Monday, September 27, 2010

Brace For Impact! The One-Off Pilot Session

Ran my one-off Empire! game for the start of the university rp society year yesterday and it seemed to go well. Not particularly high concept, I admit, but Edwardian Steampunk meets War of the Worlds seemed to fire up the imagination of the non DnD players so I had a the maximum number of players I had planned for (six).

General premise - Scott's first Antarctic foray coincides with the arrival of the Martian cylinders. Having no red weed to give the game away nor a major spread of bacterial life to kill them off the Martians set up a resupply base using the personnel at McMurdo Station as food until Scott's expedition disturbs them. Much derring do ensues.

Player characters were Scott, Shackleton and a number of their expedition regulars (a doctor - MacKay, engineer - Skelton, dog handler - Crean and navy officer - Royds).

There was much fun had at the general presumption of 'Prussian Mechanical Monstrosities', the heroic death of the dog team as Crean sent them careening off into the night to cause a diversion and save the lives of the expedition and the finale which involved the PCs taking control of a now unmanned tripod (after fitting the base's Colours to the machine and attempting to play 'God Save the King' through the 'sound funnel') and coming to the rescue of their incoming supply ship HMS Pandora.

The quote of the night was Scott's magnificant deadpan understatement as the signaling device they'd whipped up using a bucket and all the reflective material they could find was destroyed by a tripod tendril in the groups first glimpse of the Fighting Machines: 'Damnation, there goes the shaving mirrors.'