Recent content by [OMENRPG]Ben

Most of my games are run with this kind of playerbase, so I'm quite familiar with it. The one thing I've encountered is to ensure that the characters either have a strong connection and loyalty to one another or to a specific cause. If that cause is something as selfish is "getting rich", it...

What are your thoughts regarding book organization for player actions? To clarify, in a single-book system (no separation between PHB or DMG) would you prefer a list of defined actions with their rules and terms spelled out in the Player section of the book or in the Game Master section? The...

You're getting the gist of it Heartofvalor , but I think you're missing out on some of the more typical uses. Generally a game system uses as few different dice mechanics as possible (there are exceptions) to help simplify things mathematically. As a system designer myself, I know that ideally...

That should be fine. If you have a decent quality camera, the player should be able to see adequately.

I tend to shy away from meta-game awards like this, but there is definitely a draw for accomplishing certain silly things. If you're doing some deep, political noir game, I say doing whatever you can to increase the fun is worth it. Since the dawn of shooters that have RPG elements (a la Call of...

I've done it both ways, Skyping/video conferencing in to an existing group and having a player skyped into my group. I've also done entirely skype games, as many of my company's employees are international. Does it work? Sure. Does it work really well? Not in my experience. The biggest...

I think trying to focus on all of the little details is distracting. I've sort of specialized in GMing city games over the years, playing in Sigil, a few home-brewed cities (from low to high fantasy) and quite a lot of sci-fi cities, including Coruscant (a planet-sized city) and some of my own...

If you don't care much for rules, what is stopping you from using real world fluff? If you want a very rules light game I recommend Dread.

I generally discuss with the group what they prefer. Do they want to know each other? Are they related or friendly? Are they colleagues or work in the same organization? If most everyone is along the lines of "lemme alone, I wanna be my own guy" then I let that go. But I will ask (read: insist)...

If there is an organized military, religion, kingdom, that the group belongs to, they can simply be hired based upon their reputation. This requires the perception of the campaign that level 1 PCs are already relatively prominent in local areas, or start higher than level 1. I typically prefer...

This is completely normal for retail. Did they have microphones and radios/ walky talkies? Probably not. If they didn't, they had little to no opportunity to give the "all clear" over the radio to the people working in different departments. If it was a slow day and they were somewhat...

Quickleaf that is also correct from my point of view, although really the only characters who should be "hitting" anything with skills are Jedi or computer users. As far as heavy weapons proficiency and everything for ship combat, I still allow the players to use teh weapons even if they don't...

Yeah I pretty much agree with Umbran if you're trying to keep the power creep down to a minimum. Era plus the class books is probably fine, as typically I've allowed talents from almost every book as long as it made sense for the character to have. Right, 35 not 30. But with force points, still...

Try to see what reasons the non-engaged player is completely uninterested. Maybe s/he is doing this as some sort of power play in the group dynamic because s/he doesn't like the character they created or the game that is being played. As a guy who has 50+ players chomping at the bit to run in...

I'm a long time Saga player and GM, and I've had a blast with it. Over the years, I've made a good chunk of house rules and on-the-fly decisions, and I think Saga is pretty forgiving for these types of things. I would get as many of the books as possible if only for the available Talents...