YMIAT GMing Profiles - An ongoing series (add your profile today!)

[Lucivious]

Name: Nick, but most of my friends call me 'Luci'

Age: 22

Gender: Male

Location: Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada

Tell us 3 things about yourself that aren't related to gaming:
-I currently hold a Bachelor of Computer Science and work for the Canadian government as a Developer, but my professional goal is to become a Professor of Classics.
-I like hats.  A lot.
-Single and looking!  Any single gaming ladies in the area, I’m your man. 

When was your first session as a GM, and what game did you run:
2000, I'd heard about D&D growing up and knew that my uncles had played, but it wasn't until 3rd ed. that I had really knew what D&D(and later RPing in general) was.  Quite an awakening.  A friend bout the starter kit and ran it for us, then I took over as the GM for our second campaign. 

Share your favourite GMing experience:
D&D 3.5.  Party level 4-5.  The luckiest party I have ever seen.  There is a city block that has been invaded by a gang of mindflayers (completely unknown to the players, this was supposed to be the climax of the campaign)  About half way through the first session the largest of the group decides to test his bravery by entering the local "Haunted Mansion".  Overcompensating he bursts through the old wooden walls in the back of the building.  Right into the ilithid lair. 

An overlord and 2 henchmen, suppressed, react slowly.  Large PC walks up to the overlord, critical hit, max damage.  Dead.  Remaining PCs.  3 Critical hits between the remaining 2 ilithids. Dead and Dead.  The entire campaign, right down the drain.

What's the hardest thing you've ever had to do as a GM:
Kick a friendly, but disruptive, player out of the group.  A really nice guy and a good friend, but he continuously tried to bend the rules in his favour and he always had to be the center of the group.  He became unmanageable and had to be asked to leave.  Tough thing to do to a friend.
 
What are your favourite GMing tricks and techniques:
I prefer to let the players run the game.  I don't plan very far ahead or very rigidly.  I work off of the Pcs actions to build the next chapter of the adventure.

What are your GMing weaknesses:
I don’t plan ahead.  This can lead to problems where neither the PC’s nor I have any idea what to do next.

What are your favourite sources off inspiration for your games:
A little of this, a little of that.  I like to take little things from dozens of sources and try to come up with something as original as possible.

[mehrkat]

Name: Mehrkat
Age: 38
Gender: Male
Location: Austin, TX

Tell us 3 things about yourself that aren't related to gaming:
Father of a 12 year old son
Living with a long term partner for 13 years
Card Carrying member of the Society for Creative Anacronism

When was your first session as a GM, and what game did you run?:
When I was 12 I ran an Old School red box Dungeons and Dragons Game

Share your favorite GMing experience
Running A D6 Star Wars game while in college

What's the hardest thing you've ever had to do as a GM?:
Accept that as a parent I don't get to game very much and don't get to prepare as much and getting my groove back for gaming.

What are your favorite GMing tricks and techniques?:
Use Romance and relationships to hook the players into the game. 

What are your GMing weaknesses?:
Missing a consequence of a power or ability.

What are your favorite sources of inspiration for your games?:
Just about anything but I've found one of my latest inspirations is chatting about historical practices with my partner based on her researches on medieval European culture.

[Telas]

Welcome to the forums, Mehrkat!  Austinites are always welcome (seeing as how I am one).

I completely agree with your assessment of family and gaming: Time isn't as free as it used to be.

[EruditeDragon]

Edit:  Formatted a bit more.  Noticed the topics weren't bolded.

Name: Alan

Age:  18

Gender:  Male

Location:  Wisconsin

Tell us 3 things about yourself that aren't related to gaming:

• I'm currently going to school to get a degree in IT Programming.
• I'm a prolific reader, though I've slowed as of late, due to classes.
• I'm in a (now long-distance) relationship with a great gal and fellow tabletop gamer.
  
  

When was your first session as a GM, and what game did you run?:  
I'd say it was a few years ago, and it was D&D 3.5.  Looking back, I did all the things a GM shouldn't do, so I'm eager to start
a new game where I don't do these things.

Share your favorite GMing experience:
I haven't GMed much, so I don't really have one.  I do love seeing the look on player's faces when they finally "get it," whether "it"
is an ancient riddle, or the true identity of the grand vizier...

