First, the team of players devoted one hour to shaping a Colymar clan using the clan creation rules of the Sartar Book. Jeff read us about thirty-five questions, from the Creation of the World to the lunar occupation in Sartar, and proposed for each of them the different answers of the questionnaire. Making a unified choice has sometimes involved epic discussions among players, but as we were progressing into the questionnaire, it became more natural to choose the answers, in the sense that at one point the players agreed on a common idea of what the clan concept had to be: more or less war- or peace-oriented, and so on.
As far as we were concerned, our clan, after a beginning blessed by Uleria, the ancient Great Goddess of Love, finally ended up as a rather war-oriented clan (ehh... love is passion, passion can imply violence, you know), a clan proud to resist to the lunar occupation. Of course, we had to pay for it, that's why our clan was proud but... dirty poor. In passing, we discovered (as say the «game design» guys, you know ;-)) many things: that during the Age of Vingkot, for example, our ancestors had taken the myterious «Hungry women» in, or that as far as one could remember the deadliest chaotic foes of our clan were the infamous broos.
Next step was the characters' creation, and that was another definitely cool step. The new HQ rules allow you to begin the game very quickly. In fact, one of the ways to create the characters imply to define two «umbrella keywords» that represent all the normal things that your character can do (bye bye the long lists of capacities of the ancient «homelands»): one is devoted to the clan relationship -«Member of the Orlmarth clan» in our case- and another one to the occupation –in our group, for example, we had:
- a skald with a strange bagpipe
A few other abilities and a flaw had to be imaginated by players in order to define more precisely the personal ressources of the characters: no more than two or three abilities at the beginning, and we could choose the next ones (up to ten) during the session: that is named the «as-you-go» creation method. One keyword, one ability and one Rune begin at 17, all the other ones at 13, and you can spend up to 20 points to augment whatever score you want. The score of the flaw is equal to the highest of the other ones, it's worth noticing that! (That's why the sheepherder was so fascinated by the hated Lunars...)
Please note too that the choice of the abilities required all our attention because the way Jeff played the new rules is that only one augmentation is possible with a particular ability, and that augmentation was played with a simple contest (against a resistance of 14), so that this augmentation easily provides a +3 or even a +6 bonus. So, be sure you choose abilities with discernment, that means they will be original and they will support different kinds of use.
Last but not least, we had to choose three Runes for each character, that means three favoured magical links of the character with the powers of the Other World, that define also some of his personality traits. Two of us chose the Darkness Rune, following the path of the «Hungry women». Remember : the clan questionnaire had established that our ancestors taken them in during the mythic times. Who were exactly these «Hungry women»? We didn't know, and it was not a problem, we just had to imagine that and make propositions to Jeff –clear, simple, and absolutely MGF-compatible. Another player chose the Beast Rune and under Jeff's advice, his character, Andrin, became an initiate of the «Ram God» –a divinity improvised on this occasion. We loved that! The very cool thing, here, is that the clan's background provided real good opportunities to go into the character's background. And that point is true even for complete gloranthan newbies, as noticed by the player of the ernaldan priestess (she was a gloranthan newbie).
Finally, we began to play the promised Return to Apple Lane, a scenario that will be included in the long awaited Sartar Book. What follows, below, is a very short summary of the main events that occured in the game.
Be careful: spoilers ! ;-)
The scenario opens as the clan chieftain summons our (proud but dirty poor) characters. He orders us to go to Apple Lane, a village set on the frontier between the Colymar and Malani tribes, inhabited by strange Orlanthi people (Listen! They live in stone-builded houses and they always cheerily welcome strangers... Rich people are so weird...).
There, we have to meet Gringle, the famous merchant, to warn him that the tribal king recently claimed that he was no more under the protection of the tribe, so that the Lunars consider now that Gringle is an outlaw. His life is in danger! But, thanks to an oath that the clan chieftain absolutely wants to honor (yes... the kind of things that make you proud and dirty poor), we have to convince the obtuse priest of Issaries to flee for the safe of his life...
On the road, we first meet a strange and rather thrilling band of weird dancing dragonewts. How to react, to face towards that... what? Threat? Provocation? Simple disconcerting magic stuff? Finally we choose the dodge (proud but not idiot, you know). Which is not so easy and demands magical feats from some of us...
After that we face towards many problems when we arrive to Apple Lane. At one point a band of mercenary bastards commanded by a clearly detestable red-and-blue skinned lunar witch turns up without any delay. The witch threatens Gringle and his protectors (our characters). After a harsh and futile discussion, during which the lunar woman tries to intimidate the group, the mercenary band is finally scattered away. That is possible thanks to the conjugated magics of all the characters, that notably imply the frightening music of the skald's bagpipe, the terrifying howlings of the «Hungry women confronted to the desperate cries of their starving children» (yeah, it's pretty cool) and the fact that Andrin became the Ram, charging, headbutting and kicking savagely out. That finally gives to Gringle an opportunity to do what he first refused to do, that means: to leave Apple Lane (obtuse but not idiot, sure) and hide in the hills.
It was time to conclude so that we all chose to end the game session at that point, but it was not difficult to feel the desire of everybody to continue among the players, in particular to explore some other branches of the story that we had discovered.
In a few words, we had a fun, vivid and deeply sartarite moment that greatly enjoyed us and made us eager to see the release of the Sartar Book. About HQ2.0, and that was a point of view shared by RQ players around the table who had not yet really experienced HQ rules, it's definitely the game we needed to enhance our gloranthan feelings and experience, under the laws of the MGF!
Malik Amoura, Gregory Molle
Powered by hypermail