Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dykstrav" data-source="post: 4455491" data-attributes="member: 40522">RIFTS: There are already alot of RIFTS posts, but what the hell... I tried playing RIFTS twice myself, and both times, the games fell flat. There were just too many character options and no coherence or direction to the plots, although I'm willing to concede that as most likely being the GM's fault rather than the game itself. I might try it again if the right GM ran it. Wraith: the Oblivion: This is actually a game I love dearly. I'm actually a bit pleased to see it discussed so much, even though many people haven't enjoyed it. I've never really had any problems explaining the setting or society of wraiths beyond laying out the cosmology a bit (although players do tend to get caught up in the Shadowlands/Temepst thing for some reason, but it rarely goes past the first session). With Wraith, my problem has always been getting players that can actually make characters. I don't mean in the "assign dots to your attributes and abilites" sense, but in the "what is so important to you that you can't pass on?" sense. In my experience, the players are generally enthusiastic about selecting their powers and figuring out a basic concept of who their character was in life and how they died. It gets hung up on passions and fetters. The players who are excited about their characters ("Cool! I can use Outrage to start fires in the living world!") fall flat when they have to describe why their characters have those powers and what they intend to do with them ("Uh... My guy was a pyromaniac, I guess."). I've found that players enjoy the game with a bit of coaching, especially in the area of character design. The Outrage guy that I reference above just wanted to start with Outrage 4 and be a classic poltergeist type of character, but the game requires a bit more development than that. So I walked him through his character concept, and we decided that he was a cop who was gunned down while on patrol and felt like the department didn't do enough to investigate. Now he haunts the run-down parts of the police department and parts of the bad neighborhood he used to patrol. His passions include discover who his murderer is (anger) 3, renew the investigation into his murder (determination) 3, keep the old neighborhood safe (pride) 2, and protect beat cops (pride) 2. His fetters include the bulletproof vest that failed him (4), his old badge (2), the police department building (2), and the photos of his wife who divorced him after he joined the force (2). Fun stuff. Sure, helping a player design a character might be construed as "railroading," but the player needed it and we both had a blast with the character. I particularly enjoyed playing his Shadow and its attempts to destroy the evidence he needed and ruin his old neighborhood. Wraith is a very character-driven game, and bluntly, players who sit on their hands if they aren't spoon-fed the plot won't enjoy it. Alot of the drama and satisfaction of the game relies on players selecting long-term and short-term goals for their characters and working towards them. Fighting against your own Shadow is really cool when done properly by a skilled storyteller, or it can be contrived and wooden when handled poorly. It really is a game where you have to actually design the characters and their backgrounds and have a skilled storyteller to pull it off.</blockquote>

Verification