Ran My First John Carter Game

[JohnK]

Kaor, Werlynn,

@Werlynn

Since it was your first time running John Carter , I’m assuming you encountered differences yourself between the rules and the two other game systems. Did you have problems with the game rules yourself?

I felt comfortable with the rules themselves, with the exception of that one thing about core equipment that only came up because I told the players what it meant. Self inflicted problem.

I’d asked a lot of questions on the forums here to make sure I felt comfortable with the rules before running it.

Ah, so that’s what all those questions were about… Smart move on your part!

@Werlynn

Definitely sounds to me like neither player was into it.

Yeah. It ended up being “hey 2 of us came here to GM games, but counting all the players we have 3 people total. Which game should we run with 2 players?” so one person was “meh” on the system and the other was like, “I’ll play whatever.”

Yep, the two players in question were definitely not into the game. Shame that, since John Carter really is a remarkable game in so many ways and offers a somewhat different take on the sword & planet genre because of its style and feel.

@Werlynn

With those two characters, you started with 9 Threat. How many did you have by the end and what was the most Threat you had at any time? (Just curious.)

The most threat was probably over 20 since I did at points say, “just put in 8 or 9 threat for damage dice to wreck this ape.” I was spending it to keep it from just piling up. I know I ended with close to 20.

Damn, but that is a lot of Threat! I don’t think in any game session I’ve run with the raw, even at conventions, that I’ve had such a high differential in Threat from the start of the session (the 9 to start and 20 later). Interesting dilemma, to say the least.

@Werlynn

Also, how high were you making some of the Difficulties for tasks?
…
What Difficulties were you using for them making attacks on their opposition?

They didn’t do much beyond the two fights. Repairing the gun was a 3 or 4 right from the adventure but it was during combat. I can’t remember what I set the difficulty at to not crash quite so hard. They searched around the crash and the fallen raiders at 1 or 2 after the landing.

Part way through the fight on the ship I spent about 4 threat to introduce a tilted deck of the ship as damage was causing it to start to fall, so any movement or combat task was +1 difficulty (so all 2s).

The only things above 2 that I recall were either from the adventure or the result of afflictions. Until they took afflictions the fight against the ape was all 1.

Those Difficulties don’t strike me as all that tough, so the fact that the dice were just rolling badly for the players is just someting that you had to roll with (so to speak).

@Werlynn

I wish there’d been more doing of stuff outside of the fights for sure. I’m still not sure I’d house-rule out the combat limit yet. Certainly not without running it a couple more times. I trust that it was put in there to achieve a certain intended affect on gameplay. That’s just my preference though.

Yeah, I suspect that their doing nothing outside of combat was part of the problem. Non-combat tasks are a good way to generate Momentum usually, 'cause the difficulty is usually D1.

Like you, I also assume the rule was put in there for a reason, but to be honest, I think I prefer the game with no limit on how many actions in combat you can spend Momentum on. Of course, if the dice are rolling poorly, then the point becomes moot.

JohnK