Oldskool revisited

[Overdrive]

Tonight I had a chance to see how our group had been gaming for ages. We played Warhammer FRPG, a campaign that started some 5 years ago, very high power level nowadays. While I've never been a fan of WHFRPG system I thought this time could be a bit different because all this recent new-age stuff.. A friend of mine was the GM, this is his campaign.

This was actually the second session of this particular adventure (don't know the book, but it's published). During the first session we were sent to  investigate "something" in a city built atop half a mile high mountain. There were some kind of new taxes for dwarves and such, and since an annual carnival was about to start we could investigate low-profile. We looked at the 30+ carnival happening advertisement and went through a few with nothing happening. I mean nothing. The only event that was interesting was the duels with the local champion, and the toughest fighter (pretty tough, I'd say) in our group did go and challenge him. Even he couldn't beat him.. Seemed like we were supposed to "do stuff" but there wasn't much clue on what exactly. Everything we tried failed (by the dice, or by GM fiat).

This was like three months ago. Since then I've GM'd alot of very successful sessions of The Pool, Riddle of Steel, InSpectres and such, and the players have somewhat accustomed to more narrativist style of play. But tonight's GM hasn't had the opportunity to attend..

So it was no different. I actually spoke to him about what I thought could be cool. Since there were alot of events and we could not possibly visit them all, and even if we did, we'd probably miss those with "official plot stuff", why not frame us to one right from the start. Didn't happen. This lead to us speculating what would be important events, but nobody was really serious about it and waited for some plot hooks. There weren't any. So we just went around, tried to talk to people. But since there are apparently no social skills of any sort in WH, or at least we didn't roll any dice (or we did roll if we could get to the high priest or whatever), it was just GM-player dialogue, with the player thinking "key words" and the GM improvising stuff that would not hurt the "official plot"..

Or perhaps we were just tired. But it was sad.

The game even started with one character coming to the city, discovering the huge taxes (the player was absent last time). He stated the GM was trying to take away 40% of his stuff/wealth and had his character run away. Then he got his coat and left the building.. Maybe this set the mood for the rest of the game. It really seemed like the GM was playing against us and was keeping all the information secret.

This is my perspective of the things. I bet the GM thought he was doing it right; perhaps the group preferences are beginning to differ. Oh well, have to go to bed.

[edited for the most immediate typos]

[Anthony I]

Your post brings up an interesting point- and one I just recently ran into myself- hide-bound GMs.  I recently purchased Donjon and plan to run it.  I showed it to one of my normal game group guys, the other GM to be exact, and he just hated it.  The main problem- that the players could have input on the adventure details.  He really was uncomfortable with the idea that the players could tell him where a secret door was, or what the monster they were going to fight was, etc.  This goes against every "rule" of GMing that he (and I) learned as fledgling GMs.  Now I too find it a bit weird, but I'm willing to give it a try- I want to expand my game horizons.  He just flat out rejected it.  Same with every other indie game I've purchased and proposed for play.

I posted my groups reaction to TROS, which was generally unfavorable, but now I'm rethinking that opinion- maybe it was unfavorable due to group resistance.  I'm going to run it again with a totally different group and see how it goes.  Same goes for Donjon- I'm running it this Friday, some of the players will be people from the "Tried D&D 3.5" thread- who, to my suprise, were much more open to trying something totally different, ass opposed to my normal game group who I expected to be more open but aren't (well, actually there is really only one dissenter, but he carries alot of weight in the group).

I definitely attribute this resistance to "Oldskool" GM bias more than anything else.  I'll make sure to post our actual play of Donjon after our session.

[Ola J.]

Ah, Thats the quite famous Power Behind the Throne WFRP adventure you were playing, written by Carl Sargent and a part of the much-applauded Enemy Within Campaign. It gets mentioned on the "best scenario EVAR"-type threads at RPG.net all the time as an all-time high in the history of fantasy adventure scenario-writing.

And it is. I think. Perhaps.

It does, however, have very weak adventure-hooks, and is so complex a web of interrelated events that it needs a very good GM with the ability to do almost absurd amounts of prep-time for each session.

I completely bungled it when I tried GM'ing it about 8 years ago.

And I'm going to run it again soon, probably.  If I do, I'll try to frame the characers right into the interesting bits.

[Catalyst]

I wanted to chime in and agree with Ola J. In the section of the campaign that you guys were in, Overdrive, the GM and players suddenly have a fairly nonlinear sociopolitical situation to deal with. Not much in the way of hooks are given, it's somehow expected that the players will move in certain directions to further the scenario, very different from the previous sections of the campaign.

I ran this campaign from the beginning years back with some friends and had a good time, but stopped short of this particular section because I was pretty sure I wouldn't be able to run it. I think I could now using similar tactics as mentioned previously, but it's a rough one if you're a GM who is used to running linear scenarios.

Sorry to hear that things didn't go well in this session.