Tabletop RPG players (About GURPS, but D&D players could help too)

[#686578]

http://www.bluegartr.com/forum/showthread.php?t=91479

So a few friends and I have started trying to play GURPS together. We started out with one of my other friends trying to GM a Zombies campaign and things didnt go out too well. I was the only one with any real tabletop RPG experience, I've played a few GURPS campaigns and a couple of D&D campaigns, the guy GMing and one other guy had played GURPS with me in one campaign like 4 years ago, and then there's two other guys and two girlfriends with no experience whatsoever.

Well that didnt go so well, it was kind of a clusterfuck, our GM didnt really know what he was doing too well and I tried to help him out a lot especially with the combat sequence but it's like he just didnt "get" everything. Like, for instance, he didnt understand difficulty modifiers and assumed if you raised a skill to 16 then you autowin unless you crit fail (just as an example of one thing that he was kind of naive about).

Well I woke up with what I THOUGHT was a good idea. Our group is kind of newbie, and they're kind of... stuck in some very bad habits.

• They expect the GM to tell them everything
• They think they have to roll perception for every room they walk into (they literally think they have to roll to see the table and chair in a room)
• They're not really used to RPing at all... the very beginning of that first session for the zombies campaign he set up our setting and how we met and et cetera and then set up what just happened and our situation we were in and everyone just was like "what?"
• What little roleplaying they do do they do terribly, for instance one person had loner or something so he was constantly like "Okay, well since the group decided to go this way I'm going to roll against my will to follow them." and I'm just like... really? You're taking that way too far, he did it for basically any decision the group made
• Kind of like a subpoint to the above, they also dont really get the idea of NPC vs PC reaction, they're trying to be like oh yeah I'm going to use my fast talking skill on Michael to get him to come with us

So what happened when I woke up, the campaign that I thought of was essentially, they're going to be super heroes, and in the first session there's almost nothing but battle, they're just going to dive through tons of enemies and it's going to be super easy. The main villain is Doctor Ominous/Professor Ominous (I switch back and forth every time I say his name), so they go through all the fighting and at the end of the session he traps them in a plot-strength force field (basically just bullshit forcefield they cant escape no matter what, I'm the GM fuck you, no you cant punch your way out of it), and there's also a Plot Device in the middle of the room, the villain gives his monologue saying he's going to take over the world and sort of foreshadowing the rest of the campaign, then pulls a switch and leaves, after a minute or two of panicing there's an energy pulse and then the heroes pass out. Then they wake up the next day at the villains lair seemingly unharmed, they dont know that they lost their powers yet and I'll make up some situation to let them find out before they leave the Villain's hideout or more than likely they'll try to just fly out or something. The session should end with them back at the headquarters, knowing they lost their powers, and wondering wtf. The next session will kick back up with them finding the Villain making major moves against world powers and hearing rumors about how to get their powers back. The campaign will revolve around slowly getting their powers back (and maybe some new ones along the way). Oh right, they're going to flat out lose SOME powers, but most of them should just be extremely degraded, like going from 1000 points to 200 points characters.

Effectively I want them to start out REALLY strong and have some fun with it, they're still new so they dont even really get how fighting works, so that'll introduce them to that. They dont really understand how much freedom they have, which is sort of good for me, but I want to encourage them to freestyle instead of punching the robot pick two up and smash them together, or punch the ground to demolish a group! It'll force me to improvise a bit, but I understand that GMing is 10% planning 90% improvisation. The first session is supposed to be a good introduction to their characters and the feel of the gameplay. Also, I've never GM'd before, so them having super powers will allow me to make a lot of mistakes without killing them, and if all else fails I can just say they ignored the damage and the bullets bounced off their chest or something.

What I'm looking for is if anyone can give me any advise for a newbie GM (who's more or less experienced with the mechanics from the players view at least), newbie PCs and how to get everyone towards a better playing style? What sort of tricks or techniques could I use to FORCE them to role play more? And for me, is there any tips for creating enemies? Perhaps any templates or something? I found a few robots in the Ultra-Tech book for some mass produced robots that they can just trash through, but I'll need way more variety to keep things interesting. I kinda just need a lot of tips on how to improve my GMing and what I might be able to do to improve them as players.

I've already DONE this first session by the way, I meant to write this up and post it before hand, but things went pretty well over all. I was able to keep control of the group and they didnt get out of hand and start doing just bullshit or fighting with eachother. If they ever tried to leave the place or use their psychic powers I just said there was some ultratech that was blocking them, I didnt want to be too constrictive so I let them blow shit up and stuff, but I was trying to constrain them to the environment (our last GM didnt really understand how to do that well).

