The other day, I got a copy of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer RPG core rule book as a belated birthday present. It looks like it’ll be a lot of fun, once I wrap my head around the Unisystem.
I was just wondering if there were any other Dopers playing Buffy out there. Tell us about your campaigns, er, seasons and characters. Any cool ideas for characters, settings and NPCs? I was thinking about a season set in Rome around A.D. 100 with the Slayer as a slave girl and her Watcher/owner as a Priest of Diana or something like that. Do you think it could work?
And to those of you wise in the ways of the Unisystem…did you have a difficult time incorporating it into your roleplaying? If you were a D&D or White Wolf player beforehand, did you find it difficult to adjust to the different rules? Does it really lend itself to smooth combat as the corebooks claim?
It would be cool if there were enough Scoobies on the boards to get a game running on IRC. There aren’t enough Buffy gamers near me to get a game started.
(Apologies if this shows up more than once. I timed out on it earlier in the day and figured it was time to give it a second shot.)
It could work. If you’re going to have a bunch of people in the group you might want to get rid of the slayer and have everyone be white hats or something. In my experience most players don’t like it when one PC is way more powerful then everyone else.
I’d also go with a more modern setting. The 1920’s and 30’s would be pretty darn cool.
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Unisystem is super simple, so much so that it might throw some players off. It isn’t all that complicated and players should be able to adapt with little difficulty.
Marc
How about a season set in Puritan America? Think of the possibilities. For one thing, you have a (literally) empowered girl in a pretty misogynistic society. You have to determine if Goody Brown is REALLY a creature of the night or not. And witches are just plain bad instead of all this frilly patchouli wicca junk.
I don’t know the Uni system, but there are ways to balance this. Most of the campaigns currrently running in my gaming group have a fair amount of power disparity in terms of level, but the GMs imposed other penalties/bonuses to make up for it. For example, in our high-level Oriental Adventures campaign, I’m playing a monk who’s several levels higher than the rest of the party, but is under vows of poverty and humulity: he gets no treasure and has to act as a hireling to the rest of the party. (I got the character idea, in part, from Nodwick.) In another campaign, in a more traditional D&D setting, I was playing a prince. I had significantly more money and prestige than the rest of the party, but I was also the only character who had to start at first level: everyone else was third. (But I got to be the boss!) So, for Juniper’s idea, you could have a young (naturally) Slayer and, say, a seasoned veteran of the Roman legions and a powerful priest/sorceror as first century Scoobies.
However, I assume that if the game designers were half-way competent, than the game balance issues have been addressed, and that there are alternate, equally powerful non-Slayer character classes available. I mean, what’s the point of playing the Buffy RPG if you’re not going to have a Slayer?
I think liberal use of Drama Points is meant to help White Hats keep up with Slayers and Heroes. Spending points to shake off a nasty punch, get in a lucky swing of the stake or rise from the dead keeps non-Slayer characters from becoming discontent.
I like the idea of including a soldier from the Legions, Miller. I had been thinking more along the lines of a gladiator, but I think that archetype has been overplayed in recent years.
