Alex Sandoval

I feel that these players are this way because they don't know anything different. That is what they started with and that is what is familiar to them. I feel that most roleplayers are of the opinion that you described out of habit not choice. I don't know enough about the history of the situation around BRP but if it is as was described earlier then I feel that BRP would have been the main focus instead of D&D if they had better marketing strategy.

Hoping my class schedule lightens up enough this semester to get something rolling and I'll be happy to help. As for the "higher level" characters, my old game was in AD&D 2e and it was observed by all in my group that the challenge disappeared after 10th level. The gems that my group were, they would volunteer to retire their characters at 10th level and start play anew with the minions and followers their original characters attracted. This way a favored character could have a happy ending and intermitten cameos not to mention their new characters had an immediate connection to the campaign and realistic expectations of their superiors. My current design for a campaign is based off of the old characters that advanced to mayors, warlords, kings, tyrants as well as their gangs, socities, cults, dominions, armies, and the Cold Wars and secret alliances that had surfaced. Sorry, I get a little excited when I think about the campaign.

I'm Alex and I was born in 74. Started playing the old D&D red box edition in 82 and had a great group of gammers. The simplicity of the rules influnced my group to focus more on roleplaying rather than anything else and after moving through every book put out for old D&D we moved on to AD&D. My players kept their roleplaying style and I liked the expansion of skills and powers but didn't realize until later that it was, what I believe, the spawning of the age of min-maxers and Monty Haul. Thankfully my original group remained immune, but as I started to meet younger players who started in AD&D, the unsavory playing styles seemed more ingrained in them. All the way up through high school we gradually lost players from our original group one by one. My new groups seemed like cardboard cutouts who's most redeeming features were they were conduits for their list of equipment lists buldging at the seems with easily gotten magic items. Oh, how I wished I could show them or had the eloquence to explain to them what they were missing. After DMing for the newer groups for a number of years I became disheartened that the rule books these players were so despirately clinging to were muddling their vision so they couldn't see what they were missing. Every tactic I tried only seemed to enhance their death grip on the rules like a drownding man clinging to a life preserver. Realizing that I and my ,then, poor communication skills were part of the problem I bowed out as a DM thus ending my 12 year DMing streak. I took up a part as a player and had fun on and off but always with a nagging sensation that there was more fun to be had than these megar, intermitten, moments. Since then I started looking to other systems and jumping from one gaming group to another. I was a GM for some and simply playing in others, but learnig from each of them. Then about 8 years ago a friend asked me over for a home brewed BPR game about Vikings. I loved every minuite of it and have been hooked ever since. The no kid gloves approach to combat was refreshing. The conscise, yet full-featured, and intuitive rules made such a rich roleplaying experience where the story came first. The skill based system and progression would leave an avenue of growth, uncertainty, and challenge for characters of any level. It was then I could finally articulate my frustrations with the gamming industry. My love for the fantasy setting and fondness for the familiar vehicle of D&D became constant growing embers of furstration as I watched the system "progress." When I first started, my gaming was paper, pencil, and a rich world of imaginagion & possibiliteis. As the industries need for money grew I saw more and more books that were needed to play the game. Then it turned into rules that you needed miniutres to fully express and utalize the system. Finally it became a giant plug for online gamming that solely mimics every aspect of an online MMORPG but lacks the immediate gratification of online play that they probaplly charge you $10-$15 per month to play. In today's immediate gratificaton, disposible, independent culture I feel BRP is the easiest route back to true role-playing. Back to the richness of the imagination and possibilities armed only with a paper & pencil. A way to shed the shackles of these "things we need to play the game." These very things, that although nice, are getting in the way of our imaginations. BRP is my bastion of hope, my road to freedom, and my word to those who are choking on the status quo and don't even realize it. Now I know that the things I have written may sound a bit pretentious but I am not here to change everyone to my way of playing or seeing gaming the way I do. It is just so hard for me to imagine that such a group of imaganitive, creative, and open minded people can all be so satified with the status quo that they will blindly play someone elses game where the only people who are actually using their imagination are the writers that write the books and are not even in our gaming group. Now my only fear is that the open and vast possibilities of the BRP may cause sticker shock as I intoduce it to new players.

