Hi all,
I have been waiting several weeks to play this game and i thought i would write a quick review of my thoughts while its still fresh in my head. I hope some people find it useful. Firstly i have all the down loads i could find from the various official and unofficial sites.(hammerzeit being one) Those are mighty helpful in regards to walk throughs , arcane spell casting ect. A must have in my view. Like many have mentioned i also preferred to have a copy of the cards the monsters could use this made it easier to use in game and of coarse is reusable. One thing that struck me was how easy it is to give a monster another ability if you wanted to just bolt on a card. So immediately from a dm point of view love the flexibility of this potential mechanic. I found for my personal tastes that it was not that bad to keep track of the various pools like stress and fatigue and any used cards. The party card was fantastic and really brought the group together. A piece of advice i would give is to be really creative and flexible in pushing the meter along keep the tension going it really added to the moment as the pressure built during the game.
I was not using any prewritten material i was using my own story because i wanted to try and see what i could do with the various mechanics. So straight from the beginning of my story as the characters were traveling down the road towards Altdorf i had a them hear initially a carriage and then see it appear moving towards them at high speed. The driver missing inside they could hear the screams of some woman. So instinctively they had to try and board it some way. The abstract movement really worked in my view as was proved several times during the session and the initiative system created some interesting decisions for the group again bringing them together.
At this point i should add how impressed i was with the way the dice mechanic works in telling a story within a few roles everybody got in the swing of it.
In this one situation we saw an excellent idea from the wizards apprentice to use a cantrip spell although it failed to generate any successes i instinctively gave the next character an extra fortune point on his next action because of the boons the wizard had created.I know this is not covered by the rules but it was something i felt appropriate. The player tried to pull on the reins with the cantrip spell personally i loved this idea.
The next character an elven war dancer tried to jump on the carriage were the driver sat however due to a chaos star and his role he made it momentarily then fell off taking luckily just one wound.
This left it down to the last character to go for it which he did and at this point brought the carriage to a halt.
As you can see just from this brief extract how much fun was created i was really worried that my high hopes would be dashed by playing how wrong could i be this is the best thing i have ever played i cant wait for the next session.
Some things i will improve on is pushing the party tension meter and awarding fortune points a little quicker i think i may have missed some opportunities in both cases however not bad for a first session. The player feedback was fantastic i am lucky that i have a lot of knowledge about the game world so was easy for me to slip into the various accents for territories i.e. brettonia French ect. However im sure as other stuff gets published things will be clearer for the new dms and players out there. So if you have limited knowledge just search out the internet various sites or ask people like myself i am always happy to help.
So massively impressed don't just play a demo seek out a game then make a judgement for yourself.
Honestly it will be worth it.

I like the jumping onto the carriage idea; what a great way to teach them how to make checks and to have them see how those checks shape their interactions with the environment.

I had much the same reaction to my own first session that you did. The dice help you tell a story well, don't they? My most interesting observation was that after the first session, the players wanted to talk more about the story than they did about the mechanics. In my previous experience, mechanics dominate the discussion of any new system after the first play session. It's a testament to the system that it didn't happen!

Llanwyre said:

I couldn't agree more regarding talkin about the story. I am playing with 4 new people to pen and papers and they really ate up the story just for a day late! can't wait to run an eye for an eye!

Glad to hear you had such a great time. My first game last week also went well despite my trepidation at DMing for the first time in around 10 years. I winged the story, just a journey towards the town for 'day late ...' as we were missing one player but all had a great time and looking forward to future sessions. I used the location cards quite a bit (and wove in little encounters around some) so am looking forward to the campaign set and DM kit to get more. My group also focussed on story and the mechanics ran really smoothly.

I just finished my 5th session running, tonight.

I really really like this game. I will say that 4E dnd is easier to prepare for, but imo the stories just flow with this game. One combat tonight was particularly long, probably the longest combat we've ever had at about 2 hours, but I did have 6 players, and the combat never got boring. I've recently added the house rule someone suggested where a player narrates what happens in the case of one boon or one bane, then they get a fortune dice for it on thier next action. This helps the long combats from getting to stale. Tonight I really got to see how the recharge tokens work as many many cards end up under recharge status, this differed from the very short combats of the past 4 sessions.

I think the party tension and fortune points are things I keep forgetting, and although I've messed with them, it's not nearly as much as I should.

My players are excited about the game, which is nice, and the XP award system is great. It gives some sort of minor instant reward per session which I like and my players like.

The only downside to this game is the set-up, preparation, and clean up. It's something I'm more than willing to put up with for how well things have been going.

Sinister said: