It all started when I got my girl into roleplaying, little did I know it would backfire on me one day. It wasn't too hard to get her in, she plays all sorts of video games and we had a blast playing through Borderlands together.
Of all the rpgs I ran for her though, she liked Dogs in the Vineyard the best. Walking around the GenCon sales floor I pointed out a familiar face to her, "That guy's Vincent Baker." She looked at me blankly so I elaborated, "He wrote Dogs."
Her eyes lit up. It was hilarious and adorable. I led her over to the Lumpley/Forge booth so I could check out the new hotness. There it was, the new shiny from various rpg forums, Apocalypse World. I picked it up and flipped through as Baker finished up a demo. He chatted with us for a bit and gave us a run down of the game.
After the chat, I asked, "So what do you think babe? Should we pick it up?" Her favorite rpg author had written a game, a game just like Borderlands, a new game that Jarvis didn't know how to play! The "YES!" didn't take long.
Within hours I was informed that the crisp new Apocalypse World book I just purchased was now her game. "You can't read it because I'm going to run it and I don't want anyone else correcting me on rules."
[Edit: I later discovered that the underlying reason is to prevent me from 'knowing the game' better than she does. Expertise breeds confidence and she wants to be the AW expert when we sit down to play.]
And here we are. Five weeks later and I still can't read the hot new book because my girl insists on running it for me. Awesome and totally not, all at the same time. :-P
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She needn't worry; virtually everything the MC is called upon to do in Apocalypse World is discretionary, and the rest is all stuff players are allowed to know.
ReplyDeleteI probably should've clarified things a little better in my post. She actually just wants to be the resident AW expert when we play, for the confidence boost.
ReplyDeleteIt's much appealing to say "Look at this cool game I'm running for you!" than to say "why aren't you running this game if you already know all the rules and have MUCH more GM experience?"
I'm sure we've all had moments where we find ourselves running a game for its designer, or for the guy that GMed that awesome year long campaign. It brings a degree of intimidation that Leslie is hoping to avoid.