A good gamemaster indeed
I guess one of the reasons I have so much trouble playtesting The Company is because I’m not a very good gamemaster. (Speaking of playtesting The Company, I have, sadly, given up hope that I will hear from any online playtesters, and will have to carry on as best I can myself.) Tony, however, is something else. He can spin an excellent roleplaying session from the barest of plans, and I hope some of you will eventually have the pleasure of playing a game with him as the gamemaster at a GenCon one of these years.
On Tuesday we were playing one of his games in development by the name of Demoner. Taking the premise of a town under control of a magic-using cult, with the town church and library decided as two important locations, Tony managed to spin a very entertaining investigation, and then seamlessly allowed it to shift into a shooting spree when I got tired of using subtlety to achieve my ends. With very few bumps I was able to learn what was going on, who was involved, and where their centers of power were. When night fell… Well, away went the joking investigator and out came the shotgun.
This is the versatility as a gamemaster I wish I had. Sitting on my bedroom floor, we can play pretty much any game I want with a premise as general or as specific as I request. Next week we’ll probably play some The Company, since what has been said about the game after I released the playtest copy was positive, and I would really like to get it out there to a wider audience.