What's the hardest thing you've ever had to do as a GM?:
Contemplating kicking out a player.  I haven't actually had to boot somone yet, but I'd hate it if I had to.

What are your favorite GMing tricks and techniques?:
I don't have many, but I will try to involve all the players in an adventure I run.  A person who has Knowlege (Nature) better be able to use it.

What are your GMing weaknesses?: 
I plan way too much.  Oftentimes, I'm the one suffering "option paralysis" instead of the players!

What are your favorite sources of inspiration for your games?:  
Anything that I can adapt, though I'm partial to books and movies.  Older gaming modules are also fun (I have a copy of B2:  The Keep on The Borderlands that I'd love to use in some fashion someday.)

[forlorn1]

Name: Jeff

Age: 41

Gender: Male

Location : Virginia

Tell us 3 things about yourself that aren't related to gaming:

• I like to cook, and am a reasonably decent at baking.  I make a mean scone, and a nice flakey biscuits.
• I'm a vegetarian
• and a dad

When was your first session as a GM, and what game did you run?:
1981/2 - AD&D -  A3 - Assualt on the Aerie of the Slave Lords because we couldn't find any of the other A modules at the FLGS

Share your favorite GMing experience:
Running a convention game of Primetime Adventures, and watching as it turned into the character drama I had hoped it would be.  And then everyone at the table wanting to know when I'd run the follow on episode.

What's the hardest thing you've ever had to do as a GM?:
Ask a player to leave a group due to his criminal activity.  Not a fun day.

What are your favorite GMing tricks and techniques?:

• Relationship maps.  I always make a r-map for any scenario or game set up we plan on running.  It makes it easier to see who is not connected with the group tightly enough and which NPCs the PCs care most about.
• Buffet of index cards - when creating a game/setting document with my group we'll write out potential idea for NPCs, Locations, Plot ideas, ephemera on index cards in the center of the table.  After brainstorming for a while we have a buffet from which we can pick the elements that are most interesting.

What are your GMing weaknesses?:
Keeping energy about a game up even if we aren't playing it.  Our group often creates characters, plays one or two sessions and then stuff come up and we won't get back to it for several weeks.  I find it hard to maintain energy for a plot/setting I'm not playing on a regular basis.

What are your favorite sources of inspiration for your games?: 
Well written TV.  Song titles.  Actual history, which is usually stranger than anything you'd make up.

[mattwalton]

Name: Matt

Age: 27

Gender: Male

Location: East Midlands, England

Tell us 3 things about yourself that aren't related to gaming:
I'm an amateur musician (recorder, singing, bass viola de gamba, and dabbling in anything else that stays still long enough); my day job is as a computer programmer; I'm learning a constructed language called Lojban

When was your first session as a GM, and what game did you run?:
Some time in 2006, running an online game of Paranoia XP

Share your favorite GMing experience:
A Paranoia game involving the team being required to look after a cow for half an hour. Within fifteen minutes of game time one of the Troubleshooters had decided to feed it an experimental drug provided by their secret society and the team was attempting to deal with the consequences of this cow frothing at the mouth and dying in agony. It wasn't a good day for them, but I laughed my socks off.

What's the hardest thing you've ever had to do as a GM?:
I'm not sure. I've not had to do anything really hard yet. Fortunately.

What are your favorite GMing tricks and techniques?:
Flexible plots, preferably made like a Lego set so you can chop them around as necessary.
Making things up as I go along.

What are your GMing weaknesses?:
A lack of adherence to the rules.

What are your favorite sources of inspiration for your games?:
Dreams, anything I watch or read. Even the bad stuff. I just suck it all in as much as possible.

[iceforge]

Name: Michael Pedersen

Age: 24

Gender: Male

Location: Denmark, Europe

Tell us 3 things about yourself that aren't related to gaming: I work with Children (best job in the world, who else here has ever got payed about 25$ pr. hour for watching "Ice Age"? ), I am an atheist and I have previously studied Sociology.

