My Worst-Ever GM Mistake

Like most long-term GMs, I have a lot of war stories to tell. And, also like most long-term GMs, I prefer to tell the stories of all the times the game was awesome, when everyone went away happy, the dice fell just so, and the bad guys made a satisfying thump when they hit the ground.

This isn't one of those stories. This is the tale of my worst-ever screw-up as a GM. Fortunately, it was a mistake I only ever made once, and it's one that I learned a great deal from. As Yoda says, "The greatest teacher, failure is."

(I'm no fan of "The Last Jedi", but Yoda's scene is truly great - in those few minutes he has the two best lines in the film, and indeed the two best lines in the whole of Disney-SW. The above is one.)

Anyway.

The campaign was my long-running "Rivers of Time" chronicle for "Vampire: the Dark Ages" (we went through various eras and various rulesets in that campaign, but at that time it was V:tDA). Having thoroughly run out of ideas for the campaign by that point, I came up with what I thought was a clever approach: one of the PCs woke up one morning stripped of all his hard-earned supernatural power. For reasons unknown, he was suddenly mortal once again.

Now that, by itself, was already a hugely risky move. If there's one thing players hate, it's losing stuff - they've 'worked' hard to earn all these powers, and levels, and magic items, and so on, and to have the GM suddenly strip those away tends to be the opposite of fun.

But I was lucky enough that my players trusted me with this, and did so on the understanding that it was going to be a temporary thing. Which was fair enough. The story progressed with the character gradually settling back in to a mortal life, enjoying a little peace and serenity, and things being generally good.

But the character was also approached by one of the villains of the campaign, who told him that he knew what had happened, and was willing to teach him how to reverse it, in return for "just one small thing" - a favour that the PC could now do that would normally not be possible. So far, so good, and the player duly played his part, carefully considering whether to go for that deal with the devil, or whether to instead retire to a mortal life. In the end, he went for it.

Now, what the player didn't know was that the aforementioned villain was lying. He had no special knowledge, he had no way to restore the character's abilities, but he'd seen an opportunity to carry out his agenda, so he took it. (It is worth noting that this was a long-established villain with a history of lies and villainy. So this shouldn't have been a totally unexpected betrayal.)

Thus far, everything was okay. I was on thin ice due to the "you've lost your powers" thing, but otherwise okay. Then came the crucial moment when for the bad guy to reveal his betrayal. And that's where it went wrong.

We were role-playing the scene in the first-person. Thus, when the villain asked whether it was done, I said "is it done?" And so on, and so forth. And then the moment of truth - the player stated that he'd done what was asked, and therefore it was time for the villain to make good.

And the villain laughed in his face.

Now, the reason that this was an especially shitty thing to do was three-fold. Firstly, the immediate impact was that I laughed in the player's face. Which is never a good approach. The second problem is that we then had a screwjob within a screwjob - I'd screwed the player by 'stealing' his character's powers, and then my NPC had screwed the PC by tricking him. That conflates the two things, to a point where I was, in short, being a right bastard about it. And then the third problem was that the PC, having lost his powers, wasn't in a position to actually do anything about it - the NPC in question was vastly more powerful than that PC at that time.

All in all, it sucked. And it was a rotten thing to do to a player. (As I said, my worst-ever GM mistake.)

As it happened, it all worked out okay. The PC promptly got his powers back by other means, and shortly thereafter got his revenge on the villain for that humiliation. So at least there was some catharsis. Plus, that plot point then proceeded to pay off for the remainder of the campaign, which ran for another eighteen months or so (despite my having almost completely run out of ideas already).

So that story does have an ending that maybe isn't 'happy' but is at least not a disaster.

Anyway, there it is - my worst-ever GM mistake.