The Bastard GM's Handbook

Women Now this section is not about how to humiliate women, partly because I really don't like the idea of writing about how to humiliate women, but mostly because humiliating women is a really bad move when it comes to persuading one of them to sleep with you, which as a strange, pathetic nerd (which you are if you're reading this article for serious advice, rather than just to laugh at... please God tell me you're just reading this for laughs) is presumably one of your long-term life objectives. This section is about how to use women to humiliate male players. The women reading this might not be aware of a certain principle, so I'll outline it now: "Any degree of humiliation caused to a male by a public failure of a macho nature (such as failing to kill a buffalo, win a joust, fix a shelf to a wall or make the fucking car start on a cold morning) is multiplied by a factor of approximately five, if women are watching, and ten if they're laughing." Yes, we (men) really are that pathetic. I can illustrate this (and yes I am wondering off topic here, but it's my fanzine, so I will) with a story (sadly true) from my schooldays. It was summer, and we had a P.E. (physical education) lesson. Since it was summer, the sport we were doing was athletics. Since athletics has a number of separate disciplines, we had a choice of what we wanted to do. (I think the choices were something like long jump, sprinting, shot put or javelin). Now this might seem like a simple choice, but if you attempted to produce a computer program to model a population of about sixty thirteen year-old boys and their choices, you would find that it is actually a very complicated problem, especially when it comes to the ten or so boys who are athletically inept (guess what, I was one of them). In this case, you're having to balance two very different factors in your attempt to avoid being humiliated: a) How good you are at each sport, which you know (in my case it was shit, shit, very shit and very shit, respectively). b) Which sports the other boys are doing; which is very hard to work out in advance. Generally, you don't mind doing a sport which you are particularly crap at, as long as no-one other than your mates is there to watch you fail. Well, I got together with my similarly inept friends, and we had a quick conflab (that's a discussion for the non-English reading this). Our choice: Javelin. We were all totally shit at it, but we figured the Neanderthals would pick the shotput, whilst the sporty would pick either sprinting or the long jump. And we were right. As we trudged away to our corner of the field, we found that it was just us and the teacher doing javelin. But then it all went horribly wrong. Some genius had decided (perhaps to make the most of a limited number of teachers, but more probably out of some misguided commitment to sexism-free education) that since one girl wanted to do javelin, it made sense for her to join our group. Now, before all you women jump down my throats, can I just point out that it wasn't her joining our group that I had a problem with (although I wasn't wild about it). It was the fact that the female P.E. teachers had bought along another 30 or so girls to watch that disturbed the hell out of me. That's right. Watch. They weren't throwing the javelin. They weren't doing anything. Their P.E. lesson consisted of sitting on the grass watching some other people throw the javelin. Or in our case, miserably fail to throw the javelin. It was awful. This girl (Jennette, a girl who I particularly disliked on account of the fact that her main hobby was taking the piss out of me at every opportunity) went first. She ran up, launched the javelin, and the bastard thing flew about thirty metres. Now, this might be pretty crap when you compare it with the Olympic games, but on that summer day, in that field, it looked like a fuck of a long way. Then it was my turn. I ran up, tripped, and dropped the thing on it's point about a metre in front of me. The afternoon continued in that vein. It was like a ritual humiliation for us all. I think the best either one of us managed was about five metres. I think that perhaps the female P.E. teachers has intended it to be some kind of assertiveness training for the girls, showing them how a skilled girl could beat a group of boys by a humiliating margin. (Yes, I'm probably way off the mark, but I still don't understand why an hour's P.E. lesson for thirty or so girls consisting of sitting on the grass doing nothing). Anyhow, that's enough of my personal tragedy. The point here is that if there's one thing your average insecure male hates more than being humiliated, it's being humiliated in front of women, especially women you might have had romantic attentions towards (if you hadn't been shown up in front of them). Now, not all men will be susceptible to this technique. You have to pick the person. (It helps if they're not gay for instance). Imagine that Linda has created a female priestess, and that Ken, who fancies her something rotten, has created a big, tough barbarian, who basically follows the priestess around acting as her personal bodyguard. (This is the sort of sad thing I would probably do if there were women in my roleplaying group). Well, in that case, you could create a situation where an NPC made some kind of crude, unwelcome approach to Linda's priestess. Ken's barbarian would then step into defend her honour, and proceed to get chopped to bits in a rather embarrassing manner... Ken would clearly not be a happy bunny. Note:- Linda will probably not think much of you at this point. In fact, she'll probably think you're a complete prick. So you have to balance how much you'd like to humiliate Ken, verses how much you'd like to sleep with Linda. Interestingly enough, this is kindof a test to determine just how much of an abnormal psychopath you are (given a choice normal blokes would rather impress Linda than humiliate Ken). Eliminate Other GMs For you to have complete control over your gaming group, it is best if you are the only GM. Now there are various permanent methods of eliminating any other potential GMs, but these are liable to leave you serving a few decades at her Majesty's pleasure (a life sentence in prison). And your chances of finding a good gaming group in a maximum-security gaol are presumably pretty limited. So put the gun down... And the pistol... And the snare wire... And the--- dear God, is that really a six foot tall wooden cross? What sort of sick psycho are you? Put it down... I just meant that you should try to dissuade other members of the gaming group from gamesmastering. There can be only one... In Conclusion I don't think there's any sane way to conclude this article, so I won't. If you try to put any of these techniques into action, don't drop me a line to let me know how it went. I don't want to know.

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