Welcome to the first in a series of articles called Wolverine's brain Spasm's. These articles are general advice and ranting on how you can be a better player or gamemaster or whatever.
After gettting out into the world and talking to a few gamemasters I noticed a distinct lack of something that most role-playing games need badly... PC's that are afraid of something or anything! There are way too many PC's out there that think nothing of confronting, and attacking a Dragon. Now my first reaction to this lack of fear was to think "If any PC's like that entered my game, they'd be dead inside of two minutes." But then I started thinking, "Wait a minute, I seem to remember a game where I wasn't afraid of anything." and I traced it back to the two games where I seemingly feared nothing, Battletech(and I know my attitude is completly wrong here, and I'm desperately trying to change it.) and the game that gives all RPG's a bad name D&D. Well after I figured out what games had had no fear in them for me I started to think "Exactly where did I turn around." and after some searching figured out that it was my first game of the Aliens RPG that did it. I had been a massive Aliens fan before I even knew the game existed, so when our group played our first game I approached with a different attitude. Instead of approaching the game with a full-frontal-attack-blow-them-all-to-hell-attitude, I approached the game with a avoid-if-possible, scream-cuss-firing-your-rifle-over-your-shoulder-as-you-run- away-as-fast-as-you-can attitude. So instead of yelling "Mouhahah, die multitude of Dragon's" as I had in previous games I started yelling "Shit, shit, shit, the damn bugs are after me, get the fuck out of my way!" This is the attitude I have pretty much retained for all future games. Now I'm not saying be a coward all the time, I'm just saying increase the number of running battles, and be afraid once in a while. I just let my player's kill their first shape-shifter in combat, and it nearly killed them, PC's shouldn't be killing god damn dragons!
A long time ago our group decided that those Physical Adepts with the foresight to purchase the Astral Perception power could bond with power 1 power focus of level 2 or less. This has helped balance our game greatly.
What can I say but I love that spell. Now I know some of you are probably out there bitching and moaning about this potentially game unbalancing spell so here is a list of the restrictions I placed on this spell for our campaign.
Well that's it for brainspasm #1, don't forget to tell me what you think about it.
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