Since it seems like such a dead thread posting wise (though quite alive in the comments!) I thought I would start a new little discussion. What is your chief failing as a GM? Maybe it is something small, or such an awful mistake that your gaming table stopped playing and you lost a whole group of friends. Hopefully not, but bad stories are usually more interesting...

I know in the campaigns I have run, my biggest failing is the lack of role playing. I can write up worlds, campaigns, regiments, or characters, and have no problem playing as them. However, I suck at compelling my players to role play too. Part of this problem is my whole group's recent entry into the role playing world, with some of the players less imaginative than others. Regardless of that fact, I am bad at getting them to role play along with me. This isn't always the case - we had a very good Only Necromunda campaign everyone participated in nicely - but it is usually the way the cookie crumbles.

How about you guys?

I honestly can't answer this question yet, I'm getting ready to run my first game and then I'll be able to answer hehe.

The most consistent criticism I get is that I don't give enough details on what the scene is like. Like I'm not describing the smells in the market place, or mentioning that when a shuttle door opens on a desert planet a wave of hot air rushes in. I do it a fair bit, but I'm usually thinking about where the scene is likely to go, how to incorporate player actions into the scene after that, and I'm describing the people. I guess I can always do it a bit more, but part of me is sorta dismissive of that particular criticism. I guess I can write down short descriptions to make it a more consistent thing, and not have to think about it.

I don't plan enough in advance, because I rarely trust my players enough to think that they'll follow to it, and I don't want to feel like I've wasted planning on stuff that never happens. When I reach a "now what should they do?" point, I just toss in some combat, purely to buy time. I also frequently borrow from other sources more than I should, and it sometimes gives my games a goofy feel. I want my players to be serious in their characters, but they want to be silly, and enjoy their downtime from "real life"; I often have to stop myself from punishing them from being silly, when the entire point of the game is to have fun.

One of my biggest weaknesses as a GM is an absolute revulsion to "level 1" games. I hate playing, and running, low-level scenarios, when I want to be able to throw in "cool stuff" more often, but find that the span I like to run in, 8-12, can be a hard spot to forge "random encounters". Wild animals and stray bandits are no worry, and there aren't that many roving armies, or big NPCs. I find it difficult to sometimes challenge my heroes, who can specialize in specific things, and they stop being challenging, while trying to figure out what to slow them down with.

I have had a hard time keeping the combat interesting in regards to enemies the PCs fight. Everyone gets tired of Severan Dominate, Chaos, Orks, and Dark Eldar. Have you guys introduced new enemies? Adapted anything from other books?

I've used enemies from every gameline. If you're having a hard time keeping the combat interesting, you might want to consider changing the types of combats you run rather than reskinning the mooks themselves. Are your combats too long, too samey, too simple, too fast, too slow? It might be something other than them being bored of the same enemies. If it is the same enemies, I suggest tossing beasties from other books at them. Nids, and Tau are obvious go toos. The Raks from RT ain't bad.

But you can easily just brew up a ton of different off the wall xenos races on your own that need exterminating.

I have had a hard time keeping the combat interesting in regards to enemies the PCs fight. Everyone gets tired of Severan Dominate, Chaos, Orks, and Dark Eldar. Have you guys introduced new enemies? Adapted anything from other books?

To elaborate a bit on whst n00b f00 said:

I find that when this occurs it's usually because the Gm has allowed his combat scenes to become too "Setpiece". I once knew a Gm in a fantasy game where every combat basically involved lining up the bad guys on the opposite side of the board and advancing them towards the party. While this is a legitimate method of encounter it get's boring pretty quick after a few combats!

Consider changing terrain, elevation and the tactics of your bad guys. An encounter with Dark Eldar should be nothing like an engaement against Orcs! This will of course require some thought on your part in developing tactics and strategies for your various bad guys.

Range is another factor: Many Gm's make the mistake of making every encounter a CQB engagement. (Close Quarters battle for those who don't know the Acronym!) Especially in Only War; that doesn't really make sense! Most outdoor battlefield encounters will take place at rifle ranges (100m+) where cover and Visibility really make a huge difference! In this environment, charging into melee is not only not viable it's suicidal! Also, At these ranges, Heavy weapons, Sharpshooters and indirect fire really come into their own!

Lastly and most importantly: UNDERSTAND THE SYSTEM! You can't shoot at what you can't see! Those combat modifiers are there for a reason and your Sergeant and comrades have a reason for existence beyond just meat shields and chainswords!

A full treatise on Gming combat could take up a book by itself but I hope these little tips help!

I tend to have a lot of problems with running combat. RP'ing, I can do somewhat well, but when it comes to combat... I'm generally pretty bad with the rolling part of playing.

