I let a player torture a goblin for hours in game.
One of my first mistakes as a brand new DM was letting a PC torture an innocent goblin for hours in game. The player left the party and stayed behind to torture my poor NPC. Even after the party had already gotten the info they needed. I don't remember the details of the story or even what the player was asking about.
I played the goblin, saying over and over that the players already had the info. I don't know anything else! The player continued to stay separated from the party and described in detail what he wanted to do to the goblin, like putting the point of a dagger under the goblins fingernails.
The player didn't get my hints and continued to try to torture this poor guy even after he knew that the goblin didn't know anything else. It was really creepy and weird. It still leaves a bad taste in my mouth to this day, over 15 years later.
Since I was new to the game, I didn't know what to do or how to handle it. My only strategy at the time was to repeat over and over again that I didn't know anything. I felt so uncomfortable and just wanted the player to get back to the group and on with the game.
Back then my stories and sessions didn't get very far. But I'll never forget this creepy torture players choices. It was really weird to me that someone would do that. Weird power fantasies I guess. I don't know how long it took in real time, but it felt like forever.
Looking back, there are a lot of things I could have done.
Most simply, I could have just said "You torture the goblin for a few hours and you get no other information from him. Now back to the players who are actually playing the game..."
I let this gross player hog the spotlight and hog my attention instead of focusing on the players who were trying to advance the story.
I could have made the goblin suddenly get a lot stronger and just beat the player to a pulp. Good revenge, right?
I could have made that player miss out on the next battle or loot cache. He wasted so much time in game that I could have ruled that he wasn't there to join in with what the group was doing.
I could have said, "The goblin doesn't know anything, you would just be wasting your time."
But being the nice guy I am, I let him role play that nastiness. Never again.
I stopped a fight mid-battle because I wanted to move on to the next dungeon.
The players were around level 3 in Pathfinder. They were fighting some large trolls and the BBEG who was a female elf wizard. My plan was to set up how powerful the villain was by having her kill some NPC's and ultimately capture the players. I wanted the players to wake up in the next dungeon so I could get them to where the plot needed them to be.
The plan didn't go well.
I was being really lazy that day and didn't put any energy into the baddies goals or characterization. So the battle was droning on, and I got bored. I cut the fight so early that I didn't even get a chance to establish how powerful the enemy was. The players had no idea that they were supposed to lose.
I had no clue how to plan for this. But I know now what to do.
During battle, on my turn, I should have made the enemies hit harder right away. Establishing the story and plot points in round one.
I should have told them that there would be a transition cut scene, and they would get a good chance to escape afterwords. If the players knew this, they probably would have trusted me more as a DM and enjoyed the story.
Instead of a cool story scene introducing the bag guy, it was an awkward and abrupt cut mid-battle. The players didn't know what was going on.
I didn't communicate to the players and I didn't put any energy into telling a good story.
In the end. I told them that they were captured and left in a dungeon. I got them to the content I had prepared so the game would be easier for me, at the cost of some great storytelling.
I had no patience for myself, and the lack of confidence in telling the story.
I gave my players a powerful magic item and two MacGuffins without making them work for it.
I felt bad because that session only had two players, and they ran into a really hard encounter without the rest of the party to help out.
The encounter I prepared was hard because the PC's had just gotten to 5th level in 5e. They all got to attack twice per turn now. So I decided that all my enemies had multi-attack as well as a few hell-hound creatures that have a powerful fire breath weapon.
Since it was pretty hard and there were only two of them, I let them sneak past a few enemies and let the players find some magical stuff like a broom of flying.
Since I let them sneak past a lot of my encounter, I didn't have anything else specifically prepared and I wanted to wait until the next session for the other players.
I also didn't have much of the world prepared and I definitely didn't plan on the players having the power to fly wherever they wanted.
Most of the session had to be improvised and role-played because I let them skip past the prepared content. Since things weren't prepared properly, I was panicking about what to do.
They were searching for MacGuffins and I gave those to them relatively easy too. I let them charm and steal from two different NPC's I had just made up and neither of them put up a real fight.
I knew beforehand that a player wanted a magic broom, and I should have prepared for it. I should have made them go on a quest for it. Make them explore and work for their items instead of just dropping exactly what they want in front of them.
In that session, I became a pushover DM. I knew what the players wanted and I gave it to them. Without any real obstacles in their way.
I screwed myself over in 4 ways. Giving them powerful items, Preparing an encounter that depended on a specific player who didn't show up, and letting them sneak past the obstacles that was supposed to be the entire session of content, and Improvising pushover NPC's who didn't have specific goals or character personalities. Therefore the NPC's were really lame obstacles that the players easily got past. These are all bad ideas.
In my career as a DM I have gotten more and more scared of railroading. In that fear, I have tried to say "yes" to just about anything my players want to do. Usually I can improvise my way out of most situations and get the players back on track, but this time, I let it go too far.
I became out of balance with my preparation and my improv. My neediness to allow players to make choices destroyed the session.
Overall, I think the players still had fun, they had a great time role-playing and charming NPC's. They were freaking out because the battle was super hard. The session had ups and downs like any good story. And at the end of the session they did ultimately beat the baddies, after I fudged the dice and lowered some HP. The fact that they were worried the whole time mad it an intense experience.
I also could have given players more hints to make the battle easier for them. "Do you have any spells or items that don't use up spell slots?" "Do you have something that does ice damage to hurt the flaming hell-hounds?"
The main lessons I have learned here is to plan correctly and follow that plan even if the story becomes a bit too linear. Communicate better with players to tell them where to go and what to do.
I always give advice to people about not planning too much and now it's bitten me in the ass. I still think you should only prepare for no more than 2 or 3 sessions at a time, because you still won't know what might happen. In my case I didn't prepare a single session properly.
I have grown a big ego about being able to improvise my way out of most game situations. This situation got me into trouble because I was too nice and unprepared.
