I ran a short CoS game the other night with three players. Two of them were completely new to the setting and system, so I kept things short and simple. An intro adventure, so to speak. As far as characters went we had:

Anka - The Captain of a small caravan company that delivers goods (and merchants) for a fee from one city to another. Anka is a good leader with a determined attitude and no time for fools.

Elek - A craftsman with an (un)healthy interest in the occult. Elek has hired Anka and her team to transport him to a new market (one with hopefully new bits of lore he can acquire).

Ramira - A professional mercenary who has sold her services to Anka as some extra muscle on this danergous part of the journey. Ramira has seen her share of darkness and hopes to someday atone for her past.

So, the caravan will be arriving in a small farming village to resupply and rest up for a longer stretch of road. They stop to make camp for the night, pulling the wagons in close around the fire. The drivers and scouts are taking shifts keeping watch while the customers eat some stew. One of the scouts, Wiktor, takes a seat and starts telling a story he heard about the villiage coming up the next day. He says that a witch has moved into the area and is calling up the ghosts of those who have died. She has twisted animal servants who hunt the unwary in the night and may be able to turn herself into a creature of the night under the full moon.

Most of the folks sitting around the fire are entertained by Wiktor's campfire tale...although it does seem a bit gruesome. Elek and Ramira, however, are wondering just how much of it if fable and how much might be true...

More to follow...

Regards,

Matt M McElroy
"What Are You Afraid Of?"
http://www.flamesrising.com

Matt,

So what was actual play like? How did the mechanics affect the game? What worked, what didn't? No stories man, give with the meat.

Keith

Yeah, yeah...allow me a little bit of set-up at least...

I did say "more to follow" didn't I?

Anyway, I handed out the two pages of mechanics from the Intro/Quickstart pdf (I still think a page or two of setting & character info would be a good idea) to give the players at least a basic understanding of the rules and character sheets. They really liked the Descriptors, which we talked about briefly during the start of the game.

As the story above shows, we started out with some dialogue and character interaction. This allowed everyone to get into character and get used to the historical setting a bit before jumping into action. There was some great role-playing on the part of Jeff (playing Elek) and Monica (playing Anka) about the caravan prices and other merchant issues. Sara (playing Ramira) got into it with the NPC Wiktor about the witch and role-played her character's temper quite well.

The great thing about the mechanics of CoS is they are easy to learn and do not force people into long dice rolling sessions which can take away from the role-playing. Even the big combat scene against the witch and her henchmen had some great role-playing between Anka and Elek.

Regards,

Matt