Tips for running or playing games. (Role Playing Games (RPGs) in general)

Member Name: Bryn Pearson

Product:	Role Playing Games (RPGs) in general
Date:	07/06/01 (143 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: fun way to spend an evening., sociable, challenging and creative.

Disadvantages: Can be addictive., people may tink you are a nerd.

A few suggestions if you are thinking about getting in to gaming.

Ideally, it helps to start out by joining a group who know what they are doing - your local games shop may well be able to help you with this. (Games Workshops are especially good.)

If you are going it alone, you need to pick a system. AD&D will give you high fantasy in a magical setting, World od darkness will give you mythology based fantasy in a real world setting. There are also Babylon 5, Star wars, James Bond, games - if you can think of it the odds are that there is a sytem. Take you time, find a setting and rules that look appealing.

Costs - most core rule books cost about fifteen pounds. You may well want two or three more books at a similar price, so its worth chosing carefully and not wasting your money. You will probably also need dice (except for GURPS) check out which dice you need and buy lots of them as they always go missing. After that, you will need pencls and paper, other people (Groups of six are god and about optimal) a space to play in where you won't be disturbed for four hours and access to a kettle. (Or munchies.)

How it works. One person is the games master, or Dungeon master. it is the job of this person to understand the rules and know most of them, to have the book with the rules in. The Games master supplies the events for the players to interact with. This means that you have to portray all of the world - what the other can see, hear, smell and feel. You have to come up th things for the players to do (More of this later.)
Player each have a character - they act the role of their character and test their abilities by rolling dice aginst the probability of doing something. (varies from system to system)The mroe developed a character is, the more fun the games are. Choices for what to play vary dramatically between systems and settings. I will list a few examples of characters I have played to give you some idea.

Bertra
m of Orsino - a knight dedicated to the battle against evil. Prone to tragic romances.

Siobahn Caitlin - a wandering bard who uses her "charms" to get what she wants.

Juliet - a wild vampire running tours of haunted places in York.

Girl - a young woman who has spent 16 years trapped in the form of a wolf.

Nimue - a centaur ranger/shapeshifter who was very niave and died several times.

The only limit is your imagination.

How do you make a game go? The characters must have challenges - treasures to liberate, monsters to fight, villans to thwart. To make the most of this, remember that evil people are people too - make sure they have motivation and character - as the games master youg et to play them, so have fun. Make up a story for the characters to interact with. Don't push them rigidly along it - allow them to find their own way and be prepaired to be flexable if they think of something you haven't.

Some good story lines - defending a villlage from attack - the party has advanced warning of bandits/monsters/armies and a few days to set up defenses and form a plan, then they must fight....
Murder mystery - always good, limitless variation. Having a party member wrongfully accused works well.
Kidnapped - track down the path of the missing person, perhaps things will not be as simple as you first thought.
Quest for an artifact - of course there will be traps, monsters and misleading information to hamper the party.
Mysterious sightings - something strange has been seen in the woods - what is it, why is it there?

You get the idea. Games work best when they players have to think for themselves, make plans and find things out. Striking the rght balance and getting things difficult enough without being demoralising takes time - you also need to know your players. Find out what the people in yur game like, what they as people enjoy and work to that - after all, the i
dea is that everyone should have fun.

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