Friday Night Game Report - Capharnaüm RPG, Session 0
As noted in yesterday's blog entry, the Friday night gamers had wrapped up their Torg Eternity campaign for the moment, and wanted to get into the Capharnaüm - The Tales of the Dragon-Marked RPG. I had meant to post this blog entry this morning, but things got away from me and I was too tired when I got home right after grocery shopping and errands. Ah, well, better in the day than not at all, right? :)
The Friday night gamers have started to play the Capharnaüm - The Tales of the Dragon-Marked fantasy RPG of Arabian Nights, Argonauts and Adventure, published by Mindjammer Press and distributed by Modiphius Entertainment. Capharnaüm - The Tales of the Dragon-Marked is a fantasy roleplaying game set in a world of Arabian Nights, Argonauts, and Crusaders. Inspired by the One Thousand and One Nights, the myths of ancient Greece, and the legends of the Crusades, it’s where history meets myth, and legends are born.
Once the Friday night gamers showed up at my place for the evening, around 7:10 pm or so, I started off by showing them the maps of the Known World and the continent of Jazirat, talked with them about the game world and answered their questions to the best of my ability for about an hour. This covered everything from basic game mechanics, the use of the dice, lighting up constellations, the various cultures of the Known World, and a couple of other things that they asked about (including the cosmology aspects of the game world). From that starting point, we moved on to character generation.
Character generation in the Capharnaüm - The Tales of the Dragon-Marked game is a relatively straightforward process, made easier if you have an idea of what you want to play, but it does require some tought. (You can get an idea of how character generation for the game system works with the detailed example, Ibraman Ibn Yussef Abd-Al-Salif, that I posted up to the blog a couple of months ago.) That said, half the fun of the character generation system for Capharnaüm - The Tales of the Dragon-Marked is some of these choices, as well as the Legend dice rolled choices that one has. The eight basic Archetypes for Skills - Adventurer, Labourer, Poet, Prince, Rogue, Sage, Sorcerer and Warrior - are a good guideline to use for creating character concepts as well, since these are the typical archetypes for characters, both protagonists and villains, in the genre in question.
The characters that the Friday night players created for the Capharnaüm - The Tales of the Dragon-Marked RPG turned out quite interesting and had some interesting basics to their backgrounds. Here's what the Friday night players created.
*****
KathyB - She pretty much knew what she wanted to play, and decided on the Rogue, specifically a thief. Chanda Bint Aziz Abd-Al-Salif (Chanda the Dark-Haired) is a Saabi thief with a penchant for pretty things and a bit of a dark past.
Angela - She looked over the Archetypes and decided that she wanted to play an adventurer, specifically a storyteller. Derori Bat Natanyu is a Shiradi storyteller who loves travelling the world and learning new stories, and sometimes hears the Muses.
Ellie - She looked over the various character Archetypes, but wasn't sure what she wanted to play at first. She finally settled on Meheka Bint Yazid Abd-Al-Tarek, a Saabi sage and a bit of a sorcerer who is searching for something that will explain what happens to her at times.
Mark - Looking over the Archetypes, Mark was enamoured with one and is playing Menachim Bar Vidal, a Shiradi physician with a strong sense of right and wrong, and a bit of a price on his head.
Peter - He was quite looking forward to playing the game, and looking over the Archetypes, he decided he wanted to play a mercenary type. He took on the role of Edrick Olafsson, a mercenary from Occidentia (Orkadia), who travels the length and breadth of Jazirat, looking for adventure.
*****
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 and really did a good job of coming up with ideas on how their characters would meet, though not necessarily know each other (other than the commonality of the Dragon Mark). The players didn't really struggle with character generation, finding things relatively simple, and Ellie was fond of the lighting up a constellation game mechanic. From start to finish, character generation went from 7:20 pm or so until about 9:40 pm (about 2-1/2 hours), and that included going through the game world stuff.
After we finished character creation, I went through the game mechanics with the players (who had a bit of a problem digesting the nature of Magnitude dice) and then ran a very quick, one-on-one combat between Meheka and Edrick that surprised everyone with its outcome. Overall, the players quite liked the Capharnaüm - The Tales of the Dragon-Marked RPG, and are now looking forward to starting their game on Friday in two weeks (my health and the weather willing).
