Matt Lavery wrote:
Fellow Marshals:
I’ve got two questions,
but here’s the setting:
My players have made
characters with very rich, but very
diverse, backgrounds. I’ve been in parties before where the GM has
forced
the character histories to cross, and contrives some way for the
characters to
already be working together. It works, but it’s not what I want to do
with my posse. So far I have a British Bio-Mechanical Mad Scientist
bent on
“perfecting the human condition”, a Gunslinger of the
“I’ve been framed for my parents murder and now I’m after the
real killer” variety, a stereotypical drinkin’ whorin’ smokin’
ornery gunslinger, a Huckster of the “I wanna be a huckster ‘cause
spellcasters
are cool” variety (don’t expect to much role-playing depth from
this one), and a Saloon Gal who’s not bad with a gun, but uses
seduction
and persuasion to get men to do her bidding. There may be one more
player, but
that’s an unknown at the moment.
I need some way to get
these players together and working
for a “Mysterious Character” without contriving it or pulling
something like, “You’re sitting at the bar when you notice a guy
walk in with a flashing light over his head that says, ‘I’m a
Player Character too, work with me.’” Any good ideas? I don’t
want to use any adventures from the books, because I have very avid
readers in
my party, and they can’t seem to resist reading things they shouldn’t.
I know kind of what I want to do with the Mysterious Character, but I
want to
use an intermediary to start with. Eventually I want to build them up
to an “Oh
crud, we’re in way over our heads,” sort of moment, but I’m
drawing a total blank on the hook. Any ideas?
A couple ideas for getting the group together: One, have them all be
riding a train together, when it gets attacked by something nasty.
Assuming they help to defend the train, have a muckraker do a big story
on them. The "Mysterious Character" could then read about them and
decide to send them each a job offer of sorts. A second idea would
involve something happening to friends/loved ones (for example, a
vampire attack), something where they as individuals would be trying to
find the creature responsible, and that search would also make them
bump into each other, since they are all looking for the same creature.
The "Mysterious Character" would again hear about them through some
sort of underworld sources, and could then offer them all a job.
Second, does anyone out
there have some good modifications
that speed up the combat system. Last time I ran a game, we got so
bogged down
in minutia that combat seemed to take forever. Anyone have any handy
quick
reference charts or spreadsheets the I can put on my PDA or something?
I *don’t* want to use
d20 conversions…
I want to maintain the feel and the elegance of the original system,
but I need
some streamlining. Any help would be appreciated.
To speed up combat, there are several things you can do. First of all,
have all the players reveal their cards at the start of the round, so
you can skip over numbers that no one has a card for rather than go all
the way through the numbers. Also, I am a firm believer in giving a
time limit to how long someone can debate what they are doing. If a
player's card comes up, and they don't know what they want to do, give
them a few seconds, and if they don't figure something out, tell them
to sleeve that card while you move on to the next person. For most bad
guys, don't roll quickness every time, just give them a card or two
based on what their Quickness stat is. Also, don't worry about all the
different hit locations for the mooks/peons/fodder bad guys. Have a
player roll hit location, but only to see if they get a head or
gizzards shot and thus do extra damage. I use a set of small poker
chips to track how many total wounds a bad guy has taken, and once he
has taken 5, he's out. He may not be dead, but he is too wounded to
continue fighting. Please note that for big bad guys, like leader
types, you should still roll quickness, keep track of hit locations,
etc. But for the mooks and such, just do it the fast and easy way.
--Dave
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