Fantasy

The fantasy genre is a hugely broad one, taking in many different themes and sprawling across time and space from cod-medieval mediocrity to modern worlds with fantasy elements lurking in the background and even taking in alternate histories, traditionally more the province of science fiction. The fantasy milieu is usually the one that gamers start with, growing familiar rather quickly with gaming’s take on elves, dwarves and the like, so much so that these things are a cliché and a shorthand for gaming as a whole.

 

High Fantasy

High or epic fantasy takes place within a world removed from our own where the rules are different, where magic is powerful and widespread, where fantastical monsters, creatures and races roam the land and it is a genre in which the stories are generally epic, sweeping and wide ranging and deal with grandiose and world-shaping plots of good against evil.

 

The classic example of the High Fantasy Epic is The Lord of the Rings.

 

High Fantasy is what a lot of RPGs aspire to be and there’s a lot in High Fantasy that lends itself to gaming well. The – relative – black and white of good and evil makes plotting easier and the physical and spiritual presence of evil makes for simpler way to introduce villains and to excuse their motivations. Fate and destiny can also be used to more explicitly manipulate characters in a way that might be inexcusable in other subgenres. High Fantasy is also very much suited to mid and long scale campaigns divided into significant sections or ‘chapters’ and where you have definite conditions of victory and an end to the plot.

 

On the downside expectations are high and the relatively slow rate of character advancement in many fantasy games can be frustrating when it comes to getting to the grand action. It’s also hard, given many fantasy RPG systems, to have truly mixed party levels of competence. Frodo and Aragorn in the same party can be hard to pull off well in many systems, especially those with mechanically heavy, encounter-oriented, carefully balanced systems. The nature of High Fantasy games doesn’t particularly lend itself to unending games, where you go on playing until things peter out, unless you play it generationally with new heroes rising in the same world time after time to face down the same evil, reincarnated or resurgent in each generation.

 

Running a successful High Fantasy game is a matter of managing to make every character shine in their own way – something that doesn’t happen so much in the genre fiction. Not everyone can be destined to be the High King but each character will need their moment to shine and their own great destiny, something tailored to the player and what they find inspiring and perfect for their character. The other big trick is to incorporate all the high-powered fantasy elements without slipping over into the land of cheese and pastiche. The secret of accomplishing that is to treat these elements with gravitas and seriousness and to ensure that they’re consistently treated within their own internal logic, even if you – as the Games Master – are the only one who knows or understands the rules you’ve made for yourself.

So, now you’ve got a group and a place to play you just need something to play. Quite a lot of people, surprisingly, are system monogamous (or bigamous), while that means you’re not going to have this challenge, per se, it can still be a problem all of its own in a group that includes people that like other games and you still need to keep these things in mind in deciding what spin to give your game. If your players are all over the place on their favourite systems, games and themes then you’re going to get a clash that needs to be resolved somehow.

How to Choose
There’s a few different ways you can settle the argument of what game to play, none of them are entirely satisfactory but they should let you come to an acceptable compromise, or at least to shut the whiners up one way or the other.

GM Fiat
You’re the one running the bloody game; you’re the one that gets to choose. If the Games Master isn’t happy then nobody’s happy and if they want to play a game at all, then they’re going to have to do what you say and play what you want and tough titty if they want to do otherwise. One the plus side this establishes the Games Master’s authority right from the start and sorts out what you’re going to play with no quibbling. On the minus side, people who really, genuinely, don’t want to play a game are going to pout and possibly spoil it for everyone else.

Votes
Work out what all the different games are that people might want to play, each list them on a different piece of paper and then give each of them a score based on how much you want to play them, 1-5 or 1-10 works well. The Games Master then tots up all the scores and the one with the highest score is the one that you play. This only works if everyone’s honest and it tends to mean the same games dominate session to session unless something new really takes everyone’s fancy, but it does also tend to mean that everyone can at least tolerate whatever game it is you do end up playing.

Lucky Dip
Everyone writes down one game that they want to play and drops it into a ‘hat’ (or a dice bag, or a box or whatever). Then the Games Master draws one of the notes out of the hat and that’s what you’re going to play. This puts everyone on equal footing, gives everyone an equal chance but it can result in very unpopular choices that one person likes and everyone else doesn’t, a group predominantly of gritty horror fans playing Furry Pirates or something. Not good.

Round Robin
Use one of the methods above but only to determine what order each of the games should be played in. That gives people more time to get used to the less popular choices and makes sure that everyone gets their crack of the whip. On the downside the unpopular choice may loom over all the other games like a black cloud and motivate people to keep these other games going on longer than they should, simply to hold off the inevitable terror of Bunnies and Burrows.

Gauging the Mood
The easiest way to work out what mood people are in and what sort of game they want to play is to ask them. People aren’t always honest though and don’t always answer truthfully about how they feel or what they’re really in the mood for, plus you need to somehow collectivise everyone’s mood together and figure out a game that either makes the best of the overall mood or that hits several different emotional notes as you’re going along. That’s also difficult.

This isn’t really the sort of thing you can be advised on, empathy is something you have or you don’t have and you don’t always have the option to shift the feel of a game session from comedy to tragedy or vice versa. Just be aware of the cues going on as you play, the way people react, how ‘intense’ or ‘shallow’ they’re playing as you go along, be responsive and don’t try to force something that isn’t really working.

Once you’ve gotten a group together you need somewhere to actually play the games. You don’t need a huge amount of space, just a table with room for a fistful of people, enough space to roll some dice and a bit of peace and quiet for a handful of hours. Can’t be too difficult to get, can it?

Home
The obvious place to choose to play is at home, either in your home or that of another member of your group. You’ve got the advantages of comfort, familiarity and you – or whoever else it is – doesn’t have to lug their entire gaming library to the new location. On the downside there might be a lot of non-gaming people around, interrupting, getting under your feet and otherwise causing all sorts of mayhem and mishaps. Sometimes spouses and house sharers can be less than understanding about tramping hordes of gamers descending upon the house and messing up the place and that’s another disadvantage, you might have to tidy up. It can also be a little difficult to get people to leave once the gaming is over, releasing the hounds can be helpful in this regard.

School
Schools often offer rooms for hire or for after-school activities and you can use these to game in. Schools are often central to areas and can help you get a bit of publicity for your gaming group, plus you can recruit some new gamers from the fledgling hordes of acne-ridden adolescents in need of some power fantasies. On the minus side you might have to include students in the club, be attending, or have a kid going there in order to use the facilities, plus other after school groups may well interrupt or cause problems for you by running up and down the corridors or – badly – practising the trombone in the next toom.

Pub
Pubs often have rooms for rent that you and your group can use, like schoolrooms. The disadvantage here, as with the schoolrooms is that this costs money, but with a big enough group – or a couple of groups – you can spread the cost and then it’s not going to be so much. You’re also going to be restricted on time, usually the rooms are paid for by the hour and the pub does, eventually, close. Another drawback is that pubs sell booze, that means no underage players and it also often means that your players get plastered which, while occasionally funny, can also be a bloody nuisance when someone vomits on their character sheet or starts telling you why they love you in the middle of a scene.

Shop
Gaming shops often have play spaces that you can use to meet up at. Some of these are only open after hours and some of these are only open during hours, each approach has its own issues. If they’re only open during shop hours then that’s no use to you if you work, if they’re only open after hours then time may be restricted and the shop gaming room is more likely to be oversubscribed. In either case there’s likely to be a lot of interruptions and, being surrounded by all that swag, you might be tempted to spend a lot of money on gaming stuff that you wouldn’t otherwise buy; a boon for the shop owner, but not necessarily for you.

