DNAphil

“What we need to do is to think outside the box.” –Meeting Room Proverb

Thinking outside the box, that is coming up with ideas outside of the established norm, is the battle cry heard in meeting rooms in corporations around the world. The idea is to think past our base assumptions and rules that were established previously. By thinking beyond those assumptions, we can then explore new ideas that may lead to true innovation. As much of a cliche as it in the business world, there is some truth to the phrase.

In gaming, there is a belief that when it comes to rule systems, that thinking outside the box, that is using the rules outside of their initial design, is being innovative. It has been my experience, that when you do that, you create more frustration than innovation…

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In December, my gaming group went on a gaming hiatus for the Holidays.  We had a brief return for two sessions, in January, and then on January 18th, my daughter was born, putting us on another four week hiatus, while my family and I adjusted to having an infant in the house.  For the past four weeks, I have been trying to get as much sleep as I can, helping my wife out, as she has been taking the late nights up feeding our daughter, giving our 3 yr old son as much attention as I can, and settling into a new role at work.  What I have not been doing, is much gaming stuff.   The blog posts took a dip, my work on RPG’s, in general has been very low. I feel as if my creative spark has gone dormant.

This Sunday the hiatus is over, my gaming group comes back together, as we are going to start a new Cyberpunk 2020 campaign, run by Sargon.  The following week, is the return of my Iron Heroes campaign, and to be honest, I am a bit concerned.  It’s now been about 8 weeks since I have created any session material, or been behind the screen.  Right now I am feeling a bit numb.  I know that I have the GM spark in me, but this is the longest I have gone, in the past 10 years, without exercising it. What I need right now, is to wake it and get my GM Groove back. I have been giving it some thought and I have some ideas…

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A week ago, the gaming community received word that game designer Erick Wujcik was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and is dying. I sat in front of my computer kind of numb when I heard the news. As it sank in, I came to realize that Erick’s work has had a large impact in my gaming life, and that I wanted to dedicate a post to thank him for what he has done for me as a gamer and how my own gaming style was forever changed….

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A few weeks ago, I wrote a letter to my past self, giving him some advice, about GMing… what I know now that I did not know then. To make things fair, I figured that my past self should have the opportunity to write a letter back to remind me of some of the good things that I did as a GM then that I should be doing now.

And here is the letter that came back….

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I have been a GM for over 20 years. I started the same way many GMs did: picked by my friends to run the game for them. I don’t know if I was a good GM or bad GM, but my friends always said nice things about the games I ran, and I know that we had a lot of fun. Over the years though, my skill as a GM has certainly improved as I have learned from other GMs, the Internet, and other sources.

So I got to thinking, what if I could pass information to my past self, about how to GM better, just what would I tell myself….

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Call them Mooks, or Minions, or Goons, these are the disposable NPCs that heroes blast and cut their way through wholesale. Most RPGs do not have specific rules for handling Mooks, which I think is a big oversight. In this week’s article I am going to discuss what a Mook is, how RPGs should address them in their rules, and what you can do with them in your games.

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