By the way, you may be interested in this

“The Game of Metal? Is that heavy?”

I did run another Trumpton game. In “Things that go ‘ooops!’ in the night”, the Muppets turned up in the USS Swinetrek spaceship and the resulting mayhem saw Peter Hazel the postman use his elephant gun to waste Beaker on the steps of Dr. Mopp’s science bunker … ’nuff said.

Do you think you’ll make it for the summer con? I’ll ty and think of something equally silly for then.

As for the player who sold out the rest of the party, sounds to me as though that’s where you advance to the scene where the players are facing certain death with the villain explaining how nothing can possibly stop him now, while stroking a while cat.

Surely everyone knows how that one goes well enough to wing it without too much preparation?

Going off plot? It depends how far off you go. I recall a game where one player decided to “go with the character” and sold out everybody else to the opposition, thus bringing the game to a premature conclusion. While they defended it as great roleplaying from their point of view, it was a waste of time for everyone else. Arguably the GM shouldn’t have allowed it to happen – but that is another subject altogether. On the other hand, if going off plot means the player addresses the objectives in a novel fashion then that make sense. But it really ought to be something that everyone else can participate in. It’s awful sitting at a table looking despairingly at a character sheet that just doesn’t have anything useful to contribute to the current circumstances.

In the case of Trumpton, I just plotted a series of events that would happen (unless the player actions prevented them) and decided what leads they would get as a result of each event. Then left them to make of it what they could.

It’s now so long since I’ve played an RPG round a table I’ve almost forgoten how it goes. Part of me would like to get back into a real long running campaign, but I don’t have the time any more, and somehow the short single episodes one can fit into a convention don’t give me time to seriously identify with my character.

I also have a very nasty habbit of ignoring the GM’s story line. My character does what I think my character should do, and this might not involve anything the GM had in mind when we sat down at the table. I also expect the same level of plot distortion from my players when I’m the GM, which can confuse players not used to providing their own input to events. However, once one has got used to this style, it becomes dificult to accept the straight-jacket of someone else’s module.

I’m glad you liked Trumpton. I forgot to say at the time that you found Mr. Troop tied up in the van along with Miss Lovelace’s marbles. And the gingerbread hitman lives to shoot another day.