Running the Game: Let Go

Letting Go as GM/DM

This past summer when I was going through some old files I found notes from an D&D game that I ran back during the hallowed Dungeons and Dragons 3rd edition days. I had been a Game Master for the Star Wars RPG by West End Games at this point though had not yet run Dungeons and Dragons. This was going to be my first foray into running a D&D game.

During this time I had been working for my local game and comic book storefor a few years and a perk was we could play games after hours. This gave me some neutral territory to host so I invited a regular customer or two and then two coworkers to join as players. We took maybe half a session to generate characters before launching into the campaign. I can remember pouring through the Player’s Handbook and Monsters Manual to craft a long integrate plot with each character playing part in this intricate destiny.

And then like many campaigns before it and since I ran the game for several sessions before it fizzled as many campaigns around many other tables do these days. I could point to many reasons why the game didn’t work though looking at my notes the most glaring problems were the following:

Too much player railroading.
Being too ambitious.
Not being player focused on what they wanted as opposed to story I wanted to tell.

It looked too much like a novel (or play really) and not like a ttrpg campaign. I could have run a published adventure or limited my scope though I was oblivious. And didn’t have the experience to know what I didn’t know. I also wanted everything to be perfect on the first try and I didn’t have the experience to know that nothing can be perfect (especially for your first game!). Since then I know enough to know that I don’t know everything and that no matter how perfect a game is in my mind it will never come across perfectly at the table.

As I am running my latest mini series campaign I have to realize that I will make mistakes (both old and new) and keep in mind that generally speaking a game is better than no game however imperfect.