UberCon IX an Artesia:AKW Report
I had been late to submit my events for UberCon so I found myself with the ever fabulous midnight slot on Saturday night. Once pre-registration closed I wasn't terribly surprised that only two people signed up for my Artesia: Adventures in the Known World session.
Can you imagine how I felt when 8 people showed up hoping to play? I only had six characters available and unfortunately character creation isn't a quick process: two of the guys had to go. My sixth player was a friend with whom I game regularly. Since this was the case, and since player six was a rockin' gm as well, I told her that it would be fine if she stepped out of my game so that she could gm something for the two guys I turned away.
Thus, I ended up with a table of five players. Of the five, three were entirely unfamiliar with the world of Artesia, one had read some of the comics, while the fifth had read the comics and gm'ed sessions of the game at conventions. And I had thought my game would fold due to lack of players.
The addition of conflicting goals to the character backgrounds created some fun scenes at the start of the game. Anisa wanted to get together a group to go into the Erid Wold and find her lover. Jaila wanted to travel to outside of Westmark to visit a specific herbalist to get some supplies for a difficult birth that was pending in the village. With her gift of Honeyed Tongue, Anisa got her way.
During play, the guy playing the mid-wife, Jaila, asked me a fantastic question. "What could be the spiritual consequences of the child being born early, late or on schedule?" We decided that the 'on time' option should be determined by a roll on the random star sign chart in the book (pg 147), modified by the character's Star Lore. The result was The Scales with a strong influence. My interpretation was that a child born under that sign and influence had the potential to become a wise and just leader of men. However a difficult birth could result in the child growing up to be a spirit of vengeance under the guise of justice. Fun eh?
Considering the lateness of the game and the tiredness of some players, the session went really well. There was strong role-playing and entertaining consequences to rolls and player decisions. I learned some weaknesses of some characters, particularly Olan the blacksmith. He has reasons to be with the group but the character isn’t terribly effective once on the road to the Erid Wold (he’s much more effective if Jaila’s, his own or Lagaine’s quests are undertaken.) I’ll need to look at the character sheet and do some tweaking. I had been playing with the idea of his being immune to the effects of the flower pool. I may put that into play.
After the game, which ended around 4am, most of us talked for a while. Cameron (the guy who has run the game before) thought a random Arcana draw on critical successes and failures could be interesting. For instance, Lewin crucially fails his Courage check and draws a card. The resulting card can then be interpreted as an influencing factor to the failure. The same could be done for critical successes. I think I'm going to try this as I find anything that encourages storytelling to be a good thing.
The player who had the character Jaila was incredibly pleased with the game. He kept telling me how happy he was with his character choice and that he had a great time. He went on to say he would love for his gm to get the game and learn it so he could play again. That of course developed into our talking about the availability of the game book and where it can be purchased. It would be very cool if these guys try running it at home.
I'll be running the scenario twice more before the close of 2007: at Philcon in November and AnonyCon in December. Maybe by the December game I'll have all the kinks worked out. LOL
And now for a note about the character names in my scenario
If you have read The Witch's Price, the scenario in Artesia: AKW, then the names above may seem familiar. They should, as they're names of some of the NPC villagers in the game.
I had been writing my scenario, slaving away over were to set my village, the types of people in it, etc. Only to find that the village of Belward, the main location of The Witch's Price, was nearly exactly what I was making.
"Why should I do all this work," I asked myself, "if it's already done and with beautiful illustrations?"
So I made player characters out of six of the named villagers, designed some conflicts that are totally unrelated to the published scenario, and voila! I had a game.
Was this cheating? Maybe a little. However, I've put a lot of hours into the characters (none of them had stats of any sort, just names and occupations) and the conflicts in the game are very different from those of the scenario. Additionally I added new NPCs and a handful of small locations. The more I work on it, the more I add and make it my own.
Can you imagine how I felt when 8 people showed up hoping to play? I only had six characters available and unfortunately character creation isn't a quick process: two of the guys had to go. My sixth player was a friend with whom I game regularly. Since this was the case, and since player six was a rockin' gm as well, I told her that it would be fine if she stepped out of my game so that she could gm something for the two guys I turned away.
Thus, I ended up with a table of five players. Of the five, three were entirely unfamiliar with the world of Artesia, one had read some of the comics, while the fifth had read the comics and gm'ed sessions of the game at conventions. And I had thought my game would fold due to lack of players.