Room Sharing Issues
Sharing rooms with multiple role-playing groups has its good and bad sides, on the plus side you get a nice, vibrant feel to a room with lots of people in it and you get to mix with and meet a lot of other gamers, whether you know them already or not. On the minus side the noise makes it difficult to play and if you’re trying to have an intense and serious session of one game while someone else is having a boisterous game of Paranoia or Sea Dracula then you’re shit out of luck. It also tends to be the case that some people don’t take such good care of rooms as the rest of you, but you all end up carrying the can for one person’s bad behaviour.

Burn them in effigy and they might get the hint.

Teh Interwubz
There’s some other possibilities but one that’s really worth mentioning is the use of the Internet. You can use e-mail lists, IRC, chatrooms or potentially Google Wave to coordinate a game. If so inclined you could also spend a small fortune setting up a Second Life area to play in, but that’s not really going to conform to the rules of the game. The Internet is great for all sorts of communication and you can play across it but there’s disadvantages as well. If you’re using a dice-rolling program then all your rolls will be open, making ‘fudging’ the rolls towards a certain outcome more difficult. Not everyone can type quickly either and this can really slow things down no end, even more so if they’re dyslexic or just relatively illiterate and that makes it no fun for people to play at their end either. Playing online tends to really slow things down unless the system you’re using is really abstract, so reckon on things like combat taking even longer.

There’s some nice tools out there that can give you virtual tabletops and tools to help you with the rule of the game but these tend to be amateurish, complicated and not very intuitive to use and they also tend to only cater to a few of the major systems on the market. At the time of writing Wizards of the Coast still haven’t brought out their 3D virtual tabletop and it’s become something of a joke in any case. It remains to be seen if that – or some similar software – can truly provide a real, full suite of online role-playing options that works, is adaptable and is user friendly. Don’t hold you breath!

Forming a Group
These days this is probably about the biggest obstacle to any successful game, getting people to play. It's possibly a downer to go over all the problems but if you're aware of them you can either give up without trying and save yourself the trouble, or be aware of the issues as you're going into them.

• There's a lot of competitors for gamer's time these days. Computer games, MMORPGs, card games, all sorts. Even if you get people who want to play, they're going to want to do a lot of other things as well, leaving less time for gaming.
• Gamers are an aging demographic, that means we're shrinking in size and there's even more demands on a lot of gamers' time, partners, kids, work, all takes its toll.
• Game shops aren't as common as they used to be, eliminating a major meeting place for gamers.
• Gaming has gone from being Satanic (which is kind of cool) to nerdy, which isn't. While there's some 'geek chic' going on it seems to only really exist/persist within existing geek culture.
• These are problems, but they're not insurmountable with the right approach and some can even be turned into positives.

Friends with Benefits
It's pretty likely that when you started gaming (or if you are starting now) that the first people you gamed with were your friends. They're the ones you could rope into trying it and if anyone stuck with it it's likely some of those original friends that you played with. Friends make some of the best members of your gaming group, you know each other, know what you like, have a rapport and are likely to be fairly forgiving with each other and you'll be more likely to find some time to spend together, for whatever reason, not just for gaming but for any other reason. Friends are also more likely to offer up somewhere to play and spouses are more likely to be understanding about you spending time with your friends.

Perfect Strangers
Meeting new people to game with can be a bit of a bind. Where are you going to meet? Sure, there’s some RPG clubs dotted about here and there and a few shops, but probably your best bet is running into people at conventions or the occasional serendipitous encounter.* It can be hard to suss out whether you’re going to get on with someone from such a brief meeting and a chat, but it’s better than nothing. As with dating, go with your instinct to start with and don’t be afraid to run, screaming for the hills if they turn out to be a creepy psycho.

*I met some of my best friends and lifelong gaming friends only because another gaming friend mentioned monowire while playing laser tag. That’s serendipitous.

Blind Dates
Another way of hooking up with new gamers is to answer ads in magazines or on the Internet and to find people near you in that way. This way of hooking up with people is even more random and unpredictable than chance encounters or stalking gamers in stores or conventions. You’ve really got nothing to go on other than the way they write, what they say and maybe a picture, if you’re lucky. Again, there’s no harm in going and meeting up, but it might be a good idea to take a friend with you. People aren’t likely to be killer psychos, but things might be weird or uncomfortable and it’s always good to have backup when you’re meeting any strangers. As with the random encounters mentioned before you shouldn’t be afraid to cut and run or to break off contact if it just isn’t working. Sometimes things don’t work out, even with other gamers.

Conventions
For your part, when you’re at a convention you and your existing group can do things to maximise your opportunities to meet new people, there’s little point all just playing together like you were at home after all! Split up, maybe in pairs so you can feel a little comfortable and then mix it up in as many events and games – or running games – as you can. That gives you your best chance of meeting new people, making new friends, getting new gaming partners and scoring! Bonus!

The Internet
There’s plenty of forums out there, plenty of social networking sites, blogs, e-mail lists, twitter and so on that can get you together with other gamers. Getting you together with other gamers in striking distance of yourself is a little more difficult. Many clubs and groups do make their own websites as well and you can do the same thing. Make sure you’re easy to find via e-mail and that your general location is listed on such a site so that potential players can find you and get in touch with you. The real problem is that the role-playing scene is completely fractured across many, many, many different sites and there’s no real, universal, central point for you to find people and to communicate. Because of this you’ll need to spread your efforts as far and wide as you can. Some ideas to draw interest might include…

• Lots of pictures – people pay more attention to pictures than text.
• Podcasting – You could record some of your sessions on audio, or discuss them, or products you’ve bought that you like. Gamers do value each other’s opinions and that can draw an audience.
• Play reports – Summaries of your sessions and some of the ‘war stories’ from them can give people an idea what your sessions are like and whether they’ll fit in as well as giving clues to the game systems and types of games you like to run.

Schools & Colleges
Schools have a lot of activities after their official hours are over. Community schools may have rooms for hire for clubs and groups to use as well. It’s potentially creepy to play across a big age gap and some games might not be suitable but schools are often the hubs of communities and good places to get the word out about your group and your games.

College or university is also a great place to put gaming groups together, lots of people packed into one institution, away from home and looking to socialise and find new friends. There’s usually plenty of rooms and facilities to host games and directories and notice boards upon which you can advertise. The gaming friends you make there might well be friends for life and universities might well be the hubs of any local gaming clubs in any case, whether you attend or not.

Hobby Shops
While there are less hobby shops around these days, that does mean that the ones that remain are good hubs for meeting other gamers. You can also find out who plays what by seeing what they buy and what they look at, many stores also host games and tournaments during or after hours and most will also have a notice board or let you set out some poorly photocopied fliers for your gaming group. They’re an excellent place to be a stalker and you can lurk behind the miniatures racks ready to pounce out on whoever looks like they might play something you like. Games Workshop stores don’t work so well, they don’t like anyone talking about anything that isn’t one of their games and you can get thrown out, so take it easier there or lurk outside and pounce people as they leave.

A great deal of being a successful GM is in successfully balancing your needs from the game and those of each of your players. This is not an easy prospect, especially with a group of practised and experienced gamers. Some people's desires from a game are virtually incompatible and the only way you can achieve any sort of balance there is by switching from one style or focus to another either within a game or from session to session. This isn't a perfect solution either as it can make games become a little schizophrenic. Here's how you deal with it...

A game doesn't have to be perfect.

So long as you're all having fun most of the time you can let go of the 'need' to run a perfect game. After all, we can't all be Spielbergs and so long as you're not being Uwe Boll, everything's going to be just fine. Games can be pretty forgiving; they're played over longer periods. People don't remember everything session to session, even if they make notes. You can shift the game as you go along to find the 'sweet spot' for your group and you can get feedback from your players to make everything better over time.

So long as you all make a bit of an effort, together, to make for a good game, everything will be fine, really.

Knowing what kind of players you have in your game is helpful and lets you tailor things to suit the group that you have. Different players with different needs can lead to problems in the group but actual problem players are a breed apart. Any player can be a problem player in combination with whatever other kinds of player they are, but that doesn't mean they have to stay a problem, you can either fix it or, provided there aren't other issues in the way, you can exclude them from the group. You shouldn't be afraid of being selective over who you play with, even when it can be troublesome getting a group together. If someone consistently ruins games and can't be 'tamed' or moderated, then, frankly, you can be better off without them.

