First time GM'n looking for tips and feed back.

[Kaughnor]

I've been on a mad binge last few months buying up old rifts books I used to have back in high-school. I plan on running an adventure with my dnd group. None of them have played rifts before and I want to make thier first experience a good one. I woukd love some feed back please on some campaign ideas.

First one was going to take place in Northern Manitoba, Canada (we all live in Northern alberta so a post apocalyptic Canada setting would be cool I think). The Idea was to base the group out of Hudson Wheigh from worldbook Canada. The location seems to have a lot of potential... xictic to the south, a demon pit somewhere to the north and west and free quebec to the east. The city seems developed enough to justify all sorts of occ's at a lower power level (ie no gods or big robots). The first major quest I plan to put the players on would be to take down a demon bear.

The second idea was to to start the group out on the first session with a pre-made Coalition squad. Teach everyone the rules of combat by running them through the basics and hopefully have them get attached to the characters a little bit. Then have them make there own characters once they had a grasp on the rules. My plan is to turn whatever characters my players ran into the main bad guys going forward with out letting them know. I really like this idea but it takes me away from Northern Manitoba.

Finally, am I reaching for the stars? I don't have much experience DM'n and perhaps I should focus on a pre made adventure like Archie 3 from sourceboon one.

I would love some guidance on my ideas above and some tips for a first time GM.

Thanks ahead of time.

[Grazzik]

Some good advice on this thread.

Some advice for a new GM re combat

Even more advice from an older post

But specific to the adventure you are laying out, here are some initial thoughts, take them or leave them...

• Packaged adventures are a good way to keep the homework light for you on the first outing. You could adapt some of the lower power adventures from BTS Boxed Nightmares for a Rifts setting if the SB1 adventure doesn't tickle your players' fancy. But I actually really recommend Boot Camp! in Rifts Mercenary Adventures - I've used this many times to ramp up new PCs and it runs the players through skills, activities, bonuses, gear and character development. The writers hit it out of the park with that one.
• Perhaps use territory you know, Edmonton, Fort Mac, Grand Prairie, etc. whatever northern Alberta is for your play group - it may be easier to visualize the area the PCs find themselves in. Whatever their backstory, they could be found by Tundra Rangers and escorted to HW and the journey could be that intro adventure. Lots of different terrain to cross and you can buff the group with experienced NPCs to give them a boost if things get hairy.
• Coalition squads take a bit of mind bending for new players as it comes with a ton of canon baggage. 'Nuff said on that as many have differing views. A ragtag merc or adventurer group is easier to allow players to try out different types of PCs and toss them fast if they realize they don't like being a mage or find a Borg too one dimensional. The PC could be "written out of the script" and have PCs come and go as players get a feel for what they really want to play while keeping to the plot for others.
• If you do have Coalition elements, probably make sure the setting is close to CS borderlands, they really aren't crawling all over the wilderness. Easier just to set up bandits or a lone monster (like the demon bear you mentioned) as the first challenge. The thing with the demon bear is there isn't much material reward and bandits could be used as loot pinadas to return supplies to the team as they consume them, especially if in wilder areas.
• Understand what kind of game your players want, not what you want to give them. This is why session 0 is really important. You also want to make sure they start off with good roleplaying habits. Rifts is well known for bringing out the inner munchkin in all of us.

Hope this helps.

[Kaughnor]

Dude thank you for your feedback. I'm kinda surprised you know my home town so well. We're in Edmonton but you named real northern communities lol.

Been reading through the threads you linked. Great info there. The mercenaries adventure book looks perfect for what I need. Going to adjust to use it to introduce everyone.

Also I agree to keep it more local. I'm going to have them all role Tundra Ranger recruits up in Fort Smith using the expanded list of occs wb Canada.

I've been working on an adventure in Northern Canada so I'll stick to continuing that. I kind of picture it as a tale of three acts.

Part one getting there feet under them helping out small threats to local communities getting a name for themselves.

Part two I want to put them up against one of the xitix hives as part of a bigger tundra rangers force

Part three the demon pit mentioned up in Northern Canada.

I would like hudson wheigh to be a focus too but that can wait for act two. I want to tie the growth of the group to the emergence of that town into a bigger player in north America.

Quebec will be the source of my coalition baddies. Have thoughts of weaving them into a larger picture and perhaps a bit of a redemption arc move away from the way they are characterized currently in the books. They will be needed to deal with demon pit i suspect

Dude ty again. I really like that boot camp idea. Going to flesh out my campaign some more then will post again for more feed back.

[Warshield73]

Here is some advice I posted in the Megaversal ambassadors forum.

Wow, that is a big group. The largest I've ever run at a con was I think 14 and the largest long term group was one with 12 or 13 but I don't think any more than 8 or 9 showed up for most games. A few things I have done with groups of all size that might help.

Name Plates. Take a piece of paper fold it into thirds so it sets as a tent on the table. Listed on this I put the following from left to right and written in different color sharpie:
- Letter designation for the character A - whatever. I really only use this when I have large groups, 8 or more, but it is a nice shorthand for keeping track of characters. I have used initials of either player names or OCC's like "JS" for John Shepard or "LW" for Ley-Line Walker but a simple letter really is easiest and I assign the letter after players sit so A is at my left and go around the table to G or H or whatever the last letter is.
- Character name, nice and big with OCC written under it.
- At the far right I have two numbers, on top is the number of attacks and underneath that is the bonus to initiative.

Initiative counter. This is a small piece of scratch paper (1X3 2 3X3) the only requirement is that all pieces are the exact same size. Each piece has all the information listed for the name plates. In small groups I simply use these behind my GM screen and as the players tell me their initiative I put them in order so that as I go through combat I just pull the next paper and call for their action.

When I am running large groups the players keep the counter and hand me the paper as I call out initiatives. So I say "any above 20" and players with 21 or up hand them to me in order and then I countdown "20", "19", etc. and players hand them to me when I get to their initiative roll.

Now this allows for time savings as well. For every NPC that the players might run into I create two things. One is a 1/4 sheet stat sheet so it has basic MDC, bonuses and weapons whatever I need in combat. The other is the initiative counter with everything that I have for the PCs but it also has four pre-rolled initiative rolls. Most combat runs less than two rounds so four is enough but I take them in order as rolled with bonuses already added in. This way the layers are not waiting for me to roll for all the bad guys.

I also suggest you look at some of the discussions on character creation in this forum. Character creation in RIfts can be really challenging and some potential players just give up on it completely so have a plan in place.

Good luck

[Grazzik]

Character creation in RIfts can be really challenging and some potential players just give up on it completely so have a plan in place.

Wise words. Some players like the chunky char gen, others don't. Knowing your players and how they want to experience char gen is very important.