I GMed my very first game!
This blog entry is a little late, but I still think it's important since many new people are always wondering what it would be like to GM a game.
I know for me I was extremely nervous thinking of all the worse case scenarios that could happen to me. From completely botching up the story to being ostracized from the Fudge IRC channel. All of these fears were completely unfounded as you soon will find out.
My first GM experience crept up on me. My original plan was to watch, practice on my own, and ask questions of the experts. This changed when my good friend Jonas aka "Fudgebob" on the IRC chat said to me, "Hey, why don't you run a game?" I immediately began the wishy-washy-maybes, but he smoothly talked me in to running a game that Saturday.
As I logged off the computer the realization sunk in of what I had just done and I did not even have a story! So, for the next two days (as Saturday was only three days away) I worked feverishly on a story and with all my own print outs, cheat sheets I made to keep from screwing up, and a step by step of the story I logged in to run the game. I lucked out with have only fudgebob and I thought to myself, "Whew, this shouldn't be to difficult."
Boy, was I wrong! To all you Newbie GMs, the first thing you need to get out of your mind is that the story will go the way that you thought it out. It NEVER goes that way. Players are a unpredictable variable in the world of RPGs. When you would think they would try one thing, they try another and that is usually something you did not plan for.
My first experience in the game is when I had a little dinosaur steal a piece of vital equipment and I wanted fudgebob to chase it in to the field and wind up in a nest of them, but low and behold, Fudgebob decided to try to charm it and he rolled pretty good that I'm like, "Great! He just tamed the reptile. That wasn't part of the plan!" Let alone, he wouldn't enter the plains where I wanted too, try to forge the river where I had dinosaurs waiting for him. He just simply went his own way.
After two sessions though, I was graced with another player, shyann (another original thinker who threw me for a loop). After battles with veloci-raptors and collecting their weapons fudgebob and shyann finally got to the goal where I had a sleeping T-Rex waiting for them. I made sure the weather hampered their ability to see so I could at least have one surprise on them. The surprise worked and I sat there chuckling to see how they were going to get their goal without getting eaten.
Low and behold, they wanted to rig all their grenades together to make a super bomb to blow the T-Rex up! I couldn't believe it. I made the task hard to do, but they succeeded! I made their ability to sneak up on it hard to do and they made it! suffice to say, my only little surprise wound up being pummeled by a energy grenade explosion. Suffice to say, the mission did not go according to how I wanted it to go, but this is something I'm glad that happened.
If the story had gone by the book, my job would have been boring. I would not have had the chance to think on my feet without letting my players know that they had just stumped me. It is something that you should revel in and try your best.
Fudgebob was excellent in pointing out mistakes I made and taught me how to go with the flow, How to allow the players to describe their victory when they won instead of me. Do not be scared of GMing. It's a fun experience that I enjoy more then playing. To be able to watch my players panic because they think they are about to be eaten gives you such a happy feeling (in an evil sort of way). Stories are interactive and I know these adventures will live in my mind longer then any video game will.
If you want to know more about the game that was run or want to try it yourself. You can find it on the FudgeRPG repository as “A Fudgey Tale: Tears of the Jungle”.
