In the past I’ve covered a few roleplaying exercises such as analyzing a list of your top 10 games, what would you like to play today — and in the same vein — what would you like to run today?
The latest occurred to me a few weeks ago and having done the exercise, I think it also has the potential to tell you a few things about your roleplaying habits.
What are your Top Five Gaming Regrets?
First, the ground rules! This is a private exercise, so honesty is what we’re searching for. No one will see it so the only person you’re lying to is yourself. Second, make the list off the top of your head, in five minutes or less. We’re trying to tap those memories that provoke an emotional response — good or bad — when making our list. Thinking about it too much defeats the purpose. Finally, analyze your results and try to divest yourself of the moment and look at what you put down critically.
Ultimately we’re trying to find out more about what drives you, from a roleplaying/gaming perspective, and how to learn from our past.
In this case, our past mistakes.
We all have had games or experiences that just didn’t measure up to expectations. Maybe we didn’t set the proper expectations (or any at all) or the outcome wasn’t what we had envisioned. Perhaps elements outside of our control conspired against it or, more ominously, we subconsciously conspired against ourselves. So, looking back at your gaming history, what are your greatest regrets?
Again, like previous articles, I’ll use myself as an example. Skip to the bottom if you don’t want to hear me talk about my games.
- Fading Suns (2004)
- D&D (2003)
- Star Trek: Midway (2001)
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer (2004)
- Marvel Super Heroes (circa 1988)
The Specifics
1. Fading Suns (2004): This was an easy first choice as it has weighed heavily upon me for several years now. My first (and only) Fading Suns game — a game that I truly love — started off with a throwaway idea of a campaign based loosely on Jacqueline Carey’s Kushiel series of novels. Rounding up two eager players, we began in earnest. I put a lot of work into the Epic that was crafted and was shocked at how well the game worked. It was an intriguing mix of roleplay, subterfuge, and eroticism. The players seemed to love it. I loved it. The handouts were great, the NPCs memorable, and the story flowed well. The problem? Like many things, time.
Ultimately, playing on a weekday night and not starting until 8pm, we were lucky to get in two hours of roleplaying. Adding a third player only diluted the story and stole time from the other two players, the main protagonists of the Epic. As is the case with most games, we drifted away and eventually just killed that group outright because of the problems in getting together and playing regularly.
My regret is not seeing it through to the end. To this day that unfinished Epic — and its promise — shows such potential that my heart literally aches at leaving it unfinished. I should have found a way to try to wrap it up before the game died. Instead I may be left with this memory for a long time and no chance to ever resolve it.
2. D&D (2003): A game I played in and part-time ran, it had a great run before the primary storyline was finished and the campaign ended.
We should have left it there.
But no, drawn by the allure of the memorable characters and trying to put a “fresh spin” on the campaign we tried to resurrect it not once but twice. Both were dismal failures. Both essentially tarnished what were otherwise great characters and a memorable story that you’d be happy to look back upon fondly. Now I look back and only see the refuse of what we did in trying to resurrect it.
The reboots to the D&D game were as “Battlestar Galactica 1980″ was to the original “Battlestar Galactica.”
I’ve always been a proponent of letting a game run its course and when it has ended, END IT. Revisiting the memories of our past only muddles up said memories and rarely results in any new good ones.
3. Star Trek: Midway (2001): This is a regret of untapped potential. My character was built pretty much around another — the only other roleplayer at the table — and my cunning plan fell to pieces when said player bowed out of the group. It’s not that the game wasn’t good — it was — it’s just that there was a lot of potential in that game and the characters that were never realized. I’ve always wondered “what could have been.”
4. Buffy the Vampire Slayer (2004): Another casualty of the weekday group that went away, so did the amazingly fun Buffy game that we played in. I’ve yet to hear a bad word spoken about this game and everyone has fond memories of it. It was startling at just how much fun one could have playing teenagers fighting crime and regressing to their youth! Two players in the game — one the GM — didn’t even have any real experience with the “Buffy” television show which just goes to show how enjoyable a game can be with everyone at the table tuned in on the experience.
