Re: [ORE] Digest for cult-...@googlegroups.com - 3 Messages in 2 Topics

 
Caleb Stokes <stok...@gmail.com> Nov 17 11:54AM -0600  

You're not doing it wrong, per se. There's just some things the book
doesn't make super clear for a first-time group.
 
In a first game of Better Angels, you've got to really encourage use of
advantages like Surprises, Secrets, and Weapons. And the GM has to be
generous handing out those bonuses. When that Alchemy roll fails, the
Natural Philosopher should have a wrench behind his back. They should be
riffling through the trash of any villains they want to fight the night
before the battle. In short, characters that want to be effective in early
stages of the game need to be sneaky, sniveling little assholes. In turn,
this usually leads to more sin, so they get more powerful more quickly.
 
But Better Angels isn't really a game about success. It's a game about
failure, getting tired of failure, cheating to taste success, and in turn
setting yourself up for greater failures (the ultimate of which is Hell). A
Venture Bros-esque tone worked best for my players. They didn't crit every
roll, but when they did fail they had a narrative framework with which to
build a reaction to that roll.
 
Failure is also just another motivation to offer up those MD. Demons should
be using repeated whiffs to lure their humans into a sweetly assured
success. Sure, the demon gets hurt in the short term, but they don't have
to turn on the perfection unless the human promises to do something truly
awful for them. If the human ditches out, that's just all the more reason
for a demon to turn the powers off at an inopportune time or deny Aspect
invokation. A promised atrocity traded for a MD can lead to entire subplots
over extended play.
 
Another thing you can do is start players off with Devilish Devices. There
aren't specific rules for it, but one Devilish Device can make even a
freshly stated-up character feel like a boss. From what you've described,
it sounds like your players were supervillains already at the time. It
would make perfect sense that they'd already built some toys.
 
Finally, a house rule I made is that while I still split character
generation between two people, I don't do it as written for brand new
players that haven't read the whole book. A lot of the powers have wonky
descriptions that don't line up entirely with what their title implies.
Doing the Power/Aspect and Power/Aspect split between two people that don't
know the system can lead to ineffective power sets like Arrogance/Ineffable
Defense (congrats! you're obstinate and unimpressed! super-powers?) or
defunds the dice pools to make cool powers work. The way I do char. gen.
for players entirely new to the game is that I let the demon pick all the
powers and aspects, then I let the human decide how close hell they want to
be at the beginning of the game with their dice pools. That allows for some
traditional power-gaming without totally unbalancing the game, and it gets
people interested enough in the setting and play dynamic that they'll come
back for traditional character generation and long-term play.
 
I hope that helps out. Give it another shot. It really is a great game.