Friday Night Game Report - Atlantis: The Second Age RPG, Session 0
And so it begins... again. :)
Friday night saw the re-start of the Atlantis: The Second Age RPG campaign. Rather than re-starting the game from scratch, the Friday night gaming group decided to continue their campaign from where they had left off with the game in late 2015 (you can read about that last session by following this link).
For those who don’t know, the Atlantis: The Second Age RPG is published by Khepera Publishing, and is based on the games from Bard Games (1985) and Morrigan Press (2005). Atlantis: The Second Age is a sword & sorcery roleplaying game set in the Antediluvian world filled with savage warriors, powerful magics, and cosmic horrors. It's a Sword & Sorcery fantasy roleplaying game in the vein of the old Tor and DAW books, owing a lot to Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, Michael Moorcock, and Fritz Leiber.
The players had decided that they wanted to do a Session Zero to start with, given the length of time that had passed since they last played Atlantis: The Second Age, and because one of the players (Peter) hadn’t even been with the gaming group the last time they had played!, and had to create his character for the game. I started off by showing the players the map of the Antediluvian world from the Khepera version of the game, and talked with them about the game world and answered their questions (Peter had quite a few, of course!) to the best of my ability for about an hour. This covered everything from basic game mechanics, matters about some parts of the game world, the cultures available, and everything in between. This was somewhat exhausting for me, as the Antediluvian world is just soooooooooo *BIG*, but the players seemed content with the knowledge and Peter loved the amount of and detail about the game world. We then moved on to actual character generation.
Character generation in the Atlantis: The Second Age RPG (Khepera edition) is a relatively straightforward, somewhat easy to get through process, but it does require a good deal of thought and the making of choices. (You can get an idea of how character generation for the system works with the detailed example, Nadaria of Cimmeria, that I posted up to the blog.) That said, half the fun of the character generation system for Atlantis: The Second Age is the Life Path system; all of my players, when it came right down to it, had opted to go through several Life Path events to make their player characters more interesting, and Peter kind of liked the idea. :)
While Peter created his character (see below), the rest of the players went through the process with him, so as to re-familiarise themselves with the game system and elements and to give Peter some advice as he created his character. The characters that the Friday night players created and are playing for the Atlantis: The Second Age RPG are an interesting, somewhat eclectic mix, to say the least. Here's what the Friday night players have got. (The only new player character here is Peter’s, but I provide this listing for completeness.)
*****
KathyB - She decided to break with her traditional character type, the thief, and instead went the route of Sahauviia the Green, an Atlantean Sorceress who spent some time at sea, and had several encounters during her time adventuring that left her...changed.
Angela - She had a somewhat tough time deciding which of several concepts she wanted to go with, but settled on Koomara Hadansi, a female Human Scavenger (another new Profession) of First Age artefacts from Galacea (Europa). She ended up with a modicum of magic as well, and found that she needed to add some Skills to be competent at what she wanted to do.
Ellie - My goddaughter wanted a character who wasn't related to her mother's, and she created Melucene Palleremos, the daughter of a Hesperian Priestess whose mother attempted to sacrifice her to the Gods.
Mark - He decided that he wanted to play an almost stereotype of the sword & sorcery genre, and created a Cimmerian named Vaino the One-Eyed, who was mauled by wolf and almost died (twice) during his rite of manhood. He’s now trying to find the love of his life who went missing, and the trail seems to have led him to Atlantis.
Peter - He was intrigued by the Andamen, and decided to play an Asena (wolf) from Pemba who works as a scout. While Uratan was raised in a savage environment, he has a dark family secret, and also suffers terrible nightmares about the Elder Gods for reasons he doesn’t understand.
*****
All in all, an interesting group of characters with a lot of potential, and the players had a good deal of fun with the process (especially the Life Paths) again, and really did a good job of giving their characters a little bit in common, so that they don't start in the gaming void of not knowing each other. While they didn't struggle with any of the game elements per sé, Peter (and two of the others) admitted to having a difficult time coming to grips with the concept of the Atman, and how it affects their characters. Overall, the players quite liked the character generation system for the Atlantis: The Second Age RPG, and are now looking forward to getting back into their game on Friday in a couple of weeks.
