Penny Arcade! - The Seventh Spring, Part One: "...sustaining an entire universe mentally is taxing, and full responsibility for another person's enjoyment is never something I hoist willingly. I [do] my best to embroider the complexities of moving through public spheres, and the players didn't appear to entirely disgusted, so apparently my failure was not absolute."
Paraphrased from Tycho, on running a D&D game. I've run two long-ish games, Werewolf and D&D 3.5. In both cases, I was constantly told by my players that they enjoyed it, notably in the Werewolf game. Werewolf was particularly odd, as the game sort of went off on its own. I spent an entire summer planning it and got through all of 2 of the encounters I wanted to run in nearly 2 semesters of gaming.
The same little voice in the back of my head telling me I sucked and my friends were lying to me (I know, unlikely) is the only thing keeping me from starting a game out here. I always feel nervous DMing, and I always feel nervous talking to people don't know, so the combination of the two will surely cause me to collapse in a ball of introversion. I only know a scant few people out here well enough that I really feel comfortable with, and there's not enough of them to run a game for. My urge to game is slowly overcoming that, but not to the point that I'll run a campaign of my own design.
Solution! I got a copy of the first published 4e adventure (Keep on the Shadowfell) for free a while ago, and having listened to the PA/PvP podcast I know that it doesn't actually suck. From there, Thunderspire Labyrinth, Dungeon Delve, and who knows where we'll be by then. Now then, to find people who want to play...
