GM Diary #1

Use of my blog had drifted in 2018, largely due to the near collapse of my hobby interaction with adults and the growing pressures in my career. In 2019, I have decided to experiment with a GM Diary series: simply recording the various activities and thoughts that surround my actual-play experiences as a Game Master.

I have no doubt that, on top of this idea, I will be able to write occasional articles on other topics. Of particular interest to me would be making time to write some more philosophical comments, especially as my employer wishes me to prepare to teach Philosophy to 6th Formers next year (as opposed to my current focus on Ethics).

So, here we are. GM Diary #1. Who knows if I will keep this up, but hey – there is no harm in the attempt.

Where Am I?

As a Game Master, where are things at the beginning of 2019?

I have three gaming commitments, two of which are active and one that needs resurrection. Firstly, I run a school-based D&D club for 11-18 year old students. Secondly, I run a casual online Castles & Crusades mega-dungeon game in “Stonehell” via The Society of Extraordinary Gamers. Finally, I have the Friday Nighters – a gaming group I founded in 1998 – which is, to draw on an analogy, in a coma and not showing many signs of brain activity.

Thus my priorities are:

1. Keep the school D&D club alive and enjoy it as much as I can.
2. Turn up to run the casual online Castles & Crusades game regularly.
3. Perform serious surgical procedures on the Friday Night Gaming Table.

Gaming At School

Where am I with this? That’s easy – we are playing “The Caverns of Thracia” and there are eight to ten regular players who come along. It’s an Open Table which allows for anyone who signs up prior to the session to take one of the eight available seats at the table. It’s generally over-subscribed.

This campaign is a mega-dungeon and we are using B/X Essentials to play it. The sessions take very little prep (perhaps as much as 5 minutes to refresh my memory just before play) and I can run it largely off the cuff. As the game progresses, I will need to invest a little time to re-read and orient myself to the dungeon, but that’s more a pleasure than a chore.

There is a part of me what wants to develop this campaign a little and generate a wilderness around the dungeon but, for now, that seems unnecessary. Thus, as GM, I will keep the game running and see how it develops.

Saturday Night Castles & Crusades

There are four or five players who turn up to play Castles & Crusades with me on a Saturday night. This used to be a D&D 5th Edition table, but I got a bit overwhelmed by the prep needed to deliver on what I wanted to do, back in mid-2018. I opted to resurrect the group around September time and began running “Stonehell” (a megadungeon) with C&C.

Making maps of the mega-dungeon levels is a massive task – I have this desire to prepare a digital map of the dungeon level and allow the players to slowly uncover it as they explore. I don’t bother with too many details, like furniture or such, but I do like to show the basic layout.

To be honest, this was made easier by using the rather cool Dungeon Map Tile set from WyldFurr. That said, it’s still a slow process to build a whole section of a dungeon from scratch – even when you are simply copying someone else’s dungeon map and digitizing it.

The good news is that the players haven’t entered the main dungeon yet – very likely tomorrow night, I suspect – and I have one of the four sections of that dungeon level completed. The bad news is that I really need to get seven more of them done over the coming weeks – three other parts of Level 1 and the four sections of Level 2. I think I will schedule a little time each week – maybe an hour at a time – to simply build some more dungeon.

In the past, I spent a lot of time copying and pasting text from dungeons into Fantasy Grounds. I am going to stop doing this, however, because I end up delivering most of it verbally anyway and doing such work is simply time consuming. Given that “Stonehell” has excellent yet terse notes that are easily referenced from the printed book, it’ll be best for me to invest in the maps rather than the notes.

Thus, prep will have two elements: a) some time put aside to build more dungeon maps in digital form; b) reading the dungeon sections most likely needed for a session and making sure any combat encounters, treasures, and other details are inputted into Fantasy Grounds just prior to play.

Mega-dungeons do allow for a lot of “just in time” detailed prep as long as the larger design exists. Running someone else’s mega-dungeon makes this very doable, especially when you run a rules-light game such as Castles & Crusades.

Resurrecting Fridays

And that brings me to the bigger problem: what to do with Friday Nights.

The group had, until early last year, five regular players. We were playing Mythras Classic Fantasy and having a good time… right up until I totally screwed up as GM and drove two players away. Since the collapse of that game, which is my favourite rules system and was set in my own world of Mystamyr (now part of the larger realm of Greymoor, the official world of Mythras Classic Fantasy), I have – frankly – felt heart-broken. Yes, I floundered around and tried desperately to get players back to the table. But that is ancient history, really.

As it stands today, I have two players who want to come play but who are both incredibly busy people. One guy loves D&D and fantasy games and the other is fed-up with fantasy games. One guy will show up whenever he can, regardless of the game, while the second guy is much more likely to attend when it’s not fantasy. Both have families, partners, and careers. One of them is a doctor, for crying out loud.

I have written, recorded, and uploaded an entire podcast episode on how I plan to deal with this group – it’s Episode 8 and will be aired in a few weeks time. Thus, I am loathe to repeat all that here. What I will say is that I have a plan.

The plan already appears to be in trouble due to scheduling problems… but the plan doesn’t require a regular attendance or a schedule beyond me being ready bi-weekly to run a game. So, I am hopeful… and it’s a rather cunning plan, methinks.

What I will say, though, is that I was tempted to say, “F*** it!” and run the game I want to run, regardless of the player’s desires. Of course, had I of done that, I suspect I would have no players. As The Angry GM will tell you, there is a certain point at which you have to accept that you can’t GM the game you want to play because you have the GM the game your players will turn up and play.

My plan is a blend – not a compromise, mind, a blend (yes, there is a difference). I am going to run the game rules and world that the players have expressed an interest in; I am going to run it using the game structures that I know I can afford to run. Thus, I am going to be learning to play Savage Worlds and reading the “Deadlands: Hell on Earth Reloaded” supplement. For the rest, you’ll need to listen to the podcast.

The Other Things…

Anyone who has ever been a player in either my home Friday Night games or my online Fantasy Grounds sessions knows that I tend towards some serious flakiness. Over the years, it feels like I have cancelled more games than any other GM on the planet.

The big goal for 2019 is to end this flakiness. Again, my forthcoming podcast episode “Curse of the Flaky GM” will address this and give more background… but one of the big factors for me will be controlling my urge to do other things in my hobby.

I buy too many games. I read maybe two thirds of them. And I get easily distracted from the live games I am meant to be running. Thus, I need to get control of the “Other Things”.

I think this year is a time for focusing on the actual play. I want to play more games, not read / buy more games. I have three groups with loads of potential for play and I don’t want to let go of those opportunities. I believe I am on the right path, yet it will take considerable determination and some good personal systems to keep me there.

Game on!