Making campaigns interesting... (My players stay out)

[cyberdon]

...when the players consist of true Atlanteons, Demigods n' such, combined with city rats.

I find it difficult to do, and it's slowly turning me off from running the game. Making things interesting can be tricky under such circumstances.

That said, how do you fellow GMs handle this?

[say652]

Seperate them. Also did you notice the more powerful the character the less useful skills they have. I mean who hasn't sat there and failed skill checks for hours. But to be fair don't let the tanks get bored.
In the Mechanoids book they talked about using sn elevator during a gun fight. Prime example. Skills&brawn working together. Or a cityrat seedy underworld thing. The boss(cityrat) doesn't get his hands dirty, the muscle does.

[cyberdon]

Yeah, I think separation may have to be the way to go. I do love Rifts, but finding challenges for some, while not wiping out the rest of the party seems difficult.

[say652]

Thatd why I love the sdc worlds so much. In HU just about everything has vulnerability shotgun. Lol

[say652]

Almost forgot nobody appreciates a body fixer until they are wounded. Nobody picks healing psionics until the first time the Borg carries five half dead pcs back to town.

[Alrik Vas]

The City Rats should be equipped to deal with tech issues. Include things like that. Maybe a security system has to be overcome, maybe some electronic surveillance. City Rats are good at scrounging up resources, finding places to lay low and making contacts by trading favors and skills with others. Make part of the game about that. Basically, provide challenges the others are tailored to handle that combat characters with tons of MDC and damage aren't necessarily ready to unravel.

Also, during combat, maybe the less capable characters should develop a plan so they can support the other guys easily. They shouldn't really be expecting to kill everything anyway, unless they got their hands on some serious hardware.

[random_username]

Just some general stuff that might help a GM form a basis for quantifying the party members clearly. Mainly the Intro and Part One stuff.

http://palladium-megaverse.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=129640


Also there are many mods and mod variations that could be applied to the weaker characters (if appropriate) to boost them up to a slightly higher innate power level (basic survivability + fun) : Azlum, Bio-Wizardry (super lenient transformation effects from an escaped Azlum affected Splugorth minion bio-wizard who only does benevolent bio-wizardy... who is hunted down and eliminated shortly after adjusting the one or more party members ... or whatever), a few Magic Tattoos, the Yakuza quasi-Tattoo (W8:Japan), Gene-Splicing, Lone Star (lesser gene-splicing see Psi-X and Lonestar), Psi-Cola/Variant Experiment, Psyscape Training (if psionic), Merc Training (Merc Adventures non-super folks only), experiment providing belated Super Abilities to Scholar/Adventurer OCCs, Animal Totems (Spirit West if of native ancestry), World Tree/Yggdrassil mod (C2 Pantheons), Sea-Inquisitor (Mod/Variant OCC), Warrior of Valhalla (C2 Norse)/equivalent (C2 Aztec War minions)/variant, and so forth.

However changing a player's character too much can be annoying to the player so limiting any effects to the bare essentials (or providing subtle limited time availability options) can be a good way to go. The low power character may bring out the innovation and tactics that lead to better things.

Finally if the player is happy with their underpowered character "as is" then allowing them to play as an ongoing uphill battle with low survivability chances is still viable (player preference). Sometimes players will make a throw-away type character if they lack any current inspiration for making a more interesting character.

[cyberdon]

K- thanks guys. Now I have some things to munch on.

[Vrykolas2k]

I never separate the group, nor do I unfairly screw over one type of character due to the way people decided to make characters.
Instead, I try to make sure everyone is having fun playing what they wanted to play; sometimes that takes a little work on my part, but it's worth it in the end.
So if you have a human city rat and a demi-god warlock in the same party, well, the city rat can get into places that the demi-god can't... like if you arrange for the group to have to deal inside a CS city, for instance.

[Alrik Vas]

Rappanui...let's not talk about other's people's suggestions, eh? be constructive, Vrykolas isn't even the OP, there's no need to call him out.

[Noon]

They all made their characters by themselves rather than as a group together, did they?

[Noon]

he just made an oxymoronic post..
that's a crime now to point it out?

Yeah. No critical thinking on the internet.

Blame Obama for that!

No, don't ask why he's to blame - that would be critical thinking!!1!

[Alrik Vas]

Wasn't my point. We're supposed to be constructive. People get all upity when you talk about them personally...you know...because they take it personal. I know, i know, shocked and amazed. Though Vy2k seems to have ignored the response, so in the end it isn't a big deal.

