New Campaign Zen

Here we go.  Tomorrow I set off to start a new campaign, this time with a system I’ve never used (Savage Worlds) with a setting I’ve never run (Deadlands).  I’ve read the books, watched Westerns, pumped my brain full of Western themed music.  I’ve gone over expectations with players, reviewed their character builds, questioned their motivations and read their backstories.  NPCs have been statted, scenarios planned, and scenes envisioned.

All that’s left to do now is to wait, and let it all settle, and see how things  fall the moment the game starts.  It’s been said that no plan survives contact with the enemy, and likewise it’s been proven time and time again that no GM notes survive contact with actual play.

Part of being a GM is learning how to roll with the punches, simultaneously working with your scenario outline while deviating it depending on where the players seem to be having more fun.  It’s an interesting exercise of the GM’s empathy, as it relies soley on how well you judge if the players are having fun, or if they’re getting bored.  For the sake of the entire group’s enjoyment, sometimes even the best laid plot twists and plans that you’ve been cultivating for weeks now have be be brought around to the back yard and shot.

There’s a little Zen moment to be had here, where I let go of all my stress and tension from planning the game and just relax.  It’s in giving up on absolute control of a game that the GM finds fun again.  Setting up the scenario is work, but watching it unfold is where the GM derives his fun.