I am guilty... I took revenge in my game

So before the last session I was approached by my friend Neal about my feelings of him discussing creating Deadlands characters with the group before we started D&D. I said sure, I have wanted to play for a long time, a surprise to my group, and I encouraged the original system to the D20 OGL version which I do not care for.

Now my friend Kevin has been asking us to stat ourselves for a mystery game he would like to run. I have been passive aggressive since he announced it on our Facebook group. I was all over him about system specifics then tried offering solutions such as D20 Modern and such. Heck I have both the PDFs and the books I can give him.

One big thing I have been struggling with lately is my attitude and my punctuality to games, not to mention my being prepared. So this time I was all ready. I got there an hour before anyone else, ate lunch, had the characters printed from the previous session and just needed to print additional material. I was pretty close to complete when the topic of the mystery game came up.

To say I was mad would be an understatement. I had been torn between running the adventure as it was from the last session (Bark at the Moon) or tie up a few loose ends and move onto a request from the group, a real Dragon encounter! We had not done one in years, sure we fought one in the 3.5 game my friend runs but it was a weird homebrew creation I think, it was cool I guess but I spent the entire encounter (all 4 hours of it) unconscious.

But I am getting off topic, being mad. During prep I set up my tiles for the Dragon encounter start, when the talk of the mystery game started and they actually started writing up characters… I scrapped the Dragon encounter for the night and went to the published adventure, and by that I mean I sat there and fiddled around while some went to get food, came back and ate while I cut out The Weem’s Condition cards.

Could I have started my game on time? I suppose I could have, I was a jerk and I knew I was being a jerk. It probably showed, especially when I was asked if I would make a character I gave a typical response by not giving one when I said it might be possible. Here I was thinking that at least Neal asked me if it would be ok to talk about creating characters for a Deadlands game at my game. Why did Kevin not ask?

In hindsight, I should have said “We are not doing this now, I have a game to run.” Case close and game is underway. No I had to act out in the way I am classic for. I silently did a filibuster for my own game until I was ready to go. I need to take control more I guess.

I came to this realization after talking to my friend Neal on my drive home from work the other night and when I asked him his thoughts of the game I got a bit of a sigh and the topic of start time came up. I had shot him a look when he was texting people and he bit back that he sat there waiting for me so touche I guess.

Outside that conversation with Neal I have not spoken further of the incident. Would I do things differently if given the chance? Sure I would, like I said I need to take control more in my games and be able to say no more. I will start that during my next game session which the jury is still out on when that will be.

Does anyone else have moments where they were not proud of what they did during their game session?

Until next time.