Quote:
Originally Posted by Cornelius
Preparation
I’m going to print at least another copy of Gurps Lite and I’ll prepare a couple of sheets with a redux of combat and the other main rules. Should I prepare anything else (a part from the usual set: maps, handout, pictures etc...)
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GURPS Lite might be a little much to plop down with them on the first session. I'd recommend giving the one-page summary at the beginning of the first session, and letting them take home GURPS Lite. If you hand it to them at the start they're gonna be thumbing through it while you're playing and trying to look stuff up instead of punching bolsheviks/huns/zombies.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Cornelius
Characters
Since they know nothing about the game, I’ve decided to keep things simple and create the characters using just the basic book, avoiding any supernatural power and ability. Mundane characters. Many new players are actually scared by the sheer amount of possibilities offered by Gurps and mine are accustomed to D&D and his “precooked” approach.
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My earlier advice is assuming pre-gens. I'd suggest doing pre-gens for ~2 sessions to get a feel for the mechanics, then letting them build their own.
That way they'll know roughly what everything does in play, what skill and attribute levels are "good enough" for what they want to do, etc. It eases them into the mechanics first, shows how easy that is, then eases them into the character creation system.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Cornelius
Campaign
Deciding what kind of adventure to run has been difficult. Consider that they have played only “high fantasy”, a genre that, after so many years of role-playing, I’ve come to hate with passion (really, I could do pretty nasty things to any bloody elf). This rule out most of fantasy and DF.
They don’t seem to follow science-fiction a lot and running a SF campaign without a common milieu is a recipe for disaster. Historical campaigns require dedicated players.
In the end I’ve restricted the choice to three campaigns I had hidden in the depths of my PC:
1) An Horror Campaign. The players are policeman that will have to face a foolish medium, the ghost of a former SS captain killed in the last days of the war, his not-dead-enough soldiers and possibly his demonic master. Setting: North Italy.
2) A Pulp Campaign. The players are WW1 veterans sent in the Far East in search of the fabled treasure of the Tsar. White Russians expatriates, bolshevik spies, femmes fatale, diabolical chinese crime lords and the baron von Urgern Sternberg will appear during the play.
3) The Age of Reason. The players are brought by a banestorm event in a world similar to our 18th century where magic albeit erratically works. After being “spontaneously” enlisted in the Prussian army (the seven year war is in full swing) the players discover that they have become pawns in a power struggle between two powerful warlocks. The campaign will be more a “light steampunk” with ritual magic and a lot of swashbuckling adventure than “High Fantasy”.
So what campaign should I run? And how many points should I concede? Are there any other problem should I be aware?
Thanks in advance.
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I like the first two, but I think letting them pick is a good idea. I think for especially the first one, you could have their pre-gens be the people who stumble onto the horrible truth and end up dead, and have the characters they create be the guys who investigate the disappearance of the pre-gens. Plus it'll give them an appreciation of the lethality of the offense without killing the characters they sweated over to create.
As for point totals, I'd do 150 for 1 and 3, and 200 for 2, but make those 50 points a "pulp hero" package of Luck, Hard to Kill, Attractive, etc that everyone must take.