Halloween Gaming—Not Terribly Spooky

So, after six weeks we finally played Savage Worlds again. Last Session was derailed when only two people showed up. The session before that was set aside for Beatles Rock Band and Guitar Hero 5.

This was a very Role Play session. The party was still in Flagstaff. Though P wasn't there I contended that his character had a Parrish and that he had acquired a bus for church purposes. One player, who hasn't been there for every session has a character that happens to be a surgeon (of the plastic variety)—this gave me an excuse to run the hospital portion of the story—which made it easier to get the group out of Flagstaff. Though they almost didn't take it (interestingly enough).

This was a difficult session for me to run—sort of. This campaign (as I've mentioned ad nauseam) is my first ride in the Game Master seat. I've found myself at times not confident in my own storytelling skills, and shaky in my ability to act as referee and make rulings with my limited understanding of the rules. Because, I know myself, I had a feeling this is how things would go. Which is why at the outset of this game, I didn't just start making a story up and allow my players to interact with it. This is why I'm running Zombie Run, rather than my own Zombie Scenario.

The benefit of running a scripted scenario, is that you don't have to take the time to create the world and characters and story—it's all there for you. Except when it isn't. This particular branch of the story was rather more sandboxy than previous story arcs. Since I'm not the story's creator—it's not a part of me.

Advice given to budding authors is to write what you know. If you write what you know, then when a new situation presents itself you instinctively know what is going to happen, because the places, characters, and situations are all a part of you.

The same goes for Storytelling through Game Mastering, if it's something you created—then it's going to be a part of you, and when new situations arise (as they always will—players will surprise you every time) you theoretically will know how to react.

So, this session presented me with the challenge of getting the characters to interact with a particular character. I tried to get them to go there last session—but there was no rhyme or reason to do so. This session however, there was a way to do so. Though I think, if this had been a story of my own creation I would have been more flexible last session and changed things to make it work differently. Sometimes when I'm in the thick of it—I forget to be flexible and forget I can change things to suit me.

Also, I find that I'm not descriptive enough. I need to use a palate of words to create mental visuals for my players, but I find that more often than I should, I just let the dice tell the story, which isn't that exciting.

Holiday Season is upon us, so there's probably going to have to be some schedule adjustment following the every two weeks rule lands a game on the week of Thanksgiving and the Week of Christmas. I'm willing to play those weeks, but understand if things just don't work out—Halloween almost fell through (humorous side note, two players were asleep on the couch the entire game—in spite of the Halloween Music playing on the Sound System quite loud at times...So a big thanks to Brandon and Tiffany for coming, it would have been Lame without you). I just hope this game doesn't die on the vine as a result—because it's written to end with a Bang!!