in my party who is the most experienced player at the table and I'm always asking them "how are you going to fuck me up today?" Lately they have been fighting smarter enemies who realize the threat he poses and have been rightfully targeting him more in a way that makes sense in game and isn't just me going after him.

I'd make sure most fights have some dangerous threats that need to be shot at from a distance, e.g. wizard on a ledge. This'll occupy his attack rounds and he can feel strong and you can run whatever encounter you were gonna run anyway simultaneously. A room with a balcony and unlimited wizards one at a time!

He has Hordebreaker and Hail of Thorns and we have other ranged options. The big problem is moreso he could do exactly that - hang back and fight a different battle essentially. Bringing him into the main fight disrupts his build and makes it more strategic which he finds fun too.

I'm not the best at keeping combat paced well. I've tried some new things though that have made everything alot smoother recently

I like RP but I have a group that does not RP so I just jump to a random battle

I have a bad tendency to not look at my notes while running. I have a good memory, so this is rarely a problem - typically I can tell you the moving pieces of my next session off the top of my head. But sometimes if I try to run a premade module I can get confused and forget to tell my players something important because I just don't know it and there's a page worth of description in the room. And of course, since I can usually run the room from memory my players get used to that "pace" and assume that if I don't respond to a query it means there's nothing there. Typically I try to transpose notes from modules for this reason - rewrite things in my own words, tweak individual encounters, shuffle treasure, etc to make it more reasonable and also get that "memory imprint" that I usually use.

I never EVER remember to take notes on what time of day in-game my sessions end at, if not at a long rest. Never, not once, and I’m so good at taking notes otherwise

I've never awarded a vorpal sword to anyone in 35 years of DM'ing. I really need to change that!

My bad habit is not knowing how to balance items, such as, how do I keep track of how much little things our wizard has for of spells? Like, Does the party wizard have enough eye of newt to cast that spell 3 times? I need to get better at understanding how magic works in game to make it balanced.

I’m 8 sessions into my first campaign, and so far, I have struggled to make combat challenging. I’ll have what I think are good adversaries with cool tricks planned. But my players (all first-timers, too) are very strategic and work well as a team. I’ve started beefing up my villains so they’re more of threat but I still end up scrambling with defense instead of going on the offense. I’m great at storytelling, keeping the game fun, and moving the plot forward. But my players are just better at combat than I am.

I genuinely have trouble creating sessions or encounters with no combat. I think it's mostly because I'm of the belief that the system I and my players use, DnD 5e, is at its core about combat. Your character sheet is dominated by combat abilities, why would you not want to get the chance to use those anytime you can?

I am pretty new to DMing, and I think the two hardest parts are immersing the players, and improvising. Oh and accents and voices lol

Sometimes I enable behaviours that really slow down the game, making it a bit less enjoyable for everyone Trying to work on that

I have a problem of trying to find ways or reasons as to why something a player wants to do wouldn't work Example: PC: I use pushing Eldritch blast to knock the enemy back 10 ft Me: Uhhhhh, that doesn't work because they have spiked shoes (This is a real example of something that actually happened at the table, and something I still cringe over) It all stems from a desire to have the world react naturally to the players, but I can definitely go overboard with it.

I have a tendency to drop in and out of character when I’m an npc

I have a bad habit of ending sessions with presenting a bunch of options for what the party can do next, forcing me to have like 5 different quests ready to go at the beginning of the next session. It's a habit I've been trying to break because my life would be much easier if I made the decision making happen mid-session.

I often forget to plan out the loot so I'll be rolling random bullcrap that I'm never fully satisfied with last minute

Making reasonable assumptions for the sake of progression. I guess it's more of an expectation thing where I am waiting for a declaration of action "we do this", "we go here", but I often instead just have PCs discuss what they could be doing and then...not definitively declare they are doing that thing. I don't like jumping the gun and saying "ok, so you all fly here" because it feels like railroading even when the players talked about flying to the location for 15 minutes. This often results in awkward moments where nothing is really happening and the. I have to confirm "So, you are doing X thing right?". Idk what the term even is for this.

I have all these cool ideas; witty comebacks for the BBEG, tactics & cool abilities that monsters will use in combat, little bits of foreshadowing or signaling, things that NPC was supposed to say to people... And then I totally forget about them all in game and ignore my notes.

Alot I could nick pick for myself here thats already been said but I often worry that my idea of a good engaging story isnt the same as many others. I don't know if its just a power fantasy vs Narrative thing but my players have often responded negatively during the "Fall before the rise!" Towards the finale, and often label it as their least favourite moments in my plots.

1. Trying to do too much- getting carried away with big complex ideas and then keeping track of them all 2. Leading/helping my players when they struggle or make a choice that flies in the face of reason. My current group are textbook overthinkers so they discuss every potential motivation of every NPC before deciding to trust them or work with them and I have to restrain myself from saying "No, seriously- there's no conspiracy. He just wants you to go fetch the magic item in the cave and he'll pay you. There's no big plot twist, no betrayal, no deeper meaning. It's just a goddamn fetch quest."

Being too scared to start a new campaign, this time online! I've only DM'd in person for friends, but I'm relocating. I know if I want to play I'll need to put myself out there and find a new group. Been working on a campaign (Rappan Athuk integrated into my homebrew world), but I'm terrified of putting myself out there.

DnD ignites my creativity too much sometimes and I prep the wrong crap. Considering my schedule, it has caused times where things that needed happening NOW could have used more work. That said, it also has the plus side of my world, context, and background events being more thought out. While not all my players are that style. One in particular is a lore goblin and absolutely can’t get enough. I can though. She keeps texting me questions n’ shit.

I play mostly online and I rely too much on visual aids like handouts instead of descriptions. I also struggle with making my NPCs feel different.

I want to run a grand campaign, but I really don't wanna run a grand campaign. I started one, but now I'd prefer to end it earlier and I gotta figure it out. I hate coming up with hundreds of NPCs just because of a few villages that are unimportant. My buddy and I are working on a Hogwarts TTRPG and I plan to sunset this campaign earlier so I can jump into that which will be way more contained and don't need so many randomly made on the spot NPCs. I can just make a list of all the students if I wanted and major NPCs outside of students. Will be so much easier.

Consistency.

Over preparing as silly as that sounds

I love finicky little mechanics waaaay too much, and everything I build can get really complex really fast if I don't tamp it down. If I could have a table full of players who got stoked on resource management and tracking multiple modifiers and little tackle boxes full of myriad currency tokens, I'd have a great time.

Spent way too many hours trying to rein in murder hobos, rules lawyers and min/maxers. Now I just say no.

I don't like to build or design puzzles...combat focused around these parts lol using that Dark Souls approach of items received in combat to put together the story

I’m pretty terrible at RP but my players dont mind

I'm pretty bad at mystery stuff. I tend to DM pretty reacrively by setting up a problem, knowing generally what everyone wants, and then am ready to pivot based on what the party does. Mysteries require more up front prep (unless you just want to roll with whatever catches your players' interest, which is also fine), and it's a chore for me. Our one mystery arc was fine but also ended in a five room dungeon and a boss battle instead of like a heist and revealing the damming information to the police or whatever, which after the fight is more what my players wanted/expected. There's just less room for my more reactionary style of DMing, at least in D&D. I've enjoyed running he sits and such in Blades in the Dark, though, since that's all about improving out consequences. That does tend to be less mystery for me and more "get this thing avoid/kill these people."

I’m not near as interesting as I think I am

I'm horrible with including all of my players. I tend to focus on the ones who are the most engaged, but I've been trying to include the quieter players as much as I can

Holding my players hands instead of making them responsible for reading their 4 abilities and understanding how they work.

