I had a good Sunday of gaming fun. Went into town to play some Warhammer, then went up to a guy's house for our regular RPG sessions. First up was character generation for our upcoming Scion campaign.
Scion is a really interesting game I find. For those who don't know, it's a tabletop RPG where the characters are the offspring of classical deities from various "real" pantheons, such as the Roman/Greek gods, the Voodoo Loa, The Norse gods, etc. The stories it has in mind are of the grand epics told in the days when those gods were worshipped: slaying demons, roaming the globe, ancient magical artefacts and other some awesomeness. According to some of my classicist friends, it's basically an RPG of American Gods and the Percy Jackson series (ie books I haven't read. Oh well).
It's from White Wolf, and so uses a system similar to it's World of Darkness games: roll a number of dice equal to a Attribute + a Skill, then count up the number of successes (dice of a certain number or higher), the more being the better. The difference here is that this game will 1) have you rolling much more dice than usual and 2) you get automatic successes from your character's Epic Attributes (part of the various arrays of godlike powers you get as a Scion). This, combined with the extra spells and power granted by your divine parent means you will be doing some epic superhero stuff right out of the gate (flinging cars around, inciting whole crowds to riot, jumping chasms, you name it).If you're into those kinds of stories, ancient mythology, or superhero type gaming, I wholeheartedly recommend Scion.
The first session was really for character generation, although we got some role-play in to do our characters' 'visitations', our first meetings with our godly parents, which was fun. The GM also got us on the adventure hook (something in Crete....oooh), so that'll be fun methinks.
The second part of the evening was the regular Star Wars Saga Edition game, which I've already mentioned I've recently started running. Some re-jigging of the PCs stats by one of the players so that the party was far less broken (though the brokenness had originally been somewhat accidental) meant that I could give the party an actual challenge during combat *gasp*. After interrogating a Force-user they'd captured during the previous session (players never fail to surprise me), they had to repel some boarders in the form of two baddie Force-users and a big ol' droid. The droid lasted about as long as I thought it would (that is to say, the longest), and even the Force-users did their part now I'd actually figured out how to use Force powers properly. I've actually got something in mind for the rest of the plot now, as opposed to basically ad-libbing it for 3 weeks, which is a big step forward.
I'd do a little review on Saga Edition as a game, but it's been out of print for about 3 years now so there'd hardly be a point. To put it in a sentence: go find Star Wars Saga Edition if you like Star Wars and know the rules to D&D fairly well (it's a d20 game).
And that was my weekend in gaming :)
I might make a regular thing out of reporting on these games, it's good for reflection and heck, someone might read it XD.
Scion is the property of White Wolf.
Star Wars is the property of Lucasfilm. Saga Edition was created by Wizards of the Coast.
Warhammer is the property of Games Workshop.
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ReplyDeleteI play in James' star wars game. I play the Noble character.
ReplyDeleteNobles are about empowering your allies while screwing your enemies. My PC has yet to draw his gun in this game, a fact I think is fantastic.
First game I picked a selection of abilities that were all based upon the "persuasion" skill. I ended up attacking the enemies by denying them actions and by stealing them (with the awesomely named Rant ability). This was apparently a broken character, which is funny because I've run Saga quite a bit and this was my first character which wasn't a "build". He was a concept.
Oh and I had an awesome moment of using my second best skill of "Knowledge (Bureaucracy)" to talk down the enemy commander... brilliant...Czerka Corp for the win.
Anyway the next game and I change the character to lose the broken abilities. Now I give actions to the other players. It's much more effective but much more boring.
I prefer stealing them, it makes me feel better.
Also when I give the other players actions... it's a leadership ability... they should kinda acknowledge that fact when the blaster bolts stop flying. I'm not playing a leader (ok, "crimelord") because I want to sit there in combat and say "Hey bud, have an extra turn" because my character is a dooshe. The character is INSPIRING you to act, not waving his arms around like a madman. Out of combat... act the same way, the guy is inspirational and likeable, the kind of guy that makes you sit up and listen.
Bottom line. Disrespect him, someone else gets those actions :)