The original question was:
First RPG played (this year)
The answer: MÖRK BORG
Specifically, I ran a game at Con-tingency, an excellent 5-day residential event held in Hunstantion. I thoroughly encourage you to try this one out if you’re in the UK (or even if you’re just near enough in Europe that the journey isn’t too awful).
I had read a lot of MÖRK BORG, but I had never run a session. I played one with Blithy (of The Grognard Files infamy), but that had been a one-off that hadn’t totally sold me on the simplicity of this grimpunk fantasy game.
I ran a session of Treasures Of The Troll King, a sewer-crawl adventure by Chris Bissette, with art by Johan Nohr. There are a bunch of suggestions in the first section about hooks, and the one I opted for — the one that sang to me — was one about getting poisoned. The adventurers get double-crossed by their last patron who poisons them, and now they need the antidote.
It was a lot of fun; not least, there’s a lot to be said of a game when the first encounter is with three territorial fairies, and the player characters almost get their butts handed to them on a platter.
Most of the characters died. Some of them definitely, others probably. I got a lot of mileage out of NOT using the GM screen but leaving the TRAPS insert up-front and highly visible. I also understood the genuine value of pre-generated characters in excess of the number of players at the table; they offer choice at the beginning, and then they provide essential spontaneous fallbacks mid-game when the casualties start piling up.
RPGaDay is a prompt-driven experience in tabletop roleplaying, initiated by Dave Chapman of Autocratik and powered by you and me.
The prompts for this year are as follows — and you can find out more on Dave’s website.
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