Lot of fond memories and memorable quotes from that game.
5. Marvel Super Heroes (circa 1998): I say “circa” because going that far back one’s memories get a bit foggy. Mine certainly do. Marvel was our first non-AD&D game back in high school and we played it non-stop for at least two years. It was the drug of choice that spawned several other Marvel games. The main campaign was played for about five years mostly with the same core group.
My regret? That way back then we didn’t have the foresight to write down or record any of the game and what transpired. It was memorable (to a point it would seem) and loads of fun but I’m left with nothing but abstract thoughts and random emotions over the experience. I’d have a hard time naming more than one or two characters beyond my own. Speaking of which, I still have my original character sheet done on my Commodore 64 back and pencil art from back in the day.
Ultimately you don’t know what you’ve lost until it’s gone.
Putting It All Together
The common theme I am seeing in my regrets is planning, specifically not planning for the future. No game (or group) goes on forever yet I think most of us aren’t prepared for what we’d do if we had to end the game by the next session. Every session could be your last (wow, that sounds dramatic) and you need to make the most of each. I certainly feel validated in my position that doing tie-ins to old games, beyond an homage reference or two, is a big mistake. I have some fond memories of that Marvel game but I never want to play it again; it’d just be a shallow rehash and tread all over what I do remember. Making new memories seems to be a better expenditure of time.
Oh, and to underscore a point on planning, there is an honorable mention that didn’t make the list, my current Stargate SG-4 game. It was on “perma-hiatus” until last year when we brought it back for a second season. For awhile there it looked like that wouldn’t happen. Had that been the case, Stargate certainly would have made this list. I finished the first season on a cliffhanger with many unresolved threads, thinking we’d just come back to it “someday.” Well one player flamed out and left the group and the other two players expressed — after the game was over — that they really weren’t keen on returning. So there I was with an unfinished campaign being told I’d never get to resolve it. Arrgh!
Ultimately the game did come back and changes were made to keep the players interested, but I guarantee you that when I wrap up this final season, everything will be resolved and that campaign will be put to bed properly. (Six episodes and counting.)
I want to be able to look back and remember that game for what it was, not what it could have been.
So, what’s on your list?
Oh, my. All I have to do is list my last five attempts to run campaigns.
Instead of going into details about the campaigns themselves (which could be a comment as long as the blog entry because a lot of them are original settings) I’ll go into the five regretful reasons that, upon reflection, I think led to their collapse.
1) Schedule Conflicts: This is the most cold, impersonal reason. I work 3rd shift and most of my friends work 1st with copious overtime. One of my friends commutes an hour to work — each way. Mix that in with family events and other interests and we’ve had precious little time for RPGs.
2) Disruptive Characters: I love campaign settings that give players freedom to make exactly the sort of characters they want to play. However, at least two persons in my current group have proven that, given the freedom, they don’t always make characters that are balanced or willing to fit into a group.
3) Disruptive Players: One of the above players has proven so lethal to my campaigns lately that, for the time being, I’ve pretty much given up on GMing for now. If you what a ‘munchkin’ is you’ll know why. I honestly think his job has ‘corporatized’ him to the point where he’s lost his sense of fair play. On a side note, I haven’t talked to this friend now in over a month and my other friends are either excluding him as well, or have the sense to keep both of us out of the same activity.
4) Creative Fatigue: There is a finite point in time where I know that whatever mental mechanism fuels my creativity broke down and never fully recovered. It was after my second, completely original game setting failed. It’s still an acute source of angst for me, and I think the wound of it’s failure still weighs on me. I love the setting so much that I’ve been resurrecting it on and off in personal projects ever since, currently in the form of a homemade miniatures space combat game.
5) Lack of Discipline: As a GM, I have a hard time enforcing discipline, and consistently it’s hurt my games. I suppose it came (and continues to come, perhaps) from a naieve belief that, all things being equal, a group of people who are considerate can be given free reign without fear of, well, the above reasons. And I suppose I still believe it’s still essentially possible, so perhaps this one is less a regret and more of an optimism.