Now I take more care balancing prep and play time, and allow stories that come up in game to take precedence over stories I’ve pre-panned.

2. Shadowrun 1st ed. campaign, 1992: Abortive attempt to run a campaign with (a) inexperienced players, who (b) only knew D&D, and (c) weren’t that into cyberpunk. The first (published) adventure went pretty well, until I accidentally turned over two pages instead of one and missed a crucial scene. And then the decker brought the entire game to a grinding halt. There was no second session.

3. Numerous mapping exercises, 1977-1989: Lots of campaign creation, without ever writing a mission statement or otherwise figuring out what made the world interesting or what PCs would be expected to do. Big waste of time and graph paper that never paid any dividends.

1-3. Not driving to the ending. This is actually from more than one campaign (and different systems). In two cases, a move ended the campaign. I still feel bad about a brand new group that I nurtured and got interested, then had to leave in the lurch. It was especially bad because one of the players was instrumental in getting me the transfer (which I wanted very badly, 1000 miles away).

Real life has to take precedence to the campaign, but knowing that it’s a good idea to be able to wrap things up. As soon as I started angling for that transfer, I should have immediately switched our few remaining sessions towards a wrap. Likewise, I learned that campaigns with story arcs–even if the arcs mutate all out of the original plan–are preferable to my style over episodic campaigns. It took me a long time to learn that I couldn’t trump myself every session, but that an ending has a power all its own.

4. Letting personal issues with the players intrude in the game. I was a teen running a 1st ed. AD&D episodic campaign, and the personal issues we had were accordingly silly stuff–now. At the time, they seemed important. Like a lot of teen issues, the only thing good that came out of it was that we learned not do that. Some useful lessons you have to learn the hard way.

5. Fantasy Hero, 1989. Like Abulia, tried the followup campaign with characters that everyone had loved. I’ve actually done that where it worked very well, but not this time. The biggest problem was that the characters did not fit the style of the new campaign. Lesson learned: The only way to make the sequel work is when the new campaign idea fits the characters like a glove.

Honorable Mention: As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, I learned a long time ago that the optimum prep regimen for me is to alternate homebrew campaigns (little rules tinkering, making up setting out the wazoo) with published campaigns (little additions to the setting, tinker with rules to my heart’s content). Every time I ignore this bit of self knowledge, I regret it. The homebrew campaign I’m running now would have been better if I had simply waited to run it after giving myself a break.

A lot of what I keep running into results in two lessons:
a) Don’t play with people who don’t like each other.
b) When starting a game, make it clear what people are making characters for. Sure “the twist” can be cool– but it’s better to have a solid group that’s interested in/ invested in each other’s characters.

1. In the Face of Darkness. This is the game I mention most often… my group and I really blew it. I allowed unlinked character generation, which players used to create PCs that gunned for each other, reflecting RL rivalries. The contortions required to make them “a group” while enduring each other’s knives in the back gave everyone a foul taste. It died a short and bloody death (~9 tortuous sessions) after the second successful in group assassination.

2. The Path to Conflict was an Amber Diceless game that my roommate and I intended to run in college. We recruited players and got started… but made the mistake of letting people “pre-play” out backgrounds. High turnover in the beginning cut out many players, and it died as a glimmer of possibility, without realization.

3. High School AD&D group. The group held together for a lot longer than most, but when they hit 5th level and I allowed them to change alignment, they separated explosively. Keeping people together who enjoy roleplaying but not each other is ugly work…

Burning Wheel: 5 sessions of chargen leading nowhere (there were a few scenes of play scattered among the sessions, but overall, it was just a big failure). Lessons learned from this one: When setting up a campaign with lots of input from the players, make sure to veto anything you simply do not like to run (the campaign was going to be an intrigue deal – something I just don’t do). When using a new fangled chargen system, make sure the players are on board with the goals of the system (we tripped over Beliefs and Instincts a lot). Also, make sure the players are all creating characters that will be interlinked.

Drow: Glad your AD&D players went along with not tearing down the pyramid. Old school D&D requires players to buy into the dungeoning concept – and it sounds like they did. And this might not have been all that bad, as I recall from my early days, players often made these suggestions on how to bypass the whole adventure, partly as a way to make their buy in. In a way, it’s like the comments we all make when watching B-grade horror movies…

Frank

drow: Re your Debris campaign, that sounds really familiar. I’ve definitely made the “no Plan B” mistake before — it’s an easy one to make.

Discordian: I know exactly what you mean. That play approach is very cool, but seems odd unless you’ve already been exposed to something similar.

Was little ackward then.

But now, several years after, reading through and playing some of the indie games I came to the even worse conclusion: Boy were we wrong! Hers was the better and more natural style of play, which she executed better than any of us. If we hadn’t stopped it cold.

Debris campaign, 2005, D&D 3.5. determined to let the players drive the story, they didn’t and i didn’t have a plan B. okay campaign, but ended on a whimper.