(TFT) I knew this guy

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

I knew this guy

  Four players with me as the DM.  One of the guys is pestering me to run 
AD&D.  None of them have ever heard of TFT and we dont have any books 
availiable, so I figure 'what the heck.'  He is suggesting for a week that I 
run.  He really wants to play, and the other guys have played AD&D a couple 
of times before.
  First I run a very efficient character generation session.  Everyone is 
able to roll up a character, choose a class, and buy starting equipment in 
an hour flat.  This has got to be some kind of record for AD&D.  'This is 
going well,'  I think.
  Everyone's attention is focused.  The suspension of disbelief is starting 
to creep into the air.  The players have given their characters interesting 
names.  So we start.  The problem comes with the first encounter.  Now I 
have to admit that I haven't run AD&D in a long time.  So my memory of some 
of the spells and monsters is a little fuzzy.  Memory of the combat system 
is hazier than that.
  They encounter a couple of bugbears and start a fight.  We are no more 
than two or three turns into the fight when this guy, the one who practially 
begged me to run, says 'That is not right.  You're doing it all wrong.'  I 
can feel the sparkle of imagination evaporate from the room.  Suspension of 
disbelief has left the building.
  I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong.  Or more accurately, what I am doing 
that is different from how his DM used to do it.  'How should it go?' I ask. 
 Apparently he takes this as a challenge.  A dark cloud settles in the room 
as he challenges me on seven different points.  A whole litany of mistakes.  
I don't remember any of the specifics now, it doesn't really matter, most of 
them were differences in style.
  'I see.  Why don't you run?'  Now I'm planning on making a character real 
quick, and getting the game going again.  But, it turns out that he takes 
this as a challenge too.
  'I will.'  He says, and he litterally snatches the Monster Manual from my 
hands.  Then he calls everyone else from the couches over to the kitchen 
table.  Over to the kitchen table with only four chairs.  I just kind of sit 
there on the couch and listen as the game goes on for about a half hour.  I 
get the distinct feeling that he does not want me to come join in the game.
 Very strange.  Kind of insulting, but I push that feeling aside and try to 
be objective about it.  I'll just listen.  I chill on the couch and keep 
both ears open.  Maybe I can pick up some new descriptions, or even hear 
players having fun.  But one by one the other players start making thin 
excuses and dropping out of the game.  An hour and a half into it, the game 
is over.  I have just witnessed a complete disaster of a game.  The subject 
of role playing is never mentioned by any of them again.

  Years later one of the players in my regular group decides he wants to 
GM.  His name is Merlin Schweitzer, and he is one of the quite players that 
doesn't say much during the games, but he's really hot to run all of a 
sudden.  First he runs a Runequest game.  He really likes Runequest.  But he 
doesn't know the game that well.  Unfortunately several of the other players 
knew everything about Runequest.  The 'profesional' Runequest players 
shatter his confidence and destroy his campaign in almost no time.
  So he regroups and makes a Traveler campaign.  He really likes Star Treck 
and is just brimming over with ideas.  But it turns out he's not quick with 
details on the technology.  The players who are physics majors make soup out 
of his campaign in no time.  I think one of the egg heads even laughed at 
him.
  Merlin is tough.  He regroups, and makes a TFT campaign.  I do a little 
PR work for him behind the scenes.  'Go easy on the guy.'  'Give him a 
chance.'  'Let him get the story going.'  I say things like this in private 
to each one before the session.  It doesn't help.  The characters anhiliate 
every monster he throws at them, and take little to no damage themselves.  
His tactics are easily exploited.  After two hours of this one can see that 
he is getting discouraged.  But he calls a short break and writes up a new 
encounter.
  He calls us back to the table and has us set up in the middle of the 
board.  He then proceeds to get every single miniature in the house and 
surrounds us with them.  It's incredible.  Every single miniature painted or 
unpainted.  Our characters are surrounded by this sea of one hundred and 
twenty undead.  He has really got our attention now.
 There are eight players.  Two wizards, polearms, and some high DX guys.  
We begin beating them.  Some of us take damage.  But we keep surviving.  Row 
after row fall.  The rotting bodies of undead are pilling up around us.  We 
run out of fatigue, healing potions, arrows, and even break one of the 
polearms.  But we keep surviving.  We hold out to the very end and slay the 
last zombie.  We only took one casualty.  We had a blast.

  Later Merlin pulls me aside.  He doesn't want to run TFT again.  He tells 
me he's always had a soft spot for AD&D and he wants to run, but he only 
wants one player; me.  So I roll up a character and let him DM me for weeks. 
 We had about ten sessions, before he gets discouraged and stops.  I may 
not know much about AD&D, but apparenty I remember a lot more than he does.  
I'm begining to realize I'm just as bad as other players when it comes to 
out witting the DM.
 It's at the end of the last session and he's telling me about the 
frustrated feeling he's getting trying to DM any game.  It is then that I 
realize what I should have learned from that disasterous AD&D game I tried 
to run all those years ago.  A DM/GM should know the game at least as well 
as the player, if not better.  Ideally they should know it a LOT better.
  I tell him this.  Further, I tell him it seems to me in the early days of 
D&D the DMs were very secretive with their campaigns*.  And nobody really 
knew the game that well anyway.  So it was easier to start out as a DM back 
then.  Now in days everyone has read all the modules, and fought all the 
monsters, so its harder.  I recomended that he go to the game shop and get a 
system that no one else has run.  Learn it and then run me on that.  Which 
he did.
 He bought an obscure game called 'Beyond The Supernatural.'  Spent some 
time runing solo fights, and built up some ghastly scenarios.  It turns out 
he is a horror GM, and a fair one at that.  Who knew.

 Here it is years later and I'm reflecting on all this.  If I had to do it 
all over again I think I would have given him different advice.  I mean he 
GM'ed for quite a while, and his games went well.  But he doesn't GM any 
more, and he hasn't in years.  I don't think I really got to the crux of the 
matter.  I don't think I really addressed what happens when players try to 
eat their GM.
  In the second to last paragraph of the section above there is an asterix. 
 I feel that sentence touches on the reall issue.  My memory of the dawn of 
role playing is one of DM's who guarded their 'secret campaign' notebook 
with their life.  No one could touch it, let alone look at it.  It gave an 
aura of authority to person when they would consult their binder, even make 
notes in it, but no one knew what they were doing or what it said.  Detailed 
notes add a layer of authority and keeps players guessing.  I realize now 
that in the disasterous AD&D game I tried to run I didn't have any campaign 
notes.  In fact the very books I was using belonged to the guy who had asked 
me to run.

    David Michael Grouchy II


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