#INDIEGAMEaDAY2016
16. Are GMs abusers, control freaks, or both? Best story explaining why this is so.
Now if you don't follow indie RPGs too closely, this might not land for you, but a lot of indie games strive for player agency and there's more than a few GM-less systems out there (one of which I've talked about before and will do so again in a bit). But anyway, I'm not going to discuss the hashtag itself, because I thankfully have no GM horror stories to share. However, the question did get me thinking about GMing, my style, and why I got started into it.
I think I may have mentioned this before, but I only very recently got into GMing, probably within the past two years or so. My first real run of it was an online Mouse Guard PbP game with a group of people I've been playing with for years, kind of as a feeler. I had a campaign idea, and we had a player dropping out, so I asked the person who had been running the game for years if he would mind letting me run the game for a bit. He was delighted, and I ran a fairly decent campaign, especially for a first time running it, but had some issues. Primarily, running a PbP game is a completely different animal, and the chief challenge is keeping everybody focused and checking in regularly. I quickly learned I am very bad at this, as I am not a generally authoritative person by nature. I ran I think one full year, three sessions, and then burned out from chasing one of the players and turned things back over to the original GM.
The experience did reinforce my own feelings on why a lot of people end up GMing, though: they want to play games. If you enjoy a game or a system enough, you want to play it, and it is the eternal struggle of a gaming hobbyist that they don't ever have enough players to play with. And so in order to play a game they want to play, they have to convince other people to play with them, and the easiest way to do this is to volunteer to do the heavy lifting and run the game for the other players. Ask your GM if they'd mind you taking over for a bit and watch their eyes light up. Seriously, do it.
That being said, I think there is definitely a group that prefers GMing to being a PC, and I think I may be skewing more towards this end of things the more games I run. I have always been a writer at heart from childhood on. I have never been published and never have really put much effort into that end of things, but I've always written stories if for nobody else but myself. It's part of the reason I play the video games I do (only massive open world games where I can create a character and do my thang. Your game doesn't have a story? Perfect. I will make my own), and it definitely is a muscle that I enjoy flexing as a GM. I find I enjoy putting together scenarios and watching players develop over time more than any character I have played.
For the most part, I enjoy improvising when I run games, and reacting more to what the players are doing than anything in particular that I planned, and so I gravitate more to those systems that allow me to do that. It's one of the main reasons I have issues running a lot of OSR games where there's more prep involved. But my primary focus with any game I run is simply to make sure everybody is having a good time and enjoying creating stories alongside me.
New Games!
I bought some new games! Well, one new game and another game I already owned but only in a digital format.
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| Questlandia |
Questlandia I've written about before, and I already grabbed a digital copy when Hannah Shaffer offered it as a free download for Free RPG Day this year. The game is so good, though, that I felt guilty having not paid for it. That and it's typically much easier for me to get into games in physical format. As I've said before, I really can't recommend this game enough for world building, both just for a fun game to play with friends and especially as a prep session to starting a longer campaign. Once we wrap up our home Mouse Guard game, I'm planning on running this for a session or two to lead into a Burning Wheel campaign.
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| Ryuutama |
Ryuutama is a game that is completely new to me, but one that I've had my eye on for quite a while. I almost grabbed it at PAX East this year, which was the first time I had seen it, but thankfully waited and bought the physical/digital bundle from Kotohi direct. Having both formats is kind of perfect for me, as it allows me to do session prep during my lunch break or slow days at work, while allowing me to get deeper into the game reading before bed. Plus, I always prefer buying direct from creators whenever possible.
I started reading this one last night, and I really am excited to play it. The system is kind of brilliantly simple, and it will make a great introductory game for people that have never roleplayed before. I'm especially looking forward to eventually running this game with my daughter in a few years when she's old enough for gaming, provided she shows an interest. This and Michtim are going to be my go-to early years roleplaying games, but both are also robust enough to easily entertain players of all ages for years. If you have kids, or even if you just like cute stuff and also RPGs, you should definitely own both these games.
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