Fixing my son's terrible high school RPG club.

I agree that the highest priority for role-playing should be fun for the whole group. Realistically, there will be probably be some differences in opinion about fun, because different players often have different priorities for fun. Steve Jackson published a neat guide for GMs which identified several types of gamers and how to address their interests in an rpg campaign. It's been a long time since I read that, but it was very useful. Some types that I remember: power-gamers, strategists, roleplayers (emphasis on playing a role), and people who like hanging out with the gaming group more than playing the game.

The best that a group can reasonably hope for is a style of play that entertains the GM and a majority of the players a majority of the time. The GM is probably spending more time and money than everybody else combined to run the game, so it should be fun for him. And of course his style of play should work with a majority of the players, or they won't show up. The trick is to try to entertain as many players as possible, but also tactfully boot anybody who doesn't fit and doesn't care.

Shellhead wrote:

Black Barney wrote: Get two girls in that club and the entire activity becomes a whole new thing, it's So much better with women , as are most things

Have you ever watched I Hit It With My Axe?

no, is it good? Sounds funny already

Black Barney wrote:

Shellhead wrote:

Black Barney wrote: Get two girls in that club and the entire activity becomes a whole new thing, it's So much better with women , as are most things

Have you ever watched I Hit It With My Axe?

no, is it good? Sounds funny already

It's different. A group of female porn stars playing Dungeons & Dragons with a fairly creative DM. Meanwhile, the various boyfriends of the porn stars sit around in the background, looking incredibly bored. I only watched a couple of episodes before I realized that watching other people play D&D is not necessarily interesting.

Sorry for being distracting, and I'm not being critical, but I'm just trying to imagine what it would've been like had my mother tried to involve herself in my D&D roleplaying.

i played with my mom once. First time i ever DM'd. She was a magic-user and a kobold one-shot her with a short-bow. It was the first encounter. I felt bad.

Both of my parents tried role-playing exactly once each.

Dad: In 1980, a 17-year-old freshman at Michigan State disappeared. There was initial speculation that he was killed while playing in a live-action D&D game in the campus steam tunnel system. In reality, he dropped out of sight for a while as he struggled with his sexuality, and eventually committed suicide later that year. The media latched onto the D&D angle for a while, with predictable scaremongering, so my dad decided that he needed to learn more about role-playing hobby. He spent a couple of hours with me creating his magic-user, but found the process overly complex and didn't want to try any actual adventuring. The important part was that he was satisfied that the game was harmless. I understood what he was up to but played along as though I didn't.

Mom: In 1982, some relatives were visiting for a week, and we decided to go to our favorite amusement park, which was a two-hour drive. Just as we pulled into the parking lot in our van, a torrential downpour began. It was going to be quite a walk to get to the front gate from our parking space, so we decided to stay in the van until the rain let up. I happened to have a bag with some gaming stuff in the car, so my mom, my sister, and my uncle rolled up characters for Metamorphosis Alpha. While we were figuring out their starting equipment, the rain abruptly let up. So off we went to the amusement park, and the game was forgotten.