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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Graf" data-source="post: 486149" data-attributes="member: 3087">Re: Re: Re: Re: Advice for a virgin DM?Oooh. Where to begin?1. I lost at least two games to poor follow through... I couldn't follow through with the initial story idea so it withered on the vine. Werewolf, and a fantasy version of Over the Edge (brilliant game by Jonathan Tweet).2. I think I lost 4 or so games to player disinterest after the first few sessions. You need to understand you're competing with other things in people's lives for their time.... Shadowrun, an In Nomine game I co-DM'd. Another Werewolf game D&D.3. My first game that I tanked (back in grade school) was too gross (wanted to make the bad guys bad and the torture made people pretty uncomfortable). In retrospect it was a little thing, the torture happened to an NPC, off screen but it was kind of the straw that broke the camel's back in a poorly conceived game...(I was in another game where a similar thing happened. Wasn't in the room but the DM apparently really really went overboard and freaked out a friend of mine. I'm glad that MC and WotC brought this up with the whole Book of VD, thing. I think its been pretty positive for raising awareness.)This doesn't count all the games that I was a player in that fell through.Throughout the whole thing the one thing I think I learned was the importance of managing players, their expectations and group politics. Not in a negative way, it can be a lot of fun once you've got the swing of it.But one person's bad mood/sense of inferiority/need for attention can spoil the experience for everyone. Managing the game so that people get what they want is crucial, I find.I don't think I really felt like I got control over the role the hobby played in my life until I walked away from a game last year. After that things suddenly clairifed.</blockquote>

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