[DL] Who forks out the loot? (Goff's question)

["Leybourne, Brian" <Brian.Leybourne@airnz.co.nz>]

> How many of posses out there just use the Marshal's books?
> 
> How many players purchase _only_ the book appropriate to 
> their particular character?

Certainly in my gaming group, the GM is pretty much expected to provide all
the resource necessary for playing. We swap around, but I tend to be the GM
at least 4/5ths of the time, so I'm generally the guy who buys everything.

Actually though, I don't mind this for two main reasons:

1) It means I get to read everything - I'm a bit of a fanatic when I really
get into a game. I have every DL sourcebook and suppliment up to The
Agency/Ghostbusters. Before Deadlands we played Vampire, and I have every
book WW ever published for that (Now that one is a damn big collection, let
me tell you) as well as all the Mage books. Before that we played Amber
(Luckily, there are only 2 books out for Amber, so that one was easy) and a
few years back I sold all my AD&D books second-hand and got well over a
thousand dollars, so you can imagine how many of those I had.

(Additionally, I buy RPG books that interest me, even if I think I may never
play the game. I have most of the HOE books, HOL, In Nomine, and numerous
others I can't even remember off the top of my head just because I wanted to
read them.)

2) I have to admit, I don't really like players reading the books. I know
this sucks from PEG's (and other companies) point of view, because they
don't sell more copies of the books, but I prefer to be able to control what
my players read and don't read about a game system. When we started
Deadlands, just over a year ago I think, the players knew nothing - they
thought we were just playing a normal "Wild West" style game, and I brought
the weirdness into it very slowly. I could not have done this if the players
had seen/read the books. I started my first Vampire campaign off the same
way - the players all started as mortals and got embraced in the first two
sessions, and then had to learn everyhting about (un)life the hard way,
which again would not have worked if they had read through the books (or
even seen the name of the game they were playing *grin*).

So certainly for me, the whole book is really a marshall's section. :-)

On the other hand, as we get more into a game I like to release information
to players, and it's a hell of a lot easier in Deadlands because I can let
them look at parts of the players section, rather than in a game like
Vampire where one paragraph (or even sentence) may have what I need them to
read, and the very next bit on the page might be a GM-only spoiler. So keep
up the current format, John, it works!

Brian "jealous marshall" Leybourne.

.-->
"The Web brings people together because no matter what kind of a twisted
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Brian Leybourne
brian.leybourne@airnz.co.nz
bleybourne@hotmail.com
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