After today's game session, there will only be two more games of My year long Mutants & Masterminds campaign before I end it to pursue another game idea. While its been a ton of fun and I've learned a lot about my new group, I'll also be glad to finish it and do something a bit different.
When I first started GMing for my current group, I really only knew one or two of the members prior to playing in a few of their sessions. After I began GMing for them, I immediately noticed that they played in and enjoyed a somewhat different style of game then I was used to. As I may have mentioned before, either on my blog or elsewhere on the net, my origins and experience in the early days of RPGs is very different from most gamers my age. We never really suffered through the difficulties and pitfalls most GMs and groups regularly experience. Between 1977 and 1985-86 none of my games had munchkins, power gamers, rules lawyers or anything of the sort. Since there was a story and heroics in my very first game, I never ran or was in a game of a purely hack-n-slash nature. The GM and the players developed a bit of background and then generated much of the world's history and lore, as well as the characters' background together. There was little to no PvP as everyone tried as hard as they could to work together, protect each other and accomplish their goals.
My current group is...as I said...a different matter. While many gel perfectly with my style, some do not. A few seem more interested in playing their stats and powers than their characters. Some develop pages and pages of background but do want me to touch (i.e. include, effect, add to) it during the game. Others hardly seem to be playing at all, prefering to sit back and enjoy the show. The possibility of player character combat comes up fairly regularly, even though it is largely illogical in the situations presented. Power gamers are definitely present.
Now those are the negatives and certainly the positives outweigh them. It is a diverse, funny, exciting group of really good guys who show up regularly (if not always on time) and take their playing fairly seriously. It is a big group (7-9 on average, 11 at full capacity) and I've missed having a big group. Those that get my style of GMing not only make the game well worth the effort for me but they help me ride out the difficult moments of the game by moving the game along. Overall, its been a blast.
So, what does this mean for the future. I'm not entirely sure. I really want to continue running something at the Compleat Strategist but for the life of me I can't think of what. More accurately I can think of a thousand things but none seem perfect for this particular gang and this specific venue. Since my other more alternative games are going so well, I'm less desperate to try something avant garde and crazy but I sometimes feel like I can't do something too wacky at the Strat and that's a bit of a bummer. I am not especially good at getting excited over the same old thing. Some of my players have suggested Traveller (Classic) or Star Wars (D6). Great games both but I can't shake my feelings of 'been there, done that, got the t-shirt, wore it often, rinse, repeat'.
This post ended up being a bit of a rant I know but I figured it would help me sort the matter out. Not certain it helped.
Oh well, off to the game...
AD
Barking Alien
No comments:
Post a Comment