Other issues can be tackled...

The Centre of Attention
Problem: This player constantly wants to be at the lead of the action, always wants to be the one moving and shaking and getting things done and resents it when other players are in the spotlight, practically vibrating in frustration and pent up need to be leading the action. If allowed to indulge this they'll marginalise the other players, if not their presence can exasperate and upset the other players since their disquiet is obvious.
Solution: If they can be made to recognise that they're having an issue then maybe they'll moderate their behaviour. You can also deliberately play up the roles of the other players by emphasising the skills and abilities that their characters have so that everyone gets their time in the spotlight.

The Cheat
Problem: OK, so RPGs aren't competetive, they're storytelling exercises, even so, without risk, without the role of randomness in the game you might as well just be sitting around telling stories. Risk, the chance of failure, adds spice to the game and so when people cheat, lie about their die rolls, alter their character sheets, they rob the game of some of its appeal and their in-character accomplishments of worth. They also marginalise and sideline the more honest players, who can't match their 'success'.
Solution: As the Games Master you can do some things to moderate cheating behaviour. You can insist on public rolls in a box or through a die-rolling tower, you can insist on making all the rolls yourself or you could even institute a mert/demerit system within the game, rewarding people for paying attention and playing nice and punishing people for being disruptive and cheating. You could also shift to playing more indie/story games, where there's less emphasis on the vagueries of random chance and more on the story, less chance to cheat.

The Deviant
Problem: It's a great strength of the role-playing community that we're so welcoming and so non-judgemental. However, it's also a great weakness since we allow in and tolerate people that would be thrown out of a furry swinger's club. If you've got a greasy-haired living-potato at your gaming table, in semen-encrusted jogging bottoms, reeking of cabbage and stale sweat and gently massaging their genitals over hermaphroditic ocelot porn between turns, you have a problem.
Solution: Kill it with fire.

The Disinterested Tagalong
Problem: It's all very well when friends and loved ones take an interest in your hobby but not everyone likes roleplaying and when someone is playing who isn't really interested and is acting like a martyr, only because they want to show an interest in their friend/partner, it drags the whole game down into a hole.
Solution: "You know, you really don't have to be here if you don't enjoy it. Not everything is for everyone."

The Frustrated Gamesmaster
Problem: Some people just aren't happy unless they're in control. Every Games Master is different and many have very different playing styles to each other. The way one Games Master does something can drive another Games Master crazy and some have a bit of an issue letting go of control and relaxing in order to enjoy playing.
Solution: The best way to solve this problem is to remind the player how they'd feel if someone was second guessing them in one of their own games. If they're a half decent Games Master that should be all it takes to get them back on the straight and narrow. Another possible way to get around these problems is to share the Games Mastering duties and work together.

The Kid
Problem: A big age difference in a group can lead to a little bit of disomfort and a disconnect. This might be because you're at a gaming club where there's little or no control over who joins the group, it might be because you're at a convention or it might be because a younger sibling is foisted upon you by a well meaning but ignorant parent.
Solution: Frankly, we should do all we can to encourage younger players to game and maintain an interest. If that means moderating your language and playing slightly less adult game themes, then so be it, so long as it's not forever. If you're playing a more mature game then a frank explanation to the parent, or even the kid, might do the trick. If need be you can always organise kids games seperately.

The Munchkin
Problem: The munchkin issue has been satirised and played out in a huge number of ways and the munchkin has almost become a figure of affection. Games like 4th Edition D&D even seem to go out of their way to acknowledge and encourage the munchkin, legitimising 'character builds', optimised for specific purposes and exploitation of the rules. Regardless, munchkins are an issue for games, overpowered, playing the rules rather than the game and tending to drag other players along in their wake, simply so that they can compete and feel useful.
Solution: More of an emphasis on story and roleplay will disarm the munchkin a little, as will using puzzles and other non-rules oriented game problems. Munchkinism can often be a 'stage' that a player will grow out of. Even so, it can be fun to engage with munchkinism sometimes and to play a game where it doesn't matter so much, just so you can all get it out of your system.

The Ninja
Problem: It needn't actually be a ninja, but there's something that this player is obsessed with and seeks to play some version of in every, single game they ever play, even where it's completely inappropriate. Needless to say this can get annoying for Games Masters and for other players as yet another ninja makes their presence felt in a game that's supposed to be about sentient clams, or whatever...
Solution: Gentle encouragement to try other things might work, so long as they get to indulge their fantasy once in a while. Wish fulfilment and fantasy is, after all, a large part of what gaming is about. They just need to learn to accept that they need to moderate their needs with that of others.

The Non-Player
Problem: Having someone in the room who isn't playing the game can be distracting, disruptive or embarassing. Let's face it, gaming is a strange passtime and we can all be a little self-concious about it. Someone who isn't playing is a disruptive presence, especially if they're bored out of their mind and watching TV, playing on their DS, reading or constantly interrupting the game. This usually happens when it's one of the player's girlfriend or boyfriend.
Solution: Whoever is bringing along the person who doesn't play is the person you need to talk to, though the issue can also be with flatmates and others who don't play. In that case you can possibly trade favours to be left alone while you're gaming.

The Sponge
Problem: Some people just turn up to games, munch all the snacks, drink all the drinks, crash over without properly asking and make a big mess. They're basically taking advantage of hospitality and that eventually breeds resentment, no matter how generous and good natured you all are.
Solution: Even if they're dirt poor, some sort of contribution to munchies should be possible, however small. The rest of it's just down to politeness and it's better to take a firm hand on sooner rather than later, before it becomes habitual.

As with Games Masters there are as many different types of players as there are players. No two people quite want exactly the same thing in the same way no two people like exactly the same books, TV shows or films. You can identify trends in player desires and play styles though and that can be a very helpful thing in crafting a game to suit the group and individual play to suit the individual players.

The Action Hero
The Action Hero wants to do impossible deeds, swing from chandeliers, fight off ten men at once and get away with the damsel in distress. They tend to like games that encourage or include this sort of over-the-top action and may run aground in games that are more gritty and realistic, trying to do things that - in the real world - lead to a quick and messy death. Games Masters may need to loosen up the game and be a bit more generous with Action Hero players but Action Hero players themselves need to be aware that not every game is Zu Warriors of the Magic Mountain.

The Anthropologist
The Anthropologist finds social interaction to be the key to their enjoyment. As well as socialising Out of Character with the group they like to talk up a storm and understand the situation with the Non-Player-Characters in game. This can be a headache for the Games Master who has to keep dozens of NPCs and their motivations clear in their head at all times. The Anthropologist's concern with social interaction can bore other players who like to hit things more. The Games Master should include social scenes where they can shine and get their jollies, but equally the Anthropologist should be gracious and acknowledge that not everyone likes to play out two hour long speeches.

The Expert
The Expert likes their character to be really, really, really good at something. Perhaps they're a sniper or a hyper-specialised magician, perhaps they're a scholar of ancient Egypt, perhaps a computer hacker. Whatever it is the player likes to be an unparalleled genius in that one specific field. Unfortunately in scenes or encounters where that expertise doesn't apply they're probably about as much use as a chocolate fireman. The GM needs to make sure that in every game there's somewhere that The Expert can be useful and that their pre-eminent status doesn't get undermined too much. The player of The Expert needs to realise that there's other people in the game and other topics and ways of going about things, developing some secondary capabilities is probably a good idea.

The Investigator
The Investigator lives to solve the mysteries of the game. They love uncovering layer after layer of plots and schemes until they get to that sublime 'AHA!' moment where everything falls into place. Investigators are good from a Games Master point of view since they can drive the plot forward but there can be a temptation to create overly convoluted plots to appeal to The Investigator which can leave less motivated players behind. The Games Master needs to introduce puzzles at appropriate levels for different players and The Investigator needs to remember to let other players have their moment in the sun.

