Bringing non-gamers to the game

I realize this isn’t a massively impressive first article, but it’s fresh on my mind, and I’m still upset about it. Sunday evening I was supposed to be GM’ing Shadowrun for 3 friends. Two had made characters, and 1 still needed to make his character. I figured we could be done character generation and prep in an hour, and be gaming. Wrong!

I’ve got all the books I need out, I’ve looked over Chris’s character briefly and ok’ed it, and we’re watching TV in my room, waiting for the rest to show up. Brad arrives and we watch TV some more, while Brad finishes his smoke. Then Jim arrives… With Derrick? And Krystal?

“Hey Adam, you mind if Krystal uses your computer?”
“Uh, I’m making a multi-meg PDF file right now.”
“Well, can she watch the game then?”
“The computer it is.” So I make her a copy of mIRC and let her loose on my account. Ten seconds later:
“It doesn’t have all the buttons on the screen!”
“Of course not. My computer isn’t configured for morons.”

And I walk out into the living room where the guys are waiting. One of them is showing the others how to use the points based system, so I sit down to scribble some notes and ideas for the game down.

Derrick generates his character in record time, but of course it’s a pathetic munchkin. Since I figure he won’t play again, I let it pass. While trying to look over Brad’s character and give him some advice on skills, Derrick goes into my room and starts playing my guitar. You don’t know how much I like my guitar, and how little I like people touching it. “Derrick, get your god-damned ass in here and put my guitar down!”

Finally I get everyone sat down and ready to play. I’m a bit rusty with my GM’ing skills and didn’t do much prep (I had a basic plot in my head, but nothing more.), so I almost welcome the guys chattering a little bit. Derrick decides his character ‘Drinks as much as possible’, so I focus the game on the other three players, who are actually trying to play. I was keeping the plot basic—the runners are hired by some gangers to track down whoever killed two of the gangers that night, in the sewers. They split up and scour the sewers for clues, as I scramble to figure out exactly who or what did it. Krystal finishes up playing on IRC and yells for us to come and disconnect her. Whoops, that ‘Disconnect’ button is really really tricky…

Derrick decides to launch into a story about someone he knows, and we sit through it for a few minutes and then I tell him to shut up. We start playing again, with Brad stealing the show and extracting some important information from some other gangers and a squatter. Krystal pipes up with:

“This is a nerd game, isn’t it?”
“Yes Krystal, it is. Too tough for ya?”
“You’re making it all up, it’s stupid.”

She bums a cigarette off someone and we start to play again. A few minutes later Derrick declares that he’s going over to a friend’s to get drunk. No objections from me, as he takes Krystal with him, and I drop his character down a sewer pipe, killing him instantly. By this time it’s about 10:30 PM, Brad has to be at work at 5 AM, Jim wants to go get drunk too, and I want some time for a cup of coffee and a breather from all these people. However, we’re on a hot plot thread here, so we continue playing, sans interruptions, for about another hour, until the game degenerates into useless chit-chat. I declare the game dead for the night, Brad drives off to go to bed, Chris walks home, and Jim goes off to wherever the party is.

What’s the point? We just spent 4 hours to get maybe 90 minutes of good solid gaming, and it all could have been avoided if one of the players had followed a simple rule: Don’t bring non-players to the game! I don’t think it’s too much to ask of my players to ask them not to bring other people that I don’t like to the game. I don’t go to their drinking parties; I’m out of place. Why should they be at my Shadowrun games?

After everyone leaves, I go back to my room to do some reading, and every piece of paper in my bedroom has been rifled through. My list of phone numbers had been read, a large pile of printouts had been dumped on the floor and stepped on, etc. Paolo, if you get weird phone calls from a weird chick at strange times during the day, I’m sorry.

Other fun things on Sunday night: Derrick throwing ‘Bob’ across the room and hitting my eye, Jimmy emptying my 3 ring hole puncher on the floor, and Jimmy sharpening a pen in my pencil sharpener. I know what to hide next time we play.

Everything!

Have gaming horror stories like this? Let me know via email, I’ll print some next week, along with some Actual Shadowrun Content. Wow! : )

Adam Jury - Wednesday, July 30 1997