game advice for strange group
ronfig:
Objective: to find a quality rpg that could work within the following constraints:
player age range 13-18
45 minute sessions maximum
possible campaign play
players are anime fans, larpers, Magic the Gathering players
We meet once a week.
I want these kids to experience indie games at their best, but these constraints are stumping me.
lumpley:
It might be a trick to track down, but: Psi*Run.
45 minutes is tight, but doable. How many players at a time?
-Vincent
Eero Tuovinen:
Considering all the constraints, I'd have to go with 4th edition D&D. Just provide ready-made character chassises (no fluff, only the crunch) for the players to fluff up, and run one encounter per session; start each new session with a short monologue about what happened in the last session, what's going on now, and why you just go into a fight. You might even make a point of putting in a non-tactical choice of some sort before or especially after the day's session: like, the session was about how the characters beat a tribe of goblins, and at the end of the session you tell them how they found clues pointing towards both the evil human slavers from the hometown and the strange necromancer of the enchanted forest; which way will the party go when the necromancer was probably the ultimate cause of the town's massacre, but the slavers were clearly at proximate fault? Base your next session's content on the consequences of the choice the party makes. Prepare some new character chassises for each session for new players and be ready to narrate how the party met this strange bard or whatever since the last time who happens to have conjoining motivations because of X.
My reason for picking this game is that it has a good shot at enticing the sort of player demographic you describe with its mechanics and the subject matter. 45 minutes is also nigh perfect length for playing one combat encounter. The fact that you won't have time for plot or drama is something I find to be a strength of your situation for this game: 4th edition works best when you treat it as a colorful miniature skirmish game that expands somewhat clumsily towards roleplaying. What would be a weakness for any other game is almost certainly going to be a strength for this game, as you get to do extreme framing from high point to high point in your story, progressing it at an appealing pace even with the small amount of play time. Like, if you were doing Lord of the Rings (and LotR was a skirmish-based fantasy story), your first session could be a fight with some ringwraiths, then there's a Moria fight scene, then vs. Saruman, then Gondor, Shelob, some Mumakils and a finale against Sauron's hordes. All the intervening portions of the story would be touched upon as GM narration that would tie these skirmish encounters together. You understand what I'm getting at, I imagine - pacing is going to be a bitch to plan for when you're only playing 45 minutes per week.
3:16 is an inferior substitute for this plan, although it can match D&D in having a clear episodic structure and episodes that can be played through in 45 minutes. It's inferior mostly because you won't reliably find a creative accord within that demographic for the sort of thematic statements or even thematic commitment that the game requires to be interesting. D&D is much better in that it doesn't ask you to have an opinion on imperial warmongering. 4th edition D&D wins over other editions and variants in my estimation because it's practically built for hard-framed combat scenes that provide the actual meat of play. Other editions would have you spend your 45 minutes basically just setting up and exploring the encounter space.
greyorm:
True, but 4th Edition D&D isn't an indie game (which looks like a constraint -- "I want these kids to experience indie games at their best").
ronfig:
Quote from: lumpley on June 13, 2010, 10:39:07 AM
It might be a trick to track down, but: Psi*Run.
45 minutes is tight, but doable. How many players at a time?
-Vincent
I would like a game that could comfortably handle as many as possible...6-8-10.
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