Fixing GM Mistakes! (GM Tips w/ Matt Mercer) 

My favorite GM "clue": In a modern era game, the PCs are driving to Chicago to follow up on a lead that exists only in their heads. The GM said, "As you drive the new hit song comes on the radio 'There is Nothing for You in Chicago'"

You can also follow the advice of the DM Handbook: “...When all else fails, roll a bunch of dice behind your screen, study them for a moment with a look of deep concern mixed with regret, let loose a heavy sigh, and announce that Tiamat swoops from the sky and attacks.”

"You see a room with furniture, there is a note hidden behind a chair in the cor-... There's a chair." "Is there a note behind the chair?" "MAYBE"

'Then they're fucked. In which case, heh.' Made me chuckle, well played Mr Mercer.

was playing on roll20 once and I had enemies lying in ambush. only problem was that I forgot to put them on the hidden GM layer so the PCs spotted them right away. we laughed at my mistake and turned the enemies into a comedic sort of bumbling attackers "YOU FOOLS! I TOLD YOU WE WEREN'T HIDDEN ENOUGH" good fun

This lesson seems to come down to a quote by Bob Ross: "We don't make mistakes, only happy accidents."

My worst one yet was, "so you follow the shapeshifter?" whoops :D

A good rule of thumb for GMs: No plan survives contact with the party. It's a good idea to be flexible.

I had a villain monologue about how weak they were compared to the players and accidentally spoiled that he was a lich. The party bailed before he could finish his monologue "HOW COULD YOU EVER DEFEA- wait no come back you can't leave this is an encounter!"

One of the best DM moments I've ever had was a total mess up on my part. It's long but it's worth the story. The ranger was looking for herbs in the downtime between quests and rolled a natural 20. I describe him coming across a single rose with gray petals and an ivory, skull-looking center. It was surrounded by vines that it was centered on. No other plant life was visible with its reach. "Haha," I thought to myself, "Sounds cool, now he will bring it with him and I can figure out what its alchemical properties are before next session." "I cast speak with plants." He told me with a determined gaze. I looked back at him with a now stupid self satisfied grin that was quickly fading, "You cast what now....?" ""Yeah since last level up I took this as one of my new spells." ....... "it slowly begins to move and as the grass tickles your legs beneath you, the rose fixes its hollow gaze on you." Nailed it. Shit what does it do? Just wing it. As you all can probably guess I ended up having to make it up as I go and the story quickly spiralled into a quest to find a plains God who could identify this weird rose that I just thought sounded cool looking.

one time I had the party discover a legendary sword in the first dungeon. ended up making the fighter ridiculously op 0_0 luckily, another person was looking to play, but they were out of town. So, I decided to let them skype in and introduce their character as a spirit trapped in the sword. for the next session and a half, the sword was intelligent, and chose when to be useful (the sword player was intentionally helping me maintain balance) until they decided to free the spirit. this was an adventure in itself, and resulted in the sword being destroyed. the spirit then possessed a suit of armour, and next session there was a new player sitting at the table irl. The possessed suit of armour was their PC. And it was the guy who had been playing the sword over skype. worth noting that the original players had never met this person before, and got to know them via their sword character. forged a pretty strong friendship, a cool character and allowed me to fix the game balance.

In a very recent game of Titansgrave I DM'd, I passed a note to a very perceptive PC saying "That fuel tank will explode after two more rounds." I meant rounds = turns, she heard rounds = bullets. So when the fuel tank exploded two combat rounds later and took her Saurian sniper below 0HP, she complained that no-one had shot it yet. Moral of the story: Synonyms matter.

"Don't admit the mistake. OWN IT!!" I love you Matt

One of my villains is a changeling who pretended to be on their side for almost 10 sessions before betraying them and my party never trusts any of my NPCs now.

