Sunday Afternoon Game Report - Rivers of London: The Roleplaying Game, Session 0, Part 3
As noted in the previous blog entry on the subject, the Sunday afternoon gaming group continued their Rivers of London: The Roleplaying Game campaign last session, beginning with the usual Session Zero of character creation, among other things. You can read that Session Zero entry by following the link to learn what happened and what player investigators (what the game system calls the player characters) the players created in that session.
The idea this time around was to go through the game rules and mechanics, the Combat section, play out some sample combats and then hopefully get to the start of the first case file (adventure) for their investigators. Such was not to be the case, however. Tammy started the afternoon by telling me that she needed to talk to me about her backstory, notably where she was born, where she resides, and who she works for. SteveR decided that was a good idea, too, so we spent the next hour-and-a-half to two hours going through material about London, some of the boroughs and their demographics, and the like. SteveR worked out most of his origins by the time we finished up, but Tammy was still somewhat up in the air about where she came from and a few other matters.
The remainder of the four hours of the game session consisted of talking to the players about the basic rules and mechanics, including once more dealing with the rules for Newtonian magic. Tammy is very concerned about suffering from Hyperthaumaturgical Degradation (HTD), but this is typical; she hates magic systems that have costs to casting magic, but said she'd find a way for her character to "deal" with possibility. One of the reasons I would have preferred she had created the character with the potential for magic, as then she could have properly learned about magic in the same way that Peter grant does in the Rivers of London novel. I think she's still disappointed that none of the magic seems to be functional within Emma Thorpe's job as a forensics specialist. (Little does she know.) Both SteveR and Tammy were a bit concerned about the use of Luck in the game, but I told them that practice will make perfect and that it's a matter of balancing the Luck economy.
I then proceeded to talk to the players about the Rivers of London: The Roleplaying Game Combat system and the rules for that. Both players liked the rules for combat, since it's not something that occurs with regularity in the Rivers of London novels, but when it does happen it can be deadly if one is not careful. The combat system is not crunchy as a lot of games out there are, and the sequence of combat is very easy to work with (compared with some Chaosium Inc. games). I had just enough time left in the game session to run three sample combats with the players, showing them how Skills worked in the Combat system, as well as having them take each other on and then menaced them with some typical (and not so typical) alley thugs at a crowded bar. It was a good way to wrap up the game session for the afternoon, and would give the players a week to sort out some stuff for their backgrounds and figure out what else they would need to know.
Overall, the Session Zero of the Rivers of London: The Roleplaying Game went a bit longer than I had expected it to go, because of the detail on the game world and police investigations and the like that the players wanted to know. The players are now looking forward to their first case file, which will start hopefully next session.
I'm just looking forward to actually *running* the game now! :)
The idea this time around was to go through the game rules and mechanics, the Combat section, play out some sample combats and then hopefully get to the start of the first case file (adventure) for their investigators. Such was not to be the case, however. Tammy started the afternoon by telling me that she needed to talk to me about her backstory, notably where she was born, where she resides, and who she works for. SteveR decided that was a good idea, too, so we spent the next hour-and-a-half to two hours going through material about London, some of the boroughs and their demographics, and the like. SteveR worked out most of his origins by the time we finished up, but Tammy was still somewhat up in the air about where she came from and a few other matters.
The remainder of the four hours of the game session consisted of talking to the players about the basic rules and mechanics, including once more dealing with the rules for Newtonian magic. Tammy is very concerned about suffering from Hyperthaumaturgical Degradation (HTD), but this is typical; she hates magic systems that have costs to casting magic, but said she'd find a way for her character to "deal" with possibility. One of the reasons I would have preferred she had created the character with the potential for magic, as then she could have properly learned about magic in the same way that Peter grant does in the Rivers of London novel. I think she's still disappointed that none of the magic seems to be functional within Emma Thorpe's job as a forensics specialist. (Little does she know.) Both SteveR and Tammy were a bit concerned about the use of Luck in the game, but I told them that practice will make perfect and that it's a matter of balancing the Luck economy.
I then proceeded to talk to the players about the Rivers of London: The Roleplaying Game Combat system and the rules for that. Both players liked the rules for combat, since it's not something that occurs with regularity in the Rivers of London novels, but when it does happen it can be deadly if one is not careful. The combat system is not crunchy as a lot of games out there are, and the sequence of combat is very easy to work with (compared with some Chaosium Inc. games). I had just enough time left in the game session to run three sample combats with the players, showing them how Skills worked in the Combat system, as well as having them take each other on and then menaced them with some typical (and not so typical) alley thugs at a crowded bar. It was a good way to wrap up the game session for the afternoon, and would give the players a week to sort out some stuff for their backgrounds and figure out what else they would need to know.
Overall, the Session Zero of the Rivers of London: The Roleplaying Game went a bit longer than I had expected it to go, because of the detail on the game world and police investigations and the like that the players wanted to know. The players are now looking forward to their first case file, which will start hopefully next session.
I'm just looking forward to actually *running* the game now! :)