Rules for Asshole Gamemasters number one.

 
Rules of the table for asshole gamemasters.  


Or...


Necessary rules to keep your sanity and your stuff. Number One. When they forget to bring a freaking pencil. You have this nice little stash of mechanical pencils in your bag. Because, as a GM, you are never unprepared. Problem is your players also know you have that stash of mechanical pencils and somehow seem to think that it falls into the category of 'Community Property'. So here they show up for the games without anything to write with and look to you as if you are the responsible party for them being ready to play the game. With a sigh you hand them one and another to the guy over there who evidently realize that writing shit down was something that happened in an activity involving dice, paper, books, etc.   But then when it's all over for the night you find the stash to be short a couple.


 Now most of the time they didn't up and steal them on purpose, it just slipped their mind when they were packing up. But you can almost bet that next weekend nobody will be showing up going “Oh here is that pencil you loaned me last week, sorry about that.”. Nope they are now lost to the world or claimed as the sole property of the person you lent it to. Now what's the rule for this? You see this pencil right here? You need this pencil? Okay then give me your car keys. Yeah that's right, give me the ring that has the keys to your car, house, whatever on it. I don't get my pencil you don't get these keys.


 This way I'm absolutely freaking sure that the usual 'slip of the mind' will be quickly remembered when you try to leave. If we're at a shop you better hope you remember before I load up and drive away. I mean your keys in my bag of stuff must have simply slipped my mind. For the record.


 Yes, I DO use this rule.