[UA] wierd gamer moments

[Timothy Toner]

One of my flaws as a GM in the past was my inability to keep good notes,
which mugged with continuity.  On occassion, an overeager player would lead
the game down the path-less-planned, but I was fairly flexible, and good on
the fly.  However, reconnecting these diversions back to the greater
campaign proved to be difficult when I forgot the little details, like the
name of the guy who ran the bar in the bad part of town.  This became an
(annoying) running gag among the players, as someone drilled me about the
campaign minutiae at least once a week.  I got a little better, and learned
to plan ahead.  However, while in college I couldn't anticipate the
imaginative leap of logic one player took hold of, creating a master villain
out of the various bits I'd scattered about.   They tracked him down, and I
ran with it.  Finally, one asked, "What's your name?"  Name?  Damn.  They
werte into it, and I was into it, so I needed something that was easy to
remember, but at the same time seemed to be all part of my master plan.
"John Buscher," I replied, naming one of my friends from high school.  Easy
enough.  When they asked for a physical description, I rattled off John's
features, and made him a thoroughly amoral fellow.  John always got the
upper hand in the end, but no one really minded it all that much.  What did
bother the players was the absolute ruthlessness he displayed from time to
time.  By the time that game was winding down, John Buscher had become a bit
of a legend.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I arrived back at my house to discover John
Buscher, mohawk and all, sitting on the steps smoking a Camel, instead of my
gaming group.  John had a big shit-eating grin on his face.  "You've been
spreading my gospel, Br. Toner."  It didn't occur to me until that very
second how weird it would be to discover that the guy your imaginary selves
were fighting against wasn't imaginary at all.  When I caught up with one of
my players a day later, he told me how they'd basically worked themselves
into a paranoid froth, starting with the "I have no idea who you are, but
I'll be polite" banter which eventually revealed his name, and escalating
with each revelation about his background which matched the fake John's
background uncannily.  John's a roleplayer, too, so he rolled with it.
Eventually, half the group was convinced that this guy was a LARP plant I'd
thrown at them to liven things up, and the other half didn't know what to
think.  They eventually took off to strategize and regroup, and never came
back.


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