The 'Me but not Me'
The 'Me but not Me' doesn't quite grasp the idea of playing a character other than themselves, or can't, or prefers to consider how they would act in such a circumstance. The Games Master needs to be careful not to push too many of the player's personal buttons, though some of them can be good to put into the game to increase engagement. The 'Me but not Me' player needs to remember that the other people at the table may not be playing themselves, at all.

The Snowflake
The Snowflake likes to be something special and unique. Maybe they want to be a lost prince or princess, maybe they want to play a race that's normally limited to monsters. Perhaps they want some unique powers. This can, frankly, be a pain in the arse for the Games Master who shouldn't feel that they have to go along with any and all whims of the players. Snowflakes can be good for a game though, excellent for plot hooks and providing something of a focus for the rest of the group. The Games Master should find a way to fit some uniqueness - for all the players - into their games while the Snowflake should try to understand that they make a lot of extra work and perhaps settle for something rare, rather than absolutely unique.

The Thespian
The Thespian craves suspension of disbelief. They want to live the life of their character and work their way entirely into their head. They want to think and act as them and live in their shoes, even for a couple of hours. The Thespian can have trouble compromising their role-play for the good of the group and the game as a whole. As a Games Master it's flattering and enthusing to have someone so into the game but, on the downside, they can resent the out-of-game chatter and socialising that goes on. The Games Master needs to give The Thespian a little more attention and RP opportunity. The Thespian needs to understand that not all the players are like them and some people just like to eat pizza, kill things and take their stuff and take their enjoyment where they can.

The Winner
The Winner likes to conquer, to defeat, to win. They may view the game in an adversarial mode of thought and may even compare themselves to the other players. They're driven to be the best and while this is often a hindrance it can be a boon as they can often take the lead of the player group and play ruthlessly to best the antagonists. Games Masters need to watch Winners as they're more likely to cheat and also needs to up the ante for the difficulty of scenes and encounters to account for how driven they are. Winners need to take a step back, calm down, remember that it's only a game and give the other players more input.

What's a player in an RPG? This seems like a pointless question to ask but I think it is worth exploring. What are you when you're a player in a role-playing game? Are you an actor playing a role? Are you yourself - or some part of yourself - thrown into these situations? Are you like a chess player, only with a single piece, are you the controller of something 'other'? Why are you playing? How do you play? What are you playing for?

Different players have different motivations for playing, some people like to step into the shoes of someone unlike themselves, some people like to win against overwhelming odds, some love tweaking statistics or creating 'optimal builds', some play the system, some play the game, some play make believe.

The only thing all players really have in common that they're participants in the game. In an ideal world all the players have similar playing ideals and goals that compliment each other and the Games Master, but the world is rarely perfect and diversity can have a beauty all of its own. Players are all there at the sufferance of the Games Master and each other though and an awareness of that, of some basis of social etiquette and that - like the GM - each player is there to facilitate each other's fun, and the Games Masters. This is something that I feel's being lost, particularly in the CRPGs and MMORPGs where singular play and internet anonymity makes a lot of players very selfish and focussed entirely on their own fun, that attitude can - unfortunately - carry over into TTRPGs.

Tabletop RPGs are a filthy, commie, pinko, liberal pasttime. They require an awareness of other people, of 'society' to work really well together and the players, as the game's 'proletariat' are essential to the Glorious People's Republic of Gaming! Long live the revolution!

It feels to me as though the role of the Games Master in gaming has been lessening for some years and in two directions. On the one hand there are some games - such as D&D4 - that are so codified and clear-cut in their rulings and systems that the Games Master might as well be a games console, running along a set little track nice and efficiently. On the other hand, the reaction to these kinds of systems has been the 'soft', narrative type games where player input plays a much more significant role in the game - directly rather than through play - than it used to. Case in point being the character/team creation rules in Spirit of the Century.

In some ways this is good, the more set and codified games are easier to prepare for, they're 'plug and play' in a way. You can just slot in a gang of goblins, treasure option B2 and some environmental hazards and you have an 'encounter'. With the softer games the shared burden of coming up with plot hooks and character buy-in relieves the Games Master of a great deal of the weighty burden of coming up with something everyone wants to play and finding reasons for the group to be together. In other ways it's bad, the GM becomes less of an interpreter and gets to put less of a personal spin on what's going on, or they succumb to being a wish fulfilment engine with less of their own narrative engagement with the game and the story.

Of course, you can always ignore both and do your own thing, damn the torpedoes, but it's nice when a game works with you rather than against you, where the system, setting and theme harmonises with the way you want to play. Speaking for myself I'm caught in the middle of the whole ideological 'gaming battle'. My happy place is somewhere between the two extremes.

There are as many different kinds of Games Master as there are people willing to run games for people but they can, nonetheless, be streamed into a number of different types, depending where their focus on the game rests. If you're a player it helps to know what sort of Games Master you have so you can have realistic expectations of the game. If you're a Games Master identifying what sort of GM you are can help you identify your strengths and weaknesses and play to them or overcome them. Here's a few of the more recognisable ones:

Auteur
"The artist doesn't have time to listen to the critics. The ones who want to be writers read the reviews, the ones who want to write don't have the time to read reviews." - William Faulkner

The Auteur has an idea and you're privileged enough to be along for the ride. The Auteur isn't a railroading Games Master in the traditional sense but, rather they have a story to tell and if your irritating player actions get in the way, then they'll get ridden roughshod over. If they add to their idea then that's different, they might get incorporated and run with. The Auteur wants everything to be perfect, to shine light on their idea and for the game to be one of the best ever. If you all get on then this may, indeed, happen. If the player's tastes and ideas differ from those of the GM then you may be in trouble.

Advantages: The Auteur tends to put a lot of work and thought into their games and they're often great, so long as you don't go against the flow too much. The Auteur is unlikely to run out of interest in their own project and so you're pretty much guaranteed the game will run on through to its conclusion.
Disadvantages: The Auteur wants to do everything and they may include playing the player's characters, or at least interfering with them to the extent that they're unrecognisable to the player's original intent. You're also very unlikely to get a lot of leeway in playing the game and while not on rails per se, you're at best on a fairly narrow path.

Autocrat
"Dictatorship is without a doubt the most satisfying form of government...as long as I'm the dictator." - Phil Stromer

The Autocrat desires total and absolute control over the game and will brook no argument, no rules-lawyering and no complaints. They'll probably be quick to chuck people out of the group for being 'disruptive' and arguing their calls and they get off on being 'in charge'. They may even see the Games Master's role as being adversarial in a decidedly old-skool fashion.

Advantages: The Autocrat's game will tend to be organised and efficient, you'll get a lot of gaming done, albeit on their terms. They know how to keep order at the gaming table and to prevent others from spoiling the game.
Disadvantages: You can never quite be sure whether what you do while playing is going to offend and goofing off, half the fun in a lot of games, is less likely to be tolerated.

Captain Play-Doh
"Too little liberty brings stagnation and too much brings chaos." - Bertrand Russell

Captain Play-Doh is whatever you want him to be. You want to play a tense Lovecraftian horror using Bunnies & Burrows? You go it. You want to play a sentient otter with Jedi mind powers in D&D? No problem. Captain Play-Doh is an amorphous mass shaped almost entirely by the desires of the players which can often lead to games that are such an incoherent mess that anyone new joining the group wouldn't have the barest hint of a clue as to what the hell was going on.

Advantages: Whatever you want to play they're up for. Provided your gaming group isn't too wild and crazy (in different ways) this can help ensure everyone has fun and a GM with some flexibility is good for helping everyone get on and get their kicks from the game.
Disadvantages: If your group isn't coherent or of similar taste then you're going to end up with a growling Frankenstein's Monster of a game. Without a backbone Captain Play-Doh is unlikely to stick up for the things that they find fun or to be able to apply some necessary discipline to the game.

