The Worst Game I Have Run

paka has asked me about the best and worst games I’ve personally run.

So, I shall answer! Worst first.

I’ve run a lot of bad games. I flatter myself that most of these were in my early years of GMing, and a lot of them were bad only in the sense of being games run by and for 15-year-old boys. I will remove them from consideration, since they are sort of "juvenalia."

I can remember a very bad Underground game I ran around in 1993 and 1994. There were a couple of interesting sessions, but the players didn’t really get the setting. Worse, I was trying very hard to impress on them how grim the world was. They were expecting Marshall Law, but forgot that meant playing the wretched and depressed superhero veterans. After a couple of sessions working at a fast food restaurant and fighting with their neighbours in a tenement block, I decided to give them work for a sort of Veteran’s Association, fighting to clean up their neighbourhood.

There were some interesting ideas in the campaign, and some fights with gangs and so on, and attempts to bring down an evil organization with pirate broadcasts. But overall, they didn’t “get” the setting, and neither did I. Have you ever seen a 19-year-old white gamer try and portray a super-powered gangsta vet from Compton? It was not a pretty sight. The campaign died one August afternoon at my friend Dan’s apartment. The players fielded a harassing phone call from a minor adversary, making vague threats.

The character answering the phone said, “Why are you even calling us? What do you want?”

Still in character, I angrily growled, “I don’t know!”

We stopped playing immediately, and never touched the game again.

Since then, I’ve had games that ended because people lost interest, or because I tried to match the wrong players in a group. I’ve had games where I tried to GM in my old reactionary style, only to have it fall flat because the players were not as proactive in some ways as those I was used to. I’ve had games fail because I tried to be too ambitious. But I think the Underground campaign takes the cake for sheer lack of preparation, interest, and aptitude on the part of my players and myself.

The Best of Games

Now, on to the best game I have run. I strongly believe that any game that comes successfully to a close with a majority of the player satisfied is a good game. However, certain games have offered a level of roleplay and fun that lingers in memory. I’ve had the good fortune to have this happen a few times. Yes, these are all high fantasy. I'm lame.


1. The Oakhurst Adventurers
I would be remiss in not mentioning, first of all, the Hamilton Underdark Exploration Society (HUES), a group of players I started gaming with in January 2002. The players are doc_mystery, mar2nee and her husband Daniel, shadow_maze, and velvetpage.

We started with the first Adventure Path module, The Sunless Citadel, and in 2007 we were just about ready to embark on the last module in that series. The player characters are now all 16-18th level, and embroiled in a massive interdimensional war. The campaign went on hiatus in 2007, but should start again in a couple of months. The years of gaming have produced a number of memorable stories, some of which you can read on our ancient website. I really look forward to getting back to this one, and tying up the loose ends. Though, I suspect we have a year or so of adventuring before we finish the Adventure Path.


2. Voyage of the Riddock's Dawn
Then, there was the campaign I ran that was turned into a published novel!

In the summer of 2002, I ran an Ironclaw game for velvetpage, wggthegnoll and redstorm. We were childless at the time, I was working fairly close to home, so we managed to play on weeknights and packed a lot of gaming into that summer. The campaign grew in the telling, from a few germs of intro adventures I’d run at conventions.

It turned into the Voyage of the Riddock’s Dawn, a globe-spanning adventure the uncovered and defeated an ancient evil. The game paused for several months when redstorm and wggthegnoll moved to England, then restarted when Wgg returned, with the addition of sassy_fae and etherlad. A complete summary (with pictures and everything) can be read here. And, of course, this is the campaign that inspired velvetpage to write her first novel.

3. The Battle of Angbad Way
Finally, I have to mention the game that, for a long time, was the yardstick by which I measured all other gaming experiences. I wrote about it in 2004 – The Battle of Angbad Way.

Conan: I remember days like this when my father took me to the forest and we ate wild blueberries. More than 20 years ago. I was just a boy of four or five. The leaves were so dark and green then. The grass smelled sweet with the spring wind.
*pause*
Conan: Almost 20 years of pitiless cumber! No rest, no sleep like other men. And yet the spring wind blows, Subotai. Have you ever felt such a wind?
Subotai: They blow where I live too. In the north of every man's heart.
Conan: It's never too late, Subotai.
Subotai: No. It would only lead me back here another day. In even worse company.
Conan: For us, there is no spring. Just the wind that smells fresh before the storm.