Not sure how to handle inexperienced party

[Lighturtle]

We created characters and want to play tomorrow. I'm not sure how to make the game go well. We'll use that D&D boardgame for terrain and figurines.

The setting is very ill defined: at the moment it is Generic Fantasy With Orcs And Dwarves and Stuff, with the money being Shekels.

The system is good old "make it up as I go", using D6s and simplified stats.

Player A: middle aged woman. Very little experience, doesn't take the game seriously at all. Wanted to be an invisible fairy that talks to animals, the rest of the players and me managed to explain to her that it would overshadow everyone else.
Character: A peasant girl that found a mysterious obsidian wand with random effects (any good random effect table I could look up?). Also has a box of trained mice. Found she could gain super smell by picking her nose with the wand. Came to the local city to have it appraised by player's C character and find out what the hell it is.

Player B: middle aged man. Experienced but didn't play in a very long while. Said he was going to play a barbarian with a two hander because he "had to" to "balance the party". Player C and me eventually convinced him to play something he found fun instead.
Character: "Hobbit de cheval", some sort of half-hobbit half-centaur rogue. Sneak attacks, move silently (hairy hooves), and ability to dash fast and kick behind him. Came to the city to have player C help him get a more natural form. Poor as hell, considered monstruous. His character drawing is great.

Player C: young adult woman. The best player of the lot on imagination/cooperation.
Her character is Bastadinas, the Silver Streak, legendary adventurer whose name inspires dread to the entire countryside. Long silver hair, giant flaming sword, five belts, giant demon eye amulet, glowing hands that mend any wound... Will play One Winged Angel when other players meet him. Actually a weak illusionist conning country folks. His/her? special power is that anyone convinced by the illusions will react as if it was the real thing: someone cleaved by the giant flaming sword and not noticing the illusion will take several rounds until they realise they are not dead. Same for healing, has to convince allies their wounds are actually healed. If they notice, they take the damage back. Roleplaying bonuses or maluses to those checks. ****ty physical stats.

So on to my question. I wasn't sure on an adventure casual enough.
My intial thought was:
Player C character is found out by a local and blackmailed into saving the mayor's daughter from goblins. A and B tag along.
Daughter actually eloped with a goblin. Mayor is a demon cultist planning to sacrifice her to dark gods, Isaac style.
Improvise from there. Maybe plan defense of goblins from adventurers.

Does that seem adequate for those players? Any better ideas?
They seem utterly terrible at combat and I can't really think of a challenge weak enough.

[WbtE]

A and B tag along.

This won't do at all. Set the dice aside for the first session and talk to the players about how the characters came to be friends. It doesn't look like anybody really wants to go in for a hard-core gaming experience, so don't try to force it.

Your results from that session should give you some ideas about where to go with the campaign.

[Airk]

This won't do at all. Set the dice aside for the first session and talk to the players about how the characters came to be friends. It doesn't look like anybody really wants to go in for a hard-core gaming experience, so don't try to force it.

Your results from that session should give you some ideas about where to go with the campaign.

Agreed. You really should figure out some reason to for these people to hang out together, or things are going to crumble pretty fast.

Admittedly, I don't have any clever ideas for HOW to do that, since the characters are all so "WTF"?

[MonochromeTiger]

Agreed. You really should figure out some reason to for these people to hang out together, or things are going to crumble pretty fast.

Admittedly, I don't have any clever ideas for HOW to do that, since the characters are all so "WTF"?

normally I'm against a "you start in a prison" opening but here a psych ward seems believable enough.. box of trained rodents and super smelling? hyper-real illusionist? halfling/centaur hybrid (I'm fairly sure the halfling parent would break just making that possible...)? maybe switch systems to dungeonworld so they can make everything as crazy as they want without requiring a rulebook with every page open.

[banthesun]

This sounds like a ton of fun! I've had some ideas for how to tie the players together, so hopefully this helps! :smallsmile:

Perhaps it's B that finds out that C is a fraud. While C can disguise his monstrous form in town, B can force C into finding a proper way to fix his body.

Instead of having C found out by a villager and blackmailed into helping, the town pleads for the mighty hero to help them. To stop her/him refusing, two powerful heroes offer to join them, eager for the chance to fight under such an obviously experienced hero. These could be the two-hander barbarians B was talking about, but instead of "balancing the party" they're here to make C sweat. :smallwink:

And the answer to both their problems is A's wand. C recognises it as an artefact of immense power, something that could grant her/him true magical power. The only problem is that it seems to have attached itself to A in some way, always finding its way back to her if stolen, so C has to find a way to make this daft peasant girl master the wand (for C's gain, of course :smalltongue: )

From there, you have a team that's more focused on the interactions inside their group, that needs to actually avoid (most) combat, while constantly being dragged towards it. A sneaky horse-hobbit who needs the other two fix himself (but is probably the most competent member of the party), a fraudster who's bitten of more than they can chew and is now caught between a rock and a hard place, and a peasant girl who everyone needs the help of due to her uncontrollable power (which could be a great way to bail them out if you need to.

However you run it, it sounds like this could be a fun campaign. I might have gotten a bit carried away with my ideas, but hopefully there's something useful in there. I'd also second everyone else's advice of discussing the campaign with your group, but if you do think you're on a good thing, you can do this in smaller chunks, to introduce elements and check what your players enjoy.

