Author: Gordon Shumway (---.aol.com)
Date: 04-11-2000 19:29
This is a good article, but not really what I expected it to be. Generally, it's not hard to get the PCs together and cooperating, because they know they're the PCs.
The hard part of starting out, in my experience, has been getting the players immersed in the setting as fast as possible. Any time the GM has to say "you wouldn't do that because...," the game has died a little. Fantasy campaigns largely sidestep this problem through the coventions referenced above (e.g., everyone knows what you mean by "dwarf" or "elf"). But even within the fantasy genre (and even within AD&D's subset of the fantasy genre), getting the players to understand the conventions as they will be applied - How powerful is magic? Who can weild it? Are "elves" Tolkeinesque or D&D elves? How rare are enchanted items? How rare are "adventurers"? - can be a challenge.
So, any suggestions for getting the players to think like their characters in the setting? Tossing volumes of background material at them is unappealing, and lecturing is worse, but trial-and-error isn't fun either, and can easily devolve into one of the former.
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