Enthusiast
"If you aren't fired with enthusiasm, you will be fired with enthusiasm." -  Vince Lombardi

The Enthusiast is dead keen on something. Perhaps it's Star Wars, Star Trek, Babylon 5 or The Lord of the Rings but it could be something much more obscure, like bats*. Whatever it is they're devoted to it, enthusiastic about it and are a die hard fan. While they know everything about it and can produce games and adventures of startlingly complex subtlety and depth on this subject, outside of it, not so much.

Advantages: Within the paradigm of what they know you won't find a better GM. Even better, everything they do will fit within that universe and no matter how obscure you go, they should know what you're talking about. This is even better if their enthusiasm is for a particular game that you all like to play.
Disadvantages: Outside of their favourite subject the Enthusiast isn't so enthusiastic and their performance will be lacklustre or, even worse, they'll start introducing things from what they do know into games that they don't like so much. AT-ATs as dungeons for example, or even worse.

Homebrew
"He who builds a better mousetrap these days runs into material shortages, patent-infringement suits, work stoppages, collusive bidding, discount discrimination - and taxes." - H. E. Martz

The Homebrew GM never does anything by the book. They build their own games either from scratch or by cannibalising the bits they like from other games and roughly nailing these pieces together and calling them a game, but a game that only they really understand. The Homebrew is a bit different to the professional games designer, who may be looking for playtesting. The Homebrew GM isn't interested in creating a working, professional product so long as their Rowland Emett-like game system does what they want it to do.

Advantages: You'll end up with a system and a game perfectly suited to your GM and the kind of games they like to play as well as their game world. At least they'll think it's perfect and that counts for a lot.
Disadvantages: You're unlikely to understand the system, so they could be just making things up for all you know. Whatever system there is, is likely to change from session to session, constantly pulling the ground from beneath your feet.

The Long Haul
"As you journey through life take a minute every now and then to give a thought for the other fellow. He could be plotting something." - Hagar the Horrible

The Long Haul Games Master is in their element with epic, long-term campaigns rather than individual adventures. They crave the extended story, the slow build up, the reveal and the intricacies and attachment that come with longer games. This long term view covers almost everything they do, meaning that individual adventures can cover... not very much ground.

Advantages: If you have the time and energy to invest in a long term campaign then these are the perfect Games Masters to have. They appreciate character development and if the games are slow to get going, the eventual payoff is worth it.
Disadvantages: If it's a one-off game you're after the Long Haul can be worse than useless as by the time the game gets anywhere you have to wind up the session, so you end up with a ton of different campaign starts that never go anywhere.

The Mayfly
"There are three side effects of acid. Enchanced long term memory, decreased short term memory, and I forget the third." - Timothy Leary

The Mayfly is the opposite of the Long Haul. The Mayfly is a firecracker chain of ideas and enthusiasms but none of them ever, really, seem to amount of much. The constant flow of ideas and distractions pulls them in all directions and makes them a fount of novelty but none of it ever really seems to stick.

Advantages: If you're after a one-off game the Mayfly is your man. Their scattershot of ideas is bound to get a few good hits and if you're really lucky you have another GM in your group who can take some of these good ideas and run with them.
Disadvantages: Even if you start a campaign the Mayfly is likely to lose interest and either change the game you're playing in some way or to want to change to an entirely different game.
Disadvantages:

Referee
"A judge is a law student who marks his own examination papers." - H. L. Mencken

The Referee sees the position of the Games Master as like being 'the guy who knows the rules' in a boardgame. They're there to officiate, to see that the rules are applied fairly and evenly and that the scenario is followed. While they're fair they're also likely to be fairly uncreative - at least where the rules are involved. A style of GMing that has largely fallen out of favour.

Advantages: You're going to be able to get a fair showing in the Referee's games but since most GMs bias in favour of the players, that may feel like they're picking on you rather than being fair. The Referee is going to know the rules though and you're unlikely to have huge pauses in the game while someone looks up a rule in the book.
Disadvantages: Referees tend to be the people who buy modules, so you may well find yourself stuck on rails when it comes to actually playing through an adventure. You're also unlikely to get away with any creative rules bending, even if it makes perfect, logical sense.

*Srsly, I felt really sorry for the guy but it was a non-starter.

The idea of giving the players more direct influence over the course that a game takes has gained a certain amount of cachet in recent years, though it's not exactly a new phenomenon (many Games Masters seek player input into their games, game worlds and adventure settings and topics) it has become more and more mechanically formalised, which is a little contradictory as it's more associated with the story-strong games than the system-strong games. This ranges from special points (Fate/Action etc) that let you interrupt the flow of the game to get re-rolls, trigger special powers or force a redaction of a scene to the more explicit worksheets, merits and flaws that can dictate the way the game will go or provide fodder for a Games Master to create a campaign from.

This isn't all a bad thing, if you're the sort of Games Master who can roll with the punches this sort of stuff can be a real boon, providing constant feedback and direction to the game, making it more of a negotiation between the Games Master and the players and helping everyone get something they like and want from the game. If you're trying to guide characters through a particular story that you like and that you've worked hard on though, you can end up completely sabotaged.

The real problem lies with the fact that players can now interfere with something that was relatively sacrosanct, the plot. Previously Rules Lawyers could argue the toss over the application of the rules and that was bad enough, Rules Lawyers can be a real bane to successful campaigns, now players can also interfere with the plot and the story - in some systems - something that the Games Master could previously cleave to their bosom as relatively inviolate.

Grim's Rules
4. Whatever the game, the guy running it is ultimately the one in charge.
5. Work with your Games Master, not against them - and vice versa.
6. Whatever the game, you don't need to apply all the rules, as written, or at all.

The Games Master might be the adjudicator but they're still, also, a player in their own right and deserve to have a little fun. Believe it or not, from the Games Master side of the table it can seem like the players get all the fun, getting to play their characters in depth and engage in the storylines, to feel the thrill of victory and the bitter taste of defeat. Being the Games Master can seem a bit too much like being an accountant in a large firm, underappreciated but essential, wrestling with dry figures and statistics while everyone else is having high powered board meetings in exotic locations. From the player's side it might look like the Games Master has all the power but it often doesn't feel like it.

It's often overlooked that the Games Master is another player who deserves enjoyment from the game as well, sure, some Games Masters are just awful but still here's a person who has taken the time to come up with an adventure idea and who has been kind enough to offer to run it for you. Their ideas and their game, however hackneyed and/or cheesy, deserve a little bit of respect because without them you wouldn't be playing at all. So, show some appreciation for your Games Master, even if they're not the best one in the world because they're still going to be offering you something you'll have a hard time getting without them.

Sometimes the Games Master can take the idea of being a player in their own game a bit too far of course. This is where the horrifying case of the Games Master Player Character (GMPC) comes in, or even the favoured NPC. Sometimes a Games Master wants to get the joy of playing as well as GMing, but both at the same time. This is when either their character joins the party and they play them out as well as Games Mastering or when a particular NPC that they really like, a LOT, is suddenly all over every plot and scene in the game. Games Masters are only human, they want their character or their favourite NPC to be super competent and effective and suddenly the players can feel sidelined, accomplices to the Super-Character. The best way to avoid the problem is simply not to have Games Master characters in the game at all, ever, period, make it a rule. If your Games Master is being a prick with a super-powerful NPC and disenfranchising the player group, tell them, fix it, don't suffer and bitch in silence.

Grim's Rules
1. Know and understand where your games are coming from, your gaming history and that of your group.
2. Don't GMPC, ever.
3. If someone in your group is being a dick. Tell them, but gently if possible.

