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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kobold Boots" data-source="post: 7732457" data-attributes="member: 92239">It's fair to assume slight.  I apologize.  In my defense, the original post I quoted did not have the user associated with the quote inline so my reply was a general one, not intended to be applied to you.Since we're elaborating, just for the future.My first game was in 1981.  It was a juvenile one off intended to satisfy my older cousins who simply used it as a way to take advantage of or crap on their younger cousin.  We played a few games, I sucked and retreated to reading the game and making maps.  Over time, I played a few more games, still sucked.  Went to military school and got into wargaming and history.  Played a few more games, made a few more maps, group stabilized.  Game went 4 years til we went to college.  Never called it a "campaign" we were playing very serially but about six months in players started talking about building on what happened "last time".  I still say to this point that if it wasn't for my constantly making maps and writing out character sheets, my penmanship would be lousy.  The hobby was good for trying to neaten up writing, because the character sheets didn't take kindly to crappy lettering.  I still don't know if I took architectural drawing because I liked designing, or because I wanted neater game notes.Anyway on to college.  (about 5 years of real game experience once a week).  It's the 90s, I call these the dark times.  Transition to 2nd edition from 1st was easy enough and the first generation of characters was put aside for a bit.  Built out another section of the game world which now was considered a "campaign" because I first heard the term used proactively at this time and actively thought about prepping in the "world" because it would cut my "prep".  I feel I learned a lot about people and performing during this time.  Without any doubt in my mind, I sucked at DMing because I couldn't connect across a table with what people wanted.  Until this point I had only DM'd friends with a common desire to put up with the game because we weren't really able to do much else with our downtime.  Here, we had distractions and better things to do, so the game better be fun, or we weren't going to be doing it much.  I was entirely too formulaic.  By the end of the 90s I dropped tabletop in favor of LARP.  The 2000s - LARP and 3X - So this is what I'll call a mentorship in WTF.  I was fortunate enough to be on the home turf of NERO and while Ford wasn't part of the equation anymore he left behind some wonderful people who were running LARPs in my neighborhood.  One person in particular was highly talented and had all the answers for how to manage 70 plus players, for two days, four times a year and get folks to pay 70 bucks each to do so.  That one person had a strong writing committee around him, and I soaked it all in.To be entirely fair, I was also very good at being a giant jerk during this time and I didn't appreciate what I was a part of until long after my ego convinced me I could do what they were doing, better than they did it and was proven entirely wrong.  One thing that came away from it though was my first experience with meta when about 15 of those LARPers allowed me to DM them over a three-four year span.  Easily the best gaming of my life and where I finally broke through on DMing.So on meta.  If you have the right players and they're willing to do things like- Have one main plot and three side plots for their character- Involve two other PCs in their side plots.- Still take part in the main storyline of the campaign- Write post event letters about what their characters experienced and tell you in character what they want to do next.- Actually play NPCs in cut scenes to develop the world further- Allow you to facilitateThe game lives and is absolutely amazing.  These players became the second generation of characters such that I was able to bring some friends in from the first group via PBP and hand off the early plot from the 1st ed game.  The 2nd ed game events colored things somewhat but were relegated to trivia by the end.  This group ended due to my aforementioned jerk behavior and I've apologized where I could.  Anyway, by this time, I've got a strong love of the game as it was and a great grounding in meta or story over mechanics.  What comes next goes entirely in the other direction.2008 - 4e - Wargaming. - By this time I had really screwed myself in terms of gaming as I had alienated almost everyone I had known locally and those that weren't had pursued careers away from my area.  Went to a local gaming store, ran a game there for a few months and continued the trend.  Many reasons for being a jerk but no excuses.  Take away was I had a new group of folks that liked my DM style and agreed to play through the Shadowfell series of adventures.   This was sort of a throwback as we had at least one player that was really 1st ed/2nd ed and a few that were more third, but I think I was the only one that truly appreciated 4e due to its wargaming/positioning basis.  it's still my favorite version of D&D but it's probably because I liked ASL and other Avalon Hill games back when I was in mil school.   So that's another three years of gaming off and on in the DM chair.  While I did superimpose those modules on my own game world I did not interleave them with the 1st/3rd groups timeline and consider them more in line with the 2nd ed group as I did have a couple of those folks take part once or twice when they were available.2017 - I've taken five years off.  It was necessary to deal with some things that were contributing to my less than wonderful behavior and focus on family.  Better person, not necessarily interested in starting fights on forum boards about games.  So as I started the post I'll end it.Sorry for the slight.   Obviously looking for the next group.  Willing to be open about history due to anonymity and to establish some common knowledge <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Be wellKB</blockquote>

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