New Campaign
So Monday was the first session for B team in the new setting. As with the previous campaign I will be posting recaps from my players point of view and my own. The GMs recaps will be linked.
Starting off though some info is in order to help you follow along.
The campaign is called Ten Thousand Jade Petals or TTJP for brevity. Its very loosely based on a fantasy version of ancient China and is a Wuxia and Wu Xing; basically high flying over the top martial arts and a spirit and elemental based magic. The gods left, as did ancient warriors with weapons forged by the gods to aid them in battling demons and monsters. The country is ruled by major and minor clan houses who feud with each other and try to increase or at least maintain their power. Starting points are 400,putting us a little lower than Monster Hunters but higher than Action or Dungeon Fantasy. B-Team will be wandering heroes and C-Team appears to be parked in an influential city and will at least be partly in charge of it.
The Character Concept
One person was designated as partly leader and I was given the role of the party face. I initially wanted to veer about as far from my previous character as possible (variety is nice) and opted for a gentle giant type. Based on needing to be a face and others apparent lack of interest in powers I intended to go for a heavy powers base, focusing on earth for strength and healing and get a good staff and do whirlwind attacks with Push. As other players came up with ideas I opted to try out a random generator some were using. Pretty much killed that concept!
Rolling up a background assigns certain traits,though your encouraged to take them by getting a discount if purchased at the start rather than forced. Pretty much nothing rolled up fit the initial concept and ignoring the rolls goes against the spirit of doing it in the first place. Plus, who can resist discounted advantages and skills?
Being a Face in GURPS is not too expensive, and he rolled up a background as a brawler, knife fighter, musician and religious scholar. So Voice works for the mission and the roll (though no discount) and that pretty much covers the overlap. Concept change!
As I worked out details and others built and talked abut their characters and I fine tuned the new direction. Hes a Face, Dagger stylist, Chain Whip stylist, singer, drummer, religious scholar and has latent abilities for communicating with spirits and magic.
Kusari or chain whips are an interesting weapon I have wanted to use in GURPS but not gotten around to and with the right skills and a magic weapon he can compensate for most of the drawbacks.
- So a new way of fighting,and the idea of using Beats and disarms sounds interesting.
- Those points in Religious skills can help him with local temples, so aids the Face role.
- Singer and Musician have good synergy with the Face role, as long as your the obvious rather than stealthy type.
- Latent Spirit communication works well with Face and the GM wanted to use spirits, plus I like to explore new things in a setting and poke around a lot.
- Latent sorcery is powers based so expensive but balanced against Chi powers. Adds potential versatility, and again a chance to poke at the GM's setting and rules to see how things work.
- A lot of points were invested in chain whip to make it viable but I built a new style combining Kusarijutsu and Chinese ribbon dancing (ribbons use short staff or smallsword skill, a fencing weapon) to increase his combat flexibility and invested in a magic weapon.
The First Session
We had worked out how we all met and such prior to the first session so things started off pretty smoothly. This however was our chance to get to know each other and see how our characters worked as a team.
We rolled into town and set up or S.O.P. Gushou heads to the temple to exchange news and pleasantries while gathering info on any local troubles. AnRang rolls his wagon into town and starts hawing his wares. The others head to the Tea House or Inn and work the crowd there and we all meet up to share what we learned and make plans. This way we get info from a variety of sources, and after all what could go wrong with splitting the party up?
We learned there were some local bandits making trouble and decided to rout them the next day. A bit cocky of us perhaps, but were all Masters, one of us a bono-fide war hero even, so what could go wrong?
Resting for the night an angry ghost shows up, scares Gushou and tells him to find his body and avenge his death. Unfortunately AnRang also hears this and has a phobia for ghosts so spends the rest of the night running away screaming from the ghost. We opt for a late start, and apologizing to the owner find out its his dead brothers ghost.
The Big Fight
The bandits have seized a bridge and are well armed, oh and thirteen of them to our four. But we are still cocky. AnRang tries to lure them closer to the wagon but our war hero Xhai Kiyun and leader who is out front charges them, cutting off the lead bandits' head.
Everyone else is on foot and we move up to close ranks. The fight is already posed so I wont go into detail here, read it at RavensNPennies.
Gushou experimented, Dual Weapon attacking with two ends of the chain was effective. They had repeating crossbows and never tried to parry or block, only dodge so never got a chance to get fancy that way. He could have tried to disarm but that would have taken longer than just smacking them two at a time.I was satisfied with how hard he hit, got two in for 20 HP and nothing below 10 HP. I made two bad choices, first was after most foes were down he failed a Dodge and instead of using a Wildcard to make it a success decided to test out his chi power "Iron Skin" which is DR 4 (he also has DR 2, tough skin for a total of DR 6). He took some damage but dropped his weapon so that sucked. He went on the defensive and picked it up then the second mistake was having it change from chain to sword so he could try some sword moves since he was just a hex away. Failed two more dodge rolls and rolled badly on his Rapid Strike,only hitting once but it took out the last guy.
A couple things to note, I think we got to move too far with Extra Effort on our Super Jump but went with what everyone else was saying. I think this was a case of people mixing up normal Flying Leap and the chi power version of it, but maybe I'm wrong. Also Gushou should have been using Acrobatics. We also got in each others way a bit in the beginning, but quickly adjusted.
Overall a good warmup and test fight!