Let me tell you about my first foray into being a Game Master for a pen and paper RPG! Gather around, cuz I’m telling the story fast and breathless!

First we were all like dealing with a vampire with an umbrella:

And he had an Oni henchman!

And the heroes (Agent Aaron and his girlfriend Amy) had to go to a Warehouse:

To find a vulture brooch:

And a magic owl:

Oops!  I meant magic “Awl”:

But suddenly there was another vampire!:

And then Aaron beat the Oni and took his weapon:

And beat up some bad guys, and Amy was a sneaky former shapeshifter and everybody had fun and I ruled as Game Master.

*gulps in air*

Yeah, its kinda like that all the time.

In all honesty, being a GM was a lot of fun.  But the thing I found out is that I am really, really bad at the math part of it.  Rolling the dice.  Knowing which numbers and stats I’m rolling against or for or both(?).  Its dizzying at times.  Aaron must be hearing “Wait, I’m rolling what against the WHAT?” in his nightmares now.  But bless his blond, math oriented head, he never slapped me in the face and make me eat the dice.

My strengths would probably be in improvising and character creation.  I really know how to make a character the players can fully hate.  Sometimes I’m so good at it, they say “I f**king hate you, Nathan!” and this is because they’re so lost in the moment of the character that they feel like they hate me.  I mean, sure its odd that they were constantly calling my characters names and cussing them out and renaming all my characters after me…

*stares off into space with a haunted look in his eyes*

Their… their rage is a testament to my strengths.  It has to be…

I highly recommend being a GM for anyone that likes writing.  Its a catch all for improv, dialogue, character creation and motivation, pacing, action description, and fan fiction.  The forethought for an RPG session is easily in the same level as most short stories.  I would even go so far as to say most novels.  And the type of story and structure you decide upon can add different elements.

For our first session, I titled the “Case File” as False Start.  I’m envisioning it as Part One of a possible three or four part short story series.  All of this is like putting on a play where only a skeleton of a script has been made, the actors can change the entire outcome of  the story, and a roll of the dice can decide if someone will straight up die.

I am fully addicted.

Side Nate Tangent:  Next week I won’t be writing about the following RPG session (which is titled Hang Man’s Tree FYI) Keep an eye out for a side article where I write a synopsis of the sessions as they roll along.  What will happen?  Will our heroes win?  Will they lose?  Only the dice will decide! (Or me, if I’m in a particularly crappy mood).