Musings of a Gamemaster

I formally played my first Fantasy Role Play (FRP) game in 1977, a mix of original D&D (wood grain box), early Tunnels & Trolls and Empire of the Petal Throne. Mike used a fair bit of each, with some skirmish war-games rules thrown in. I was hooked, even though our initial adventure ended in a tragic encounter as we explored our first dungeon. I was excited, this was storytelling! No matter the three of us found a secret entrance and walked into the back room of a Medusa's lair. Failed saves on all of us, but it was so cool... I was happily stoned.

Like a number of kids growing up in the 60's and 70's, card and board games gave way to more complex war-games. I had a fairly long bus commute through high school, about an hour each way. With speed reading and the smaller size of early science fiction & fantasy books I quickly developed a 2 to 3 book a day habit on weekdays. That's a lot of background stories in the brain buffer. My father told 'made-up' stories to us as we grew up, it seemed easy and given the chance I leaped at FRP gaming.

Along the way I've had a few insights and learned a few things. Tried different systems and kept a few ideas here, switched to something new there. Like many early GM's I just had to build my own system (actually a collaboration, but we all had the itch). Most of that early design work is discarded as well, for a very good reason. If the rules slow down the play and the group spends more time looking things up than role playing... your players loose interest. Game mechanics are there to support playing and story telling. If the game becomes bound by your rules, well, I wish you well and hope you have patient players. Myself, I'm going to streamline what I need to to keep mechanics out of the way of storytelling.

Will that make me inconsistent? Very likely. Will I make occasional mistakes and allow things to happen 'for the story'? Absolutely. Can I tell compelling stories and keep players interested for years? Fantastic. That's why we're still adventuring 35+ years later.

Today's game is still D&D, in a way. It's also parts of the Arduin rules from Dave Hargrave and the Tunnels & Trolls rules. And a bunch of other ideas and systems I've happily encountered over the years. If it works and keeps the story moving - use it! The blend is my System 2 home brew, evolving as we need it to. Hope you enjoy cooking your own version to keep your players at the table.

So, over the years I've made comments here and there about gaming. Not as many as I should have, but I'll copy some here in the hope it will help other GM's. Many were made in the Arduin Forum on Yahoo Groups. I'll tag those I can as to original post.