Day 19 of #RPGaDay and the word is... "SCARY"
I've certainly gotten worried in games. I've been troubled by circumstance, and in a Call of Cthulhu one-shot run by the infamous Dr. Bob, I was filled with dread desperately trying to escape the clutches of a ghoul.
But scared? Nah, I save that for the other side of the GM screen.
As the back-up GM when our regular 5e online game is a no-go, I'm forced to deal with certain preferences depending on which players can't make it. My three go-to's require slightly different prep.
My Illuminati University (IOU) game requires the least set-up and I can adapt pretty well based on player choices/character actions, but the concept falls flat unless I set-up a few contingencies/fail safes if things go sideways.
And they always go sideways.
My Canadian 90's in College Call of Cthulhu game is much more free-form than my usual CoC campaigns. So long as I take good notes I can call back in later sessions, I'm happy with the players collaborating with me on certain portions of our game in Medicine Hat.
My BECMI D&D Adventures in Gulluvia is honestly the most collaborative game I currently run. Whole swaths of the campaign were influenced by direct questions to players and much of the rest is based on random comments or actions that they make. I managed the entire last session based on an inadvertent trip to the herbalist and the players/characters wishing to know more about "Grimy Dwarf Weed." We not only had a good role-playing session, but it allowed me to introduce a plot point that I have had trouble introducing between dungeon crawls.
Of course, the true terror is when I eschew everything I've built and we play a completely improv game using Risus.
With a roll of my random IOU poll generator to guide me, we made characters with the following:
And as a GM, I was terrified every step of the way. It was like a HoL game that almost made sense.
I've certainly gotten worried in games. I've been troubled by circumstance, and in a Call of Cthulhu one-shot run by the infamous Dr. Bob, I was filled with dread desperately trying to escape the clutches of a ghoul.
But scared? Nah, I save that for the other side of the GM screen.
As the back-up GM when our regular 5e online game is a no-go, I'm forced to deal with certain preferences depending on which players can't make it. My three go-to's require slightly different prep.
My Illuminati University (IOU) game requires the least set-up and I can adapt pretty well based on player choices/character actions, but the concept falls flat unless I set-up a few contingencies/fail safes if things go sideways.
And they always go sideways.
My Canadian 90's in College Call of Cthulhu game is much more free-form than my usual CoC campaigns. So long as I take good notes I can call back in later sessions, I'm happy with the players collaborating with me on certain portions of our game in Medicine Hat.
My BECMI D&D Adventures in Gulluvia is honestly the most collaborative game I currently run. Whole swaths of the campaign were influenced by direct questions to players and much of the rest is based on random comments or actions that they make. I managed the entire last session based on an inadvertent trip to the herbalist and the players/characters wishing to know more about "Grimy Dwarf Weed." We not only had a good role-playing session, but it allowed me to introduce a plot point that I have had trouble introducing between dungeon crawls.
Of course, the true terror is when I eschew everything I've built and we play a completely improv game using Risus.
With a roll of my random IOU poll generator to guide me, we made characters with the following:
- The best Fleetwood Mac cover band in the Baltimore suburbs.
Characters were made, a full set was played in a lesbian bar, a chicken stolen, cocaine snorted, a group of Chinese students were accosted in the midst of their late-night flashmob in a Target, and every Fleetwood Mac song we could think of was either integrated into the plot or spoken like David Caruso in the opening of CSI Miami.
(342/124)
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