First impressions [long]

[Mike Holmes]

Here's the simple equation that everyone seems to be missing. Yes, don't ever fight an equal opponent.

Unless you aren't equal.

See, there's two considerations. One is how "skilled" your character is, essentially. The other is how much he (or the player) cares about the situation. If the character has SAs that apply, then a character who is normally equal to another is now superior. Even if it only gives you a two die advantage, that's actually pretty large (especially if you use the "correct" method and apply them to each and every roll, not just to a combat pool).

Basically, the game is geared to make you capable of fighting and winning as long as your SAs are involved. If you fight for something for which you aren't getting any SA bonuses, then you're taking your character's life into your own hands.

So, in conclusion, when you don't have SAs firing, then refrain from fighting more, when they're firing, fight more. Is that making sense?

Mike

[Ashren Va'Hale]

on the equal opponent fights, dont forget to fight smart and fight dirty. A toss in the right spot or a good insult and then counter combo can work wonders. Try the maneuvers out until you understand what works with what. I find that evasive attacks, simultaneous block strikes and other red red manevers can be great, as are feints when used right. The maneuvers are your best friends in this combat system.

[nsruf]

I think we have the "how to fight" down pretty well already (basically taking the combat system as a Gamist challenge). The "when to fight" may be the problem;)

BTW, sorry for not posting the story yet. This takes longer to write up than I thought. Maybe today.

[nsruf]

I'm still not done with the last session, but here are the first two:

0. Session

After explaining the basic rules, and before we started character generation, I described the opening scene. Since I had no idea what the group would end up like, I had them start not at home but abroad. I also wanted to borrow a suggestion from these boards and start with a fight scene between NPCs - controlled by the players to introduce the combat system.

The - as yet nondescript - party starts in a seedy tavern in the trading town of Ardena, a couple of miles south of the Morantes's barony. I explain shortly that they are going to be members or retainers of this family, and that they are visiting the local spring festival to enjoy themselves and hire a master brewer for their uncle/lord Dario (the drunkard). I didn't want to introduce anything more restrictive without knowing the PCs first.

The tavern's main attraction is a gladiatorial pit, with two combats taking place this evening. The first fight is between two professional pit-fighters, a huge Aesir northman armed with two daggers (and little else), and a tough Nemedian with a shortsword and shield. Combat lasts for several rounds, and neither combatant suffers worse than a level 2 wound, although the players decided not to pull punches (I let it pass for eductional reasons). The Nemedian is declared victor after at least 10 rounds (I forgot), because he has hit more often. The players are impressed by the importance of TO.

The second combat is in many ways the exact opposite of the first: a Hyperborean convicted for robbery and murder is to be killed by two thugs. The local lord has sent the prisoner as a special "treat" because of the spring festival. The thugs have clubs, and to make things more interesting, a spectator throws the unarmed bandit a knife. I should note that the bandit was physically superior to the thugs and had an SA Passion (hate all foreigners), while his opponents had a little Luck. After failing his terrain roll, the Hyperborean's player decides he has no chance and throws red anyway, as do his opponents. The outcome is predictable: one thug and the bandit die messily.

With some lessons learned (hopefully) from combat, we made characters (see above). I told my players that I hadn't decided on their family relations yet, and that they could introduce NPCs by taking suitable Passions, but they only took generic SAs ("loyal to Morantes", "hate Scyla family"). I'm not sure whether they were afraid I would "screw them over" by kidnapping their beloveds, or whether the idea to be able to shape the setting was simply alien to them.

1. Session

We started right after the pit fights, with focus switching to the PCs sitting at a nearby table. There was some introduction and banter, until a pair of local nobles approached the group. Their leader introduced himself as Lucan Verdano, son of the city's ruler, and his comrade as Cladio Quinius, his trusted friend and secretary. He asked for their names and origin, and whether they wouldn't appreciate "gentlemanly combat" more than the crude spectacle of the pit-fight. Albano didn't bite (he's a wuss, combat-wise), but Hassan indicated that he would be very interested in some friendly sparring. Lucan invited the PCs to a party at his fathers "country house" the next evening and left. There were also some meaningful glances between Helena and Cladio, but the woman lost interest quickly once she learned he as poor and landless.

