Oct. 19th, 2015

luckykaa: (d20)
I wanted to play a game of Spirit of the Tentacle. Unlike most role-players I've always preferred pulpy action over high fantasy. I also wanted to have some experience running an RPG. A bunch of friends were willing to suffer my novice GMing skills.

After struggling with coming up with my own plot I decided to pull one off the internet. It covered most of the elements I wanted. The only thing missing was a travel montage. But I am well aware that plot elements can be recycled. I also came up with some semi-genned characters. With some brief concept and background and a couple of sample aspects - character traits that can be tagged for a bonus or can be invoked to punish.

Players seemed happy with the chartacters and quickly threw in a bunch of their own aspects. So that was pretty good. Started in media res, with the players outside a speakeasy. I also learned the phrase "in media res". So spent too long planning. Things I learned - prod the players to settle on a plan. Also didn't have my papers organised. Next time I'll staple the plot docs together. Still, they came up with a plot. It lent itself to some potential action and subterfuge, and colour. So, plan settled, they went in, had a decent idea of what to do and got into a rumble pretty darn quickly, which is exactly what we expect from the setup, from roleplayers and from pulp adventures in general.

Action escalated quickly as a tentacle burst through the floor and attacked. Lots of fighting. The players managed to get hold of the McGuffin, and chase the tentacle back, and even rescue the safe. Was quite happy with how that first round went. A couple of players grabbed some of the money from the safe, so I figured the aspect of "pocket of dosh" might be fun. FATE doesn't seem to allow adding long term aspects like that but whatever - house rules say they do.

Act 2 caused problems. I need some knowledge dumping I was expecting the players to be proactive and go out and bust heads or hit the books. They instead investigated the McGuffin. That's fine and all but I had no idea how to prod them. It was getting late (not too late - we had more game time but a couple of people were tired), so we called time.

So things I've learned - am quite happy with the whole things happening and generally managing to let players do what they want to do without them hijacking the plot too much. People seemed to have fun and said they had fun, so that's the most important success. Worked out that I can avoid the tangents by interrupting and asking people what they want to do. Have learned not to worry too much about dice rolling. Do need to improve time keeping. Also need to prod players a lot more. That last one is tricky.
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