As noted in a recent post, my friend Pat—one of the Marst Chronicle players—has volunteered to act as Storyteller so I can get some playtesting in from the players’ side of the screen. He’s decided to run an actual ongoing game; this limits the amount of straight-up playtesting involved, but it also means I get to try things out in the context of actual play, which has its own benefits.

We started off the first session by finishing up character creation. Travis played Sinkakusha Ro, a Twilight shrine maiden based on Sailor Mars; I played Prince Clovis of Ysyr, a Twilight sorcerer-swordsman based loosely on Elric of Melniboné, and Shane played Icas, a waifish, deer-riding Eclipse who was apparently the same character he’d been playing in an Exalted Second Edition / Dungeons & Dragons Fourth Edition crossover set in the 4e default setting. (Don’t ask.)

After riding away from a lynch mob of enraged villagers (“I am a doomed prince, no one understands me”), I encountered Icas in the woods, with whom I chatted and traded social influence attempts. We then rode together toward a nearby source of weirdly comforting emanations, which turned out to be Ro’s family shrine. I spent a lot of time watching the other two PCs flirt with each other over dinner (and swapped Attribute points to raise Appearance to 4 so I wouldn’t be left out), then snuck into Ro’s room to verify that her weird giant umbrella had actually concealed a daiklave. The session ended with the farming village behind the shrine under attack by bandits. Next session: the stabbity!

For your entertainment, here’s a photo from the session:

That’s Pat on the left and Travis on the right. Shane was sitting to my immediate left; he’s not visible here, but you can see his character sheet. The sheets aren’t official; they were put together by a playtester from another group. They look nice, though!