The Hufflepuff Game: the beginning

The kid looked at me sheepishly.  "I know your gaming group is full, but I wanted to ask if, maybe, if there was a player who was kind of inconsistent if you might consider letting me sit in on the game in his place."

Now, even if this kid wasn't my daughter's best friend and a pretty decent person, this is a young teenager approaching an adult to whom he is not related and for all intents and purposes is begging for gaming table scraps.

And that kind of courage matters to me.

I know there are GM's who like to limit the size of their gaming groups in order to maintain some consistency and stability.  I get that, and I'm playing in a campaign like that and am enjoying the dynamic of a small, constant group.  I'm not judging their decisions--it's their game and they can and should do what they want.

But I don't like telling people who are interested in getting to a gaming group but lack the wherewithal to form their own that there's no place for them.  And in the last year, there's been a lot of them.  But now, since the group for whom I've been hosting games has had two players start their own campaigns, I am free to run another game, one for anyone who wants to play, even if it is a very large group.  I'm calling this my "Hufflepuff Game," inspired by the ethos of that particular house from the Harry Potter books (as sung by the sorting hat):

Said Slytherin, "We'll teach just those 

Whose ancestry's purest."

Said Ravenclaw, "We'll teach those whose

Intelligence is surest."

Said Gryffindor, "We'll teach all those

With brave deeds to their name."

Said Hufflepuff, "I'll teach the lot

And treat them just the same."

 So developing this game is going to be the thrust of my blog posts for a while.  My general goals for the Hufflepuff Game, for now:

1. Have fun
2. Have a creative outlet for myself
3. Have a game where anyone who wants to play can

More to come!