The moral of the rant is...

A little over a month a go I met with person who was trying to find an extra person to join their group. So we were discussing what type of GM and player I am. I had to think about this for a second and this is what I came up with.

I like to run games that flow (not bogged down by hours of book research), games that are more about the role playing and the storyline than strategy. (If we’re playing a strategy game lets play Warhammer 40K, Risk, or something like that.) I like action packed storyline and good plots. The whole “Look a Dungeon lets go in there” or “lets fight Orcs in the forest until we level” or “a prince is capture by something bad lets rescue her”.

I find that the best games are ones that push the boundaries of what we consider good and bad. Like in real life there are not people who are Diabolically Evil or Lawfully Good. There are days and times when we are each of those, but usually our alignment, motives, and beliefs change. Much like the novel series A song of fire and ice things are broken down into a good and bad side.

As a GM that is one thing I do my best to manage, the real factor. That good and evil are simply matters or perception. An example was in one game where a demonic cult followed their leader because the creator left the world in his hands, the saintly good guy who said that the demon lord betrayed the creator is lying. Or that an invading kingdom is attacking the nice Camelot style kingdom because their unfair trade regulations are leaving the other kingdom in poverty and starvation.

As a player I do my best to portray that also, I don’t play someone to say “that’s not my character’s style”, it’s about what is in his best interests. Regardless of so called alignment categories my characters always are strategic, calculative, and know that almost everything is expendable including allies.
So at this point in my conversation with the individual, he said “but can he change as the storyline goes, so that he isn’t like that and he’s loyal to his friends?”. It was at this point that I knew I could never play with this guy. So I reversed the conversation about him.

He then goes on to tell me how low his self esteem is, and how he’s been kicked out of every group. This is when I realized that this guy took gaming way too serious. He actually thought that characters were direct representations about who a person was or wanted to be. He wasn’t looking for a new gamer but someone to be his friend. I will admit that to a certain level we all portray parts of ourselves into characters we play, but they are not direct representations of who we are.

So the moral of the story is this, if you are looking to gain friends through gaming, get to know them, not their characters.