Last Chance Troubleshooter's Guide
"Wahhh! My Gaming Group Won't Play Fair...."
by Dennis Glover with additional material from Fred Hyacinthe.
Out of the darkness of our minds we bring forth the horrors that cannot be named in regular daylight. Beasts so horrible that to set eyes upon them renders you insane and the furthest depths of human, and in-human, evil. From the humble beginnings of one gray covered book, we have spawned terrors that probably belay some deep-seated emotional need or mental trauma, not to mention that we like hitting shit with big swords and huge guns. This is the basis of the GM/Gamer relationship. Since there isn't as many GM's that can just rip out killer story lines at the drop of a hat, and those of us that can get sick of never getting to play. Most groups shuffle the responsibility. My group has a rotation that would make the Mets pitching staff green-eyed jealous, shifting the weight after every campaign. If you keep the same characters (alive), and the campaign going, it takes a lot of the pressure off of the GM. The group is already assembled, they have most likely have a great deal of back story already in place, and you'd only need the most basic idea for a game to take it from there.
I received a letter from a cat named Chris a while ago. He was using a set up like I just described, and he was still having problems. Now I'm going to take his situation step by step, refining the process, and hopefully solve some of his problems too.
Problem #1- "I have a problem with my role play group. Well sometimes I am the GM and other times my friends are. Well, when we play my friends turn to be the GM, the story has no plot to it at all. All he had ready was pre-made Coalition Troops ((from the Rule Book )) and towns that he thought up of off the top of his head"
What he's asking is, "What if someone isn't pulling his or her weight?" That's the biggest problem with this type of arrangement. It's only as strong as the weakest link. What Chris needs to do is one of 3 things. First is try and help the guy out. There is nothing wrong with using the "Pre-Fab" NPC's and what not that are provided for you in the miriade of source material Palladium provides. I personally favor doing the legwork for NPC's but you have to do that when you KNOW your player group would mop the floor with their worthless hides. If you have an NPC that you never got to use, haven't decided to use, or even a character you made up to use when you PLAY, give it to the struggling GM. Hell, there are entire GAMES written into half of the books, USE ONE! Two months ago, this very space was occupied by a ready made game with NPCs and everything. Everything we use is "Pre-made", just by different people.
Second (or maybe this should have been first) is find out why he's falling behind. It could be he's nervous about the responsibility. I know, it's stupid, but there is a little stress involved with BEING the entertainment for your friends. Maybe he's just not inventive, creative, quick thinking, or any damn good at it. Some folks just can't hack it behind the dice. Maybe they'll get better or maybe they won't. It's up to you to decide how long you want to give them to come up to speed. But support them, help out if you can, and maybe they'll get better. Suffer through the droughts and you might get rewarded with one bad-ass GM that can crank out killer campaigns.
Worst case scenario is the last one. They might just hate doing it and tank at it until you give up. I've seen it happen. It isn't pretty and it might break up your group. It's up to you how you want to deal with this. If you can suffer through his turns as GM (people that hate doing it, don't do long campaigns because they don't want to suffer through their GM'ing any longer than you do), do it. If you can't take one more second of piss poor, half-assed gaming, boot him from the group (impossible to do in an already small group) or just take him out of the rotation. It may seem like giving in (it is, you did, deal with it) but then they don't have to GM and you don't have to sit through it.
Problem #2- "He wanted us to go find and kill an army of Coalition troops who where protecting this city. Well then when we did go to kill them, he killed all our characters. He also gave us no chance to find any allies or such…"
Oh-no! Attack of the "Killer" GM. This is a big enough problem that it should probably be an entire article on it's own (It will be). I'll just stick to quick fixes here though. I've got no problem with characters dying in combat. It's the nature of combat. One side wins, and one side loses. Don't get mad when your unbeaten streak of 999999999992 comes to a halt when you finally work up the cahones to take on a division of SAMAS with your 35th level City Rat. Can't win them all. But if you are led into a death trap with no warning and no chance of finding relief, escape, support, or divine intervention there is a problem. The most basic solution for this is to make badder bad-asses. If your players keep dying, make players that are harder to kill. If he (or she) still gets killed, address the problem. I don't mean leap across the card table in your mothers basement/garage/attic/etc. and throttle the offender (I actually do, but I'll tell it anyway), I mean ask him why he keeps killing off characters. Listen to his answer, he might have a valid reason. Note the quote said "…when we went to kill them…" not when we went to poison them, or orchestrate a plot to get them killed by friendly fire, or lead them into a dragon's lair. If YOU are actually to blame for getting multiple characters killed…shut up. Know your role, shut your mouth, and sit back down and figure out why your 3rd level Vagabond couldn't swindle Mjolnir away from Thor (or why he got pissed when you grabbed it and ran).
If the problem persists, read answer 3 to problem 1.
Problem #3- "When I am GM'ing, my group kills every thing in sight, thus ruining my game that I had planned for them..."
The same rules apply to when your NPC's are getting squashed as when your characters are getting trounced. If your NPC's keep dying, make them harder to kill. Now one of the things I pride myself in as a GM is the ability to make absolutely RUTHLESS NPC's that cannot be killed by your average player. If you don't believe me take a look at the NPC section of the page. I'd be willing to put them up against any player or group. I'm only going to give one answer here because one of the later problems (man this brother has problems) covers this one too. This is what government in the 80's was all about, an arms race. Find killer solutions to killer players. Keep an eye out for Mongrel or Violence (Now at an NPC page near you) if you really want to screw up a player.
The "Purple Haze" himself had this to offer. "Try mixing it up. If your players use mostly technology based characters, hit them with magic or psionics. If they are all mages, hit them with technology or Heroes unlimited type characters."
Also there is always the tried and true tactic of HEADHUNTING. This means make up NPC's for the specific purpose of taking down SPECIFIC characters. All of us here at L.C.S. have been doing it for years, and guess what. IT WORKS!
Problem #4- "Do you know of any way to tone down the game"
This is the one place where all the power lies with you, the GM. If your players kill every living thing in sight, take away their victims. Run a campaign where they have to enter a technological playground (read: Maze), populated by automatons where they have to escape. Give them problems that they have to solve WITHOUT killing. Best would be a problem that would cost them their lives (i.e. diffusing a REALLY big bomb). You could also give rewards for every person they DON'T kill (i.e. Avoiding unnecessary violence points). It is also in your power to punish characters that get out of line. You could go back to that thing about jumping across the table and choking the shite out of them, or you could do what I did. A particularly violent player was sitting in his favorite tavern on Phaseworld's Level 4, and a meager little man in a suit visited him. Said meager little man proceeded to hand him a paper, actually SERVE him with papers. It seems that one of the relatives of one ofhis victims was suing him for 385 billion credits. Due to the civil laws of Phaseworld, he was ordered (by 2 2nd stage Prometheans) to appear in court and make his case. He lost, he was stripped of his belongings to help pay for the settlement (a mere 100 billion), and had to take a job as a street sweeper on the Splugorth level to pay it off. If that doesn't work, go buy a pair and try again.
Well Chris, I hope I solved your problem, and the problems of some others. If you have a problem/question/comment, feel free to drop us a line. Everyone gets answered. Good luck, good gaming, and watch your back.
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