RPG #2

The second week of the Rune Quest 2 campaign went exceptionally well last night with pizza and ninja bread men, although Xavier did his best to stay up late to see what all the fuss was about.

I’m really enjoying the bronze-age mythological Glorantha game world setting and the Rune Quest rule system, but it is really great to be playing with role playing newbies again. Having players who have never played a pen-and-paper RPG before brings a whole new chaotic element to the game: who’d have thought the teacher and the lawyer would bring torture, slavery and murder to the game in our second week (those goblins really shouldn’t have stolen our horses) – and both are pregnant women, talk about shattering stereotypes.

It was good to test out the combat system, even if we did try to reason with the Goblins to get our horses back first – but we weren’t prepaid to pay for our horses they stole. Trax (my character) took a hard line stance on the suggestion that we press the goblins into our service, preferring instead to send then theives on to their next reincarnation in the great ouroboros of life.

Just a shame we have to break for the holidays – looking forward to more games in 2011.

Here is the rough background I’ve sketched out for my character, Trax A’mococo, the grizzled veteran mercenary, from the Black Grove Clan, in Delela. Trax was once a keen if amateur musician and married at a young age, but certain events lead to the death of his young love and another warrior in the clan. Although not entirely his fault, Trax was deeply troubled by the tragedy, which lead him to accompanying Soliste in the EWF raiding parties – through a growing commitment to the Humakt the Claw, a warrior and death cult that believes death is merely the requirement to move on to the stage of the great ouroboros, he has concentrated his marshal training in battlefield tactics and favours the hoplite fighting style shield and spear (he trains obsessively in fighting with the short and long spear as well as the javelin). His manner once jovial and lighthearted is now an enforced matter-of-fact facade, a deliberately attempt to tempter the rage of youth. Not afraid of death or dying, he avoids rushing into battle like many hotheads in the death cult, but once weighing the situation he commits to the battlefield with unrelenting determination and cold expertise.