So tomorrow I'm running a game of Everyone is John for some friends (or multiple games, I don't know how long they last). We're fairly experienced with tabletop and I've GM'd before, but none of us have played this game yet. Does anyone have tips for GMing?
Also general Everyone is John thread or something I guess.
Prepare for multiple ones, a game is very quick.
I don't have much to say along the lines of GM tips, it's a simple game and not very serious so it's pretty easy to just improvise yourself through.
General fun stuff, good improv on your part is a must.
Last session I did lasted 2-ish hours with 2 players with relatively simple obsessions. They won by completing all goals without me killing them, even after a very blatant nuke attempt.
You may or may not have a player that ONLY 6s the entire game.
>>48245866
It is a competitive game. Make sure the players understand that from the beginning.
Anything that is further than 10 minutes away will never be visited. Plan your locations accordingly.
Don't take your end to be the end. If you have nothing prepared, improvise. John fell off a building? What happens on the way down? John drowned? Maybe he's saved by mermaids. Shift genres as you wish if the players make you. Play the afterlife and try to fight John's way out of Hades. Only end the game when the player are out of points to spend.
Everyone is Bump
>>48245866
The objective is to have fun. Let the players have fun.
If someone is making the game boring and/or is trying too hard then you might as well quit. It won't work. I've played several times with friend and it's been fun everytime except once, when we had another friend there who didn't realize that the game wasn't all about her and that there's a point where it's more funny to stop than to keep going.
>>48245866
Make John the leader of a small Island Nation!
>>48245866
I had an idea for a variation called Everyone is Smith, based on Killer7. Same game but instead of being good at mundane things, every Smith picks a special ability, and the GM is 'Harman'* instead of 'John', you get 'blood' instead of 'willpower', and you try to accomplish mission objectives in between indulging in paraphilias.
*or Emir
>>48245866
From my experiences:
>Establish some loose ground rules to quantify the "scale" of the obsessions (one man's 1 may be another's 2)
>Choose a varied, dense location that requires as little travel/downtime as possible--to start. Players will inevitably take things off the rails
>Related to above: try to nip obviously-strong skills in the bud (to avoid overcentralization between voices). "Good at running" can become common if your locations are too spread out or have John get in shit with cops often, for instance
>Don't feel beholden to a 'standard' setting. Change up locations and genres to keep players off-guard and constantly devising wilder skills/obsessions
Just make sure the obsessions are somewhat balanced.
>John wakes up in a strange room, not long later a guy in a suit walks in and asks him to sign some kind of bill because John is the president
>John wakes up with an ak47 in his hands pointed at a gagged man's head while some suspicious Arabs scream at a camcorder mounted to a goat, John was about to do a TV execution for ISIS
>John wakes up inside a dark house wearing a balaclava with a knife, John is a burglar
>John wakes up staring at a blank book in a grandiose stone room and is then summoned to a wizard meeting with his peers to discuss his findings, John is an archmage that read the Necronomicon
>John is going up in an elevator with four heavily armed men, just as the doors are about to open one of them says "remember, no Russian"
>John wakes up around creepy looking men some wearing cartoon pony costumes, John finds out he too is wearing one, John is a pony forum moderator at a my little pony convention
>John stands facing a wrecked white door with a fire axe, on the other side is a screaming woman with a knife, Jon is in The Shining
>John wakes up in a nice bed in a nice house with a nice family. John is living in a suburban nightmare
>John wakes up discovering he is a cult leader, about to give a speech on their upcoming greatest achievement
>John wakes up in a stalled car in the middle of the field. On the passenger side are 5 passports of different nationalities and identities, 25k in different currencies, two pistols, and the severed head of a goat
>John wakes up in line at airport security, he has a briefcase handcuffed to his wrist. He is being asked by security staff to either remove the briefcase or go with them for further inquiry
>John wakes up on a charging horse, clad in armor and holding a lance as a knight in black armor charges him down to the roar of a crowd
>John wakes up in a supermarket as a customer's head spins around and screams about swallowing his soul
>John wakes up naked on stage
>John wakes up in line at a government building toying with a detonator
>John wakes up leading a team of special forces into a terrorist compound
>John wakes up in a surgery room with bewildered doctors looking down at him
>John wakes up in bed with an alien
>John wakes up with a plasma cutter slashing open a door with a scientist screaming about the monster behind them
>John wakes up in a tent with a man announcing he's been healed by the power of Jesus
>John wakes up with a weight on his chest at the head of a table filled with very stern men and armed bodyguards staring daggers at him
>John wakes up with a fist being driven right into his nose. The attacker is shirtless, as is John, and the crowd of people watching
>John is awoken once a sack has been removed from his head. Nobody cared who he was before he put on the mask. John is Bane
>John wakes up inside of a dark office room, with the windows boarded up and the electricity out. He tries to figure out what's happening
>John is an electrician aboard an ocean liner, and he wakes up as all communications are severed following a capsizing of the vessel
>John wakes up as fifty dollars are handed to him, and he is ordered to buy supplies for the most daring heist in history
>John is an after-hours cleaning guy when the business he's cleaning is broken into by elite special forces units.
>John wakes up in a small office kitchenette; going through the door, he discovers he's in an Amazon distribution warehouse.
>John wakes up at a stage, in front of ~60 liches. John is the entertainment at a lich conference and is the only living person in the room
>John wakes up in a bullet riddled ford focus, a 30 litre container of horse semen is in the passenger seat
>John fell asleep on a bus. When he wakes up he is handed a hat and asked to drive the train
>John wakes up the runway of a small private airfield, below a two-seater airplane sporting a few bulletholes and surrounded by suitcases full of cocaine and one dead lemur. John is a member of a bugfuck cartel
>John wakes up in a cul-de-sac full of kids. Two of them are trying to get you to help them scam kids for jaw breakers
>John wakes up in a portapotty, the sound of carnival music can be heard outside
>John wakes up in the middle of his day job as a Mall Santa...with a child on his lap
>John wakes up in a giant steel cage with 6 other men surrounded by hundreds of cheering observers
>John wakes up in a coffin, with the lid open. There is a funeral service in progress, and several onlookers are crying. A woman stares at you in disbelief as you get up out of your coffin. As you inspect yourself, you are wearing a Hawaiian flower button up t-shirt, and boxers. In your casket sits an M16, with one clip of ammo, a hunting knife, and 10 wadded up $20 bills. People start to run away while the woman collapses to the ground crying. The pastor clutches his chest, and falls down. You think you can hear sirens in the distance
>John wakes up sitting in a chair wearing glasses and clasping his hands in front of his face. Strange, cute women seem to be in positions of authority and a giant octagonal based UI is flashing "Blood Type: Blue. Angel Identified."
>John wakes up mid air, he's just set the new pole vaulting record at the Olympic games
>John wakes up, the president of the united states is lying in front of him with his chest open, John is performing open heart surgery
>John wakes up, his cellmate asks him what he's in for
>John wakes up in a big sauna with twenty other people. All are desperately banging on the door to get out
>John wakes up in a surfboard, wearing a flower necklace and with a six foot wave approaching. John is Hawaii's surf champion
>John wakes up on an angry bull charging through the streets of a dusty city. John is a cowboy
>John wakes up with a pistol in hands, on a boat, speeding down one of the many water ways of Venice. John is a CIA agent and the mission's going wrong.
>John wakes up playing the violin alongside a band, while panicked people are all around. John is in the Titanic
>John wakes up as a booming voice counts down from ten and then blasts him into space with six other people. John is an astronaut
Have fun with your game!