U should add critical role clips that demonstrate some of these situations

My mom was once in a campaign where early on the paladin of the party got his hands on a Vorpal Wword at a low level. The GM later had another paladin come across the party. "I see you've found my sword. May I please have it back?" The sword could only be wielded properly by lawful good. Keeping someone else's property wouldn't exactly be very lawful good, would it? ;)

in the first tip you mentioned bad luck and saving the party as the gm. i'd like to put forth a terrifying experience with a banshee, in which all of our party members go unconsious 3 from her scream and 1 from combat. it was looking bleak, our dm was debating on starting over, or re-running the encounter. However, fate had words to say that day and I, Raaktir the silver dragonborn bard, clutched my muscles and rose from 0 hp with a critical success. i healed our cleric who in turn healed the fighter who used his second wind to survive another attack as me and the cleric raise our monk and heal ourselves and the fighter delivers a heroic blow severing the banshee in two. it was glorious and i saved our dm from pain

Another good way to prevent the party from abusing a powerful magical item is to introduce an anti-magic glyph that drops it into a pit of acid

The part about removing bad items had "Magic carpet" was written all over it. IT was getting in the way of your story, so remove it and give them a more clunky and situational broom instead! No more, "We all get on the carpet and fly over the ingenious traps so carefully laid out for us to fall into." scenarios.

0:02:32 fixing tough encounters, dropping hints, kinda like how Matt kept dropping clues to Sam to use his Mythcarver... Until the point that the entire party was telling him outright to just use it xD lmao!

So, I DMed for a year before I knew about the XP budget. I know. I did read the DMG but evidently not very well. So I built this encounter at a slavers hub at the end of an underground river beneath Waterdeep. The group is way too heavy handed and blew their chance to bluff through it (which was really my original intention). So they are floating in on a canoe, facing down two drow mages, a bunch of guards, barbarian pimps, and six archers while being level 6. The encounter split over two weeks. Things were looking pretty grim. The next week, I dropped hints that continuing a full frontal attack on the beach stronghold was suicide, and they would have to use some cunning to look for an out (retreat wasn't an option due to the design of the waterway). Because I didn't want them to die, but I also wanted there to be a cost to their dumb decisions, I had put two ale barrels behind the wall near the most powerful enemies. So they blew them up. Except they weren't ale. The Zhentarim slavers were also running weapons and it was two barrels of alchemist fire. Thankfully it was a very large cavern and the mage was a good distance when magic missiled it. Still, it destroyed the stronghold, killed almost everybody, and nearly killed a few in the group. I guess my advice is: if you make a mistake, blow your group up.

Players: *get knocked unconscious* Me (the dm) : you wake up in a wagon and a man in shackles also in the wagon tells you "hey you, you're finnally awake".

The best fix is usually just "rocks fall, everyone dies".

GM mistakes? MISTAKES?! What is this heresy? We don't do 'mistakes'! We are always right. Do not question me I WILL TPK THIS GROUP IF YOU DO! Jokes aside, nice video, thx for the advice Matt.

Raise your virtual hand if you've committed all of these GM Sins! *Raises hand*

Oh yeah Tip #6) Read in a GMs guide once for some RGP game similar to dont punish creativity. Dont punish a player for adding story to the game. Example. A rogue on a rooftop wants to enter the fray with acrobatic flare. So the DM makes the player roll for the rooftop exit onto the pole. Roll for going down the pole. Roll for tumbling off the store canopy...So the player eventually fails a roll, is now prone and gets beat down due to all the penalties and attacks of opportunity. And gets called a dumb*** for trying such a stunt. The article saying, IF the player is trying to get an attack bonus or advantage out of the situation, yes make a roll. If they are just story telling and adding creativity to the game. Dont punish them for it. How you end up with all murder hobos at the table.

Awesome tips! I actually turned an unbalanced fight that ended in a TPK of my low level party into a vision, given to the cleric by her deity, of what would happen should the party follow a particular course of action. I rewound the story to an appropriate trigger point and explained that everything they had just encountered had not actually taken place and only the cleric was aware of the vision. This allowed the party to proceed giving them the chance to alter their original decisions and avoid a catastrophe.

That moment when you give your entire party great axes of +3 strength.

One of my favorite ways to provide a little insight is to assume a player character's knowledge based on the details involved in creating the character or even their level. Example: a wizard recognizes magical script when they see it, or a rogue-type realizes when their innocent monk friend is being scammed or manipulated. I get information across clearly, without the need for constant dice rolls, and my players feel good for having their characters know things, like it's a reward for building that specific character.

More tips on how to fix a miscalculated encounter? Nerf the HP of some monster mid fight. Make amount of hits instead of HP for some minions. Fake fail saving throws for unimportant foes.

The "Accidentally gave your party an over powered item" has a much simpler solution that Matt provided I think. Don't be afraid to talk to your players. Let a player know "hey I fucked up that item is way too strong, going to make it a bit weaker sorry". I think some DMs, and this doesn't apply to Matt since he's actually making a show that thousands of people follow for the storyline, get too caught up in preserving a sense of cannon/continuity at the expense of fun. I think a player would rather have a dm frankly tell them they messed up and have some power adjustment on the item than have some weird bs happen that ruins the cool new toy they were enjoying.

Sometimes when I mess up I just tell the party; "Hey I accidentally messed up, we're going to have to retcon it with x." Usually if you explain your mistakes your players are willing to go along with your nonsense.

This has actually been prevalent in a lot of sessions I run, so thank you!

I've been learning the "don't admit the mistake, own it" a LOT in my campaign. The story flows much better if you just pretend everything was part of your plan all along.

Thanks for such a great series, Matt! I'm GM-ing my first campaign soon and having access to advice from my favorite DM is pretty rad!

Back in my Storyteller days, I actually had players legitimately figure out a sub-plot that stopped, in its tracks, a lead up to a latter significant plot. Maybe it was the couple of beers in me (and/or a Mountain Dew or two, I'm hazy on intoxication level) but it made me realize, in an instant, the moment you feel completely in control, you've lost half the fun of a rollicking good RPG. Why invite players when one could just write a novel, after all? I revised the nature of the significant plot, let them "win" the subplot, and it ended up creating a different sub-plot that made them feel more confident they were affecting the storyline, increasing attendance (not attendance rate, actual attendance) for several sessions. As it was the Storyteller System, I just started sketching out ideas, and NPCs, leaving the heavy lifting to the player characters and their motivations, to drive the story. When their stories are just as good, if not better, than the ones you came up with, better to react than to herd unnecessarily.

Could we improve the volume on these GM tips videos? I always have to turn it up so much higher than anything else I watch, then I forget next time and get assaulted with almost max volume videos that are appropriately volumed.

I really like these GM tips, not that I am a GM myself, but for understanding how a campaign should work. This is very useful to players as well to be aware of how a game should be played (but not as a mandatory rule). By the way, I don't know why, but these videos are always with the audio so low to me. Maybe tunning up the mic a little would help ((:

This is definitely one of the best tip videos out there. Matt has helped me run my own campaign so much, and I am eternally thankful for him.

4:56 I love this tip, and the way you delivered it. Thank you for being so awesome, Matt!

Man, did this come at a good time for me.

Dying in-game is cool if it's not anticlimatic. If done well it's pretty good and moving.

Thanks, Matt, for your suggestions about correcting GM mistakes. Thus far, this has been the most helpful of your most interesting series. I'm a GM of 30 years, on and off, and I've discovered we GM our games in a very similar fashion. I was especially impressed with your suggestions for balancing out power from a magic item acquired by a character. Very creative and helpful ideas! Thank you for your devotion to your craft.

Hi, just a note to say I've been GMing for about 30 yrs and really enjoy these tips and always find something nice to take away and use myself. Thanks!

"[If you accidentally reveal something, have an NPC reveal a bunch of false things too so they don't know what to believe!]" I saw this episode of The Office. It worked out well for neither Michael nor Stanley.

I found this to be EXTREMELY helpful, I'm about to start my first real campaign and my favorite way to reward players is through magical items. I feel it makes the game more immersive and interactive rather than just generic XP and gold. I'm just extremely worried I'm gonna break the game with stupid bullshit that I thought was balanced but wasn't at all tho.

Been watching a lot of content regarding the fine tuning of my own GM skills, and it has given me a lot of confidence that I've been doing a lot right. Many areas I can improve upon of course, but it makes it easier to believe my players when they compliment my sessions.

I always love his super creative solutions that involve real story telling.

so.... fake it till you make it.... :P

I once had hair that almost rivaled Mercer, even had an identical style... couldnt get a job until I cut it...

you are hands down the best DM i have seen...... your ability to adlib is insane

I appreciate that you've given ways to change an OP item to something more tame instead of simply taking it back from the player because the DM made a mistake. That's really well thought out and I like it!!!

something i am doing for my game that can help out a lot in fixing mistakes is a special NPC that i call Mr.E. very much a mr mxyzptlk type of character. he has many amazing powers and knows all but wont tell because there is no fun in that. as well may help the player in certain encounters if i feel like it is getting way to rough. i have a party of 2 right now so that can happen. One example, they had to face a Drider Queen, (custom enemy) 4 Driders, and 8 Giant Spiders. while they had 2 npc allies with them they had more close by. so i decided to chance to see if Mr.E will help. i make a d20 roll and if i roll a 15 or higher he will aid in some way. so each new round i rolled and got higher than a 16 so there allies appeared out of nowhere. then towards the end of the fight due to it still be difficult and the match going quite long i had him help a again by removing 3 of the 4 driders. (one was already dead) but for him to do so i had to roll a nat 20 which i did. he has been quite usefull as well the Players are the only one that can see or talk to him. which can make for some interesting situations.

these vids have really gotten my interest in DnD back up. It's even got me wondering if maybe I'd have more fun as a DM instead of a player.

woah, the way Mathew fixes these GM mistakes feel far cooler than many GM intentional adventures

Wow as I watch this more and more I find me and Matt are on like the same wavelength with our ideas. I know this is older so he had me beat, but holy god we use near the same wording in our videos. The uncanny near word for word part in this video around 3 minutes and in my first video I ever did, (Story Core Emoturnus) when explaining how to give clues and how to adapt is ridiculous. At the very least it is an honor to be so in sync on these issues. Keep up the good work.

Thank god for this episode. I have been running my first extended campaign over the past few weeks, and just gave out a new item to one member that I think is way too powerful. Mercer to save the day

The second hint is ironic given the latest CR episode. NO SPOILERS. Also: 5:17 is just hilarious

I like getting my players talking in-game amongst themselves about what they are planning or what they think is going on. It gives me tons of ideas - where if they're starting to guess a major plot point too soon I can back off of it, or if what they _think_ is happening is better than what I had planned, I incorporate elements from that. It's also good to know where the players want the game to go, and what they have in mind for their characters' futures. Hopefully, it'll be possible to blend your GM-intended story with their ideas and the kind of story they want to play, and create something none of you could have created alone.

I'm just getting back into DMing after a near decade hiatus and these tips have been so great for refreshing the way I think about my campaign. Thanks Matt!

