10 May 2005

Actual Play Impressions of The Shadow of Yesterday

The regular group is taking a break from The Devil & The Deep while I rewrite it. So we played a game of The Shadow of Yesterday to tide us over. I'm planning maybe 3 sessions before hitting the playtest again with a rather different looking version of my rules.

Anyhow, I decided to run Rat Moon Rising, the adventure that is available at the game's main website. Four of the guys were there and they proceeded to make up a bunch of oddballs who each picked a different faction in the scenario. We had one soldier, an Zaru Uz magician. Two goblins, one working for each of the opposed Maldorite lords. And finally, one ratkin who allied himself with the more dangerous ratkin faction.

The goblins were both looking for the lost soldiers and we initially played their meeting. They became cautious allies while the ratkin killed off the one goblin's lackeys who were ready to ambush the other guy.

Then we cut to the soldier who was given the job of dealing with the ratkin captors in an effort to get them out. He was introduced to the main issues in the ratkin horde.

Back to the goblins, they engaged in a little masochistic sex to break up the walk and the ratkin took advantage of them bloodying each other to attack. He did some damage and then fled.

In the city we had another scene with the soldier and his comrades and their efforts to work out what the hell to do. This was made more urgent with the news that someone had overheard ratkin talking about slaughtering them all that night.

Our ratkin had a confab with Squall and some plans were made for the human soldiers.

The goblins had reached the city by this point and they ambushed and killed a litter of young ratkin, although one got away. He ran into our human soldier, who was taking some fresh air. The soldier helped the crtter get away and tried to talk to the goblins. They decided to go hide and work out what to do.

Our ratkin psychopath ambushed them in their conference and in a brutal fight slaughtered them both. Ouch!

Then Squall's lackeys (including our guy) decided to sneak into where the humans were being help and kill them all. This didn't go so well - the Zaru hit him with some magic and this gave the humans time to run for it. They headed for the hills and Gerard managed to get them where he wanted them.

The last thing was the leadership of the ratkin... Squall ended up challenging Night-paws and taking over the horde. There goes the neighbourhood.

That's everything that occured. The rules played well - as you might expect, we had a few minor misunderstandings, but none fatal. Overall it was smooth and brutal, which I think is the intention. The PVP possibilities of the scenario were really played up, basically due to the ratkin guy turning the character into a combat monster relative to the others (they were more well-rounded) and also having good dice luck, while the goblins rolled atrociously. Too bad. Everyone had fun, which is the main thing. Next time I think I'll set it up to have less deadly conflicts at the start.

Anyway, it seemed to play as good as it looked like it should. Great stuff.

1 comment:

Jason Pollock said...

Hi,

I was the guy playing the Zaru. :) The session was fun. We were new to the rules and the world, so we didn't realise just how important it was to specialise in a couple of skills. This let that evil ratkin bastard get the drop on us. :) Hi Stef!

Other than that, a lot of fun was had. There was some confusion on how "bringing down the pain" worked, as well as opposed roles, but that's mostly because the ratkin and the GM were the only ones who had actually read the rules! Heh.

Much fun