Next, Albano sends Urdaa to fetch some decent wine, because the tavern doesn't satisfy his standards. Helena accompanies her for safety, so the girls explore town on their own. They hear some scuffling in an alley and stop to listen: a pimp is beating one of his whores and accuses her of donating money to a priest of Mitra. This encounter was intended as a first attempt to bring SAs into play, since several of the PCs have Conscience or Faith (Mitra), plus Helena has this thing about male chauvinist pigs. But after noticing the pimp's muscular Kushite bodyguard, the girls shout some insult and leave quickly. So no SA points used or earned.

Urdaa and Helena find another tavern, buy drinks for their discriminating masters, and fend off some drunken elderly craftsman who is easily intimdated. On their way out, they meet the beaten whore from the previous scene, and Helena lectures her on not letting others push her around. The girl merely replies that she needs someone to protect her, and that there are far worse people in town.

Soon after the women return with the wine, the group decides to leave (it is past midnight). They return to their inn, and Helena complains to Hassan about having to stay in servant accomodation. Hassan points put that there is room in his bed, but is quickly put down and told to get her a room of her own. Which turns out to be unavailable because of the festival. After some more inter-party banter, everybody goes to bed.

The next morning, the group takes quite long to assemble, since Albano stays in bed till noon, and little can be done without the "boss". Finally, they get to meet the master brewer whom Albano's secretary has contacted previously. The man turns out to be very eager to leave his current employer, a merchant who has no "appreciation for the finer arts of beermaking". In fact, since his wife is dead and his apprentice incompetent, he is quite willing just to pack up and leave unannounced. Since this saves the Morantes from paying off the merchant, they quickly agree to the deal.

BTW, the above involved no SAs whatsoever. The PCs are simply running errands for their uncle, and if they don't like it - well that would be the time to bring in some SAs...

In the evening, the group arrives only an hour or so late at the Verdano mansion, because Helena took Hassan shopping for some decent clothes. They are all given adequate accomodation and told to join the party which is taking place outside. There is some brief confusion as Helena doesn't want to share a room with Hassan, but finally agrees to share a room with Lucan's 16 year old cousin Giulia. Some girl-talk ensues...

At the party, the PCs have the opportunity to talk to some guests. Nothing particularly interesting happens, but this was probably my fault as I hadn't prepared the guests in advance (lack of time and such). After a while, Lucan mentions to Hassan that it would be a good time for some friendly sparring. A large part of the guests follows them to an open area in the park surrounding the mansion. Notably absent is Albano, who prefers to stay inside because of his fear of insects. However, he sends his secretary to bet money on his half-brother.

The duel is the first event where SAs actually come into play. It turns out that Lucan, like Hassan, is driven to become a famous duellist. They agree to fight to the first real injury (level 1 wound or above), or until one of them gives up. The first few exchanges show that Lucan is the slightly better fighter, while Hassan has the greater Drive, which evens things out. Lucan manages to land a few hits, but deals no damage (arming sword with ST 4 vs. TO 6) since he is pulling punches*. Hassan would be able to wound his opponent, except that he is at first unable to hit him at all. Things become more heated as Lucan starts attacking for real, but it is Hassan who finally gets in the decisive blow for a level 1 wound to the neck.

The victor is celebrated (and gets a point of Drive for his victory), and Helena uses the resulting confusion to steal some rich merchant's purse. We stop at this point, and I decide to give each character another SA point, applicable to whatever trait the player believes he tried to follow most. The only other SA point awarded is a Luck point for Hassan (consolidation price for crappy rolling).

* We used the following rule for pulling punches: can be done with any damaging attack; activation cost is 1 die; damage dealt is base damage + 1 (as with a single success), and the attacker can decide to subtract any number between 0 and his MoS; declare this before rolling for exact hit location.

[Mike Holmes]

OK, I'm going to take a guess, and ask if you use the phrase, "Now what are you doing?" quite a lot. That is, do you leave it to the players to determine a lot of what they are doing?

This will seem contradictory to what some people have heard from me, but you don't want to leave the action solely to the players to determine...well, if not ever then almost ever. The GM should be doing his part to shape the action. If you see the players saying, "I dunno, I go shopping, that's your cue that the player doesn't know what to do to get to the action, and they're asking you to get them to it. To shove them into it until they see where they can take it from there.

PC Banter, shopping, girl talk, errands - this is all just the PCs floundering around wondering what they're supposed to be engaging. They're begging you to take them to the action.

