Player Takes Backseat GMing To A New Level
This is something that happened to me a while ago when I was a new GM just starting out. I was GMing play-by-post in a server that a much more experienced GM and writer than me (he was the problem played and I’ll call him Hero) had allowed me in. The server was meant to be hardcore narrative and had had all kinds of games run in it, from sci-fi to fantasy.
I had played a few games with Hero and another player as the GM and had had a lot of fun, so I’d asked Hero if I could run a game of my own. After running my game, advertisement for the game, and plots through him, he accepted and my first game went okay. I was a new GM and made several errors, but all of my players (of which Hero was one) agreed that they had a good time on.
I got the bug for GMing from this and decided to run a new game soon after. Hero and his boyfriend were the two players, as scheduling for play-by-post shortform can be a nightmare with more. The story centered around a cursed disease that should have been cured but now had one last sufferer, who should been cured by the goddess of medicine when they ascended, but for a mysterious reason hadn’t. The task for the players was “save this girl/stop the world from ending” with the server being naturally very open ended as to its plots.
Hero made… a hero. A girl who had had divine blessing upon divine blessing stacked upon her since birth, who saw herself as nothing more than a killer who purged the filthy and who wielded a divine sword that incinerated everyone in the vicinity. This girl was annoying to run for, to say the least.
Most of the NPCs were in some way related to the disease or the cult worshipping it so interactions became either combat (of which no one in the game had much interest in) or the hero going “you’re filth and I’ll kill you”. I tried to throw moral dilemmas such as a villain using real people as spare bodies. “I’ll simply kill them all.” I tried to have someone question their faith. “I don’t like how you’re assuming that she’ll change her path at all.” Every single thing I had for them to engage with including the literal prophet they worked for going “hey before you go scorched earth can you try to investigate this disease first” was met with a “they’re singleminded.”
Meanwhile the other player made an enigmatic ninja type who basically never spoke much and who didn’t explain why they did what they did, but who saved the lives of a few characters from Hero’s character. My attempts to draw them into conversation, also thwarted.
I’d like to note that throughout the campaign and my previous one after sessions Hero had been giving me notes and feedback. In this campaign, it became active feedback mid session. “Oh this character shouldn’t say that. It’s kind of boring.” “This isn’t good for the character arc presented.” “Can you rewrite this? Sorry, but tonight I’m not in a mood for low quality storytelling.” At one session he even sent me a video on how to write better and said “why don’t you take a break to watch this video and then come back.” I rewrote multiple GM posts for the sake of how he thought I should run the game, as I’m a massive people pleaser and also struggled with my confidence in myself as a writer, respecting Hero tremendously. But with the way most of my plans were burning and the constant instructions to rewrite, things were draining on me. Especially since Hero and his boyfriend seemed to be pretty checked out during sessions and would have their characters flirt with each other and make sexual jokes.
Then things came to a head in a final session where Hero’s character had tracked the others down to a city and was going to kill the last afflicted, even if they had to kill every single person in the city. I had the girl eventually, after her own character arc and after seeing the massacre as hundreds of bodies burned, decide to give up her life to the Hero, telling them “you can kill me, just leave this city.” Once they were killed, I’d be able to move into phase two of the campaign and reveal a few lore goodies… I was so close to being able to salvage the campaign…
“Before you kill her, I want to duel you.”
The other PC stepped in and the two begin their duel, fighting. This is a situation where I have no wins. I can’t stop the duel or interfere since “the players really want it and you should work it into your plan”. I can’t engage with the duel with the characters present. And I can’t exactly have the NPC girl watch going “please don’t kill people…” while a collateral damage sword kills more and more people. There’s nothing as a GM that I thought I could do in that scene. I tried five different ways to do something there, five different entire GM posts and each time Hero told me “you should rewrite this it isn’t good.” Or something like that. Finally I simply said
“Okay. I don’t care. I’ll have her do nothing. Enjoy your duel. Tell me when it’s over.”
And got a bit snappy. Hero’s boyfriend responded with.
“After a display like that I don’t even want to duel now.”
I said that I couldn’t deal with rewriting any longer and that they could either duel or not. I didn’t care. Hero then said that “I’m sorry but your writing isn’t compelling enough for me to engage with it.” And then I said “fine then.” And ended the campaign.
Looking back on it, I definitely could have been a better GM, but I’ve never dealt with that level of backseating before and it was genuinely soul crushing to have to rewrite my story constantly for the whims of a player who seemed more interested in flirting than playing and who disregarded every hook or thematic beat I could give him.