TMP for teens?

[gbmaz]

I have the great pleasure of running a center for teens where we have recently started Saturday afternoon RPG sessions. Several adults from the community, including the faculty sponsor for the high school tabletop gaming club, are helping run the sessions and GMing the games. So far they have started with Pathfinder, but seem open to other genres.

Have any of you had luck getting teens interested in TMP? Or does it seem not to resonate with the post Cold War generation?

I recently bought the 4th Edition book and have unearthed my nearly complete collection of TMP materials published through the early '90s.

[Matt W]

Never tried it with teens, but I did have some success with the 20-plus crowd. Just call it something like "100 years after Mad Max".

I do have a serious suggestion, though. If you're going to use the modules, you should make some extensive modifications. Most of them are very difficult to survive

[gbmaz]

Good thinking on the modules. A generation raised on a Call of Duty games is not prone to subtlety in a gun fight.

I am contemplating using the major themes of some of the modules, but moving to setting to the Rocky Mountains. Kids raised in the mountains of NM may have a hard time imagining the wood of the UP.

Being that they live in Los Alamos, the whole nuclear war thing is easy to talk about.

[ArmySGT.]

Good thinking on the modules. A generation raised on a Call of Duty games is not prone to subtlety in a gun fight.

I am contemplating using the major themes of some of the modules, but moving to setting to the Rocky Mountains. Kids raised in the mountains of NM may have a hard time imagining the wood of the UP.

Being that they live in Los Alamos, the whole nuclear war thing is easy to talk about.

The Starnaman Incident is easy to relocate.. Little about the setting forces the location. Lonestar is easy to gather.

Liberation at Riverton can be relocated to anywhere there is or was an active duty post or national guard station..... White Sands Missile Range is close for you.

Probably just sit down and game a few firefights before the actual gameplay starts....... knock off the rough edges.

[ArmySGT.]

There is a thread for each module and encounter group..... You are welcome to resurrect any thread you like. Bumping old threads is actually encouraged versus starting a new one. Gets the conversations going again.

Can be slow, so don't get frustrated that some haven't replied. Work, life, and stuff is happening too much for some to check posts here everyday.

[ArmySGT.]

Will THIS (http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/11/enough-shovels-go-to-around-ars-looks-back-at-the-lies-of-the-cold-war/?mbid=synd_moz_newspol1) help set the tone and evoke the setting?

[mmartin798]

Tie in a reference to Fallout 4, since it has cyrochambers and power armor, and you might get some traction.

[gbmaz]

Will THIS (http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/11/enough-shovels-go-to-around-ars-looks-back-at-the-lies-of-the-cold-war/?mbid=synd_moz_newspol1) help set the tone and evoke the setting?

I remember reading that "With enough shovels" book in high school. It definitely effected my becoming an anti-nuke activist in high school. We got our high school in the suburbs of NYC declared a "nuclear free zone" and marched for disarmament. The irony of having settled in the town where the atomic bomb was created and having a spouse who works on stockpile stewardship is not lost on me.

It is interesting having older friends who have retired from working at Los Alamos National Laboratory who have all sorts of crazy stories. A number of them worked on test shots in the Pacific and at the Nevada Test Site. Another was a manager on parts of the SDI program and helped lead the "dog and pony show" put on for Soviet scientists that convinced them that it was really ready to deploy. One of the demos broke the spirit of the Soviet scientist who had written a theoretical paper, but could never get the technology to work. LANL scientists then showed them a working version of what he had theorized and he cried. There are some really crazy stories.

If you want to get a different perspective on nuclear proliferation check out the book Nuclear Express by Danny Stillman (http://www.amazon.com/Nuclear-Express-Political-History-Proliferation/dp/076033904X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1449587098&sr=8-1&keywords=nuclear+express). Stillman worked for LANL on proliferation issues and did some amazing research. There are stories that give you a completely different view of the history of nuclear weapons. Like the section that talks about the French detonating one of their test shots in Algerian early so that the site was not overrun by rebels.

[gbmaz]

Tie in a reference to Fallout 4, since it has cyrochambers and power armor, and you might get some traction.

That is a really good idea. Thanks.

[gbmaz]

Pitched a Morrow Project game to one of the teens from the gaming group at my youth center. When I told him it was a post apocalyptic game from the '80's he asked which one. Turns out he had actually heard of TMP and was very excited about trying it out.

Then I talked with the teacher who has been GMing their Pathfinder campaign and he is someone who is not usually into non fantasy RPGs. But when I told him that they would be playing a Recon Team and that it would basically be a bunch of teachers, psych majors, and social workers with guns he said he was in.

I will let you all know how it goes later this winter.