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Mailing List Logs for ShadowRN

Message no. 1
From: Firepower <DVANDERS@*****.VINU.EDU>
Subject: Re: GM Styles
Date: Thu, 3 Nov 1994 13:39:59 EST
<Damian wrote that the style of a GM should change to keep the
characters happy.>

I hate to admit this is true. BUT IT IS. The happiness of the
players is the main concern of the GM. There must be challenge,
must be danger and excitement. But if the rewards are poor, or if the
run is just about impossible, you'll soon run out of players. Aim for
the happy medium. This is not always easy--it is easy to spoil
characters by making life too easy.
I confess that I have this fault. I like the people I play with. I want
them to feel that I delivered. I WANT THEM TO BE HAPPY. This isn't
real life. Real life is often cruel and, honestly, a GM should be also.
But it's so hard to kill a character, so hard......
Firepower
Message no. 2
From: Shadowdancer <BRIDDLE@*****.VINU.EDU>
Subject: Re: GM Styles
Date: Thu, 3 Nov 1994 15:39:22 EST
Firepower writes:

> Real life is often cruel and, honestly, a GM should be also.
> But it's so hard to kill a character, so hard......
>
Not really. If the particular character(or player) is stupid, give it to
him/her. And you really do not have to kill a character to straighten
someone out. Just bring them close to death and damage something
vital(like that brand new wired-3 or a magic rating).
Message no. 3
From: The GREAT Cornholio <mruane@***.UUG.ARIZONA.EDU>
Subject: Re: GM Styles
Date: Thu, 3 Nov 1994 19:00:16 -0700
On Thu, 3 Nov 1994, Firepower wrote:

> I hate to admit this is true. BUT IT IS. The happiness of the
> players is the main concern of the GM. There must be challenge,
> must be danger and excitement. But if the rewards are poor, or if the
> run is just about impossible, you'll soon run out of players. Aim for
> the happy medium. This is not always easy--it is easy to spoil
> characters by making life too easy.
> I confess that I have this fault. I like the people I play with. I want
> them to feel that I delivered. I WANT THEM TO BE HAPPY. This isn't
> real life. Real life is often cruel and, honestly, a GM should be also.
> But it's so hard to kill a character, so hard......
>
Firepower
No kidding. tuesday, two chracters were sent to do some Sabotage on an
island state in the Carib League and they made a wrong turn... right into
a military compound and new, experimetnal forms of powered assault
armors. Oops. And they didn't hide the body of the one guard they
killed. Double oops. Well, then all the powered assault armor started
walking around and kicking on their butts. I literally through one
character through a concrete wall (and it took all of his karma to
survive the impact damage. it was stun, but it was enough stun to
transfer to physcial damage, which was almost filled.). I didn't really
feel like killing them all because it was a stupid mistake and they had
blown almost all of their karma reserve. Sucks to be me... Gming...

Mike aka Spellslinger
Message no. 4
From: Stefan Struck <struck@******.INFORMATIK.UNI-BONN.DE>
Subject: Re: GM Styles
Date: Fri, 4 Nov 1994 12:42:40 +0100
>
> <Damian wrote that the style of a GM should change to keep the
> characters happy.>
>
> I hate to admit this is true. BUT IT IS. The happiness of the
> players is the main concern of the GM. There must be challenge,
> must be danger and excitement. But if the rewards are poor, or if the
> run is just about impossible, you'll soon run out of players. Aim for
> the happy medium. This is not always easy--it is easy to spoil
> characters by making life too easy.
> I confess that I have this fault. I like the people I play with. I want
> them to feel that I delivered. I WANT THEM TO BE HAPPY. This isn't
> real life. Real life is often cruel and, honestly, a GM should be also.
> But it's so hard to kill a character, so hard......
>
Firepower
We tend to play like it's a movie. Just imagine a crowd with popcorn and
coke watching you on screen.
If you want to watch that movie, you're doing find, if not, change it.

Stefan, Son of Yuboert

Further Reading

If you enjoyed reading about GM Styles, you may also be interested in:

Disclaimer

These messages were posted a long time ago on a mailing list far, far away. The copyright to their contents probably lies with the original authors of the individual messages, but since they were published in an electronic forum that anyone could subscribe to, and the logs were available to subscribers and most likely non-subscribers as well, it's felt that re-publishing them here is a kind of public service.

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