Listening to some roleplaying podcasts lately, it struck me that I don’t really have “thing” as far as my GM preferences are, except maybe laziness. I prefer to run games rather than take a PC, but I’m rules agnostic, setting agnostic, genre agnostic.
I suppose I do have a couple preferences (namely a predeliction for the works of Michael Moorcock), but as I don’t bang that drum much, let alone find the opportunity to run it, I don’t think it counts.
Around me, there are people known for Call of Cthulhu, various World of Darkness, D&D, Shadowrun, Rolemaster. I also know GMs famous for good NPC characterisation, or mood manipulation via music.
On the player side, I know that one person in my group will play the grumpy antisocial character who will disrupt the game. I know that one will try to play dexterous characters that don’t wear much armour, but avoid being hit.
I don’t think I have any of this (if I’m wrong, feel free to point it out). Part of it is that I haven’t been very much excited about anything in a long time. I got heavily invested in the D&D3e re-run of Dragonlance, but that hasn’t really worked out. It must be almost a year since we played, and I felt at the time that I wasn’t engaging as much as I should have. It might be that D&D combat (regardless of edition) bores me when it takes longer than 5 minutes to hash out an encounter, or it may be that I just don’t visualise what’s going on in my games any more.
Which brings me to my current CyberPunk campaign. I’m determined to wrap it up properly, instead of letting it peter out like most campaigns do. I’m starting to plot out something epic, but I know that my main barrier is to make the sessions themselves interesting both for myself and the group. I want to deliver an experience that keeps the players interested, but without driving them on rails.
If you’ve got any hints, I’m keen to hear them.
3 replies on “Game Master ADD”
I’d like for all of our backstories to come cooking together for an explosive finale, but with lots of choices and interesting dilemmas, sort of like Batman 2, so the pressure’s on and we have to decide between ‘a’ and ‘b’ and none is really the right decision. Sort of like a Bioware game where we get quests from our contacts/friends/NPC buddies at different times and locations and with different consequences, but unfortunately, unlike a Bioware game, the quest won’t be waiting for us to get around to finishing it. But we get a city map and get to decide or prioritise what we do. You said once you enjoyed giving PCs rope and watching them hang themselves with it, so more rope is always welcome. Hope this makes sense!
When, I ran my cyberpunk campaign. I had a huge amount of intrigue both government and corporate. I have a few layers of intrigue for the players to unravel. As I began to unravel the layers for them, they began to get the satisfaction of solving the big bad toward the end. I hope that helps.
Rails are find with me, I like trains…