Thanks for the advice guys. I'll take it slow then when combat comes. I eventually want to create a fantasy campaign that is a spin off of a D&D campaign I ran about a decade ago. Although it was D&D, it was the richest roleplaying and least combat oriented campaign I had ever ran. Hoping my group today will enjoy the flavor and mystery that this campaign can bring. I picked up the Classic Fantasy monograph and it was a nice trip down memory lane but seems a bit too cheesy and overpowered for what I had in mind. Besides, I feel my group will get more out of the Alliegance and professions as opposed to the Classic Fantasy classes. Was a little reluctant to add more magics from other monographs like Basic Magic and BRP Witchcraft but with the characters reputaion and NPC reactions I feel I can show them what happens if they abuse the powers. I did pick up The Search for Trollslayer for both my players and myself to get our feat wet. I figure after the adventure I can get a sense of what the players are looking for and what sets of rules that my players and I can agree on. After the nuts and bolts are out of the way I'll ease them into the idea for my campaign and tweak it to suit our group.

Comming back to GMing after a number of years and discovering the BRP system I am afraid that I will either make things too easy or do a total party wipe. How do you handle combat in the BRP system? What rules do you use? What do you keep in mind when creating encounters or during combat? Any other advise for combat in the BRP system? What works for you and your group?

That clip looks awesome. I am going to be on the look out on Netflix. Playing a one shot on this sounds just as good.

First off I love being with my friends and players. I have never met a more imaginative and creative group of people who are this open minded, tolarant, and accepting. I tend to feel that way about gamers in general. I am fully aware of the game's role as a social gathering and I do choose to play with these people time and again. It is the concept of "giving the players what they want", that if taken too far is nothing more than spoiling your players. If meat-grinders and Monty Haul start explaining your gaming sessions then it is doing little to encourage roleplaying. I fully accept that as a GM you have the responsibility to make the game as enjoyable as possible for your players but you also have the responsibility to set the bar and help those players who view their characters as nothing more than vehicles for their egos. Doing this in a fair manner is utmost in my games. A long time ago I was taught that you never tell a player "no", you just determine difficulty. This has always worked out great for me. If a character wants to do something that may seem outrageous then I will tell them how difficult it is going to be, such as "I'll need to see an 01 on your roll." Now no matter what the result of the encoutner the gaming group came out ahead. If the player fails, then they feel that they were at least given the chance and possibly a way to save face. If the player suceeds then it has altered the story in a way I had not intended and has enriched the story and the experience. When the court jester in our party convinced his cow mount to attempt a jump over a spiked pit along the narrow mountain road, the fearless dwarf jumps down a trap door's hundred foot shaft to catch himself with his axe's head on the last iron rung to escape a mob of goblins, and the major villian is one shot killed on their first meeting then these experiences are exceptional and memerable. The fact that the cow never made it, the dwarf had to search for over a month to find someone to heal his dislocated shoulder, or a whole adventure was wasted but made a power vacume that attracted three other villians to the players dosen't matter. What does matter is that these are memorable experiences that neither me nor my group will forget because they are exceptional, fair, and came with a feeling that they earned something.

Players like these seem selfish and lazy to me. They think about what THEY want, and ONLY about what they want. Roleplaying is about a strory people can get caught up in, emersed in, and wrapped so deep into that you can forget for a few hours that there is a real life with jobs, bills, and other mundane stresses out there. Players that continually play in this selfish manner are not roleplaying, there going through the motions out of habit. It takes no effort to think about only what you want. Be it a single player or a group that continously plays like this, you are fooling yourself if you think that is fun. It's like reading a book where the author hates all the characters they wrote. Sooner or later either you as a GM or the players will get bored and wander away from your game because their is nothing special there. You don't have to play a roleplaying game to experience selfish, self-centered stories, with abuses of power; we have miniture games, online games, and real life for that. I personally am eager to get back into GMing and try the Alliance rules that influence NPC reactions. I feel these rules and tactics will help my GM style of showing the players that their characters are special but not an island. I always like the ripples on a pond analogy for gamming. Sooner or later the characters are going to do something, good or ill, that will ripple out and affect others in the story.

Did you use any of the mentioned tactics or was it just a deadly encounter that changed the players mind?

back in 1985 I was a little kid but finally old enough to get my cousin to let me play DnD. Shortly after that me and my group turned to ADnD and eventually we came to todays versions with small visits to other systems and genres.;-( Dearly miss the days of real roleplaying and looking to use BRP to bring it back to my group.:thumb: