Mike H's FATE Campaign

We finished off Mike H's FATE Dresden-style campaign last night. We had a lot of game time to cover very quickly, since he was ending the campaign abruptly because of a sudden move. Unfortunately, two of the five players unexpectedly had to cancel at the last minute, making it that much harder to bring things to a satisfactory conclusion. However, Mike rose to the occasion and found ways to make it work.

There were several things I've learned from this campaign. I rarely have the opportunity to participate in roleplaying games as a player because I usually GM. I had an interesting concept for a character, but ultimately the character turned out to be more of a plot device than a personality. It's not a mistake I usually make. I felt as though I had a grasp on the character during the first session, but after that I only seemed to have that grasp sporadically. I think that I always had a better grip on the sort of things that I wanted the character to do than on who he was, and I'm usually much better at understanding the internal workings of my characters. That's because I usually closely link the external abilities of the character and the way his head works. In this case, I didn't do that. I conceived of his precognition ability, then had to figure out who the guy was, and those two things never came together the way I'd hoped. It's a lesson for the future.

From a GMing perspective, I learned a few useful things from the way the game was run. I enjoyed the way Mike had each of the players supply campaign elements that he brought together into a reasonably cohesive whole. I know that the methodology wasn't originated by him, but it was the first time I'd seen it and I think he did a good job of implementing it. I found the methodology itself a little mechanical, as those things often seem to me, but the concept of having the players contribute such things is worth keeping, and I think I'll have to use it for my upcoming Cabal campaign.

I'm going to miss having a GM of Mike's caliber around. He was always well prepared (maps, photos of NPCs, etc.) in ways that I've tended to slack off of personally in recent years. He often ended up leading the group when he was playing in one of my campaigns. And I'm really going to miss the post-game conversations, which ranged all over the place subject-wise. Thanks for the gaming, Mike, and I hope we'll continue to cross paths in the future.