Current Play: Portland Debacle
 

So my regular bi-weekly Saturday game of Champions was canceled on Friday. I emailed a fellow player and suggested getting together to give TFT a try, as I'd talked about to him a couple of times. After some emails back and forth, he eventually roped in most of the rest of our Champions group to give it a try.

They seemed to be under the impression I was going to run a full-on fantasy campaign session, not the "getting your feet wet" test combats I intended.

In any case, we got together and everyone made characters. Two elven wizards, a dwarven fighter with a war axe, a human fighter with a bastard sword, an orc fencer, and a thief. With only one copy of the book (mine) and some handouts I hastily produced the night before with lists of talents and spells and combat options, we had at it.

I had the players fight 3-on-3. The results were...disappointing. Partly, I think, because they were all unfamiliar with the system. More to the point, I think they didn't like how the combat system limited them compared to other games.

They were all 32 point characters, and most wore heavy armor, so their adjDEX scores were pretty low, leading to a lot of turns where nobody hit his opponent, which also frustrated them.

One player found himself engaged by two opponents (briefly by three when a summoned bear joined the combat), and was clearly frustrated by the limits on his ability to disengage. A limitation that I, personally, find perfectly plausible and realistic. In a real fight, your opponent is NOT going to let you get away easily (unless he, too, thinks breaking off is a good idea for HIM), and unless you're lucky, trying to escape combat leaves you vulnerable.

Of the two wizard players, one seemed to enjoy it. He was unclear on a lot of details of course, being a complete newbie to the system, but he seemed to "get" it and made good use of "Summon Bear" to to maul one of his enemies.

The other player concluded that wizards were "useless" and it was pointless to play one, that spending ST to power your spells was an idiot's game, and he created a new fighter character after the first combat. (The existence of the higher-level Staff spells intrigued him, and it also frustrated him that I didn't let him start with a fully charged Mana Staff.)

Overall, they found the combat system "clunky" and didn't particularly enjoy the game. We might have played out a short scenario where they tracked down and fought some bandits, but I was feeling a bit demoralized myself and didn't particularly push to run it.

I think part of the issue is that they're all long-time Champions players (as am I, for that matter), and they're used to a system where hitting your opponent is usually pretty easy and mostly just knocks them out of action without any serious injury, as opposed to the lethality of TFT. Nonetheless, I don't think any of them are likely to be interested in playing the game with me in the future. Which is disappointing.

Re: Current Play: Portland Debacle
 

Sounds like a bummer. A good thing to keep in mind when introducing the game is that the combat system was designed to be competitive; i.e., both sides have a serious chance of victory. You can't have a competitive game in which one side generally delivers knock out blows with high chances of success every turn. And, the character design is based on the idea of trade offs, so if you want something cool, you generally have to accept there are other things you don't get. And if you want something really cool, it's going to come with big sacrifices in other areas. If people don't like that, then they don't like it. But people who like the game consider them key features.

Re: Current Play: Portland Debacle
 

For a first play, I'd always give the players pre-generated characters. For a start off it saves time, but it also means they wont design characters that aren't going to work well (like the low adj DX characters you mention). The pre-gens from the Legacy Edition are mostly good for that if you have them.

Re: Current Play: Portland Debacle
 

I also generally find that for introductory games, it's better to put your players into an arena with NPC enemies instead of each other as enemies. Think in terms of the big arena fight in Gladiator, where the "Romans" fought the "Carthaginians." This is particularly true if they are used to playing as a team. I also probably wouldn't do magic for the first playthrough -- let 'em have fun gutting the bad guys first and then consider introducing the Wizards later.

Re: Current Play: Portland Debacle
 

Good points. I'd agree better to play as a team first time round and I'd definitely leave Wizards till later. The learning route is: Melee, then add Wizard, then add ITL Talents etc.

Re: Current Play: Portland Debacle
 

I have the opposite view of the best first experience; I think a competitive match between two or more well matched sides is a more interesting and effective way to learn the rules.

Re: Current Play: Portland Debacle
 

Depends very much on the players. If they are highly competitive, then yes; if they tend more toward cooperative, it can be very off-putting for first time players.

Re: Current Play: Portland Debacle
 

TFT is simply a poor fit for players who expect to win as the 'default' case, or who want to be clearly signaled when they are in a situation that carries a risk of defeat. It is hard to play TFT without a significant risk of defeat, unless you focus on encounters with nuisance creatures. It is also a poor fit for players who expect to have high levels of competence at most or all things, unless you give them highly experienced characters to start with.

Actually, that's probably the best solution if you think your group has these sorts of preferences. If characters are allowed to start with 40 stat points, 5000 XP worth of talents, spells and staff ST, and a minor wish in their back pocket, they will find they can do all sorts of wild things with only modest risk to themselves.

I personally find this sort of play to be mind numbingly dull: encounters with highly predictable outcomes amount to spending 20 minutes to work through the statements: 'you encounter 10 orcs'...'we kill them!'...'cool, on to the next room'.

