(TFT) I knew this guy

["David Michael Grouchy II" <david_michael_grouchy_ii@hotmail.com>]

    I knew this guy.  He was the most insane DM I ever met.  But he taught 
me to role play.  I consider some of his foibled apporaches to be genus.  
But one night he had us laughing so hard we couldn't breath.  Apparently he 
didn't know what 'paranoid' meant.
    Robert Miles had spent the summer of 1979 in Wisconson.  When he 
returned he was raving about this "great new game."  Of course he didn't 
have a copy of it or anything so we just took his description and made up 
our own version.  He was right.  It was a lot of fun.
    It was natural for him to DM.  He had a certain amount of authority 
about him.  Being the one to introduce us to role playing and all.  But he 
was no good with groups.
    He had tried having a couple of get togethers where anywhere from three 
to twelve people would show up to role play.  His dad would bar-b-que, his 
mom would make lots of kool-aid and they would give us the whole dining room 
to ourselves.  We would game some times untill ten o'clock at night.
    But Robert would spend most of his time DMing by taking one person out 
of the room and giving them secret information, or making them fight 
something one on one.  Or when he did produce a monster it was only one 
monster.  The rest of us would trounce it in one turn.  So he would go back 
to taking one person at a time out of the room for a fight.
    And he was very secretive.  He had his spiral binder with tons of notes 
and graph paper in it.  I still have no idea what was in there.  He would 
take it with him in and out of the room.  Held very close to his chest with 
both arms wrapped around it.  Even when pulling the sliding doors to the 
dining room closed.
    So we finally decided for Robert that we would hang out in the back 
yard and he could come take us one at a time into the dinning room. where 
they could actually sit down and use the table for the fights.  And there in 
the yard we had some discusion about our DM and his aversion to group play.  
We also knew he was sensitive and touchy about accusations so any 
suggestions we made would have to be done very very delicately.
    As a group we went into the dining room.  We told him we had approached 
him all together because we wanted him to know that we all agreed.  That we 
thought he might be, possibly, just a tiny bit, on the paranoid side.  I'll 
never forget his reaction.
    He looked up from his binder and said "No I'm not.  You guys just made 
that up to go against me."  After going out in the yard and laughing for a 
while someone when in and showed him paranoid in the dictionary.  
Particularly the part about distrust of others.

    David Michael Grouchy II


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