Alright, Julia's, "Go Strider!" touched off a bit of a rant in my mind, so I'll start with that.
GMs have to be very careful with powerful NPCs, *especially* if they're thinking about including them in the party. My advice is, don't. If you want to run a `character' in the game, that's perfectly fair - if I were GMing, I'd do it. But make them, at best, equal to everyone else. Seriously think about running a less powerful character. And keep them the heck out of any kind of leadership position.
GMing is a lot of work, and GMs can end up being somewhat set apart from the players. That can suck. It's a good argument for alternating GMs, and running an (N)PC becomes perfectly legit...but the GM has everything else in the world. The big decisions for the party should be made by the players, and the final showdown should *definitely* be tailored for the PCs. This CAN entail finding out that they were just a feint by more powerful good guys who needed a distraction to get in. Played right, that can turn the PCs against their own side and be great fun. But it's a very different thing to have an (N)PC in the party who `just happens' to be the only one who can win it. Bluntly, while extreme glory-hound players can be a problem, it's not so bad, as long as it evens out in the end... this ties to Doyce's, "Everyone wants to be a star." A glory-hound GM doesn't leave any room for that.
Now, for the actual rant. This was, bar none, the worst GM I have ever gamed under - bad enough that I don't think I've ever really talked about him much, even to Meera. He was the kind of gamer people worry about...suffice to say that having known him for more than a year, I never knew his real name - he went by his character name. Which I won't give, just on the off chance he or someone he knows stumbles across this.
This was his only character. It was a high level, multi-classed character with a fair load of magic items. He ran it in every game, even when everyone else was starting out at 1st level. He'd still use his boots of levitation to get out of fights, and loot everyone else's bodies. When saving throws had to be made, he rolled his behind the GM screen. Can't say I ever saw him miss one. That kind of thing. It was like watching a GM favor their SO, but many times worse.
Outside of gaming, he was a nice guy. Let's call it `quirky', but nice. His GMing almost turned me off gaming, and I can tell you, that's something like disrupting the tides. (OK, I've seen characters that might be able to do that, but...)
That done, I'd like to go with ArrefMak's "So much for Plan A." The maxim goes way beyond gaming, of course (albeit not so critically as the details behind "Dreamguard"), and I know some other people talked about no plan surviving the enemy etc...but Arref said something I hadn't really thought of before.
"If your plan was in shambles, the enemy's plan might be too."
Damn. You ever realize you've been completely blind? I've always figured if my plan wasn't working, it's because the other side had planned better, or seen what I was doing and messed it up...not because *everything* was ruined and they were scrambling as badly as I was. But that makes a lot of sense. Especially if your enemy is someone like Benedict, who was *expecting* your plan. (Benedict's last words, as he's skewered by an invisible assassin: "You're late.")
I'm going to have to remember this one. Right along with Rick's, "Go straight to Get 'Em!" - if getting to Plan B first can win the battle, how much better to kick in the door while your enemy is still working on Plan A?
Finally, I'm afraid I have to go to Tara's "Leave The Boyfriend at Home." I don't WANT to, but there you are. I haven't actually had a bad experience with this; I've seen minimal and even non-gaming spouses do quite well around gaming. It seems to work better when it's at their own home, but I have seen it work fine even without that. Gaming isn't like dragging someone to a football stadium...they can bring along something to do if they get bored for a while, and most of the groups I've been in haven't been so Immersive that they can't handle some out-of-play exchanges that the non-gamer can still have fun with.
All the same...we're about to meet with a new gaming group. I desperately want Our Sweetie to come along. Frankly, I want her to join the game. If it works out, it's going to be all day a couple times a month, and I don't know how happy she's going to be with that.
On top of which, I miss her when she's not around. On top of THAT, when she's in the mood to game, she's a *lot* of fun to play with. (She doesn't entirely understand this. She's not a Gamer, but she's very good at it.)
So of course I want her to go. I don't know if she wants to, though. She keeps complaining that she wasn't there `in the beginning.'
I CAN remember `the beginning' for me - a guy who hung out with me mostly because he had a crush on my sister got me into gaming. He had a homebrew system a lot like Star Frontiers. (Remember Star Frontiers? I almost do. I think the insectile ones were the Vrusk. The ape-guys were something close to Yakusa, and the amoeba guys were..not Drilasi, but that's what I'm getting. Hm. Humans were humans. I'm sure of that.
Anyway, the point is, offhand, I can't even remember the guys NAME.
Oh wait. Brian. Brian Feiser.
Okay, so I DO remember his name. (And Brian, if you happen to stumble across this somewhere: Thanks!) Fine. The point still stands. NOBODY was there at `the beginning'. Meera came into my life when I'd been gaming (or at least making up stories about gaming) for at least five years. I came into hers when she'd been gaming all her life, and her dad had been a gamer, and her grandfather started doing it for her cousin...
But of course, we both already did it. Our Sweetie has done some, before meeting us, and some since, but if you could slap a label on her, it wouldn't be Gamer.
Which, frankly, is why I so *desperately* want her to come to this new one. New game, new system, new people...as much a beginning as we're going to get.
She seems genuinely interested in going the first time, at least to meet them and help us decide if this is going to work. After that... well, I suppose it's up to her. I'll try to leave it up to her, anyway. I just want her to know she's *wanted*. It's a fine line between inviting and pushing, and I haven't got it down yet.