And I'm not saying that you don't do that, but the other part is that the action that you should be shaping should be based on the PCs SAs in TROS. That is, the whole thing with going to duel at Lucan's place? What SA was that aimed at? Who's idea was it to run errands for the uncle? If that's what you came up with, then what SA was that aimed at? What did you do, if anything to precipitate Helena's flirting, or her theft? Or is that just the player on his own? If it seems random, its because you haven't shown the players where the fun stuff is.


Where are the Aquilonians to hate? Where are the Morantes to be loyal to? Where are the Scylla to hate? These are great SAs, because you can have a jillion of each, and no matter how many die or move away, there are always more to fill in. The PCs should be surrounded by nothing but these characters.

Think of it this way. The PC SAs are your roadmap to your preparations. All you have to do is come up with some NPCs who will push buttons of the PCs, and figure out why they're interested in the PCs and you're off and running. Let me be clear about that, any preparation that you're doing without a particular SA in mind in some way should just be thrown out. Have nothing ready except events which trigger the use of SAs.

It's like you want to see the players build something, they've decided to build a house, and you're giving them car parts. No surprise that they've constructed neither a house nor a car. Give them bricks, and they'll build the house. In TROS, the GM doesn't get to decide what to build, the players do.

Mike

[nsruf]

OK, I'm going to take a guess, and ask if you use the phrase, "Now what are you doing?" quite a lot. That is, do you leave it to the players to determine a lot of what they are doing?

Yup. If for no better reason that we have always done that, and that you easily get into railroading technique if you don't. I suppose there is some magical middle ground, but I've probably never seen it myself.

This will seem contradictory to what some people have heard from me, but you don't want to leave the action solely to the players to determine...well, if not ever then almost ever. The GM should be doing his part to shape the action. If you see the players saying, "I dunno, I go shopping, that's your cue that the player doesn't know what to do to get to the action, and they're asking you to get them to it. To shove them into it until they see where they can take it from there.

I'll try that.

PC Banter, shopping, girl talk, errands - this is all just the PCs floundering around wondering what they're supposed to be engaging. They're begging you to take them to the action.

They actually seem to enjoy the banter.

And I'm not saying that you don't do that, but the other part is that the action that you should be shaping should be based on the PCs SAs in TROS. That is, the whole thing with going to duel at Lucan's place? What SA was that aimed at?

I wanted to involve Hassan's Drive (become most famous duellist) and Albano's Drive (become influential noble). The latter failed because his player didn't really socialize, although I admit I hadn't prepared anything in particular. The duel worked as intended and resulted in the only SA point earned through actions that evening.

Who's idea was it to run errands for the uncle? If that's what you came up with, then what SA was that aimed at?

My idea. It was part of the backstory I gave them before character creation. I had assumed that we would get past chargen on the first session and needed something for them to do. Involving a family member looked like it could relate to some SA, but it turned out it didn't.

What did you do, if anything to precipitate Helena's flirting, or her theft? Or is that just the player on his own? If it seems random, its because you haven't shown the players where the fun stuff is.

These are more or less related to her SAs and personality (which the player wants to keep secret for now). Not sure what you think I should have done.

Where are the Aquilonians to hate?

Hey, I can't fit all 25 SAs in a 4 hour session. They'll turn up soon enough.

Where are the Morantes to be loyal to?  Where are the Scylla to hate?

Coming in the second session. Maybe it was a mistake to start the PCs away from home, but as I said above: I thought we would get past chargen in the first session, and didn't want to go fully improvisational. So I had them start on neutral ground.

These are great SAs, because you can have a jillion of each, and no matter how many die or move away, there are always more to fill in. The PCs should be surrounded by nothing but these characters.

They are getting closer to home in session 2. In fact, they had just engaged some of Scyla's soldiers when we left off.

Think of it this way. The PC SAs are your roadmap to your preparations. All you have to do is come up with some NPCs who will push buttons of the PCs, and figure out why they're interested in the PCs and you're off and running. Let me be clear about that, any preparation that you're doing without a particular SA in mind in some way should just be thrown out. Have nothing ready except events which trigger the use of SAs.

It's like you want to see the players build something, they've decided to build a house, and you're giving them car parts. No surprise that they've constructed neither a house nor a car. Give them bricks, and they'll build the house. In TROS, the GM doesn't get to decide what to build, the players do.

I'll try that for next session. That's a heck of a lot different from prepping a D&D game, so it may take me some time to adjust.

[Mike Holmes]

I'll try that for next session. That's a heck of a lot different from prepping a D&D game, so it may take me some time to adjust.

