Ending up as the DM/ST/GM forever?

Aegeri

On reflection in the World of Darkness thread, it's dawned on me in the 10ish odd years I've been playing DnD (Ironically, I started playing DnD at the same time as Warhammer, 40k and Necromunda, pretty much a TT flood!) and other roleplaying games, I've only ever played in one game. I do admit I once had a game of Dark Sun, but I only made a character and never actually did anything (absent during every session by plain stupid luck). Since my first game, I've ended up as the Dungeon Master, Storyteller, Games Master etc every time. Sometimes at the request of my players I've tried some systems and things have gone horribly, such as:

GURPS modern. Was fun but was only a one-off.

Some Palladium system that my mind has mentally blanked as a defence
mechanism.

Shadowrun (This is a great system, but the players involved and me were not compatible. Hillarious results)

The Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying system, whatever the hell it was called. Couldn't control my players from constantly PKing one another, stealing the gold off other players and such forth. It devolved into complete asshattery. I didn't like the system either.

Spy-craft. Yeah, amusing enough but I didn't care for the system.

Obviously, some games I've ran have been truly wonderful

Dungeons and Dragons 2nd Edition. Good times had by all usually, though there was a Planescape campaign that went horribly, HORRIBLY wrong. But we redid things and everyone had a great amount of fun. Was vagely Planescape torment inspired (Hence...Planescape! Funny how things fit together...)

D&D 3rd Edition. As above, only it's been mostly really good. Had a campaign in the Jungles of Chult end up grinding to a halt and going nowhere however. Was a real shame, I spent a long time thinking about that one.

Vampire the Masquerade. Some good and some went horrifically. As I mentioned in the WoD thread, "Fluff fundamentalists" or FFS (Yes, the S is meant to be there... ) constantly annoyed my efforts in this game. Although Kakos (from a discussion a while back on MSN) insists he never ran into such people, I seem to have hit ever FFS I can imagine. The nWoD has literally shot these people stone dead though. Still, I've had fantastic times in this game and I've always really enjoyed it. The same goes for Werewolf the Apocalypse and Hunter the Reckoning (albeit, I treated Hunter purely as a B-horror movie that was a roleplaying game ). I never encountered a single FFS in those two systems though....hmmmm

Vampire the Requiem. I've only got the chance to run two one off chronicles in this and they went superbly. I like the nWoD rules and find things tend to work with my way of thinking more. FFSs are dead and no longer a concern, everyone had fun! Sadly, I've not had the chance to run Werewolf yet, because Promethean owns my

And finally, the things that have gone exceptionally, AMAZINGLY well:

Call of Cthulhu. Unquestionably in my mind one of the best systems ever created and arguably one of the best thematic horror roleplaying games available. CoC is just made even better if you can get the even better written and thought out Delta Green supplements. I've ran large scale campaigns, small scale adventures, one off horror filled nights (for Halloween ) and it's always left me wtih great memories. I'm still thinking of running a WoD game that almost entirely integrates concepts from Delta Green as well. I run games in this system regularly, though sadly not for the past couple of years simply out of being too busy....

But anyway as you can see. I've sadly played very little and nearly always been the dude doing the legwork behind the screen. It's not like I don't enjoy being the guy in charge, otherwise I wouldn't actually do it at all, but it would be nice to actually play for once and not have to worry about thinking up a ton of NPC names/personalities.

Litejedi

I feel for you, dude. I see myself going down that road, and it's already starting to bum me out. All my friends are way too lazy to run any games.

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The Celestial

Our current DM is really good. I mean, really good. His knowledge of D&D of encyclopedic. I can tell he wants to get back into playing though, which I can imagine seeing how he not only runs our game, but others over e-mail for groups he's been to in the past. Deadlands, Shadowrun, etc.

I've been trying to brush up on my DM'n skills and staring to write a little war campaign in Faerun using Heroes of Battle so that I can hopefully give him a break. We're wrapping up a big scenario in Cormyr right now, so we may place this campaign on hiatus for a bit.

Athenor

I have a long-standing cynical belief that the natural state for humanity is to be a sheep. Roleplayers tend to be somewhat above this.. Except when they are doing it just for social interaction.

However, if you can find the right game, most people warm up and take a crack at it. But it really depends on the various quality levels.

I dunno. I'd kill to play in a Shadowrun game, but I've been championing it for 7 years now, and I've kind of resigned myself to the fact that I'll never get to play it.

Conditional_Axe

I am in the exact same position. There are cases with my usual gang where my name being attached to a game is the difference between it happening and not happening. And I really want to just take it easy and be a PC for a change. So, now, it's basically either me running a game or nothing happening at all. It's lame.

Mongrel Idiot

I know the feeling. Ever since I stopped playing out at a hobby shop six years ag0 (holy fuck, has it really been six years???) I've been DMing everything. I played in a few crappy campaigns, but any game that went anywhere I had to run. I tought most of the people I play with how to play, so they just sort of accept me behind the screen as the status quo. Kinda sucks, but I enjoy it.