The addition of conflicting goals to the character backgrounds created some fun scenes at the start of the game. Anisa wanted to get together a group to go into the Erid Wold and find her lover. Jaila wanted to travel to outside of Westmark to visit a specific herbalist to get some supplies for a difficult birth that was pending in the village. With her gift of Honeyed Tongue, Anisa got her way.
During play, the guy playing the mid-wife, Jaila, asked me a fantastic question. "What could be the spiritual consequences of the child being born early, late or on schedule?" We decided that the 'on time' option should be determined by a roll on the random star sign chart in the book (pg 147), modified by the character's Star Lore. The result was The Scales with a strong influence. My interpretation was that a child born under that sign and influence had the potential to become a wise and just leader of men. However a difficult birth could result in the child growing up to be a spirit of vengeance under the guise of justice. Fun eh?
Considering the lateness of the game and the tiredness of some players, the session went really well. There was strong role-playing and entertaining consequences to rolls and player decisions. I learned some weaknesses of some characters, particularly Olan the blacksmith. He has reasons to be with the group but the character isn’t terribly effective once on the road to the Erid Wold (he’s much more effective if Jaila’s, his own or Lagaine’s quests are undertaken.) I’ll need to look at the character sheet and do some tweaking. I had been playing with the idea of his being immune to the effects of the flower pool. I may put that into play.
After the game, which ended around 4am, most of us talked for a while. Cameron (the guy who has run the game before) thought a random Arcana draw on critical successes and failures could be interesting. For instance, Lewin crucially fails his Courage check and draws a card. The resulting card can then be interpreted as an influencing factor to the failure. The same could be done for critical successes. I think I'm going to try this as I find anything that encourages storytelling to be a good thing.
The player who had the character Jaila was incredibly pleased with the game. He kept telling me how happy he was with his character choice and that he had a great time. He went on to say he would love for his gm to get the game and learn it so he could play again. That of course developed into our talking about the availability of the game book and where it can be purchased. It would be very cool if these guys try running it at home.
I'll be running the scenario twice more before the close of 2007: at Philcon in November and AnonyCon in December. Maybe by the December game I'll have all the kinks worked out. LOL
And now for a note about the character names in my scenario
If you have read The Witch's Price, the scenario in Artesia: AKW, then the names above may seem familiar. They should, as they're names of some of the NPC villagers in the game.
I had been writing my scenario, slaving away over were to set my village, the types of people in it, etc. Only to find that the village of Belward, the main location of The Witch's Price, was nearly exactly what I was making.
"Why should I do all this work," I asked myself, "if it's already done and with beautiful illustrations?"
So I made player characters out of six of the named villagers, designed some conflicts that are totally unrelated to the published scenario, and voila! I had a game.
Was this cheating? Maybe a little. However, I've put a lot of hours into the characters (none of them had stats of any sort, just names and occupations) and the conflicts in the game are very different from those of the scenario. Additionally I added new NPCs and a handful of small locations. The more I work on it, the more I add and make it my own.
posted by Spring at
7:24 AM
5 Comments:
Heya Spring,
Glad to hear it went well.
Question, would it be possible to have a little bit of a run down of the structure of your convention adventure.
hi, uh, zombie neighbours...
(gosh, I would think this was a sign we should move somewhere where there WEREN'T zombies, no?) Anyway, I can field this one.
The structure for the adventure is simple. Joanna has developed six characters with goals and ideologies (see the post on Acts). We've developed the same number of Locactions with their own Acts. Thus the PCs decide amongst themselves (briefly) what they have on their plates and what is the most pressing of their goals (and this isn't obvious). Then when the character's go to the Locations the area wants something from the PCs - NPCs want gold or a problem solved, monsters want food, the land wants peace or, maybe, blood. Then it's simply an interaction between the PC and the Locations.
The characters were actually pulled from The Witch's Price to some degree and then expanded upon. As are some of the locations. We added a few locales to change things up.
If you want more specifics, well, honestly I think that's a project for December sine we're hip deep in national Novel Writers Month :)
Yeah the zombie infestation is a pain in the neck, but i does mean that you can make a real steal property wise.
That sounds really interesting.
In additional news, I may have sourced a A:AKW editiable PDF character sheet. I am still waiting to see if it will get done, so don't hold your breath, but having seen previous sheets by man in question, i suspect we are in for a pleasant suprise.
Ben
That's fantastic. We'd love to get a copy if you get a chance.
If it manifests, your more than welcome to a copy too.
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