What I ended up doing for characters was I asked them to give me a backstory, or even a vague description of what kind of hero they wanted to be. They'd give it to me and then I made their super hero and tried to keep it around 1000 points and balancing as I went. I did this 'cause they're really new and honestly their other characters sucked dick and I knew they'd fuck it up. I kind of fumbled around the Supers and Powers books to create the heroes but I dont really feel I did it too well. Next I'm going to have to decide how I'm going to scale them down and reduce their powers so that's going to be tough too, if anyone has any tips they could give me on creating GURPS super heroes that'd be great. I've been using GURPS Character assistant fully updated with the proper books added and using loose templates in the Supers book. I kind of looked at the templates and the role it was meant to play, the advantages and skills they had, and sort of mixed and matched to whatever I wanted the hero to be. I'd REALLY appreciate if someone could give me some tips for creating Heroes and enemies.

[#686578]

Tabletop subform doesnt really get much exposure so was just getting this out there

[Conrad]

lol, nerd

[#686578]

Obviously

[Conrad]

Hey everyone, let's all laugh at the nerd!

[quannum]

obvious post is obvious
http://www.luminomagazine.com/2004.1...ogre/ogre2.jpg

[Linliel]

Good luck, I've only ever DM'd one group (D&D4ed, though I've played lots of other games) and they were all vets, so I didn't have many problems there. I found it as a noob DM a lot easier to run a few pre-genned dungeons before trying to do something myself.

Honestly, as far as the players go too, it's probably a good idea (though you've already started) to keep it pretty simple to start with, especially with the new players. If you want to knock out their powers, knock them out completely, and have them work to getting them back (perhaps Dr Ominous has put some sort of force over the city or something?) rather than dumbing them down. I know for me as a new player, simple was much easier -- if I only had a couple of things to track at a time it was much simpler than trying to keep track of a million skills and abilities!

As for the actual roleplaying, perhaps give them some more things where they need to work together, to, say, convince some NPC to work with them, or some other sort of puzzle where they need to roleplay rather than fight or something like that. Maybe even tell them that to begin with

good luck!

[#686578]

Honestly, as far as the players go too, it's probably a good idea (though you've already started) to keep it pretty simple to start with, especially with the new players. If you want to knock out their powers, knock them out completely, and have them work to getting them back (perhaps Dr Ominous has put some sort of force over the city or something?) rather than dumbing them down. I know for me as a new player, simple was much easier -- if I only had a couple of things to track at a time it was much simpler than trying to keep track of a million skills and abilities!

Hmm so like give them just one power at full strength back at a time? I'm trying to sort of balance it because it's hard to say you'll get your super speed an 3 in 1 turns back but then all you'll get back is your super durability

I dont know, I'm just trying to balance it to where they still FEEL super. I guess it's a lot like the Darksiders story now that I think about it, in that supposedly you were bad ass and then lost all your powers and then fully unlocked them one by one. I could always just recreate their characters better, I already told them that the ones I made them now will more than likely be different from their full strength heroes in the end because I didnt understand every super mechanic before hand.

And yeah, it's really hard not to overload them with too much information. Just explaining how combat worked was difficult, but I found these like "cards" online for each type of combat maneuver you can take (attack, all out attack, etc etc) that I'm going to print out for them to use next time.

What I was SORT of thinking about was to give them 1 power or facet of their character back at a time and then also give them like 20 extra points or something to sort of customize their hero the way they want him to be rather than how I imagined him; also it'd be kind of nice if they ended up STRONGER than they started at the end of the campaign lol...

[Linliel]

That sounds like a good idea Give them one thing to play with as they go, as rewards or something for completing quests. If they start out super then lose powers, it's a good goal for them to accomplish (and of course perhaps they can go beyond)!

[Stumblingdrunk]

there's a tabletop subforum?

[Qalbert]

I have only ever DMed once, DnD3.5
very cliche plot since i had no DM experience and wanted to start simple, basically giant labyrinth with a magical device at the end that was needed to stop some evil force or whatever
laced the place with traps and hidden passages and such
they finally get to the middle and theres a bridge over a lava pit with the item sitting on a pedestal in the middle
and this dumbass goes, hey everything so far has been an illusion! and jumped off the bridge into the lava
there is no saving throw for that scenario
I was like... seriously?

[Charismatic]

fuckin' nerds, lol

[Conrad]

lol

[#686578]

I have only ever DMed once, DnD3.5
very cliche plot since i had no DM experience and wanted to start simple, basically giant labyrinth with a magical device at the end that was needed to stop some evil force or whatever
laced the place with traps and hidden passages and such
they finally get to the middle and theres a bridge over a lava pit with the item sitting on a pedestal in the middle
and this dumbass goes, hey everything so far has been an illusion! and jumped off the bridge into the lava
there is no saving throw for that scenario
I was like... seriously?

lol

[Pikarya]

there's a tabletop subforum?

Being serious I never knew till a week or two ago.