Arcana, Endurance and History (¬ω¬) (from the GM ask meme)
So, my sweety solalv asking about some stuff from my experiences as a Game Master, though I might just talk about my experiences as a player as well, as I have more experiences being a player than a GM due to me just recently starting to run my own games…
Irregardless: Here we go!
Arcana - What is your most crazy/insane/bizarre tabletop experience?
Hmmm… I have a few kinda “strange” tabletop experiences throughout my times as a player and as a GM, so it’s kinda hard to pick out one that stands out.
Aright, I’ll start out with one I was a player in, and the specific one I can think of right now happened during my study-abroad in the US a few years ago. And again; I weren’t the GM, but it was one of the most amusing things that I’ve been able to join in on. So, I’d managed to join in on the start of a new campaign with some of the people I’d gotten to know through the local game’s club at the HIgh School. It was me, our GM Jack and a couple of others, and I think the game was D&D 3.5 in some sort of homebrew setting.
A couple of sessions in we, the players ended up improvising alot of the action during the session. This was mostly because it was a downtime-session between the introductory mission and the next our group were sent on, and we’d been given a small apartment in one of the big cities of the world. This lead to one of the players; Nathan, who also were a part of an improv. group together with Jack, this lead to the two of them dragging the rest of us along the most amusing and pseudo-Noir detective story I’ve ever been on. Full on with Jack doing the classic Detective Story narration of more or less everything we were doing, to Nathan pulling the most insane fast-talks and bluffs I’ve ever had the joy of witnessing. It was a blast to join in on.
In terms of crazy stuff I’ve pulled as a player, again I sadly haven’t been able to pull of alot of insane, bizzar or crazy stuff as a GM yet.
This happened a year or so ago during a Shadowrun campaign run by a then friend of mine. I was playing the Face of our group, doing most of the mission gathering and interactions with Mr. Johnsons. This lead to me making ALOT of deals under the table with several “enemy” faction to our group, and all concluded in me setting up one of the biggest schemes I’ve been able to pull as a player. This basically meant I set my whole group up for getting killed by our antagonist, whilst I got out of the only functional escape-pod and half a billion Nuyen. The others: Vented into space. The other players basically looked at me with blank stares as our GM explained what was happening, but their jaws hit the floor as soon as I explained how I’d managed to do it. As I’d expected, most of my co-players never really questioned all of the minor stuff I’d done during the campaign and they never expected it all to be connected and having my character having other motivations than helping other. Also, I was basically the only player that were actually playing a “grey” character with personal motivations :P
Endurance - What’s your worst tabletop experience?
Oh boy, this one is actually kinda hard for me… I’ve rarely had alot of bad experiences with tabletop games, and most I’ve had has been as a player.
Again, the worst experience I’ve had as a player correlates to the Shadowrun campaign I talked about in the previous question. Our GM was far from unbiased towards their players, and they ended up being pretty harsh and prone to not help out some of the lesser experienced players, and one of the female players took this very personally (she was also one of those persons who take everything super personal…) to the point where the two were basically shooting daggers at eachothers and souring the enjoyment of the game for everyone… I ended up being the mediator in this situation, which again was kinda a bad experience as both were insistent on the other one being wrong. It got resolved, but it was quite a pain.
In regards to experiences as a GM, I have a bad habit of fucking up every first session of my Campaigns. This is usually due to me being a mess and never manage to prep enough… x.x
History - When did you first start tabletop gaming?
As far as I remember, I started playing tabletop games around the age of ten or twelve, so some ten-ish or so years ago, when my older cousin introduced me to AD&D and Cyberpunk 2020. He let me play with him and his group, and I’ve been loving tabletop games ever since :)
This ended up being a looooong response, but I hope whomever end up reading the whole thing enjoys it :D