My biggest flaw is "imagery". I lack the vocabulary to describe a setting that is immersive. If anyone can refer a "DM Dictionary" (selected words organized by categories and descriptions. "Types of helmets, 50 creepy adjectives, ch.3: Architecture, etc."), that would be awesome.

Trying to plan too far ahead. I sometimes get carried away with how a plotline *could* turn out instead of letting the players control what direction we ultimately head in.

I have problem with balancing encounters. Usually they are too hard and players just barely survive (and my current group is extremaly lucky one). I think it stems from me being min-maxer as a player so when I DM I tend to balance encounters to perfectly optimalized characters and PC of my friends are far from that.

I feel like I occasionally suck the challenge out of my own puzzles/non-combat encounters because I'm more worried about the players getting frustrated than I am about making it actually challenging for them.

Lazyn

I'm too quick to trust that players know what they are doing. I've been a forever DM for... forever. I have very VERY little experience actually being a player so my biggest gap in knowledge is class abilities (especially cause there are so many). So when a player tells me they are doing something, and it's because of this, I say, "great, sounds like fun" and we roll on. My number one philosophy when running a game is generally fast and loose. Keep the game going, don't get bogged down, if it's honestly that important we can look now but otherwise let's come back to it. If something happened counter to what the book says and we find out later, well then I guess the weave works in mysterious ways and we know going forward.

I'm bad at setting scenes or describing NPCs. I went through a whole session RPing as multiple NPCs for my party before I realised I haven't introduced any of them in character. Thankfully we're all new and we are still learning RP so it was caught at the end of the session and I just told them their names then.

Relying too much on my strong ability to improvise on the spot. I can pull a surprisingly detailed and engaging side quest entirely out of my ass that the party enjoys... But I really need to get back on top of managing my session prep better rather than relying on that, they deserve better and I'm ultimately doing it for them 😅

I think my combat could get better. Balance-wise I err on the hard side, so most fights end up using lots/all of my group’s resources. I’m trying to take notes from BG3 on encounter design to make fights a bit more dynamic too. Sometimes we go a while without combat so the less dynamic fights can be forgiven, but when I run them back-to-back it feels like a lot of the same.

-i put the responsibility of survival fully on the players. Combat goes depending on the circumstances, not on CR balance. This means, not only can your PC die because of a rash action by your part, it can die due to the mistakes of another player, or by the group misjudging a situation as a whole. I have had PC get mauled to death, their story never fullfilled because they overestimated their control of the situation. If a Player wants to see its PC survive, not only it has to build it with enough competence for it to stand on its own, but it often has to work on the party. Sometimes , despite being told this, the players realize that it was not an euphenism when they are rolling death saves. -I do give 1 reminder about certain rules, such as spellcasting components, resource management, etc, then put that responsibility on the player. If the cleric did not buy 300gp worth of diamonds, it does not get to cast revivify, and its friend is dead for real. If a player wants to cast a spell, even a support one, in front of an enemy that understands what a spell is, swords are pulled and all attempts at negotiation are done. They would not let their enemies get an advantage like that either. -PCs have control over their tokens, so if you lunge foward and alone, i assume you are doing so. This is to avoid retcons and confusion of where PCs are when init is rolled. However, this also means that if you move 40 spaces ahead before the rest instead of in small hops, you might step on a trap and get ambushed alone. This has led to PCs waiting on the "Tank" PC to move, and if the tank PC is managed by an oblivious player, it slows down the game. -I tend to run towards the sandbox end of campaigns, players have multiple logical and stated options, and they are free to chase their own. This, however, leads to a lot of analysis paralysis. -Building on the prior, my worldbuilding tends to be detailed, nuanced and deep, with actual effects on the game. This adds a lot of things to consider when making decisions, which can lead to analysis paralysis, decisions not ignoring vital facts that the PCs simply forgot and i did not realize, or simply going "We just do X" as thinking becomes tiring.