Heh, it's completely different. But it has some huge advantages.

First, on railroading. This is a complicated subject. But whenever you discuss this with people it comes down to the same thing - railroading is making decisions of some particular sort as GM that the player would have liked to have made themselves. Basically, railroading is taking away that part of the game that really interests the player.

Now, the real question is what sort of decisions are they that the players want to make. Some players like to decide to shop, or do errands, etc. And there's nothing wrong with a little of that. But what's really exciting are things like deciding to get into fights or not.

As such, the encounter that lined up the duel had some potential. But the problem was that there was a lack of other decisions to make. That is, the player's choice was duel, or do nothing. Nothing isn't a fun choice, so this isn't really a case where you've given the player a choice (known sometimes as Hobsons Choice, or "may way or the highway"). What if, instead, his opponent had come to him privately before the duel and asked Hassan to throw the fight as a favor to him, to make him look good? Now the player has a real decision. Does he follow his Drive, or let his Destiny lead him?

This is a classic TROS tactic - put one SA opposed to another for the same character. No matter what, the player has to choose one, and should get a point for that one. It's just one of many ways to create player choice. But the key here, you'll note, is that it's the GM running the NPC in a way that creates the important choice. This is what I'm talking about in terms of staying involved. If you just play, "What are you doing?" these moments don't come up, or at least don't come up as often.

There's a technique that you might want to try to get into, called Scene Framing. Instead of asking, "What do you do now?" Ask the player, "What would be a cool scene to find Hassan in next?" Instead of the player thinking, "Well, Hassan would go to bed now," the player thinks, "Hmm, it would be cool, if Hassan ended up in a street duel against some punks to show how good he is." Also with scene framing, if you know what the player would find cool, you just go for it, "Later, after Hassan has had some drinks and stumbles into the street, some rakes out for a good time approach calling him derisive names. Hassan notes that one of them has on a Scylla family tabard."

Generally, if you just create action that latches onto the PCs SAs, you can't go wrong. In fact, there's a more aggressive version of scene framing where you'd say, "Later Hassan is verbally accosted by some youths in the street, one of whom is associated with the Scylla family. We find Hassan about to draw his blade on the young ruffians." Or even more aggressively. "We find Hassan in the middle of a duel. There are two injured ruffians on the sidelines that he's already dispatched, and he now faces the leader of the group who is a bit more talented than his partners."

Basically, you do this already. I mean, at some point the player says, "I go to bed," and you respond, "You get up in the morning refreshed, what do you do now?" This is framing past all of the sleep that nobody cares to narrate. You frame past bathroom breaks, travel to the palace, all sorts of boring things. The point here is to frame past anything that's not pertinent to a character's SAs. Even stuff that would be important in other games. "Hassan finds himself in the palace at night having evaded the guards by climbing the wall, and sneaking about silently. He now stands in the chamber of the scion of the Scylla family who lays sleeping undefended - Hassan also notes his enemy's famed dueling blade mounted on the wall." This would be a good response to the player saying, "I want to go to the palace to kill Lord Scylla." At this point, the player has the choice, kill Scylla in cold blood, or wake him for a duel. Either way, the player is saying something important about his character.

Later when Scylla has a level 3 wound to the leg and can't effectively fight anymore, he'll surender, and offer Hassan a noble office that he has the right to sign over if Hassan will spare him. Man I want to see what happens to Hassan.

I could go on and on and on with things you could throw at Hassan. For example, at some point the very beautiful daughter of Lord Scylla, Alasanta, will encounter Hassan at a party. Not knowing who she is, he'll hit on her, and they'll end up in love that night. Only then will he learn that she is a Scylla. Of course, if he marries her, he'll be a noble....

Of course, her brother objects if he finds out, and calls Hassan out....

Anyhow, the above are what's called Bangs (from the game Sorcerer). The idea is that this is all that you prepare. Just situations to get the player into so that they get to make the fun decisions. The GM's job is to get the PCs into trouble of this sort, so that the player can then figure out how he wants the character to get out. The neat thing about Bangs is that they're pretty easy to make. Just come up with an NPC who wants something from the PC that brings at least one SA to light (more if possible). Given that the SAs are listed for you already, it takes very little effort. You just jot down a note, and you're ready. Then all you have to do is play the NPC.

Have about 3 of these for each character ready, and you're all set.

