Sunday 14 April 2013

AP: Pendragon of Mars

It's been a crazy topsy-turvy sort of week, but I couldn't let it end without talking about one of the highlights for me: my first chance to join noisms' game, Pendragon of Mars, which was also my first time playing anything over a G+ Hangout.

I'll talk about my character, Sir Owain the Red, and his mechs in another post, I just want to focus on what happened and what it was like playing with noisms, Patrick (Sir Wiglaf), David W (Sir Elias) and Zak (Sir Xyre).

The other guys had already had a couple of sessions to get used to things; I'd done most of the statting up beforehand, but there were a few things I didn't know about my character. As ever, as soon as the questions started flowing - What does he look like? What sort of family is he from? - the few details I had already brought together started mating like crazy.

A lot and a little happened in the session. So far, Pendragon of Mars is really unlike anything else I've played in the last two years: we spent ninety minutes playing through the events of a formal-ish ball, full of court intrigue, flirting with the Ladies of the court, being knighted, passing initiations and sometimes making asses of ourselves as we tried to impress women with knife skills or back tattoos (both techniques I tried, both of which failed). Finally we were formally knighted by the Earl (including being punched in the face and jumping over a sword to mount our steeds; that's how we roll on Mars).

And then the night of our knighting over noisms said "OK, so now it is winter and you are back at home. Here is what happens..." and each of us had some scenes back at our manors for the winter (passing judgement on commoner disputes, finding out what happened with our families, and just generally getting older).

Where things really got fun was seeing what the other players' characters were like, and how they interacted.We weren't trying to tag team fighting Martians or performing some mission. We were trying to help each other out at court. Brothers in arms!

The experience of playing over G+ Hangout was interesting. It was a lot of fun to be playing from home, and playing with people not just in different parts of the UK but different parts of the world. It also made me wonder about playing ViewScream, a game which I've read about and intrigues me...

Anyway! Lots of fun, and looking forward to this week's session. I have to stat up another mech! One final part of the character gen was rolling for an important family belonging. I got another charger, which in Pendragon of Mars means designing another 150 construction point mech under the Mekton Zeta rules...

Roll on Wednesday.

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