My gaming misadventures. Try to top them.

Nov/Dec 1989 - I am introduced to Shadowrun by a fellow employee. He refuses to let me join his gaming group. But he does show me the FLGS.

Jan/Feb 1990 - After discovering the FLGS and buying the core Shadowrun books, I attempt to form a gaming group and GM. This should have been a bigger disaster than it was as I had never roleplayed any game in my life. Instead, I notice that the players don't seem to be too involved with the game, and when I cut off the flow of beer, the game crashes and burns. Not long after this, someone sets fire to my house. Gaming goes on the back burner.

SR2 gets released within a month of me buying all the core SR1 books, making them not quite obsolete. I settle with the insurance company and buy everything published for SR2.

Late Summer/Autumn 1994 (I think. I know I had just gotten the Denver set) - I go to the FLGS and post a note looking for a group or players to start a group. I posted it IC as a Mr. Johnson, which led to a bit of misunderstanding. I get calls from a few people and we discuss our gaming experience and try to figure out if there is a qualified GM. I say I can try GMing, but would rather not. One guy volunteers to GM and he even has friends who want to play! I show up, bringing all the books that have stuff to help create characters and my brand new Denver books, hoping we might set the game there. I am received as the big, book toting geek and things go downhill from there. Search 'There are no walls in Denver' and you may get both sides of the story. Anyway, I decide to make a scene, and it obviously was memorable. Ask Sphynx. I think we have made up and gotten over it. I hope so anyway. (Funny how you start reading a thread on Dumpshock about some guy talking about an @$$, and you keep thinking that sounds familiar about a dozen times.

Oct 1994 - I post another note at 2 locations of the FLGS specifying no donkey shamans. I get invited to a group of about 8 people that is just forming. We get together one night and create characters. One guy insists on a chain of command, with himself leading, and that everyone contribute a percentage of their starting resources to a party fund. I do not know how much those influenced everyones decisions, but that first time was also the last night we met.

Oct/Nov 1994 - The self appointed leader from the disbanded group contacts me about trying to get another group together. He hires in at my workplace. I know another person who is interested and call my contact from 'The no walls in Denver' debacle to see how things turned out for him there. He says he is quite happy where he is. My new co-worker and I recruit another co-worker, my friend who also is a co-worker, and another respondent to my ongoing FLGS posting. We meet at my place and create characters over breakfast. I GM, but as it turns out there is a better, more experienced gamer/GM present, and also the self appointed leader probably has more GMing experience than me. But they remain quiet and like the military, volunteer for nothing. I start running the adventure from NAN1. The non-friend, non-new-hire co-worker decides he thinks gaming is silly and quits. Session 2, I explain IC the quitter's PC's demise. The experienced gamers loot his body - as in organlegging and used cyberware. The self appointed leader/new-hire co-worker moves in with me! He got kicked out of by his last roommate, someone had broken into his car and stolen a bunch of his stuff, and I offer to let him sleep on the couch - for that day. This was right after we finished gaming. The next day, he offers to show me another FLGS instead of apartment hunting, and I am thinking oh my god, I think he thinks I invited him to move in. Now this is not so farfetched as my Dad was telling me I was supposed to take the family pool table as an heirloom sort of thing, so after the fire I had gotten a 2 bedroom apartment, intending to put it in the second bedroom. Maybe he thought I was looking for a roommate. Back to our story, that night I go to work and say something along the line of I don't really know you, please be trustworthy. Probably not the smartest or nicest thing to say, but it happened. I come home from work the next morning and he is gone, never to be heard from again - even quits the crappy job. And nothing was missing, so I guess I really pissed him off.

Nov 1994 - Our group is down to 3. Recruitment time. The pool table is no longer an heirloom; I must have imagined the several conversations on the topic. The second bedroom becomes the game room with a sheet of 4'x8' plywood on short metal shelves and some scrounged up, uncomfortable chairs, and some fantasy artwork from an old calendar. To make a long story short, we find a couple of players, but the group dynamic kind of sucks. After a time or two of just two people, we look for another player and find one. The group plays until spring of 1996 when silly me decides to seek my fortune in Florida. The group finds another spot to play, and as of GenCon last year is still meeting.

1996 - Daytona Beach is not a hotbed for roleplaying, much less for this silly game known as Shadowrun.

1997 - Jacksonville, FL has many roleplayers; unfortunately they are live action V:tM.

1997-2000 - I have given up on making my fortune in Florida, but have inadvertently fallen into a lucrative job that "is like being on vacation". However, it has no schedule and involves a lot of travel. Anything resembling a routine is impossible, so is committing to a group.

2000 - I take time off from work to remodel a newly purchased house - and visit the FLGS. I post a note looking for a SR group. The FLGS suggests I go online to a local game site. I remember a guy from the last group talking about what turned out to be DS. Gaming and Shadowrun in particular prompt me to finally get connected to the web. I discover Dumpshock the day FASA announces it is closing. I never have yet to find a local gaming group. (See how optimistic I am trying to be?)

