Well finally we managed to have what seems to be the first of many promising sessions. After almost reaching homicidal rage for all the cancelled sessions of TROS, Armageddon:2089 etc we got together and made characters for the new world we made during the week, Azuraloka. It roughly translates into "land of the Demons" in Sanskrit..but we fiddled with it a bit. Essentially we wanted a world that each player could contribute to and where we could each take a turn as GM detailing bits we liked using Narrative elements none of us are all that familiar with, but thought was "the way to go" as far as "gaming post-30 years old" if that makes any sense. We wanted a game that would feel kind of epic in a historical sense, without a bucketload of magic. Empires rising and falling, Huge sweeping romance and intrigue, tragedy, pathos the whole lot.

A bit about the world. It's a bit of combinations of ideas and themes that we've all had floating around in our heads in the various worlds we'd made over the years. We wanted magic to be based off of an interaction between spirits (of some kind) and the characters. The exact nature of spirits had changed from its original form of dead souls in the "spirit realm" to a more animistic approach. Spirits are everywhere and yet nowhere, you can't see them as such. This is partly as a result of them not being some anthropomorphic "dude all whispy" but conceptual spirits. "The Spirit of XXXX" kind of thing, where XXXX is a concept such as happiness, fear, love, hate, loyalty whatever.

The world is split into four main races, the Av'tarah, Sidoryn, the Jem'vidar and Adi'sharad. Av'tarah are kind of Sumerian/Akkadian, while the Sidoryn are a kind of inuit/mad celt cross over, Jem'vidar are a pale race lead by witches and the Adi'sharad are a primeval race of cavemen who possess no vocal cords. There's a half-breed race of Av'tarah-Adi'sharad called "Coarse". Each has their own way of interacting with spirits to bring about magic. Essentially the game starts with the characters as Av'tarans in a city called "Forge" (I know I know..I didn't come up with it)...anyway the city of Forge is also called the "City of Factions". Lead by the Damara (baron) Forge is a city built on inspiration, innovation and a kind of ancient industry. Stonemasons, Bronzeworkers, and the newly "discovered" iron/steel from the faraway lands of the Adi'sharad all have their own kind of faction built around them. There's not familial heredity here, just power and who has it. The city is built upon the backs of the Adi'sharad slaves who are shipped in constantly from the west with Av'tarans making up only a small percentage of the population. This post is a bit long so I'll get on with the characters and their SAs..

Hish'Har - Coarse (halfbreed)
SAs:Drive-to attain high social position; Passion - the love of an Adi'sharad slave"girl";Conscience; Luck; Drive - Personal Freedom

Remshet - Av'Taran high freeman
SAs: Destiny - to leave a lasting monument; Conscience; Passion - Science;Luck;Drive - Travel

Kanaarif - Av'Taran 'noble' (really just a rich snob)
SAs: Luck;Conscience;Destiny - to lead a slave rebellion; Drive - For Recognition/Fame; Passion - yet to be filled (grrr!)


more about the first session once I've thought about it...

As we all wanted to get in some actual playtime this first session we hastily created Kickers for all three characters. In hindsight this was a bit of a mistake though not campaign destroying. Our only other experiences with kickers saw them to be a drawn out experience, back and forth creating then discussing their "validity" etc. I found that this kind of stalled the energy of the game right after character creation. Others have indicated they felt the same. So instead of optimizing our Kickers and making sure they really propelled the action, we kind of compromised and went for the first things that came into our head. Of note also is that the GM (myself) hadn't prepared much as far as NPCs, possible Relationship Maps or any of that and that this would ensure that the first session was done pretty much on the fly, using the SAs as a guide and the few NPCs that I'd conceived of on the car trip to the game.
Also of note was an idea I stole from Orbit, that of the Journey.. once a person is educated they leave their family in search of their own fame and fortune for a period of time... it seemed like a good idea at the time...
Of note was the construction of the Damara's palace, the first of its kind and a real symbol of his power. This gave the players a sense that this was a world in change with things happening all the time. The players decided that their characters were working for the Damara on the construction site in separate, unrelated roles.

Kickers

Hish'Har (Coarse Foreman): The object of his Passion SA, the Adi'Sharad slave girl is to be sold on the morrow and is being taken away for inspectino as the character awakes

Remshet (Av'Taran Engineers Apprentice/Roguish character): Someone Remshet has crossed in the past has just launched his plan for revenge...

Kanaarif (Av'Taran "noble"): Escaped Slaves are attacking a fellow noble...

Of the three Hish'Har's Kicker seemed the most solid. It propelled the character, took its direction from his SAs and got the game off to a good start. Without much info on the city, we made stuff up as we went along with a fair bit of Directorial Stance being included. Once we'd dealt with this Kicker up to a dramatic point we Star-wiped (our lingo for Scene Framing) to the next kicker. We would later pick up the Kicker to "finish" it off at the end of the session.

Next we dealt with Remshet's Kicker. This was a bit tricky. It didn't really propel the character into action, mostly because I'm not sure it described the situation clearly enough. In the end it felt a bit weak in the beginning, but as we went on the action kind of built up and in the end involved all three characters after some stilted use of Directorial Stance.

Player1: "Is my character around when this is happening?"
GM: "I guess so...is he?"
Player2: "I'd be around at this point right?"

Later
Player 1: "Is there anything around that I can use as a weapon?"
GM: "roll Per" blah blah blah

I think we kind of fell back into D&D mode here using the rules to determine scenes, putting Directorial Stance use onto the backseat and falling into the familiar Actor-Author stance. Later we would comment on this and made a commitment to try and use Directorial Stance more next time.
Remshet was attacked by two thugs who had killed an Engineer using his Cubit rod. I guess I kind of dropped the Narrative ball here, where I should have had him just find the dead body with his rod all bloodied etc, I had him follow a thug through a maze of scaffolding around the Damara's Palace construction site. I think I was a bit thrown as the Kicker was fairly vague and didn't propel any action. This was most probably a result of our haste to get into the game and not stall any energy we had for the game.

In the end we decided that this situation was sufficiently close to Kanaarif's vaguely outlined Kicker so we just pooled it together. All three characters got involved, there was a scuffle, the chance the saboutage of the thugs would collapse the entire West Wing of the palace, some use of Remshet's Fear of "Unstable Construction Sites" and the destruction the head thug's cerebellum (thankyou TROS for including such a thing!) In the end two weak Kickers became a nice double-scene. First overcoming the thugs secondly saving the building from collapsing. Hish'Har used SAs the most I think, at one stage needing a 12 on a Strength check to stop a 3m^2 block of stone crashing 3 storeys from the top of the palace. Some good teamwork etc..

After the kickers were touched on and dealt with, we Star-wiped to a scene in the Damara's temporary villa where they were rewarded with "That which the Damara could give, shall be yours". Hish'Har wanted some land and his slave-girl freed, but unfortunately she was already promised at sale to the Stonemasons. There was some allusion to her potential as a good breeder slave (breeding more slaves etc) earlier, firing the Passion and Drive SAs of Hish'Har.. In the end all he got was a patch of stony dirt outside the city and a bag of 10 gold coins (quite a lot)... Remshet was reassigned from less dangerous duties and has a chance to travel, Kanaarif will get a hall in the palace named after him.

We rounded the session off at the Slave markets with Hish'Har bidding successfully for the slave girl.

All in all not a bad session, despite some stilted moments.

We'll be picking it up again next weekend...