Fellow Gamers: who was your best GM/DM/ST? What did s/he do that made them so? What was their game, or did they go for multiple games?
Thanks :),
–CiaTH
Best GM: Tony Gustavsson (now Dr. Gustavsson)
Incredibly well thought out campaigns (with twists!), awesome attention to detail and a natural authority. Also completely devoid of compassion, meaning he would (and usually did) kill your character that you spent 3 days writing up a background story for if he felt like it, bringing a nerve to the game.
He prefered historical games, like Call of Cthulu (and doctored on the history of forensic medicine) rather than fantasy or sci-fi (unfortunately, because I prefered fantasy).
Best straight GM I ever had was a lady writer, who DM’d a homebrew game in her book’s universe. Understandably, she knew the setting inside and out, her NPCs were lively and well thought out, and her description skills were incredible.
However, the best roleplaying experience of my life happened while playing “conceptual” RPGs : no character sheets, and barely any DMing. The DM just explained who each of us were (in private), then let us play with each other while staying in the background and only intervening discreetly when the scenario required it.
The best game was when we players were supposed to be patients in an insane asylum after a plane crash, all with amnesia except the doctor, who was trying to get everyone to remember what happened. I was the doctor. And I progressively started realizing during the game that I was insane (well, my character) and the patients were really my doctors. Real head trip.
Theo Epstein should be a lock for the Hall of Fame, considering he brought two World Series titles to Boston after that long hard drought.
I’m pretty sure that was a joke, but lest anyone else get whooshed, this thread is about gamemasters/dungeon masters/storytellers, the folks who run role-playing games, not general managers, the folks who run baseball teams.
I knew an excellent DM named Ben who played his own version of D&D. What made him so good was that he could improvise very well. You could go anywhere in his world(s) and interesting things would happen no matter what you did. You were never railroaded.
His npcs were very compelling even though he had just made them up.
His plot hooks always sucked you in and put you in situations that you were motivated to solve. This was never forced, the plot always seemed to be in reaction to the pc’s actions and decisions.
He had an immense, dynamic imagination and he was also a very charismatic person so that helped too.
Really? I thought this guywas going to win this thread in a heartbeat.
<vicarious>A good friend of mine used to participate in campaigns run by Gary Gygax.</vicarious>
Considering what Gygax’s modules were like, though, that might not be entirely a good thing.