Riddle of Steel is crap!

[Lance D. Allen]

It didn't go down last night, due to time commitments... So I went and watched SWE2 again.

Oh well, I have a D&D game tonight, and another week in which to plan. If I can get some idea of what sort of characters the players want to play, maybe I can craft a story which suits them a little bit better, and be that much more likely to present the game as it ought to be presented (and yes, I do understand that presenting/selling the game shouldn't be my primary focus.. But I do feel it's an important sideline). Thanks all for the "chill pill".

[Christopher Kubasik]

Hi Lance,

I'll dog this matter one more time, and then promise you, won't bother you on it again....

Don't.  Make.  This.  Harder. Than.  It.  Has.  To.  Be.

"Craft a Story?"  Um,   Don't.  I mean, do if you want to, but really....  Don't.

Jake, the designer of the game, mind you, has offered the scenario he uses to show off his game.  They wake up.  They're slaves.  They got to get home.

Just make sure one of their SA's deals with home or some sort of aggression toward their catpors (which you can plug in/name during character creation).

Crafting a story is only going to make them feel squeezed and pushed.  All a GM can really do is a) give the players a goal (or let them choose one); and b) give them a situation (or let them choose one).

After that... Whatever.

So....  Figure out the general terrain of the slave camp.  Stat out some guards and such, maybe some bennies nearby to compicate things (is there a princess who's being ransomed in the camp as well? (Maybe they'll rescue her, maybe they won't; maybe one of them will try to woo her, maybe he won't -- you don't know and shouldn't expect anything.  Just enjoy giving them new problems as they try to reach their goals, & so on.  If, for example, they never bump into the Princess  FINE.  It just means they're busy having fun donig something else.)

A Simple one shot sesssion.  Give them a problem and let them use their characters and the rules to solve the problem.  

"Crafting" comes during play, not before hand.  Trust me.  I'm older than you.  I've been there.  It. Does. Not. Work.

Because, for the love of god, I don't want to read about a RoS disaster coming from you.  You love the game.  Let it do the work.

Jake's scenario.  Put some frosting on that you like, serve it up and see what happens.

That's it.

Good luck.

Christopher

[Lance D. Allen]

Christopher,

1. There are already characters made. Two of them, out of 4 players. They have already said that they want to play these characters, and would be sorely pissed if I took their stuff from them and made them captives. One is a freedom fighter from Angharad a la William Wallace, and the other is a young squire with a destiny to become a great Knight one day, a la Knight's Tale. Using these two as a core, I can craft a good story.

2. These are traditional-type players. As I've observed, they'll wander around town doing nothing until something is dangled in front of them, despite there being a story that we could already pursue on our own. If I don't craft something, they're going to hate it. Letting them make all the decisions for their story will have to come later on, once/if I manage to break from this mold.

3. Crafting a story does not mean the same thing as railroading... at least not for me. I've always had a really improvisational "anything goes" attitude toward GMing.. I have my desired story, I present it to the players in a way that they can take it or leave it, and that they can choose the method that they take it, if they so choose to. I put a little effort to have 3-d villains and NPCs when they arrive at various points in the story so that I don't have to totally improvise even when they DO what I expected them to. When those NPCs die, or are ignored, it peeves me as much as anyone else, but I don't let it derail the story. (OH LORD I could tell you stories about players, totally by accident, destroying my carefully designed scenes...)

The suggestion that Jake made would have been perfect... Except that some of them have already made their characters, and would be unhappy if I a) made them change them, or b) put them into a situation where they would not realistically have been. If this does turn out to be a short-run game, but their interest is piqued enough to play another, then maybe I'll use his scenario as a good starting point (it has a lot of potential to start off a long-running campaign as well, and is in fact quite similar to what Lonnie did for our secondary D&D game)

Anyways, that's all for now.

[Christopher Kubasik]

Hi Lance,

Fair enough.

Take care,
Christopher

[Brian Leybourne]

How about a compromise then?

Here's what I was considering to start off my tRoS campaign. It's a mix of Jake's scenario and another one that someone suggested a while back (don't recall who, sorry).

Give them entirely new characters. Those characters you'll make up, so they have all the SA's that you want/need to slot into the begining scenario (which is that they wake up on a slave caravan, yadda yadda).

Using their SA's as a guide, they'll try to escape, maybe resuce the princess (/woo her, whatever), they'll have a few fights, and basically learn how to play the game, how combat works, how skills work, etc.

Then, you kill them off. Show them how deadly the combat system really is. Make them suffer and make them bleed.

Next session, start them off fresh with the characters they have made up (give them some XP for their dead pre-gen characters efforts if you like). The plot hook is that all of their "real" characters were related in some way to the slave characters (not necessarily the two characters for each player, but some relationship must exist).

So, you have given them a taste of the game and how it works. They know more about combat, and appreciate it enough to be scared of it, they know how skills work, how SA's work, and you have a good plot hook to bring their characters together, because they have all lost a loved one to slavers...

Just my 2c.

Brian.