2003 - Even though I am back to crossing the country on a monthly basis, I decide to try to fit gaming into my schedule. I post a note at the local FLGS to no avail, but I also post to the FLGSs about an hour away where I previously lived and got responses. I post on Dumpshock. I get 2 people from DS and a husband/wife from the FLGS. We play at a nice FLGS and have some transient players. Life gets more hectic for some and even I miss a game or so due to work. I think about hiring a gaming group to play at my conveniance, but it seems too much like hiring a prostitute for sex. Financially, it actually makes a strange sort of sense, and it would surely fit my schedule. The group disbands after Easter of 2004.

Around this time I try playing and even GMing some online games. Only one ever gets completed. Most are debacles. I even get kicked out of my own campaign.

Aug 2005 - I go to GenCon just to get the new limited edition of SR. Things do not work out so well, but I wind up volunteering for the con people and have a good time. I eventually snag a couple copies of the LE.

Aug 2006 - The Shadowrun people seem desperate for GMs for GenCon. They must be desperate - they accept me. I have a blast at the con, running into the guy that introduced me to SR all those years before, and one of the guys from the group I started in my 2 BR apartment a decade earlier. I actually GM for his tournament group, but don't make the connection until after the game when PlainWhiteSocks makes the comment he couldn't believe the heretic was GMing his group, introduces himself and everyone starts talking.

Dec 2006 - Kagetenshi takes pity on me and lets me join his group at school. I actually do not start playing until about March. A few sessions later, the group goes on hiatus. (Or that was the story I got. )

To sum it up: A lot of debacles, a few catastrophes, a lot of lonely times looking in vain, but a few good gaming groups to keep the flame of hope alive.

*Picks up giant club and starts thrashing*

Kinda sounds like my own SR experience.

My Traveller group has gone on strong, but the other SR fan in it has no time for anything but Traveller.

Where are you based out of, if I may ask? If you're in the DC/Baltimore area, I know plenty of people in the area. That said, I've also found that online gaming is still far more convenient (now that I have to deal with hungry little bears and dirty diapers in the house).

Wow tisoz, I wish I could give you karma just for soldiering on.

I've never been kicked out of a SR group. Other groups yes. Twice.

When I was about 13 I got banned from a group I eventually joined later after my first playing session. We were playing AD&D Spelljammer and they said they needed a thief character. So not knowing much about the game they let me play a Neutral Evil thief who worshipped Bane. You can imagine how that went over.



Anyway I bought a Player's Handbook, read it cover to cover, and begged them to give me another chance. The next character I made was a fighter named Conan.

<Seriously if you grew up in the 80's and you don't have a shameful rip off fighter or barbarian character named after an 80's Action Movie Hero or a Thundercat in your past then it's the same as saying you don't masturbate.>

I played SR with this group when 1st Edition came out. For some reason we let the guy in our group who never GM’d before GM it because he loved Blade Runner. Don't ask why he agreed to the following but just to point out we had a Munch and a Min/Maxer in our group. So our first group consisted of two young Western Dragons, a Free Spirit, an insanely rich Decker, and me the Mercenary Archtype Street Name: Ripper. I modeled him after Rambo

Fast Forward seventeen years later after five really good SR campaigns which includes the above. No group. No SR. Everyone is older, married, has kids, plays WOW, moved away, or a combination of those.

Not really looking for a group anymore. Just posting because I'm feeling nostalgic. Besides I don't think there are any groups that play SR in my area.

Which would be East Tennessee, Tri-Cities. <Hint, Fraggin' HINT!>

1992ish--played snes shadowrun game loved it. didnt know it was a tabletop rpg until...

2004ish-

found out it was a tabletop rpg, played some sr based muds, got the sr 3 core book...


sr4 came out... waited a bit, got it..


still havent been in a full campaign

i wish i had seen this back when i was in Jville in 2002, i wouldnt have even bothered to try and start an SR group, yes i had one shot at GMing and failed miserably, ended up playing in a dark world game as a werewolf, had lots of fun but needed an SR fix

Damn, you had it rough tisoz.

I've never had any real bad self destructs in a SR campaign...had a few slow dies and a couple of fade outs, but nothing to compare.

D&D on the other hand...boom!

Really creative build-point accounting practices, eh?


Tell us about the one where you got kicked out of your own game!

I gotta say I'm somewhat curious as well.

I left it out because the person involved is still running the campaign. I think it would devolve into "he said - she said" because it occurred in PMs back when the incident played out.

And it hurts, because the person involved seemed like a long lost twin. We would finish each others sentences over AIM, and be posting the same idea at the same time.

And I did my part to get kicked.

Eh, don't beat yourself up over it (or the other parties involved, for that matter). Sometimes conflicts of personality happen the most with folks that are the most like you.

An Update!

August 2007 - I become a commando.

