All Systems Go!

Greetings listeners!

We’ve been on a break for a little while, the focus being on Princess Beetroot, but everyone is raring to get back into playing. There’s been a number of changes since then, which I’ll relate to you all here.

Firstly, we’re one less as a gang. Kerstin took up an offer too good to miss in her native Hamburg and has returned home, and she’ll be sorely missed. She assures us she’ll drop in from time to time, whenever she’s in the UK. We hope you’ve all enjoyed the dynamic she’s added to the game as much as we have, and wish her all the best.

Secondly, we won’t be returning to our Mage: the Awakening game immediately. With the squishy one demanding lots of attention at unpredictable intervals, Chris doesn’t feel like he could give running a game his full attention. We had a discussion about where to as an alternative last night, and I’ll be running a game instead. As a group everyone has GMing experience and varying levels of enthusiasm about running a game for the others, and several of us had plans about what we’d do when the next “break game” slot opened up. Arran’s already had a turn with his Dresden Files game, and this time around, I stepped into the breach.

For the longest time, I’ve wanted to run a straight historical game set in the early Hellenistic era, when all the bowl of the world was in turmoil as Alexander the Great’s former companions each vied to make himself master of the empire.

It’s a period in which a lot of the various tropes common to fantasy; a fallen empire, numerous warring states, opportunities for adventurous types willing to risk their lives for glory, a common spoken language and universal culture understood by many people, a well-known pantheon of gods; all hold true. It is also in that Goldilocks zone for historical research – enough to establish broad swathes and patterns, not enough to provide detail down to the level of day-by-day happenings to get in the way of whatever license we take.

The system I’ll be using for this game is the excellent Adventurer, Conqueror, King (my hack is tentatively titled Mercenary, Liberator, Tyrant). It’s derived from the old D&D Expert set, but is no slavish clone. It’s tidied up the formatting, reworked and re-presented some less-than-clear elements, and added some nice modern features, like a Proficiencies system to allow us to distinguish the characters and highlight their capabilities. The real gems are in the consideration of domain-management and the mass combat system, both of which we’ll be making use of.

The player characters will be a motley crew of experienced, independent-minded and combat-ready types out to make their fortune and carve out their own fief which they’ll have to hold against all comers. The collaborative setting/premise/character generation session will be next week, and there will be more to share (and hear, perhaps) after that.