Newbie and GM shouldn't go together.

[Lavek]

Re: Newbie and GM shouldn't go together.

 

They've all agreed to a "Trial of Grievance" sort of thing. I really want to do it with all of them together since for instance, one of them has equal DCs to the others, but it's in the heal power. She uses little robots that she can deploy to make repairs, they also attack like little saboteurs that share the same charges in a multipower. And she can slap shield generators on the other mechs.

 

The second (and more roguish character), took his idea from an old cage match game called One Must Fall. He has a slightly smaller mech with a neural interface and its stats are bought up so it can mimic his own movements. He uses a cloaking device to sneak around the battlefield and get combat advantages.

 

The other two are more the tank on legs types from Mechwarrior, only one of them (the tank) has a giant chainsaw that looks like a sword. Which I found in the mecha chapter of the Ultimate Vehicle after helping him design the exact same thing. And he has a shield that fans out of his other arm.

 

And the last one is all guns, jump jets, and some armor. He very much a blaster.

[Greywind]

Re: Newbie and GM shouldn't go together.

 

I have one character that in all the years I've been running my Champions campaign never changes. He's also the first character that the group runs into.

[Barwickian]

Re: Newbie and GM shouldn't go together.

 

I've found running trial combats with noobs very, very helpful. I use stock characters (so they don't have to bother with chargen at this stage), and encourage them to get creative, trying chancy or flashy maneouvres. I also look for ways to interpret their actions to introduce more concepts. This gives new players a chance to experiment in a sandbox with Hero's extreme tactical flexibility.

 

I've been using this technique with a regular player who's primarily familiar with 3.5 but open to other systems. However, he likes to try to 'break' new systems in trials by trying to do stuff he reckons the rules won't cover (so he can test the limits of the system, he says).

 

So far, Hero is the only system we've tried that not only has he been unable to break, but offers options he didn't even think of. (I still remember the look of overjoyed awe on his face when he downed an orc and, roleplaying, roared a battle-cry - which I interpreted as a Presence Attack; it caused the three remaining orcs to pause and retreat.)

 

After some similar trials we moved to a simple one-off combat scenario, again using pre-gens. The most recent was a Second World War special forces raid in a Nazi zombie stronghold - I moved away from a fantasy setting as players decided they wanted to try firearms.

 

I'm currently engaged on the third phase - character generation. I'm doing this one-on-one basis, which is a lot more time consuming, but enables me to give more help (and general discussion about the system). I find that using a genre familiar to the player is most helpful. Note that these are not characters we intend to run in a campaign (at least, not immediately), but are planned as dry-run characters, so they get a chance at designing something they can use in a one-off and see how it works.

 

I also introduce cool concepts like Dave Mattingley's Knacks (very little 1pt talents like Always gets to ride in the front seat or Always gets the last slice of pizza) which add considerable colour to a character (these are from an old edition of Digital Hero).

 

This may be a time-consuming approach, but I think it helps characters really come to terms with the paradigm shift and give them enough experience to design a campaign character with some degree of confidence.

 

It can also give me inspiration for short campaigns - one of my players is designing an Orc shaman which has forced us to invent a shamanic magic system (actually, we're only part-way through this) and some background. Both of us want to play a bit with this Heroic Orc campaign, if other players are also keen.

[Susano]

Re: Newbie and GM shouldn't go together.

 

And if you needed pre=generated characters, there's always my site (http://surbrook.devermore.net/index/) and Killer Shrike's (http://www.killershrike.com/).

[bobooton]

Re: Newbie and GM shouldn't go together.

 

You could try to work out damage/turn figures...

 

 

1. OCV vs. DCV to get percentage chance to hit
   
2. Damage vs. Defenses to get average damage on a hit
   
3. Multiply percentage chance to hit by average damage on a hit to get expected damage per attack
   
4. Multiply expected damage per attack by the character's SPD to get expected damage per turn
   

Then you can figure out what sort of combination of defenses, combat values and Stun will be necessary for your NPCs to last a hypothetical number of turns. This only goes so far (good/bad die rolls can hit anywhere at any time, melee characters need to get in range, etc.), but it gives a basis to work from.