From: mishae@niksula.hut.fi (Mikael Eriksson)
Newsgroups: rec.games.frp
Subject: AD&D - A few questions from a newbie
Date: 9 Apr 92 18:48:43 GMT
Distribution: rec.games.frp
Organization: Helsinki University of Technology, Finland


 Hello folks,

 I started playing AD&D with some friends a few months ago.
Unfortunately none of us has experience with this game, nor with any
roleplaying game at all...! We are sort of learning by doing, having a
great time, but naturally it tends to get a bit awkward once in a
while.

 I'm the DM, and believe me, it's not easy running a game you never
played before! So far I think I've managed fairly well, I'm no master
at it, but gaining experience all the time. The crew I'm playing with
prefers roleplaying and puzzle solving to the traditional
hack-and-slash, which suits me just fine, it's more fun for me that way.

 Now, there are a few practical questions that have come up during our
sessions. They can probably not be answered in a straightforward
manner, but a small discussion about the subject would be most
appreciated!

 First of all, I'd like to hear some advice on how to keep track of
the time during the game, when I should run the game in realtime, and
when it should be run in "slowmotion" or in "fastforward". So far I've
kept track of the group's movement every ten minutes, that is, assumed
that most of the basic movements and actions take ten minutes. When in
battle I use one minute as unit time measurement - works quite fine.
The problem is, when should I "demand" a realtime respones from the
players. Naturally this is needed while negotiating with an NPC, or
when something unsuspected is happening - a character is attacked by a
monster jumping out of the shadows, a net falls down on the group or
an avalanche rumbles down when the little dwarf sneezes... It doesn't
always seem to work, though, so some general advice would be nice.

 Slowmotion and fastforward is not always easy, either. Fastforward is
the natural way to referee when traveling, isn't it - "The party goes
round the world and back again, wow, you're all nine years older".
Slowmotion is fairly natural when fighting, there's a lot of
diceshooting and propability calculating, etc. But somehow I feel that
there's more to it than that - I just can't put my finger on it.

While on the subject of time I could ask you when I can allow my
character to interact, when can it be considered impossible? Of course
they can chat when walking down the old path to the wizard's castle,
but can they communicate while fighting? Can Keenslayer scream: "I
will poke out it's eye while you burn it's tail with a fireball", will
the rest of the crew hear it or will they be too occupied fighting?
Will the monster understand what the characters are saying, and get a
bonus on the save rolls? (This of course depends on the language the
monster is speaking).

 What about capturing characters? I remember reading somewhere that
the characters should explicitly state that they intend to capture,
and hit with the flat of the sword to accomplish this. This would
cause half the normal damage, and render the victim unconscious when
his hitpoints run out. This is the way I've done it, seems to be
working, but is there a better way?

Well, that's all for now, hopefully somebody can provide me with some
interesting information around these subjects. Thanks in advance and
happy gaming!
--


Cheers,

            Misha

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