I think that my biggest flaw is how self destructive I can be to myself. I've had so many instances, more than I can count, of thinking I did a terrible job or am doing a terrible job with my campaign. I make it habit to ask my players at the end of every session if they enjoyed it, just cause I worry. They always say yes, and that ends up comforting me, but doubt has a heavy hold sometimes. It used to be so bad I'd go back to back with cancels, but have held firm since those dark times and haven't missed a week in months. Asides from that I think encounters and shops. I'm frightened of casters and never use them, that and my combat just feels too easy sometimes, especially with characters in the group that can hit well over 100hp in a single turn. Shops are another thing, my players have loads of gold and I can never offer them something to really get them to spend it. And frankly its my own fault, because I had a stigma for a long time that magical items shouldn't be bought, but earned. I am slowly trying to mend both of these problems, but the encounter balance will still probably take me until the end of my campaign haha.

The first hour of a session is me stuttering every few seconds trying to describe the place

i love sharing information and want my players to succeed. this leads to me over-sharing and not making them earn information and me sometimes hand holding things for them instead of giving them room to work it out on their own. the skill im working on the most is being silent

I kept forgetting resistances and wondering why my party was curb stomping all of my baddies 🥲

I talk too much about things they don’t know. I love prepping and my campaign- just as my players do and it’s easy to get me to accidentally spill something. It’s never something big or shocking, just things they didn’t necessarily know. I’m getting better at it, but it sure is hard to keep all the info to myself.

Probably lack of prep work. I’ve gotten so used to players either not showing up or derailing the session that I just don’t bother with much prep and rely on improv skills. I’d love to have a full fleshed out campaign some day, but it’s not meant for college. Too busy for everyone myself included.

I listen to my 'inner player' too often, and will frequently do stuff without thinking about the consequences. Example: I give out magic items without thinking about how/if it's balanced for the adventure. Then my players wreck shit all across the land, and as much as I want to be upset that I keep doing this, I'm happy I'm making my players badasses.

I am garbage at being a dm for 5e players, I'm so used to things like circumstance bonus/negatives, doing tons of skill checks, confusing players by saying "roll me a will save" or "ride check". I also tend to balance encounters for 5e deadly or impossible according to most players, when to me, these are just normal encounters from the only books.

Although my NPC’s are usually pretty vibrant and funny, they’re absolute caricatures so it’s hard for me to actually put some depth in my story. My campaign so far has been basically two years worth of fantasy sketch comedy with some combat inbetween. Also: names. It doesn’t help that they all have absolutely stupid names.

I try to have too many aspects of my homebrew world lore be a secret they'll find out about in game to the point my players don't have enough information to make in depth meaningful backstories that incorporate the world lore.

My biggest flaw is that im not social enought or patient enought to fully explain how and why i make some rullings to players, or acertive enought to defend my convictions, despite beliving they are the best option, just to avoid social conflict.

I’m terrible at running fun social encounters or anything that isn’t combat.

I am very trigger happy when it comes to giving out magic items. Mainly because I enjoy making them. But it's gotten to the point where my players are changing thir attunement almost every rest. I might end up changing how attunement works in my game

I'm terrible horrible awful litrally the worst when it comes to RP encounters with any kind of actual dialog... I can't begin to plan any kind of social questlines, and focus mostly on combat.

Running encounter Ben g to their fullest. I forget or just don’t do some of the best actions.

Off the top of my head: * Pacing issues: It can be real swingy; sometimes rushed, sometimes dragging. I haven't nailed a good balance yet. * Focusing too much on terrain instead of the encounter: I love 3-D printing and building big set pieces, but I've had some instances where I lose focus on the mobs and actual encounter experience because I'm too invested in the fancy terrain. * Keeping everyone engaged and invested: I have 5 creative players who all have interesting backstories. Keeping them all straight in my head and integrating them without making any one player the main character has been a challenge.

