I recently decided that since I'm creating more RPG books, I need some new and current players to test out some of these new adventures and characters. So, I've asked for my church to support this endeavour as a new group. This means, they will help me advertise the group, provide space for us to play for free (if we want it), and generally support what we're doing. I got six people who were interested in the first 24 hours, and now I'm looking at whether I should run one group or two. Currently the number of players is floating around 7 which is a little big for one group but a little small for two.

Now, I think I'll lose a player or two because RPGs being what they are, some people might lose interest, personalities might not gel, and people change their minds. On the other hand, the church has committed to promote these new groups because they want to see them grow, and this includes adding them to bulletins, posters and adding videos on the web site about the different groups. So, its fair to think that new people might also join the group as we're discovered.

So... what I'm wondering is what you would do if you had a 2 minute video to promote an RPG group you wanted to start, and how you would explain what we do. I'm only an occasional public speaker so I'm interested to see if any of you have any pointers.

Thanks!

RAMBLE

Holy Crap, Majestic!

Way to pack in a full response to my question! I'll start at the top and break it into a few sections...

Was it brilliant? I hope so! I guess time will tell, but yes, from my perspective it really is a win-win for me (I get my newest books play tested), the players (who get to play the newest games and I'm adding their names and exploits into the book as a permanent record), my readers (who get better books) and the church (who gets to support another kind of fellowship and promote their ability to embrace different ideas).

So that's a win-win-win-win? Maybe I'm going to far, but the point is that this is an opportunity to support different groups by just trying something a little different...

<More Responses to come>

RAMBLE

Responding once more to Majestic, when he said:

"If I was going to do a 2-minute video, I'd keep it short and sweet and explain that there are many misconceptions about RPGs.  Of course, nowadays many people know what they are, even if they've mostly seen them in video games.  But for those not familiar, I'd explain that Monopoly is really close to an RPG, where each of the players is 'playing' a business person acquiring, trading, and mortgaging properties." 

RAMBLE - Good suggestions! I'll need a mini-script, I think, to keep the umms and ahhs to a minimum.

"I'd explain that they're (a) a ton of fun, that (b) you can come have fun whether you want to really ham it up (like a theater actor), but that it's also totally cool to just come hang out (that one won't be forced to 'act' if they don't want to), (c) the game will be an amazing way to meet and connect with other people (very similar to many 'small groups' that many churches have, and that (d) it's totally cool to just come watch and see what they're like."

RAMBLE - Again, these are all good points to make.

"I'd also take advantage of the popularity that the current rage of superhero movies have on our popular culture right now.  I might start out the video by saying something along the lines of "Have you ever wondered what it might be like to BE one of the Avengers?", or "or considered what it might be like to be a superhero like Batman or Wonder Woman?" and from there launch into a broad overview of your game."

RAMBLE - Yeah, between Comics, TV shows, movies and the marketing machines supporting these products... I'm guessing most people will be familiar.

"Best of luck with this!  I think you'll do well, and I hope it will grow into a very successful endeavor!"

Thanks Majestic! I'm getting alot of support, so yeah, I expect it will all come together.

RAMBLE

We are in the midst of building characters and beginning the campaign.

We have 6 players (one recently suffered a concussion and decided to bow out for the time being), so I'm just doing one group.

RAMBLE

Hmm... no LARPing... or at least not in my game. The lady in question was in an accident and has been recovering for a few months.



Once the players have truly settled on their characters, I'll do more of a formal introduction. I'm playing around with character generation a bit, so this part has really got my players to thinking about what they want and what they can live without. Also, since the mini-campaign is set in WWII, they are looking at history quite a bit.

RAMBLE

Entry in my church's 2016 Annual Report:

Playtest RPG Group

The Playtest Group was promoted in October, and began in November. We currently have six players – five adults and a teen. We meet at <Church> once or twice a month on Saturdays. We are play testing a recently published book of Villains and Vigilantes (V&V) adventures (Homefront) in order to help the team to gel as a group and get some experience with the playing V&V. The Game Master/Organizer is Darren Tenor and the current characters (players) are: Bolt Storm (Will), Chimera (Katharine), Cobalt Blue (Belinda), Paladin (Max), and two other players (Chris and Graham) who are still working on their code names. 