When was your first session as a GM, and what game did you run?: Unstructured; I ran a game based on the aliens movies for a few fellow schoolmates when I was about 10 or 11 for which I had made all the rules myself. Structured was DnD at about age 14 or 15, when a new aquintance had a few months earlier showed me DnD (which made me go: "Wow, there actually is a genre of those games I been making up for the last few years? COOL!"), don't remember much about what that game was about through, as we jumped back and forth between games all the time back then

Share your favorite GMing experience: Finally fnishing an entire campaign about 7 months ago: Until then, all our games had been short one or two session games, or campaigns that never ended before something got in the way (people moving, GM's burning out, lost player interest, system burnout and so on)

What's the hardest thing you've ever had to do as a GM?: Tell a player that me and the rest of the group did not feel that his presense was increasing anyone elses fun and that we felt the general gaming experience of the group would increase without him, due to different styles of play and personality conflicts about a month ago.

What are your favorite GMing tricks and techniques?: Always ask for feedback and actually using that feedback when I get it; Nothing improves the fun around the table as when you listen to the feedback and actually adjust accordingly; My goal when running games is to be able to do something creative in a way that is entertaining and fun for the entire group present.
I also love scouting through GM forums and blogs to find good hints and secrets, you never know when a post is going to make you realise that you could improve dramatically by doing simple adjustments

What are your GMing weaknesses?: Descriptions; I feel awkward when giving them and I am bad at coming up with them on the spot, at least in my own eyes. Only once has a player asked for such feedback, and that was in a one-time scenario with a group of people I don't usually play with, so I don't know if I have a high self-critisism and that guy was picky, or if the other people I play with just don't care that much about it; Anyway, I always feel that is my strongest weakness.
My second weakness would be my lack of structured prep work; I think a lot about the game and often got a lot of ideas prior to going to the game, which I thought about during the week, but often I have nothing writen down about it and only got the notes I take during each game to go on.

What are your favorite sources of inspiration for your games?: My Players; I love to construct a world and setting for the players to make their characters in, but I generally try to make their characters the center of the story, by taking their strengths, weaknesses and stuff from their backgroundstories (if they make any) and using that in the story; I often spend an hour before bedtime just thinking about how to make something interesting with the various aspect of their characters.

[Clawfoot]

Name:  Clawfoot (or Sarah)
Age: 35
Gender: female
Location: Waterloo, Ontario (Canada)

Tell us 3 things about yourself that aren't related to gaming:

• I am a published writer (only one short story so far, BUT IT COUNTS!)
• I have a seven-year-old yellow lab named Willow
• I tend to like humour in my music ('Weird Al', Jonathan Coulton, Arrogant Worms, etc.)

When was your first session as a GM, and what game did you run?:
The first time I ever ran a game was when my husband and I started a LARP back in 1998.  We wanted to LARP, but the only ones in our area were White Wolf, and we didn't like the world or the system, and we were sick to the back teeth of vampires.  We designed our own, and launched a completely home-brew LARP we called "Midgard," based on the Norse mythos. We had a 5-year plot arc sketched out, with plans to bring the LARP to an end in 2003.  My husband, unfortunately, died in 2002, but I brought on a friend to help me finish it. Seeing it to its end had been important to him, and I did not want to just let it go.

Share your favorite GMing experience:
It was one of the first sessions of our Midgard LARP.  We'd designed some powerful NPCs to be the PCs' allies, but made them total jerks (with the thought that the players would learn what they could from them and then, when powerful enough themselves, kick them to the proverbial curb).  One session we'd thought we'd covered all the bases.  The NPCs came in and basically said, "We're going to go do this dangerous thing on your behalf. You can stay here like frightened rabbits or come with us, we don't care."  We were prepared for the PCs to go with them, to stay behind, or even for some to go and some to stay.  Option A, B, or C. We thought we were so clever.  What we weren't prepared for was what we've come to call "Option Pi."  The PCs did something entirely unexpected and unpredictable, and we rolled with it, and the powerful allies turned into powerful adversaries, and it changed the game considerably, and we had to rewrite a lot of stuff, but it was the most fun I've ever had, and the most fun our players had, and although it happened over ten years ago, it's still trotted out as a favourite 'gaming war story' amongst our group.

What's the hardest thing you've ever had to do as a GM?:
A couple years ago, I ran another LARP (White Wolf Vampire Elders) with a friend.  The most difficult thing about that was recognizing that although I liked this friend a lot, we did NOT work together at all well.  Our styles were completely incompatible and the game suffered for it. The game was giving me more stress than fun, and I had to recognize that and end it.

What are your favorite GMing tricks and techniques?:
I like making memorable NPCs, and I do that by trying to forge some sort of connection between them and the PCs as quickly as possible, whether that's a romantic connection, a mentor/student connection, or something more abstract (like "this shopkeeper gives you good prices because you remind him of his son").

