I started gaming back in 1984. Myself and a couple of mates started on this new game my friend Stuart had heard of, called Middle Earth Role Playing. He had Neil and I create a couple of characters each (a Sindar Ranger and a Dwarf Warrior for myself, if you're interested). Keeping with tradition, we happened to be at a local tavern where the barman told us about an abandoned keep of ill repute. Shortly after, I'm being attacked by Crebain in a crenelated death-trap of shoddy construction ™. Next day I buy my first set of dice.

After a year or so of MERP, we give Paranoia a go. Things do not go as planned. I know this could pretty much describe the perfect paranoia game, but we were struggling to “get” paranoia. Some of this was due the fact that we were too young to fully appreciate the humour, and some due to the GM (sorry Stuart). I never told Stuart I thought he was doing it wrong, I just bought a copy of MERP and staged a coup. I didn't know exactly what I thought was wrong either to be honest, but I was conceited enough to think I could do it right.

The first time I read the parts of the base book that weren't directly related to my character was a revelation. There was stuff in there. Rules on experience points (level 2 after 18 months of gaming!), situational modifiers, role-playing tips, optional rules. I was still a player while digesting the rule book, and I must confess, became a rules lawyer for a time. Not for any noble reasons like improving the game or helping the GM, but for petty, small minded reasons. Not my proudest moment.

My first time GMing was a revelation of an even higher magnitude. The party were quarrelsome, uncooperative, psychopathic, sociopathic, bloody minded, greedy nut-jobs. In every way a normal role-play group. My players consisted of a rules lawyer, a complete loon, Mr Nice-But-Dim, and a psychopath. I don't think I could have asked for a better start for my GM career. They mercilessly ridiculed my plots, NPCs, and bad guys. Went off in random directions. Attacked each other, the town guard, the bards singing in the park. Did pretty much everything except what was written in my lovingly prepared plot notes. People got hurt, there were arguments, some screaming, my début was not the success I'd hoped for.

It is at this point I started to develop the GMing style I still use today - indeed, said style has become a habit I have difficulty breaking. I “wing-it”. I write down plot points, some NPC names and a couple of set-piece encounters, and everything else is an off-the-cuff, spur-of-moment decision. I keep a selection of generic maps for whatever, and sketch out any serious dungeon-bash I may have planned. My last 2 year campaign fitted on 2 sides of A4.

As I have been running and playing with most of my current group for over a decade my predictions of the party's reactions to outside stimuli are accurate about 80% of the time. The other 20% of the time their response tends to be so random it defies description.

The free form GM style I use has led me to many different game systems and settings. As we cut our teeth on MERP (with a brief foray into Paranoia) it seemed only natural to move to Rolemaster. Now here was a game we could sink our teeth into. Once you added in the companion books, character generation could take over 6 hours. There were tables and charts for just about everything, and optional rules (and charts and tables) for everything else. Rolemaster allowed me to control the game flow in several ways. No-one was sure which optional rules I was using. Nobody knew the charts and tables as well as I did, I could fudge pretty much anything, and the players wouldn't spot the tampering. Also the critical successes and failures were hilarious...

This marked my move into more complex systems. I started looking for game systems with extensive and exhaustive mechanics that covered any eventuality, systems with some serious minutia. I thought I had the one with Living Steel (Edge Of The Sword), but teaching the game to the party was a nightmare. Each time I thought I had found the perfect system I would find myself drifting back to RM. After a 12 man fight that took over 10 hours to complete, I decided there had to be a better way. This decision happened to coincide with my groups breakup due to various Uni courses ending and the like. This in turn sparked my hiatus from gaming for quite a few years.

On my inevitable return I picked up a game that has remained close to my heart ever since: SLA Industries. Here was a system that had none of the mechanics I traditionally looked for in a game (though it was as badly laid out as original MERP). It was simple, fast and for the most part, easily understood. It relied heavily on Rule Zero (every rule is optional) and could be bent and house-ruled to fit any number of situations. I was (and am) in love.

In fairness, SLA is unbalanced in many areas and almost every SLA GM has house ruled it extensively, but, it was EASY. Time spent fighting and dice-rolling was minimised, allowing the group to get on with the important stuff, like de-railing the campaign. SLA was also my gateway game to a whole new generation of systems. Systems that had become more elegant and experimental, it wasn't just about killing something and taking its stuff any more.

It was around this point I took part in my first D&D game AD&D to be exact ( I know, I have no idea why it was so many years before I played), and I was struck by the many inconsistencies which often showed their house rule heritage. Don't get me wrong, I like D&D a lot, but a lot of my fondness comes from the very existence of these often contradictory rule addendum.

The release of D&D 3^rd edition, and the streamlining and consistency that went with it got me thinking and formalised my position on rule sets. I came to the conclusion that quick and easy systems are the rule sets that suit me best. I tend to be lazy, haphazard and reactionary as a GM, I rarely have a set method of solving a particular problem, the players give me a solution that I like the sound of, fantastic, problem solved. This style of rules also tend to fit my players well too, they like to decide what is important to them. They like to decide what direction the story takes and who the villain is.

One of my best friends however, he works damn hard. He reads and plots and balances and tweaks till he has a masterpiece. He is proactive, his plots have for-shadowing, twists and well thought out NPCs. He prefers a more formal system, with well graduated power levels, clear and well defined rules for most situations and a minimum of house ruling. His players (of which I am one) tend to have a more methodical approach, we clear the floor before taking the stairs, we check for traps and listen at doors before kicking them down.

So the point I'm trying to make through all this is that, while the setting is important for the style of the game. The rule-set is as important for the style of the people. It's self evident that a GM will attract and retain players who like his or her style of game and a GM will gravitate toward a system that supports his method of running a game. This doesn't mean that a GM shouldn't try a system s/he doesn't like the look of, in fact I would encourage everyone to try a new system once in a while. It does mean that if you like a setting but hate the rules, change them. Use the tools that work for you and your friends, don't let a rule-set put you off trying a different genre, or dictate how a game should be run. I know that system conversion can be one of the biggest headaches you can willingly inflict on yourself. But very often its worth the effort, your players may not show their appreciation, but they will keep coming back so you can inflict your imagination on them once again.