So I ran tRoS for the first time last night, and I hate to sound like a broken record but SAs rock!

We decided to play a one-shot because one of our regular players couldn't make it. We tested the QuickStart a few months back, though we only had time to run some duels. The players, Drew and Gerry, were interested but did express some concerns about the lethality of the system, suggesting it would probably be better for one-shots than an ongoing game.

I used my own setting for the session, determining that the characters would start in the capitol of the Tairen Empire, attending the Imperial Academy, which produces military commanders and the Emperor's Blades (sort of like the Musketeers). I explained the city as a cross between Constantinople, Renaissance Florence and Paris under Richelieu, adding that I had no scenario in mind and would base the adventure on the SAs the players provided.

At that point we started creating characters. I had envisioned the Imperial Academy as offering mostly military training and fencing instruction, but Drew focused on the academic side and loaded up with skills. I decided to revise my conception of the Academy. He took the Academic+Swordsman packets, creating an obese swordsman who excelled at academics but carried a reputation for laziness.

The other player, Gerry, took inspiration from Porthos of the Three Musketeers and Robert Louis Stevenson's The Master of Ballantrae. His character was a bon vivant hailing from my setting's analogue of Scotland.

Things got a little tricky when it came time to choose Spiritual Attributes. Drew suggested that I should have forewarned them about the choices and given them time to come up with some selections before arriving, but I wanted to fire up their creative engines right from the start. I explained the various choices and asked them to think about what really mattered to their characters.

Drew settled on Passion: Loyalty to the school (I figured the school would count as an 'entity'), Destiny: To become Headmaster of the school, Conscience, and Luck. I can't recall the other off the top of my head.

Gerry wanted to go with Drive: Live Life to the Fullest, but I suggested it was overly broad and asked him to think about what turned him into such a hedonist. After some thought, he decided that his brother had discovered that he was a pagan worshipper of the god of the Vine (this is a heavily monotheist setting) and had driven him out, becoming chieftain of their clan in the process. He ended up taking Passion: Hatred for his brother, Faith: Bacchus (he uses the name St. Biber to make his faith more acceptable), Destiny: To die naked in a brothel, Conscience and Luck.

To round out the group a little bit, I created a genteel but dissipated swordsman who spent much of his time drinking and gambling but had no time for women. He had the SAs Passion: Loyalty to the Emperor, Passion: Loyalty to his friends, Drive: Become an Emperor's Blade, Conscience and Luck. We had a highly skewed version of Aramis, Porthos and Athos.

All in all, character creation took about 2 hours.

Drawing from the SAs, I realized that I needed to threaten the school and bring the brother into the mix. Feeling ironic, I opened the session with the characters carousing in a tavern near the docks when three toughs from a rival academy, the College of St. Jehan, walked in. Students of the college tend to be supporters of the Patriarch of the church, while students in the Imperial Academy tend to be the Emperor's followers. The toughs intimated that the Academy would soon be shut down and told them that a highly feared Inquisitor had arrived in the city and would take the academy apart. The trio exchanged insults with the toughs and were challenged to a duel, which would take place in an hour.

After the toughs left, the Inquisitor walked in, accompanied by a naval officer, whom Gerry's character immediately recognized as a distant cousin. The trio was able to determine that the Inquisitor arrived on the cousin's ship. When the cousin left, the trio followed him back to his ship and Gerry confronted him. More insults were exchanged and the cousins agreed to meet for dinner the next evening.

The trio then hurried to the field behind the church where they would hold a 'pointed debate' with the three toughs. This was probably the slowest part of the session, as we felt out the combat system. However, it went smoothly and Drew and Gerry got the hang of it rapidly -- though we still had to flip through the book to read about various maneuvers. The trio adeptly won their debate, leaving one of the toughs with a broken arm (Level 5 thrust to the upper arm, ouch!), another with a punctured thigh, and a third with a gash to his sword hand. We all agreed that combat would flow very quickly once we all get our legs. Also, we saw that even without SAs (neither chose to activate any during the fight), the system does not need to be extraordinarily deadly if you fight intelligently and favor defense.

From that point, things began to progress rapidly, and escalate, as the characters used their skills and contacts to discover information. They learned that the Inquisitor had a nasty habit of stringing heretics up by their intestines, that a beloved and elderly professor had been accused of devil-worship, that these sorts of accusations have a tendency to spread as the Inquisitor puts the subject to the Question under torture -- meaning that other professors, the students and even the Emperor's Blades were at risk.

Putting it all together, they realized there was a diabolical plan at work that went all the way to the top. There were rumors that the Emperor was ill, and his only heir was his daughter Demea. The Patriarch had placed a priest (a cousin to Gerry's character and the naval officer!) into the school under an assumed identity in an effort to destroy the Academy and the Emperor's Blades, thus weakening the position of those loyal to the Emperor. Then, once the Emperor dies, the way is open for the Patriarch's nephew (a distaff nephew of the Emperor!) to seize the throne.

That's where we had to call the session (because character creation and the combat took up slightly more time than I had anticipated). Still, the above represents about 2 1/2 hours of actual play, and it feels like we packed an awful lot of play into that time.

Observations:
* The SAs worked like a charm. While the players didn't couch it in these terms, it was clear to me that they both felt protagonized from the very beginning and they engaged the game wholeheartedly. They both started creating NPCs (with story important information) and setting scenes naturally. That's not completely alien behavior for them, but usually they don't kick in until the story is well under way. Using the SAs as a way of delineating conflicts and thus collaboratively crafting the scenario was a blast. This is the way I like to work anyway, but forcing the players to really define and refine the idea of their characters in black and white terms makes it a real snap.

* I'm a little iffy about skills. I didn't have any problem using them, but they didn't feel as integrated with the system as everything else. I can't really put my finger on it, but I think it struck me when Gerry's character attempted to seduce a chambermaid in order to get some information. I wasn't sure what skill would cover seduction. After a brief glance at his skill list, I just told him to roll SOC and improvised a target number based on his roleplaying. Thinking back on it, I probably should have called for an Intrigue roll since it was information he was looking for. I will say, though, that Drew (who played the skill-heavy character), seemed to really enjoy adding those little ticks next to the skills as he used them in stressful situations.

* Combat is clean and relatively simple, despite all of the various maneuvers and options. I was a little bit concerned about having to juggle Blood Loss, Shock and Pain for multiple NPCs, but I didn't even need to because every combatant dropped out of the fight the moment they were wounded. I suspect the only time those stats will come into play with any regularity are if the PCs take wounds or if they face someone really dedicated to the fight (i.e. have SAs firing).

As the session drew to a close, we were all really fired up about the game. Drew, who at the beginning had expressed concern about the lethality factor, said we definitely need to keep tRoS on tap for when our other player can't make it.