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Post by goodmush on Jun 20, 2013 10:47:22 GMT -8
Hello all, To begin I have been unfortunately unable to game for some time now, but the fates of dice have smiled on me and have given me a chance to GM a Pathfinder game. Now with any blessings from the fickle sirens it comes with a price. This game will be a long distance one with me as the GM being the remote one. Also adding to the difficulty, the party will be new to the game and roleplaying. Some only having a surface level knowledge of the game and roleplaying as a whole, at best. This is a great chance for me as it allows me to help guide a group in developing into well-endowed gamers. Now this brings me to my quandary. While I have a competent grasp of the game and the mechanics, I want to bring the party into the rules slowly, like you do with first timers. But I can see this going very wrong really quickly if I don't help instruct the group in the way of roleplaying. With my past groups, I have butted heads with many over min-maxing and power gaming being the "right" way to game. While "Fear The Boot" & "Happy Jack's" have been great in offering suggestions and advice, I thought it would be best to throw my question to the jackals that roam the savanna of the forum to be torn apart and left to die in a forgotten blood stained post, for great learning can come from watching the hunting and killing of pray. So my request is this, advice on bringing this group into glory that is the light side of roleplaying and avoiding the pitfalls of the dark side in min-maxed power gaming. Also if there is any pointers on mining character backstories for useful gems that can be turned, or weaved into a plot.
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Post by guitarspider on Jun 20, 2013 12:32:21 GMT -8
Probably take a "Here's the world, now what kind of person do you want to play?" approach and only do the stats when they've built an actual character. I'd want each of them to have a link to two other people in the group as well, so that they have something to go on for roleplay right when play starts. Basically any change to the character creation process that makes it clear that this is different from a video game is probably good. As for character backstories, if your players have built actual characters you can look at those and ask "What's that character's issue? What is he about?" and then run with it (learned that from Dogs in the Vineyard ). For example, if friends are really important to that character, get their friends into trouble. Then give the character the chance to shine by getting his friends out of it, depending on your playstyle you can also include some tough choices along the way. "Do you save your friend but endanger the lives of five others?" "What your friend did wasn't right, do you listen to his pleas and help him anyway?" and so on. Don't ask that question explicitly, just set up the situation so that that is the question they're answering with their decisions. Then you can look at those decisions and up the stakes ("Do you still help him after he did ~this~?). Note that if your players always want to be able to resolve everything you throw at them without answering tough questions about their character or are just not that interested in character stuff they might well hate this. Hope that helps. I have to say I run a lot of games via skype, but I've never been the only one to be on skype while the rest is in a room. You'll need a good mic for that room. Is there a reason why you're not all on skype/G+ or am I misunderstanding the situation?
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