Here’s a little not-so-secret bit of trivia about me. I suck as a game master.
It comes down to two problems. I don’t think quickly on my feet, and I don’t prepare well. A GM needs one or the other to be successful, and ideally both. Last Friday I ran the ETU plot point for Mrs. Flametoad and a pair of friends, and I feel like it didn’t go that well. The game started off with one strike against it–we didn’t get started until almost 9 pm after a high-carb dinner. The energy level in the room was already low. Actually, a second strike againt it was that 2/3 of the players had never played the system before. It took almost an hour to go through character creation, partially because we were only working from one copy of the ETU character creation rules because my printer was acting wonky. We didn’t even finish the short adventure before we decided to call it a night at 11 pm. We were all tired, and agreed to pick it up next time (which hopefully will be this Friday). I didn’t even end the adventure on a cliffhanger.
Between now and Friday I need to dedicate a night to actually preparing. I need to re-read my own damn adventure. I need to look at the characters and consider how to introduce elements that play to their edges and hindrences. I need to figure out what what’s going to happen if they continue on this path of getting none of the clues. I need to figure out where to go after the first adventure ends. It would be a lot easier if I could just improvise as I went along, but I’ll have to settle for preparation.
Unfortunately, I can’t do much about the timing. Due to the tadpoles, it’s just not realistic to start before they go to bed. At least next time we’ll have character creation behind us and we can jump straight into the adventure. I just need to work on making the adventure interesting even when their notice rolls suck.
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