WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING!?!?
So, as I'm sure many of you have heard, this past semester was my first experience as a DM. It was, weird. Dark. Kafka-esque. The past year of pissing in the eye of god (aka other DM's whose campaigns I had been a part of ruined) have caught up with me.
So here's a brief bit of background info on what we were doing. It's a custom setting for DND 4e, essentially designed to be low magic and more in line with the grittiness of something like ASoIaF or Dark Heresy rather than the happy-go-lucky indestructibleness of the traditional DND setting. The setting was fairly dark; genocide and speciesism were driving forces in this world. I could go into more detail (and will when I get around to doing my character PoV chronicles) but I'm not going to. Some other time, too lazy.
The PCs were all largely new to me with the exception of Blake and Will. I knew Katie from working at the writing center and I had hung out with Daniel sophomore year, but that provided almost no context for what they'll be like in a campaign setting. Pretty much the same with Jeff; I had met him (I believe) once before where we had bonded over our mutual love of Fringe. So on top of not knowing what to expect from DMing in general, I had very little idea what to expect from the PCs. They say ignorance is bliss...
FALSE.
Maybe thesis is catching up to me, but I think viewing this experience through the theoretical framework of Cuil Theory makes the most sense (or none at all, it is Cuil Theory after all). Essentially, Cuil Theory is a way to measure abstraction from reality on a 6-point scale that arose from the bat-shit insance search results that the Cuil search engine would return (Oh, you wanted a bio on Susan B. Anthony? Here, enjoy this My Little Ponies hentai!). The classic example of 1-Cuil: I ask for a hamburger, you give me a raccoon. See this link (http://cuiltheory.wikidot.com/what-is-cuil-theory) for more; it will fucking melt your brain.
The main thing I learned from this whole experience is that you can never predict what PCs are going to do. Don't fight it, learn to roll with the unexpected turns and for the love of god get better at improv. Now, while I don't think this campaign was BAD, per-se, IT WAS SO FUCKING WEIRD.
Now, not to point fingers (totally points fingers) I think a lot of this came from Daniel, who is probably at a base of like 2-3 Cuils for everyday life. While a lot of his stuff came under the guise of stupid PC antics (ie, letting their kobold tour guide get killed, TRY TO REPLACE WITH DIFFERENT KOBOLD), things like the obsession with the gimp mask (which my character was forced to wear, while on a leash) or the crab fishing incident were just, weird. AND THE FUCKING TWITTER BIRD, HOW IS THIS EVEN A THING (mechanical bird that could only send a Twitter length message)?
Jeff, might have actually been worse in the Cuil Theory aspect, but it was all concentrated into a single session for better or worse (I was described as having a look of abject horror on my face during this session). He developed an obsession, the way all men too great for their time do, with the WORLD'S MOST FASHIONABLE BOOTS (and vest, and monocle), and getting a giant crab mount. Oh, also his character decided to become horrifyingly racist. THE KLAN WELCOMES YOU, SER!
Now just to get the world's most fashionable KKK robe.
Now, all spread apart, this doesn't sound so bad, but no, the worst bits I mention here all coalesced into a single session of Cuil, a Cuil singularity if you will. Between Jeff and Daniel, it was at least a Level 4 Cuil Event, and that's not even counting the guy they feed magic Viagra to. They did not get him to a hospital when he passed the 4-hour mark.
In summary, I still don't really know what to make of this campaign. I think everyone had a good time playing, but from a DM perspective I'm disappointed we didn't get through as much story progression as I had hoped. To top that off, I really don't think I like DMing that much. It's very exhausting coming up with new and interesting material each session and keeping PCs on track is fucking rough. Hell, just keeping track of everything that's going on is tough. I definitely have a new found respect for the prior DMs I've had; seriously guys, don't know how you manage to make it look so easy!
I think from now on I'm going to stick to just being a PC. Now if you'll excuse me, I've got to go growl at a bartender and start some fights while the rest of the party looks on in horror RARRGGHHH!
WILDCARD BITCHES
I'd be curious to see how you would react to a scripted campaign and/or a much more railroad-y campaign. It might be a lot more enjoyable for you as GM.
ReplyDeleteAlternately a campaign where you can mercilessly insta-gib any PC who annoys you or doesn't perform as you want. :-P
I think you hit it right on the head; railroad-y would definitely be the way I'd want to go with a future campaign, that and just a shit ton more planning now that I know exactly what is practical to map out ahead of time and what isn't. Although, you still have to deal with unexpected shit happening; you know, what with free will and all (if only there was some way around that...) :P
ReplyDeleteI think if I did it more often, I'd probably get the hang of it a bit better, but I'm still not convinced that the DMing side of RPGs is something that I actually enjoy (I think Jesse made this prediction for me iirc). Time will tell!
(Late comment is late)
ReplyDeleteSounds like a good one! Shame abbout the racism, but eh, it's bound to turn up sooner or later. Now, the important thing to remember after all this is, when you play a PC again, to completely forget / ignore aaallll the things you learned about how hard it is to DM for a none-railroad adventure. :D
On that note, Lord bless the 'Enormous list of random NPC's'. Seriously, it was the best, most useful thing I made for my campaigns. Well, besides the 'Randomized Traps list', but you'll never hear me admitting that list's existence.