[Razzinold]

They all made their characters by themselves rather than as a group together, did they?

It's a game he runs on Skype, maybe they all couldn't agree on a time to get online together to make characters?

Is this something that groups always do when starting new campaigns?

My first group I played with for years we just picked whatever we wanted to play. After that some times we would try and cover all aspects (when I had a new group) to be prepared to fight/defend against magic, psionics and tech. I always thought it was a bit like cheating though, I mean what are the odds that a group of strangers gets together for an adventure and you just happen to have a mage, psychic, borg/juicer/pa pilot, skill guy ?

After awhile when I became GM (group consisted of original group members and new group members) and they all made their characters separately and just submitted them to me for approval and they did that for each campaign that I ran.

[Noon]

It makes people start to think of a cohesive theme for the group (if as a RL group they are somewhat cohesive).

What are the odds of strangers just deciding to form up anyway. "Hmm, I'm gunna go risk my life - I think I'll pick people at random to accompany me!"

[Razzinold]

It makes people start to think of a cohesive theme for the group (if as a RL group they are somewhat cohesive).

What are the odds of strangers just deciding to form up anyway. "Hmm, I'm gunna go risk my life - I think I'll pick people at random to accompany me!"

Not very good at all. However our GM always came up with a reason for us to be together if we were strangers. Nothing awe inspiring original mind you, just the typical: you all answered the same want ad, summoned by a higher being, fight broke out in a bar and you were forced to work together, being in the wrong place at the wrong time and now you are all wanted criminals so you work together to clear your name. I especially like the last one because technically we have to work together but there is always mistrust at first and some personal scheming so it makes for some good role playing. Although it can be difficult as well because I find some players can't separate the player from the person, so if your PC argues with their PC it can make for some RL tension as well.

The few times that we did get together and plan our characters in advance is when the GM said he was starting us off as an established team that had trained together.

[Alrik Vas]

I had the characters all grow up in the same city as children. They all went their separate ways in adulthood and then they met up later on, very auspiciously, so it kept them together.

I have also, in the past, used commonly known to the group NPC's to get them together. I've even had a PC's girlfriend make friends with all the PC's separatly (some people are just nice to everyone) and of course all the PC's got the "wrong idea" and it turned into this competition for the girl as they went on this adventure. That was pretty amusing.

[Razzinold]

One time our GM started the campaign by having us all in our own individual prison cells, tailored to restrain what ever powers each of us possessed, on a frakking airplane!

We managed to get out of the cells and out of the airplane [i]while[i] it was still in the air.
Luckily some of us had the power of flight. The problem is we all had partial memory loss. We didn't know who we were, or who each other was, but we knew we had powers.

So we stuck together because we heard partial conversation from the people on the plane of having captured us together.

We started getting glimpses here and there of fuzzy memory flashbacks. We end up making it to this storage/freight hauling warehouse which turns out to be a front for our real jobs. We managed to piece together that we ripped off Fabricators Inc. on our last job and now they were out to get us. It was a pretty cool Nightbane/HU crossover game. Turns out we had an awesome storage vault hidden under part of the floor that had our workshop/weapons and gadgets, also the middle of the floor opened up to reveal our own spaceship/jet combo (kind of like the one the Xmen had in the cartoon).

I thought the whole partial amnesia thing was a pretty cool reason for us to form a group, then it turned out we actually were a group

[Vrykolas2k]

your claim of never seperating the group .. and having the city rat go places where the demigod can not... is seperating the group.

Actually I mistook it for separating the people who want to play "powerful characters" from people who want to play "squishy characters" into different groups to play on different nights.
No reason to be a jerk.

[Alrik Vas]

Never is a bad word to use. Because it likely has in some situations.

[Noon]

your claim of never seperating the group .. and having the city rat go places where the demigod can not... is seperating the group.

Actually I mistook it for separating the people who want to play "powerful characters" from people who want to play "squishy characters" into different groups to play on different nights.
No reason to be a jerk.

I've had people cut in ahead of me on a que - but someone just saying something is incorrect, that isn't the same thing. The internet isn't there so we can just listen to people who already agree with us.

[Alrik Vas]

Difference of opinion is one thing...

[Vrykolas2k]

well that style of play never works out... the groups become out of sync

Right.
I've had GMs try it though, thinking it would work out like a novel...

[eliakon]

well that style of play never works out... the groups become out of sync

Its not impossible, just more difficult. It also requires a lot of extra work for the GM, and a lot of trust from the players. But I have seen it work before.