Describe the best compliment you’ve had while gaming

The standard answer to this is the simple one, a thanks is enough, as is the attendance of the players. It sounds trite, but it’s still true. If the players say or message a thanks, it’s nice. It makes it feel like the work put in was worth something. The same works the other way, too.

Still, we’re not here for the obvious one. Dredging up the mind canal, one of the nicer compliments I had was in a GenCon UK game of Spycraft. It was the year where the con was in what was pretty much a giant tent in a Butlins. I wrote a trilogy of Spycraft adventures which frankly could have been better, but were still entertaining to run at conventions. I ran the first one a ton of times at this Butlins GenCon UK. It was midday and no one showed up for a game. Not at first. Then these two players showed up and while I was’t used to running for two players, I decided to keep going.

The game seemed cursed. Despite knowing each other, the players both had created the same character class; a snoop. While the adventure was some investigation of a town where the populace thought they were birds, segueing to a chase on a train, these players simply showed up with briefcases and legal papers. Still, we played. As people on the RPG tables had got used to, there was the smell of the portaloos being drained which happened far too often. We kept going. Then there was a power cut. The players made their excuses and left.

I didn’t have anywhere else to go, so I stayed at my table and read. The players returned. They explained that they figured they’d go back to their chalet, grab some beers and hopefully at least the smell from the loos would have dispersed by the time they returned. They handed me a beer, said that they’d been enjoying it, especially with the mission working despite their atypical set up. I don’t even like beer, but in that moment at the con, it was the perfect time for a beer and the rest of the adventure with those players.

Those Spycraft adventures are tricky to find these days. They’re available here with the other Living Spycraft documents.