"You should have just asked 'Do you want to play Gelf again?'"

Due to some recent unfortunate events, my weekly Pathfinder gaming group got a bit shaken up a couple of months ago: One of my friends, who was actually my co-GM in the campaign he'd designed, decided that he wanted to take a break from regular RP.

Now, that's fine, really. I don't think anyone would (or should) begrudge someone else the decision to stop gaming, whether temporary or permanent. The only problem I had was that he was the GM of the game we were playing. Okay, co-GM. But it was his campaign world, his overall plot. I sort of took a bit-part role, filling in some blanks with ideas that I thought were cool. So when the setting designer and chief GM gets burnout partway through the campaign, what do you do?

Well, I had a few options, really - and they were very much my options, since I'm the only person in my gaming group who feels confident enough to quickly pick up the GMing ball and run with it:

• Continue the adventure.
• Start a brand new campaign.
• Do something a bit different.

The first of those wasn't really an option for me, since I had no idea where the adventure was going: we were literally half-way through an encounter when things went pear-shaped and he decided to call time on his GMing (and playing).

Now the second isn't a bad choice. I even had a campaign in mind that I'd been bouncing off some of my fellow players for a few weeks. I'd done a broad-strokes examination of a world, knew how I wanted things to kick off (vaguely), but hadn't really written anything pertinent down, like details - I'd have to work damn fast to get that one working.

The third option, though... well, now. That's a pretty broad statement, taken just as it is. Fortunately, a few of my players had been helping me out with a bit of playtesting for an upcoming Pathfinder product: Mythic Adventures. I'm a big fan of high-level play in D&D, and I was looking at how this new set of rules worked when added to 20th level characters. So, every few days, we were running a purely combat scenario (in a fairly scientific fashion) with some characters that I made up. One of those characters was a guy named Chemlak, who may or may not be my favourite ever RP character (I'll let you guess), and may or may not have been carefully converted from 2nd Edition AD&D (which was the last time he was actually roleplayed), through 3rd Edition, 3.5E and up to Pathfinder. And I'd come up with a 20th level version of Chemlak's partner-in-adventuring, Gelfar, for one of my players. The other playtest characters were quickly generated to fill out the party, and we were having a blast fighting insanely high-powered enemies and tearing through them like nothing you've ever seen.

You can probably see where this is going.

Chem and Gelf (as we tend to call them), had long-ago (in the real world) retired from adventuring (somewhere around 1994, if you're keeping count), but they remain ever-present in conversations, reminiscences and jokes.

Only one real question remained: Could I quickly (I had less than a week) come up with a plot outline for even a short adventure that could challenge these characters?

Umm... HELL YES!

The last thing that happened to Chem and Gelf was that they established a small town in the middle of nowhere. They had friends, followers, and (fortunately) some unfinished business with some enemies.

I had to get busy. Really busy. I sketched up my plot outline, checked it for gaping plotholes, and ran it through the "what would Batman do?" process. It looked solid. Easy hook, nice way to bring in the new characters, and some pointed reminders to not allow the long-established characters overshadow things.

I just had to sell it to my players.

First, I got my wife on-side. That was surprisingly easy, actually. She'd never had the chance to RP alongside Chem at all, but loves to hear stories of his adventures and background. Then my other players - maybe I'm a bit of a coward, but I wanted to get everyone accepting the idea before I pitched it to Adam, who played Gelfar. Well, the general consensus was "sounds like a laugh, as long as you're sure you can manage it". Yeah, I'm sure.

Then came the REALLY hard sell. I grabbed Adam on Skype, and explained my reasoning for not wanting to launch my "next campaign" because it would take a long time for me to get the details I need down, of not wanting to try to continue the current campaign without the lead-GM. I explained that I had a high level plot idea, and that it would be great to take the playtest characters out for a spin in a real adventure.

His reply was the title of this post.

Damn, I can be long-winded for no good reason, sometimes.

Fatherhood and Games Mastering

Something very strange happened to me last week. I had to stop and think about it for a minute, before I realised what was actually going on.

I was writing a bit of prose for a friend of mine for my weekly Pathfinder RPG game - his character has had a semi-prophetic vision (of the "prevent this" variety), and I'd set up the scene of the vision, and wanted to describe something to make it seem more dramatic.

Not wanting to go into too much detail about the scene I was describing, suffice to say that it was about demons terrorising a town that they had taken control of. Now, to me, demons in RPGs are evil, end of discussion (though I am also a merry user of the redeemed demon as one of my favourite NPCs in my long-running campaign). So, any evil thing you can think of is fair game for demons. Since I happen to have a fairly vivid imagination, I can think of quite a lot (though some truly depraved things still shock me).

So, I had an idea for a particular part of the scene - not to go into too much detail, but it involved a young child being harshly treated by a demon, and the child's mother able to only watch. I got about half a sentence into writing it, and stopped. That half-sentence got deleted. I got on with the rest of the story - I didn't even think to try and come up with a different description to use to "strengthen the image".

Why?

Because, as a father with a two-year-old, the image in my mind sickened me. Sickened me on a level I can't properly describe. Over the years I've described lots of things for RP, some of the worst crimes one human can inflict on another, and I've never had a problem writing things down for stories, but I had to avoid this one.

I doubt I can really explain it, but I've found one of my taboo subjects, and it's there not because I as a person consider it particularly depraved or awful - I can write that sort of description until the cows come home - but because I cannot separate the emotions I have regarding my own son and the things I write.

I can intellectually discuss rape, or torture, or the vilest means of dismemberment - I know the mechanics of them, but I have no deep visceral understanding of them, even though, for example, I have a close friend who was raped. But evil being done to a child? That's when Daddy steps in and slams on the brakes.

I'm not the same person I was before my son was born. I didn't really realise that until last week. Up until now, I'd always thought I could deal with anything in a mature, intellectual, detached way.

Boy, was I wrong.

I was again reminded of this when I was flicking through the archives on Gnome Stew and came across a post about taboo subjects, which is what prompted me to write here.

I don't think I have all that many taboos in my own games, but I certainly don't revel in pushing the boundaries of politeness, and I'm certainly a lot more careful than I once was about even mentioning certain subjects. The important thing is what stopped me writing that thing about the demon: if it doesn't add to the story itself, it's gratuitous, and if it's gratuitous, it probably doesn't need to be on the page.

My two-year-old son taught me something about writing and Games Mastering that I didn't understand until now. How awesome is that?