Thread: A bit of Advice
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Old 01-20-2010, 05:07 PM   #38
Agemegos
 
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Join Date: May 2005
Location: Oz
Default Re: A bit of Advice

Quote:
Originally Posted by Stormcrow View Post
I also agree that letting the players vote is the best policy, but I recommend playing something completely different than what they're used to. If you play something too similar, they'll just start thinking it's D&D, and will get frustrated with the differences. If you play something very different, it will seem like a new experience.
Agreed, very much.

If you try to wean players from D&D to GURPS by giving them as much as possible what D&D already gives them, there won't seem to be very much reward for slogging their way up the learning curve. Sure, eventually they'll enjoy a game with superior mechanics and a vastly wider scope. But in the critical early stage the awkwardness of unfamiliarity will sap their enthusiasm, and it will feel as though they are struggling a lot for little return.

I always recommend that when you are trying to get players to switch to a different RPG system you ought to start a new campaign with new characters (not convert, which some people try to do) is a completely different setting and genre, preferrably one which their usual favourite game obviously can't do, or cant' do without a lot of kitbashing. That way the effort of learning and familiarising oneself with a new system gives an immediate and obvious reward: a game that the old system could not have supported.

My usual advice is to pick a genre of stories or film that has a large body of popular material in it, so that its genre conventions are well understood and so that there is a range of different well-known heroes in the genre. For this, I usually suggest Westerns, swashbucklers, 20s-30s Pulp/matinée serial adventures, 'hardboiled' mysteries, police procedurals, or thrillers. That way players get a good idea of a wide range of things that characters might do, and the sort of results to expect of them.

Then I suggest a DVD night in which you show three varied examples of genre material from movies or TV, to work up enthusiasm and to give a clear reference.

And then say "help me make a GURPS game come out like that".
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