On May 26, 11:22 pm, Peter Knutsen <p...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>
> My preference is for "competetive storytelling", since that's what is
> actually going on between the denizens of the campaign world.
> Sauron
> wants to tell a story about how he achieves world domination. Gandalf
> wants to tell a story about how Middle Earth is saved from Evil(tm),
> and
> so forth. Since we have disagreement, the characters must "game it out"
> to see who wins and thus gets to tell the story he wants.
>
Whilst I like that idea, I don't think that that's a great model for
introducing newbies to roleplaying. A more outgoing player is likely
to hog the limelight more when dealing with inexperienced players,
IMHO.
>
>
<snip>
> > The adventure and rules were fairly familiar to me, but I only had a
> > week to prepare; it was either that or wait for a month or more, and I
> > wanted instead to get these people while the interest was still
> > fresh.
>
>
> So here goes (and keep in mind, this is grounded in traditional
> roleplaying gaming, meaning fairly heavy in combat and other physical
> action):
>
> 1. Combat. Specifically ranged combat and unarmed combat, because
> sometimes engagements initiate at range, and sometimes you have your
> weapons taken away. Melee weapon combat is useful, but much less so than
> ranged and unarmed.
>
> 2. Stealth. Getting to and from places, meaning skills such as Hide,
> Move Silently, Climbing and Lockpicking. Skills for dealing with traps
> may also be useful, even in a modern setting.
>
> 3. Investigative skills. Highly useful to find out what's going on. This
> deals not only with skills such as Acting and Disguise, and Research,
> but also non-skill traits such as Contacts. Social skills also belong to
> this category, both those skills that let you befriend people, and those
> skills that lets you extract information from people (anything from
> Language skills to Interrogation and Detect Lies).
>
> 4. Medical, although this depends much on how useful medical skills are
> in the chosen rules system. I try hard to make them useful in Modern
> Action RPG, and it seems to me as if GURPS 4E also tries to make them at
> least slightly useful. If nothing else, a Poisons skill can be good to
have.
>
> ... I think that's it. Perhaps make it a list of five: Ranged Combat,
> Unarmed Combat, Stealth/Intrusion, Investigation (and Medical if it's
> game-mechanically useful, or if you know from experience that the GM
> will *make* medical skills useful).
For a *modern* game, a techie/mechanic can be much more usefull than a
medic - there's not much a medic can do for a gun wound, on the spot.
A techhead might be usefull for the stealth stuff, or winging it with
the environment - moving a crane, hacking a security system, fixing an
old boat to escape the island, etc. etc. So for modern, I sustitute
"techie" to take the place of the traditional healer.
>
<snip>
> Also, in general, the trick of "recent historical" roleplaying gaming,
> which probably means anything more than 12 years ago, is in "doing the
> time machine" well. I don't have a whole lot of ideas yet, but I know
> I'll need to include a section on it in the Modern Action RPG GMing
> advice chapter. How to take the players back into the near past, and
> convey to them the feel of the setting, the attitudes and the most
> im****tant issues.
I think period music is really good for this. And in the case of the
'60's and 70's, a lava lamp is a must. :-)
>
When I last introduced a newbie, I pre-made the characters, including
hers (a typical ranger type in a fantasy game), and made sure that she
was the only person who could solve a couple of the problems presented
- tracking the bad guys, looking out for quicksand, etc. and that
meant that the player felt she played an invaluable part in the
party's success. The actual role-playing she took to like a duck to
water, fortunately.
Cheers,
Steve
Thanks, Ben, for the OP. Handy stuff.
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