Here's some ideas for Albano:
Albano meets the girl of his dreams at a party, and she seems interested (at this point, the player might buy down one of his SAs to buy a passion for her - tell the player that he'll get a point if he does). Later at the same party, an important noble approaches him with an offer to marry his daughter - an ugly sow of a girl.

Albano is accused of being gay, one of his effeminate friends being declared his lover.

A Scylla family spy posing as a noble offers Albano an important position, but only if Hassan is out of the way - he says that they don't want a bastard from Koth to have the potential to inherit the position.

Some information that could damage the King badly (he's dying slowly from a curse or he's got a brother who was thought dead and should have inherited or whatever) falls into Albano's hands.

Bangs for Marius:
Albano is challenged to a duel. (Does Marius try to step in for his charge who's not the best duelist?)

Aquilonian bandits attack, threatening the Morantes boys, and the temple of Mitra, and Marius has to decide which to defend. At some point, the bandits manage to set fire to the temple. They have an opportunity to chase the bandits down, but someone asks them to help fight the fire just then. (this one affects Hassan as well - when possible, have Bangs affect more than one player).

The Morantes have a sister, Nehuna. Marius finds out that she is seeing an Aquilonian suitor, but she asks him to keep it secret. (Of course she's always had a thing for the rugged warrior servant of the family, despite his scars, that she can't persue...or can she?)


As I mentioned, have Bangs affect more than one character. A neat way to do this is to have them put the PCs at odds. For example, Albano is offered a position if he promotes some religion opposed to Mitraism. Does he support these enemies of his brother and Marius? If he does, how does this affect Marius' loyalty? Will Hassan see it as an opportunity to become better respected, or will he see it as his brother abandoning his religion?

Get the idea? Bangs have two qualities:
1) They force the player to make an interesting and revealing decision on the character's behalf. No matter what they do, even if they "walk away" it has to say something about who the character is.
2) There has to be more than one decision that he player might take. Preferably a lot.

With the best Bangs, you look at them and say, "Huh, well, he can't ignore that, but I have no idea what he might do."

Make sense? To me, the test of a good GM is how many SA points he can manage to reasonably give away in a session. The more you're giving away, the better job you're doing.

Mike

[nsruf]

Thats a lot to digest. Thanks for taking the time explaining it in such detail! I really think I have a better idea how to handle things now.

[bensei]

Hi, I am the player of Sir Albano Morantes in the campaign.

Aside from the questions of how to master the game without railroading, I would like to readress two issues which appeared earlier in this thead.

1. SAs:
From my experience as player they are a great element for deciding what to do.
Related to the issue of when and under which circumstances to fight an equal opponent, I am not sure about them. Is the number of points in a particular SA a rating for the importance to the player? If yes, how can investing points for character improvement be explained? If no, I get in trouble when my character should pick up a fight and when not. He hates the Scyla family, but when he engages a good fighter one of them, fight or not fight? Just 1 point in the SA or 4 or 5 points in the SA makes a huge difference. Does the character "know" or "feel" how many points are in the SA? Etc. Lots of open questions...

2. Flaws, Gifts, etc. which relate to character behavior:
My point of view on this issue (may be repetative in some instances):
How should a player with the "troublemaker" flaw behave when he meets someone sitting in a tavern, who in some minor way could "disturbe" the character, but so far has no relation to the story and is actually just a simple flavor NPC? Picking up a real fight might can certainly be a reasonable behavior for a real troublemaker. But what is the point with that? The other players are not involved (possibly already already gone to bed, or whatever) and the player's character can only lose (being wounded), but not gain anything.
A player taking an action (which is going to take at least half an hour real time), just because he feels that he has to bring a flaw into play, cannot be blamed, but there must be something wrong with the flaw system.

[nsruf]

1. SAs:
From my experience as player they are a great element for deciding what to do.
Related to the issue of when and under which circumstances to fight an equal opponent, I am not sure about them. Is the number of points in a particular SA a rating for the importance to the player? If yes, how can investing points for character improvement be explained? If no, I get in trouble when my character should pick up a fight and when not. He hates the Scyla family, but when he engages a good fighter one of them, fight or not fight? Just 1 point in the SA or 4 or 5 points in the SA makes a huge difference. Does the character "know" or "feel" how many points are in the SA? Etc. Lots of open questions...

Maybe I didn't explain it very well, but the value in an SA is not a measure of its importance. Just having the SA shows that it is important to your character. If you want an empirical measure of importance, look at the frequency with which you gain points.