What are your GMing weaknesses?:
I am bad at mysteries.  I know that I have trouble telling the difference between "too subtle for Sherlock Holmes" and "Obvious Sledgehammer of Obviousness +10".

What are your favorite sources of inspiration for your games?:
This may sound a bit incestuous (or at the least narcissistic), but I find the most inspiration in past games. I like to dissect them, see what worked, what didn't, what the players responded really well to, and bring that into my current games.

Other than that, I do find inspiration everywhere. Books, movies, television, etc.

[eachna]

Name: Gwen Morse
Age: 39
Gender: female
Location: Long Island, NY
Tell us 3 things about yourself that aren't related to gaming:

1) I'm a big advocate of open standards/open source/linux/Android.
2) I studied ballet for 8 years.
3) I met my husband on the Internet.

When was your first session as a GM, and what game did you run?: When I was in High School I ran "The Wizard of Oz" (the book, not the movie) as an adventure. It was universally reviled and I didn't GM for decades afterwards.

Share your favorite GMing experience: Teaching two brand new players (high schoolers) about the "joy" of roleplay. Watching them open up and be more willing to talk out scenes.

What's the hardest thing you've ever had to do as a GM?: Reset an campaign (remove all the characters and have people re-stat as new characters). It was heartbreaking to see how upsetting it was to the players. I only did it because I had made so many mistakes as a novice GM I felt like I couldn't continue. I've since learned there are more graceful ways to power down characters for multi-year campaigns.

What are your favorite GMing tricks and techniques?: Just about everything I read on YMIAT. No kidding, my online GM notebook is full of YMIAT web clippings!!!

What are your GMing weaknesses?: I can't do accents and I also struggle with different types of speech. Every NPC "sounds like" every other NPC.

What are your favorite sources of inspiration for your games?: Supernatural romance novels. It may sound dumb, but, I like to read romance novels with vampires, ghosts or ghost hunters, psychics, ect. Since the old World of Darkness is my playground, it's a rich source of NPCs and mini-plots. One of the best parts is that I can be guaranteed that "no one" in my playgroup has read the same stories. Like nearly every other GM I like to steal the best part of someone else's writing, dust it off and repaint it a different color, and then present as my own idea. One hazard of widely read playgroups is they've often read the source material and recognize it. With romance novels, if I just throw out the mushy bits, they have no clue about the source material.

[ekb]

Name: Eoin Keith Boyle (just give up trying to say the first name and call me "Keith" if you have doubts)
Age: 39 (for a few months longer)
Gender: M
Location: Ingleside, IL - the happy land between Fox Lake & Round Lake, just before you head into Wisconsin.

Tell us 3 things about yourself that aren't related to gaming:
--I didn't ride a roller coaster until 2002
--I trained as a chef, but hate the restaurant business
--I have remarkably eclectic tastes in music: I'm a sucker for good songwriting

When was your first session as a GM, and what game did you run?:
Sometime in the 80s. Red book Basic D&D.

Share your favorite GMing experience:
Teaching my exGFs daughters (8 & 3) about RP, having them realize that it's just adults playing pretend like they do, and then BOTH of them wanting in on the regular game that we'd run every Saturday night...

What's the hardest thing you've ever had to do as a GM?:
Tell someone that they're really disrupting the fun. It's gotten easier since then...

What are your favorite GMing tricks and techniques?:
I do a lot of conceptual theatrical exercises to get the players to really think of their characters as characters and not just a set of stats. I also really like using randomness as prompts - yet also have some love for diceless RPGs. And I do often say "say yes, or roll the dice."

What are your GMing weaknesses?:
I can be a bit slow on the uptake of what a player is trying to describe. I ask for clarification and the SoD just starts collapsing around us... I'm working on that, though.

What are your favorite sources of inspiration for your games?:
I ride the train into the city pretty regularly. At the stations, the various "Friends of the Library" groups will put out books for anyone to read. The chaotic mishmash can be pretty useful - the latest cluster was a prose translation of the Iliad, Economics in One Lesson, and Moorcock's Gloriana. I read voraciously, so I've also been known to pull random entries from Project Gutenberg and Archive.org.

