Green GM—Meet Seasoned GM

There are probably some spoilers ahead—those that visit from the Savage Worlds Forum may want to skip the read if they plan on playing in a Zombie Run Game. You've been warned.

Friday was busy to say the least. The bulk of the day was spent at a Family Reunion, and a good time was had by all in attendance (as far as I could tell)—and it was great catching up with cousins that I don't get to spend as much time with like we once did.

The game was planned for 7, the invitation says people can show up at 6 (this allows for socialization before the game—i.e. the game can actually start at 7—in theory this allows us to not play so late: making for happy spouses where necessary). We left the location of the Family Reunion late. The Drive takes just over an hour—unless they happen to have the freeway closed because of an accident and you literally come to a complete stop.

Curiously, my sister had called and talked to us (because she had left her phone behind) and failed to mention that there was traffic. Normally I'm patient, but the kids had not had naps. One was asleep in the back, and the other (the one that gets upset if the car stops moving) was threatening to wake her sister because the car was not moving.

I took the first opportunity to get going in the other direction. We went back to town and took an alternate route home. Meanwhile the first player shows up at our house and finds us not there. Since we have been friends for years we instructed him on how to get into the house.

When we arrived home, he was still the only one there, and he had made delicious enchiladas with what he found in the kitchen—for which we were very grateful.

So we were waiting for one person, who said he would be a little late. I called him for an ETA. . . . Earth to Justin, an hour late is not to be considered "a little"—just for future reference. Not that it mattered that much, after eating and setting up he arrived fairly close to go-time.

Now, I have mentioned this is the first campaign that I have ever run. The first player that showed up at our house, the person who graciously fixed us dinner. He has been our GM for years. He is the GM guy, they guy that is always the GM. The guy that loves being GM. The guy that given the choice between Playing or Running a game, will always choose to run the game—Yeah, that guy is playing in my first campaign.

Thankfully, he's a good player as well as a good GM, and allowed me to run the game. He did help me out with some rule things that I was still a little confused about. Yes, we've had three sessions and three different ways to kill a zombie. (I still haven't decided how I want to run it for the rest of the game, but at least I've had some different flavors to mull over [different flavored zombies?—that's just not right])

Once we got started they entered the First Methodist Church of Camettesville, and were faced with terrors so horrible and disturbing, that I'm not going to mention them here.

The party did come up with an interesting way to handle the challenge laid before them, and in essense defused the "trap." I must say I was quite pleasantly surprised.

I also forgot about part of the conclusion to the Camettseville chapter of the Zombie Run saga, so there was a little less punch to the story than there could have been. If I had gone ahead with the original ending, there would have been some continuity problems, so I had to wing it a little.

I'm actually a little more nervous about the next session. There's two ways I could go about it—one involves furthering the story, and the other involves allowing extra player creativity. We'll see how that goes. I'm leaning toward player creativity, because I want to see how that plays out.