Finally: My first posting under “Actual Play Reports”. We did our first session last week and it was great fun even though it was a bit (expected) confusing.
It took very long to create the PCs because I wanted to describe the background a bit. This “bit” took ~ 1h because I explained the setting a lot (… industrial fantasy, but with ghost/demons/vampires, but with elektroplasma, but with X and Y). Then I tried to explain the “special” rules to my old-school players (… flashbacks and Group Actions, Fiction-First, no Combat Initiative and did I mentioned flashbacks! Wow!)
Then finally we did the characters and the crew and then I had a group of suprised players when I told them that they’re already in Bazo’s office. They had a hard time coping with that. We did not manage to finish the score and go to downtime because we had a break after 3 hours of playtime. We’ll see how this will work out.
BUT: It was great. All my three (stressed) players said it was great and they’re all curious how say will manage to climb to the top in Doskvol (no doubt about the if)
Question to anyone who played the Lampblacks vs. Red Sashes start: Did anyone of your players took the “yep, we’re here to murder Bazo using a flash back” option? My players were REALLY relieved when I said that this is only an option and they don’t have to. Short planning will be a challenge to them 🙂
As a GM I had some hard times thumbing through the papers (situation front, rules in the middle, score somewhere in the back) and I decided to create my own cheat sheet for the next session.
Congrats on your first play! Glad it sounded mostly successful.
It’s obviously far too late now, but I recommend doing a quick guided character creation (perhaps picking their first advances for them so you don’t have to read them all), and then jumping right into the game with no rules explanation. Put them in the situation and ask them what they’d like to do. If they want to murder Bazso then you tell them they probably planned for this and explain flashbacks. If they want to negotiate terms with him, explain the action roll. If they want to work together to overpower his guards explain teamwork actions. When things go wrong for the PCs(and they will go horribly wrong), explain how harm, stress, and resistance work. These are probably the only rules you’ll need for session one, and it lets you start playing immediately.
I’ve definitely fumbled with papers a lot in my first few sessions. Eventually you remember most of it without needing to look at the sheets, and you keep the few sheets you do want to reference handy.
I’ve started two groups in Baszo’s office, and to my eternal sadness, neither decided they were there to murder him. Oh well, I guess I’ll have to start another group, or play in one myself.
Mark Griffin thanks for the advice. All of my players are veteran GMs him-/herself. So, they want to KNOW the rules before they play. Therefor I had to explain a bit. Maybe I overdid it, but this will be okay in the next sessions.
Concering the Baszo murder: We just have to find and start new groups as long as one of them choose the murder 😉
It is both a blessing and a curse that my players rarely want to know the rules.
Thanks for posting, Stefan. Glad you had fun!
My group tried to kill him with a clockwork explosive. There were a lot of resistance rolls.
Nick Belleque “tried” sounds like he’s still living?
Leech rolled Tinker in a flashback to make and set the bomb, with a devil’s bargain, with a setup action from the Slide(talking their way in), and rolled four 1’s when it was time for it to go off. It went off all right, destroying the entire top floor of the building, Lampblacks flying every which way, the Bluecoats and the Brigade show up, and the latter steals Bazo’s entire whiskey collection. The PC’s only narrowly escaped thanks to the Cutter deciding that doors were for quitters, and bashed his way through the floor into the sewer system. Everyone came out with around 5-6 stress. Good session though.
But does Baszo live?
They don’t know……..
Nick Belleque Very cool. I think this hits the essence of the game: Daring Actions, plan went nuts, but the story and the outcome is so damn cool. A bunch of loose end just waiting to come back “haunting” the PCs, pun intended 🙂