this happened to me last week. I have only been playing dnd for 4 months now and started dm'ing a group about a month ago. anyways last week my party went to recieve a map from a hermit in a house (he is secretly an oni and they are all lvl 5). in any case he aroused their suspicion and they tried to investigate the oni's house against his will. one of the players is a ghost and he was invisible and going through walls trying to find something suspicous. i panicked as there are literal bones in the oni's closet and the oni is integral to the story at this point so i said that the walls are magical.....all of them. after much fighting between the players calling me out for bs on a totally magical house i accedentally reffered to the house as the oni's house. well they caught that and asked me "wait, what oni's house?". panicking i told them that i didnt mean to tell them that at this stage (at this point i start improving). so i tell them that while they were talking to the barmaid earlier that day she mentioned the "oni house" as sort of a village tale. well of course they want to go there so i tell them its a run down house that a family was murdered in years ago. likely by an oni. they search the place find som broken furnature and scratch marks from a fight then they go down towards the cellar and i get an idea. they see a place where a lot of furnature is broken and an inordinate amount of blood is. as i said one of the players is a ghost so i tell him due to him experiencing death he can touch the deathblood of others to feel their last moments (but not see them only feel there emotions) and i say that he feels a sense of betrayal and a drawn out pain that implies the individual was tormented to death. well they start rolling perception checks and investigations. i tell them nothing is there....they keep rolling. the one of them gets a 27 (damn guidance) so i decide to tell them that (again all improv) the find the bloody diary of the bar owners niece. the diary starts out usual stuff. then halfway through she starts mentioning "him", "the one". no name is ever given as to who "he" is and she seems mildly interested in him. then in the span of one day (according to the diary) she goes from interested to full-blown obssessed. then in the second to last entry she writes "he is coming over tonight. my parents don't know, but i know they will love him." then the last entry written in blood and ink. "he is a monster" I thought that the mistake turned into something cool but i have no idea where to go next with that little tidbit. any thoughts?

Looking forward to Cursed Hand Cone of Clarity.

This was definitely the most helpful GMtips so far. Awesome!

The part with the magical items really helped me as GM - Thank you!

Look I know these are all filmed in advance and no one will ever see this anyway, but I'd really appreciate a video on running an NPC as a party member.

I've been given an orb early on by a GM that doubles the power of my fire spells.... I'm a sorcerer with a meta magic to turn any elemental ability into fire when i cast it... :) In his defence i was a much lower level at the time. I hope he's not watching this :P When i was GM'ing once i'd given clues to an assassination plot on a religious leader. meanwhile i'd used an npc to conscripts one of the players to assassinate the same leader (because they said they were corrupt and working for the Empire to the north). A great scene played out where 2/3 of the gang protected the arch-paladin & arch-cleric only for the last member to bow-sniped the soon to be new arch-cleric [current one was v old] & legged it to freedom. We actually had a court-case game a few weeks later when he got caught & they had to fake his execution to keep him alive.

Very important episode, thank you Matt! Had a bit of a mishap where a supposed trusted NPC (a friend of a PC) had said one thing, but the party's boss said the opposite. They caught the paradox, and I was able to twist it to throw suspicion on both characters, creating dramatic tension.

Geek and Sundry is litreally my favourite youtube channel. You deserve the diamond play button more that anyone!!!

I got bored once and gave the party a Deck of many things :(

Can you guys PLEASE increase the volume of these videos before uploading? My pc is already on max volume and I can barely hear it! SPECIALLY when Mercer whispers for dramatic effect!

I'm becoming eerily certain that you are watching my games. every video has fixed a mistake I've made in the past, or given hints that I desperately needed because of the game before! thank you Matt!

This is one of the best Dm Tips ever good work matt

Fixing mistakes is one thing, but if you're too benevolent towards your party they'll start expecting you to always have someone around to save them. It even happened to me when I had a planned encounter with an NPC turn into my players interpreting it as a direct message from the DM, and that's despite the fact that I *_never_* do such things. If you set it up as an expectation, you won't be taken seriously ever again. A TPK was a real possibility in our 4th edition game. My players, fun as they are, aren't really... great at tactical thinking. I kind of have to play blindfolded and concussed for them to stand a chance, and in one fight against duergar they were about to die. So how did I fix it? I could've lied about my rolls, make most of the attacks miss by fiat, introduced an NPC to save them, gone the deus ex machina route. What did I do instead? I told my players which actions would let them get out of the fight alive if all went well. Instead of the fighter going down in a blaze of useless glory, I explained five steps that'd let them survive the encounter. And then I rolled my dice and I didn't lie about the results, not once. Everybody survived, battered to shit but still alive. I personally think this is a better way of intervening than poofing Rescue McSavesyouall into existence in the other room with his Concord-made iWin bow (EVE online joke, kids). It's obviously DM intervention, there's no escaping it, but at least _they_ got themselves out of it with their own rolls. Plus it doesn't create sudden characters who'll be expected to stick around and unbalance the game further or potentially uninteresting diversions like almost dying to one enemy only to almost die to a one-armed wampa. Goddamn I'm old.

