the Game Master of Failure

Today, we will see how Alexander (see previous article) is at Mastering a game. The result is of course a predictable major failure, bringing boredom and yawning around the table as well as a feeling of a wasted day. Why that ? what makes Alexander such a bad Game Master (GM) ?

• Explicit player preference : no-one is unbiased. However, giving one player around 200 points of creation and giving the other one 1500 is over the top. Doing explicit player preference is a good way to bring players against a GM, since players are usually united, except when it's Alexander as a player who has less points than the rest because he will inevitably DIE (and less points means faster character re-creation). Unequal Playing Characters (PCs) will make the players less willing to feel serious about this, and just try to act against the GM's plans.

• Using unexplained things to refrain players from doing unwanted stuff : "the players, after a critical failure to heal an important NPC (non-playing characters) decide to euthanize him by decapitation. At one inch of his neck, the blade is stopped by a strange force..." okay, enough. This is ridiculous ! When players want to do stuff, let them do it, even though it is stupid. Giving stupid excuses to limit the players is extremely bad. Let players do what they want to do, even though it's a very stupid idea.

• Being unoriginal : after a long walk in the forest, we see the big bad guy : the final boss of < insert popular video game name here> with the music related to him. Am I playing DnD or that video game ?

• Being anti-climatic : everyone wants a good final battle after fighting through miles of corridors, let their rage flow onto him, have him suffer 100 fold what they suffered. For example, a "Big bad guy" I created was just a child with powerful necromantic magic but unable to defend himself. The fact that the players had to fight plenty of undeads and a huge undead... THING (which almost killed them), they were more than happy to be able to hit and kill that little bugger, and the overall experience was great because the players were satisfied of getting revenge. But Alexander is a bad GM. basically, the script was like his : find the i bad guy. we walk across a forest and find him. His (unoriginal) final boss looks powerful,but dies in one hit, without doing anything to us. Great going ! why did you need 5 persons search for a guy for 3 hours to kill him in one hit ? Oh and there was no damage roll. It was basically "you touch him, he's dead". Why am I here again ?

• Giving anything to players : "hey Alexander, my character has a lot in 'allies', could he call someone to gather information about the theft we're supposed to investigate ?" "sure, well since you have xxx in 'allies', well your contact knows where the stolen object is, and gives you the address". WTF ?

• Having NPCs act like pussies : the players are in front o the king. One starts asking the princess out, another kills a guard while the others start looting the room. Reaction of the king ? "please, could I have your attention ?". if you want to role-play a kin, at least know how to be authoritarian ! if you can only play pussies, make all NPCs unimportant and insignificant, and therefore, you shouldn't master !

And the list goes on. Finding what makes such a person a bad game master is hard do do because it is such a pain to be a player at one of his tables. Please, Alexander, if you read me, do not master a game, EVER ! (reminder : Alexander is a generic name chosen at random).