Not counting character creation or session zero of course, first actual gameplay session
I’d love to hear how it goes.
I’m approaching session 2 of what will hopefully be a monthly mash-up of Cortex Prime and Reign where my players lead their province through the tumultuous Three Kingdoms era of Chinese history.
I’d be curious to hear what your homebrew looks like. I would love to incorporate it if possible. Cortex Prime has rules for mobs of npcs the players can mow through.
I did a prequel session with pre-built characters during the yellow turban rebellion and they were tasked with preventing a yellow turban garrison from reinforcing the last turban city which was besieged.
They ended up blasting their way into the besieged city instead and just ending the siege. They had a great time.
So we’ve done a ten year time skip and the players are assuming control of a fictional city/province after the previous ruler died at Hulao Pass. The coalition against Dong Zhuo has splintered and it’s every warlord for themselves.
The company rules from Reign allow them to run a city and interact with other leaders of the era and set their own missions in order to survive the era of chaos.
I don’t have anything written yet, just ideas at this point. I’m a fan of xinxia and wuxia and I think the concept of cultivation would map well to a TTRPG. My players know little to nothing about xinxia and wuxia so it would be a whole new world for them.
To that end, much of the worlds and lore are already established- heck I could even place them in any fantasy cdrama storyline and adapt from there. My group just created new characters and started a series of DCC modules recently, so I have some time to brew my ideal campaign.
Two experienced players, two newcomers, my first tame with the game. It went fine, everyone seemed to have fun. I opted on throwing the players into a more action opening, I was amazed how their own rolls filled in the time to make situation take half of a session and built the tension and pressure by themselves. Did downtime activities, including two starting long term projects, and later threw in some plot hooks. Next session we will begin on selecting next score. We would have done that this time, but my Internet crashed.
Full score or just the start? I'm running beamsaber right now, and I feel like I'm building the plane as we are flying, it's a bit harrowing. I don't yet feel like I'm quick enough on my feet to work out everything as we go, and I'm not sure I'm supposed to, really.
I started with an action opening, so like a semi-full score, but it went well. Then we did downtime and next plot hooks. Honestly, I see why you could find it stressful, it relies on improvising a lot, but it's also somehow less stressful for me compared to knowing I have prep work to do before my d&d game. I can actually see myself running two campaigns if one is Blades and other is something more prep-heavy like d&d. I'll if I have the same opinion after few more sessions. I hope I do.
Congratulations on branching out!
I think we need more variety in the TTRPG space. I don't like the idea of D&D being a near-monopoly.
Nice! I started my first ever campaign as a DM a couple days ago and ran the second session last night. It's a great feeling watching all your hard work come together.
We tried running the system, but it didn't feel like it had much potential for a long term campaign. It was fun using the retcon mechanic to attach a grenade the the lever of a toilet though...
Congrats. First sessions are rough. I'm a fairly inexperienced DM myself myself and I remember my campaign's first session
Cool beans. I enjoyed The Adventure Zone's Blades in the Dark campaign, seems like a neat system.