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The Table is Round
There's an adage about gamemastering that I want to relate, but I need to tell a side story first.
For a while at IMSA, there was a contest for the title Master of the Obvious, contenders including Mr. Wilson and both Perkinses. But this title originally came from my middle school friends back home. The original Master earned his title by stopping a conversation at lunch one day, shushing everyone, and saying in this perfectly profound voice, "The table.... is round."
The table was in fact round; everyone knew it was round and had always known it was round, but somehow it had escaped Zac's notice in the months he'd eaten at that table. He just happened to realize that day and was struck by it.
"The table... is round."
The same sort of thing happens in gamemastering sometimes. I remember the first session I ever ran of D&D3. I was doing a guest arc in a friend of mine's long-running campaign. My story involved the players fighting through this complex and intricately plotted dungeon inside a quasi-dormant volcano to get to the center and fight the evil Salamander sorceror inside the caldera.
The players, of course, decided to fly straight in the caldera and fight the guy. It's a volcano, it has an open top. But somehow, in all my planning, I had forgotten that one simple detail.
The table is round.
I was really upset about it at the time. I improvised a flying encounter and then they did the fight with the Salamander, removing two sessions worth of plot and effectively cutting down my arc to one night of play. The two encounters I did run were shamefully spiteful and difficult, but the players still carried the day and normal service resumed a week later.
That was seven or eight years ago. I've grown a lot as a person and as a GM, but it still happens to me occasionally. My players did it to me again in Nobilis last night. They found a perfectly obvious solution to a problem which I hadn't even considered and unraveled three sessions of plot. But right now I'm grinning to myself and figuring out how to adjust for it.
Times may have changed, but the table is still round. :)
For a while at IMSA, there was a contest for the title Master of the Obvious, contenders including Mr. Wilson and both Perkinses. But this title originally came from my middle school friends back home. The original Master earned his title by stopping a conversation at lunch one day, shushing everyone, and saying in this perfectly profound voice, "The table.... is round."
The table was in fact round; everyone knew it was round and had always known it was round, but somehow it had escaped Zac's notice in the months he'd eaten at that table. He just happened to realize that day and was struck by it.
"The table... is round."
The same sort of thing happens in gamemastering sometimes. I remember the first session I ever ran of D&D3. I was doing a guest arc in a friend of mine's long-running campaign. My story involved the players fighting through this complex and intricately plotted dungeon inside a quasi-dormant volcano to get to the center and fight the evil Salamander sorceror inside the caldera.
The players, of course, decided to fly straight in the caldera and fight the guy. It's a volcano, it has an open top. But somehow, in all my planning, I had forgotten that one simple detail.
The table is round.
I was really upset about it at the time. I improvised a flying encounter and then they did the fight with the Salamander, removing two sessions worth of plot and effectively cutting down my arc to one night of play. The two encounters I did run were shamefully spiteful and difficult, but the players still carried the day and normal service resumed a week later.
That was seven or eight years ago. I've grown a lot as a person and as a GM, but it still happens to me occasionally. My players did it to me again in Nobilis last night. They found a perfectly obvious solution to a problem which I hadn't even considered and unraveled three sessions of plot. But right now I'm grinning to myself and figuring out how to adjust for it.
Times may have changed, but the table is still round. :)