Re: [DL] Looking for Gamers (in all the wrong places)

["R. Serena Wakefield" <raistw@gate.net>]

At 03:58 PM 7/24/00 -0400, you wrote:
>deadlands-digest-1                                  Monday, July 24, 2000

From: JohnGoff@deadlands.com wrote:

>It seems to me that one person in a group tends to buy most of the books for
>an RPG (not just Deadlands); in the case of my group--which has been running
>for 4 years--it's me <g>. This plays into a lot of things both business and
>creatively for me, so I'd like as much input as you folks would care to give.

This is partially true for me.  In my high school group, there would always
be two complete sets of books -- mine and Sam's.  Whose books we used
depended on whose house we were playing at (whoever lived closer generally
brought theirs).

This was even true when neither of us was the GM.  Whoever WAS the GM would
simply borrow the books they would need from one of us the previous week.
I think there might have been maybe two or three 1st Ed. That Other Game
hardcovers and one copy of Paranoia among the entire rest of the group.

I suppose I could say that, while it's not just GMs who buy roleplaying
books, generally it's only GMs who buy anything near a full set of 'em.
The only exceptions are collectors like Sam, who are a godsend to GMs on a
budget but who often end up succumbing to temptation and reading those
GM-only books.


>How many of posses out there just use the Marshal's books?

I'm "between groups" right now (nothing ever happens over the summer) but I
can't remember there ever being a time that any of my players ever picked
up more than a core rulebook and their own splatbook.

Not, of course, counting that rotter who kept buying adventures in a vain
attempt to cheat.  Too bad for him I always make allowances for that.  Poor
sucker must have lost about ten characters before he realized I was on to
him ...


>How many players purchase _only_ the book appropriate to their particular
>character?

I used to buy the full series of splatbooks for any game, and my players
would just borrow what they needed.  This changed when we started on
Werewolf; there were simply too many books out there, with IMO too little
content in each one to justify the prices.  Unfortunately, this didn't mean
that the players bought the splatbooks ... it meant we did without them.

Nowadays I just buy whatever splatbooks I find myself in need of, or that
happen to interest me.  I usually end up buying all the major ones anyway,
so I have plenty of material for villains, and so far I've been able to
keep my players "covered."  Not sure what I'd do if a player needed a book
I hadn't already bought for myself.

You know, I just realized something; for several of the games on my
bookshelf, I've got my players' splatbooks but I DON'T have my own!  I
think we may need to make some changes 'round here ...


>How many Marshals _don't_ want the players reading the Posse sections in
>each book?

It really depends on the book.  Any player who wants can read the Posse
Territory in Law Dogs, since for the most part that's freely available
information.  Everybody has a general idea of how the police work, and
they've heard rumors about the people there.

A book like Lost Angels, though, is another story.  I treat the whole
player's section of that book as No Man's Land -- Agency characters would
have access to that document and Rangers would probably have an equivalent,
but it's hard for me to justify the average man-on-the-street in Dodge City
or Liberty having that kind of detailed knowledge.


>One thing we've always tried to do with our books was set up a "Posse" and a
>"Marshal" section so a player could get some use from the book as well.

>Now, obviously, some books (in spite of player info) are purely Marshal
>draws (RVC II comes immediately to mind here) and some don't even have
>player info at all (adventures). What I'm interested in is for
>setting/informational sourcebooks like, say, the Back East and other
>location books, Tales o' Terror, etc.

It absolutely depends on the character's background.  If the sourcebook
concerns something that a character would probably know about, I let the
player read it.  Otherwise, no.

I suppose I should say that I find the presence of player material in
sourcebooks to be INCREDIBLY USEFUL, especially with books like Boomtowns!
where it saves me the trouble of running a boring "gettin' comfortable with
the town" adventure.  Nevertheless, anything in those books is
enthusiastically No Man's Land.  It's just easier to get permission for
some books than others.

If a player actually bought the book ... well, that might be another story.
 I'd probably be ticked if they bought a book whose Marshal's section gave
away campaign secrets, but a character-type splatbook would be different.
I doubt one of my players would buy a splatbook for a character type they
weren't already playing or about to play, though.  They're cheap
so-and-so's.  ;)


>I doubt we'll change the format, but I'm wondering about the space devoted
>to the Posse section in these works. If only the Marshal is buying/reading
>them, we'd best be serving you guys by reducing the size of the Posse
>sections in these books and _increasing_ the Marshal section.

That's the circumstance in my experience.  The only books that posse
members are likely to buy are books that'll be almost all Posse-section
anyway; with campaign and city sourcebooks that section really needs to be
fairly short, so that a player could conceivably read it without needing to
borrow the book and take it home with 'em.

-- 
R. Serena Wakefield (raistw@gate.net)
Visit Serena's Roleplaying Dojo:  http://welcome.to/serenasdojo/