Saturday, February 5, 2011

The Enemy Within: Session 2 (WFRP)

A long work week, with after hours filled with unexpected house hold repairs have left me with little time for blogging; however, we did manage to squeeze in a second session of WFRP this past week.

We had one player from the previous session fall too ill to play, but we had two more players join in, one via Skype. Skype opens up new avenues for role playing. One long time member of my table retired this past year and moved out of state. We had tried Skyping him in before, but a slow connection made it impossible at the time. Now, armed with a faster connection speed, we were able to make it so.

Neither of the two players who joined in had an opportunity to make a character ahead of time, so our first hour and half was spent making characters for them while chatting. I didn't mind this, as I had not spoken with the player that was Skyping in a good long time. Our start was also delayed as our other player joining in was running late himself due to illness.

When all characters were complete, we started. Our party now stands at a strength of five: Bartolf (human male Protagonist), Gotfried (human male Initiate of Sigmar), Ildrial Eponaia (elven male Wizard's Apprentice) and Rickter (human male Marine). I kept things simple. With the time remaining alloted for gaming (about two and half hours), I had four goals:

1. Introduce Gotfried and Ildrial to the group while keeping Rickter involved (Ricter's player stayed home sick).
2. Let enough time pass for Willow to heal from her wounds suffered in session 1.
3. Introduce some future plot elements.
4. Get the players involved in the main plot.

All four goals were easily met. I started with goal 2. Following up on one of the notices found at the Reik's Platz in session one, Bartolf and Rickter took a job with the Nuln city watch repairing, replacing and dredging sewer grates. They stayed at this job for three days, earning a bit of coin and giving Willow enough time to heal her wounds.

The first goal was accomplished by having the characters all end up at the same inn for a night of drinking: The Fisherman's Rest, more commonly referred to as "The Rest". While there, two strangers dressed in the garb of middle class merchants, attempted to send secret signals to Bartolf. They seemed to believe he was someone else. This was observed by another stranger. A tall human male wearing a grey cloak. He seemed to make sure that no one could see his face by keeping his hood up. When the two strangers gave up on sending signals to Bartolf, they left with looks of confusion and disgust upon their faces. The characters decided to follow them out.

The two strangers realized they were being followed by the characters and took off at a dead run. They did not get far before the sounds of them being attacked were heard. When the characters caught up to them, they were both dead. One had a bolt through the neck, while the second had a bolt through the right eye. The bolts were from a hand crossbow. The characters tossed them for what they could find, even stripping them of their fine clothing. When they stripped them, they saw that both men had a half-dollar sized tattoo of a purple, right hand print upon their left shoulders.

They returned to the Rest where a bit of camaraderie was established by having a fellow protagonist challenge Bartolf to a brawl. Bartolf accepted and Gotfried and Ildrid noticed that Bartolf was not going to be met alone, and was walking into an ambush. They jumped into the fray to help, joined by Willow and Rickter. A short combat occurred with the characters walking away with an easy victory.

A very drunk merchant observed all of this and afterwards gave his card to Gotfried. He introduced himself as Herr Georg Fleischer. He stated that he had need of people with their skill sets and that they should visit him at his butcher shop the next day.

No comments:

Post a Comment