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superstickman4@aol.com postulated:
:: Yesterday was the first time i've played Mage and we played totally
:: w/o books(with some prior knowledge). I am a usual player in D+D
:: and with that group people are book nazi's. Everything has to be by
:: the book. I was just wondering how you guys usually play.
It really depends on the game and complexity of what's involved. For
instance, for both Werewolf and Hengeyokai I used to pull out a stack of
books to sit next to me during the game because I used rules and/or elements
from so many of them. For the entire run of a chronicle I probably only
looked at the books about 5% of the time during a game. For games with lots
of tricks, like Werewolf, I have never bothered (and have no intention of
changing this) learning by rote what every player is capable of doing. I
have a rough idea from play, and I trust them to keep track of how they do
their tricks and what tricks they can do. Sometimes this is nice because I
get pleasantly surprised and it has sometimes kept *me* on my toes, and I
like that as a GM because too much complacancy is bad.
For DA:Mage I have the rulebook handy, but my handouts do all my work for me
really. The only time I've really needed the book was to use stats for a
critter I was throwing at my players where I was using the book, or when
Pillars were being used that did not belong to the Valdermen (i.e. by NPCs).
And in a predominantly Viking game, this was rare.
I will almost never let books be available to players during a game. For
some there is too much temptation to sit through the game reading irrelevant
passages and not paying attention. The only times I let a player look at a
book is if they need to look up a trick where they might have neglected to
make a proper note of its use and want to check the wording before proposing
a use. This is always so long as it doesn't hold up the game.
The important thing is that it doesn't hold up the game. Usually I set
myself a time limit on finding information in a book. If I (or whoever is
looking it up) haven't found it in x amount of time I consider the game to
be "held up" and will wing a response that seems acceptable.
As Stephenls, I think it was, said above, it's mostly a comfort thing.
Knowing that I've got a safety net if my memory goes a total blank or if I
get caught off-guard with something. At conventions, however, although I
often have a corebook in my bag, I rarely ever actually use it. My most
useful tool there is my GM screen. The only things I worry about having
reference to are the varying combat related stats, most of the time. In
fact, I usually run Call of Cthulhu with *only* the GM screen. I have only
on a couple of occasions referred to the book, and that was to check some of
the finer SAN rules that are not mentioned on the screen. Easy enough things
to remember if you're a regular player, which unfortunately I'm not.
I stop ramble now.
Nimrod...
--
"I didn't know there was a red light district in the land of
make-believe!" - Toothgnip, www.goats.com
(and the occasional borrowing to people to read up on
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