Game Mastery

If I haven’t been posting lately it’s for two reasons.  Firstly, I’m not actively GMing right now.  The other reason is that I’ve been reading Gnome Stew and that has satisfied my need for GM blogging. I’d like to draw your attention to today’s Gnome Stew article, Mayhem, Squared Circle Style. (As noted in the GS comments) for years I’ve been claiming that everything I know about GMing I learned from pro wrestling. I’ve been trying to sum this up in a post here, but it never goes right and I scrap the post. Gnome Stew made the post for me so now I don’t have to.

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I’ve always defended D&D as a platform for roleplaying.  Sure it focuses on combat by providing an abundance of interesting combat rules, but that doesn’t prevent you from roleplaying in it.  I’ve run entire d20 sessions without even looking at dice.  A character is a character and as long as a system supports a setting appropriate for your character, you can roleplay in that system, right?

Well, I’m not going to talk about that right now.  I’ve been playing 4th edition lately and will be running a pre-written 4th ed module this weekend.  I wasn’t able to get through a full reading of the mod without finally understanding why people take exception to using D&D for role play.  This post is an airing of grievances (in full Festivus spirit) I had while reading through a single D&D adventure.  I’ll bitch and moan and maybe, if we’re lucky, figure out a thing or two about writing good RP by examining the bad.

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I’m having a very hard time writing this post. This is at least my 5th attempt. Rather than building up to the point I’m trying to make I’m going to start with the point and babble from there.

Last year I participated in NaNoWriMo to try and write a novel. I knew I wasn’t going to write a good novel. I just wanted to see what it was like and learn a thing or two about writing, a topic I’ve always found interesting. It was something I’d wanted to do since reading Stephen King’s On Writing, but had been putting off.

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Good RPGs invariably lead to good stories. I have a love/hate affair with this particular story. Don’t get me wrong, it’s pretty damn awesome. I’m just a little sick of it because a) I’ve been repeating it for the last five years and b) no matter how many games I GM I’ll never do anything this cool ever again.

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As someone who has appreciated unique, novel ideas, it makes me incredibly happy when my players tell me my games are original. I put a lot of effort into making sure that my games are something the players have never seen before (and more importantly I as the GM have never seen before either – otherwise I’d get bored while running it). I suppose it shocks people a little when they ask me where I get my ideas, and I tell them, “I steal them.” (continue reading…)