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Message: <blockquote data-quote="NewJeffCT" data-source="post: 1670085" data-attributes="member: 10784">change things up a bitI know the feeling – I started gaming a few years before you when I was 12 or 13 in ’78 or ’79.  As with you, I was almost always the default DM while growing up.  And, once I graduated from college in 1989, my gaming got cut back considerably as my college friends also graduated and moved to ‘exotic’ places like Texas, Florida and New York City.  I satisfied my occasional gaming urge by playing D&D computer games like “Pool of Radiance” or “Eye of the Beholder.”  I still read fantasy novels and the like, but I found other interests to occupy my time – biking, basketball journalism, etc.However, in 1998, I was stuck in a marriage that was spiraling downhill quickly.  While I would never have cheated, I needed something to distract me.  Enter the internet.  I found a gaming group that was not too far away for face to face gaming and emailed the DM.  He seemed like a good guy, I met the group and had a blast gaming with them on a weekly basis as a player.I have tried to DM a few times since, but it just has not clicked for me.  With old age (I am 37 now), I am not nearly as quick witted as I used to be in running NPCs and just not as smooth.  (If my old gaming group from school got back together, they would no doubt talk about a few of my famous NPCs – the old lady shopkeeper with a bad temper, the thief that lost the party’s money gambling & whoring, etc)I tried to change things up a bit.  Don’t change your style, but change the story and/or the NPCs.What I did was to try and take some non fantasy stories and work them in to a D&D plotline.  The excellent novel “Black Hawk Down” was now an adventure where the PCs were supposedly support for a ‘Special Forces’ type mission for their kingdom in a distant, unfriendly colony.  The PCs were supposed to be there just to support the main strike force to take out a rebel leader, but the main ‘good’ guys were taken out early and the PCs were left to try and complete the mission by themselves and also rescue their fallen comrades  (I did not see the movie of the book)   Or, take a fictional character from a non fantasy/sci fi TV or a movie and base an NPC on this character – I had fun with a Charles Emerson Winchester (MASH) based snobbish cleric from a wealthy family or a saucy, older barmaid with a high sex drive based on Carla Tortelli from Cheers.  A so-so movie can be made to be very good with just a few memorable characters.  Imagine if the grungy old captain played by Robert Shaw in ‘Jaws’ was played by a wooden actor?  That movie would have been totally different.  And, just the opposite, good material can be made bad by the wrong choice of actor or actress (good book – “Striptease”, good supporting cast in Burt Reynolds & Ving Rhames, but the lead should have been an actress that was good with light comedy & satire instead of Demi Moore… Moore looked the part, but her intense, serious performance was not what was needed)</blockquote>

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