Li

I tend to have a lot of problems with running combat. RP'ing, I can do somewhat well, but when it comes to combat... I'm generally pretty bad with the rolling part of playing.

I also recommend reading. There are many good books both fictional and not that deal with the subject.

If I may; I'd recommend a book called Rogue warrior by Richard Marcinco. He's the founder of SEAL team 6 and pretty well knows his stuff! It's also a fun read!

I am terrible at accents. Everything sounds much the same.

I am terrible at accents. Everything sounds much the same.

Oh man the accents! I'm one of those guys who likes to do silly accents and impressions but I'm no good at them. I do just enough to sorta set a character in that scene apart, or maybe using an accent as a shorthand for their background "Hmmmmph yes that's fascinating, you'll have to tell me more later. I really must be going now." My players claim to like it, but more importantly for me at least. I like making funny noises.

Yeah Rad, that book is a fairly interesting read. However much of it you take at face value, it's a real fun read with some cool scenes and insights.

Oddly enough, some of the stuff I know to be true because I was there when they did! (Although I have to say, I wasn't a SEAL!)

The tactics do jive with what I learned in "sweep and clear" drills though.

Debatable one, but when I GM, the enemy tend to be more intelligent than the players.

Sometimes, I want things from my players that they don't feel like giving, and I have to remember that it is at least as much their game, and definitely their characters. I would certainly never be dumb enough to say "there are no lady gamers", but I can say that, minusing three or four, I've never had one in my games, certainly never more than one at a time, usually even in the club it's a part of. This hits me hard because I often want to compare the experience to something out of one of the books I read, or video games I play (and might be ripping off), and while romance in those sources can be as two-dimensional as in Fire Emblem, and as soulless as the computer it was written on (sorry AdMech), my gaming groups never even get that close. Silly theatrics that they do aside, I rarely have a guy want to play a female character, but even fewer actual women who want to play, and most of the guys don't want to act out a budding romance between their characters, because the group will make jokes. If there IS a woman playing, if she isn't involved with another player, she hasn't wanted to act this out, either, because it makes her uncomfortable, or just because that's not what she wants to play. I accept that it is perhaps too much to ask for, and they need to play what they want to be, while I more merely flesh out the world, and the events around them, but sometimes, i just want them to act more like "real people", and less like over the top caricatures of something they rolled some dice to make. The romance thing is a big sticking point for me, and I know of some scenarios where it has gone poorly, even weird, for others, but I continue to hope that, someday, it will happen, even knowing that my players, as they often are, will remind me that it won't be today .

In one of my games, my RT player realized that he was a one man dynasty, with no one else to continue his legacy so he became worried in and out of character about it. So I looked around at the female NPCs in the game who'd be appropriate for various reasons. I found one who was a decent fit, who was to this point a background somewhat antagonistic rival. In universe she's one of many ambitious heirs to another powerful RT line, and being the 2nd most important person in a (temporarily) lesser dynasty was more tolerable than the real possibility of being passed over. She's an experienced fighter/merchant/explorer, someone who would be a major asset to the player's dynasty, someone of more use than the daughter of an agri world's Governor's daughter.

For meta reasons it worked in the tone and structure of our game. She burned one of his fate points the first time they meant in a petty argument turned violent, and culturally was fairly different from the RT( fairly old money vs born in a lower hive new), and our table being on the sillier side it was good fodder for comedy. Another excuse for our slightly crazy war hero, to act a fool at fancy dinner parties where people are none the less impressed by his mostly true exploits. And slightly more importantly she's a walking plot hook for multiple obvious reasons. She's someone who can run some of the background operations, offer wise council, has a few contacts to facilitate stuff, and occasionally come in as the cavalry if dynasty is coming down on something harder than usual. She wasn't the driving antagonist of the game, so it didn't derail any long simmering plots. It was just something that could be easily slipped in, and I'm not hurting for antagonist ideas. It was just a good fit, and I was pleased that I just had to slightly rework an existing character, rather than coming up with a new one.

While the characters really get along together, the scenes are mostly played for laughs or occasionally a level of sappy mentality the doesn't exceed that found in a scene where Space Marines bro bond with their BAHTLE BRUTHAS. So it never feels weird. At the same time while it adds that element to that character, and the relationship gets screentime vis a vis adventures, the romance is basically off screen. It makes the characters feel slightly more human, but it's a minor part of the roleplaying. I've never been in a game where a romance got a lot of screentime and was played totally straight. If you really wanna try to work it into your game, I'd just introduce an NPC that was into one of the PCs, and keep the romance portion of it out of focus. Ground the characters a bit more in humanity, without having it be important narratively. Like when a tv side character has a boring, but happy offscreen marriage to make them seem more real. It might not be exactly what you were looking for. But it's more likely than the PCs spontaneously having a serious romance with each other.