Re: Current Play: Portland Debacle
 

I agree -- another nice thing about this "let's play a boardgame" approach is that there's little investment (time or emotion) in the characters while you learn the rules

Re: Current Play: Portland Debacle
 

I think you are overstating this. It's not a case of people just wanting to win, but if every combat is a coin flip then at best you can expect about 3 combats before everyone is making new characters. That's not much of a campaign.

Likewise you don't need to give the new players super overpowered characters. You just need to give them characters that have a decent chance to hit something. No character should have a starting DX of less than 10. Or if they do ( a "tank" character for example), then make it clear up front that this character is expected to miss 75% of the time. His role is not to dish out damage.

So maybe give them 34 point characters, or just make sure they aren't all wearing heavy armor right off the bat. And put them up against weaker creatures to start and ramp up the difficulty as they get better at the game. That's the best way to get new players into the game. In my humble opinion at least.

Re: Current Play: Portland Debacle
 

With TFT, I think it is critical to point out the deadliness of the combat. That in an actual campaign, any time the PCs find themselves in anything resembling a fair fight, they have screwed up spectacularly in the prior planning department.

TFT requires players to approach combat the way a police swat team approaches a raid on a drug dealer: total surprise and overwhelming force.

The combat does, however require a fair bit of practice. This can be done a couple of ways. 1. Start off a game session with some quick arena combat between NPCs run by the players. The PCs are assumed to be in the audience watching the poor gladiators get their livers carved out. Afterwards the PCs can discuss what worked, what didn't and why they would never be gladiators, while having a brew at the local tavern. This then transitions to their planning for the sessions main adventure. Or. 2. Arrange to start with in character combat training using practice weapons that leave marks and some bruises but no actual injury. In this case the players use their normal PCs and the training is part of the roleplay. This works quite well if the PCs are all part of some organized group: A mercenary company, local militia, retainers of the local minor lord, etc. Once more, after the practice combat the PCs gather someplace, perhaps the mess hall, and plan the sessions main adventure.

Re: Current Play: Portland Debacle
 

Lars nails it again.

Heroic games are for heroic players.

TFT has always been the mortal game for 'normal' players who don't actually EXPECT to survive a heavy crossbow bolt to the chest.

Just the shortage of healing type magic lays out the mortality and realism of the system from day one.

It's also what makes TFT awesome for decades now, and for decades to come.

Re: Current Play: Portland Debacle
 

I have the same love/hate relationship with Rolemaster. The deadliness of the systems promote the RP part of RPG. Fighting is the tactic of last resort, because you are likely to get killed if you do. Roleplaying your way out of a situation is a better option if possible, and IMHO makes for a much more interesting game. If all you want is a hack-n-slash HP-fest, this isn't necessarily the right choice to accomplish that.

Re: Current Play: Portland Debacle
 

The difference with Rolemaster is that character creation is a major undertaking in that game. The mismatch between investing hours in a character then dying in 10 minutes is a near-fatal flaw in the system. At least TFT doesn't have that problem.

Re: Current Play: Portland Debacle
 

Man, you aren't kidding about that. That was so excessive our first sessions used to be "character gen parties" because there was no way you were going to play that first day. I actually wrote a program back in 92-93 to do a lot of the heavy lifting, which is just insane.

Re: Current Play: Portland Debacle
 

This is true of most games.

The further the game from the player's prior experience, the more likely, unless character generation is totally random. And TFT is decidedly NOT random.

Re: Current Play: Portland Debacle
 

Word to the wise: One way to manage PC risk with the desire to do dangerous seeming stuff on adventures is to pack your dungeons (temples, whatever) with a diverse pallet of obstacles and threats that mostly consists of things other than balanced fights with armed monsters. Examples include: natural obstacles and traps (the risk of which can be closely managed by the GM, while presenting interesting puzzles to the players), nuisance creatures, bugs, plants and other weird things that only threaten you in specific ways, and non-combat encounters. Think Indiana Jones rather than Temple of Elemental Evil.

Re: Current Play: Portland Debacle
 

Exactly. If every encounter in your dungeons is a well matched challenge for the party (a la Death Test), then the characters won't last very long in this game. Tough battles should be a highlight rather than the norm if you want any chance of longevity.

Re: Current Play: Portland Debacle
 

There is another option which I found in a number of the Dark City Games games - use underpowered opponents - pit your 32 pt characters against 28 pt or 30 pt characters. This allows them to learn the system while facing opponents with ST of 10 or 9, AdjDX of 9 or 8 and IQ of 8 which allows them to survive without being outclassed from the outset. Damage is less, number of times hit is less and talents are minimal. Just enough to give a serious challenge while they're learning the system.

Anyone who doesn't understand that a balanced system where you kill an opponent with one blow means that you can be killed with one blow either learns quickly or walks away to find a kindlier fantasy