Quote:
Originally Posted by Michael Lewis
Yeah, the rules are not the best organized. An short adventure would not be a bad idea.
Any suggestions?
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Effectively, what you need here is a convention demo game. Four or five hours, simple plot, just enough to teach the basic rules and give your players a feel for the setting.
My usual formula for such games has a briefing/introduction and three main scenes. Feel free to use or discard this as you see fit.
In the briefing, the PCs receive a mission. For a demo, make it easy and make them part of a larger unit, so this can be handed out by a commander. "Go reconnoiter our planned route and deal with any major problems" is always good.
In the first scene, the players engage in some preliminary investigation, which leads into the first of the session's two combat sequences. This should be a slow pitch - you don't want to outclass or kill the PCs, you want to use this as a low-threat learning experience so your players learn how the game mechanics work. (Example: the PCs encounter a patrol of local militia which initially acts friendly, then tries to backstab them.)
In the second scene, the players put together all the information they gathered in the first scene, do some more investigating based on that, identify the major obstacle facing them, and formulate a plan to deal with it. (Example: friendly villagers thank the PCs for taking out the militia patrol. The local militia is in the pay of a renegade Russian officer who rules this entire area with an iron fist. The local garrison is weak enough for the PCs' unit to take on, but an unrelated event has triggered a large-scale deployment. A large troop column is due to arrive in 18 hours, and it's more than enough to overwhelm the PCs' unit.)
In the third scene, the PCs go deal with the problem in decisive and violent fashion. This is the players' chance to come up with a cool tactical plan and to use whatever resources they managed to scrape together in the previous scenes. They also get to apply the lessons they've previously learned about how combat works in this game system. (Example: while the unit gets ready to move out, the PCs are tasked with taking out the local garrison to clear the path. How do they do it? Up to them.)
That help?
- C.