And How to Fix Them Without Losing Your Mind (or Your Notes)
Being a game master is a sacred and ridiculous thing.
You build worlds, perform voices, juggle stats, vibes, and player psychology. And sometimes, despite your 40 hours of prep, your group spends the entire session trying to get paid in chickens instead of coin.
Welcome to the job.
Over the years, I’ve run (and played in) everything from folklore whimsy to space horror, dungeon crawls to convention chaos. And no matter the system or tone, I’ve noticed a particular breed of problem that only GMs face. Weird, specific, often hilarious issues that no prep guide quite prepares you for.
Here are five of them — and how to deal with each before they drive you to become the BBEG yourself.
1. The Side Character Who Refuses to Stay Sideways
You create a throwaway NPC, someone to nudge the party back on track. In my case, that was Fukit Bloodaxe, a gruff old dwarf who I tossed into a scene just to get the players moving in the right direction.
He had one job: say something grumpy, gesture vaguely toward the path, and disappear forever.
Naturally, they adopted him.
Fukit became their guide, their drinking buddy, their emergency contact. They wrote songs about him. I think one of them even asked if he had any siblings. There was no lore for Fukit. I had nothing. Now he was canon.
Fix It:
Don’t fight it — forge it.
If they latch onto a character, let that emotional investment pay off, but make it cost something. Fold the NPC’s fate into the story. Give him secrets. Give him history. Or give him a tragic arc they’ll talk about for years. (Or all three. Hi again, Fukit.)
Players remember who they choose to love. Use that, just don’t give him plot armour.
2. Lore You Forgot You Made Up
You’re mid-session. A player says, “Wait, isn’t this the same goblin from Session 3?”
You nod confidently while your brain screams. Because yes — that was a goblin you made up on the fly, and now they’ve remembered it better than you have. (Goblin, sexy?)
You dig through your notes. You find nothing more than a post it note.
And now it’s canon.
Fix It:
Let your players be the lore-keepers.
Invite them into the continuum. If they recall it, and it fits the tone, treat it as truth. Write campaigns like jazz: with callbacks, improv, and call-and-response world-building. You don’t need to remember everything — you just need to make everything feel remembered.
3. Session Pacing That Moves Like a Drunk Chicken
You planned a tight three-act structure. But Act 1 took four hours. Why?
The party started a union or adopted a goat or some other nonsense. Or as in one session I played at an expo, we demanded to be paid in chickens instead of coin. Full stop. The GM tried to roll with it, but I swear you could see his soul leave his body.
We spent 20 minutes bartering over poultry logistics.
It was brilliant.
Fix It:
Structure momentum into the fiction.
Use in-world timers: a siege beginning at dawn, a ritual at midnight. Let urgency come from consequence. But sometimes slowness is the story. If your players are lost in the weeds but loving it, make that the narrative. They may never fight the demon king, but they’ll talk about the chicken negotiations for years.
And hey — sometimes the campaign is a long walk to the weird tavern.
4. A Puzzle That’s Way Smarter Than Your Party
You wrote a clever riddle. The answer was “fire.”
They guessed: time, revenge, capitalism, a rat, the colour red, and a fork.
Eventually someone lights the altar on fire out of frustration — and it works.
Fix It:
Build puzzles for emotional logic, not academic logic.
Expect brute force. Expect symbolic answers. Design puzzles with multiple viable solutions. And if they set something on fire that shouldn’t work but you want it to? Let it work.
Congratulations. It was fire all along.
5. Emotional Whiplash
They’re goofing off, making fart jokes, and inventing imaginary fantasy muffins.
Then suddenly, one of them role-plays a grief scene so raw it hushes the table.
Now it’s therapy.
Fix It:
Let tone be elastic — just set the stage first.
Start each session with a tonal check. Let players know what kind of story you’re aiming for — tragic, comedic, eerie, fast. But once the game is running, don’t resist the shifts. Laughter makes sorrow land harder. Horror hits deeper after safety. That emotional chaos is the good stuff.
TTRPGs aren’t novels. They’re campfires, and sometimes the ghost story ends with a joke, sometimes the punchline starts a war.
Final Thoughts: Herding Chaos Is the Job
You’re not failing because your players derail things, forget plot points, or fixate on minor NPCs; you’re succeeding — because the world feels alive enough for them to push back.
Being a GM isn’t about control. It’s about offering structure and letting your players destroy it with joy.
So, take a breath. Let go of the map and when they try to pay the King’s assassin with a sack of chickens?
Smile. Cluck. Roll with it.