[LoL] New Player and New GM equals bad mojo

[dindenver]

Hi!
  We got a pretty good group. It's a mix though. We all naturally pick different kinds of characters.
  Even when we did an "Evil" campaign in Blood of Heroes, we were not too bloothirsty or particularly evil. We were more of evil masterminds, manipulating the world through plot and sabotage...
  Tom is the guy we can trust to make an evil/anti-hero character in our games. I think it stems from his Punk attitude and general dislike of authority.
  Lawrence is  new, I dunno where it's coming from. I told him Tom already had a Thief and he didn't feel like making a second, so we didnl't get into the whole we're all heroes shpeel with him. Which I now regret.
  The other guy is one of my on-line playtesters and I think he just did it to be different.
  Cheryl (my wife) always makes a upright good guy (good gal?) and when we all voted to play a second evil campaign she was never very open to it (in fact she was the GM for our one evil campaign).
  Pat is the ultimate casual gamer. He plays what everybody else is playing. His chars are creative and easily motivated by money, lol
  Eric is an old-school wargamer. When it comes to RPGs, as long as he gets to beat something up every two or three sessions he's happy. I think he usually makes chars modeled after himself. So they are usually intellectuals with combat potential (moinks, mages, etc.).
  Nate is sort of passive/aggressive. He never says what he wants. Even when he GM'd Exalted. He's a good guy though, and is good at finding math glitches, etc.

[Clyde L. Rhoer]

Hi Dave,

I thought you might be doing something like attribute + skill. The reason I asked is I was thinking that if you want to promote Heroism why not make an attribute called Heroism. Heroism could be your only attribute, and you define when it can be used. For instance:

Heroism can be used when:

• You help others.
• You fight evil.
• You do something reckless, like swing from the chandalier
• You know what you want on this list better than I do.

This would mean that you wouldn't have to try to force players to be heroic, they could be bad if they wanted, but when they were bad they would be only as effective as a normal human. This could also help tone down the need to keep track of reputation, as the players could invest in their heroism which will determine how heroic they want to be. I think if you did something like this you wouldn't have to convince anyone not to make thieves. Thieves would be suboptimal, unless they were like Robin Hood.