The description for this panel:
Countless tales are told of the legendary “That Guy,” the fiend who destroys the good times of tabletops everywhere. But little is said about the others, the celestial beings who remember names, piece together plot points, and work with their GM on narrative and theme. This panel of GMs and Players will tell stories of the best player moments, and elucidate what makes these angels so special.
I’ve been playing various role playing games for a very long time. I’ve played a lot, and over the most recent years I’ve been the game master more often than not. Running a game and staying ahead of a group of creative, talented and smart people is a fantastic challenge. Here are the notes I had for this panel.
Chemistry.
We play these games because we want to have fun. It’s definitely no fun if the person sitting next to you is the verbal equivalent of a pebble in your shoe while you walk.
Finding your people is NOT easy. It IS a role-playing game, so you will have to get past the anxiety part in order to make it work… unless that’s your whole party and the game adventure becomes who’s actually going to be forced to speak to the service person you’re facing…
Flexibility.
You’re here to have fun, right? Sometimes that means getting outside your comfort zone and pretending to do a thing you would NEVER do in real life, for whatever reason. Sometimes you need to change a little to allow others to do the same.
No Judgment.
This one is a balancing act. It ties in with the chemistry thing. What if your rogue character does something that you, on a deeply personal level, find abhorrent? Is it just the game? Is it how the character would actually behave because reasons? You can’t leap on the judgmental band waggon or it will kill certain creative parts of the game.
Pay attention.
Sounds dumb, matters a lot. When in person games were more common than virtual there was always that one person that was on their phone or who fell asleep on the couch. It can hurt the flow of any session if we all have to stop, back up five minutes to tell you what you weren’t paying attention to and then wait for you to re-read your spell list to figure out what you were doing.
Be creative.
Not everyone is a mastermind with 56 plot lines weaving in and out of their minds, but do any little bit you can. Take on something small if you feel like you don’t know where to start. Look at your character and create from there. What do you really know about? Slide some of that into your character, and use that as a starting point. If you’re a hair stylist, allow your character to wear a hair style that you’d love to see, then leap off from there and make it a quirky part of that character – the character constantly tries to get others to color their hair or braid their beard or something. Those little bits of flavor make a very rich game.
Be understanding.
Sometimes gamers need to take a knee. The real world intrudes. This ties together with chemistry and flexibility. My best games have come after we’ve had to skip a week because of family stuff or during really tough real world issues for my players.
Favorite things from my players? I had a OCD person with a color coded notebook. She wrote everything down. I have a great note taker in my campaign now. She takes the greedy character to a whole new level, so she tracks all the party wealth.
New players rock because they don’t have tropes to rely on. They do something weird every time!