Manaburst: Session 2 (Bastion)

Nika was struck with a moment of shock as she found herself being yanked away from the plane of Broken and through the borderpost after Ada. There was no point in voicing her complaint though – no one would hear her as she shot along through the Blind Eternities.

Surviving the trip required a small portion of her attention.  Her spark did most of the work, keeping her body functioning while the alien energies pressed in, but with a little effort she was even able to keep them from her. There was little else to do but wait for the trip to end.

As Nika felt herself slip from the Blind Eternities, she quickly opened mouth to voice her complaint.   But instead of a fresh breath of air to use to expel her curse, she nearly choked on a mouthful of brackish muddy water.

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Manaburst: Session 1, Part 2 (Broken)

Nero glided over the broken terrain like a shadow, moving with inhuman speed and catching Grrrk well before reaching the designated ruins. He snatched the goblin from his feet and tossed him into the deep shadows behind the wall before darting around to the sunward side where he danced up the stones as if he weighed no more than a feather.

As creatures followed, scrambling and seaching for footholds, Nero called back to Grrrk, who was effortlessly drawing up strength from the stones beneath him. The wall slowly began  toppling  over, while simultaneously the ground on the far side started to rumble uncontrollably.

Nero tried to leap free but had underestimated the goblin’s destructive capabilities and caught a glancing blow to the side, knocking the wind out of him as he tumbled away. The sunblights were not so lucky. The wall came crushing down, sandwiching them between the crumbling slab and the trembling earth.

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Manaburst: Session 1, Part 1 (Broken)

As the session began, the planewalkers slowly regain consciousness in a large domed chamber, lit only by a faint reddish glow filtering down a stairway through the chamber’s only entrance. After a few moments of recovery, Gaeleth illuminated the small room with divine radiance and the planeswalkers tried to get their bearings.

The only feature of the room to stand out was the circular engraving in the center of the floor, but before anyone could investigate they realized something was off. Torvolis was missing and another man had appeared – a planeswalker named Nero. Accusations were curbed when Grrrk and Ada vouched for him, having traveled with him before when they and a fourth planeswalker named Ibrand had attacked a plane under demonic control and decimated one of their strongholds.

The group started looking around for answers to where they were, how they had gotten there, where Torvolis had gone. Gaeleth followed Ada, illuminating the chamber so that she could examine the carvings and the two found the artifact Grrrk had swiped from the magnus on Whitesea laying against the wall, smoking slightly.

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Prelude to Manaburst

After finalizing the last few characters, our first actual roleplaying session  was dedicated to teaching the players the basics of the system and as a prelude, setting up the situation in which I wanted to start the campaign proper. In both regards the game was a success.

The campaign opened in media res with the characters on the plane of Whitesea, being ambushed by a herald of the demonic forces trying to invade the plane, and some of his forced-converts.  Our bold planeswalkers backpedaled initially but after Grrrk unleashed his destructive power in the area  indiscriminately, knocking the converts (and a companion) out of the fight, the herald fled.

While Nika and Ada helped get the companions back on their feet, Gaeleth took a moment to examine the fallen conscripts.  Under their armor she found the pale skinned faces of the denizens of the plane, eyes rolled back in their heads – vacant but alive.  Realizing there was little to be done for the conscripts except to end the Herald’s hold on them, the planeswalkers quickly chased after him.

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Earthdawn 3e: Character Generation

earthdawn At the last session with my group, we came up with character concepts and had decided to do the actual generation this week. I wanted to get it taken care on my end prior, so that I could both familiarize myself with the changes to 3e character generation enough to answer questions and be available to do so instead of needing to work on my own character.   So earlier last week I finished up my human warrior.

If you’re like me, one of your initial reactions to that last sentence is “a race and a discipline isn’t a character concept,” and you’d be right.   However, for this post I want to specifically talk about some of the changes to Earthdawn from a character generation standpoint.   So while a character back-story and personality are crucial to a good character, they’re going to be outside the scope of this discussion.

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Earthdawn – Savaged: Season 1

A month or so ago my Earthdawn: Savaged campaign wound up to a close. The early summer/late fall months brought a rash of player absences and missed sessions which seemed to sap everyone’s motivation. So although I very much enjoyed returning to the Earthdawn world our game ended rather anticlimactically.

At least I was able to do the experimentation with Savage Worlds that I wanted to. I learned a number of valuable lessons about the system from behind the GM’s screen. I plan on going into more detail about what modifications I plan on making to Savage Worlds in a short series of articles but I wanted to take this opportunity to summarize our campaign and my thoughts on it.

Our small group consisted of a few adepts who had banded together in defense of a Rex, a small village in the hinterlands north of Bartertown, and forged their group in tribute to the dwarven weaponsmith who had brought them together and gave his life in defense of the innocent. Thus The Hounds of Askari were born.

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Earthdawn – The Legend Begins

Session 1 – March 30th, 2008

GM: Dave
Players: Luke, Chad, Dan, Josh, Pat

The scene opened on the town or Rex, a battered and broken village in the hinterlands of Barsaive. The townspeople had fought a daily struggle to eek a meager living out of the dried and broken land, and just as their efforts began to pay off they became the target of a band of ork scorchers. Frequent raids kept the town on the brink of collapse but the orks were smart enough to always leave the town in good enough shape that it could recover… and be raided all over again.

Rex’s headwoman, an elf by the name of Emberica, was finally fed up with the cycle of destruction and called in some old favors which led Askari, a dwarven weaponsmith, to bring his small band of adepts to aid the town. The orks were not expecting any resistance, let alone a band of adepts, and a cunning trap sealed their doom. However they were not go quietly. Many good townsfolk lost their lives in the orks’ death rage, as did Askari himself.

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Earthdawn: Savaged

I’ve finally made my return to Gamemastering, kicking off a new campaign with my gaming group at the end of March. This time around I went for my long-time favorite: Earthdawn. Now that we’ve gotten a couple of sessions under our collective belt we’re settling into the swing of things.

Although I’ve turned to the familiar setting of Barsiave for this game I’ve decided to try a few new things as well, the first of which was converting this fantastic game to a system more suitable to my players.

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Deadlands – The Ballad of Chuck and Daniel

Deadlands

We had last left the posse down one Ranger and up one mad scientist and one Harrowed guide after it was revealed a former companion was actually a skinwalker in disguise. With their new guide in tow the Rangers set off from Redrock investigate the manor where Sen. Grissom was last seen.

Located half a day’s ride from Redrock, the mansion was secluded from the main cattle trails by a smaller nearly overgrown path. The trip was uneventful other than the weather turning south as the posse approached the manor. They hoped to take shelter within from the storm while they looked around but unfortunately would find the dilapidated residence less uninhabited – and far less safe – than they had expected.

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Deadlands – Welcome to the Weird West

DeadlandsWith the death of Manaburst our group has moved on to Deadlands, the Weird West roleplaying game. After two sessions I think it’s fair to say we’ve gotten back into the groove and are set to have an great campaign. I think that Luke might have some early-campaign jitters up in the GM’s chair but everyone else seems to be having a great time.

The first session took place January 20th and started out with three young Texas Rangers being called in from their field work assignments to meet with a ranger that had trained each of them at some point in the past, Elijah Peterson, in Redrock, Arizona, a small town just off the rail line. With the recent escalation of the Great Rail Wars the posse-to-be had expected to be assigned to assist the Dixie Rails but they soon found they were in for something completely different.

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