Session 0
Having done Serevid, I have many other ideas of characters that I want to connect in the web of intrigue. But I hold off and wait for my players to get together for a session 0 and get their insight into the city and the campaign.
Three friends have decided to join in, but for the duration of this narrative, I'll refer to them by the character names that they have chosen – Baratus, Callendin, and Daakon. Members of Cohort I of the 47th Legion, the Unstoppables earned that nickname as they broke lines and broke enemies, able to get past any fortifications. That was primarily because of the first 'Tent Group'. They had their own name in the unit – the Bloody Bastards. They did the jobs that no one else had the stomach to perform- infiltrating and taking out sentries, blowing lines of egress, scouting ahead to ferret out ambushes, sapping walls, and more extremely dangerous missions.
Everyone liked that bit of background and flavor, so I gave them the pitch to go along with that- they were going to be pulled from the lines and put into an urban environment to be troubleshooters for a powerful patron. Once I told them about the works that had inspired the idea, they came on board pretty quickly!
We'd all played in the Eberron campaign that I mentioned earlier, so the idea of sticking with that for the city and just overlaying the background really appealed to them, and they had many ideas.
Baratus was the sneaky one of the bunch. A Warrior/Sorceror/Thief (Assassin). Daakon was more of a Conan type Warrior/Thief. And Callendin was a Sentinel/Sorceror – an interesting combination.
We spent the rest of the session going through the rules and deciphering areas where we had doubts.
General vs Investigative – As we'd done some Fall of Delta Green, they were very familiar with those.
The class angle was something new, but it wasn't too hard to grasp. In fact, seeing that the penalty was only one point, they decided to all multi-class in order to cover all of the classes. They liked the fact that there was a separation of the skills in that way, and that there was not much penalty for being creative with the classes.
They did wonder about there not being free build points as there were in other games where competence was assumed, and what that meant for the tone of the game, and also wondered at the investigative build points being so much lower- but then they saw how fewer there were in the way of the investigative skills. Allegiances and Enemies seemed like, to a limited extent, Agency, though since this was more political, it made sense that they could be negative.
It seems like with the emphasis on corruption and demons and such that some sort of ability similar to Stability would have been included- but I pointed out that this game has Morale, which seems to in some ways replace that, and in other ways, help the cohesiveness of the party. Preparedness was really welcome.
Combat, while familiar in some ways, was quite different in others. We decided to call it so that everyone could read through how to make things happen, and they could finish the characters on their own with my help.