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On Asyncs

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Mon, 2012-05-21 04:52
Decivre Decivre's picture
Re: On Asyncs
Quigs wrote:
I almost exclusively play with people that I know well. A pleasant consequence of this, is that I know which players can handle playing an async, and I know which can't. I've got a friend/player who loves hacking. Loves exploring advanced concepts, but he also hates being singled out for bad consequences. As such, I don't allow him to play an async. It's not worth the headache and the game slowdown. I've got another player who constantly sits his character out if he believes the character doesn't have a reason to be somewhere, who'll accept negative consequences for his actions, and that player is free to play an async if they wish. Its all how you roll. It's a great addition to the game.
One way to invert this relationship is to simply lay out all the cards on the table with regards to how a specific character type will play. The first player you talked about would probably not even choose to play an async if you informed him that the character would have consequences that go along with it. The latter might pick the character for that exact reason. I find that when players are well informed, they drift towards characters that best fit their playstyle... whatever that may be.
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Transhumans will one day be the Luddites of the posthuman age. [url=http://bit.ly/2p3wk7c]Help me get my gaming fix, if you want.[/url]
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Mon, 2012-05-21 07:23
Xagroth Xagroth's picture
Re: On Asyncs
Decivre wrote:
I find that when players are well informed, they drift towards characters that best fit their playstyle... whatever that may be.
That also tends to be the right way to make them enjoy the game and save the player a lot of frustration. It has happened to me that in a Conan d20 campaign almost all encounters were combat ones, and my scholar was rather... useless (I got to make an enemy outpost to surrendern thanks to my diplomacy, and some sorcery was good for making a jailbreak even more epic), which was rather frustrating. Now we reached lv 6, I asked to invert the Leadership feat use (so my old toon would be the follower and the new one will be the "main"). So I'd also say that it is best if you tell your players in advance the kind of game you have in mind (yes, I know it is written in almost every rulebook out there. Nevertheless, it is something that's best reminded, for what I can see ^^). Oh, and also it is good to inform the players about parts of the game you won't be using (for example, I always say that I won't be using Asynncs in EP, but that they might find exurgent enemies that can generate some interesting strange stuff). One of my first Cyberpunk 2020 games was with a GM who had no use for Netrunning rules... and I had just made a Netrunner! XD
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Tue, 2012-05-22 23:00
Decivre Decivre's picture
Re: On Asyncs
Xagroth wrote:
That also tends to be the right way to make them enjoy the game and save the player a lot of frustration. It has happened to me that in a Conan d20 campaign almost all encounters were combat ones, and my scholar was rather... useless (I got to make an enemy outpost to surrendern thanks to my diplomacy, and some sorcery was good for making a jailbreak even more epic), which was rather frustrating. Now we reached lv 6, I asked to invert the Leadership feat use (so my old toon would be the follower and the new one will be the "main"). So I'd also say that it is best if you tell your players in advance the kind of game you have in mind (yes, I know it is written in almost every rulebook out there. Nevertheless, it is something that's best reminded, for what I can see ^^).
At the same time, it's crucial to inform them how a specific character type plays. I had one player that totally geeked out the minute he read "technomancer" in the Shadowrun core book. He didn't really read much of it, just got the pre-made from the book (I told everyone to take up pre-mades, because they wanted to play [i]now[/i] and Shadowrun didn't really have quick creation rules at the time). He immediately hated the character when he realized that the technomancer was more like a hacker... because he thought that it was a wizard that could cast spells on machines from the little he saw. Once he found out that technomancers can't make cyberarms explode, he was pretty pissed off. So being informed is pretty crucial. Many players who are initially excited about being an async might find out rather quickly that they don't want to play a superpowered obsessive-compulsive.
Xagroth wrote:
Oh, and also it is good to inform the players about parts of the game you won't be using (for example, I always say that I won't be using Asynncs in EP, but that they might find exurgent enemies that can generate some interesting strange stuff). One of my first Cyberpunk 2020 games was with a GM who had no use for Netrunning rules... and I had just made a Netrunner! XD
Oh definitely. It also goes into account how the rest of your team plays. I have a buddy who loves playing stealth characters. He always played the sniper, infiltrator, or pickpocket of the team. He thought he would love to do the same in the game Deadlands, but he found out rather quick that being a sneaky bastard doesn't work when your group loves to announce their entrance into town. He ended up modding his character so that he was more of a con-man than a true stealth character (which worked for the group he was playing in... they definitely needed a face).
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Transhumans will one day be the Luddites of the posthuman age. [url=http://bit.ly/2p3wk7c]Help me get my gaming fix, if you want.[/url]
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Wed, 2012-05-23 07:30
Xagroth Xagroth's picture
Re: On Asyncs
Decivre wrote:
Oh definitely. It also goes into account how the rest of your team plays. I have a buddy who loves playing stealth characters. He always played the sniper, infiltrator, or pickpocket of the team. He thought he would love to do the same in the game Deadlands, but he found out rather quick that being a sneaky bastard doesn't work when your group loves to announce their entrance into town. He ended up modding his character so that he was more of a con-man than a true stealth character (which worked for the group he was playing in... they definitely needed a face).
This is one of the reasons for creating the characters as a whole, devoting a complete session for making a working team (oreven two). Sadly, time constraints mean this is not always possible... And in my case that ends meaning I have to hunt down the players and squeeze what they want to play (be it concrete details or something really vague...), and then I have to make the characters so they act as a group somehow. I have discovered that, regardless of the game, it is important that each character can do or fill at least two roles (a main one and a "backup" one), even if that means they will meddling into each other's specialties: Nothing makes people realize how good is to have different characters like suffering like hell to barely make something while another character can make it effortlessly and for the whole group. Sure, envy can come in play here, but after a while they also see they are all in the same position. And the more complex the game (or bigger the character sheet), the more time you need to make any character.
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