We did managed to get the first game going this last Sunday. I met up with my friend and his 11 year old at his workshop. Cool thing is he is working towards (or already there) his journeyman's level for knife making. So the shop is full of sharp pointy things and tools to make knives with, along with the the welding and other equipment necessary for his day job. So I am thinking about how to work that shop into a game at some point...
The first part we read over their character backgrounds. We have the Elf archer who is perhaps overly proud of his prowess (yet managed to not hit the avatar a whole lot when we got into combat) who was wandering back to Edge City to see about the bar maid he once loved. There is the half Elf rogue whose mother is the bar maid, and the Elf may or may not be his father (this is metagaming at this point, so if/when we get to Edge City and they meet up with the mother/ex-girl friend, there could be interesting dynamics). The rogue has a good many knives secreted in various places. Then we have the Goblin wizard and his staff, a bit stand-offish and is looking out for himself. Finally the Dwarf smith who is our walking tank.
Getting the characters built took a fair amount of time, balancing out the skills and magic. I had training wheels on - let them pick the armor and weapons without worrying too much about the money side of things as per the Fantasy Trip rules (start with 1,000 silver I think is the general rule). I also tried to explain that the rules are a framework - it is our game to have fun with.
With the characters built, I tossed them into the village of Hamor, where the previous party was having dinner with their messy Goblin wizard. Runt, the Goblin wizard, ignored the voracious and messy Merk,and that party went upstairs to their rooms not long after that. The party eventually all showed up, with some words between Dwarf and Elf (in TFT Elves and Dwarves do not get along well). I tried to set the scene with young Jon worried about Blue, his dog. Anyway, roll over to the next morning and more dogs are missing, and the inn-keeper of the Badger's Lodge, father to young Jon, offers a reward to the group that can track down the missing dogs. Our group gets together and heads out. Sadly none actually have the tracking ability; I allowed the Goblin mage with his large IQ stat to find some tracks that they followed to the foothills to the west of Hamor (near the mushroom caves in fact from a previous adventure). There were some huge footprints along with the dog prints.
They got to the clearing and saw the smoke rising up from what should have been a deserted guard house or watch station. The dogs were visible behind the house, barking and yipping. Unfortunately they did not succeed in sneaking up on the house: the Dwarf wearing plate mail is not a quiet Dwarf! Out of the building comes a huge, human-looking being in bronze chain mail, and he issues a "Who goes there, to disturb my abode?" A bit of conversation and a somewhat belligerent Dwarf and battle commenced While the avatar had a ST20 and a 2 handed spear that did 1d+2 damage (just slightly more than a normal spear), the Dwarf, though slow, managed to engage Urkon (still need to figure out which god he is an avatar of!). Between plate armor and having toughness 2, he managed to actually avoid any damage. However, his natural DX and armor pretty much assumed he would miss every time. Except: Runt had magically enhanced this hammer (and we now need a name!) with a +5DX giving the Dwarf only a 9- to roll, so not quite 50%. He did manage to land a few hits but more often missed, as did Urkon (which, considering he was 3x the height of the Dwarf, may have had something to do with that). The Elven archer was shooting, and did manage to hit but equally often managed to miss, making a pin-cushion of the building behind them. He did get a good alignment up to not hit any of his companions. The rogue had moved behind Urkon, invisible thanks to Runt, and while would not miss easily, the dagger rarely did damage as the armor absorbed 3 points of damage. What ended up turning the tide was the gargoyle the wizard brought up - it flew over and attacked Urkon, claws scratching and teeth biting.
Urkon was finally vanquished in a puff of smoke - the avatar may return (hey, it's a nice mini :) ). Runt the wizard had used up all his staff's mana and a good bit of his own, so was a bit wobbly on his feet. No one else took any damage, so perhaps I was too careful with the new players.
At this point, they can rest for a bit as it is only mid-day on a nice fall afternoon. I gave out 120 XP each as they played within character and defeated the avatar. This allows them to bump up a stat, and in the case of Runt the wizard, recharge his staff (it takes XP to recharge if I read the rules, so I wanted to be a bit generous to allow them to improve a bit as well as prepare for the next part).
And the next part: explore the building, maybe find the caverns for a real dungeon crawl, and then hopefully get back up and take the dogs back to Hamor.
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