Sunday Afternoon Game Report - Vaesen - Nordic Horror Roleplaying RPG, Session 0
Yesterday afternoon, the Sunday afternoon group arrived to play their regular session. We started off by wrapping up the last Atlantis: The Second Age RPG scenario by taking care of the paperwork that goes with the end of the adventure while the material was still fresh in our minds. This involved totalling up the final Renown Points awards for the adventure, determining whether the character's Renown allowed for another round of improvements (it did, for two of the characters), and then spending the Improvement Points to do so. Overall, the process took about half an hour or so, but that was fine.
We then took a fifteen minute break to move the Atlantis: The Second Age gaming material out of the play area and then started in with the game that I'll be running for roughly the next three months, Vaesen - Nordic Horror Roleplaying game, the dark, Gothic setting steeped in Nordic folklore and the old myths of Scandinavia.
So this game session marked the start of the Vaesen - Nordic Horror Roleplaying game campaign with my Sunday afternoon group. Since the players haven't played the game, nor were they all that familiar with the game world and its setting, we started the game from the...the beginning. :) Essentially, this is the Session Zero of the game campaign. I started by giving the players an overview of the game and what it's about, and then proceeded by giving the players the basic material that they would need about The Society, the 19th Century world that they would be playing in and the Mythic North and Upsala, and finally talked a little bit about what vaesen *are* (but only in general terms). We then proceeded to talk about the basic game mechanics for the system and how they worked. (Since they had already played the Coriolis - The Third Horizon game in the past, they were somewhat familiar with the system mechanics of the Year Zero Engine. After a quick break to digest some of that material, we then sat down and I explained the basics of character creation and the twelve steps involved in the process. The players were quite intrigued, and we talked about various aspects of the character creation process, and then the players set about creating their characters for the game.
Character generation for the Vaesen - Nordic Horror Roleplaying game is a relatively simple affair but does have some decisions to be made, and uses a system that is similar to most of the Year Zero Engine, with some modifications that fit the world of Vaesen. After about two to two and a half hours of explaining the game world and setting things up, the Sunday afternoon players came up with an interesting mix of characters and personalities. Here's what the Sunday players created.
*****
SteveR - SteveR went into the game with no real idea of what he wanted to create for the game. While he talked about creating a doctor, he finally settled on Isak Hellqvist, a geologist turned occultist who fell in love with a vaesen and has killed for her.
Tammy - Tammy looked at the list of character archetypes for the game, and saw one of the talents available to characters is the Herbalist talent. She decided to play Mia Bolander, a herbalist who has real problems with the incursion of science and technology in the rural areas of Scandinavia. Her character took a bit longer to create, since she needed to fit her abilities in to make the herbalist work using the Hunter archetype, but the character seems interesting enough at this point.
*****
All in all, the players created an interesting pair of characters with a lot of potential.
After character creation was complete, I spent about ten minutes telling them a bit more about the game mechanics, had them make some sample rolls to show how the game mechanics worked and how the combat system functioned, and then I ran a couple of simple combat sequences. It was nice and neat, showed off the game mechanics nicely, and gave the players a good example of how the game mechanics and in-play combat worked.
After the session was done, the players agreed that they had created some lovely, interesting characters for the game, though SteveR wasn't sure he wants to play the doctor (so we'll see what happens over the next couple of weeks, and that Vaesen - Nordic Horror Roleplaying had relatively simple mechanics and does a good job of emulating the Gothic horror feel of 19th Century Scandinavia.
They're quite looking forward to the next full game session, and so am I! :)
Note: Updated on October 31st to include the characters' names and SteveR's switch from the doctor to the geologist occultist.
We then took a fifteen minute break to move the Atlantis: The Second Age gaming material out of the play area and then started in with the game that I'll be running for roughly the next three months, Vaesen - Nordic Horror Roleplaying game, the dark, Gothic setting steeped in Nordic folklore and the old myths of Scandinavia.
So this game session marked the start of the Vaesen - Nordic Horror Roleplaying game campaign with my Sunday afternoon group. Since the players haven't played the game, nor were they all that familiar with the game world and its setting, we started the game from the...the beginning. :) Essentially, this is the Session Zero of the game campaign. I started by giving the players an overview of the game and what it's about, and then proceeded by giving the players the basic material that they would need about The Society, the 19th Century world that they would be playing in and the Mythic North and Upsala, and finally talked a little bit about what vaesen *are* (but only in general terms). We then proceeded to talk about the basic game mechanics for the system and how they worked. (Since they had already played the Coriolis - The Third Horizon game in the past, they were somewhat familiar with the system mechanics of the Year Zero Engine. After a quick break to digest some of that material, we then sat down and I explained the basics of character creation and the twelve steps involved in the process. The players were quite intrigued, and we talked about various aspects of the character creation process, and then the players set about creating their characters for the game.
Character generation for the Vaesen - Nordic Horror Roleplaying game is a relatively simple affair but does have some decisions to be made, and uses a system that is similar to most of the Year Zero Engine, with some modifications that fit the world of Vaesen. After about two to two and a half hours of explaining the game world and setting things up, the Sunday afternoon players came up with an interesting mix of characters and personalities. Here's what the Sunday players created.
*****
SteveR - SteveR went into the game with no real idea of what he wanted to create for the game. While he talked about creating a doctor, he finally settled on Isak Hellqvist, a geologist turned occultist who fell in love with a vaesen and has killed for her.
Tammy - Tammy looked at the list of character archetypes for the game, and saw one of the talents available to characters is the Herbalist talent. She decided to play Mia Bolander, a herbalist who has real problems with the incursion of science and technology in the rural areas of Scandinavia. Her character took a bit longer to create, since she needed to fit her abilities in to make the herbalist work using the Hunter archetype, but the character seems interesting enough at this point.
*****
All in all, the players created an interesting pair of characters with a lot of potential.
After character creation was complete, I spent about ten minutes telling them a bit more about the game mechanics, had them make some sample rolls to show how the game mechanics worked and how the combat system functioned, and then I ran a couple of simple combat sequences. It was nice and neat, showed off the game mechanics nicely, and gave the players a good example of how the game mechanics and in-play combat worked.
After the session was done, the players agreed that they had created some lovely, interesting characters for the game, though SteveR wasn't sure he wants to play the doctor (so we'll see what happens over the next couple of weeks, and that Vaesen - Nordic Horror Roleplaying had relatively simple mechanics and does a good job of emulating the Gothic horror feel of 19th Century Scandinavia.
They're quite looking forward to the next full game session, and so am I! :)
Note: Updated on October 31st to include the characters' names and SteveR's switch from the doctor to the geologist occultist.