Wise Turtle Publishing

I've been running games for a few years, however I've only done it for close friends and such... Recently I was in a situation where I ran for 5 people. (It didn't go well but thats besides the point.) The people I usually run for are good at limiting their own characters, however two of the people in this gaming group were Power Players. I was using the ground Zero rule and every one pushed it as much as they could. (I admit I do this some what too, but only if it makes sense.) Now I'm really bad at telling people they can't have things in the game, for one thing I'm not used to dealing with it. I also feel guilty when I try to tell people how I think their character should be. Anyone else feel guilty when they have to do this? How do you deal with power gamers? How do you deal with running for more then 3 people?

I'm thinking about making a few house rules. No one can have emotionless 3, (people usually people don't RP this...) People can have emotionless 2 but they have to come up with a really good reason and I have to know that they can RP it. (Most people that are emotionless of 2 come out as stubborn, impulsive and pushy.) Emotionless of 1 is fine. Most people can't have life support above 1 unless they have a good reason. Peoples starting DT can't be above 4 most times. (unless they take a flaw like focus). Though the rule their DT can't be above 4 might be to limiting.

I know what you mean.

I usually ask people what they want their character to be like, what they want them to do. What makes their character stand out? And then I interactively work with them to make their character.

Now, that's tough to do with 5 people at the table. But I found that if I devote an entire session to just character creation and we go round-robin in making characters then everyone can be part of the game world creation too.

Ironically, I was just having this same discussion over on another board.

Whether running for friends or strangers, I use the same simple guidelines.

1) Decide upon a theme, mood, feel, atmosphere for your game. This can be done with or without the players' consensus, but have something definite in mind.

2) Communicate this idea to the players, making sure they fully understand what you're going for. And be prepared to assist each in character creation. Use one whole session to do so if need be.

3) Stick to your guns. Don't be afraid to say No, and don't be railroaded into allowing a concept that contradicts #1. Doing so almost always ends up in disaster.

I really haven't made up any actual houserules yet. I have setting rules, but they're basically an explanation on how the normal rules work within the genre I'm running. However, I do make some things very clear. It is too easy to create an anti-social character. I warn the players that negative behaviour will be met with negative reactions, and that usually means mistrust, unhelpfulness, and violence. My games can't be solved by combat alone, so they realize they can't go overboard on those types of weaknesses. I also don't believe in free points. Again I warn that I will play to their character's weaknesses. If someone takes an Unnatural Weakness or Rival, they will show up sometime in the game. That's a promise. Also, some weaknesses at level 3 are just unplayable for PC's. It makes their heroes too detached from reality or social dynamics and are best reserved for NPC's. Emotionless is possibly one of them. If you're unsure if a player can handle such an extreme weakness, either disallow it or penalize him with a lack of XP for not playing in-character. However, he deserves a couple of warnings before you take it to that extreme.

It has been said before, OVA is very easy to powergame. And I will go as far as mentioning that you may not want to include the known powergamers in your game. As a GM, you must enforce limitations, otherwise characters will spiral out of control. The Creating A Character chapter has a lot of helpful guidelines on limiting heroes, particularly the sections on Abilities, Power Ceiling, Point Scale, and Combat Effectiveness.

One last helpful hint: Using the guidelines above, plan a date when everyone can get together and create characters for your idea (#1). Tell them to think about a hero concept and jot down some backstory and adjectives supporting that character beforehand. Don't tell them to use the book, and it's probably better that they don't have the book at this point. Once you all get together, then you can look at their notes and select the traits that fit the hero. I found that this method is better than the usual "flip and pick" style that usually generates uber-min/maxed characters.

I hope this helps. And don't hesitate to post any questions you have about the rules on this forum. Nothing is stupid, and everyone is willing to assist.

Good luck.

I typically restrict my players to a certain type of character (primarily human) as well as a bunch of other story-based stuff, but if I ever do the book campaign, I'll throw out most of them except for these

-Ground Zero
-Characters must be "plausible" (klunky characters=bad anime)
-If you can't explain it, you can't have it. (aka The Immaculate Mastah Rule)

Those last two can probably solve a good deal of any power gaming issues, unless you have someone who's so freaking creative he can actually make all of it work.