Quote from: AsenRG;1006037In most of my games, that would make you "the guy who screwed the whole party".

Or the guy who got sick of the DM treating every NPC as an expendable pawn on the game board. And shooting down or ignoring half a session of PC planning.  I'll engage with what you bring and I expect the DM to do the same for me.
 Its not my job to save the world, I'll try but if you don't like what I'm doing, its your world, you save it.  I'll watch it burn.  

Sorry.  Its been a while since I've had a DM that really responed real time to what the players are bringing.  A little frustration seems to be coming through.

Quote from: CRKrueger;1005998Setting familiarity?  There is no setting.  You just have to be a pathetic hipster who wants to ironically mock the unwashed masses who play "gamist" games while pretending because the game has resource rules so ridiculous it's almost Pythonesque that your game is "about something".

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Actually there is a setting called Middlemark, quasi-Norse setting. I cannot address your comments about hipsters and mocking, but three of the five players in our group like it, one is on fence and one does not like it. My children liked it too, but they are pretty open minded as children are wont to be--we are playing 5e now and have a good SWN game on hold. interesting to me, I like the encumbrance mechanic a lot; I've never really enjoyed the encumber an even accounting in other systems, but the placement on someone's paper doll cutout is ... fun for me.

But I think your comment is really an agreement, if Torchbearer is going to hit the table better have full buy in.

Quote from: Dumarest;1005968What do dungeon crawls have to do with the Middle Ages?

If there is a setting from which the dungeon crawlers come, it might be medieval. If they operate outside the dungeon some of the time or most of the time, as in all but one of the  campaigns I have played in or run, maybe they should know that it is unsafe to be snotty with the nobleman/knight/samurai, maybe they should have some idea of other factors of the setting. On the other tentacle, they have to be aware that the setting is not really "back then."

Quote from: Headless;1006044Or the guy who got sick of the DM treating every NPC as an expendable pawn on the game board.

If the NPCs were expendables, you wouldn't be known as I said:).

QuoteAnd shooting down or ignoring half a session of PC planning.

Sure. If your plan after half a session amounts to "let's bring a bigger gun", you'd wish that I simply shot it down...but most likely, I won't be that kind;).

QuoteI'll engage with what you bring and I expect the DM to do the same for me.

However, if all you bring is a list of equipment, "the same" might be less than you'd want.
 

QuoteIts not my job to save the world, I'll try but if you don't like what I'm doing, its your world, you save it.

I never said a thing about saving the world. I was commenting on the "shoot the NPCs, then bring a bigger gun" school of "planning", which was what you suggested;).
Are you still replying to my post?

QuoteI'll watch it burn.

That's, putting it mildly, unlikely:D!
Far more likely, the world would see you to your shallow grave that you dug yourself.

QuoteSorry.  Its been a while since I've had a DM that really responed real time to what the players are bringing.  A little frustration seems to be coming through.

Yeah, I can sense the frustration. But I can only comment about my games, not other people's games.

Glorantha.

Quote from: AsenRG;1006198If the NPCs were expendables, you wouldn't be known as I said:).


Sure. If your plan after half a session amounts to "let's bring a bigger gun", you'd wish that I simply shot it down...but most likely, I won't be that kind;).


However, if all you bring is a list of equipment, "the same" might be less than you'd want.
 

I never said a thing about saving the world. I was commenting on the "shoot the NPCs, then bring a bigger gun" school of "planning", which was what you suggested;).
Are you still replying to my post?

 
That's, putting it mildly, unlikely:D!
Far more likely, the world would see you to your shallow grave that you dug yourself.


Yeah, I can sense the frustration. But I can only comment about my games, not other people's games.

We might be talking past each other.  

My plan didn't star as bring a bigger gun.  But thats the plan that works.  

Second point.  In my role playing experience the more the DM says he doesn't want to run a hack and slash campaign, donsn't like social skills, doesn't like all that gamey stuff.  The more twinked out min/maxed system mastery I will need in order to do stuff.  

I'll play a poet if that doesn't cripple my charcter.  But if I play that for a while and the basic experience is one of things not working and always needing bigger numbers, I'll come back with bigger numbers.

Quote from: Ravenswing;1005161... and when the players decide they're unwilling to be clueless sidekicks, they're going to take the bit in their teeth and play according to their own lights, and that's unlikely to be Doctor-standard pacifism any more than you'd dump a bunch of newbies on Star Trek and expect them to follow the Prime Directive.

A good GM is going to take note of Player Character abilities and craft encounters accordingly. If they have characters that want to fight something, then give them something to fight. It's not like villains haven't just popped out of the blue in the series. But it's also Doctor Who, so they should have the option not to fight as well. So there needs to be goals which can be accomplished without hitting things, but since it's Doctor Who violence is going to happen. The Doctor has totally had companions who have solved things with violence as I have already mentioned, and for a pacifist he sure has a lot of friends who use guns.

Sarah Jane Smith. In her first encounter with The Doctor, she found herself in medieval England and thought he was the villain. What did she do? She organized a militia complete with Hal "Boba Fett" the Archer and set out and captured him. I have no idea what people are talking about when they say companions are pacifists. Leela? Ace? Jack Harkness? River Song? Ace aside, the other three are murder machines. And he married one. How many murder machine K-9's did he build? For fun, emulating quaint 50th century Earth technology. The Doctor has built a death machine in the form of a cute dog, for fun. More than once.

