I took the time out of my schedule to go to AggieCon, figuring I would get in on the "flexible" D&D game and spend a couple of hours studying that (as well as the Con itself, having never been to one). As it turned out, the game was full when I showed up and a non-RPG (but still tabletop) game kind of developed at the table I was waiting at. Obviously, I never got to the D&D table. Still, the convention was an interesting experience, and I had a great time for the two and a half hours I could spare from the Capstone project and other obligations. What I learned there reinforces what I had seen elsewhere during the course of this research; gaming groups will let just about anyone play, and are generally really easy to get along with.
I'm thinking the last big thing that needs to be written up for this project is a good example of a game session; it doesn't have to be a full, detailed transcript but anything to give our faithful readers a good idea of what one of these things actually look like. (Although, the kibbitzing may be hard to record properly, and it seems that there are always many inside jokes). I intended to write such a post today, based on a partially free-form game my brother and I played over Spring Break (since I didn't really learn anything new from it, I didn't , but I've decided that is better saved for the grand, Gamma World finale Stuart has proposed (assuming it happens, which is iffy given our current workloads) for week 8.
So, instead, today I'm going to play the inside man and write about some things that I've learned as a game-master for the groups I have played with in the past. I'm going to use the aforementioned game as the format for examples. I'm going to present it as a list of things I did and tried to do, with a little of my thought process, and let the reader fill it in from there, rather than trying to self analyze too deeply. Oh, the setting was (relatively) hard sci-fi. Hopefully this will give a better understanding of how these games operate, and what an effective GM has to do.
*Improvisation. This was one of those sessions that materialized on the fly, but the pacing still remained excellent and the setting worked well. Considering that I had about one sentence of plot written when it started I thought was great.
*Engaged the player(s). With only one player, who I knew well, this was easy. Give him a girl to rescue and a flag to paint on his shiny new spaceship (we'll get to that in a minute) and he can really get rolling.
**For example, my brother is one of the "Pluto is still a planet" crowd. One line about how Pluto is really "sketchy" because all the corporations pulled out to "fund real planets" and we have gone from "space pirate" to "space pirate with a cause".
*Gave the villain(s) a distinctive trait. The Earth Secret Police have had their eyes removed and replaced with computer sensors. It served to give them character as well as make them "faceless".
*Rewarded creativeness. I should have seen "I throw four bombs and four fakes out the airlock at the secret police" coming, but I didn't and they wouldn't have either.
*Didn't arbitrarily kill off or otherwise eliminate PCs for no reason.
*Made locations memorable (or at least tried to). Pluto was the best one, but I'd like to think some other elements can across well as well.
*Let the players add to the setting while its in progress. I had no idea there were lifelike holograms available, but if the players pitch something reasonable work it in. It makes everyone more engaged, and helps really flesh things out.
**On the same note, the character known only as "Always Angry" (A space punk pirate from Venus) got some unexpected character development when we realized we'd both switched to calling her "Almost Angry" without realizing it.
*I'm also really proud of how Switzerland was the only politically independent body in the Solar System. I'm not sure why, but it worked great.
*This was a very crunch light game. We must have been 7-8 hours in before rolling a die.
*I've found sometimes that working in a world that exists only for that campaign as opposed to a well defined and established one that has to stay somewhat the same can make for really great games. I can have my characters right at the heart of the universe and still make it make sense.
*Always, always, always have read or watched a lot of genre relevant fiction that your players haven't, especially when knowing you are going to have to improvise. That doesn't mean you have to be better read, but it does mean there can't be one to one overlap and you have to know what they know. This lets you borrow elements of the plots and/or settings, with the necessary tweaks to fit, quickly. It also gives you a bunch of character names to assemble quickly.
DANIEL STOP READING HERE
Sources I was heavily inspired by include:
The Lensman series. (E.E. Smith)
The Voice of the Whirlwind
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
Babylon 5
...and most of the names were random recombinations of given and family names from characters in John Wayne westerns.
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