There are all sorts of interesting things you can do as a GM to hook
your players and make the game work for your group. Start with
thematics if you can. Especially if you're the game's Host as well. My
last L5R game was played in a room with paper-lanterns and meaningless
Kanjii on the walls (I probably didn't spell that right). It set an
interesting atmosphere, that worked for the Samurai/Feudal Japan themed
game. If you mean you want to run the game differently, I've had a
small amount of success (as well as a game that failed) by running it
"MMO style." What I mean by that is two things: 1) I made
power-cards for the players in the style of D&D 4e. This gave them a
simple easy way to identify what they could do, and the rolls and
modifiers it had. 2) Sessions were short, so I split them into opposing
weeks. week A was roleplay/quest week. The party gets to (or back to)
town, and turns in quests, shops, meets contacts, sleeps, gambles, has sex,
whatever else those players would do in their "down time" as well as
meeting whoever their next questgiver would be. I would try to make
sure each player had a compelling personal story as well when i could
that would send them to the same place to thematically keep them together. It wasn't too hard; For the
fighter, the villain in the base ahead could be a reportedly excellent
fighter too, so the party's one wanted to fight him as a personal
challenge. For the mage, well, maybe the big bad has a vast library, or
trains minions in an unusual magic the mage wants to learn. Have a druid? Ok, the base is producing toxic waste. You can almost always ask your players what they think would compel their character and go with that. Week B
is combat. The party departs town, has encounters on the way to the
enemy, if any, and arrives, do their quest, explore, stop the villainous
plot, or whatever they do, as well as take care of personal quests which are generally in the area, or on the way. Finish up, make camp, and end of session. The
players seemed to like it, and it meant that when someone missed a
session, a simple retroactive rewrite would suffice to explain their
absence. Oh, the fighter isn't here? That's because he heard of a
champion visiting a town about a day's travel away, and decided to go
challenge him. He'll return next week with tales of his glory. Or defeat if his absence was last-minute. Even easier if they miss a town session ("Ok, Josh, you missed the party's weird sex-adventure in town, which means you're now the only one the innkeeper doesn't hate. e-mail me a list of items you wanted to shop for, if any, and I'll let you know what you were able to find. Oh, and when the dragon's head was turned into the sheriff for the bounty, I made the party split you a share too since you were there to help kill it. Their next quest is actually to travel with the head by caravan to the City of Solace where they intend to mount the head as a display in the center of town. You guys gained 25 experience due to the Fighter's participation in a tournament in town. See you next week!") Anyway, find the nuances of your new group. and GM to keep them happy. If they seem to prefer combat, you can easily make for interesting combat situations by mixing and matching tactics, terrains and the like. I know Penny Arcade has a writeup somewhere of when Gabe used two orbiting planet-like objects as the ground for the big battle. I've also run interesting combat-chases with players in one caravan, and bandits with hostage in the other. Take some examples from video games. There's a fight in one of the raids in Star Wars (The Old Republic) where you're in the middle of a ridiculous sandstorm. If you don't pay close attention and keep right on top of the boss monster, the sandstorm will just tear you to shreds. One of the instances back in World of Warcraft had their take on a game of Chess, where enemies were pieces on the board. I once had a superhero group get their base raided by the Jellyfish Pirates (Guilty Gear), and my Dresden Victims Players may or may not have to prove they are Bad Enough Dudes to save the President. Ok, i admit it, i made that last one up. Wow, that's a lot of text. Sorry.
