Topic: GMing for first time gamers

[Colin-ICE]

I've managed to convince some friends who have never gamed before to let me run a one off game for them. My plan is for it to be so good that they consider playing on a more regular basis (or at least agree to a second game).

As they're first game (and they're pretty cynical about the whole thing) I want it to be really engaging. I've come up with a basic idea but I would really appreciate any thoughts/ideas/opinions that anyone else has.

Rough idea:

A simple dungeon layout with a number of rooms in a rough circle around a central (much larger) room. There are a number of ways to enter the central room. In each (or most) non-central room are challenges be they puzzles, traps or monsters which grant magic items/weapons/potions to the adventurers. Unbeknownst to the adventurers, defeating each challenge will best equip them to defeat the beast lurking in the central room guarding the... whatever it is they're after but it is up to them which doors they take and when.

My challenge is coming up with enough puzzles and traps etc to fill the rooms. Also I would like them to be things which take them away from the gaming table or give the players themselves the opportunity to shine. Current ideas (and very rough ideas) are as follows:

• A room that looks exactly like a room in my house with a timer ticking down to find something (they need to search the room in my house)
• A riddle from a mischievous parrott
• A collection of potions with each giving a clue about which potion must be drunk
• Flat out fight with a monster of some sort
• A booby trapped room which requires some form of knowledge (a la the last crusade)

Anyone else got any ideas?

[Thot]

Some social interaction, bridge-in-Monty-Python-and-the-Holy-Grail style. 

[Cory Magel]

Heh, yeah if they are Monty Python fans put in a box that says "Antioch" on the outside with what vaguely looks like a grenade inside.

[thorwyn]

Make them play "themselves" without knowing it. Adjust their RPG characters to their real life characteristics, each character representing one real person as good as the game mechanics allow, so they can find out what/who they really are during the game via subtle hints and suggestions. The story could be some kind of shared dream or illusion and the players are supposed to break free. This adds a second layer of immersion to the game and you can set up some sort of final puzzle that can only be solved by merging real life and PRG knowledge. It all depends on how well you know the people of course. If you want to mess up the plot and raise the bar, let each player play another player.

[markc]

 As a GM I try and tailor a game to my players, just what that is at the moment is the hard part. Do they like battle, riddles, traps, physical or mental challenges? Those are the questions I need to answer when I create my game.


 To me it seems from your post that you are trying to highlight one area of RM with each room to show RM's strengths and weakness to your group, I do not see very many RM weakness but some do. So I would stick with that. The area's I see that you are missing is spell casting and/or magic item use, a chase room, a sneak past or fight room, and a social gambit/challenge room. And maybe a room that seems to be something but is rather nothing but a time waster. Other than that any area in the Rules can be a room for your to highlight.
 IMHO it is almost better to have fewer rooms with the option of more rooms on your part for the first timers than a lot of room that the party does not finish.
 
 Once you have those down then you can pre-make the PC's for the group so they can just jump in a play with some simple explaining from you. IMHO you are almost designing a Tournament Dungeon with all of the things that go along with that, ie rule set, age, time limit (better under than over time), player vs PC knowledge and do players want to act or just play.
MDC 

[HawksNut]

A concern would be that if they are new to fantasy Roleplaying then the ubiquitous dungeon crawl might put some of them off. I recently ran a new game for my 11 year old and my wife to introduce the two of them to fantasy RPG and I took a different approach.

I set my adventure in a port city of small to medium size that was experiencing a rash of merchant caravan attacks with all killed or missing. This forced the PC's to interact with government officials, bar tenders etc. and the PC's discovered the attacks were being carried out by a band of Orcs/Goblins whatever works best for you and they were using an old abandoned/decrepit keep as a base of operations. The fort happened to have a dungeon.

I think this would allow you to insert a lot of puzzles, clues and NPC's for the group to interact with and befriend in addition to the battle and potential dungeon crawl when they get there.

This is just my taste but I prefer clues and stealth to, in your face, hack and slash. You could even have one of the City NPC's a part of the plan to raid traveling merchant caravans.

I like your dungeon ideas but I would set the adventure in an environment that might involve more NPC/GM interaction.

Good Luck. Bye the way, my wife and my son both loved the adventure and are hooked.

[Aucon_the_Ancient]

This would depend on your group and how they would react:

They wake up shackled to the walls of a room, either in the bowels of a ship, or some dungeon. Escaping and reclaiming their gear and subsequently finding out who they are and what kind of world they're in is a lot of fun. I've ran this type of scenario before and it went over well.

[markc]

Aucon the Ancient welcom to the ICE Forums.
MDC

[Colin-ICE]

Thanks for all the replies, some really good ideas.

I like the idea of having each character represent a person in the group and there being a puzzle at/towards the end which requires them to know which member of the group they are.

I also like the idea of a chase/sneak past room. I might steal an idea from harry potter and have then chase keys or something around the room to find the right one. Also perhaps something like in the cube where they can't make any noise or traps are triggered/monsters released - just riffing but this could be done in real life as well, every time the players communicate above a whisper it is set off.

The reason I have gone for a straight dungeon crawl is that I want to be certain that we finish on time within 3 hours. A dungeon with a clock ticking down to them being sealed in allows for that. I would love to have them doing some more social and political intrigue but I'm concerned they will get upset with me 'not cutting to the chase' as it were.

[HawksNut]

This would depend on your group and how they would react:

They wake up shackled to the walls of a room, either in the bowels of a ship, or some dungeon. Escaping and reclaiming their gear and subsequently finding out who they are and what kind of world they're in is a lot of fun. I've ran this type of scenario before and it went over well.

I like it. I did something similar to this a few years back. Makes for some very creative game play but usually you need at least one experienced player.

