The story behind Rant Number Three

"Have you ever taken the time to get a group of people together to game then had the game you planned to run taken away from you?
It happened to me years ago. And I’m still a little irritated by it.
That same person also stole several of my game ideas.
I don’t mind people using my ideas, but give me credit for it. And do it without slamming me personally first.
Want to know more about that story? Ask and I shall tell."

Well someone asked, so here is the story.

In high school I went through the trouble of getting a bunch of the geeks I knew to give D&D and/or our tiny group a chance.
It didn't too much effort, but I was the only one putting forth the effort.

The only thing I didn't have was a place to run the game. That's where "Jack" comes in. We almost always played at his place because it was almost perfect for the high school gamer needs.

Because I had to work, I could only run once every other week.

Jack said that was ok, he'd run them through the Dragonlance modules on the other weeks.
Silly little me thought that was a good idea.

So we all got together and ran my first game. Everyone said they had fun and I was happy and prepared for what I would hope would be a fun campaign.

The following week I worked, and Jack ran DL1, the first module of Dragonlance.

Then on Monday I was told (by Jack) that they all liked the DL game more, so my game was out but I was welcome to join in "their" DL game.

And of course, that game lasted 3 or 4 whole weeks. Which was sadly, standard back then.

Now I know what you're probably thinking; "They liked the DL game more so why shouldn't they play that one over yours?"
And that is perfectly logical thinking if you're on the outside looking in.
But Jack was a guy who knew how to convince gamers to agree with him. And if you didn't agree, he'd convince everyone else and then have them start on you.

And although I was stubborn, debate was not my strong suit (my charisma is 6 on a good day).

Plus this same fellow had done the following:
- Bought modules and read them so he'd know everything in the module. I can name 3 modules he bought doing this.
- When I was running games, he knew where I kept my GM notes and would sneak into my backpack, find my notes, read them, and then tell everyone what I planned to do.
- I would not game with certain people. But he would invite those people to games, knowing I would be ticked. The result - I stopped showing and the people he invited ruined the game and it ended.
- He used some of my gaming ideas, and then ridiculed the way I did them. I recently found out that he has a website where he mentions me by name and not in a good way.

Yeah I know that this entry probably seems a little childish, but I'm looking at it as more of cathartic thing.

Besides, those years helped with the most important gaming rules of all:
- Don't risk losing a good player for an unknown player if that good player doesn't want the unknown player around.
- Everyone at the game table must be friends, or at least friendly. If players A & B can't get along, no one is going to have fun.
- And of course, "It's a game. Have fun!"

And on that note, tonight should be fun.

Last week we skipped our usual session to attend an ENWorld gameday.

I played in two games.

The first I originally hadn't intended to play in, but I joined in when I found out that there were not going to be any "pick-up" games.
So I made an 8th level rogue in about 1/2 an hour, and played in an updated version of "Expedition to Barrier Peaks".
My guy had a simple concept; "Pain is bad - let others get hurt".
And that concept worked too. Through several combats, I took not a single point of damage and dished out quite a bit with some of the "eggs" we found (grenades).
All six of us players had a good time.

The second game had Dale, Brian, Aaron, and I in it with three other players.
The game's description was basically that everyone was going to be a dwarf and we had to go stop a necromancer from raising our dwarven brethren from our graveyard.
We had all decided to sign up for that game and then create characters together to get them to work as a team.
We originally thought it would have been fun and funny for all four of us to bring in a dwarven cleric.
But we decided to go with something we liked from the WLD; 1 melee freak (me), 1 sorcerer (Dale), and 2 clerics (Aaron & Brian).
Now here's the funny part - the other 3 players made dwarven clerics as well. So had we gone with our original idea, there would have been 7 dwarven clerics!
My dwarven fighter(6)/barbarian(2) was happy - he had 5 walking bandaids around him!

It was a good time.