There are some interesting threads on this subject already. Look in the forum directory to find some, i.e. here.

2. Flaws, Gifts, etc. which relate to character behavior:
My point of view on this issue (may be repetative in some instances):
How should a player with the "troublemaker" flaw behave when he meets someone sitting in a tavern, who in some minor way could "disturbe" the character, but so far has no relation to the story and is actually just a simple flavor NPC? Picking up a real fight might can certainly be a reasonable behavior for a real troublemaker. But what is the point with that? The other players are not involved (possibly already already gone to bed, or whatever) and the player's character can only lose (being wounded), but not gain anything.
A player taking an action (which is going to take at least half an hour real time), just because he feels that he has to bring a flaw into play, cannot be blamed, but there must be something wrong with the flaw system.

I would be very interested in some advice here as well, as the above example is from our second session (which I am still going to post, promise!). It made me wonder whether to do away with personality flaws and handle them as SAs (see page 1 of this thread for some discsussion of that idea), either as Drive or maybe introduce Vice as a new type of SA.

[Mike Holmes]

A player taking an action (which is going to take at least half an hour real time), just because he feels that he has to bring a flaw into play, cannot be blamed, but there must be something wrong with the flaw system.

Actually he can be blamed.

There are two general styles of play we're looking at here. In one, the player looks at the in-game situation and thinks, "Hmm, my character would do X." And then he declares that the character is doing that.

In the other mode the player thinks, "Hmm. It would be cool for the story to do X. Is that something that I can explain my character doing?" And then he does the cool thing if it's plausible. Or finds a way to make it plausible.

What I would suggest is dropping the first mindset. There's been loads of debate as to the value of each, but in playing TROS, you'll get a much, much better game if you use the reasoning behind the latter method. Basically you set up an agreement amongst the players that no player will be allowed to hide behind the excuse, "My guy would do that." Players have to consider the real people first, and then what they should do in-game.

So, if your character has "troublemaker" yes, you should be looking to get him into trouble. But in such a way as everyone would enjoy. In the example, come up with something cooler than attacking the guy in question, and have the character make trouble for everyone. For example, maybe he starts a baroom brawl that includes everyone. Or, even better, maybe he just sits on his anger for a while and then you use it as an excuse later to stir up trouble in a way that's better for the overall story. "That guy in the bar pissed me off. The more I think about it, the madder I get! I'm going to find some Scylla to beat up!"

Moreover, if the GM is using the methods that I've outlined, then there never will be Q Random Disturber in the bar in the first place. That is, the GM shouldn't be presenting you with choices that don't really advance plot. Just as he should gloss over the menu selections at the bar, he shouldn't worry the characters with the odd heckler. If there is somebody disturbing at the bar, it should be a Scylla, or an Aquilonian, or something of that nature. So that you can reasonably get into it with him.

In general, remember that the game is there to satisfy the players - the characters are fictional, so use them as tools to make the game fun for all of the players. This relates back to the SAs; no, the character doesn't know about the level - the level of the SA makes no difference to how the character thinks. If the SA is "Hates Scylla" then he hates them just as much when he's at 0 as when at 5. The player just has less points to use in those situations. Make the decision about what to do as the player, and then figure out how that makes sense in the game.

If you have 0 points in Hates Scylla, then have the character refrain from fighting the one in front of him; but not because he's afraid, or doesn't hate the Scylla. Say he's going off to plan to kill the Scylla in a particularly ingenious way (and during the planning, no doubt you'll get points in that SA). Or have him remember a meeting with somebody important - relate it to another SA. Or he just has to go to the bathroom. Or he's just not feeling murderous at the moment - consider that most people never act violently on their Hates. There are all manner of plausible things that one can do besides attacking at this point.

Also, you guys should try to get over the idea that taking center stage alone is a bad thing. If you do so advancing the story, then the other players will be interested to be audience for this, and wait for their turn in the spotlight. In fact, if you get to playing really intensely, you'll find that you really approaciate the "time off." Might be hard to imagine, but it's true.

This goes back to the whole scene framing idea, and away from the "party" concept. Have scenes with individuals present as makes sense, instead of the characters gaggling about together. It seems to me that you're already doing this to some extent (the girls off on their own), so I'm not sure why you feel that this is any different than a fight.

