The Play of the Game...

[Ieqo]

We all know that TMP isn't the right game for every player. Finding the right group can be a challenge--but a rewarding one once the group is found. The wrong group--or even the right group with the wrong expectations--can give you the kind of experiences that only years later can you look back upon and laugh.

Back in the 80s, I struggled to find the group that was right. It took some experimentation, exasperation, and more patience than I thought I had. As a public service to GMs beginning TMP for the first time, and the nostalgic nodding-of-the-head of the other grognards, I offer a list of pitfalls to watch for. From speaking to other TMP players of the same vintage, these are common enough to be considered almost universal.

1. YOU'RE NOT AUDIE MURPHY! Explain the purpose of the project until you're blue in the face. Tell them over and over what they'll be in a Recon team and what a Recon team does. Stress that the Project recruited normal folks. And yet if you give them a choice of their character backstory you'll still get something like, "Dissatisfied after ten years in SEAL Team Six, and another five years doing unspecified BlackOps dirty work for the CIA, Joe Schmuckberger was recruited by the Project." Sigh. Related to (and usually found in the same place as) this phenomenon is the Sniper. This is the guy who insists that the Project should issue a Barret, and furthermore having a sniper (the real-world employment and limitations of which you'll never convince him of) makes perfect sense. "Yes, I get that we're supposed to make peaceful contact with the indigs. You can stop repeating over and over that we're really only armed for self-defense. The ability to assassinate a target a half-mile away is completely consistent with both of those directives!"

2. GET THEM OUT OF THEIR DAMN HOLE! For whatever reason, given the typical wakeup (no radio contact, subtle clues that they slept way too long, etc), players will NOT leave their bolthole until you inform them that their air is going bad (now SOP for my games, by the way). They'll wail and gnash their teeth when you tell them that their bolthole isn't reusable and thus unsuitable for use as their secret underground lair.

3. HOARDERS IN THE TWENTY-SECOND CENTURY! Give them a mission, give them a radio contact...hell, put a burning orphanage right outside their bolthole and the first thing they will decide they must do is proceed to the nearest cache and open it up. A reenactment:
PLAYER: We go to the supply cache.
ME: Why? You're fully-supplied.
PLAYER: Do we know what's in it?
ME: You've got a general idea.
PLAYER: So what's in it?
ME: Supplies.
PLAYER: What kind of supplies?
ME: The kind that you are currently fully-loaded with, to the point of not being able to move around in your vehicles because you're so fully-supplied!
PLAYER: We need to see what is in there.
ME: Caches aren't resealable. Once you dig it up, it is exposed to the elements and anyone else can find it.
PLAYER: That's okay. We'll take the stuff with us.
ME: Were you listening about the whole 'vehicles are overloaded' thing?
PLAYER: Not our fault you didn't give us a reusable base.

Repeat for any remaining caches the team may have.

4. TRADE WITH LOCALS? YOU'RE KIDDING RIGHT? When your players complain that the Project doesn't issue enough ration packs, you're probably into this one.

5. ANY SURVIVING TECH BELONGS TO US! Doesn't matter if the locals are using that tractor engine as a water pump to supply their town. Or the old airport hangars have been pressed into service as an ad hoc refugee center. Get out. We might need it. For something.

There are a couple more that I've seen more than once, but these seem to be the Big Five that happen all the time. Are there any others that I (mercifully) have not encountered?