GM: Michael (that is to say, me)
Player: Brian (slightly-younger brother)

The setting for our game is based off of the Playstation game Vagrant Story. This thread is where I'm putting the setting details right now.

We're going to be using some of the changes that Mr. Nixon has suggested in this thread, as well. Significant, so we'll get to that in a minute.

Main campaign influences are going to be Vagrant Story and the manga/anime Berserk; mostly the former, dash of the latter. Some other things are probably going to creep in, but those are my main sources right now. VS itself has a large dose of medieval/fantasy France, especially in architecture.

All we ran this first session (tonight) was a straight-up combat.

Brian's paladin has the following attributes and abilities:

Active: Quickness (3)
Reactive: Wit (2)
Light: Foresight (2)
Dark: Rage (1)

Arms (Riskbreaker style; no specific weapon)
Break Arts (supernatural combat techniques)
Dash (as in, sprint)

Light Animus: 4
Dark Animus: 2

We decided to jump straight into the game with the combat in-progress; the introduction-cinematic style of a video game seemed pretty appropriate, considering the source material. Even better, the character doesn't have a name yet. ;)

The paladin is standing in the middle of a ruined plaza; it's the center of a city on the Jorai Plains, in the western part of Valendia. All around are the remains of once-proud architecture. Something has laid waste to the city.

Before the paladin is a ruined fountain. A terrifying beast overlays the fountain, sixteen feet tall and pitch black. Arcs of neon-green electricity sporadically ground themselves nearby. Our hero is panting, partly wounded, and is wielding the creature's sword, itself over ten feet long. He turns around at a sudden noise: a second demon stands only meters away!

Issue one: there needs to be a full example of combat in the next edition of Paladin. Saying, "combat works exactly like everything else," really isn't true; or maybe it is, but I'm carrying too much traditional RPG baggage with it to grok a combat. I probably did this all "wrong".

At first, I figured we'd roll initiative; see comment above re: baggage. Looking over the text, though, this just didn't seem to fit. There would always be someone who started the action, and if two people acted at the same time, well, they'd just both use Active that turn.

We decided the demon got to go first (attributes: A 4, R 2, L 0, D 4, LA 0, DA 2, demon sword 3). He rolled 7 dice: Active + sword. Brian rolled 5, for his Reactive + sword. Demon came out with 5 successes, Brian with 2.

Issue two: Combat needs to be tweaked under the new 4 Attribute system, or attributes must get more points allocated to them at character creation. Either that, or Armor becomes absolutely necessary.

Under the normal combat rules, this is - if I'm interpreting correctly - 6 points of damage to the paladin. Out 8 points total. Yikes! We immediately decided that was.. well, no fun! I went ahead and ruled that it took two successes in combat to do 1 point of damage, and there was no margin multiplication. Now the demon did only 1 point of damage. This was a lot more managable. But what to do with the extra success?

Since there aren't really any initiative rules, I decided to opt on an inertia (actually, my thought was 'sente', if any of you play go) based concept. Whoever "wins" on an action is considered the aggressor on the next action as well. So the left-over success does little on this turn, but if a creature wins by only 1 (not enough to do damage), it's still enough to make sure he's Active next turn. An example from the first few rolls of the combat:

1: D 5 / B 2
2: D 2 / B 5
3: D 2 / B 4
4: D 7 / B 5
5: D 6 / B 5

So demon goes first on 1, succeeds, and is still Active (and thus uses his Active attribute) one turn 2. Except he loses that contest; now Brian goes first on 3 and 4. Then it swings back. On 5, the demon didn't get enough to do any damage, but he still will be the Active on turn 6. Also, under this, there were a couple of times when neither side got the necessary 3 successes

This is either great, or completely unnecessary: do both parties normally just use their Active attributes in combat, unless the situation calls for something else? (acting with a Reactive, et cetera).

In the end, Brian won, but barely; he had to spend 2 Light Animus points (and his re-roll was useless with the activation, too, which bit), and when the dust settled was down to maybe.. 3 points left? He got lucky with a D 1 / B 10 margin towards the end, which definitely tipped it. The demon blew his two Dark Animus points halfway through to good effect as well.

I gave him 7 Light Animus points: 3 for a Major Adversary, and 4 because that was the rating of the demon's Dark attribute (normal rules are "highest Dark attribute", but it probably comes out the same this way).

There was a minor scene investigating a fire and slaying some mook-fire imps, but as I was woefully unprepared (work-busy this week, and I had to put stuff together in the scant hours I had left). The rest of the game-evening was spent hunting around the city for any more of the demons, of which none were found.

Combat was kind of long (we went to Turn 25 before the demon finally dropped), but that's probably a combination of unfamiliarity, and me screwing up the rules somewhere. ;)

But we like it! We had played Donjon four or five times last month, and I may try and work a Success/Fact thing into the game somehow (we both enjoyed that, and it would help me a great deal to be able to rely on him for some encounter decisions and whatnot). The success mechanic is cool, and having a character who is a certifiable badass is always fun.

The Code obviously didn't really come into play this session, nor did the interplay of Light and Dark. Next time! Character development (and a name, hopefully; sheesh!) will be worked then, too. I have a really bad habit of getting bogged down in details, and the sibling usually just wants to go around killin' stuff, with only a passing interest in character motivations. He actually showed an interest in Paladin, though, so I'm hoping for some deeper roleplay from him as the game proceeds. There's lots of opportunity for it in the setting.

Um. That's it for now for impressions. I'll continue with more sessions in this thread; hopefully we'll play either Sunday or next Thursday, depending on schedules.

This stuff is great. I really like the color of your game.

Re: combat and initiative. There is no initiative system in Paladin. All actions happen simulatenously at first, and then the roll/re-roll system takes over, which has a back-and-forth action sequence. See the examples on page 10 and 11. That said, I really like your 'sente' rules and may steal the bejeezus out of them.

Combat will be re-vamped for the Paladin re-write. The new character mechanics will make that necessary. For now, one quick idea I have to patch your specific game is give each character a number of "Flesh Wounds" equal to the highest of your Active and Reactive Attributes. These take damage first, and are basically hit points.

Also, remember to liberally give out Light Animus for characters putting themselves into adversity.