Hey, all...
This past (or is it passed, that one always throws me) Thursday, I fired up my world of Tai'eres for the third time. Out of six players, we had four at the table due to one having a medical emergency and the other not being back in the state yet.
Of the players, only my son has ever played in the system before. I don't know if he is trying to butter up the old man or not, but my spawn claims that Tai'eres is his favorite setting and game system that he has ever played. When we were done Thursday night, I might have had two more people joining him in that chant.
Our adventures start in the village/encampment of Sword's Chance. The characters either don't know each other, or know each other in a cursory fashion. To keep things simple, I started the group out with a simple "guard the caravan" mission. It's a very small caravan (one wagon), but the pay is good, and the merchant they are working for seems friendly and amenable.
On the "trail", the point man pretty much stumbles over a pile of sticks obscured by the long grass. This alone has the group paranoid, so they spread out, trying to figure out what the hell a pile of old, dried sticks and twigs are doing just lying in the grass. That is when the lurking giant trap-door spider attacks. During the surprise round, the arachnid envenoms one of the player characters and takes him totally out of the fight in one hit. That is when the players other than my son realized they were not in Kansas/D&D-land anymore. The group manages to fight off and kill the spider, plus keep their fellow caravan guard alive long enough for him to recover on his own some four hours later.
The group manages to make it to the village of Xinq'ua. In the village, Lor'kath (the merchant) sells a few of his wares and pays the group for the day. While in the village, the party here's the flapping of large, bat-like wings during the night. As a group, they surmise that is a pack of Qu'oll (think Stirges from D&D) that is out on the hunt. The Qu'oll are kept away from the village with the smoke and light coming from the communal fire lit in the village center.
In the morning, the group heads out for the next stop, which is the village of Gor'ath. The span from Xinq'ua to Gor'ath is a bit longer than their initial venture from Sword's Chance to Xinq'ua, so it will take them just over a day and a half finish this leg of the journey. During the first day's travels, the group runs in to a collection of what turns out to either be the world's worst bandits or the world's best sword fodder. Either way, in short order four out of the five bandits, including their leader, are very, VERY dead. One poor guy did run away and managed to escape the wrath of the group.
The session ended with the group camping for the night with just over a half a day's worth of distance to Gor'ath.
Overall, I felt the session went pretty well. I don't really have a story plan yet on where I want to take these guys, but I figure the first few runs are really more for getting them up to speed in the system and for me to get an idea of what they want to accomplish as a group and as individuals.
Now, I have a Shadowrun 5th edition character to make for myself...
-- GopherDave
There's nothing like a caravan run to get started. Giving them that "Oh crap!" moment with the spider was a good idea. I don't like to kill PCs, but I definitely don't baby them the way some DMs do. It's good to know that there are serious threats in the world you're playing in, and it doesn't have to be a dragon.
ReplyDeleteWe just did a two-session mission to protect a bunch of citizens in a church from an invading force. I'm not a big fan of 4e, but it was a lot of fun. At one point, my dwarf ranger went into the catacombs by himself, so we did about 10 mins. of solo play. It was a good experience.
Yeah, the caravan thing is sort of an easy thing to use to acclimate folks to the setting and the system. I've used it many times before to good effect, and it seemed to help bring folks together as a group and help players get used to the rules.
ReplyDeleteWith the last run, the caravan ended, though not before running into the world's worst bandits. Ugh, those guys all went down like complete chumps. The Screamtoads had them kind of freaked though.
So, that was a good thing... =)