Re: [HOE] Help

["james4514" <james4514@msn.com>]

O.k this is long but it works for me
the best way i've found is to ask the players what they what and discuss the
story you have planned to get a feel for how they want things and that they
understand that combat will not be the only thing happening. Preferably you
should have acess to their characters before the game begins so you can try
and tool things to fit them since their's no point in putting an impassable
force field in their way if none of them Know a thing about electronics and
it's not important to the story
And finally give small rewards for the use of non combat skills.
P1"well this old geezer has the stuff we need but the townsfolk say he's
mean"
P2"so, shoot him. It works in fallout."
P3"wait my junker,genetics-engineer,steel knight is a heroic nutcase maybe I
can try to persuade him with talk of honor, glory, duty, and the fact that
the town needs those twinkies from the vault he has the key for" ROLLS...
GM"well it turns out the old man with the key to the twinkie factory was
once a U.S marine and your talk of <insert what player says> brings him
around to you. he give you the key and here's a white chip"
P3"kewl those smucks in town will have to forgive me for when my truck went
nuts and ate that dog"
to make a long sotry short p1 managed to save the town from a poisoned
twinkie by eating it, p2 was killed by the zombies trapped in the twinkie
vault, and p3 was made mayor of the town but had to leave after my...errr
his suit acccidentally sat on someone's kid
As for combat balance I suggest only using combat as part of the story and
avoiding random encounters altogether as I have found the system to be
extremely clunky with new players and Marshals(or maybe my posse and
marshals are slow) and if you do use a lot of combatants fudge the dice a
bit on the mooks and let them die quick. Or even better just arbitrarily
assign a nimber based on the firpower the PCs kcik out and let unimportant
NPCs die quick remember anything not important to the story is excess weight
and should be taken care of quickly by the party aything important should be
given most of your attention
p1"wow fifteen zombies are guarding the chick who stole the acess codes to
the twinkie making machine......ok my cyborg opens up with his twin chain
guns and tries to clear a path so that p2 can get in close and take him out
with that chain-butter knife that the old witch said was the only way to
kill her."
p3"I'll fire my laser on brust and scythe some zombies down too"
gm goes through the motions of rolling damage dice and such then decided
they killed 7 of the twelve zombies
p2 OK I jump over the remaining dead guys and try and impale the tainted
junker witch with it. Hopefully we can waster her before the ones she's
keeping in storage get here
proceed to normal combat
IN this case the zombies were reanimated corpse the tainted junker turn
servitor was raising  using a cheap spirit fetter. SO most of them get
chopped donw leaving enough for a satisafactory climax and a reminder that
there could be more on the way
Finally pick up a thesaurus, a list of adjectives and look through some
adventures to get some idea of how to balance it all out.
and give your flavor text some kick to get them into the game world
Now I run a fantasy BESM game(though i draw a bit from world of Aden) along
with rifts and this may not work in the more realistic and gritty deadlands
setting but emphasizing story over simple min maxing tends to encourage more
creativity and roleplaying