Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 last_man_on_earth Jun 19, 2009 6:07:44	Read the rules but still don't know if I have to introduce myself. Hello, I'm new here and need some help. I am running a zombie campaign -deja vu?- and in the "Story" part I've got everything covered (since I am more of a storyteller than gamemaster). But as for the rest... I'll go step by step. 1. Beginners Not long ago I was one, but I've never dealt with SO MANY at the same time. How do I keep them interested and not confused? Putting the game in "community storytelling" makes it too easy. Applying all the rules is too tedious. I've played for a couple of years but don¡t have much expererience dealing with so much information aside my character sheet and the status of my party-members. 2. Big, huge, massive party Forgive me for I have sinned: experienced gamer/inexperienced GM, complex campaign, newbies, and MONSTER party. There are nine people in total. How do I give each one the attention? How do I draw them together? How do I keep them focused? How do I entertain them while attending the rest? What kind of dynamics should I apply to have them doing the same thing without incurring in the "combat only" syndrome. 3. I don't know what challenges can be presented to a hacker I got an intelligent hero in the party. I want them to have personality, not much utility. Which utility can a smartass have in the post-apocayptic setting of a zombie outbrake? I thought that dealing with gadgets (not common in the wolrd described before), or being the one with the plans and the power to hack into networks and repair machinery. I don't know how to present challenges to him. Misc. What the hell is the "Tactics" skill for..? I still don't understand.
#2 backstabbist Jun 19, 2009 10:28:01	1 & 2) Get an experienced player to act as GM Aide. A vet can help mentor the newbies, explaining what works and what dont in situations. Like letting the newb bounce their twenty questions on choosing what to do when their turn comes up, so while the GM is working his way thru the party finding out what each is doing the vet can mentor, train, and explain what others are doing to the newb. Many newb questions are of the "Can I do this?" / "How do I ....?" type. The GM Aide can handle many of those procedural questions, along with some explanations why NonLethal attacks are not as good as they sound when newbs ask how to punch a guy This is great in 2 ways, it gets more help to the newbs and it gives a couple of the vets something to do while the GM is dealing with the rest of the giant party. Its boring to wait for forever for your initiative but that time can be filled answering the newb questions or explaining how & why what you are doing works 3) There is no RAW use given for the Tactics skill. The GM should have a permissive eye to players that ask if their knowlege of Tactics can give some insight or observation roll about something that has anything to do with Tactics/Combat It is easy to give things for the Smart to do, but it is hard to do that without making the rest of the combat focused chars look as dirt stupid as they are. It is the same as putting a bunch of locked doors in an adventure for the Lockpick Thief... that obviously the rest of the party cant pick those locks and you look like you are spoon feeding just the theif XP. There are plenty of infantry that have no idea what a diode looks like on a schematic, cause they, like 99% of Strong/Fast heros, chose not to put any ranks into it or multiclass to get skills: They are skillsless thugs. When there is an Electrical task that needs a roll they are left out, and pointing out that they chose to build a dumb Mongo Smash with a community college AA in Combat rather than take those GE courses and get a Bachelors in Adventuring, just makes them angry
#3 dbay Jun 19, 2009 14:55:48	In my Zed campaign (i know, I'm always ranting about this one, but it was just so **** fun) the smart heroes were the most important characters. It was a zombocalypse campaign, so everything we had we had to find or make. The smart heroes could easily max out all the craft skills, repair, disable device, and a few others. The GM declared that we could make anything so long as we could figure out how someone could conceivably do it with the materials at hand. So the whole party would get together to work out how we could turn a chain link fence into a tower shield if our only other asset was duct tape. Then the smarts made it. (we used that tape for everything). The GM aide idea is a very, very good plan. The trick is to get it so that what the smarts make helps the party, not the smarts. It worked fine for us because all the strongs were able to use to bash people was made and maintained by our party smarts, so they became everyone's best friend. The GM strictly enforced craft skill times, so their time became worth gold. Theres a class (techie?) that lets them make mastercraft stuff (the GM waved the XP penalty in all but the most ridiculous cases, but said we needed access to proper materials and tools) so with enough of a attack roll bonus, even the charismatic and smart guys could go toe to toe with a zombie... for a while, anyways. The strongs still dominated the combat scene (as they should). The most important thing was the GM's material decision. It gets everyone together working on how something could work, even if its just the smart ones who make the roll at the end of the day.