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Old 06-19-2017, 09:04 AM   #1
Highland_Piper
 
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Default Monster Hunter game well recieved

So the group that I've been playing with for the last eight or nine years asked if I could come up with something last month. So I thought since they enjoy Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Supernatural, Penny Dreadful and other such television shows the obvious solution would be to play Monster Hunters.

We play every six weeks and there are normally eight players. The first session of MH went very well. After a few suggestions from the community I went with Pyramid #3/31: Monster Hunters adventure "Last Stand on Mason Drive" with some alterations as I wanted the game to be fun and easy for them as seven of the players have either not played GURPS since 3e or have not played at all. The entire six hours of play was all finding out how they know each other, how they end up becoming a group and them delving into the investigation of the scenario. By the end of the first game they all enjoyed it and they finished just before the big confrontation.

The second game, played yesterday, had some apprehensions attached to it. Apparently our game has a reputation for tedious combat. Anticipating this I had printed off three decks of my custom combat cards and created a large combat map for them to explore. We got out a ton of miniatures and I handed out the three decks to each side of the table and explained to them the basics of combat and to not think of this part as an RPG but as a table top skirmish wargame with cards. 15 minutes of combat took about two hours but no one noticed the time at all. They were completely immersed in the miniatures and tactics of the game and at the end they agreed it wasn't any more complicated then some of the board games they play.

They asked that I print off enough combat cards for everyone and that we continue the campaign and I will be adding some Ritual/Path cards and Book Magic Cards as well as weapon cards with the rules that pertain to them in one place for things like Shot Guns which baffled me for the longest of times and anything else to make the game run smoothly.

Eventually they won't need to use them. So everything went really well and now I am going to be busy creating adventures and eventually a campaign arc to keep them interested. Note that I don't play rules heavy and I'm pretty free with making stuff up if I forget the rules (which is often as my memory is more of a sieve then a bucket)

You can view a picture of the cards HERE and HERE
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Old 06-19-2017, 09:11 AM   #2
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Default Re: Monster Hunter game well recieved

Also they really enjoyed the creation of the characters and I am allowing them to make changes since everything was pre-generated for them. Out of the eight characters only one was 400 points. The rest were sidekicks at 200 points.

I gave all the sidekicks an additional 100 points to play with before the next game and from there on the points will be a bit harder to get.

I was surprised by who choose which characters and how they wanted them to become with the additional points.
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Old 06-19-2017, 03:59 PM   #3
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Default Re: Monster Hunter game well recieved

Thanks for this report, Highland -I read it with great interest. Sounds like a fun time was had by all.

If you have the inclination, I'd be intrigued to here more about this:

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I was surprised by who chose which characters and how they wanted them to become with the additional points.
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Old 06-27-2017, 07:19 PM   #4
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Default Re: Monster Hunter game well recieved

So I want to keep the game fun for all eight players. I'm generally just a Fantasy GM but the last two years I've done a post apocalypse game which gave me the challenge of learning how to deal with combat with modern weapons. Thanks to members of this forum I was able to overcome that obstacle.

Now I come to a new one. How to make all the players involved in the adventure. Out of the eight players five have little to no combat skills. Out of those five, three of them have occult abilities. The last two are the Paramedic (who is turning into a mad scientist) and the hacker. Now without these two characters things would have gone south quickly during the first scenario. The problem was they didn't do a lot in between their specialities.

It's hard to role play a scene from ER when it really just comes down to a few skill rolls. Neither player is a hacker or in the medical field so it's not like they can break down treatment/hacking step by step like a combat scenario.

Any suggestions?
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Old 06-28-2017, 12:38 AM   #5
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Default Re: Monster Hunter game well recieved

Quote:
Originally Posted by Highland_Piper View Post

(SNIP)

Now I come to a new one. How to make all the players involved in the adventure. Out of the eight players five have little to no combat skills. Out of those five, three of them have occult abilities. The last two are the Paramedic (who is turning into a mad scientist) and the hacker. Now without these two characters things would have gone south quickly during the first scenario. The problem was they didn't do a lot in between their specialities.

(SNIP)

Any suggestions?
I approach this by making sure the different characters have things to do, at some point, during the adventure, but don't worry too much that everybody has things to do in every scene.

It's the notion of "spotlight time." Not everyone can (or should) be in the spotlight at every moment, but everyone should appear in it, reasonably frequently.

So, given that not everybody in the party is combat-effective, make sure they play key roles in the events leading up to the combat. Give them a way to gather intel through either research or making useful contacts, and let them use what they discover to come up with a Cunning Plan.

Of course, the best climactic scenes do give everyone something to do. Maybe the head-crackers need to hold off the Enemy Hordes long enough for the engineer to discover all the Deadly Traps, so the occult expert can get close enough to perform the Sekrit Ritual discovered earlier, so as paralyze the Guardian of the MacGuffin.

However, those don't always work out, so make sure the characters have ways to shine, earlier in the plot.
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