disappointed
spross, who ran another session of the Atlantis: The Second Age RPG. Though as it turned out, we never got to the first scenario itself. You can see the Session 0 entry in this blog from last week by following the link.
SteveR showed up at my place on Sunday around 12:20pm, and he and I got right down to work as I just needed some clarifications on a couple of things pertaining to magic and my use of the Modes and how he was going to run things. I could tell that he was still quite nervous about running the game, and once more he asked me a few questions about character creation that I tried to answer as best I could. Once Tammy arrived close to 12:45pm, we settled in after chatting for a bit, talking about current events and the like, and then got down to gaming.
As noted in the last session's entry, Tammy and I never finished character creation as we still had the Equipment to go through and finalize stuff in that regard. This is usually a process that takes less than half an hour to do, but SteveR and I had talked over the course of the intervening week and my equipment stuff was already done. Needless to say, Tammy monopolised SteveR's time and took another hour and a half going over pretty much every piece of gear listed in the rule book with him, and he gave her a lot of game numbers. Personally, I think she min/maxed the equipment she took based on some of the relevant numbers, but that's just my opinion. And to be honest, SteveR also forgot to deal with the Encumbrance that her Owlwoman character might have to deal with when trying to fly. Again, that's just me.
And SteveR still had some sample combats to take Tammy and me through. While they were more for SteveR's benefit, to be honest, as he needs to get a feel for the combat mechanics and the pacing of combat, I didn't really mind since it would give me a chance to practice a bit with my character, Qircamo's, magic as well. SteveR started us off with a one-on-one in an arena setting. I had my dagger and Tammy's character (nameless at this point to me) had her spear. I never got a hit in on her but I was surprised that I managed to last four rounds of combat! The second attempt at using the combat system was another one-on-one challenge, this time her archery skill versus my magic skill. I failed the first attempt at knocking the flask off the target at 30 metres (iirc), but she took it down quite easily with her skill with a bow. I asked for a re-match, and since it was sample combat and didn't really "count" - I cheated! I attempted to use an Influence spell on her to fire an arrow on my behalf and shoot the target, but she resisted the spell and then clocked me one with her fist! Not how I expected it to go, but still enjoyable - especially the look on Tammy's face. :) The final combat involved our characters being in some ruins in a swamp and being attacked by animated skeletons. Tammy's character immediately took to the skies and found a ledge some 40 metres up on one of the ruined structures after I detected with a Sensory spell some humanoids coming towards up, leaving me completely alone on the ground. I put up a Shield spell on myself ahead of time, barely before the skeletons arrived on the scene, and while she picked off several of them with her arrow shots, I was able to use a blast of solid force to take down several of the skeletons as well. Satisfying, and I was glad that I didn't botch any of the spells and had to deal with a magical mishap.
I think SteveR would have liked to have run another couple of combat examples, but he ran out of time as it was just after 5:00pm around that point. After everything was packed away and Tammy had left to get home for supper in time, SteveR told me that he knew what stuff he mishandled and that he hadn't planned on taking two sessions to cover the Session 0 material. Since it seems that he'll only run two more sessions between now and the end of August, maybe three at the most, he'll hopefully have time to run one adventure and leave things open for possibly more. I'm supposed to run again likely in September, but if SteveR decides he wants to continue running the game, I won't say no.
Overall, I had a good time the past two weeks doing the Session 0 game stuff in SteveR's Atlantis: The Second Age quite a bit, with a couple of serious notable exceptions. Once more I was somewhat annoyed and frustrated at just sitting there for an hour and a half while he gave Tammy a massive wade through the Equipment lists for the game. And if I hadn't been familiar with the Magic system, he would have needed another hour or so to go over that with me before doing the sample combats. That said, I'm looking forward to getting to an actual adventure, but I just don't know how many game sessions he'll have to get us through it.
And to be honest, I just want to *play* the game, rather than run it, for the moment. :)