The Consequences

One of the consequences of being a tough GM is when the munchies leave. Oh well, time marches on and replacements are easy to come by. But as I promised a happier article let’s begin. With all my ranting and raving and having an opinion that I, according to some, am entitled to. Unfortunately one very good friend and a non-munchkin was caught in the blast of the munchy grenade that I threw. For him I have an apology later on in the article. To keep things on the ball and show them who’s still the best I decided to quote a few of the many pieces of fan mail I’ve received. But first I’ll hand out what you can expect from ticked off munchies.

Date sent: Sat, 28 Jun 1997 01:06:44 -0400 From: Rick J Federle, Jr (address removed) Subject: Nightlife’s Den

NightLife has decided to use Brian and I as targets in regard to the way we play and make out characters. As such, I have decided not to participate in any activities and will not be in a campaign with NightLife. I hereby recommend that NightLife be placed on the persona non grata list and that none of you play in his campaigns until he produces a public apology.

(if you think my reaction is extreme, check out http://www.interware.it/shadowrun/nightlife/ShowNF.asp?page=roster.htm)

Rick

p.s. please call me if you want to talk about this or e-mail me at this address

You’ll have to excuse my editing of my real first name—you don’t need it. But it’s the actual letter I got from one of my loyalists, who had to listen to munchy boy. As for me apologizing to munchkins, some things are going to have to happen first:

Hell freezes over.
The Cubs win the world series vs. The White Sox in the Giants stadium.
Wayne Newton becomes the Queen of Great Britain.
Harry Carey has Elvis’ love child in Atlantis with the Loch Ness monster as the nanny.
The Titanic is found in the Bermuda triangle with Amelia Earhart as its captain.
Hitler’s brain is found alive in a 2 liter Mountain Dew bottle and then he writes a bestseller with Yoko Ono.

If these things happen I’ll consider it. Except to Kel, who isn’t a munchkin and I’ll attend to him later in the article.

Now I realize I should have seen this coming when I got a bunch of munchies who banded together. They didn’t like the articles. But let’s hear from a few people who did.

From: “Shawn L. Stroud” (address withheld) Organization: Data One, Inc. To: habenir@ucunix.san.uc.edu Subject: Your “Roster Changes”

NightLife;

Just read your latest posting and, regarding the following, <snipped the detail about the force 5 weapons focus.>

Actually I was wrong, it was a 2.25 million ¥ items not a 2.5 one and as I was informed that wasn’t how it went down. Actually I gave the abridged version. This axe was handed over to another character for a magical rattle and then asked for (Well heavily hinted might be better) by the new combat mage as a payment to join the players.

NightLife

Did you let this stand? I (speaking as a GM) would have laughed uproariously as I madly lined out all the crap I thought didn’t fly with “Ronin”. Then, as an object lesson to Ronin’s creator, I’d give him/her major flashbacks every time he/she cast the most whacked spell!

Sounds like you get some real nimrods playing in your game. Like I constantly say to myself while driving home from work, “If you want to play a straight fantasy game, Play D&D!” In your game, you’re the boss. If someone doesn’t let you know what’s up in their life… If they cut out of the game with no forwarding address and leave their characters with you… You are that game’s GOD! Mow them down and don’t look back. Personally, I like the advice that R.A. Talsorian gave to GMs in their Cyberpunk 2020 rulebook (it goes something like this): If you don’t like the character, Kill them! It’s the Cyberpunk way!

Keep your head up, dude. Hope to read more postings from you.

here’s another

Return-Path: (address withheld) Date: Mon, 12 May 1997 22:40:41 -0700 From: To: habenir@ucunix.san.uc.edu Subject: Excellent

Dear Nightlife,

I would just like to compliment you on your great articles. Though there have been only three, I anxiously await more. Your articles show the disadvantages that gaming brings. Most people will tell you it all fun, but, as your articles have stated, it’s not all happy. I thought the one on developing characters past their life as a thin sheet of paper was great and I will be using the 50 questions with a new player that has joined. Please continue to write your wonderful articles.

Bill Wilkins

And another:

Return-Path: mason@neuma.com From: “Karen Mason-Richardson” mason@neuma.com To: habenir@ucunix.san.uc.edu Subject: Roster Revisions! Date: Mon, 30 Jun 1997 14:46:45 -0400 X-Msmail-Priority: Normal

Thank you for saying what I’ve been thinking for a few months now. I have one (maybe two) players who are really into role-playing. They are a joy to work with. The others are crybabies.

I have the following problem on my hands right now, and I’ve already written Blackjack a torque’d off letter several months ago regarding one aspect of it. I have (I think) a really great storyline in my game about a toxic cult. The two decent players are working with me on this storyline, but the other two I am ready to shoot. They want nothing to do with anything I try to get them involved in. It’s their way or the highway. If they have an idea, everything has to go their way - as soon as I start to throw problems at them (welcome to real life, chummers!) they get ticked off at me.. They complained to me that my game wasn’t ‘gritty enough’ and I was ‘too easy’, so I come back with a good combat, and the way things worked out, one of the PCs died. The player was so pissed off at me that he refused to continue with the character, not allowing anyone to revive him or using any karma to rescue himself. Sound childish???? Now, it’s very seldom that PCs die in my game (its too much work making up new contacts and stuff), so don’t think that I’m a killer GM. The other rotten player took a character with amnesia as a flaw. So I make up the character history, and try to involve him in discovering what happened to the character, etc. But the fellow says to me “I don’t care what happened in my past, it’s only the present that I’m interested in”. Every time I bring something from his past, he does his best to ignore it/avoid it, saying “I don’t want anything to do with this” and getting ticked at me if he can’t. Well buddy this is SUPPOSED to be a flaw, there’s got to be a bad side to it! My biggest problem is the other two guys are always bitching to the good role-players that the game is always concentrated on them. Well guess what you idiots, that’s because they work with me not against me. If you would take one of the many times I’ve given you really good reasons to get a bit involved in a story I would work on you too. It’s like, if it’s not their idea, it goes nowhere. This makes life very difficult for me. Unfortunately, these people are also my friends, so kicking two out of the game and keeping the other two may be great for the game, but not for my social life! But it’s getting to the point that I’m seriously thinking of doing just that. Either that, or hanging up my GM hat.

