I got two compliments yesterday during my Shadowrun game that made me extremely happy/warmfuzzy inside.
Greg, who was talking to a friend of his about my SR game, relayed the following back to me from said friend: "I sort of miss gaming sometimes and it sounds like KT is still a spectacular GM."
And JD said: "You've given me hope back for the Shadowrun gaming system."
Of course, I've always thought that any gaming system, no matter how badly organized the book is or how complicated the rules are, has the potential to be a great game. What is and has always been important to me is the actual storytelling.
Dice and mechanics are just a means to resolve conflict with the element of surprise. With a superlative group of roleplayers a system can have no - or very few - rules at all. What's important - nay even vital - is the blending of imagination, the emotional ties to a character that pull one into the story. And, of course, having fun. If you're not having fun, something is wrong. And the ultimate job of the GM is to make sure that everyone is having fun. (Note that fun comes in a lot of flavors: your character can die horribly and you can still have fun, or you can haul off a dragon's treasure chamber and still be bored. Fun is... perhaps not a very accurate term.)
My first experiences in role-playing were not so good: my GM was firmly of the opinion that dwarves, psionics, and halflings sucked. As such, he ripped those sections out of people's books. (No, really, I'm not kidding. he did!) He also was convinced that GMing was going to get him laid and took great offense to the fact that I wanted to play a guy because he wanted to be able to live-action some stuff out - like forcibly seducing my character. (Hey, this was Louisa, whaddaya expect?)
However, once I got to college and fell in with Liz and her friends, gaming became part of my life. AD&D first, then other systems. I had good games (one of the best games in my life was run over Christmas break and involved about two weeks of the most intense role-playing of my life. We lived as our characters, only coming back to the "real world" a few times a day to eat and sleep) and bad ones (my first Vampire game fell into the "bad" catagory. Besides little guidance from a bad GM in a new system, we had vampiric chickens, time-traveling mages, sex with Jesus shortly before the crucifiction and waaaaaay too many players.)
When I first decided to try my hand at GMing, I really did not know what I was doing and I was both too excited and too inexperienced to really be good at it, but I knew... I had the potential to be very, very good. I could feel it. It was like a sort of electric buildup right behind my eyes... the directed force of imagination. It's always been enough to take my breath away.
The planning out of plot, with each hook and turn carefully sculpted... watching people absolutely destroy a villian because they're so angry with her that they literally tear her body apart... the look of shock and horror when players realize exactly what a pair of clues mean... in-character arguments... romance... mystery... from the moment I started GMing, these moments have been the finest in my life.
After working desperately for several weeks to rescue their friend Morris from the clutches of the evil alien, the look on Felix's face when he finds the pregnancy test kit - positive - and Morris's hair on her pillow...
Lhynnae, coughing on her life's blood, is cradled in the arms of Catreenia as she breathes her last...
Ruth's sire saying with absolute confidence, "Well, the door locks," when asked about protection he might have on his haven...
"Want to play 'You Win'?"
So... I've been working on my 7th Sea PBeM recently... setting up plot hooks and planning out NPCs and whatnot... if things work the way I'm hoping they will, this could... possibly... be the best game I've ever run. The way things have fallen together so far, ideas and backstory and twists... well, let's just say, I'm really, really looking forward to it.
Players.... beware!
"Fun" is a perfectly accurate term, but it's fun in the same way that a good horror movie is fun. It's fun because you're emotionally invested, but not so much so that you forget that it's not real. It's fun because you have faith that, ultimately, the bad guy will get their comeuppance in the end. Even if you have to die to get there.
And you *are* a superlative storyteller. It's why we work so very well as a writing team - you have a talent for plots, and I have a talent for settings, and we both have a talent for creating memorable characters.
And I am very, very eager to get going on the 7th Sea game. Even if I know it's going to put my character through the ringer in as many ways as you can manage it. Or, perhaps, because of that.
Posted by: Liz on August 21, 2004 10:55 AM