This group meets and plays roleplaying games (RPGs) where the player are typically the “stars” of the story, and the Game Master controls all the antagonists, supporting characters, weather, animals and other forces of nature. Games can be set in many genres like superheroes, fantasy, science fiction, mysteries, espionage, literary horror, cartoon/slapstick, etc. This group can also playtest new games and products being developed for publication (as a reward for play testing, players would be mentioned in the final published product and may be eligible for other awards). Players should be mature teens or adults with good imaginations and the ability to problem solve.

Editor’s Note:
Darren has published several gaming books for Fantasy Games Unlimited and is in the process of publishing a variety of other books for additional gaming companies.

RAMBLE

Episode 1: Six to Midnight
Date: April 4, 1941
Location: Calgary, Alberta, Canada

At the request of the mysterious group known only as The Company, six unique individuals gathered at a Mount Royal mansion to hear a request from a Company representative. The six were:

Bolt Storm - A Japanese / Cuban with mighty electrical powers.
Chimera - A mysterious martial artist and acrobatic with telekinetic powers 
Cobalt Fire - An Englishwoman who can cause her beautiful body to grow or shrink in size with a strange bionic energy weapon in her left eye.
Dusky - A New Zealander with a genius mind, mental powers and ability to bend space/time in order to fly and teleport.
Jack Pot - A chronic alcoholic and gambler who possesses magical dice that allow him to change the appearance of his body and some of his super powers every few days.
Paladin - A priest/soldier who came back from the battlefield only after he discovered that he had odd powers and mystic objects that made him an incredible marksman and gave him the ability to slip between worlds.

The people these heroes met were three local politicians and a representative of the Company. They are:

Alderman Henry Cartier - A gluttonous womanizer, Cartier is a power broker who always knows the right strings to pull and people to call. Dangerous but effective.

Alderman Conrad Eastman - A strange politician, Eastman seems to be more comfortable around facts and figures than flesh and blood. Despite this, he found the money to make this odd program possible.

Alderman Rudolph Strand - Somewhat new to the politics of Calgary, Strand has a strong backing from the public and local businesses. Forced to be the liaison between Calgary and The Company, he has more invested into the project than the other aldermen... and some have said it would be a shame to see him fall on his face.

Megan Montgomery- This intense and capable representative of The Company to The team and Calgary knows more secrets than you can shake a stick at... but the question remains - just who is this woman directing the team, and can she be trusted?

And why are they here? The aldermen of Calgary have hired The Company to manage and maintain a team of super humans to protect the City in the coming years.

RAMBLE

Agreed.  Some really cool and creative powers, too!

dsumner wrote on Mar 6^th, 2017 at 8:15am:


Hey Dom!

Glad you like the team. This is a playtest group after all, so I didn't discourage the players from going broad and bold  in terms of their look/feel. Also, four of five players had never played V&V before, so they aren't trying to relive the 80's or be a new version of the Crusaders, for example. The way we approached EVERYTHING was a bit different than what you would see from V&V, version 1 or 2.

RAMBLE

So is Strand somebody that will later have a city named after him in your campaign?  Or his descendants?

I found your comments (to Dom) interesting.  Despite V&V's origin in the 80s, I can't honestly recall any of my players (some of which were born after the 80s) ever going for that 80s feel.  And I'd be shocked if any of my players could even name one of the Crusaders.  Of course, that could be quite different with others.

Majestic wrote on Mar 10^th, 2017 at 2:59pm:


Well, Majestic... I'm not going to answer your first question yet. Let's just say... someone has a plan.

As for the 80's / Crusaders feel... what I'm trying to say is that these are really not your typical V&V characters or players... whatever that means. Many of the core rules that I grew up with have been altered a bit and so these players are literally experimenting with new ideas that I'm hoping to release upon the game. Dusky, Paladin, Chimera... probably can't be made using either of the two V&V rules books. And since the 3rd edition hasn't come out yet, it's not from those rules either.

RAMBLE

Episode 3: Into the Fire
Date: April 5, 1941
Location: Calgary, Alberta, Canada

After a good night sleep in the rooms provided to them at the Mansion, Chimera, Dusky, Jackpot, and Paladin gradually awoke and went about their usual routine. Enjoying a hearty breakfast, the operatives talked among themselves and discovered a bit more about each other. (Bolt Storm and Cobalt Fire had left the mansion an hour earlier to go shopping.)

These details include:

Chimera - Hasn't settled on a costume, which is part of the reason she keeps a low profile during their exploits.

Dusky - Is from New Zealand and has a background as an oceanographer, and takes his name from the dolphins he worked with.