After GMing for the second year in a row at GenCon and hearing from some other commando's/GM's about getting their rulebooks as credit for doing the commando thing, I ask about joining the SR commandos. It turns out GMing for GenCon for the official SR guys qualifies you as a commando. I promptly cause a fiasco on the Commando site because there is no longer earned credits for GMing and how this was announced/implemented.

But I soldier on and spend the next several weekends demoing the game. In my quest to find players, I discover a heavenly Game store. I even find a group or two playing Shadowrun! I Gm for one group, but it falters after the first night. (I later find out one player had his regular game cancel and only pretended to join our group, knowing it was a one shot for him. With this attitude, he runs rampant and disrupts the game in every way possible so he can have the most fun and action for himself and his character.) The other 2 returning players can never manage to attend on the same night, so it is at most me a semi-regular and some newbies. Decide to put the game on hold until better committments and the group dies.

The other group lets me observe for about 4 sessions until I finally get a chance to play and that night the campaign ends. A new GM takes over, and I will just say our vision of SR clashes. I play one more night to see where the game is going, don't like the direction, and quit.

December '07 - the heavenly game store goes out of business and I never hear from those players again.

Kagetenshi never contacts me about reviving/resuming our game, the commandos are overhauling their program and I lose a lot of interest for SR.

Man, shit happens to you.

I sometimes gripe that my people don't stick to a specific campaign long enough. We usually meet 4 times, play Shadowrun, Battletech, Rolemaster or Earthdawn and then the GM wants to take a break. We play a different game next time and never resume the first. This has been this way since 1993 or so.

EDIT: Some of us have started to recycle chars over the years, adjusting them roughly in skill and background only for the next campaign. Puts some depth and background into those chars, too.

We've had hits and misses, breaks and dilemma's but always come out the other side and kept on playing. Had as many as 2 dozen and as few as 3 players but our local group still meets every other week. (we won't discuss for how many years, it would date myself and a few of my players) In the middle of nowhere but somehow we always seem to fill our empty slots at our table. Had some bad breaks, too bad your not in Pa seem like a good guy who could use a good group.

I've had some lovely gaming experiences on ORPG, but getting people committed to a schedule is, as in real life, like herding cats. I've got the SR bug real bad right now though, and am really, really interested, so maybe I can grab you for a game and we can get this new edition sorted out and played? The old SR tradition of 'rotating GMs' seems to be alive and well, still, and it could go well. Lots of concepts I want to play, and lots of time to play them since I'm still working out my permanent VISA situation.

-J2

I would like to know what this "No walls in denver" business is.

- J.

agreed

I tried and failed to find the original thread, which would have given the details.

The original debacle was when some aspiring SR gamers tried to get a group together. None of us had really GMed before and no one really wanted to, but Sphynx decided he would volunteer so that we could play. I did not know Sphynx or that he felt a bit of resentment at needing to GM. From his point of view, I had volunteered to GM a group. I also tend to be someone who will ask for things until told no, just to see what all is going to be acceptable in a game (this has probably grated on several other groups I had a keen interest in joining.)

When we finally meet for the first time, Sphynx has reserved a private room in a library and gathered everyone there. Somehow, I got missed for about half an hour, so am sitting in the main library for this time. When we hook up and I enter the private room, we start going over our characters. I notice a lot of strange looks when I start pulling out books that are used in character creation. As we go over our characters, Sphynx is asking what the character wants to excel at, then gives the character some bonuses and or perks that may or may not even be canon. When he gets to me, he decides I can't even have canon items. As all this had been going on, I was hinting about running the game from the Denver setting, as I had just purchased the supplement which was new at the time. Sphynx had no idea how Denver was set, but his animosity toward me is showing more and more. I start realizing everyone else is getting these bonuses for their character, yet my character can't even get what character creation says it can. I think the straw that broke my camels back was when he ruled that my Shapechange spell would allow me to turn into a raccoon, my totem, but any other animal would be in conflict with my totem and reason to lose magic rating.

I decide I am not going to have fun playing in this group and to make a memorable exit.

I pick a fight over Denver. Sphynx was making me justify how and why I had learned every spell and gotten every piece of equipment. I claim my PC is from Denver - even if the game is not going to be set there - and that the reason for many of the spells and equipment is for getting past the walls in Denver. The discussion about Denver escalates until Sphynx shouts, There are no walls in Denver." I scream back that he isn't playing in the SR world then, collect my stuff and storm out.

Almost a decade later, a topic comes up on Dumpshock and Sphynx tells this story from his point of view. The Sphynx on DS lives in Europe, but as he tells the tale, I keep thinking how familiar things sound. He ends by saying in every group he has been in when they are discussing GM/player conflicts he tells the "There are no walls in Denver" story. I think this sounds way to familiar and PM Sphynx asking him when/where this occurred. It turns out it was the same place and I am the jerk from his story. He states he will not amend his story or quit telling it. I say fine, I have told the same story in about all my gaming groups but he is the jerk. We explain why we acted like we did. It turns out there was a lot of miscommunication and flawed expectations. We pretty much make up.

Hahaha that's pretty funny.

- J.