For that matter, so am I! :)
The Friday night gamers have started to play the Capharnaüm - The Tales of the Dragon-Marked fantasy RPG of Arabian Nights, Argonauts and Adventure, published by Mindjammer Press and distributed by Modiphius Entertainment. Capharnaüm - The Tales of the Dragon-Marked is a fantasy roleplaying game set in a world of Arabian Nights, Argonauts, and Crusaders. Inspired by the One Thousand and One Nights, the myths of ancient Greece, and the legends of the Crusades, it’s where history meets myth, and legends are born.
Once the Friday night gamers showed up at my place for the evening, around 7:10 pm or so, I started off by showing them the maps of the Known World and the continent of Jazirat, talked with them about the game world and answered their questions to the best of my ability for about an hour. This covered everything from basic game mechanics, the use of the dice, lighting up constellations, the various cultures of the Known World, and a couple of other things that they asked about (including the cosmology aspects of the game world). From that starting point, we moved on to character generation.
Character generation in the Capharnaüm - The Tales of the Dragon-Marked game is a relatively straightforward process, made easier if you have an idea of what you want to play, but it does require some tought. (You can get an idea of how character generation for the game system works with the detailed example, Ibraman Ibn Yussef Abd-Al-Salif, that I posted up to the blog a couple of months ago.) That said, half the fun of the character generation system for Capharnaüm - The Tales of the Dragon-Marked is some of these choices, as well as the Legend dice rolled choices that one has. The eight basic Archetypes for Skills - Adventurer, Labourer, Poet, Prince, Rogue, Sage, Sorcerer and Warrior - are a good guideline to use for creating character concepts as well, since these are the typical archetypes for characters, both protagonists and villains, in the genre in question.
The characters that the Friday night players created for the Capharnaüm - The Tales of the Dragon-Marked RPG turned out quite interesting and had some interesting basics to their backgrounds. Here's what the Friday night players created.
*****
KathyB - She pretty much knew what she wanted to play, and decided on the Rogue, specifically a thief. Chanda Bint Aziz Abd-Al-Salif (Chanda the Dark-Haired) is a Saabi thief with a penchant for pretty things and a bit of a dark past.
Angela - She looked over the Archetypes and decided that she wanted to play an adventurer, specifically a storyteller. Derori Bat Natanyu is a Shiradi storyteller who loves travelling the world and learning new stories, and sometimes hears the Muses.
Ellie - She looked over the various character Archetypes, but wasn't sure what she wanted to play at first. She finally settled on Meheka Bint Yazid Abd-Al-Tarek, a Saabi sage and a bit of a sorcerer who is searching for something that will explain what happens to her at times.
Mark - Looking over the Archetypes, Mark was enamoured with one and is playing Menachim Bar Vidal, a Shiradi physician with a strong sense of right and wrong, and a bit of a price on his head.
Peter - He was quite looking forward to playing the game, and looking over the Archetypes, he decided he wanted to play a mercenary type. He took on the role of Edrick Olafsson, a mercenary from Occidentia (Orkadia), who travels the length and breadth of Jazirat, looking for adventure.
*****
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 and really did a good job of coming up with ideas on how their characters would meet, though not necessarily know each other (other than the commonality of the Dragon Mark). The players didn't really struggle with character generation, finding things relatively simple, and Ellie was fond of the lighting up a constellation game mechanic. From start to finish, character generation went from 7:20 pm or so until about 9:40 pm (about 2-1/2 hours), and that included going through the game world stuff.
After we finished character creation, I went through the game mechanics with the players (who had a bit of a problem digesting the nature of Magnitude dice) and then ran a very quick, one-on-one combat between Meheka and Edrick that surprised everyone with its outcome. Overall, the players quite liked the Capharnaüm - The Tales of the Dragon-Marked RPG, and are now looking forward to starting their game on Friday in two weeks (my health and the weather willing).
For that matter, so am I! :)