For some reason I took to rereading The Suethulhu Files this week. Much like The Binder of Shame, it’s the sort of trainwreck that just endlessly amuses the geeky mind. But I have to admit that the years have changed my view on it a bit over the years. These days, I’d describe it like this:
It’s the story of how the worst kind of GM runs a game for the worst kind of player in the worst kind of setting, and how it drives both of them crazy.
Now, the first and the last part of that is simply the text as written. The GM (referred to as “Marty”) does just about every single thing that GMs ought not to but that most GMs invariably end up doing when first starting out. He not only railroads, but railroads ineptly, creating scenarios that are ridiculously fragile and kept together solely by GM fiat. He takes everything personally and uses his control over the world to stomp down on anyone he doesn’t like. He is firmly opposed to the players actually doing stuff, seeing their role as just fawning over the majestic awesomeness of his settings and his NPCs. And he thinks he’s much, much smarter than he actually is.
And the setting… well, it’s CthulhuTech, which may just be the gold standard for games that learned all the wrong things from the World of Darkness. It’s really no wonder that Marty took to it, because it seems to have been created by a whole bunch of Martys. The whole thing is a constant, breathless gushing about the omnipotence of clandestine organisations, with the players existing to be tiny cogs in the machine, at best. A lot of people consider it to be depressing, because the players can’t save anyone. I consider it to be boring, because it’s so abundantly clear that the players don’t have to save anyone – the writers aren’t going to let their pet NPCs fail, so the world will be saved without the players’ involvement. Proper dark fantasy games call on you to be a hero, because if you don’t do it, no one else will. In CthulhuTech, your best bet is really to hunker down somewhere and wait for the Ashcroft Foundation to fix everything.
So that much I’m on board with, but honestly now… the narrator (“ZeRoller”) is no prize either. In fact, he seems like the sort of player who’d make my grey hairs multiply. He nitpicks. He scoffs. He demands to short-circuit the GM’s scenarios through what he considers super-clever solutions, and treats it as an outrage when he can’t. He behaves, all in all, as every bit as much of a control freak as Marty – it’s just that while Marty is a lazy, self-satisfied control freak, ZeRoller is a neurotic, overzealous one. Neither sounds like they’d be much fun.
Now, I think that ZeRoller would probably defend himself here, and claim that he’s not normally like that, but Marty’s smug insistence that his shoddy worldbuilding is the work of GENIUS!!! just drove him up the wall and made him want to disprove it. And I can absolutely believe that! Marty no doubt brought out the worst in him… but I wonder if he didn’t bring out the worst in Marty, too. If I ran a game for someone and they kept trying to break the setting by invoking bits of science that I simply had no clue about (and that they might not understand as well as they thought – ZeRoller admits himself in a few places that he was actually mistaken about something he argued for), I’d start itching to take them down a peg. That’s no excuse for Marty, of course, because just because you’re tempted to abuse your position it doesn’t mean you should, but yeah… I may not condone, but I sympathise.
In particular, ZeRoller keeps claiming that what drove him into those apparently endless arguments about the finer points of chemistry and physics with Marty was that Marty just wouldn’t back down and admit that ZeRoller’s ideas would work, but that it’d be a lot more convenient for the game if he just pretended not to have thought of it. And again, that would definitely have been the mature way to do it.
But.
But if some odious know-it-all was all up in my face and insisting that there was obviously a way to break a setting I’d poured my heart and soul into crafting… I’d need to swallow my pride pretty hard to agree with him. It’d feel like… “yes, it’s true, you’re much smarter than me, but please take pity on my poor, feeble intellect and treat me with kid gloves!”
I mean… I’m forty-five years old, and the idea still sets my teeth on edge. Marty was still in college at the time, presumably absolutely bubbling with youthful testosterone. I’m… not really surprised that his reaction was more like, “oh yeah? Bring it on, bro! Do your worst! My man-brain can beat your man-brain with one hemisphere behind its back!” Again, it’s not what a wiser man would have done, but… yeah.
All the same, like I said, it’s absolutely worth going back and reading more than ones. We can all use the reminder to not be like Marty. And ZeRoller… well, at least he’s entertaining, I have to give him that much!
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