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GMing with Joy: Long Term Gamemastering
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<blockquote data-quote="Thomas Shey" data-source="post: 9145750" data-attributes="member: 7026617"><p>I was very civil about it when I did so and thanked them all for their participation, so as far as I can tell it went over okay. One of them told me he'd been expecting it for a while, and another (my now longest-single-surviving gaming friend--I've known him since 1975 when I was 18 and he was 16 (and we were, to different degrees, both kind of jerks in our own ways) who said while he'd enjoyed interacting with us and the games he'd kind of gotten where he hated seeing, to quote "you trying to roll that rock up the hill one more time".</p><p></p><p>I still didn't feel entirely good about it on a number of grounds. I don't entirely even now though I'm even more firmly of the opinion it was the right thing to do.</p><p></p><p>But like I said, you have to take the hint when you get it.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>The problem you can run into, like I said, is that unless you wait around for the perfect group, not all kinds of stressors are created equal. The other group I'm with has stressors too, but they're internal dynamic is less severe, so its just easier to take.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>The worst part, as I said, was I kept trying to tell myself it was the structure of a campaign or the game system that was the problem. When I was in a third campaign that had been chosen, in part, to minimize <em>some</em> of the specific problems that occurred in the prior two, and I was still seeing things that either directly aggravated me, or required me to intervene to not have one or more have problems, I realized I was kidding myself. The interior dynamic of the group just had some elements that were naturally toxic and nothing I was going to do was going to fix that (the same people who caused me grief were also the people who were the drivers in each campaign, so I couldn't really selectively trim, even if I'd been willing to).</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Like I said, if you're doing it to a whole group, you just take the responsibility (even if it isn't altogether true). "I just find I'm not up to GMing for you all any more" isn't dishonest, but it takes some of the weight on your shoulders, and the only people who will be really soggy about that are, frankly, not worth your time; they're being far worse jerks.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Thomas Shey, post: 9145750, member: 7026617"] I was very civil about it when I did so and thanked them all for their participation, so as far as I can tell it went over okay. One of them told me he'd been expecting it for a while, and another (my now longest-single-surviving gaming friend--I've known him since 1975 when I was 18 and he was 16 (and we were, to different degrees, both kind of jerks in our own ways) who said while he'd enjoyed interacting with us and the games he'd kind of gotten where he hated seeing, to quote "you trying to roll that rock up the hill one more time". I still didn't feel entirely good about it on a number of grounds. I don't entirely even now though I'm even more firmly of the opinion it was the right thing to do. But like I said, you have to take the hint when you get it. The problem you can run into, like I said, is that unless you wait around for the perfect group, not all kinds of stressors are created equal. The other group I'm with has stressors too, but they're internal dynamic is less severe, so its just easier to take. The worst part, as I said, was I kept trying to tell myself it was the structure of a campaign or the game system that was the problem. When I was in a third campaign that had been chosen, in part, to minimize [I]some[/I] of the specific problems that occurred in the prior two, and I was still seeing things that either directly aggravated me, or required me to intervene to not have one or more have problems, I realized I was kidding myself. The interior dynamic of the group just had some elements that were naturally toxic and nothing I was going to do was going to fix that (the same people who caused me grief were also the people who were the drivers in each campaign, so I couldn't really selectively trim, even if I'd been willing to). Like I said, if you're doing it to a whole group, you just take the responsibility (even if it isn't altogether true). "I just find I'm not up to GMing for you all any more" isn't dishonest, but it takes some of the weight on your shoulders, and the only people who will be really soggy about that are, frankly, not worth your time; they're being far worse jerks. [/QUOTE]
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