Hey, I'm attempting to GM a game with a group of my friends. I've never GMed before and only one of them has ever played a tabletop roleplaying game before.
For an absolute beginner working with mostly beginners, what system should I use? I was thinking about going for GURPs but I'm still not sure.
As for my game itself. It is set in the Fallout Universe (the popular video game series), except I'm deviating from the established lore and am setting my roleplay in china. The premise is that the Chinese also survived the nuclear war and had vaults of their own .
And here's a simple backdrop I wrote for the players.
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On October 23rd, 2077 the world ended. The People’s Republic of China and the United States of America launched their nuclear arsenal at one another, destroying human civilization within the course of a few days. After the apocalypse, vaults and bunkers across China began to open and people found a transformed world. A world where life dies and death lives, and radiation breeds perverse, monstrous things.
The largest vault of them all opened, its monstrous metallic door screeching open exactly one hundred years after the bombs first fell. The vault belonged to the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, who sealed two companies, all up consisting of 500 men and women, away under orders from the Chinese government. When they re-emerged, they discovered a changed world. Civilization seemed to have reverted thousands of years, with past technology either entirely forgotten or held as mythical objects gifted from the heavens. Mutated beasts and bandits traverse the wastes ready to prey on any unlucky traveller. Warlords assemble and march armies across the irradiated plains, competing for the little there is to have in this destroyed world. The historical teachings of Mao had been swept from the world, bringing back a China that more resembles its ancient, classical form.
With their superior technology, the People’s Liberation Army quickly and easily descended from the Inner Mongolian Mountains and carved out a functioning state around Langzou. The conquest took less than a year, but after that their weapons and supplies begun to deplete and degrade. From then on conquest slowed, and within a few years stopped entirely. Now the newly formed Communist State finds itself surrounded on all sides by warlords, bandits, mutants and monsters.
Don't do any of that.
Get a few pre built modules and run/play those. Probably shadowrun or d20 modern for the type of world you want.
Desperate to find an escape from the undesirable position the state currently sits in, the People’s Army sends out scouts to traverse the wastes in search of pre-war technology. A particular scouting party is sent to traverse to the ruins of Beijing and find the government’s bomb shelter that is believed to lie underneath The Great Hall of the People. There’s likely to be documents there that could help locate armaments, or possible information to where the governing body of the communist party would re-establish itself in the course of war (if anywhere).
This is where you all come in. With your bags packed and weapons ready, you set out from Langzou for Beijing. Which way you decide to go is entirely up to you.
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>>47620949
Needs a "War, war never changes
line.
I would go for Into The Odd myself, the system is dead simple, combat is fast paced, and you can get into the action in about five minutes with a minimum of fussing, plus it encourages crazy shinanigans, whats not to love?
>>47620923
Pick the simplest system you can find, I'm not kidding, go with a rules light or even 2 page rule set.
The advantage role-playing games have over boardgames (of which there are an endless variety that are really good) is that you get to use your imagination a lot, and that you get to live the life of a person in a setting of your choosing.
None of that really hinges on having a really long list of abilities or super detailed rules, in fact, those tend to get in the way a lot, especially when you're new and don't know what options there are when it comes to rule sets etc. Before you know what you need the rules for, play with the least amount of rules you can.
So many people try to get a group running, then someone recommends Dungeons and Dragons or some dense, detailed sci-fi system, and before you know it everything has gone to shit because people got bored before they even learned to make characters.
Keep it simple
Ask the players what they want
Tell the players what you want
Discuss your different expectations or high-five each other for being on the same page
Start playing.
DON'T sit down and read through thick rulebooks together and distract everyone because they start trying to figure out how to game the system.
If the mechanics or combat are the MOST important thing for you in a role-playing game, you're really just a board gamer or videogamer who is using the wrong kind of game.
>>47620952
>shadowrun or d20 modern
>for a beginning GM
No.
>>47621303
>Anon, teach me about sex, I am yours!
Okay, I figure first of we should try anal fisting before we do anything advanced...
A lot of D20 players use stuff like D&D as the baseline, and compared to that, almost everything is streamlined and rules light, even if it's twice as big as it needs to be.
>>47621435
>almost everything is streamlined and rules light
Shadowrun is not.
>>47620923
For the system, don't use:
>anything d20
>Shadowrun
>GURPS
And I say this as an unrepentant GURPSfag. GURPS is a great system, especially for the type of game you want to play, but it takes a while to wrap your head around it. If it's your first time GMing, you should use either a system that has simple rules or one you already know inside and out. Given you've got total newbie player, you probably want to pick an easy-to-learn system so they can focus more on the entire experience than learning rule minutiae.
>>47621455
>Reading comprehension.
Play 3.5, it's perfect.
>>47620923
Read GURPS Lite (it's free) and see if you still want to use GURPS.
It's pretty fine for FO.
It depends on what you're trying to do. Look into Apocalypse World though, seeing you're doing post-apoc. Don't get attached too much to any one system.
