Great post, Paul. The first time I played D&D was one-on-one, with an older mentor figure (karate coach) taking me through a dragon slaying adventure.

The second time, I was the GM for all my friends at the time. I railroaded so badly that I wouldn’t even let my best friend choose which class to play (I just knew he’d love being a wizard, you see, and I already had awesome plans for giving him amazing magical items he’d love). Yikes!

I set straight for “recreating Lord of the Rings”, right out of the gate.

However, I also instituted a rule that the GM chair would rotate every session (with the same characters), so I had a bit of the hippy jiuice in there, too. (I guess my grandiose plans either didn’t pass a single session at the time, or I just didn’t consider how other people GMing could screw them up.)

We were the opposite of abusive, in a way – we all gave each other way too much cool stuff and no one ever died and it was power fantasy all the way. So much so we had to start over because the PCs were impossible to challenge anymore.