Quote:
Originally Posted by mmartin798
Tell me about it. I had one player, who is the wife of one of my other players, who fit this very well. She rolled up a great character and every managed to have psionics. This is fine in my world since I have a place for it. She had a concept, but asked me to write the backstory. So I did and she still seemed lost and asking what she could do. It's frustrating. They are so wound up in their min/max vertical character class world that they are lost in a class-less system like MP. Even when you tell they you can try anything, you might just suck at it they seem lost.
|
I feel your pain, these sorts frustrate me no end
I've been using a concept I blatantly stole from a friend of mine who would run his games under the idea of "No restrictions, only consequences." So basically, do whatever you want to do but don't be surprised if you break the law and then the law comes hunting for you. Actions & consequences.
To this end, I've been telling players for some time, "You can do or try to do anything, as long as it's within reasonable grounds and if you do something bad, somebody is going to be angry about it. So yeah, plan a bank robbery, do the bank robbery but do NOT expect the gameworld to just sit back and let you get away with it".
Even with that explanation, I've had players ask what they can do. Now I fully expect that from people new to the hobby and even to some extent, players who are new to a specific game/rules system. But my jaw drops when I encounter people who have been gaming for a decade or so who say to me things like, "So I have all my skills marked on my character sheet and I've got all my equipment sorted out but what can I actually do with this character?"
Huh? You mean you have no idea of how to play this game? You have no idea what's involved in a role-playing game after gaming for 10 years or whatever amount of time you claimed?
I think this is only marginally worse than those experienced players who try to get some freebie bonus out of the GM for some task check by saying something along the lines of: -
"Can I try to force open the blocked door?"
WHAT!?
Of course you can 'try', I explained that already. You can try anything you could reasonably try in the real world. But stop trying to find out if you're going to succeed on the skill test before you even attempt it!
Those people annoy me quite a bit too!
Sorry Chalkline, didn't mean to go off on a rant
So anyway, an Australian version of the Morrow Project...
You wouldn't have so much worry about locating bolt-holes in out of the way places - with such a large continent but with such a small population you don't have to worry so much about people stumbling upon one of the Project's secret bases.
I've been to minesites out in the middle of nowhere where although the site has shutdown, they've left reasonable quantities of equipment behind because they know in a few years the industry will pickup and make the mine economical again. Very little incidence of theft in such places while shutdown because it's so far out of the way in a lot of cases.
You could even place a Project base on a sheep or cattle station without having to hide it too much. With those sorts of properties covering thousands of square kilometres in area and with people fully expecting them to be reasonable self-sufficient, it does not surprise people to see all manner of equipment & vehicles, sheds, fuel stores and so on in the location. Most of them even have an airstrip and may even have their own aircraft (and hangar - although I knew one farmer down south of Western Australia who kept his Cessna 172 in the tractor shed). And again, many of these stations are quite remote from the nearest towns.
I think the only issue that is likely to cause problems is getting sufficient Project personnel. With a population as small as Australia's (in comparison to almost any nation in the northern hemisphere), large numbers of people disappearing to join the Project might be noticed by some aspiring journo.
You could recruit people from other countries but that runs the risk of them wanting to return home to help fix their own nation.
I don't have any other ideas about this at the moment so I'll leave it at that.