The Games Master is the essential crux of just about any conventional role-playing game. Even the new-wave, touchy-feely, GMless games aren't actually GMless, they just require everyone to be the GM all at once. The role of the Games Master - or the expected role at any rate - has changed over the years from the all-powerful gaming demigod and despot of the old days to a more nuanced and cooperative, less oppositional role in more modern role-playing games.

You can describe the role of the Games Master in many ways but none of them are quite accurate and the real thing is a combination of these factors in various different proportions:

• The narrator of a story.
• The referee of the game.
• The banker in monopoly.
• Official interpreter and applier of the rules.

Individually none of these are particularly true but taken as a collective whole they do - somewhat - describe the role of the Games Master. Perhaps the best way to think of the Games Master is to describe them as a 'Facilitator' which, while sounding like corporate weasel-speak is probably the closest to the truth. The Games Master's role, more than anything else, is to try and make sure that everyone at the table - including themselves - has fun. They do this by coming up with good and engaging plots, engaging NPCs and giving the players a good level of challenge for their characters without things being either a complete pushover or a slaughterfest where everyone dies for no good reason.

I think this is the most up-to-date and most effective basis from which to approach being the Games Master of a game, the old-skool adversarial approach where you were actively out to 'get' the players doesn't really wash these days outside of board games such as Descent and the auteur style 'Storyteller' reduces the players to bit part roles in the Games Master's story, which - however good the story might be - isn't what an interactive game should be about.

To that end, I'll try and identify problems in Games Mastering and gaming from this perspective, where the Games Master's role is to provide the commodity of fun to both themselves and their play groups over all other concerns from fairness to proper application of the rules.

Where is there to go from here? Where next? The internet continues to increase in importance for gaming to the point where World of Warcraft - derived from D&D and Warhammer - has all but completely replaced D&D in the public consciousness. Gaming is different, more widespread and more scattered, but there's still things that the new gaming can learn from the old in terms of player participation, storyline, roleplaying, plot and characters.

A good, effective way to play traditional RPGs over the internet is needed, the current options being unwieldy, over technical or vapourware. The existing online games need an injection of the 'traditional values' of old-skool roleplaying games and some old-skool roleplaying games need to be made to try and cater to the new, online situations. Games that can be played over IRC or voice chat without getting bogged down or that make the nature of forums and chatrooms a boon rather than a hindrance.

For me my gaming and my work is pushing more and more in the direction of online, PDF publishing, forums, social media, MMORPGs, Wiki, chatrooms... the internet provides a perfect medium for updated, traditional RPG gaming if it can be properly harnessed and that's what I'm seeking to try and accomplish, as a writer, as a designer, as a player and as a Games Master.

I started early with online gaming, not just serial-connecting together a couple of Atari ST computers in different rooms - that barely counts - but using a creakingly old 2600 modem to get that same Atari ST to hook up to Avalon, a pay-to-play MUD, though I never progressed very far and fell afoul of one of the moderators, playing the 'God of Justice' when I said 'TANJ' and meant it. As it turned out there wasn't, as he repeatedly turned me to stone, exploded me and otherwise used his moderator powers to fuck with my character sheet in a manner that would get you suwed for psychological assault these days.

That - and the expense - put paid to my online forays for a while, at least until the days of the 56k modem (and then cable) came around and something Science-fictiony rather than the same ol' fantasy came along. That's when I dived into Anarchy Online for another dabble in online play. The world was engaging, the music great, it was crippleware on launch but it really catered to roleplay with nightclubs, clothing and RP props which, of course, the overwhelming majority of the populace never used. I ended up falling out of love with Anarchy Online almost as quickly as I had fallen in love with it to start with.

I continued to dabble a little bit here and there and I got my online RPG fix mostly from IRC play and e-mail play through The Camarilla. While characters were able to jet-set their way around the world us poor players couldn't, so online play was a good compromise whereby you could get some players and a Storyteller together and play out your international scenes without any real problems. That seemed to work well since the Mind's Eye Theatre rules were fairly light and easy to use, attempts to play other RPGs over the internet weren't quite such a resounding success, fiddliness of rules and dice rolls, coupled with the relative slowness of text chat really slow things down to the point where it's almost impossible to play. For social RP it works fine, but anything too heavy or structured and it seems to break.

Then along came the game that would actually manage to drag me back into what I had presumed to be an RP vacuum, Ryzom. The Saga of Ryzom is a French-developed MMORPG with a truly alien world - Atys - and a very freeform form of play. The world is indescribably gorgeous and the storyline - what was revealed of it - was interesting and still took a back-seat compared to the player actions. Virtually everyone here RPed to some extent and role-playing events actually attracted people to play them. There were no quests or missions, you set your own goals, did your own socialising and somehow it all just worked.

Of course, the problem there was that they launched at the same time as EQII and World of Warcraft and, thinking they could also make a hojillion dollars, the company tried to follow suit with the big success story. Bringing in PvP, some heavy handed metaplot and otherwise boning the existing RP community within the game with badly thought out measure after measure they tried to claw them back with a half-hearted 'create your own mission' add on called The Ryzom Ring, but it was too late and they went bankrupt. Since then the game has been through another owner that didn't seem to know what to do with it either and it's now been bought again, but seems to still be making the same mistakes.

Still, for a brief moment there was the holy grail, an MMORPG where people actually roleplayed! I was so enamoured of the game at the time I got hooked into doing volunteer service for it and created some plotlines and missions for the system, moving the story forward. I got hooked. Here was a way of bringing role-playing to a mass audience and it was fantastic.

Since Ryzom went pear-shaped I've tried a few other games, but nothing yet has matched up to Ryzom at its height. Lord of the Rings Online is steeped in Tolkien's lore and a fun game to play, but there's no RP aside from cybersexing fiends in the Prancing Pony. I play World of Warcraft with some friends but there's no RP there, it's more like a team sport.

I think they're missing a trick in MMORPGs, there's definately a niche of creative people who want something more from their games, a lot of them seem to migrate to Second Life (and I don't just mean the furries and sexual deviants) but they'd probably play a properly done, RP heavy game where they were invested in what went on. If such a thing existed.

Everything is moving online and, lately, I've been working with a company called Socialgears trying to inject some of that creative, RP sensibility into a type of game that's even less obviously welcoming to it than MMORPGs are, the social media 'app' game, with mixed success.

There's definately some sort of sweet spot here and some new audiences to be reached by RPGs, forums and social sites are full of 'RP' forums with people re-living Twilight, 'Playing house', engaging in cybersex of the most creative sorts and playing RPGs without really understanding that they are playing RPGs.

Gaming's not dead, it's changing and so are people's expectations of what a game is or should be. That's something even traditional RPG Games Masters need to be aware of as well as games companies.

LARP
I desperately wanted to like Live Action Roleplay, I really did. I used to dream of going to Labyrinthe in Chislehurst caves and would covet the shiny LARP weapons and costumes but there's certain aspects - at least of the active, physical LARP scene - that just don't really work for me and spoil the experience. Sure, the immersion is closer to total without too much in the way of rules getting in the way, the experience has much more direct 'fidelity' but that can also be part of the problem. Your imagination always outstrips even the best attempts at costuming and it's very hard to mentally edit out a scout hut and superimpose a gigantic, spired castle. The other big problem I have with LARP is that it stifles my opportunity to play things that I am not. If I'm a ten stone weakling with the physical coordination of an epileptic jellyfish it doesn't matter what it says on my character sheet, Joe the Kobold is going to beat seven shades of shit out of me and then give me such a continued drubbing that an eighth shade will be discovered in the aftermath.

Nonetheless, I pressed on despite these misgivings and decided to give it a try. That just cemented in my mind that LARP wasn't for me after I was smacked in the face one too many times and fell knee-deep into a stinking bog in the woods. My refined and comfort-loving sensibility just doesn't seem to fit with the necessities of serious LARPing and my budget doesn't really stretch to buying suits of armour I'll only ever wear once a month.

