ChibiRPG:
Running the Game
How you design the actual adventure is up to you. There's no ground rules or anything, no genre or particular world you have to use; we provide a table of 'common enemy classes' you can work from, for your convenience, but really, it's all up to you.
You can choose to fully design an adventure, or just run it totally by the seat of your pants... Feel free to send it in for advertising on the ImproGaming HQ page, or just run spontaneous sessions out of a chat room!
If you are rotating the GM in your game, make sure you know how you are going to introduce your character, or work your character into the game. You'll be an ordinary player in the next session, so run your sheet by the next GM for approval.
Before you start, be sure you have all the character sheets for all of the players. Look over them, and make sure you and the player are on the same page. If you have problems with something, don't hesitate to point it out to the player. Try to work everything out before you start.
It also helps if you have a list of the enemies your characters are going to run into. For major NPCs you may wish to make a character sheet for. Others, you just need a few important stats. Check out a sample list of bad guys.
Once everyone is ready, you can start. Get all of the character sheets out and have them handy so you can quickly check them for skills.
Encourage your players to roleplay freely and get into character. There's no reason to hold to a strict turn order during normal gameplay, unless you find it hard to manage or keep up. If some of your players are being very inactive, try calling them out, to get them involved.
Similarly, you should try your best to ham it up, and make things descriptive. Roleplay NPCs to the best of your abilities, and try to keep from referring to things in game turns. It's much more effective to say "The punk shoves you back into your chair and yanks your hair back." than to say "The punk Intimidates you."
Resolving actions is pretty easy. If the action is against a non-active
object (door, tree, closed box), just decide how difficult the action will
be, apply an appropriate modifier to the target number, and roll against the
relevent skill. For example, if Dup (with a Breaking Stuff of 28) wants to
kick down a flimsy door, you might not apply a modifier at all. But if he
wants to smash a 2'x4' with his forehead, you might want to penalize him a
bit, maybe by -6 to his skill. forcing him to roll at 22. Roll the Cyber
1D40, and determine level of success. See the Skill
Result Tables for more details.
If an action is opposed, such as a player and an NPC arm-wrestling, roll for each person involved in the action. Whomever succeeds by the wider margin, wins the test!
Combat, of course, works differently. Players begin making their actions in turn order, and each round represents about 5 seconds of time. Combat follows the following process:
Combat:
0. Turn order for all participants in the fight is determined. This stays the same, unless someone falls unconscious.
1. Player decides what to do and says so with dramatic flair. After that it's up to the GM to handle the nitty gritty.
2. Roll to check if they are successful, based on whatever skill they're attacking with. See the Skill Result Tables. If they fail, stop here and move on to the next character.
3. If the target has an appropriate defense ability, they may try to avoid the damage (blocking, dodging, or whatever). With a successful roll, calculate how much they can defend against. 4. Figure out how much damage gets dished out according to 'weapon' used and any success/failure mods. Inform everyone of the results, and make sure everyone updates their copies.
5. At your discretion, an enemy may counterattack after a successful defense. A critical success on a defense roll might be a good indication. ^_^ This prevents the cast from easily ganging up on a lone enemy, but if overused, the vicious little bastard can do excessive damage. If not used at all, they're toast.
Characters will probably get injured. If a character loses all HP, they are incapacitated. However, healing at least 1 HP will revive them. If HP drops to [-(Max HP)] or under, the character is dead.
As always, it's the GM's prerogative to fudge die rolls. But be fair about it, and only do it to keep the story moving along and fun. Don't use it to keep your pet NPCs alive while you torture the players.
Basically, keep going until the session ends -- the set time limit runs out, the mission objective is completed, or even all the characters die. Once you've decided to end the session, wrap up the game, summing up what happened, and what important changes have happened to each character. Reset the HP and Chi for each character.
Remember to reward your players for good playing and mass fun! Don't be too liberal with handing out CP, though, because otherwise they may become too powerful too quickly, and since the same characters may be used in sessions run by other GMs, that could be a problem. Everyone should earn at least 1 CP, unless they really didn't do anything and were killed in-game, and most should earn 2. A recommended maximum award of CP is 4, but that should be only for extremely good role-playing or success. Award them for clever acts, killing blows on major enemies, surviving traps, and the like.
And that's it. You're done GMing a session. If there's anything you're unsure about... be democratic! If the whole group agrees on an issue, then it's golden. Be flexible and remember, it's all for fun!