How do you 'sell' the system you want to run to prospective players and friends, when the system is seemingly complicated or they haven't heard about it? I don't want to force the people I know into playing things like Shadowrun, Symbaroum or Degenesis, but I'd like to count on them to have a group to either try them out or actually play them once in a while.
Most of the time they just stick to the things they know, which is mostly D&D 3.5, Pathfinder and maybe Vampire - CoC in some rare instances. I was at least able to gather a group to play D&D 5e because it's not that popular against Pathfinder in my area, and we're having a good time, but I'd like to play things like Shadowrun or lesser known systems every once in a while. Moving from one edition of D&D to another isn't exactly progress.
With Shadowrun, my issue is that they look at it with the Pathfinder lens and it looks like a super overcomplicated mess compared to what they know, and the character creation confuses and scares them to the point that they don't even want to bother playing it.
I don't know what to do anymore.
Landon Lopez
"Hey faggots we're playing this" >link pirated pdf of game I want to run. "Alrighty then".
Jonathan Johnson
Pathfinder being less complicated than Shadowrun? Well ok. They both look like messes to me.
Alright you have a few options in my opinion you could either just run it and tell yoru players tough. Not so great as you could end up playing with yoruself.
You can use the selling points of the other systems, I mean you cant exacltly do cyberfantasy better than shadowrun.
three, find players more willing to try new things.
Dylan Turner
>[Shadowrun] character creation confuses and scares them to the point that they don't even want to bother playing it A friend of mine wanted to do Shadowrun, so we went to a restaurant for breakfast and character creation.
We ended up having to order lunch, as well.
Shadowrun is a hot mess design-wise, and not just because I wanted to try a Shaman, without anyone telling me all the extra shit that entails
>Race, class, stat assignment ok
>Creds and equipment Even with all the extra books of shit, that's par for the course
>Perks Okay
>Cybertech Unique to this system. Pretty complicated, but pretty important. Okay
>Spells Starting to try my patience
>Affinities I am so done at this point
>What languages do they speak? Fuck this
Keep in mind most knew what they wanted. Explaining it to people who had never played, but had an idea what they wanted still took 6 hours.
Hudson Carter
Chummer, you dumb cunt. I get characters out in under three minutes.
Nolan Wood
>I get characters out in under three minutes.
Because you probably spent a week reading the book in your own free time. Doing it from scratch (with no knowledge of the extra mechanics) is like baking bread from scratch
Elijah James
Chummer simplifies the creation process only if you know how chargen works and you want to do it faster. Some people have a hard time with it anyways because chargen is confusing, specially when Chummer doesn't even have descriptions and just names that you still have to look up. I shit out characters with chummer in minutes too, but that's because I have a thorough knowledge of how to build a character and what to get to build them. Giving Chummer to a new player is just as bad as sitting with them through the process with the book in hand.
I honestly never had an issue with SR's chargen. It's complicated to understand at first, but you get used to it. Can't say the same about people I've tried to play with. One of them got stuck at the priority table.
Adrian Foster
I played a fair bit of Returns and having a computer track all those numbers makes it infinitely easier to play.
Eli Morris
Returns's system is as much Shadowrun as Everyone is John is DnD. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the hell out of it, Dragonfall, and even HK, but the only thing Shadowrun about it is the name and the setting.
What kind of Shadowrun game doesn't allow you to fucking SNEAK?
Justin Harris
If you sell people on the concept and keep things moving briskly, they'll put up with clunky and weird systems. It's why generic systems haven't really caught on, anyone who cares that much about systems is a GM.
Justin Allen
Again, that takes fifteen minutes, and then bake time. Again, use Chummer, any idiot can.
Jacob Allen
>Again, that takes fifteen minutes, and then bake time Are you harvesting the wheat yourself?
>Again, use Chummer, any idiot can Even if Chummer as good as you say, the mechanics still had to be explained (ie what the fuck everything meant, like how Soul limited enhancements, or picking spells) and I doubt it would have turned a six-hour 'breakfast' into anything under two hours
Isaiah Thompson
Do I have to design a fucking game in order to play it what are you fucking stupid get the fuck out of here.
Jonathan Sanchez
You gotta have a group with an open mind. Unfortunately most Veeky Forums gamers are fairly conservative folks at the core. Not politically I mean, but in the sense that they DO NOT like change of any kind and any big changes makes them nervous or even angry if it happens as their reactionary impulses kick in rather then any interest in trying new things to see if they might enjoy them.
Austin Richardson
Shadowrun is confusing because its written by too many free lance writers who don't fully understand all of the rules and care about their specific topics. Its not a team effort where they talk about what they want its a CGL says "Ok Bobby you write the chapter about Cyberware and Jimmy you write the vehicles rules but could you also do the matrix rules for vehicles?"
Brandon Gonzalez
>How do you 'sell' the system you want to run Depends on the system, setting, group composition, current morale, last campaign, my own mood, their latest suggestions for new/next game...
>All the bullshit that follows Pic related
Mason Perry
The keywords are "acting like a grown-up". You talk with your players and you discuss best picks, rather than throwing hissfits and/or looking for excuses (like your "but they are brand loyalist conservatives" bullshit). And if it turns out your players genuinely don't want to play something, then, well, you don't run it.
Case the point, I want to run Twilight 2000 2.3e really bad. But from my 5 players, there is one with any sort of military experience and he's the one most against playing the game (precisely due to his background, since he doesn't want to baby-sit 4 people through it) and the rest understands how the game would end up like, so they also don't want to play it.
Brandon Cruz
>We are playing X for the next campaign >Here is the character sheet and here is the shorthand of rules you need to know or >We won't run Y, because it has issue a, b and c >Instead, I'd like to use Z, because reason l, m and n
This is literally GMing 101
Samuel Morgan
You played a shitty game and plan to run another shitty game. It should work out just fine.
Cameron Morgan
>the mechanics still had to be explained (ie what the fuck everything meant, like how Soul limited enhancements "You have 6 Essence points and enhancing your body with cyber or bioware costs Essence points and if you hit 0 Essence you're dead." Wow I can say that sentence out loud in five seconds.
Noah Turner
>Hey guys, let's try X
Matthew Richardson
There's something I really hate about how this artist/people of this style draw faces. THey make me annoyed.