Jackpot - Transformed from the tall negro they worked with yesterday into a slightly balding and overweight white man. He went on to say that he changes his appearance every time he changes powers.
- Jackpot is a bit of an alcoholic and a professional gambler.
- Jackpot has a criminal background, but the frequent transformations have given him a new freedom he enjoys.

Paladin - Noted that the stigmata that appears on his flesh when travels to his dimensional pocket isn't under his control, and he's possesses a protective symbiotic suit.

During the discussion... Dusky felt odd, and noticed that a dog was staring at him from where it sat in the yard of the mansion. The hound was white with dark black eyes and large paws. By the time he got the attention of the others, the dog was gone. When Paladin went outside to check for the dog, he saw not only that there were no tracks for the animal, but he also noticed that the glass windows of the mansion were darker than the April morning, which meant that the dog couldn't have seen Dusky through the window - he would only have seen a reflection of the yard it was in.

It was then that Megan Montgomery, The Company's liaison, arrived. While she gave her luggage to Spencer (the butler) and made brief introductions, she reported that she'd heard about the fight with Devastator-17 (it had made the front page of The Calgary Herald), and want to hear their version of their exploits. They told her, and showed her the strange pieces they'd recovered from the demolished robot. She committed to sending these items to The Company team that was working on other fragments from other Devastator robots that had been encountered. This was interrupted by a phone call - the police reported that a four alarm fire had broken out in the heart of downtown Calgary!   

Taking the limo with Miss Montgomery, they sped down the streets (Dusky thought he caught a glimpse of the same white dog staring at him on a street corner), as a slightly tipsy Jackpot distracted the others as he started testing out his new powers - snapping his fingers to create static electricity bursts... and were those gills on his neck?

Pulling up to the fire, the heroes tried to get fire fighting equipment, but they were immediately ordered back behind the security line by police and firefighters. Undeterred, they went down a side alley as Dusky took to the air, and he saw from above that the six storey building has the top four floors on fire, with thirty people scattered about the roof among fires and pillars of smoke, searching for a way out. Far below the ladder trucks were unable to reach the top, leaving these people in jeopardy.

Dusky created a portal from the alley to the roof. When Chimera, Paladin and Jackpot got onto the roof they tried herding people, but the people were terrified or injured, and wouldn't listen. Paladin began going to the wounded and bodily pulling them into his pocket dimension and safety. Jackpot used his strength to carry a few through a new portal that Dusky had made, while Chimera searched out the strays, and using her telekinesis to give people a move in the right direction.

Meanwhile, across the roof, but divided by smoke and flames, was Paragon, a local hero trusted by various Calgarians for his truth and defence of the law. He jumped onto the roof using his super-strength and ordered another group of frightened people towards the damage fire escape that he pulled free of the building and was using as a bridge to vault over the space while he carried them. Even his strength was no enough to make the jump cleanly, as he was forced to smash through a window one story below the opposite roof. CRASH!

As Paladin pulled ten people into his pocket dimension, the exhausted hero stumbled through Dusky's portal behind Jackpot, as the building groaned. Chimera reached out with her telekinesis and grabbed a woman who was fleeing in the wrong direction and threw her into the portal just as the entire roof collapsed. Chimera summoned her power and rose slowly into the sky even as the building collapsed below her in plumes of smoke and fire.

Paladin weakly pulled the people he'd saved from his pocket dimension, and deposited them in the alley, as the last woman pulled herself up from where she landed on Jackpot. While the heroes were dusting themselves off, thankful people from the roof pulled Paladin and Jackpot forward, in the midst of a new media scrum with Paragon, and together Jackpot, Paladin and Paragon shook hands, smiled for the camera, and were cheered by the people. Far above, Dusky and Chimera smiled. Everyone eventually made it to the limo, where Megan congratulated them, and they returned to the mansion in high spirits... only Chimera noticed a strange white hound watching as they sped down the street, but when she looked at it through the back window, it was gone.

RAMBLE

Thank you, Mr. Majestic!

Yeah, this episode was about introducing the hound, Paragon, Megan Montgomery and even the players themselves to one another and really getting them used to their powers and personalities. Also, the fire is the kind of enemy that doesn't take much for the players to invest in because they understand the risk and situation almost immediately. And since saving lives ought to be their bread and butter, it's an opportunity for me to help get into the spirit of helping people and being a force for good.

RAMBLE