That's not to say I'm disparaging LARP, if you can overcome these drawbacks and enjoy it, or even revel in it, then more power to you. It's just not quite my thing. I'm jealous if anything!

My next encounters with LARP didn't come along until the salon style LARPs of Vampire the Masquerade and friends. Now, here was some LARPing I could actually get into. With a system base so I could play something that I was not ((though I sympathise with people who have all the scheming instincts of a lobotomised hamster), we were playing indoors, nobody got hit and it gave me an excuse to buy some clothes I COULD wear on the weekends and go out in. This was far more my speed and, considering my extended tabletop group was hitting thirty or forty people at this time the progression to LARP made sense.

For a long, long time this seemed like the perfect solution to LARP for me, it was self perpetuating, big, once we joined The Camarilla fan organisation we were part of a huge international continuity that seemed to contain limitless possibilities. Big mistake. It started out that way and for quite a while it was great, but as with all organisations - especially those filled with creative people - there began to be problems. I'm still a huge fan of shared universes but when you're trying to get so many different play styles to work together in one place and so many people have different interpretations of the source material then there's going to be trouble, especially when they insist on 'one way only' and end up taking all the organisational positions of power through attrition and the Peter Principle.

The Camarilla died a living death as the result of its own bureaucracy, dogmatism, arguments and takeovers from White Wolf that never bore fruit and the whimpering end to the nWoD and nothing's really come along to replace it since.

What I took away from my experiences with LARP were a love of props and tactile gaming, an admiration - tempered with concern - for people who enjoy being smacked in the face and a profound sense of frustration at the squandered opportunities that The Camarilla represented to me and how a very few rotten apples can destroy a whole barrel.

The lasting influence from LARP, for me is that - in serious games - I aim for plausibility, a different thing to realism, and - I think - a better appreciation of how plots, schemes and other social interactions actually play out in a social context. Writing plots and stories for live-action games is a very different animal to writing for tabletop games but you can apply lessons from each to each other. LARPs are healthier when they concentrate on external enemies and allow the players to work together more, tabletop games benefit from giving the players latitude to play out their characters and attention to personal plotting.

My LARP experience may have ended badly, but it was worth having.

In at the Deep End
Unlike the enormous and overhelming majority of people in the world, I didn't start 'proper' role-playing with Dungeons & Dragons. I wasn't even aware that Dungeons & Dragons existed for quite some time. When I went out looking for a proper RPG, in a shop in a shopping area that doesn't even exist any more, I gravitated immediately to Middle Earth Roleplaying (or MERP) by Iron Crown Enterprises because I loved The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings so much, even at that young age. Anyone who knows anything about MERP knows that it was basically just a 'lite' (Ha ha ha...) version of Rolemaster, one of the most baroque, complex and inaccessible RPGs in existence. Unbowed by almost completely not understanding the rules I threw myself into playing it with my customary gusto and it was my roleplaying game of choice for many years.

That might well surprise people, since I seem to be somewhat associated with the 'New Style' or 'rules lite' system movement, these days somewhat inappropriately called 'Indie', but then perhaps grappling with 'Rulesmaster' all those years gave me a greater appreciation for the possibilities of stripping back the rules to get at a more 'pure' gaming experience. Even so, MERP taught me a huge amount about creating a good game world, about making it consistent, keeping the mood of the material and learning to expand on it an an appropriate way. It also put me completely off using figures and maps to the point where I never really used them again until very recently.

After that things turned into a bit of a blur, game after game, willing to play just about anything, but there's some particular stand-out games that I think have informed me and helped make me into the gamer and writer I am today.

• Dragon Warriors: A very simple system and spread across several books, Dragon Warriors was important for a couple of reasons, firstly it was sold in paperback format (a shame the new edition wasn't, though it is great) and secondly it really went for the mythological, British feel to the background, even more so than Fighting Fantasy. The mini-adventures in the backs of the books were also of excellent quality.
• Cyberpunk 2013: If Cyberpunk hadn't laid the foundation none of the 'stylish' games that came along later in the 90s, none of them could have really existed. 2013 also tried for a realistic combat system and while success was mixed, it helped show how system to could guide player behaviour.
• Cyberpunk 2020: A massive improvement in presentation and a progression in system showed that new editions could genuinely improve upon older ones. Cyberpunk 2020 was played for years and years in my group and we still return to the game and the system for near future and transhumanism themed games. It's just a real shame CP3.0 let the legacy down.
• Blood!: Blood! won me back to system-heavy games through the critical hit tables and in the way it played, showing me that a system heavy game could still come through and create an engaging and immersive game, especially in terms of survival horror. I loved it so much I resurrected the game under license.
• Over the Edge: Going the opposite way to Blood! this was a vaguard of 'rules lite' and showed how it could really work well. Characters defined very simply in a setting where you can literally play anything. Challenging as a Games Master and inspirational from a design point of view I still go back to it for inspiration.
• Vampire: The Masquerade: A revelation in its time in terms of presentation, graphic design and the focus of the game upon story and narrative over the game. Arguments can rage back and forth over whether the system married up to the intention and the nWoD is a crushing disappointment compared to the oWoD but Vampire did break the mould and did make roleplaying genuinely cool for a while.
• Mage: The Ascension: Mage was the apex of the Storyteller system and ethos for me, it was downhill after Mage 2nd Edition. A magic system that was inspirational, freeform and could cope with all the different ideas, a sandbox environment and a cosmology that tied together the previously dispirate WoD games. Mage was a work of art and damn near perfect, inspirational for working on systems that 'build themselves'.
• Feng Shui: Feng Shui is a masterpiece of genre emulation and most of it done with only a couple of rules, one of them being stunts. The freeform play and the stunt system, combined with the mood setting book combined to create a clear vision of play.
• Legend of the Five Rings: L5R is something of a strange game, a fantasy Japan, but that excuses some of the strangeness. The inspirational nature of the setting, its detail and the reasonably loose metaplot allowed me to create my most successful 'epic' campaign yet.
• Unknown Armies: After the occult/horror glut of the 90s had seemed to drain that well dry Unknown Armies managed to claim it back a bit and give it a fresher outlook. The horror/sanity system therein was also an inspiration, an improvement on the age old Cthulhu sanity system without rendering it too much more complex. Unknown Armies re-enthused me to the whole genre and showed there were still new spins on the theme yet to be tapped as well as room for more 'conventional' design to do the business.
• HeroQuest: When we wrote Neverwhere we kind of got ahead of some of the ideas in HeroQuest, the definition of characters by their description. HeroQuest showed me this could work in a more sructured game and with a more defined rules.

beeblebear  said: I managed to finish Starship Traveller first time. Not sure how, it was a while back.

To which I say: KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!

Fantasy Fighting
The Fighting Fantasy game books were a revelation but, unfortunately, I don't remember where I got my first one. It was a slightly younger guy, Russell, at school who was really into them, more than I was. He had every single last one of them at the time and used to loan them to me and I'd play through them over a couple of days - apart from Starship Traveller - which like many people I never finished, whether there's any truth to the rumour that it was broken or whether it was simply bastard-fucking-hard I still don't know, but even cheating I never got through it.

Even before we knew what was going on we began reading the books to each other, one person reading the text and one person playing the part of the hero and making the decisions and the rolls for him. We quickly began to get frustrated though, FF game books suffered from the same problem that computer games still do, your choices were limited and even things that made perfect sense you couldn't do, or even attempt. Then Fighting Fantasy, Titan and Out of the Pit came along. Suddenly it all made sense, we could do whatever we wanted, so long as it made some sort of sense. Of course, we didn't quite grasp the idea of making up our own adventures, at least not straight away.

It's safe to say that Fighting Fantasy - and later Dragon Warriors - were the 'ZX Spectrum' of British Roleplaying. Where that computer game us a cottage industry of bedroom programmers who later went on to create a world-beating computer games industry, so FF gave us the beginnings of the quirky and eccentric British RPG industry and, for me, my first steps into genuine role-playing and some of my ideas about what makes a good adventure, traps, settings and the overall 'feel' of a fantasy adventure.

