New Game and Gamers.

[Alibear]

Hello ya all, I'm looking for advice from you.

I'm going to run a Hero game for a Gaming Club for the 1st time. I have never been before and want to make a good impression.
Any advice you could give?

I've not even decided which genre.
I will design the characters whichever the genre.
I will keep things fairly simple for all characters.

Any other suggestions?

[mudpyr8]

1. Talk about the game etiquette you want to use. Agree no how disruptions should be handled, any out-of-character comments, and so on. Fundamentally, set everyone's expectations on how the game is to be conducted and what kind of behavior is acceptable.

2. Talk about character death. Especially for newbies to the system, explain how death works mechanically and then how it works dramatically. Will you be running a game that has a high PC body count, or are we talking about Star Wars?

3. Keep things simple at first if you are trying to teach the system. Run a few sessions with pregens and then stop the game and have everyone make characters. Make sure you set up the game to end after a couple sessions so new chars can be introduced and the campaign continued if that's what they want.

4. You will most likely not get everyone to agree on the genre. I suggest you present a couple of options you feel comfortable with. If they all want a game of courtly intrigue in 18th century France and that isn't your strong suit, there's no point in running it. Give them a choice among the genres you know best. You might even consider running an old campaign from one of your past GMing sessions.

5. If combat is going to be a big part of your game, run a combat session in detail, talking about every step. One thing I've done in the past is given my players 2 grunts each, split them into 2 teams and had them duke it out over interesting terrain. This gave them a chance to learn combat without risking a character, not to mention slug-fests can be fun.

[AnotherSkip]

At one point in mygaming career I had a new player show up every session (kept on adding) so while i built a character I instructed the others to "duke it out" basically have the characters do a one on one while I speed built the player a character. It made for a learning experience for the others while one person got one on one handling.

[JohnTaber]

Mudpyr8 got everything in his post. One follow on comment...

I really like his idea of running a game with pregens first. Give them an idea of how combat, skill resolution, and characters work. When you do get ready to make characters schedule an entire session just to make characters. That way you can answer camp questions and rules decisions for everyone at the same time. It also helps prevent having 2 characters be very similar... ;)

[shade]

Set aside plenty of time since making Hero characters take awhile.
Or
Use M&M instead.

[Alibear]

Well, it went very well. I pre-designed 25+25 characters for a WarhammerFRP game, being scared of goblins is fun.

I was short of gamers in my group as two had finished Uni. and got jobs "up north"(Berlin & Hamburg)

But after the session I found 3 more.

I might try it again next month, with another setting...Judge Dredd looks favourite.

[mudpyr8]

Excellent, glad to hear it.