Let Us Dance A True Rumba
In a few months, I’ll have been running table top games for a year. It’s not the longest length of time by any standard, at least compared to my brother and other long term game masters, but for me, who was always a player first and GM/ST/DM third (not playing was always second), it’s a long time.
I was always a player. The few times I tried my hand at being a DM in 2e were…disastrous, to say the least. In my very first game, I ran things completely off the cuff, didn’t even have an inkling of a plot or story or who the NPCs were at all, I just threw a dragon at my brother, weakened by all the arrows it had taken from the guards, and my brother ended up getting the killing blow, then retired after scrapping all the coins off the dragons’ body (I don’t know why I told him there were coins stuck to the body). Another misstep of DMing was with my cousin; The first being when I told him he tripped over a dune in the desert (which prompted my cousin to explain to me that a dune was not a small build up of sand like I thought of), and the second being when I let him stop an iron golem with a bucket of water, ruling that it would rust him out and he wouldn’t be able to move.
So when it came time for me to start running a game regularly, I was pretty nervous. I had run a few games here and there over the last year and a half (using the Pathfinder system), each lasting about 3-5 weeks, with varying results each time. I almost relented, but thanks to the support of my brother (who helped a lot with the fleshing out of the story, among other things) and the urging of my would be players, I managed to go forward on it, and ran a story involving a demon possessed paladin trying to reclaim the different pieces of himself in order to be whole again and pick up where he left off before being stopped (you know, the usual demon stuff).
I’m glad I’m a GM, as it fulfills that storytelling itch I’ve had for so long (I always had ideas in my head for different stories, but never got them out). I’m actually running two groups now that alternates each week, which is pretty exciting itself, but also kind of daunting, and a wee bit scary too.
Regardless, I’m eagerly waiting for this Sunday to roll around (the day I run my game), as I can’t wait to meet with everyone and entertain them for a few hours.