Ultimate RPG Madness

[Jim North]

This has not been my experience at all. The more seasoned people I have played with read this stuff over constantly, especially me. If I am in a game, I obsess over stuff like what I am planning to do with my character or looking up strategies, of course, I have played for a while and am a total geek for this stuff.

The only people that I have come across that do that are people like me, who also GM, and they're fairly rare. Most of my non-GMing players have to be whacked over the head with the rulebook every once in a while just so they remember it exists. I have actually heard some of these people say, "Why should I have to learn all the rules? That's the GM's job."

My honest, ruthless opinion? Drop one of the players. Of course, that's good for you, but not necessarily good for them.

What are you talking about? if you are not the one being dropped, it is fantastic!

Oh ho, are we going to have a ruthlessness face-off? YESWEAREONETWOTHREEGOIWIN

I say that any more than 4 and it just gets stupid. 5 is pushing it.

My personal comfort zone is five, with six being the absolute limit.

[Decker]

I like four (Warrior, Mage, Rogue, Cleric) or five (Warrior, Mage, Rogue, Cleric, Bard...or whatever the equivalent is in the game you're playing). We kept adding players to one game I was in, and it just fell apart. Bad scene.

[Jim North]

five (Warrior, Mage, Rogue, Cleric, Bard...or whatever the equivalent is in the game you're playing).

This exactly. Someone to fight, someone to cast magic, someone to break their way in, someone to heal wounds, and someone for support. The list you just gave is my basic preferred for D&D. For Shadowrun, it's Samurai/Adept, Magician, Hacker, Rigger, and Techie/Medtech.

[Decker]

Well, those four or five are pretty much the golden standard for every single RPG in existence. The game is pretty much built around them, so I would assume it makes it much easier to DM for.

[Nolan]

Hey guys, Dark Heresy does not fuck around!

4/6 players came far to close to death during our first session last night. Within the first 5 minutes the dumbass assassin decides to practice combat with a ships combat servitor, he put a gouge in it's chest plate.....It then punched him in the head did critical damage and gave him a concussion. He lost about half his HP right then. Later on he was then dumb enough to go to sleep and failed two rolls to wake up....

One of the Tech Priests had his right arm blown off. He should have died, the description said he died from shock of his arm being obliterated (he also had no wounds left). Since it was the first session though the GM fudged that a bit.

We were fighting some scum, one of them hit the Scum on our side, and nearly killed him....the GM then rolled for the last scums attack (who to hit) and got S, TP, S, S, S, Adept. Then he proceeded to blast the Adept halfway to death.

I (a second tech priest) somehow never took damage, and the Cleric took 2 wounds which was lightly wounded. We are all going to die....

I did get a particularly awesome kill when I hit a guy square in the chest and he caught on fire which then cooked off his extra powerpacks and killed two other scum (one of which who had a obliterated arm and a broken on fire arm) and knocked the fourth flat. I recommend looking into Dark Heresy if anyone wants the exact opposite of 4E DnD.