A Game of Ice and Fire, Part 3: First Session

So, no game this most recent week allows me to play catch up and keep this thing mostly on schedule.  Today I talk about, what I feel is one of the most important sessions, the first one.

Opening Day

Part of the fun or roleplaying games is creating a story and memorable encounters with your friends, the other players, and having fun.  The having fun part is pretty easy for some games like D&D or games that really only have one focus, like combat or cunning and intrigue.  Every one can be included at the same time and characters have very similar focuses.  There are few times when one or more people are not engaging in the game at a time.

In A Song of Ice and Fire, characters have a variety of choices to focus on.  Looking back at my previous post, you can see that we have basically 3 types of characters; 2 fighters, 1 social character, and 1 assassin.  If I focus on combat in a session, the 2 fighters are happy and quite useful.  The assassin and social character don't work well in straight up combat at all.  On the other hand, if I focus on the political intrigue side, potentially 3 characters are sitting on the side lines.  It's a careful balance one has to strike, but inevitably there will be some points when a player's character is not actively participating in the game, especially in SIFRP.

For the first session, I just recently decided to treat it sort of like the pilot to a new TV show; give each player a small scene where their character can shine and start introducing the mechanics of the game relevant to that character.  In a game like SIFRP, it makes sense, especially if you look at the books and actual T show.  It also would work for any game that has such varied choices for character creation and when having characters with different focuses.

First I started with Lucius, the bastard born assassin.  I set a training scene with him and his assassin trainer.  We traded rolls back and forth seeing who could get the upper hand with Stealth and Awareness rolls.  This no risk conflict allowed us to get used to the opposed test mechanics and roll some dice.

Second, I turned to Terrance, the heir to the house to start on the Intrigue rules.  In SIFRP, Intrigue is almost like combat.  For basic things, like getting past a guard, one roll is usually all that suffices.  Longer cons, or discussion call for multiple rolls, and it is very similar to combat.  I started with a local merchant who was looking for better prices on the metals he buys from the house.  Again, a simple, no to little risk conflict for the player.  That scene doubled as a gauge of power level for Terrance.

Third came the two fighters who got to fight off some bandits that harass the lands around House Trevayne.  This one was more of a learning point for me.  I knew the characters would be able to handle 3 bandits, one of whom was hiding, but I had no idea that they would just stomp them into the ground.  There's nothing wrong with the characters being powerful and it makes sense that trounce no name bandits.  It helps me know that if I want them to face a challenge, they will probably have to be similarly powerful enemies.

After introductions to the characters, I devised a small session to introduce some other noble Houses the group would be encountering; a wedding!  Nothing dire, like in the books, but a simple affair that really just served the purpose of letting the characters roleplay and get them involved in the world more.

Overall, I thought it was a pretty solid session and introduction to the game.  Next week, the group gets started on the adventure that is published in the back of the rulebook; Peril at King's Landing.