Doctor Who adventures often boil down to "What's the best way to keep the body count as low as possible?" Often there is a nonviolent solution. That one is on the GM to provide and drop clues for. Players can and will have their own idea on how to solve things. But Doctor Who is fueled by bullshit science, so in a game if a Player Character comes up with a bullshit science idea then hear it out and see if you can work with it. They might come up with an outlandish idea, but the GM still gets to decide how they have to accomplish that. As I said above, if there are characters who like hitting things, give them something to hit. Have some outlandish plan on a radiation laden world where the radiation suits coincidentally look like Cyberman shells, and since the radiation jams radio signals, if the PCs can get a few Cyberman heads and hollow them out, they might be able to bluff their way past a group too large to fight to get to the place with the thing that foils their plan. So now it's violence with purpose.

Remember, since Torchwood is canon, Doctor Who can range from light hearted science fiction romantic comedy to ultraviolent grimdark.

Now, if I was running a group of people who had no idea what the show was, then I'd be inclined to let them play whatever shade of grey they like. If for some reason they are playing companions of the Doctor, then they definitely need some room for Agency. You can't have The Doctor calling all the shots like he does in the show. Or, if he does call the shots, the PCs should at least have some leeway to interpret his instructions. If your character is one of those gun toting ones, just ask yourself "What would K-9 do?"

The best way to deal with Players unfamiliar with the Whoniverse is to let them stumble around on their own, and let them deal with stuff before running into the Doctor. Give them something they know they have to fight. Like Sontarans. They don't know what Sontarans are but tell them there's a bunch of armored guys with Juggernaut helmets carrying rifles coming out of a big armored sphere that just scorched the earth in a thirty foot radius, and your player characters will get the idea.

I think one line from a previous  post is key to running games in a particulr style or setting.

Are the players prepared to engage with the setting? Engage with what the DM brings?

If yes than setting familiarity is just a tool to help them do that.  If not then knowing the system won't matter.    And the flip side is also important.  Is the DM prepared to engage with what the players bring?  Their interpretation of the setting which will be different than yours.  Their discovery of the setting if they are new players.  

You invited players, not actors and not an audience.

Quote from: Headless;1006216We might be talking past each other.

We definitely were, but I think I understood why:).

QuoteMy plan didn't star as bring a bigger gun.  But thats the plan that works.

If that's what works, you do that, of course.
My point was that bigger numbers don't work, by themselves.

QuoteSecond point.  In my role playing experience the more the DM says he doesn't want to run a hack and slash campaign, donsn't like social skills, doesn't like all that gamey stuff.  The more twinked out min/maxed system mastery I will need in order to do stuff.

Yeah, I've seen those kind of Storytellers, too. It's a popular mistake - some GMs just crunch the system to the max, and then use that, or a level slightly below, as a baseline;).

QuoteI'll play a poet if that doesn't cripple my charcter.  But if I play that for a while and the basic experience is one of things not working and always needing bigger numbers, I'll come back with bigger numbers.

Yeah, and I'm a Referee who would let you use your poetry to your advantage. Provided, of course, that the plan is good, but that also goes for using those bigger numbers.
Conversely, moronic plans with bigger numbers end up with dead characters, almost invariably. Which was how the talking past each other started:D!

Quote from: Vile;1006210Glorantha.

I've had a lot of success with players who either had no familiarity with Glorantha, even no familiarity with Glorantha or roleplaying. It worked fine. (Granted this was Runequest 2 era Glorantha, not the dense, subjective  narrative that exists today.)

Quote from: Bren;1006421I've had a lot of success with players who either had no familiarity with Glorantha, even no familiarity with Glorantha or roleplaying. It worked fine. (Granted this was Runequest 2 era Glorantha, not the dense, subjective  narrative that exists today.)

I'd have to second this. I've only ever had I think 3 players that had substantive knowledge of Glorantha before playing RQ, but then I play RQ2 with Cults of Prax as the primary source. I did run a campaign recently that drew from more of the material and realized I was swamped, and eventually put most of the later material up for sale...

Frank

When RQ2 hit our group none of us had heard of it before and we did fine. There was the Lunar Empire but all we knew was about that. Glorantha doesn't require a PhD in the world to run.

RQ2 Glorantha was a whole different beast, I agree - I had no trouble running it when I had never heard of it. But that soon changed.

I am not sure that one needs to know any more about Glorantha to run a game there today than back in 1980. That is like suggesting that one cannot run D&D unless evry corner and aspect of the game world is known in full Gloranthan detail. I would wager that most GMs and players regardless of game world do not know them in anything near that exhaustive level of detail.

To run Glorantha you need know about nothing further than your characters can be expected to travel. That can be a very small area. Start with a village, add a couple of adventure sites, let things grow from there.

Quote from: DavetheLost;1006548I am not sure that one needs to know any more about Glorantha to run a game there today than back in 1980.

I'm sure that unless one chooses to run Glorantha for some humorless, anal-retentive and pedantic scholars of all things Gloranthan there is no reason to need all the details that have ever been published. And who would ever choose to do that?