Which gamer most affected the way you play?
I thought long and hard on this one, and it boils down to two people; but I will go with one for this one and that fellow is Jack Campbell. Back when I first started playing in 1979 it was just an after school club, but it expanded to the weekends when we did some gaming over either at Bob’s house or it was at Chris’s place. But, it was mostly over at Bob. His dad Jack, let us play our geeky game but he was interested in what we were doing.
It was quite a few sessions later that when one adventure had ended, Jack piped in and said do you fellows mind if I run something for you. Bob was quite surprise and he said sure, he wouldn’t mind being a player. So, the next session his father wrote up and ran us through one of the biggest mind-farked adventure. Now, this wasn’t run of the mill, since he told us everything in the beginning about the big bad boss in the adventure who was just a low level peon in Hades but managed to get himself banned on earth. Once there he had set up one of the biggest scams ever for adventurers. A resort island with a magical vault, several islands to explore and treasure to be had.
The way Jack told the adventure in the story and building it up as he went along, had all our high level characters around the table in fear for our lives. Our characters were trapped in the resort, our items locked in the vault that we couldn’t get out except for a key gem and to get this demon to give us what we truly wanted. Everything was there in his rhymes, riddles and events but we couldn’t see it.
Though, upon reflection we had discussed about it once the session was over and boy were ever fooled. Jack had billed up to the huge conflict and when that little demon appeared before us we fled like chickens from a fox! It wasn’t until someone realized that the demon couldn’t do us no harm since we were told that in the first place….
Jack delivered one hell of a session. He never did run another session since life sometimes gives you a kick in the shins. When I started GMing I wanted to emulate his style and finesse and incorporate mundane into a mystical magical fantasy setting.