This is no self-pitying tract, but the result of some serious self-analysis. I've realised I'm such a poor gamesmaster - in the sense that I can't keep a campaign going - because my first love is "playing" roleplaying games, not running them.
When I'm designing scenarios or dungeons it's always from the perspective of creating scenes I'd like to participate in - rather than "neutral scenes" that the players' actions can bring to life.
Part of the problem is certainly due my inability, following my stroke, to concentrate for very long on one thing. I'm very easily distracted. But that's only part of it.
Thinking back to the heyday of our gaming gaggle, the gamesmasters were (nearly) always Steve and Nick, with Pete and I as the regular players. These days Steve has moved away, and is kept busy by his job, and Nick has grown out of RPGs and fills his out-of-office hours with raising my godson, Alec.
All my fondest gaming memories from days of yore involve my characters in games run by other people. I have no recollection (bar one awful Traveller pick-up I winged when Nick couldn't make it to the school's games club one evening) of me actually running anything.
Now, with the advent of the Tuesday Knights, it's been up to Pete and I to run things and while Pete has done a sterling job of sticking to his Top Secret SI campaign, I've fannied about, chopping and changing my campaign ideas - as discussed back in August - culminating in our current fantasy game which I think has failed its saving throw during character creation (another Traveller throwback for the old timers, there).
We had a loose setting, everyone had rolled up characters, but I found my burning bright enthusiasm had gone completely. I had been creating a campaign that I wanted to play in, but not run. I wanted to be the one scouting ahead in the cold, claustrophobic caves, trying to avoid prowling monsters... not the one playing the monsters.
Because the games are not shaping up how I'd like to play them - in very nebulous terms - my interest wanders, as it is wont to do these days.
But, of course, when it comes to gaming - and me GMing - my gnat-like attention span wastes the times and brainpower of my players, who are - understandably -becoming increasing jaded about creating detailed characters for any campaign I come up with because they know it will probably come to nought.
I want to keep the Tuesday Knights going, as we've assembled an awesome band of eager gamers, several of whom I would never have otherwise met, but somehow I need to overcome my personal hang-ups with running games.
If only I'd kept that first game going back in 2008, how different things would be. But I had to dick around with it and instead of creating a firm foundation on which to build a long-running campaign, I created a bed of broken rocks that have served only as the unstable grounding for several failed games.
I love roleplaying - and reckon I could run a half-decent game if I found a system better suited to my style of gamesmastering - but I want to play. I want to have wild, fantastical adventures a million miles from the mundanity of real life, I want to explore dungeons by torchlight, stake vampires in seedy nightclubs, travel to the stars, struggle against insanity in the face of things man was not meant to know...
Over the years (RPG'ing since 1984, GM'ing since 1988-ish) I've heard a lot of GMs tell about their gnat-like attention spans. I myself have Aspergers, so I'm one to judge harshly. BUT: there's no such thing as an "attention span" like it's a condition that happens to you. Imho.
ReplyDeleteYou're frank in admitting that you had to 'dick around' with your existing campaign. Well then, try to GM as good (and consistent!) as possible. That should build -or repair- a foundation from which you might inspire fellow GMs to rise up and master YOUR characters.
(It's ok to feel out in the cold if all you're doing is GMing and never playing).
Maybe it would help to pick something that is pretty easy to run, very flexible, and lets the DM participate more like a player in some ways. Something like Dungeon World, or Fictive Hack.
ReplyDeleteFrom reading your blog, I think your self-diagnosis is accurate. Here are three suggestions:
ReplyDelete1. Find a GM. It's hard in small towns to expand a gaming circle, so this may not be possible.
2. Play online. With Google+, Infrno, or other virtual tabletops it's easy to find a game and meet that hack n' slash itch.
3. Stop starting campaigns! Run one-shots (using pre-gens if necessary) that begin and end a story in a single session. Move to another genre without guilt whenever the mind wanders.
4. Try DreamPark. I haven't played this myself, but Siskoid often talks about how it easily allows the same PCs to float from genre to genre--dinosaur gunslingers one session, Martian pirates the next, with no justification needed.