Lister: All we've got is us guys, us and our own
resourcefulness.
I play with new players a lot. As well as players of some
experience who are seemingly unable to read a rulebook. I can’t blame them.
Rulebooks are for GMs. The trend to producing player-focussed rulebooks –
AD&D2e, you started the rot! – has exploded the crunch on both sides of the
table. That’s not for me, or for my players.
One of the things that I find hardest to deal with in any
game is magic. And high-technology, but, let’s face it, that is the same thing
as far as matters in a sci-fi RPG. It is particularly difficult with new
players. It is one thing for a player to say, ‘My character does X, where X is
something within the ranges of human potential’ as a GM and the players can use
a combination of common expectations and a – hopefully – straightforward resolution
system to adjudicate the success of this action. Magic tends to create ‘exceptional’
rules, introduce new resolution systems, and threaten the common understanding
shared by the table, at least until the table has absorbed both the rules and
the setting.
This is just a long way round to saying that I tend to find
it easier to GM games for my group in which access to magic (for PCs and NPCs)
is pretty restricted, at least at the start of a campaign.
So, you know, WFRP!
Cat: My God, it's worse than I thought!