I buy my players with bonuses or else they don`t RP the slightliest bit. :/

E.g.:
+5 or +10 to any test if they cite a fitting litany/prayer from the Uplifting primer's crimson pages.
+25 per exemplary roleplaying moment (this makes one of my players come to games with an actual comissar cap).

There are a lot of ways I can improve. I have a tendency to not explain or describe things as well as I could, and I definitely don't plan things out enough ahead of time. I also have trouble really getting into RPing the bad guys. Need to work on that.

I seem to pity my players when they get damaged too hard... Sometimes I panic and do something stupid as NPC's to save their lives... I also have difficulties in remembering everything that they said or done.

When a new group starts to get excessively creative I tell them to find a Black Crusade GM if they want to roleplay that .

I also don't tolerate an "all special sunshines squad'' - people gotta show me they know the lore and how that fit in the squad when they ask for Comissars, Ogryns, Psykers, etc.

4 players: one is an ogryn, another is a tech priest, third is a psyker and fourth is priest - this is not an IG squad, that's a Rogue Trader's personal circus.

I buy my players with bonuses or else they don`t RP the slightliest bit. :/

E.g.:

+5 or +10 to any test if they cite a fitting litany/prayer from the Uplifting primer's crimson pages.

+25 per exemplary roleplaying moment (this makes one of my players come to games with an actual comissar cap).

I find it better to award XP for good roleplaying. This usually takes the form of a flat xp award for ideas (Loosely based on the Palladium system if you're familiar with it.) or a percentage bonus for a specific reason (For example; I sometimes give a 10% leadership bonus to the lead character if there perfomance was truly a contributor to the groups success.) Just some thoughts...

I seem to pity my players when they get damaged too hard... Sometimes I panic and do something stupid as NPC's to save their lives... I also have difficulties in remembering everything that they said or done.

Yeah, it's definitely good if you write down the night's adventure after it's over. Some people use Obsidian Portal and do a whole wiki about the campaign, but really anything to jot down notes afterwards will help make for a more connected-feeling campaign.

I'm terrible about this, as well.

I buy my players with bonuses or else they don`t RP the slightliest bit. :/

E.g.:

+5 or +10 to any test if they cite a fitting litany/prayer from the Uplifting primer's crimson pages.

+25 per exemplary roleplaying moment (this makes one of my players come to games with an actual comissar cap).

I find it better to award XP for good roleplaying. This usually takes the form of a flat xp award for ideas (Loosely based on the Palladium system if you're familiar with it.) or a percentage bonus for a specific reason (For example; I sometimes give a 10% leadership bonus to the lead character if there perfomance was truly a contributor to the groups success.) Just some thoughts...

oh, I also give them extra exp by the end of the game session.

I tend to make power level scale too fast - my players died like 3-4 times in whole Prologue (1 year of playing), 6-8 times in Act II (Also a year) and around 12 times in Act II (Still playing, only 3 months passed).

I also tend to use Hordes way too much and have to stop myself from doing it.

I used to give too small amount of xp, but fortunately, I doubled it recently and everything seems fine.

I also do not use modifiers. I give my players either -60, +0, or +60. Other modifiers appear like once per session? I prefer putting some amount of DoS required to pass, and ignore modifiers. My players hate me for that.

I tend to make power level scale too fast - my players died like 3-4 times in whole Prologue (1 year of playing), 6-8 times in Act II (Also a year) and around 12 times in Act II (Still playing, only 3 months passed).

I also tend to use Hordes way too much and have to stop myself from doing it.

I used to give too small amount of xp, but fortunately, I doubled it recently and everything seems fine.

I also do not use modifiers. I give my players either -60, +0, or +60. Other modifiers appear like once per session? I prefer putting some amount of DoS required to pass, and ignore modifiers. My players hate me for that.

I'm a little surprised they're still playing with you.

I tend to make power level scale too fast - my players died like 3-4 times in whole Prologue (1 year of playing), 6-8 times in Act II (Also a year) and around 12 times in Act II (Still playing, only 3 months passed).

I also tend to use Hordes way too much and have to stop myself from doing it.

I used to give too small amount of xp, but fortunately, I doubled it recently and everything seems fine.

I also do not use modifiers. I give my players either -60, +0, or +60. Other modifiers appear like once per session? I prefer putting some amount of DoS required to pass, and ignore modifiers. My players hate me for that.

I'm a little surprised they're still playing with you.

Ouch. That hurt. Well, they seem to still have fun, they just point out my mistakes and we're moving on. Most of the time.