Back in highschool I spent several lunch periods watching in fascination while a couple of boys told a story about a pair of werewolves while rolling dice every few minutes.
When I asked what they were doing, they showed me this book. I hit Barnes and Noble that evening, to come home the proud owner of Werewolf: the Apocalypse, 3rd ed.
I memorized the book, and it then it sat on my shelf, because no one I knew had any interest in playing it. In college I got my first taste of gaming: a single session of D&D, followed by a monthly Vampire LARP. With this experience, and two years of imagination to guide me, I started a Werewolf game with my two best friends.
It wasn’t the disaster it could have been, but it didn’t last.
A new college, and a semester with the Role Playing Club, gaming one or two times a week, and I was ready to try again.
This time, the game took off. It lasted for two years, with players entering and leaving as schedules and such dictated.
It is now nearly ten years since I first started gaming. Most of that time I’ve been GMing, with rare breaks as a player. There’s been a strong White Wolf focus in the games I’ve run, because their emphasis on character suits my style, but BESM, Star Wars and number of other odds and ends have found a place at the table as well.
For the most part, I’m not interested in expounding on system pros and cons, or mechanics. That’s covered in enough places on the web already. My focus is on what is the same in every game: designing a good plot, dealing with difficult players . . . learning to improvise when the difficult players destroy your plot . . . devising house rules, using character background, running NPCs, world building . . . you get the idea.
Leave a Comment
No comments yet.
Comments RSS TrackBack Identifier URI