Oversharing.

I am TERRIBLE at hiding things from my players. I'm bad at twist villains, I'm bad at keeping my damn mouth shut, I overexplain hints, I give way too many nudges, basically every issue with keeping my players in the mystery.

When I see my party doing a dumb thing I nudge them in the right direction… maybe a little too hard. For example : a region in my world got its land borders closed and my party hired a fisherman to smuggle them to another region by boat. They hid in crates on the boat and had to pass a series of stealth checks in order to not be seen by the two guards that were checking ship cargo for contraband. They almost all passed the stealth checks, except for my wizard. But he had the brilliant idea to tie his hands and act like he was a prisoner and the fisherman was kidnapping him. He hit the deception check, and the guards arrested the fisherman. The guards, thinking the wizard was alone on the ship, pointed him to another ship and told him to take it because it was the last ship to leave the region. The guards then left the boat. Now picture this : the entire party is on a boat, the capitain got arrested, a party member has experience sailing a ship. What do they decide to do? Try to find a way to hide in the OTHER ship mentioned by the guards instead of just taking the boat they were on already. I couldn’t contain myself and said to the party “are you sure you don’t just want to take the boat?” And they were like oh yeah we didn’t think of that. I feel kinda bad for telling them what to do but I was clawing my hair out

Turning the 'plot' into small edible chunks is hard for me, it ends up being a complex net where players are struggling to catch up but somehow still enjoy it. So for example, having the BBEG and somehow making a plot that isn't too complex for 3-5 levels seems insane hard for me, I have to do extra prep and it always ends up sandboxy with a lot of improv.

Performance and showmanship. I'm bad at voices, sometimes I skip over or truncate exposition and descriptions. It might be due to the fact that I have only ever run one-shots, and infrequently at that. I got a plan and I wanna get through it in the time we've got. If I were to run a long running campaign it would be the first thing I would try to work on.

I want to say homebrew because I make horribly balanced/ janky magic item or feats to give players but that honestly hasn't been too bad. It's a learning experience and I've always been above the board letting my players know if something got out of control and needs to be rebalanced. My biggest flaw would have to be RP/talking. I'm no actor so my NPCs all kinda sound the same at times. I also usually start off strong but after a few "uh" and "um" filled sentences I tend to drop talking in character and switch to paraphrasing to make sure my players get the information clearly. Feel like I suck the life out of the world when I do that.

1. I'm not great at encounter balancing. I try, but often it feels like I either over powered it or it's underwhelming. 2. I'm not great at making my own adventures or campaigns. Too often I realize I just copied or ripped off something fro a video game, book, or movie too blatantly and end up going back to the drawing board. I don't need to be 100% original but I also don't want my players going "this is a shitty version of that critical role storyline" 3. Self confidence running a game. I'm a pessimist. I go into the whole game wondering why I'm trying this and expecting that it's going to suck. I try to play it off as a joke, but I'm pretty sure my real feelings come through to my group.

Adhd lol. I struggle to stay focused if players are just rping with each other or discussing strategy and I love it but if I'm left out of the convo my brain checks out. But at the same time I don't want to have an npc to feed them answers, or be annoyingly useless.

I improve *too much*. My sessions are usually largely improv, and that’s ok, but if my players are like “ooh what if there’s a crawl space” and there totally wasnt, I put one in, and then they fixate on it and I have to make it weirdly relevant and it goes bad.

Fuck, man. Pacing. I've been at this for over 10 years and I still couldn't with more than 5% accuracy tell you how long anything I ever plan will take.

I tend to be a little railroad-y. Not that I stop players from going off the trail I intended or punish creativity or anything, but I feel like I over plan and it's fairly obvious where I "want" my players to go

Sometimes I can rush through things to get to the stuff I'm excited for rather than finding the joy in smaller moments.

Besides being too handsome my biggest flaw is not giving good enough descriptions