Continued the play-test of my new RPG last night at the Baranof. For those just joining us, this particular game is MY "dark future, fantasy-punk" game, a cross between B/X and Cyberpunk 2020...similar in many ways to Shadowrun, and made (in part) as a response to the over-complication (my perception) of the SR rules.
So far, not bad.
Even though Josh and Steve-O failed to show (Josh 'cause he's out o town, and Steve 'cause he works Thursday nights), we still had THREE new players...total of seven. Plus Tim from Gary's stopped by (and might be joining us next week), and Vince was supposed to be there but ditched at the last moment.
I've never run Shadowrun for more than three (maybe four) players at once before.
Fortunately, this is NOT Shadowrun...if it was, I doubt we would have accomplished much, action-wise. As it is, after last night's game I can see the true wisdom in Moldvay's addition of "the Caller" to the B/X game. Great guys though they are, my players coulld sure have used a little discipline...or outright leadership!...when it came to formulating their attack plan. Everyone's so nice and consensus-driven, that the "planning stage" of the mission took longer than either chargen or the mission itself!
Yes, more chargen. Having re-vamped character generation from last week (and putting together some pre-gen equipment lists), we still were able to get new characters generated for all three new guys...despite them having no prior knowledge of the game system. Nice.
Lots of trolls...I asked AB about this afterwards and he thinks it's due in part to the novelty. "When do people get to play a troll in an RPG?" This makes sense, I suppose. Though I find it a little weird that after nine characters being generated, the break-down is:
- one orc
- one dwarf
- three "norms" (normal humans)
- four trolls
And the trolls aren't all "big, thug-like" dudes, either. Well, two are. Mmmm...maybe three (Greg's troll, "Grok," is outfitted like a high-tech "hit troll" but he's got a pretty low Intelligence...I believe he's functionally illiterate). The fourth guy is the rigger-pilot of the helicopter gunship that made their quick-strike mission possible.
Anyway, the first part of their two part mission went down as a success with much gunfire, grenade throwing, computer hacking, and roof-top rappelling and snipering...not to mention a little plastique for good measure.
And trolls bludgeoning people unconscious. Of course.
; )
If I have a chance, I'll blog a full play report here in a bit. There was a lot of "food for thought" and, yes, plenty of rules revisions that need to be made (especially regarding saving throws, karma, and skill use). I am also considering revising the entire magic system, but I kind of want to get another test of that prior to junking everything I've written.
All right, I've got to run for now. More later (hopefully!)!
: )
I think I only saw one troll in the time I played and ran the game, and that was played by myself shortly before I stopped playing.
ReplyDeleteIn the original game, trolls hit hard and were very hard to hurt, but were also very slow, which was a big drawback given how the initiative rules worked, so that may be why you're seeing more of them in your version of the rules.
The Caller was first referenced in the LBBs. FYI.
ReplyDeleteI loved playing Troll characters in Earthdawn!
ReplyDelete@ Justin: shoot! I'll have to look that up...is it in Volume 3?
ReplyDelete