[HawksNut]

The reason I have gone for a straight dungeon crawl is that I want to be certain that we finish on time within 3 hours. A dungeon with a clock ticking down to them being sealed in allows for that. I would love to have them doing some more social and political intrigue but I'm concerned they will get upset with me 'not cutting to the chase' as it were.

I understand. If you only have three hours getting too involved with politics and NPC interaction can present a time problem. Good Luck.

Just one more idea but there are a couple of good old 1st edition AD&D modules that can make for a good introduction and be modified to RM. Try U1 "The Sinister Secret of Salt Marsh" or N1 "Against the Cult of the Reptile God". Both could easily be set in any local and be a spring board for something larger.

[tbigness]

Since you were thinking of a one off game, use pre-generated characters and construct challenges around those characters that each one has a specialty to overcome the obstacle, puzzle or challenge. A trap for a thief/rogue, following a trail for a ranger/magent, defeat a creature in an arena Various fighters, defeat a persistant magical trap spell user, reach an object out of range monk/thief/rogue, defeat a spirit that is affected by only magic cleric/magician/mystic/sorcerer, ect.... use this as an opportunity to showcase the different classes and how they can shine in a fun RPG with severe consequences.....

[Colin-ICE]

That is a good idea, the basis of each room could be based on one of the PCs and the finer details based on the player themselves.

[Turbs]

Tactical combat.

In your combat room add some way for PC's to think and act tactically rather than just
rush headfirst and .. attack, attack, attack,

Add cover, Obstacles, Flanking opportunities, High ground, unstable environment (oil barrels, gravelly ground that's easy to slip on) etc etc. and reward the players for using it with extra bonus to hit etc.

The point is to show off that -anything- is possible if you can imagine it, even in the heat of combat..

[RandalThor]

Just one more idea but there are a couple of good old 1st edition AD&D modules that can make for a good introduction and be modified to RM. Try U1 "The Sinister Secret of Salt Marsh" or N1 "Against the Cult of the Reptile God". Both could easily be set in any local and be a spring board for something larger.

As someone who has ran the former (and played through it) and is currently running the latter, I would suggest Saltmarsh to new players; the Reptile God is actually a really tough module that assumes the players will not be normal hack-and-slashers (which has thrown my current group a bit). Now, because these are new gamers you might not have that problem, and if any of them like to watch procedural detective shows, then they should actually do OK. But, the Saltmarsh module has such an awesome Scooby-Doo theme it is just a joy to run and watch the players figure out what is going on. Both are a great spring board to a campaign, that is for sure.

[markc]

Ahh, the Secrets of Salt Marsh, the good old days.
MDC

[markc]

  One thing that I thought of was try and not have just 1 person/PC be able to solve a room...Why? Well if that PC dies, person has to leave early, has n off day or just does not seem to understand what you are trying to have the PC do your adventure can be in big trouble.
  Sometimes combat is the easiest thing to plan for.
MDC

[jdale]

In general I think it's best to set things up so there are multiple possible solutions. But you can make it so one person has the best solution or the "short cut". Often "the hard way" is combat, but there is some easier way that allows the combat to be avoided (or fewer foes, or an easier way to defeat one of them, etc).

I remember going through an adventure and an NPC telling us at the end that the series of tests were intended to weed out those who were not very smart or very determined...  and it was clear we had gotten through under the heading of "very determined" but not so much on the "very smart"!

[Peter R]

I would certainly go with pre-rolled characters, it could take all 3hrs to just explain the character generation system!

I would personally go with an adventure that was a bit grittier and real (fantasy real not 21st century real) world rather than something bespoke just for this one off session. The reason is that if the players get the role playing bug and want to carry on with these characters and want to know what happens next then you need to have some where to go.

I would have the characters wake up on a boat/ship. This gives you a limited cast of NPCs to deal with and a limited terrain. The characters are all chained up with little more than rough clothing and no memory of who they are or why they are there. One has a lock pick clenched in his fist behind his back. A bell starts to toll above decks and there is a great deal of shouting. The ship they are in is about to be attacked by pirates. The thief character can free them all and as they open the hatch to the upper deck a body comes flying down. The body has a breast plate on and is still clutching a cutlass, there is a dagger in its belt. Now the party has a little bit of armour and a couple of weapons. Sneaking up on deck they should be able to scavenge a few more bits of equipment and once you think they have enough and are engaged then you can have a pirate spot them and come at them. There are opportunites for swashbuckling movement manoeuvers, stealth and straight forward battle. You can have people cut ropes and drop spars on their enemy or swing around and push people overboard. The objective is to survive but also they may want to escape. If you have the pirates completely overwhelm the boats crew then the party may choose to go over the side rather than face the pirates. I would have the pirate attack happen at night and the players boat is already in flames when the characters enter the scene. Taking a life boat would be an option to try and escape but don't make the boat available until the last 20minutes of your session. Put big hulking pirates in the way or drop burning spars on them if they get too close. Put two rowing boats on the ship and if the players get to one too soon have someone throw a harpoon at them and it smashes through the bottom of their boat. At the end of the night they are in the rowing boat watching the ship disappear under the waves and the pirate ship dwindling into the distance. Behind them the dawn shows the black line of the coast on the horizen.

[Peter R]

Also...
I know what a Goblin looks like, I know what an Orc looks like but your players may not and it forces another leap of the imagination if you go right for monsters at the first attempt. Everyone knows what a pirate looks like and sounds like.

As an aside pirates are normally portrayed as having a broad Cornish accent and where I live people really speak like that! I love pirates and use them a lot and I once used them with a player that spoke with a better pirate accent than my NPC pirates could manage. It was most disconcerting.

GM "Roll a perception roll"
Player "It be an 86, Arrgh! I see nothing!"

You have to do that in a propper pirate voice for it to be funny btw.