Honestly, when the community Centre approached me (via my friend Paul, who was their activities director), the 15 dollars an hour was not a prime motivator.
I was in my "RPG Missionary" phase and thought I was--thorugh the medium of my admittedy awesome GMing skills--going to be bringing in a whole new crop fo gamers to the hobby.
The reality of it is that the experience pretty much soured me on the idea of "Gaming with Strangers", "Gaming with Youngsters" and hell, "Gaming with the Poor"
Firstly, the table was basically about half kids with zero interest in playing. they had just been dumped their by their moms as cheap daycare. They sucked. "No attention span too short" seemd to be the motto.
Even they were better than the handful of doughy white kids whose
entire imaginary output seemed to be Themselves as Black Gangsta Rappers.
The rest of the table was kids/teens who "just couldn't get it", and by "get it" I don't mean the math, or the setting...I mean really simple stuff. Names. The concept was lost on them.
Names seemed pretty easy to me. Really. I wasn't looking for anything culture-specific...just something that was recognizably a name.
The best one kid could do was
I Really Rule. Another could manage
It's not Rape, it's surprise sex in the Name: ______ section of the character sheet. When I asked what that was supposed to mean, he said that was his name on MSN meesenger.
The kid who literally couldn't think of another name for his character than
Eminem (despite attempting to for 10 minutes) was starting to look better and better. :\
The lone girl at the table was just a fat schlub who didn;t seem to know why she was there, and seemed perfectly content to stuff her face with chips. Bags and bags of chips. One after the other.
The game itself was beyond idiotic. The entirety of the actions of most of the non white-gangsta-wannabe players at the table could be selected from the following list...
- I fart at him!
- I hump him!
- HAWHAWHAWHAW
- I kick him in the nuts
That's pretty much it. If they met anyone, those were the available responses.
The Gangstas seemd to be unable to get anything done other than throwing gang signs at one another, acting "hard" and talking about weed.
15 dollars an hour was slavery.