For that matter, so am I! :)
Friday night saw the re-start of the Atlantis: The Second Age RPG campaign. Rather than re-starting the game from scratch, the Friday night gaming group decided to continue their campaign from where they had left off with the game in late 2015 (you can read about that last session by following this link).
For those who don’t know, the Atlantis: The Second Age RPG is published by Khepera Publishing, and is based on the games from Bard Games (1985) and Morrigan Press (2005). Atlantis: The Second Age is a sword & sorcery roleplaying game set in the Antediluvian world filled with savage warriors, powerful magics, and cosmic horrors. It's a Sword & Sorcery fantasy roleplaying game in the vein of the old Tor and DAW books, owing a lot to Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, Michael Moorcock, and Fritz Leiber.
The players had decided that they wanted to do a Session Zero to start with, given the length of time that had passed since they last played Atlantis: The Second Age, and because one of the players (Peter) hadn’t even been with the gaming group the last time they had played!, and had to create his character for the game. I started off by showing the players the map of the Antediluvian world from the Khepera version of the game, and talked with them about the game world and answered their questions (Peter had quite a few, of course!) to the best of my ability for about an hour. This covered everything from basic game mechanics, matters about some parts of the game world, the cultures available, and everything in between. This was somewhat exhausting for me, as the Antediluvian world is just soooooooooo *BIG*, but the players seemed content with the knowledge and Peter loved the amount of and detail about the game world. We then moved on to actual character generation.
Character generation in the Atlantis: The Second Age RPG (Khepera edition) is a relatively straightforward, somewhat easy to get through process, but it does require a good deal of thought and the making of choices. (You can get an idea of how character generation for the system works with the detailed example, Nadaria of Cimmeria, that I posted up to the blog.) That said, half the fun of the character generation system for Atlantis: The Second Age is the Life Path system; all of my players, when it came right down to it, had opted to go through several Life Path events to make their player characters more interesting, and Peter kind of liked the idea. :)
While Peter created his character (see below), the rest of the players went through the process with him, so as to re-familiarise themselves with the game system and elements and to give Peter some advice as he created his character. The characters that the Friday night players created and are playing for the Atlantis: The Second Age RPG are an interesting, somewhat eclectic mix, to say the least. Here's what the Friday night players have got. (The only new player character here is Peter’s, but I provide this listing for completeness.)
*****
KathyB - She decided to break with her traditional character type, the thief, and instead went the route of Sahauviia the Green, an Atlantean Sorceress who spent some time at sea, and had several encounters during her time adventuring that left her...changed.
Angela - She had a somewhat tough time deciding which of several concepts she wanted to go with, but settled on Koomara Hadansi, a female Human Scavenger (another new Profession) of First Age artefacts from Galacea (Europa). She ended up with a modicum of magic as well, and found that she needed to add some Skills to be competent at what she wanted to do.
Ellie - My goddaughter wanted a character who wasn't related to her mother's, and she created Melucene Palleremos, the daughter of a Hesperian Priestess whose mother attempted to sacrifice her to the Gods.
Mark - He decided that he wanted to play an almost stereotype of the sword & sorcery genre, and created a Cimmerian named Vaino the One-Eyed, who was mauled by wolf and almost died (twice) during his rite of manhood. He’s now trying to find the love of his life who went missing, and the trail seems to have led him to Atlantis.
Peter - He was intrigued by the Andamen, and decided to play an Asena (wolf) from Pemba who works as a scout. While Uratan was raised in a savage environment, he has a dark family secret, and also suffers terrible nightmares about the Elder Gods for reasons he doesn’t understand.
*****
All in all, an interesting group of characters with a lot of potential, and the players had a good deal of fun with the process (especially the Life Paths) again, and really did a good job of giving their characters a little bit in common, so that they don't start in the gaming void of not knowing each other. While they didn't struggle with any of the game elements per sé, Peter (and two of the others) admitted to having a difficult time coming to grips with the concept of the Atman, and how it affects their characters. Overall, the players quite liked the character generation system for the Atlantis: The Second Age RPG, and are now looking forward to getting back into their game on Friday in a couple of weeks.
For that matter, so am I! :)