What does everyone think is a better starting adventure for a new GM, Eye for an Eye, or Day Late?

I'm running my first game on Wednesday.

At the moment, time isn't an issue, so I am going to be running A Day Late followed up by An Eye for an Eye .

I am going to use pre-generated Characters for Day Late, but then give the players the option to make their own for Eye, or simply carry on with the pre-generated guys.

Cheers,
Krusader

A Day Late is good because it's very simple and focused. My main quibble with it is the social conflict, which can quickly precipitate into killing without some intervention from the GM. First, you've got a Troll Slayer in the group, who's not likely to take crap from anyone, well connected or otherwise. The Elf who might be entirely ambivalent to the merchant's plight given he's holding his package ransom. The only force there is Brigitta, and she's outnumbered despite being a roadwarden.

Most smart players will realize they can just kill the merchant and make it look like part of the beastmen attack. Reinforcements ARE coming anyways, they'll loot and ransack what's left anyways. So you need to somehow convince the players not to off the merchant immediately and be done with him.

You can railroad them with threats of retaliation or Brigitta's guilty conscience. For my part I had the Merchant make it clear he did not know who the packages were addressed to, just WHERE he had to deliver them (the Red Moon Inn). This made it plausible for why he would be unwilling to hand it over. In addition, the merchant convinced them the package was locked in a chest, the key for which was at the Red Moon Inn, protection he said for important messages in case of brigands. This was really a lie, which thankfully the merchant has a chance of pulling off. Also making it sound like he was trying to get a "bribe" or "commission" out of handing over the package made the players more accepting of the social conflict.

In my game the package contained a missive to hunt down a lost forbidden text on invoking demons (the book from Eye for an Eye ). A Chaos Cult was found in possession of papers that point to the book being somewhere in the Grunewald province. Followed by the players finding postings in the Red Moon Inn about a job in Grunewald Province. (changed the title to "Looking for work in Grunewald?"). The money also helped as most of the characters were poor.

Is it such a horrible thing if the players do decide to just kill the merchant? I mean, that may not be ideal, but if that's the kind of players you have, aren't you better off just letting them do there thing, and then suffer the consequences later on down the road?

Oh sure, it's definitely okay if that's where you want the game going. The failing isn't at a story-level, it's more of a failing at the mechanical level for the demo.

However, it's still something to consider, especially if the roadwarden player wants to be straight about it and not kill the merchant. By having the merchant offer explanations, it can cure some of the other characters of their bloodlust. There's nothing the merchant will say (and still be in character) that will stop a determined party from killing him. My suggestions were more inline with giving the players some plausible reasons for not killing him.

As written, the merchant is a fat, useless, rich, pompous bastard, whose life you just saved. Who is stranded in the middle of nowhere, with a swarm of beastmen incoming. Who also has something important that belongs to one of the characters and is unwilling to give it unless they pay him money. The guy also won't let the characters into the coach while it rains outside. He also berates the half-dead roadwarden, who is Brigitta's lover for being useless. Oh, and did I mention that as written he's also a condescending prick to just about all the characters involved?

I mean, the deck is stacked against this guy so high, the only reason players have for not killing him is because they might feel sorry for the GM and want to stay on the railroad tracks. It's almost like the writers wanted the merchant to die. My suggestions were to make so it's more likely he doesn't.

Since it's a demo, the whole point of the conversation with the merchant is to illustrate the social encounter mechanics, but if they end up killing him you don't get to go over that part with your group. Hence why I felt that part was poorly implemented.

Okay, now i got ya. I haven't tried to run the full adventure yet, though I did some playing around with a couple people trying to learn the rules and figure things out. At one point what started out as some vague experamenting with combat mechanics grew into an encounter of sorts, and so I followed it up with an abrieviated take on the social contest. One of my players immediatley wanted to kill him, and probably would have if it wasn't for the other player I had. As far as running the actual adventure, how well does it work with player generated characters instead of using the pregens? It seems to me if your using a demo to teach the system, you would want to include character generation.

Character generation took just as long or longer than running the adventure with pre-gens in my group of 5. Others have had better luck with going quickly through character generation, but I've heard many stories of it running much longer than intended.

If you do go through character generation before the adventure, make sure you have the action cards, talent cards and career cards sorted and separated. Give your players a rundown of character creation, I used a powerpoint presentation and a printed handout they used to fill in their choices.

I'd even group the action cards into career appropriate piles to make it easier to go through them and find the viable one. Another option that seems good is allowing players to exchange cards after play has started. There's over 200 cards that players have to go through when making up their mind on what to choose, for some it's easier (wizards only have a few to choose from), yet it still takes them time to read, understand the cards (especially hard if they haven't played the game).

What we did seemed to work very well. We ran through the demo using the pre-gens, and then the players made their own characters. That way they had a good feel for the system and had a better idea how the actions would work. Had we done character generation first I think the players might have made some blind choices they would have regretted later.