Sit Down at the Table, $@&*$!!

They sit at the table, jabbering on. "I think we should just roll dice to see which game we play.", says one. "Why don't we just switch the games that we play?", says the other. "Because our characters would never rise in level and that's the fun." "No it isn't, it's the playing that's fun."
My head is swelling with pain.
"I still say we play Rifts and not Shadowrun." I have an adventure that took me 5 hours to create. He doesn't care, he wants to play Rifts. He agreed to play Shadowrun "the next time". It is the next time. "Well we all want to play Shadowrun." "I would like to play Shadowrun or Heros Unlimied." "Yeah why don't we play heros unlimited." "I don't like Heros Unlimited."

The pain.... the pain....
It goes on for an hour. We agree to Shadowrun.
"I'll ask my fixer if he knows anything about Alfred Dundly. Also, I'll need my Wage Mage contact to make a few distractions as we go into the Lone Star building."
You're the one that's supposed to find out about Alfred Dundly, and you can easily sneak into the Lone
Star office.
"I'll shoot him. We can't let him escape."

Your mask spell is working, you don't need to kill him. The pain thickens.

 "I'm tired of playing this adventure. It's so dull." He leaves the table and goes to the couch.

I can't take it much longer. I explode.
"IT'S ONLY DULL BECAUSE YOUR NOT SHOOTING EVERYTHING IN SIGHT AND ACTUALLY HAVE TO FIGURE SOMETHING OUT!
NOW COME BACK AND SIT AT THE TABLE, $@&*$!!"

"Why? I can still hear everything from here."

I jump out the window and run into the streets.
There comes a time when players are not at their...uhh... intellectually best. It's at these times where I suggest you either have the window open, or be prepared to just try to keep your cool. Especially with my players, we all always tear right into the GM:
"So you stand outside the office building watching various people walk in and out of the lobby."
"Huh huh. In and out. Huh huh."
"Heeheehe. That's funny, Stew."

The only way to have a truely successful gaming session is well, hmm. There is no such thing. However, we can always try.
  1. Cut down on as many distractions as possible. This includes: No music playing, have all dice and pencils away from the players (run an experiment, EVERYONE always has to do something with their hands i.e. playing with pencils, rolling dice for no reason, sticking them in their pants...).
  2. Keep the players involved. Always have everyone try to move their turn in combat along so the next person isn't kept waiting. Set a 10 seconds to decide what the hell you're doing or we skip your turn.
  3. Have the players always understand that they sometimes do have to wait for their turn. Don't have people shouting out random stuff at random times.
  4. Have your adventure COMPLETELY ready for the game. Also have your adventures clearly marked and organized for use. If you waste time looking for maps or info, your players will get bored and distracted really quickly.
  5. Make sure everyone knows the ground rules. I have the hugest problem of "But my character always reloads after combat!". Make sure you understand the player's actions.
  6. As GM, you have responsibility of keeping track of the entire game world. Keep little side notes of how many bullets were fired, keep track of what NPC is who's contact, or who is thinking what and who is about do to what, and about a few trillion other variables about the normal state of the world.
  7. Have EVERY NPC have a personality, a history, a past, a family, friends, life experiances. Don't let the players just start blowing away security guards because they are nameless, faceless people. In my olden days of GMing, there was an instance where the players made their getaway because the doorway where the guards were coming from were block by the dead corpses of their former coworkers. Make sure that when they wasted that guard on the sidewalk, he left behind a wife and son, they were reling on his paycheck, they are forced to go into the slums. Bring up past experiances to the current runs. Remeber, that son will grow up wanting the murderers dead.
  8. Lone Star, in all it's inefficency, really dislikes having runners go around committing homicides left and right. There is an investigation at all crime scenes, and whenever a murder takes pace, there are always at least 20 or so mistakes the killer made.
  9. Remeber, this is a game. Don't get pissed off when things don't go right, and don't have the players get mad when they die. Try to have some fun, and try not to kill each other (in real life that is...)


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