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What are your biggest GM regrets?
(thelemmy.club)
That things rarely go according to plan is part of running an RPG. The players will surprise you, and often this is entirely fine - in fact, it might result in a more memorable experience and a better game.
But sometimes, things go off the rail in a bad way - and you, as a GM, did not see it coming until it was too late, resulting in disaster and a non-fun experience for all concerned.
And contemplating some of my past mistakes, I am curious about your biggest GMing regrets. What went wrong, and what would you have done differently if you had the opportunity for a do-over?
I have a whole blog post about one game I ran that entailed a largely (though not *entirely*) disastrous few months...
https://pteryx.dreamwidth.org/3448.html
Ouch! That sounded rough. But I'm glad you learned some valuable lessons from it.
One particularly wild bit: that's actually the *second* time I've had someone decide that the role they'd chosen in the party was meant to make them Always Smart and Right to the point of having more narrative power than the GM... in a trad game structure. (The first time, instead of an erzatz detective/leader, it was a scholar.)