BESM

[kingandy]

Oh, last night I ran my first BESM session! (Not ever - I did another game a few years back. I don't like to guess when, I think icklejo and arwel were living in Didsbury at the time.)

I think it went quite well - people were having fun, decapitating guards and breaking vaults - though I need to have more of a look at the rules. This week was mostly intended as an introduction, so was very fast and loose, but I'm not completely comfortable yet and things did grind to a halt once or twice.

I also think I'm not great at pacing - I'll decide where things are going, and rather than prevaricate and throw obstacles or complications into the mix, it'll just happen. Which makes for speedier plot progression but also makes things seem simplistic. I tried to pad things a little early on, but I think it just came off as a bit 'yeah sure whatever' because I'm rubbish.

Also was vaguely concerned about party balance. Sean, the hacker with a Mind as high as it goes with skill points on top, was basically able to do anything to any electronic object without trying. Meanwhile Nev, as the medic, didn't really have much to do. Also she was very breakable (though I am going to allow some rejigging of stats to reflect the new understanding of the rules).

Still, Russ's neatly typed background dovetails neatly into my plot, and I may think about rewarding backgrounds with character points or something. Once I've worked out what my advancement process is going to be...

Comments

[jfs.livejournal.com]

I think one of the things that any good GM can (and in a lot of cases should) do is point out to people that while some aspect of character generation is possible, it's not necessarily a good thing _for_the_game_as_a_whole_.

And sometimes to say "I'm sorry - your character distorts the game. Generate another one or lower the skill."

You end up with the ground zero effect otherwise. The encounter that you have to throw to challenge the uber-character is at such a level that it would wipe out the rest of the party. That's usually much more of an issue if you get a combat-monster, but it can happen with any skillset really. Mainly because if you've got the God of Hacking on your team, what's the point in anyone else putting points into that skill? So when he isn't there / is unconsious / is opening another lock somewhere else, the rest of the team are screwed.

[kingandy]

Oh, I did make a conscious decision to allow such high attributes, partly because I was interested in how the game would hold together, partly to see if I could successfully counterbalance the game, but also because I thought it was funny. I'm going for ridiculously-over-the-top anime space opera here. Planets may explode. From punching.

Also, in fact, because of the second point - when the party inevitably splits I will throw combat encounters at the hacker and present the combat squad with a logic puzzle.

[mrssshhh.livejournal.com]

I think it's possibly that I just loathe min-maxing, in all of it's forms.

As I said previously, I feel it ruins a game for the people who choose not to min-max. A GM is forced to increase difficulties of skill situations, so that the min-maxed people won't automatically succeed, but in doing so, they also ensure that the people who didn't min-max are essentially doomed to fail.