As mentioned earlier this day, I spent Sunday afternoon playing in the game of Atlantis: The Second Age that spross is running. You can read about the previous session in this blog entry.

I had a more enjoyable afternoon of gaming, though SteveR was really up to his eyeballs in it because of the plot that he ran (nilly-willy) for the afternoon.


spross arrived at my place, and we chatted about a few things, including the game, waiting for Tammy to arrive. Once she did, SteveR got all set up, and gaming commenced for the day. For at least 45 minutes or so after we started, nothing really happened, and spross got desperate. So he threw in a kidnapping plot on Tammy's character, Kandaja, after having a "lady" of some sort use magic on me to lure me away from the camp we had set up for the night, and I found myself in the forest. Needless to say, I had to track down Kandaja after returning to the campsite, and then ended up being just a fighter once more. I used a lot of Hero Points, and actually had to Tempt Fate for more during the course of the fight, and I nearly died (but was saved by my own Second Wind Talent, that gives me back Hit Points when I go below 5). The fight took over an hour of real time to resolve, way too long of course, but spross was really up to it (like I said earlier) during this whole sequence. Some of which wasn't combat, some of which was. The attackers weren't Picts, oddly enough, given that we're Iber, Pictland we think, and Kandaja's attackers took her belongings, so we still have to find those. In any event, the game session wrapped up about 15 minutes early, and I was able to relax some afterwards, have a half-bagel with lox and a bottle of water with Crystal Light tea in it.

The game session went as well as could be expected, I guess. spross is still struggling somewhat with the game rules, or more correctly the little situations and the interpretations of non-combat results, but he really screwed up the Kandaja kidnapping and retconned it a couple of times, and couldn't seem to decide what the purpose of her kidnapping was and how to deal with her during that time. He also struggled with the game mechanics of the kidnapping, but to be honest, I suspect he believes that he bit off more than he could chew with the situation, and set up the kidnapping spur of the moment, because there was nothing happening. That said, I think spross is coming to grips with the rules somewhat, but he relies on having to look things up too much, and that slows everything down to a crawl.

The biggest problem he's got, really though, is Tammy. I keep burning through Hero Points and the like, but he's been unable to get her to spend any, and she avoids taking actions where her base add to the die roll is negative. He's really not challenging her enough, and the fact that she seems to be arguing every die roll Degree of Difficulty (DoD) has been getting to him (and me, to some extent). We're not beginning characters in Atlantis: The Second Age, and in order to do Heroic things, one has to spend Hero Points (one way or the other) and not only enable oneself for mere mundane activities that a normal NPC can undetake.


In any event, I'm glad that I'm getting time in as a player, and am enjoying myself for the most part. Since spross will be running for another week, I have another week off from running both the Friday and Sunday gaming groups, and am somewhat relishing my time off from the GM Screen side of things (though I've still got the Wednesday game group, of course). So I'm looking forward to next Sunday afternoon, as well. :)