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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 9647834" data-attributes="member: 18">I think my biggest mistakes have been:1) Not putting my foot down about unsuitable characters in Cyberpunk 2020 and Shadowrun in the 1990s, and failing to properly call out and stop actual, honest-god munchkin behaviour from one player (i.e. repeatedly derailing the game to show off his only-arguably-rules-legal character, to the detriment of everyone else). We had an issue in both games where often 1-2 players would make characters who were basically not going to work well with the rest of the group, either because they were:a) Incredibly over-optimized compared to the rest of the group to the point where they could basically "solo" the missions (that's not why solos are called solos, dude!)b) The exact opposite of that - completely worthless in any kind of actual "run", even though they were supposedly edgerunners/shadowrunners. Can't fight, can't sneak, can't hack, no engineering skills, unspectacular driver, why would your character actually be hired to go on the mission?c) Had personalities which were just incredibly unsuitable - i.e. total loners, raging psychopaths (I know, a classic of the cyberpunk genre but let's keep that for one-offs!), actual pacificists who are inexplicably paling around with guys fire guns designed to turn humans into a bloody mist, etc. etc.We could have just a lot more fun if we'd just cut out those characters (by saying "No, rethink that" to the players), and right at the end of the 1990s, that's what I did, and in the games we played after that, we had a much better time.2) Starting a completely abortive Mage: The Ascension game at university RPG club. This was mostly on me. There were already VtM and WtA groups (multiple of the former), but a lot of people didn't want to play those, they wanted to play Mage, but no-one wanted to be Storyteller. So I really foolishly offered to be the Storyteller for an MtA game with EIGHT players. Just absolutely dumb. Not only was I nowhere near as keen on MtA as most of the players, I didn't realize that I just didn't have the enthusiasm to run this campaign, and further, I should have said "No" to some of the players, like, limited it to 4-5 players absolute max (we could have drawn lots or something). I'd run AD&D for large groups, including relative strangers before, and I didn't really think through how MtA isn't AD&D.If I'm being 100% real, I was doing it to look cool in front of girls.Not a common reason for DMing a campaign, but there we are! There a number of girls at the RPG club and whilst it wasn't conscious, I know I was trying to look good and appear responsible and capable.Anyway, I thought it'd be cool, but even session zero took like two long sessions, and I think we got maybe two sessions in beyond that before I just gave up entirely due to just not having any idea where to go with the campaign, and the fact that eight players is waaaaaaaaaaaay too many and I couldn't even given everyone a real opportunity to play. I actually just stopped going to the RPG club because I couldn't handle it. I felt really bad because all eight PCs were extremely cool, and had great and unusual ideas behind them (I particularly remember the Hassidic guy who has a really cool Celestial Chorus mage).What did I learn?a) Don't run RPGs you aren't really into.b) Make sure you have the right number of players for an RPG, and be willing to come up with ways to cut numbers if you have to.c) Don't do things just to impress the gender(s) you're into.Okay I totally failed to learn (c) but I should have learned it!Wow, my experience is the exact opposite. SOs have been huge assets to the group so long as they actually enjoy TTRPGs.That's what the problem is that you're describing, really - making people play who don't like TTRPGs - and that applies to people well beyond SOs. But that's easy enough to deal with - if they've never played RPGs before, run a session that you explain is a "taster" session with say, just them and their SO, and you'll quickly see if they're actually interested.I have seen the problems you're describing, but always with people's non-romantic friends who are supposedly "gamers" (ugh) but aren't actually into TTRPGs (I've also seen such friends be super-cool too of course).</blockquote>

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