Lastly, one on one combat shouldn't take a half an hour. You'll find that as you get used to the system that you take less and less time to do combats. Opponents should not have 6 TO or higher most of the time. Most should have 4 or 5, or even 3 (will this give an advantage to the players - maybe, but so what?). And given that the game is about families and dueling, armor should be non-existent. Armor is worn for battles, nothing else. And given the advantage of SAs firing all the time, the PCs will outclass their opponents, too. You'll find with this set up, and knowing the rules well that combat's go startlingly quickly.

Mike

[bensei]

There are two general styles of play we're looking at here. In one, the player looks at the in-game situation and thinks, "Hmm, my character would do X." And then he declares that the character is doing that.

In the other mode the player thinks, "Hmm. It would be cool for the story to do X. Is that something that I can explain my character doing?" And then he does the cool thing if it's plausible. Or finds a way to make it plausible.

What I would suggest is dropping the first mindset.

This sounds good. (As long as the X in the second mindset is not too way off and the way to make it plausible is really artifical.) And, of course, this is a very nice general comment, not at all restricted to TROS.

Anyway, the whole reasoning (which was done here along the example of a flaw) works perfectly for SAs, too. So the question of e.g. making "troublemaker" a Drive is still there.
The question "What would be cool now?" is very general and not related to SAs. What if a situation is the perfect situation for a troublemaker to make trouble, but is not related to any SAs of the troublemaker (whether it is cool or not may depend on the point of view here).
Why should the player let his character act as a troublemaker?

[Mike Holmes]

Why should the player let his character act as troublemaker?

Excellent question. The answer is because he took the flaw. That is, the flaw is a compensation for other character benefits, so he has a responsibilty to play out the flaw.

Truth be told, there are some who'd say that the flaws aren't the best part of TROS.

Again, this is a player responsibilty thing. In fact, some players really abuse stuff like this. Not only do some players not play flaws, others take them so that they can legitimately be obnoxious. This relates back to what I'm talking about above. We call the first mindset, when used as an excuse for obnoxious behavior, "My Guy Syndrome." As in, "But, but, My Guy would do that!" This just isn't tolerable. Again, players have to consider the other players at the table. You direct what your character is like, and are responsible for seeing that other players enjoy your character (or at the very least aren't repulsed by their behavior).

Now, to be politically correct, I should note that some players like to play in such a fashion that they're trying to "channel" the character. That is, they like to feel that the character has something that feels like an objective existence, and do everything in terms of "what the character would do." For a group of players who all like to play this way, this is potentially a legitimate way to play. Presumably nobody playing this way is allowing their own explicit desires to influence the game, and so people can enjoy it all as in-game.

So, before you play, make sure that everybody agrees about the idea of "authoring" characters to make them enjoyable to everyone.

Mike

[Valamir]

Also remember that the flaws don't necessarily have to be played out in real time.  They can be thought of largely as a reputation that the character develops during all of those life moments that aren't played out in actual play.

Think of the many Western movies where the lone gunman rides into town, does nothing but order a drink at the bar when the sheriff comes up and says "we don't want your kind here, this is a nice peaceful town, we've got no use for troublemakers".

So if you have the trouble maker flaw, you have the reputation for being a trouble maker and the GM can enforce all of the social implications that having that reputation means.  But the only time the player actually needs to play out his reputation as anything more than mere scene color is on those occassions where it coincides with SAs...

...or perhaps those times when it conflicts with another PCs SAs.  Imagine here a PC with an SA passion for Lady Jessica.  Lady Jessica's brother is nearby trying to ascertain whether the PC is worthy of his sister.  Trouble maker PC chooses that moment to stir up trouble.  Now you have the PC's loyalty to another PC pitted against the PC's own Passion SA...a really powerful moment with really powerful potential for roleplaying.

But you don't need to harass every random peasant just because you have the troublemaker flaw, any more than you have to seduce every random barmaid just because you have the Lecherous flaw.  You may have the reputation for doing those things...but it isn't necessary to play them all out.  Just the important SA effecting ones (like when the lecherous PC starts hitting on Lady Jessica).

[Mike Holmes]

Good point, Ralph. Also, the GM should be looking for opportunities to have Flaws and SAs coincide. Again, it's just another indicator from the player to the GM about the sort of action he'd like to see.

IOW, don't take a flaw and then try to avoid the things that make it come out. Sure the character might avoid them, but the player should find ways to get the character into the appropriate sort of trouble left and right. As such, take the flaws that fit the character concept that you want to play.

Mike