~~I have been the GM in our group for a good number of years. It's a role and art that I'm proud to have as a hobby, however I'm not so full of myself to deny someone else a turn at the head of the table. In fact I welcome it. If there's one thing I love, it's being one-upped. I've found that the best way to cure an inflated ego, such as mine became over time, is to have someone do me one better, to inspire me to perfect my own craft.
But this topic isn't about me and my delusions of gaming grandeur as a GM...This is about my friend~We'll call her Frustrated Gamer Chick, or FGC. FGC has been my sister in all but blood since my second year in college~A little firebrand of a dame who clicks with me in a manner that we both love women, and can make filthy jokes to one another without social akwardness. She is also the munchkin in our group~I said she was a firebrand, and for a reason. She hated to lose on any level. She also had a hard-on for anti-hero character templates, and was extremely fond of the old "Triple-Cross", always opting to try and join the Enemy faction so as to destroy them from within at the apex of the campaign.
So when she asked me if she could try her hand beind the GM screen, I was a little surprised, but as I said, I'm always willing to see if someone can put me in my place at the craft. Her weapon of choice was the same as mine- Star Wars Saga Edition. I had wet my teeth and honed my abilities on the Revised Core Rule edition years before, and we were only both truly understanding the new system~ From the available library at the time, she chose the Knights of the Old Republic campaign guide~ And this is where it began a gradual decent into medicority.
We rolled our characters...A Miralukan Jedi, a human Jedi, An Aleena Soldier, a Human Noble, and myself, a Khil Noble named Cthulhu.
The trouble became obvious after the first few sessions~ We were a band of individuals after the Dark Wars aiming to find and rescue the remaining Jedi Masters in a bid to rebuild the Jedi Order under the leadership of Revan~ FGC had gone according to accepted canon that Revan was a good guy, but the Exile had gone Dark Side, however they now worked side by side for the same endeavor. The rest of the NPC supporting cast featured an array of KOTOR characters from the video games, who all had legally changed their names to "Mary Sue", and all behaved in a similar "don't question my authorita" fashion. We weren't even allowed to fly the ship ourselves.
Being a Noble, I was not entirely built as a Combat class, but quickly was pigeonholed by the NPC's and the situations at hand into a combat role~ Leading to Cthulhu laying face first in the dirt many a combat session, only escaping death thanks to Saga Editions Force Point expenditures.
Sessions often went as follows~
-Congregate before the all powerful Revan and his entourage to recieve their next mission.
-Go to planet related to missions (spending way too much time on inside jokes during the hyperspace journey)
-Go to a cantina~ Apparently former Jedi Masters take to the bottle real easy (The Ram Khota Corralary)
-Return to ship for our pre-boarding bad guy ambush.
Once that particular story arc was finished, it only degraded from there...I stuck around just to see how deep this would go before it imploded on itself like Malachor 5 after the activation of the Mass Shadow Generator.
I gave up Cthulhu for another character~ Lenny, the Kel Dor ex-sith infantryman, trying to see the campaign through fresh eyes. The next story bit was a Dead Space homage~~However, the dear girl felt that if you're going to do a homage, that means you need to do it exactly the same as the source material. So she supplied us in-game with the same weapons as Dead Space, however she didn't bother writing out their stats, and hand-writing the monsters stats herself in such a way that only a Destiny Point spend or a critical dice roll would suffice.
Finally, it arrived at our current stand-point~~A slow grind to level 20 to prepare for the final battle with the BBG and his cronies. We are currently at level 12. Most sessions follow what I call the "Meet and Beat". We set out on Sandwich Runs (see below), doing little trivial matters until eventually, one of the BBG's makes a cameo appearance to kick our teeth in (again, only a critical or Desiny Point will suffice at our level) before strolling off whisteling while we scour the ground trying to find where our kidneys had dropped.
Then I learned the real source of the issues: The bland and sudden combat, the lame plot hooks, etc~ FGC didn't actually read the campaign guides she had amassed. In fact the only time she opened them was to find equipment and enemy stat blocks. All the information she had was what she had gleamed from the KOTOR video games...We weren't played Star Wars tabletop, we were playing a pantomined version of the Video Game.
So I came before this community to try and seek assistance so that I may try and take this poor, misguided soul under my...no...OUR wing, and teach her the true merits of the Gamemasters art. I don't want her to stop GMing~ I want her to learn. Where do we begin?
