No More Pulling Punches: How One Brutal Campaign Changed My Game Mastering Forever

 Like many others, I started my TTRPG journey with Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition. I ran games, I played in games, and I fudged a lot of dice. I pulled punches. I softened outcomes. For nearly two years, I ran a long campaign where no player character ever died. Everyone was happy. It was safe, fun, and predictable. We all kind of knew that death wasn’t really on the table—just failure at best.

Then I joined a new table, one run by a veteran DM I knew from Magic: The Gathering. He made one thing clear from the beginning: “All my rolls are in the open. No fudging.” We were playing Lost Mine of Phandelver, a starter module, with a mostly new group.

In our second session, everything went to hell.

The goblin boss had a great stealth roll and ambushed us. Several goblins dropped our wizard immediately. The hobgoblin leader rolled a natural 20 and downed another party member. We decided to flee. My dwarven cleric used magic to hold off the enemies and bought time for the others to escape through a hole. Another crit—my head was chopped off and rolled down the pit. One more was brought down by a volley of arrows. Only one of us made it out.

A near-TPK in session two. I was shocked. But we made new characters—I rolled up the twin brother of my fallen cleric, a vengeful paladin crusader.

Back in town, we discovered that a group of bandits had taken control. We tried to infiltrate their hideout to free the townspeople. But our heavy armor gave us away. Another disastrous fight. One by one, we were taken down and eventually surrendered.

The bandits sold us as slaves to a group of orcs performing archaeological digs in some ancient ruins known as The Scar. Their leader, Skarg, starved and beat us. We had no equipment. At night, he would release us into the ruins to "explore," but demanded we bring him a gift or face execution.

We spent several real-time months meeting weekly, unable to heal, constantly humiliated, tortured by orcs, slowly mapping the ruins and trying to find a way out. It was frustrating—progress was slow, and my paladin had to constantly beg for his life. It was humiliating.

Eventually, we found an opening. We stole some clubs and daggers, escaped into the forest—but we had no rations, no armor, no torches, nothing. Guiding ourselves by a stream, avoiding owlbears and other threats, we finally reached the town once controlled by the bandits.

We endured a long, exhausting journey back. But when we arrived... the orcs were gone.

So we tracked them north through the forest, guided by a group of rangers. We were ambushed often—each fight was life or death. But now, with real experience under our belts, we managed to survive. Every battle was thrilling. Eventually, we followed the trail to an ancient elven temple.

Inside, we fought Skarg’s personal guard. We expected our great showdown—but in the final chamber, we found Skarg already dead, aged and withered by some alien force. Whatever had killed him was far more dangerous than he had ever been.

We investigated, traveled to a nearby city for supplies, and found a portal to another dimension. We entered, destroyed the otherworldly threat, and sealed the portal for good.

By then we were level 5. The campaign ended there, with a beautiful epilogue of our characters retiring. And despite all the frustration, despite the brutality, it was the best campaign I’ve ever played.

Skarg’s cruelty felt real. Our hatred was genuine. Finding him broken and dying brought a strange closure, and the struggle forged our characters into heroes.

What I Learned

I used to think the DM’s job was to protect the players. To make sure they had fun. That no one died unless it was dramatic and meaningful. But I was wrong. The DM’s job is to be honest. To be fair. To let the game happen.

When players suffer, struggle, and still press forward, the victories taste sweeter. The emotions are real. We weren’t actors in a story—we were survivors of a shared ordeal.

After this campaign, I stopped fudging rolls. I stopped narrating outcomes ahead of time. I stopped designing “expected” arcs. I began rolling openly, letting the dice decide fate, and treating equipment, encumbrance, and survival mechanics seriously. I stopped leading players by the hand and let them live or die by their choices.

Eventually, 5e lost its appeal for me. The high-level power creep, the magic that erases tension, the irrelevance of supplies—it all felt hollow. I discovered OSR, Forbidden Lands, Mothership, and His Majesty the Worm. These systems respect risk. They reward caution, creativity, and grit.

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In Defense of Hard Mode

I don’t believe a DM should be “against” the players—but they must be truthful with them. Hard consequences don’t break immersion—they build it. Character limitations don’t block creativity—they unlock it. When a player realizes they can’t solve everything with a spell or a feat, they start thinking like survivors, not superheroes.

It’s okay if things are hard. It’s okay if your players lose. What matters is that they own the story. Not you. Not the script. The table does, together.

Playing soft felt good—for a while.

But playing hard?
That felt real.