It's always important to include challenges and obstacles in your tabletop campaigns that the player characters are specifically outfitted to overcome. If there is a rogue or spy in the party, you should include some traps in the game. If there is a diplomat, there should be opportunities for social encounters.
But the inverse of this rule is also true. It is important to include the occasional obstacle that the group may not have specialized tools to deal with. Why? Because the fun of role playing games come partly from the diverse and unique approaches of the different archetypes. There are talkers, fighters, sneakers, healers, and all sorts of other roles to be filled. It's fun to be the character that addresses a particular niche in their own unique fashion. It makes a player vital to the team. By bringing a certain type of situation into play, you highlight the potential utility of having a character that is specialized to handle them.
There are two ways that players can explore these avenues of gameplay in the future... either by creating a new character for a future game, or by training their existing character in the apropriate skills. Either way, they have little motivation to explore alternate means of solving problems if those alternatives don't ever show up in the game.
So don't be afraid to have a lot of easily accessible computer systems hanging around your cyberpunk setting... If the group has no hacker, that is a strong motivation to have one in a future session. It would certainly make it easier to circumvent those pesky security systems!
There are a few caveats to this approach that are worth noting... first, it should never be impossible to proceed without a certain specialization or character class. There's nothing to be gained by forcing the game to a halt simply because the party doesn't have a certain role filled. There needs to be an alternative means to accomplish the same goal. Maybe the soldier needs to trigger the trap and absorb its damage, or the mage needs to use flight to find another route... the point is to showcase alternate means of approaching a problem, not to force players into certain roles.
Secondly, these alternatives should not be used to shame or punish players into taking certain roles. They should showcase the techniques that could be undertaken by different character types. The players may choose to explore different character types in the future, but should not feel forced or obligated to do so. It's all about new experiences and having fun.
Include these occasional elements into your campaign and you will not only add a layer of realism to the atmosphere, but a tinge of curiosity. What would it be like if the players had a face character who could talk them out of a situation? What if they could have de-actived the alarm? Or been strong enough to climb right over the fence? When a player wonders about the path not taken it is likely they will explore other gameplay options in the future. It's a neat way to keep things interesting.
Happy ventures!
No comments:
Post a Comment