[Morkalg]

Name: Rob
Age: 35
Gender: Male
Location: Garrett, IN
Tell us 3 things about yourself that aren't related to gaming:

• I'm a musician and was the guitarist and singer in a metal band (though I write decidedly not metal music personally) for a few years... oh the stories.
• I fancy myself a writer and a poet!
• I love to cook. I didn't say I was any good at it, but I like doing it anyways.

When was your first session as a GM, and what game did you run?:

It would have to have been the early '90s but I recall it being WHFRP and it was brutal!

Share your favorite GMing experience:

My biggest CoC game with 11 players. They had almost succeeded in banishing the entity in the house when one of my players went insane. We rolled randomly for his insanity which turned out to be the urge to eat strange objects. Since they were all engaged in chanting around a candle-lit circle at the time his culinary options were limited... he ate the candle, broke the spell and the game ended with the slowest runners dying.

Ah... good times.

What's the hardest thing you've ever had to do as a GM?:

Balance the personality conflicts of large groups and keep the action and suspense going.

What are your favorite GMing tricks and techniques?:

I'm an audio guy so I love creating mood and atmosphere through music, sound effects and sometimes lighting.

What are your GMing weaknesses?:

Being to nice to my players, sometimes I let them get away with to much. Lately though I've improved and have been giving them enough rope to hang themselves with!

What are your favorite sources of inspiration for your games?:

History and real life. Things in this world are and can be so interesting if you step back and look at them in a new light. The world is so much better simply by asking "What if...?_

[Trythos]

Name: Ben

Age: 16 - I know, young, but don't worry, I believe myself to be quite mature when I want to, even if I say so myself =)

Gender: Male

Location: Singapore

Tell us 3 things about yourself that aren't related to gaming:
-I'm currently a student of the International Bacculearate program, study mainly law and lotsa philosophy, some psychology.
-I read loads of books, mostly fantasy, love GRR Martin, Robin Hobbs, Feist, the lot. Some SciFi too, Delany etc. Oh and loads of classic lit, thought more for school.
-I can't hold alchohol for nuts. For example at last weekend's party (if you're a student you end up at a LOT of these), I found myself standing on the roof of a house, carrying two empty bottles of rum dressed in nothing more than a tuxedo and boxer shorts with three close buds singing at the top of our lungs the theme song from Powerpuff Girls.

When was your first session as a GM, and what game did you run:
2009, am fairly new to this. Had lotsa time as a PC though, 5 years approx. Dark Heresy, the Warhammer 40k Roleplaying Game which incidentally is damned good.

Share your favourite GMing experience:
Well not that many to talk about, have LOADS of player experiences though. As a GM, probably recently, when the party were each engaging in their background stories, whereby one was a dwarf enamored by elven culture, eventually joining a group of elves specializing in 'acquisitions', and the other was a prince of a realm where his father was a puppet ruler in a court of byzantine politics. Eventually, my players found out that the elves were actually assassins, but not till they had tricked the dwarf into blowing up the tower of the the prince's mentor! Which ruined the elaborate plan to bring back power laid down by the prince, and so the two were arguing the whole session. Worse, the lead assassin turned out to be an astral entity sent to kill the two of them (prophecy and backstory and such, long tale), and so they spent the next half hour running around the city, the prince trying to kill the dwarf, the astral entity trying to kill the prince and the dwarf running the hell away with the blood of a Paladin Exarch on his hands.


What's the hardest thing you've ever had to do as a GM:
None, so far. I guess it was in Dark Heresy, whereby I had created an elaborate and intricate spaceship filled to the brim with interesting tales, backstory and quests, only to have my PCs fly down to the planet, take over the orbital cannons from deep within enemy territory and blow it out of the sky. A day's work, gone like that.
 
What are your favourite GMing tricks and techniques:
Mostly, I try not to railroad my PCs, which turns out a LOT of impovisation. Half of my minor plots are made up on the spot, the other half I plan them carefully, but then crash spectacularly into the crazy spontaneous elements. As for the PCs, I try as hard as I can to push them to play inventively.

What are your GMing weaknesses:
I guess I enjoy improvisation so much to the point where it sometimes becomes cluttered. Not so much an issue for hugely epic and freeform games such as Dark Heresy, but much so for DnD

What are your favourite sources off inspiration for your games:
Warhammer 40k, Books, LOADS of Games... sometimes i take long walks and just imagine scenarios and stories and play them out in my mind.