Hello, everyone. This is my first post on these boards, but I've been following the game for a while now. I got introduced to the game through various RPPR actual plays and have since fell in love with it. I've run a few games online (though, sadly, not played in any) and have recently been presented with two opportunities to run the game for real life groups.
The first opportunity will be for my normal D&D group. We have a player missing from the ongoing D&D game next week, and I have a chance to "force" my friends to try something that doesn't involve killing imaginary dragons with swords. The second is a charity gaming event hosted in town (Knoxville, TN) in a few months.
Both of these events pose a similar set of challenges for me as I'm going to be handing premades to a group of people that have, at best, passing familiarity with the setting and system and then spending the next 3-5 hours "selling" them on the game. I'm a fairly decent GM, and have become at least decent at being improvisational, so I have fairly high confidence in being able to run whatever I put together... however, I know it's easy to overwhelm new players.
So, I come asking you guys, who I know have more experience with this kind of thing, what kind of things work well for convention modules? Is there any advice you can give me on what to "wow" the players with that works well in these kinds of one-off environments?
My current idea is to run a straightforward Erasure Squad game with the PCs assigned to remove an exhuman threat from an asteroid. I'll probably be drawing heavy inspiration from the RPPR one-shot of the same name, but refining it a bit more to add in some additional investigation content.
Is there something better? Can anyone tell me what ideas they have used successfully at cons in the past?
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Introducing New Players (Convention Game Advice)
Fri, 2015-05-15 09:37
#1
swordchucks
Introducing New Players (Convention Game Advice)
Fri, 2015-05-15 15:11
#2
Trappedinwikipedia
I used Continuity to
I used Continuity to introduce the game to my players, and it went pretty well. I'm not sure if its the best way to do it, but I think its a strong option.
This thread has a number of useful resources for running such a game: http://eclipsephase.com/continuity-and-ego-hunter
I'd be a little leery of running Erasure Squads for a new group, because of the high level of body variability you'd expect, and the general future shock from how complicated a "realistically" equipped strike team would be.
Continuity is nice because everyone is in a pretty human biomorph, which gives a lot more common reference points while highlighting the transhuman nature of the game. When I ran it, everyone but one person needed to find warm clothes ASAP due to the cold, while another person was the sole PC who wasn't having trouble breathing in the thin air. Similarly for the darkness and few people with enhanced vision.
Fri, 2015-05-15 18:49
#3
Googleshng
If you're writing your own
If you're writing your own oneshot, I would avoid the PCs having to deal with any resleeving, even in their backstory (barring someone's unexpected death anyway), but I would really play up the variety of morphs out there with NPCs, and try and casually work in some of the other more interesting aspects of the setting through dialog and such.
I'd also design around the strengths of the premades I statted up to go along with it, give everyone a very obvious moment to shine somewhere, but, that's a given really.
Mon, 2015-06-08 02:09
#4
Justin Alexander
Rule of thumb for a one-shot
Rule of thumb for a one-shot is 4-5 scenes, no more than two of which should be combat focused.
Develop a 3 minute pitch for the setting.
Use a system cheat sheet to help the players quickly get on top of the rules.
I recommend steering away from Psi powers for at least your first session. It eliminates an entire chunk of rules. Avoiding jamming and hacking can be more difficult, but is also effective for further streamlining the rules they need to know.
For each scenario, choose one "super cool" element of the setting to focus on. Ego Hunter is a great one-shot for introducing forking, for example. For the Fall you can have a team go down to the surface of the Earth. Run them through a gatecrash-gone-wrong. And so forth.
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The Alexandrian