Casting Shadows

Our #RPGaDay2022 question for today is ‘Who would you like to GM for you?” As this is a hobby of imagination, we are not bound to the normal constraints of time, space, or contact lists.

In my post on YouTube this week, covering all of the week’s questions, I look at this question from both a practical and a fantastical point of view. Here on the blog, I am going to stick to the impossible for reasons of time and space. Funny~

If I could magically arrange to have anyone as a GM, I think it would be very interesting to imagine the role being taken up by the incredible Walter B. Gibson – creator and most prolific producer of stories, novels, and radio plays of…. The Shadow.

The reasons for this are fairly simple. As a person, Gibson was quite extraordinary. He stands as an example of a professional that made the most out of the opportunities for success available to them. He was prolific and creative and able to be so in a variety of voices. Moreover, he was successful in a wholly different career, being not only a household word as an auther, but also being a professional stage magician. When you combine the speed of thought, command of language, personal discipline, command of an audience’s attention and mood, understanding of both characterization and the nature of mysteries – with healthy doses of frenetic combat, mysticism, and misdirection – all on top of refined performance and pacing…? Gibson would have been a natural as a GM. I bet he would have been a standing one as well.

Given exposure to the medium and a chance to develop a feel for and mastery of a game, I know that Gibson had all the tools he would need to be a stellar GM. Further, I can hope that it would be something that he would have enjoyed. I think he might have been attracted to the alchemy of action, reaction, and interaction and I suspect he might have felt a desire to be a part of the instant magic of how the description of a situation leads to hours of intense imagination.