accomplished**********
Last night, the Friday night gaming group got in their first actual session of gaming of the All For One: Régime Diabolique roleplaying game, set against the backdrop of 1630's France with an occult edge to it. As per usual, since the rpg game session notes can be somewhat long and may not appeal to all my journal readers, they are presented here behind the cut.
November 16th, 1635
While I posted a little entry about the Friday night players' character generation for All For One back in this journal entry, I never really went into any detail about the player characters, so I will do that here. First off, Kathy is playing Eloise Desrevais, a Queen's Musketeer with a somewhat murky past that seems to involve her life on the streets of Paris as a street urchin and thief. SteveB is playing Robert Edouard Maltier, a King's Musketeer of impeccable breeding who has a strong aversion to forests due to an encounter he had there when somewhat younger. Nick is playing Nicolas Argentier, a King's Musketeer, and the son of a French banker, whose family is now disgraced. Tom is playing Antoine Perrier, a young King's Musketeer with a penchant for the ladies and a rather strong-willed attitude. Joanne is playing Gabrielle Arcond, a Queen's Musketeer who has a somewhat shady past although it is known that she was a raconteuse and actress in the Parisian artsy community. Finally, Angela is playing Jacqueline D'Ubermand, a young woman with a past as a spy of some sort who is about to be recruited into the Queen's Musketeers.
Anyway, to the game itself...
The player characters begin the game in a small, local Parisian drinking establishment. Eloise Derevais (Kathy) and Gabrielle Arcond (Joanne) first encounter Robert Edouard Maltier (SteveB), Nicolas Argentier (Nick), and Antoine Perrier (Tom) in La Garde Ivre. Things do not go well, as to start with, Antoine attempts to flirt quite shamelessly with Gabrielle, who is having none of that, and after he continues making advances towards her, she finally slaps him hard enough to loosen one of his teeth.
Things take a turn for the worse when several of the tavern patrons take umbrage at the Musketeers and their loose behaviour towards the women, and a bar brawl erupts in the place. Robert, Nicolas, and Antoine give as good as they get in their fisticuffs with their attackers, while both Eloise and Gabrielle prove their swordsmanship is adequate to the task of holding off several others. The Paris gendarmes are quick to arrive on the scene (they were alerted by some of the Cardinal's men in the tavern), and with La Garde Ivre somewhat worse for wear, the somewhat drunken player characters make a hasty exit from the watering hole.
Wandering away from the tavern, the player characters espy a young woman being attacked by what appear to be the Cardinal's guard. Due to their state of intoxication, the player characters have a somewhat more difficult time than expected coming to the rescue of the young woman, Marie Jenest, and she is left for almost dead by her attackers, who flee into the night as the player characters put up significant resistance. The player characters decide to take the young woman to a medecin they know, Henri Courtemanche, who treats her. Once he has done what he can for her, and the player characters have sobered up somewhat, Henri tells the characters that the woman is in a coma, and will likely not recover for a while.
The next morning the King's Musketeers and Queen's Musketeers player characters report to their respective superiors, M. de Treville and Mme. Desmarais, and are ordered to find out who attacked Marie Jenest and why. The characters have the impressions that their superiors know more than they are letting on, but neither de Treville or Desmarais are willing to say more. The player characters decide to team up, and while Eloise and Nicolas go back to the scene of the crime to ask some questions, Robert, Antoine, and Gabrielle go to talk to the Jenest family.
Eloise and Nicolas meet up with Jacqueline D'Ubermand (Angela), who was investigating the attack on Marie on behalf of her patron, though she wouldn't tell them who that was. The characters found out that Marie had been seeing someone who frequented the establishment that the player characters had been in the night before, but couldn't find out more than that. It was thought, however, that the person in question had connections to some "high ups".
Meanwhile, Robert, Antoine, and Gabrielle went to visit the Jenest family home, and found that not only were they uncooperative about their daughter and her activities, but met opposition in the form of Albert Chamain, a fencer of some note with a reputation for being in Cardinal Richelieu's circles. As the characters wanted to question him in some detail, they found that he had come prepared, and the characters would have to face off against several of the Cardinal's guards...
Overall, a very solid, very entertaining game of All For One: Régime Diabolique</i>, and one that the players told me they enjoyed quite a bit. Kathy and SteveB loved the combat system of the game, and the free-for-all in the Parisian establishment at the beginning of the game was enjoyed by all the players, as they got to use basic brawling, some smashing of tables and chairs, and the like in a rather free wheeling affair. The players are enjoying the mystery of Marie Jenest and what's going on with her, and are finding that playing the secondary character aides to each of the main player characters is quite fun, and allows them to get involved in all aspects of the game. They do find this version of the Ubiquity system a bit trickier than either Hollow Earth Expedition or Desolation because of some of the variant rules here, but enjoyed it tremendously. So the group is looking forward to the next game session of All For One, as am I.
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I have no idea why I forgot to post this entry on the game up back in October last year, but have to plead stupidity or forgetfulness (hopefully the latter). Please enjoy and any comments are more than welcome.
Note: The content of the game session itself has been modified and cleaned up, with a fuller set of notes describing the action. Those are the only changes to this material.