We just do D&D, though we're thinking about giving the Serenity RPG a shot.

SanderJK

3 more weeks and i can take a 4 month hiatus as GM because we're pausing our game, hooray!

Golem

I recommend everone here should read "Knights of the Dinner Table" a great comic which makes great fun of the "Just need a temp GM" pan to 7years down the road you still the "Temp GM" :P

Asuma

Been there, GM'd for *mrpphhl* years, retired. Sometimes you just need a break...

rucdoc

well not to toss more of a load on you, but seeing as you play/played 40k try running a Inquisitor game. the rules are all online, and free through specialist games, part of the GW greater family. it's really fun and you could use your 40k minis.

Reynolds

I get stuck with the 'nobody else wants to do it' job a lot. I make them run at least one game between my runs, though.

INeedNoSalt

One of my buddies is in that role, and although I want to GM something, I'm just horrible at it.

Napoleon

I used to be a player-only type of guy, but the first group I gamed with kinda split up so I started another one, with 3 noobs, an experienced player, and a guy who bought Car Wars when it came out. Yeah, hes like 40 and I'm 21. Youd think he'd be GMing our games but he's like me; he loves playing the games. So I am the only one left competant enough to run a game. I run and have been running a Spycraft campaign for 2.5 years. I guess I have fun GMing, but it's so much stress and anxiety for me. I think I'm a good GM; lots of fun ideas, crazy combat, weird NPCs and I try to accommodate my PCs. I just wish I could play a RPG sometime, instead of running it. I'd like to be able to just go to a session, not worry about and plan for weeks in advance.
What a dilema.

*sigh*

Well, one of my players fancys himself a GM but he was one of the noobs, and he thinks that a good campaign stems from NPCs that have pages of backstory. This leads to him raping any PCs that damage or even insult his NPCs. He seems to think this is funny sometimes too. Not good GMing. Plus he always wants to run SWD20. *shudder*

mrcheesypants

Well while it seems most of you are grizzlied vets at GM and playing P&P RPGs I'm going to start my RPG career as a GM for shadowrun next weekend (which I'll make a thread for advice right after this thread). I hope I do not continue down the path of only GMing and actually play as a player often.

Forar

I'm not sure where to put this, but this thread was in a G&T "Awesome DM" thread a long while back, and it just so happens that the link is still viable.

The thread has several gems in it, but my personal favourites are him discussing making a game interesting with one player (his girlfriend, who he states isn't much of a gamer), and details a "Zombiegeddon" game he ran, which sounded like several shades of badass.

Perhaps I should start a new thread about awesome GMs/DMs and tips/tricks to make games better but until I get around to that, I wanted to get the thread out there.

Nocren

Back when I was in nuclear engineering school, I was partially running Shadowrun with a few other players/GMs. One of the guys decided he wanted to try GMing the thing so we rolled up all new characters and let him run Foodfight from the First Run book. After that he said that he has a lot more respect for us and said he'll stick to playing.


Also, once we settled onto a set of rules and setting we all decided to round-table a game of BESM. Every 2 weeks or so we rotated GMs. We akined this to an anime series having a pool of directors with a different touch for each episode.

Pkmoutl

I've pretty much been the GM for just about every game that has been run in our group. We all took a quick turn at running D&D when the 3rd edition came out, and I pretty much decided to leave that to everyone else, just so I could handle other things (although I'm getting ready to start running adventure #3 in my Lost Classics series), like Shadowrun, Amber, Silver Age Sentinels, Tales From the Floating Vagabond, and Fates Worse Than Death instead. (I still have yet to run FWTD, mind you)

For the most part, unless someone is running a game I'm either not familiar with or one where we all know the rules (like D&D3e), I cringe and twitch when people run other games. But that's mainly because the people in my group don't know how to keep the bullshit rolling. They can't just gloss over something, they have to stop the fucking game, pour over six different books seven times each, look up shit on the net and telegram the developer over the difference between the damage on a short sword and a machete. Meanwhile, I'm shouting "A machete IS a short sword. Can we PLEASE go back to the game?"

I am not kidding, this actually happened.

So I'm usually more than happy to GM just about anything. Yeah, I'd like to take a break every so often and be a PC, but for the most part, no one in my group has the practice at it or the imagination and the ability to organize their shit to actually pull it off. Well, with several exceptions.

Brother Elliot runs the best Call of Cthulhu I have ever been in. He really has a great sense of the dramatic, and can set the scene really well. He also does well with Chill.

My friend John runs a killer Cyberpunk game. When I mean killer, I mean you better be on your toes, because stupidity will get you killed. I have stories. They'll show up in the other thread at some point.

My wife runs a good Star Wars or Star Trek game, but that's because she never makes them completely serious. It's fun, but most purists (and believe me, she knows her shit) would have a fit. Especially when we had to go and kill a bunch of Muppets because they owed money to the Hutts.

Yes, we had to kill the members of the Swine Trek. I was just there as translator. Droids don't handle weapons, usually.