column: Nerdery #34: Inexplicable turns

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

reference: http://www.timewastersguide.com/view.php?id=1275

[Skar]

The best time I ever had was when a friend of mine was GMing me through a shadowrun game.  I was a troll and I went all over the place.  He was flexible enough to gently direct me back onto course when I'd go astray and smart enough to know how without deus ex machining it.   At one point I killed my brother's characer.  We were playing two different campaigns and Mike had been planning to bring us together but when I first ran into him he was part of some unfortunate collateral damage of mine.  That caused a break in the game but...semper gumby after all.

It was an absolute riot.

[Mister M]

Good article (even though the editor in me is cringing at the fact that "roleplaying" was spelled at least three different ways throughout the article.)

I've also found that these little (or not so little) bumps in a campaign are smoothed out by players giving the GM a little bit of a break. Yeah, so maybe Professor Freak really would go out for Mexican food, but the player knows the GM put a lot of work into the planned plot, so he'll hold off that particular quest until after the demon-princess's defeat. One of my favorite quotes for this comes from Matthew McFarland, a White Wolf Freelancer. Paraphrased, it says: "There's no such thing as 'That's what my character would do.' The correct phrase is 'That's what my character would probably do.'"

Of course, sometimes it's fun to just have a monkey wrench thrown in the GM's plans, even for the GM.

[42]

Apparently my version of MS Word is uncomfortable with the term "roleplaying." Something I have known for some time, but haven't bothered to fix.