An evening to tell the tale
A truly wonderful evening. Tonight, Jennifer, Conor, Markus and myself, Joan, chose to set ourselves on a sort of adventure: a new kind of pen'n'paper RPG. The system resembles other popular frameworks a lot: dice everywhere, of all sorts, with different shapes and sizes, some of them even with text.
Tonight, it was I who chose to prepare something of my own. Here, no premade character, nor any kind of equipment that was blatantly ripped off of some generic source or random generator. Each player chooses 3 sets of equipment, any kind thereof. Balance is all done beforehand, so that stats and newly found ideas can still be tried out throughout the game. And what's more: here, the equipment makes the playstyle.
First in-game day, Conor went for something pretty classic, and efficient: a melee fighter, some sort of barbarian if you will (especially given he rolled a 2 on his non-scaling attribute, intelligence), roaming around in shining armor, God knows how he kept it so, and a double-reversed chainsword.
Markus went for something a lot more refined: PCB armor, set with batteries and the like, playing around with a cloud of iron dust. Forming spears and swords with it becomes ridiculously easy as he tries out his new equipment for the first time, punching hole in the nearby critters (except rabbits, no one knows why to this day).
Jennifer went for something a lot cuter: dessert magic. Ice cream, waffles, cake: it's all her credo. God knows whatever she wants to do with it, but at least I tried to balance it out with the rest of the team, as well as the potential encounters.
It takes a lot of time for our champions to get their kits ready, but finally they set out. Their mission: investigate the recrudescence in centaur population within the southern Barrens. As they come out of the flooded Thousand Needles, they're quickly recognized by members of an odd provenance: unicorns. They're known to be distant cousins of the target our heroes seek to find and push back where they came from.
The discussion doesn't go well, as the normally pacific unicorn representative they come across is indubitably nervous, a trait most uncommon to their kind. The unicorn seems pressed to end the conversation, as though they were hiding something from the group. Our players, however, don't seem to notice so, and although one of them gets shocked by an unknown source when he asked a somewhat personal question to the unicorn, no one seems to take notice (a couple of scores below 5 were rolled, I don't think I would've had any difficulty justifying it otherwise).
As the evening (in real life, that is) grows to become late at night, our adventurers decide to set camp in the middle of the barrens: having a dessert magus around helps with avoiding starving, even though everyone got a malus to agility of 1 for 2 hours after eating, and as the tents are being set by our magnetic engineer and the magus, the barbarian takes watch. A few hours after everyone falls asleep (even the guard, after a poor roll of 1), hoof sounds are heard throughout their camp: centaurs.
The magus is the first to wake up. She realizes that the small group of centaurs, apparently renegades if their strangely pale fur suggests correctly, has introduced itself into the camp and is stealing all their provisions and gold! Quickly, she wakes up the engineer and tries to make it to our swordsman. Unfortunately, she quickly finds out that he's been made prisoner by the centaurs, and so a fierce battle begins.
The magus is first to strike, and invocates a giant waffle atop one of the 3 centaurs. Right after that, the engineer boots up his suit and forms a longsword to fight with. Somewhere, laying across a tree, the barbarian is still snoring. This attack surprises the centaurs, which take a lot of damage on this first strike. Having very little visibility, the first centaur tries to get himself out of his waffle trap, which is gushing honey onto him, slowing him down drastically. The other two centaurs, unable to move, are taken by panic: they start running around everywhere, trying to avoid ending up full of metal or chocolate dressing. A few iron dust blade strikes later, and two of the centaurs are lying dead around the camp. In the meantime, the first centaur is still prisoner. Finally, the magus walks to our sleeping prince and wakes him up, freeing him in the meantime.
A short, yet fruitful interrogation follows: the centaur, completely panicked by the sudden death of his two comrades, immediately reveals a location that "may sting our adventurers' interest". But what exactly is he talking about?
Tonight, it was I who chose to prepare something of my own. Here, no premade character, nor any kind of equipment that was blatantly ripped off of some generic source or random generator. Each player chooses 3 sets of equipment, any kind thereof. Balance is all done beforehand, so that stats and newly found ideas can still be tried out throughout the game. And what's more: here, the equipment makes the playstyle.
First in-game day, Conor went for something pretty classic, and efficient: a melee fighter, some sort of barbarian if you will (especially given he rolled a 2 on his non-scaling attribute, intelligence), roaming around in shining armor, God knows how he kept it so, and a double-reversed chainsword.
Markus went for something a lot more refined: PCB armor, set with batteries and the like, playing around with a cloud of iron dust. Forming spears and swords with it becomes ridiculously easy as he tries out his new equipment for the first time, punching hole in the nearby critters (except rabbits, no one knows why to this day).
Jennifer went for something a lot cuter: dessert magic. Ice cream, waffles, cake: it's all her credo. God knows whatever she wants to do with it, but at least I tried to balance it out with the rest of the team, as well as the potential encounters.
It takes a lot of time for our champions to get their kits ready, but finally they set out. Their mission: investigate the recrudescence in centaur population within the southern Barrens. As they come out of the flooded Thousand Needles, they're quickly recognized by members of an odd provenance: unicorns. They're known to be distant cousins of the target our heroes seek to find and push back where they came from.
The discussion doesn't go well, as the normally pacific unicorn representative they come across is indubitably nervous, a trait most uncommon to their kind. The unicorn seems pressed to end the conversation, as though they were hiding something from the group. Our players, however, don't seem to notice so, and although one of them gets shocked by an unknown source when he asked a somewhat personal question to the unicorn, no one seems to take notice (a couple of scores below 5 were rolled, I don't think I would've had any difficulty justifying it otherwise).
As the evening (in real life, that is) grows to become late at night, our adventurers decide to set camp in the middle of the barrens: having a dessert magus around helps with avoiding starving, even though everyone got a malus to agility of 1 for 2 hours after eating, and as the tents are being set by our magnetic engineer and the magus, the barbarian takes watch. A few hours after everyone falls asleep (even the guard, after a poor roll of 1), hoof sounds are heard throughout their camp: centaurs.
The magus is the first to wake up. She realizes that the small group of centaurs, apparently renegades if their strangely pale fur suggests correctly, has introduced itself into the camp and is stealing all their provisions and gold! Quickly, she wakes up the engineer and tries to make it to our swordsman. Unfortunately, she quickly finds out that he's been made prisoner by the centaurs, and so a fierce battle begins.
The magus is first to strike, and invocates a giant waffle atop one of the 3 centaurs. Right after that, the engineer boots up his suit and forms a longsword to fight with. Somewhere, laying across a tree, the barbarian is still snoring. This attack surprises the centaurs, which take a lot of damage on this first strike. Having very little visibility, the first centaur tries to get himself out of his waffle trap, which is gushing honey onto him, slowing him down drastically. The other two centaurs, unable to move, are taken by panic: they start running around everywhere, trying to avoid ending up full of metal or chocolate dressing. A few iron dust blade strikes later, and two of the centaurs are lying dead around the camp. In the meantime, the first centaur is still prisoner. Finally, the magus walks to our sleeping prince and wakes him up, freeing him in the meantime.
A short, yet fruitful interrogation follows: the centaur, completely panicked by the sudden death of his two comrades, immediately reveals a location that "may sting our adventurers' interest". But what exactly is he talking about?
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