System: 7th Sea
We finished up the 7th Sea game last night with our heroes arriving in Ussura and delivering the message to Montague, causing him to pack up and leave the frost bitten land.
What rocked
My character’s back story finally started coming out. He was an Ussuran spy who never really felt close to his bonds (in the module at least) and he finally began to feel the call of home. It started with him questioning the Musketeer about his alliances, then his sympathy for the peasants of Ussura and peppering my horrible French accent with a horrible Russian accent (not an easy thing for me to do). At the end he finally assumed the form of a Snow Lion and trounced some brutes.
Our characters as usual were very dynamic, where the module gave us very little room to express our thoughts and beliefs, the other players were the sounding board that validated our hopes and beliefs. We have a cool group that is ready to share the spotlight with each other and actually care about one another’s beliefs.
We met a real live demon, and I think I banished the fucker! We answered all his riddled and gained a boon from him. When asked what we wanted I said “leave this place, return to Legion.” Poof. Smell of fire and brimstone and he was gone. Pretty cool I thought.
I got to use every single one of my performing skills (dance, singing, acting and oratory). How many sessions does that happen in?
I was able to use Wits + Survival in an attack roll on a brute to make the impromptu structure I had created fall down on his head. Fun stuff.
The other players, all of them, were pulling off awesome moves, many drama dice were rewarded.
What could have been improved:
The module was clearly a whirlwind tour through Thea. We saw sea serpents, demons and the power of Matushka. What that was cool it left very little room for our characters. This adventure was really on rails that you couldn’t get off or effect. I think it’s meant for beginning players and our group is anything but. Essentially the module didn’t engage any of the characters on a personal level.
I was really looking forward to time in Ussura. I was hoping my survival and tracking skills as well as my sorcery would have come into play more. In fact, I was just hoping to talk to a fellow Ussuran. The closest I got was a Montaigne solider who had been stationed there for three days. Then the adventure was over. Fairly disappointing.
Buffaloraven’s character really didn’t fit in the game (see his review here: http://buffaloraven.livejournal.com/184705.html), for that matter, none of us really fit. I think we needed a better idea of what this game was going to be about and who were going to face when making characters. I think this is one part an issue with the GM and one part with module. The situation. “You must deliver a message to Montague while evading the L’emporer’s treacherous musketeers” would have really summed up this adventure nicely and given us an idea of how we could make characters that fit into it.
In two weeks we’ll pick up with the 2nd module, my hope is that it is more flexible. If not, I’ll play but probably suggest we pick a different game to follow this up with.
While your character’s back story definitely rocked hard, I think the two of us should have collaborated more about what was intended to happen. I felt like I had to put blinders on a couple of times because I didn’t know if you wanted it to come out or not. Had we chatted ahead of time, I think we could have avoided that.
Regarding your last statement, I’m right there with you. Are you ready to run something Monday nights again? If not, I have some ideas I can toss into the pot. If yes, whoopie! I’ve wanted to see what you can do in a long term setting. 😉