As a DM and gamer myself, my addendum to this would be to BE FUCKING CAREFUL with the "party gets enslaved" resolution. There is nothing more humiliating to players than that, I find, and doing it and not handling it with the utmost care is the quickest way to a crashed and burnt campaign, by way of characters doing unexpected things, or straight-up mutiny at the table.

These videos have been really helpful. Thank you.

thank you for all you gm tips, really helpful

This actually helps me a lot. I am a bit of a new DM and I am DMing my first campaign (that I am proud to say I have created myself though only half of it is done right now). I had given my group a few too many powerful magical items and now I have thought of an interesting way to solve that issue. There will be a chance encounter with an ancient and powerful dragon who is disguised as an sorcerer. He has important plot details, but the price will be high to obtain them. If they refuse he will tell them that they know his secret and cannot leave his lair alive unless they show good faith in keeping his secret. It is kind of a work in progress. Anyone have some tips to help me out?

Literally only here to listen and stare at Matt...

I swear, Matt is prly my favorite DM ever. He just gets it, on a fundamental level!

This was very inspiring. Matt is clearly a very good, and very dedicated GM, and I feel that I have a lot to learn, but that I can learn a lot from him. Keep up the good work, Matt (assuming you happen to see this, which I doubt)

Also one thing I did was give them all prophetic dreams granted by a magic user.

Example of overpowered item, my GM accidentally gave the warlock the Wand of Orcus. We're 7th level.

Again, I love these tips. Thanks Matt.

These videos are a highlight of my week. Thanks for the advice, and the entertaining delivery. Have you any advice on running a plot in a sandbox?

in our pathfinder game our gm accidentally put us up against a paladin of a slavery god we were supposed to lose to, our druid flattened him, later it turns out he's been "killed" multiple times, now we are all shit scared of him D:>

"In which case, haha!"

I love these tips, they have been REALLY helpful

i really like these videos... so helpful... i may not have anyone to play any of these games with but it's good to keep these in mind for when that day comes and even for my own story games i might develop in the future... thank you for making these they are very good! :D

Such a cool series. Makes me want to do D&D like I used to. I wish I had nerd friends, everyone I know is too cool for D&D. )-':

The objectively best course of action if you give someone an item that is too powerful is to kill the entire party and make them play as the people who has to clean up the corpses.

simple, yet insightful, and certainly useful! :)

I love this and your VA work! Keep it up :D

Critical Role spoiler warning. Was the flying carpet an example of overpowered item that had to be taken away from the party?

Fixing GM mistakes? let me just copy this verbatim

Also don't forget the amazing power of talking to your players and working together for a solution. Also also, on the note of plot mistakes, I tend to run by the "draw maps, leave spaces" motto from dungeon world. If you let something slip you shouldn't have and the players pick up on it awesome. See what they do with that information. It may wind up being more amazing than any "big reveal" you had planned. And don't forget to listen to the pcs. I've had some of my best stories come from my players misinterpreting clues and coming to a completely wrong conclusion that was far far more clever than what I had originally planned. Needless to say those pcs became correct very quickly and I never let on that they had it wrong.

thank you very much for these tips they are very appreciated !

I sometimes just have NPCs just break the fourth wall. Or sometimes I trust the players with information their characters don't know. Whatever. Semi-satirical games, woo.

One mistake people make all the time, way to many wristbands

These videos have increased not only my d&d experience but my party's. Thank you.

This has been incredibly insightful