Gamer Profile: The Professional GM

Or the Pro as I'll call him here. You probably know the Pro. There's probably a Pro in your home town. And he's not called the Pro because he's actually good or professional at what he does. No, the Pro is just a guy who games a lot, maybe even runs more than one group, or at least lets players come in and out of his campaigns. Maybe he works the night shift, maybe he's unemployed, maybe he's unemployable.

I played with my town's Pro only once to see what the big deal was all about. See, the thing about the Pro is that everybody's heard of him. Everybody's got a friend or an older brother who gamed with him. And I guess that means everybody wants to get in on one of his games. Maybe you shouldn't bother.

First off, the Pro is way too proud of himself for his "accomplishments". He likes his reputation and would like it to be akin to The Monster's. He's lethal. He's challenging. He knows the rules by heart. So I walk in and the first thing he does is size me up (as I am introduced as another guy's DM). "So what's the toughest adventure module you ever read? Cuz nothing beats Throne of Bloodstone." For non-initiates, it's an AD&D module that has you face off against big demon lords and is either epic in scope or requires ridiculous player character levels, depending on your perspective. He then goes on to show off a monster he's designed called "DungeonMaster's Discretion". It can do anything the DM wants it to. Very clever.

So let's get down to playing. An old school dungeon crawl, we come into the middle of things as these things usually go. At some point, everybody dies. Total Party Kill, as they say. We don't care much cuz we just rolled up these characters for this try-out session, but it riles up the regular players. The Pro, for a good thirty seconds basking in the sheer unadulterated power only a pair of percentile dice can give you, sheepishly tells us it was all an illusion--? Dealing with the Pro is like asking a child to decide where the family will go on vacation. He doesn't know what to do with that kind of power.

But if that were all, I'd simply write him off as overrated and move on. However, the Pro GM is surrounded by his Pro Players, and that puts him in a totally different category. I'd say somewhere around 70% of the session was wasted on these two guys arguing over rule points with the Pro. It's like being at the Supreme Court, with obscure precedents and references from across the TSR library. They're digging out the Manual of the Planes to prove a point, they're bringing up past sessions, and the Pro just sits there and tries to amend events to fit the rulings.

It was like walking into the middle of your parents arguing about money. Just step away and go mow the lawn before either of them decides to take their frustration out on your hide.

So we never went there again. And once again counted ourselves lucky we only had to deal with The Jerk.