Telling Stories
The other thing I did when I was young was to tell stories and tall tales. Not lying as such, just 'going off on one' and spinning yarns, making stuff up and wittering away happily to myself or to any audience that would listen, walls, chairs, the cat or - eventually - my schoolfriends. I would even read to them from a boy's comic at the time called Spike, which ran various weird stories under the title '5 Minute Mystery' inside it. 2000AD was always the superior comic but the text stories in Spike were better for this.

There was no interaction as such, but I would improvise and add to the stories and when the other kids asked questions I'd make up the answers and weave them into the story. This is a lot of what a Games Master does, though when you're GMing this happens during the flow of the game, not afterwards. Weaving a story, keeping it cohesive, it's a lot like lying and keeping your story straight under constant cross-examination.

From there, things got interesting as I started to make up the basis for our make-believe games. Sure they were unholy blends of the various films, books, comics and so on I'd consumed but the other kids would play along and seemed to think some of these games were 'cool' enough to play along with... in fact, writing that's a startling revelation to me because, shame of shame, it makes me realise that one of my first RP-Like experiences could be termed... *choke*... LARP!
Comments:
gbsteve  said "We don't stop playing because we get old, we get old because we stop playing." Which is a George Bernard Shaw quote, though gbsteve  and Mr Shaw apparently share initials, at least on the internet!

Shaw was a clever fellow and had a talent for saying quotable things but I don't think he was quite on the money there, despite being witty and quotable. I think everyone plays, they just get surreptitious and embarassed about it. There's the old stereotype of the father who buys toys for his kids so he can play with them, but anyone who has ever gotten stuck in a traffic jam and imagined firing missiles out of the headlamps of their Aston Martin or who plays rubbish-bin basketball is playing in their own little way.

In my opinion, what makes us 'old' is that we act like this playing, these flights of fancy, are something to hide, rather than something to celebrate and, perhaps, it's this breach of social etiquette that contributes to gamers being treated a little funny, even in an age when computer game escapism is near universal and genre fiction is all over the TV, those being somehow acceptable.

That's my take anyway.

Imaginative Play
Growing up I was surrounded by books and my dad and my grandmother were teachers, almost all my immediate family were bookworms and my dad had a consuming interest in science and, along with that, in science fiction. I still have most of his old paperback classics of the 70s and 80s in my bookcase (Why don't they still make those short paperbacks I ask you? Why does everything have to be a Hamiltonian or Eddingsesque brick?). I was encouraged to be creative and to let my imagination fly and I was also surrounded by beautiful countryside, the very countryside that inspired Tolkien, Lewis, Richard Adams, Kenneth Grahame, Carroll and A.A. Milne. It was a fortunate childhood and I'm fortunate enough to find myself in the same surroundings again now as I'm writing this (though it's not exactly convenient for the shops or gor getting a gaming group together - more on this later).

In short, it would have been a miracle if I hadn't grown up into the creative whackjob I am today.

Like most children I got my first taste of 'roleplaying' without even realising what it was, we would play out Star Wars or James Bond in the school playground, occasionally - under the threat of kooties - we would be forced to play house with the girls, or occasionally some vague fantasy thing involving princesses and unicorns where it was never quite clear what the whole thing was about. Unlike the other kids I wasn't also interested in football and my interest in imaginative games lasted long after most of the other kids had decided they ought to 'grow up' - around age ten or so - and that they didn't want to play army and run around the woods like a mad thing any more.

Looking back on it I can see the evolution of my interests towards role-playing and it's really as a sort of a justification to continue playing games after the others around me had, instead, gotten into - progressively - football, pop music, girls, studies, work and, ultimately, babies. The structure and the study that goes into it is, basically, an excuse and a method to continue that child-like play at make-believe and to ward off the barbs of critics, not that this always works and not that I'm saying this is a bad thing, not by any means.

I remember one game, a transitive moment in fact, very clearly. Myself and a friend had been dragged into playing one of the girly games (under threat of The Dread Lurgy) but had hit upon the idea of making it far more interesting to us, as boys, by playing at being knights - knights and princesses go together after all. We galloped around the school doing our best impressions of riding on horseback, something which, on reflection, probably resembled a cross between 'I'm a little teapot' and skipping and loudly proclaiming that we 'Must save the princess'.

That was a mistake.

As we passed one of the older children teapot-skipping and dramatically declaring our intent to save the damsel from the dragon, he turned and - with sarcasm I have yet to hear equalled, so withering that it instantly aged me two years - said 'Oh yes, we muuuuussst'.

Instantly we felt like the most foolish creatures in existence and stopped, sheepishly creeping away to go and play British Bulldog instead to reaffirm our boyness. For all I know the poor girl is still there waiting for her knights in shining armour to save her from the dragon.

As roleplayers we need to recognise - and even be proud of - the fact that we're playing, that we're persisting in what children do. We dress it up in rules and shared game-worlds and canonical reference but really, at heart, it's still playing. All that other gumph is just our armour against sarcastic bullies and it works very well indeed.
Q&A
unquietsoul5  asks me about what to do with players who fall asleep in the middle of a game, but then goes on to give his own - very good - answers, rendering my advice largely redundant. Thanks cockbag! :P

So, what should you do if one of your players falls asleep on you at the game? Well, that depends on the context really. The most obvious and universal answer is probably to poke them with a sharp implement, a pencil works quite well - and try to get their attention focussed back on the game while intraveniously feeding them Red Bull. Failing that:

If it's very late: If you've been playing a while before someone falls asleep then you should feel flattered. Clearly they're enjoying the game and are invested in it or they'd have begged of for beddy-bye-boes before they passed out at the table. You should probably come to an agreement with the rest of the group and play on up to a good point for the game to take a break until the next session. You can always poke them with a stick first and see if they want to try and stay awake and play, but the odds are that if one person is passing out then others aren't that far behind.

If they're just really tired: If someone's falling asleep before the game starts, right at the beginning of the game or while the night is still young then things are more complicated. One person shouldn't be allowed to spoil the game for everyone, whatever the circumstances. Falling asleep at the end of a long session is understandable and excusable, falling asleep at the start or in the middle of the action is not so understandable and is a bit disrespectful. If they're that tired they should have stayed home and you could have worked around (see Emergency Contrivance below). Give 'em a poke first to see if they can stay awake,otherwise play on without them, the rest of the group deserves to have a crack at the adventure with or without them.

Of course it might be: As unpalatable as the thought might be the problem could just be that you're being incredibly boring. Your masterpiece adventure might be slow and dragging, you may have slipped into a monotonous drone or you might be concentrating too much on one player at the expense of the others. Yes, boredom factor and sleepiness can be your fault as the Games Master. Consider switching things up a bit, throwing in a combat scene or an argument, getting up and gesticulating, varying your vocal tone. Anything to keep the player's interested and don't be afraid to ask them if it's boring.

Emergency Backup Contrivance Omega IV: If a player fails to stay awake, or, indeed, fails to show up, you can always use the Emergency Backup Contrivance. This can take various forms but ultimately it is a means of providing an In-character excuse for the Out-of-character absence of a particular player and their alter-ego. Use one of the excuses below and consider giving the party a Non-Player-Character hireling or ally to make up for the gap:

• The character has been kidnapped by the villain and his lackeys and is out of play for now, adding to the group's motivation to get to the bad guy and rescue their companion. If they wake up before the end of the game then they 'escaped' with valuable information.
• The character is ill and needs to be left behind to recuperate.
• An emergency at home or some other obligation has called the character away.

Yes, these are all terribly contrived and unsatisfying excuses, but they're better than nothing and a great deal of role-playing is built on contrivance and stereotype. 'You're all at the inn when a mysterious old man enters...'.