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It started slowly.

“I will not”, I said, “under any circumstances run an RPG

And then, with the snowball set rolling, it sort of changed:

“I will not”, I repeated like a mantra, “under any circumstances run an RPG under GURPS

So I stopped reading the GURPS basic set, and read Snow Crash instead.

“I will not”, I noted, with increasing exactness, “under any circumstances run a GURPS RPG set in a Snow Crash like world with a Metaverse I can put subquests in.”

At this point, almost admitting my doom, I opened a text file and wrote in it all the things I was not, under any circumstances, going to do with this idea. I’m still not going to do it, you understand, it’s just that I’m planning exactly what it is I’m not going to do.

Y’see, I started this RPG thing a while ago. My Aunty Ann returned from the states with a present for the 12 year old me. It was a large box containing a basic D&D manual (Original, TSR D&D. I’ve no idea of the rules edition), a board like something out of a Hasbro game, marked out with squares as a castle, and a series of cardboard figures for playing. Oh, and a full set of dice, which I’ve now lost.

Over the next few years I spend every-so-often trying to convince my friends to give this a go, and they refused. Eventually me, the older of my younger brothers, and his friend actually got to play this game, sat around my desk in my room.

It was fun. The amount of actual Role-playing being done was absolutely minimal (Having absolutely no idea about the game, we moved by the tried and tested method of rolling dice) and we played though the set adventure in a couple of hours. I seem to remember a second session where I tried to make it up as I went along, but that didn’t work. Anyway, we moved on, and what with one thing and another the set didn’t really get used again.

Over the last few years I’ve hung around with a lot of people who do Role Playing, spend several evenings in deep discussion over several jugs of ale over the best way to be evil to players without them stopping having fun, and how to run a game. Then a group of my friends started playing a game and I watched, then the Site they were using to play went offline for weeks without any warning or apology, and I wrote PFD4 in about three days flat. (PFD4 stands for “Point First D4”, proof positive that the set of dice I’ve had since I was 12 isn’t quite as lost as I sometimes assume). Now that game has been put on indefinite hold (GM and Real Life Stuff) I see a Great Void.

I’m not going to go anywhere near this. At all. Under Any Circumstances. I Will Not Run A Game.

Well, not until I have more of it worked out, anyway.

“I’m going to sing the doomed song now…” – Gir.

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