Have fun! :smallbiggrin:

[WbtE]

Agreed. You really should figure out some reason to for these people to hang out together, or things are going to crumble pretty fast.

Admittedly, I don't have any clever ideas for HOW to do that, since the characters are all so "WTF"?

Sole survivors of a shipwreck. This should let C's secret come out in a way that helps A & B.

[Lighturtle]

The only problem is that it seems to have attached itself to A in some way, always finding its way back to her if stolen,

Oooh, good idea there.

[Yora]

For new GMs with new players, I always very much recommend starting things simple by just having them go to a dungeon, explore, fight monsters, and find treasures. The players will have their hands full enough with just that, without having to worry about investigations and keeping up with the names and backstories of lots of NPCs. Which is a significant reduction of work for the GM as well.
It's better to play a simple adventure reasonably well than having a great storyline that nobody is really able to follow.

[Lighturtle]

It was a pretty fun time.

They meet up. Player A completely refuses to come with the party and ignores her own background motivations. Had to try thrice to pull her back in the storyline, at the growing frustration of my fellow players.

Party is hired by a really shady mayor to rescue his daughter from goblins. Mayor actually plans to get A killed off to take her wand, and the goblins killed off to capture his daughter for dark rituals - and it would be best to have them kill each other. Player C is there to steal the wand, because it looks very powerful, with no intention of completing the mission. Player B is there to gain player's C favor. Player A is there because C duped her into thinking there is a sibling wand in the goblin caves she needs to have to master hers.

Player C keeps trying to convince A that the wand is an evil demonic artifact A needs to get rid off ASAP, by giving it to C. Meanwhile, the horse-hobbit notices a strange bird following them. C zaps it with the wand: vegetation, including the tree the bird was on, suddenly grows caltrops. The bird falls, wounded, and shifts into a black puddle.

Player C uses illusions to pretend to cleave it with her giant flaming sword, leaving a crater behind. In reality, she whacked it with her staff to no effect. She convinces the party to leave quickly, as "I sense more of them around."

A shifting demonic tentacle/wolfoid mass catches up to them (I used a tyranid model). A wand zap makes it grow bone armor plates, but the party manages to prevail anyway (partly with A growing humongous claws, and B sneak attacking at all time - this fight also served to establish C's illusions were useless against those). Unable to finish it off, they bury the puddle.

They reach the goblin caves and hide near the entrance. C can speak goblin - she hears guards discussing the human woman seeking asylum among them. All was not as it seems, etc. C disguises itself as a old man and tries to speak with the goblins about the evil mayor. They inform C that he is a demon cultist, asked to prove his fealty to his dark masters by sacrificing what was dearest to him. Her daughter overheard and fled, seeking the protection of her childhood fling, a goblin.

At this point more demonic creatures attack. They fend them off, with the help of the goblins. I established two things here:
- Fire hardens the creatures
- The wand could absorb them by contact, killing them forever
Player A was outright suicidal. Melting demonic creatures attacking her, their blood burning her (polymorphed) soft bear skin? Roll around in it. Funny moment as B is knocked cold by a sneak attack, then wakes up to see a raging bear trashing around, covered in black ooze. She survives by turning her back into bark then having intelligent ants clean it.

Then they make a plan with the goblins to ambush the mayor. Mayor comes to meeting point with two adventurers and a carriage behind him (the adventurers were two characters B discarded before settling on his). He convinced those adventurers C brainwashed the party and the goblin into being evil bandits. There was some pretty good diplomacy and arguing, and the players actually managed to roleplay-talk the NPCs into doubting the mayor, cut short when this (http://i.imgur.com/pe4BDHX.jpg) burst out of the carriage (the tail was missing and was used as the wand model all along!). It eats one of the NPC adventurers. The halflingtaur crept nearby while negociations were taking place and kills the mayor with a sneak attack.

It was a pretty hectic fight, as they tried to stop the creature with traps and illusions as it tried to reach the wand. Almost nothing they do faze it. They get it stuck in a pit, but it grows wings. B manages to damage them, it loses balance, etc.

Eventually they use fire, with the goblin archers lighting their arrows. They get a limb off, start damaging the others... The fight would be won at this point, except...

A tries to use her wand at the BBEG, it fails, almost tearing her arm away as the wand tries to jump into it. She then does that again at melee range. Despite other players yelling at her not to do it. (aim at the ground! the sky! anything else!) I DM it into a nearby goblin kicking the wand away, but she gets rammed by the evil creature and is dying. Her agonising body starts fusing with the evil boss. It's weak against fire, there is a burning rope on the ground... but no, she dives inside, hoping to control it. I saved her about a dozen times but there, no, because come on.

Halfataur sets himself on fire and dashes around the trashing incomplete demon god, trying to tie it with a burning rope. With the help of the goblins, he manages to immobilize the evil boss, and they keep slashing at is with white-hot spears, paralysing it completely. C is almost all out of illusions but tactically ordering the goblins around. She has enough juice for one last spell: she convinces the halfling he is not actually on fire, temporarily saving him from the damage. She dunks their water reserve on him, pretending it is "holy water" to "cleanse the corruption", saving him. She explains the steam as corruption leaving his body.

The mayor's daughter rewards them, the goblins promise to watch over the petrified god, and the session ended there!

The interesting part is that usually I tried to keep the party challenged: but there I was actively fighting for their survival (due to the actions of A).