Campaign Diary: Even Hero GM's Make Mistakes

I'll be honest the write ups for my games were taking a lot more of my time than I liked. I enjoyed writing them, but ultimately it was a glossed over recap of what had happened in the game and not generally useful as any sort of reference for me to become a better GM. I decided while the stories are interesting, they are not the reason I started this blog. It doesn't address the issues I had running the game, whether the player picked up on them or not. This will be the start of more interesting session write ups. Hopefully they won't all be about how I biffed it on something.

Part of this has been inspired by the latest session of Apocalypse World that I ran. I made a mistake I've been kicking myself over since the session happened two weeks ago. It isn't one I think the group picked up on, but it's one I am kicking myself for as an overly self-critical GM.

The Game: Apocalypse World Second Edition

Group Size: 2 returning players

The group is a Quarantine named Special Lt George Washington and a Gun Lugger named Doom Fireside. We are several sessions into it and coming up on a last session we all agreed on. The past session they had taken the doctor and the mechanic from the settlement they had taken over and were headed up river into the dense city center region to hunt down a rumor about a place where plants still grew. They'd fought there way into the city and were starting their search for clues about the place they had heard the rumors about.

This is the scene I made the mistake in. They came across a store of some kind with the metal gate closed and the only way in was a window in the back. When they explored the place, I knew they were gonna find something. My first instinct was a mutant zombie that would then fight with them, but then I as I was describing the grotesque breathing noises they were hearing I changed my mind and had it be an infected kid that was close to turning into a mutant zombie.

The group had the doctor look at the kid to get an idea of how sick they might actually be. I decided to make the kid beyond helping. Here is what I feel was a mistake: the doctor saw the kid, then almost immediately went over and injected the kid with something that killed him. Right after that I had the kid's tribe show up looking for him and things got messy, but I made the mistake of giving the decision to an NPC rather than putting the choice on the players.

It's not a moment the players even really thought twice about, because I hit them with a different situation shortly after that. It didn't occur to me necessarily in the moment, but afterwards it all made so much sense and seemed so obvious. In hindsight, I should have had the doctor take them aside and let them know how dire the situation was and put it on them to decide whether the kid lives or dies. 

There is the very strong possibility that Mr Doom Fireside would have killed the kid without a second thought, because that's the way Doom Fireside rolls, but I should have given them the option. It would have made the tribe demanding to see the kid slightly more interesting if they had made the choice to end the kid's life. Since the players were taken out of the decision making process, they didn't have any particular feelings of guilt toward the kid's death.  

The players probably didn't notice that scene could/should have been better. The game moved on with the scene over and done with. That doesn't mean I should ignore my mistake as the GM. The GM should not take any choice with potential impact away from the players. The players should own each situation they are put into and the choices that got them there.

Good session overall though. Next session we get to see what's left of their settlement after spending a week of time away from it while it was under siege by an army of mutant zombies.