Starting New Players

[Anthony I]

This is split off from Manuver Declarations During Combat thread as it is off-topic for that post.  This is in response to:

It's a really slick and elegent system, I just wish my regular game group liked it.

Just let them play TROS only one time and You'll have them!!!
I had a D&D fixed group, never playing another Fantasy RPG. I only told one of them that I had a new system which is THE game.
One evening, only one session and everyone was fascinated and fell in love with TROS.

I think this is no problem.

I ran a short TROS introduction for the group I usually game with (you can see this thread here)- the Doomed Caravan (or whatever it's called), it focused heavily on the combat system and how SA's can add to dice pools.  They all hated it passionately, and I honestly didn't enjoy it much myself.  I thought about trying some "fixes" to make the system more palatable to these particular players, but in the end I just decided to forget playing TROS with this group.  

I think that the biggest problem with the above play attempt was that we didn't focus on the aspects that make TROS such a kick-ass game.  Those aspects?

1) I think TROS does an admirable job in helping players design a character that they actually care about- the process is long and detailed enough to make you think, but not too complicated.  The SA's really help define not only the character but the player's actual interests.  I used pre-gen characters, including the SA's, totally bypassing one of the cool features of the game.

2) The scenario concentrated almost totally on the combat system.  While I think that TROS's combat system is really elegent, it isn't the best part of the game.  By railroading the players into a combat-only scenario the best feature in TROS was completely bypassed- the player driven SA's making "what are you willing to kill/die for?" actually important.

I know all the reasons why I like TROS, therefore I was really (and I mean REALLY) supprised when I didn't like the actual play.  Some of it may have been the play group, but in this case I would say that it was my failure.  I'm going to be running another TROS game, with a totally different group of gamers come end of December/ beginning of January.  I'm going to definately use player created characters and SA's.  I'll post the results then.

[Ashren Va'Hale]

I had a very large group so I split them into two teams and my buddy ran team 2 while I did team one. We basically did doomed caravan but with a twist. We pregenerated all the PC's for both the bandits andthe guards. Gave them all good SA's for use against eachother and the other team as well as personal sa's.

One team was teh bandits doing the attack, the other consisted of the guardsmen. We coordinated each team's game so that they had time to get into their characters then let them realize how sa's worked. Then we arranged for the bandits to hear about the caravan carrying oodles of riches (turned out to be very little) and then let each team plan.

Neither team really knew about the others roles or characters so when the bandits set up and sprung the ambush it turned into team one verse team two with a few mooks on either side.

The guards lost all but two men while the bandits ran away once they had two left.

The lessons learned: Ranged weapons are our friends
Armor is good
So is attacking from horse back
attacking a horseman without a polearm sucks
doing so without armor as well also sucks
fighting individually also is never wise

and lastly. Be sure the GM running the other team DOES NOT take a side in the game. This causes way too much conflict and may result in one seneschal beating the other over the head repeatedly till he regains his senses.

[Brian Leybourne]

Ranged weapons are our friends
Armor is good
So is attacking from horse back
attacking a horseman without a polearm sucks
doing so without armor as well also sucks

Just like the real world. That's why I love this game so much :-)

Especially ranged weapons. They's hard to beat in TROS. Until you get into melee range of the bowman, of course. Then he's usually screwed unless he has some buddies to back him up.

Brian.

[Lance D. Allen]

Especially ranged weapons. They's hard to beat in TROS. Until you get into melee range of the bowman, of course. Then he's usually screwed unless he has some buddies to back him up.

Or unless he's got a sword, and thought to draw it as you were closing into melee range. Then it's just a matter of how good you are.