Special Guest Stars! Prizes! Sweeps Week!

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Post originally by Edward McEneely at 2004-09-30 10:37:51
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Back when I was a moderately good GM (the kind who's only sorta good, so they don't mess around with other groups), I used to start out every Delta Green session with a credits card listing the episode name, the actors playing the PCs, and the special guest star for the week.

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Post originally by unterhund at 2004-09-30 13:01:02
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*yoink*

Consider that, if not stolen, at least adapted for my group.

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Post originally by Anonymous Coward at 2004-09-30 21:31:24
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Our group has played a couple of games with a strong TV episode theme, and so I thought I'd post some suggestions.

ACTORS
Something akin to Edward above, the pics for each of the characters was an A-list star. Gave a bit of a big-budget feel to the game. :-)

THEME SONG
Pick a song which is in the mood for the game and play it at the start of each session/episode.

SCENE FRAMING
Scene framing was _vital_. Even when TV shows have people sitting around doing nothing they don't do it for very long, unlike in RPGs. I found that having multiple plot threads going at once was essential to stopping this. If one group is stuck for ideas, switch to another group and give those players time to think. But, as with scene framing, we would often not just switch to what they were up to, but interrupt the other group in the middle of the action.

GUEST STARS
One solution to the Decker syndrome (which worked fabulously in the one game we've used it) was to simply hand out the NPCs in each scene to the players who's characters weren't involved in the scene. One player goes to see the Mayor, you ask for a volunteer to play the Mayor. Then someone else gets an idea and walks in as the Mayor's secretary. It means losing some GM control of the game, but on the other hand some of these incidental characters were so good that we kept them in the game as NPCs from then on. It also means you don't have to have the characters wandering around as a mob in every scene and yet the players stay involved.

CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT
You could only spend XPs on something you visibly did, and for the really supernatural stuff you could work out a scene ahead of time with the GM, but it had to happen in the game before you could spend XP on it. Reconsidering it now I'm thinking were I to do it again I would also put a minimum xp expenditure rule in. It would mean less to keep an eye on, and when someone suddenly got better at something it would be a big, important change, not small fry.

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Post originally by amazingchet at 2004-11-03 11:31:13
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The TV aspect can even justify normal RPG conventions. When I used the normal practice of following a fight-heavy monster laden scenario with a subtle mystery my players would remark that we had blown the special effects budget, and were trying to please the executives.

On the plus side they then became willing to accept a few "quiet" sessions because they knew I was saving the "FX budget" for a really big climax.

We also occasionally have guest stars when ex-PC from one campaign pop up as NPCs in another (such as our Hunter characters arriving in our Vampire the Masquerade campaign city)

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Post originally by bobmo at 2004-12-06 09:40:28
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Edward,

Glad to hear someone else does as well! I've played a regualar campaign of Prime Directive! It is a okay rulebook, but the idea behind it is stellar. Imagine playing actors on the old 60's trek series. Our GM would have Guest Stars everyweek, especially Sean Connery for some reason :P!

Also for your interest, try using teasers. A teaser is a written up dialogue for the cast to actually say aloud at the beginning of the episode to introduce the prime plot device that the individual episode is going to be about. Usually full of some campy dialogue and good laughs.

Our Gm would break the game session down into the traditional Teaser, 3 Acts, Followup format. With polite comercial breaks for bathroom trips and snack/OOC time :)

If you'd like more info, email me and I'll show you some of our material!