The Worst Game I Have Run

[pyat]

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.

Comments

[cargoweasel.livejournal.com]

Hah, UnderGround rocks! It was another in the enormous list of RPGs I bought and loved and never had the right people willing to play it.

[pyat.livejournal.com]

That's the thing! Getting the right players, at least players who were on the same page as to how to interpret the setting in the first place.

[thebitterguy]

I had a chance to buy the entire run of the game from Mayfair a few years back. If I hadn't just gotten married at the time, I probably would have bought it.

[pyat.livejournal.com]

I think I have the entire game line, if you want to set up a trade or something.

[nottheterritory.livejournal.com]

I dunno man - sounds like that lasted a couple of sessions - that's pretty good.

I'm not sure it would qualify, but the most spectacular flame out of an rpg I've been involved in was a homebrewed GURPS V (as in "The Visitors" and "The Final Battle") I think I was going to co-GM. We all made characters (which in GURPS is a pretty labourious process) and then, to prepare for the first session, we stayed up all night one night and watched 10 hours of V - the two mini-series. I think I was one of the last ones to pass out in the wee hours of the morning.

Once we'd woken up the next morning, having survived the night of cheesey SF, _we never discussed it again_.

It was eerie, actually.

But oh man, never again.

[pyat.livejournal.com]

Oh, it lasted a few sessions, but no one liked it!

Hey, your V story is more of a non-gaming story, surely? ;)

[nottheterritory.livejournal.com]

Well yes - why I said I'm not sure it would qualify... but I mean we did create characters and stuff - it wasn't total vapourware ;)

[madmanofprague.livejournal.com]

Man, I'd totally want to be in that, if only just to challenge myself to play it straight.

[pyat.livejournal.com]

Oh, you kids and your ironic enjoyment of things!

Did you know the series was originally intended as a dramatization of the Sinclair Lewis novel about Fascism in America, It Can't Happen Here! ?

[madmanofprague.livejournal.com]

I did! Thanks to some selfless 30-something wikipedia editor.

I think my character will be called David Yughk.

[leonard-arlotte.livejournal.com]

I just read that book last year. It was pretty good.

[pyat.livejournal.com]

It is! Though I was sort of annoyed at friends who'd been using it as a sort of prophecy of the Bush years.

[leonard-arlotte.livejournal.com]

I prefer to think of it as a guide that points out that things aren't as horrible as they could possibly be.

[relee.livejournal.com]

The way you talk about having the right players for the game, I wonder what game I would be the right player for. ^.^

[pyat.livejournal.com]

I once ran a game called "Dalek Invasion of Fraggle Rock." You could be a Doozer.

[relee.livejournal.com]

Wow. I didn't expect a response like THAT! That's rad. XD

Thanks.