Surprise, you're the GM tonight!

[Whill]

By my senior year in high school, I was king of the nerds. Before 12th grade I had been running two simultaneous campaigns of WEG Star Wars (with two different player groups of other 'smart kids'). The drama club/peacenik clique, the other major group of roleplayers in my school, were mainly into AD&D 2e and Call of Cthulhu 4e, but they liked the Star Wars movies and had heard of my legendary GM abilities because my players recounted their weekend adventures at lunch.

One week a couple drama kids invited me to a "party" on Friday night but asked me to bring my Star Wars stuff 'so they could look at it.' When I got there I quickly realized that high school actors had finagled me into running an adventure for a total 12 players who had showed up. I didn't know most of the players too well but I accepted the unexpected challenge. I told everyone the template types they could choose from, and passed out printed character templates I luckily had with me. We quickly allocated starting still dice and pulled an all nighter to play a truncated version of Tatooine Manhunt, which I had only run once before this. (There was no alcohol but the mountain dew flowed). They loved it, and despite me not being in theater or into REM and U2, I had acquired a third player group. (But I only ever ran one more adventure with all 12 players, because it was always a 'whoever showed up' thing). With that group I got occasional breaks from running Star Wars when one their usual GMs would run D&D or Cthulhu for us (which they also kept playing without me when I was with one of my other Star Wars groups). Over 30 years later, I am still friends with a lot of my high school players.

I think that was the only time I was ever unexpectedly the GM. I prefer to plan ahead. But I don't care for being a player so I am almost always the GM anyway.

Has anyone else ever had to run a Star Wars adventure when you weren't even expecting to be the GM? How did it go?
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The Rancor Pit Library
Star Wars D6 Damage

[Sutehp]

No alcohol, but the Mountain Dew flowed? You guys must have been up all night.

I've never been in a situation where I had to unexpectedly take over as GM. Truth be told, I've only been the GM once when I tried to run Exalted since I couldn't find an Exalted game anywhere near me. It turned out...poorly.

I much prefer being a player to a GM. I'd love to run my lawyer-turned-smuggler in a SWD6 campaign someday.
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Sutehp's RPG Goodies
Only some of it is for D6 Star Wars.
Just repurchased the X-Wing and Tie Fighter flight sim games. I forgot how much I missed them.

[Whill]

[garhkal]

I have been HANDED a book to read so i 'could be DM' for a group of players, for shadow run.. BUT that group never got off the floor as the leader of that group (and the one who gave me the book) got a DUI and went to poki, 2 others deployed, then med discharged when they got back..
That's the CLOSEST i have had to being 'on the spot recruited' for GMing duties, Regular wise.
Convention wise, i've had three times now, where i was slated to play a game, but the DM for it had a med emergency, and i got corraled into being the DM for that slot... Luckily i had my collection of modules i own/made and others, so i could DM easily.
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Confucious sayeth, don't wash cat while drunk!

[DougRed4]

I never had to run an impromptu SW session, but I have done it before with another game system, the superhero RPG Villains & Vigilantes.
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Currently Running: Villains & Vigilantes (a 32-year-old campaign with multiple groups) and D6 Star Wars; mostly on hiatus are Adventures in Middle-earth and Delta Green

[Inquisitor1138]

Not with Star Wars, but Vampire the Masquerade...
I was staying with a friend in Pittsburgh while attending Pittsburgh ComicCon.
He & his housemates were all college students in late teens & early twenties; i was a bit older, about mid-20s. Anyway, my friend had told them about the games i had run, and so they talked me into running a VtM game.
The real surprise for me, was they all made Sabbat characters.
I have to that point only had Sabbat as antagonists/NPCs, i had not played in any Sabbat game.
Where the core game focuses on the Camarilla faction - vampires struggling to retain their Humanity - there were books for playing & running Sabbat groups. I had none of those at that point.
Sabbat are definitely the Darksiders of VtM.
I bit down my shock & used calming exercises, them i just winged it, running a 'normal' game with abnormal characters...
It was amusing having them meet & interact with an ancient vampire god after he had killed another ancient vampire god, and attempting to claim the MacGuffin ancient tome... they had done & played well, so Anubis gave them a different magical tome; one less dangerous than what Anubis was taking, but it was one more accessible to the characters & would advance their skills in Blood Magic for years to come.
I have recently reconnected with Jordan, who appears to be in Japan now...
I'll never forget the two Thaumaturges of the group; characters Johnny Mannin & Cash Black...
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[Sutehp]

Your Sabbat characters ran into Anubis? Or they ran into Sutekh AKA the Setite Antediliuvian? I don't recall any vampire (of any Generation) named Anubis but if your Sabbat characters had a run-in with Set himself, that must have been an interesting game.

And running a Sabbat game without having any Sabbat sourcebooks takes a sturdy set of cojones. I salute you, sir.
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Sutehp's RPG Goodies
Only some of it is for D6 Star Wars.
Just repurchased the X-Wing and Tie Fighter flight sim games. I forgot how much I missed them.

[garhkal]

I'd have told them "I have no info for Sabbat characters, so i can't RUN a game for them"..
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Confucious sayeth, don't wash cat while drunk!

[Inquisitor1138]

[Sutehp]

I remember an Aztec pyramid from Diablerie: Mexico, which was a 1st Edition adventure that had a 4th Generation Baali vampire, but that's probably not the adventure you had. I never read Mexico City By Night (and Mexico City is where the HQ of the Sabbat is located) , so maybe your adventure was from that book instead.

So you made a Tremere Antitribu character? That must have been interesting. Too bad about the entire bloodline (almost all 100 of them!) getting fwooshed in a single night. I forget which books mentioned this, but it was said that the Tremere Antitribu was a very small bloodline of only 100 members and they had all gathered in one of their underground warrens for a magic ritual. After the rest of the Sabbat had lost contact with the Tremere Antitribu, they sent agents to investigate. The Sabbat agents found the warren but no trace of the Antitribu...but did find almost 100 human-shaped columns of ash. Oops. No one knows whether the Antitribu's ritual somehow went horribly wrong on its own, the Antitribu's enemies somehow subverted the ritual into burning the Antitribu en mass, or even if the Antitribu were somehow all killed at once via some other method before the ritual even took place. Brrrr....
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Sutehp's RPG Goodies
Only some of it is for D6 Star Wars.
Just repurchased the X-Wing and Tie Fighter flight sim games. I forgot how much I missed them.

[Kytross]

Awesome

[FVBonura]

Relatively new to the Central PA area, I was invited and attended a Star Trek Club gathering September 2014. I was told they wanted to do an RPG. I prepared a D6 Fantasy scenario with zombies and a cursed village. The leader of the ST group said in a whiney voice, "NO! I want to play STAR WARS!". I double checked being it was a Trek club but everyone was on board. I didn't have single WEG product with me. All I had was a prepared scenario (I couldn't use), a handful of loose-leaf paper, a clutch of pencils, and a zip lock of casino D6s.

I remembered an old scenario I wrote based on the 1982 movie "The Thing", and ran it off the top of my head. I had players build characters as we went, adding skills as we needed them. We played for hours and had a blast. The group asked me back for next month and this arguably was my greatest campaign that ran for 7 years and will restart again in January.
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[garhkal]

Oohh Nice.. How did the session end re them figuring out who 'was the thing;?
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Confucious sayeth, don't wash cat while drunk!

[FVBonura]

[garhkal]

Its like running a who-dunn-it with lots of force users or spell casters in AD&D.. Spells/magic/the force can easily neuter such a premise.
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Confucious sayeth, don't wash cat while drunk!