I’ve said to Blackjack before, the toughest part about GMing is that you have to try to please everybody, which in and of itself seldom is possible. GMing, although it has to be fun or we wouldn’t do it at all, is a hell of a lot of hard work. It’s hours spent writing/thinking/researching while your players can goof around. And then, after the hours of blood, sweat, and tears you have spent working up a good plotline, they sit around and bitch about it. But, if you say “fine, you GM” they don’t have the talent/ambition/time/skill to do so. It’s a hell of a lot easier to complain than to create, eh?

By the way, and to substantiate this rather long rant, if you get the Shadowland magazine, you could check out two articles of mine in the last issue (issue 6) titled ‘Double Trouble’ and ‘What’s Cooking?” and you will see somewhat the kind of GM I am (one is a short adventure).

Thanks for the opportunity to rave a little. Don’t PC just piss you off sometimes?

Ciao for Now! Karen Mason-Richardson

And one last one.

Return-Path: Date: Tue, 17 Jun 1997 18:44:27 +1000 (EST) From: “Mr Happy…” To: habenir@ucunix.san.uc.edu Subject: Nitelifes Den

Just been reading your articles and I’ll have to say you’re almost lucky….

I stayed in my home town to go to uni and so did 1/2 of the group…. (That makes 3/4)

but the GM went 300km away… so I try to organise something… I’ve never GMed before but I’ve got the books and the missions… so I ring round…

“Not this weekend” That’s all I get… ok so I’m not the most popular guy around but these are supposed to be my friends… they want to be loyal to the old GM but that means that we get something like 6 games a year instead of the 1 every 2 weeks I was proposing to run… pretty shitty…

Anyway… what I was going to write to you about… Girlfriends and gaming…

The GM’s gf plays shadowrun as of recently… and we have to remind her of the rules every 2 minutes… ie you can’t cast that without the spell… the only spell she will cast on her own is treat…. all the rest her bf/the GM tells her to cast….

Then we come to the point of karma…. I roleplay my arse off to be in character and use as many of my abilities as possible… I risk my arse to shoot at a dragon because he’s 1) my enemy (not the group’s just mine for some reason) 2) the object that the other guys decide to shoot at…

and then because I get knocked unconscious 2 rounds before the kill I don’t get points for that battle… and I end up with 3 karma points… the munchkins get 5 and the gf gets 8 for playing in character….

BREASTQUEST- Noun: The act of the GM trying to get a piece of ass within a game by buttering up a female who is in the campaign. ««< NightLife

It gets worse with ADnD… we have another one of the gamers’ girlfriends who said she wanted to be in the game… so her bf said she was the horse… well we got that gamer romantically involved with a NPC… didn’t go well…. then I decided to shoot the horse.. (well kill it) I did it at night while everyone was asleep…. but somehow when it was morning the guy knew who did it and attacked me!

Another one was shadowrun where I didn’t like the other players and I was offered a substantial amount to do them in… they were sleeping and I said to the GM that I was going to slit their throats… straight away the same player said “Hey guys he wants to kill us!” and I wasn’t allowed to do it… I got killed again by a sleeping guy…

I got them back in Battletech because they escaped from the clans and I got left behind (I was away) so when my clan star battled them I killed them….

I ain’t that popular but I’m taking risks to act in character…. and all I’m getting is bullshit… maybe you could write something about munchkin groups… GMs who suck.. and the brave git who dares to do different stuff…. ;)

Andrew

Thanks guys I really appreciate the fan mail. I realize I’m an opinionated SOB, One of the consequences of being a gritty GM is that those who want to play in munchie land go after you and hoark your group. Munchie players are vindictive little suckers and if you’re not in their clique guess what you can look forward to in them getting ticked whenever you have an opinion and organizing a grand conspiracy. Even being a real role-player has its consequences as Andrew went on about. Don’t feel bad I’ve just got dissed from a lot of people who used to play in my campaigns. Now if you’ll excuse me for a moment I have one last note to attend to.

KM: You’re the only one here I’m bending my rules for. I’m sorry the previous article upset you like it did—the reaction I got back was completely unexpected. After rereading the article I wrote I saw exactly how you could be insulted. I did not intentionally mean to insult you as both a friend and a long time supporter of the group. I should have waited a bit longer and reread what I had put together and I should have realized that you could view it as an attack upon you, when it wasn’t supposed to be. So to you and only to you I do apologize for the pain that was caused to you by what I wrote. Any insult was unintentional and unintended.

Now back to the show. Now that I’ve gotten that out of my system I’ll say a little something to the new/old people who have replaced those who have decided to leave.

Solace: It’s nice to have you back. JohnnyMac: Welcome back old friend. Dredd: It’s nice to have new blood.

Like I said, being a tough GM won’t win you any popularity awards with the munchies and their buddies. What it will do is spread your reputation to those who will enjoy a realistic world where characters actually have to try to accomplish something. Next time I’ll talk about happyland, the realm of munchies.