Editing User:Bill/Rifts Week by Week/Series One Notes

Slated to run ten weeks, every Monday from August 8th to October 10th, Series One will focus on the ''Triax 2'' book and showcase several racial character classes from the ''Thundercloud Galaxy'' book. 

===Pregenerated Characters===
All of the pregenerated characters for Series One will be made using one or more of the following books; World Book 31: Triax 2, Dimension Book 14: Thundercloud Galaxy, Rifter 51, Rifter 52. These sources have been selected in an effort to highlight the most recent releases in the Rifts product line. While players who wish to make their own characters are encouraged to use these sources, they are not required to do so as long as the characters are of a similar power level and are able to fit into the background story.

*[[/Ashara|Ashara]]
*[[/Jimena|Jimena]]
*[[/Milosh|Milosh]]
*[[/Peta|Peta]]
*[[/Theophorus|Theophorus]]
*[[/Zebulon|Zebulon]]

====Background Stories====
Since this is a drop in game, you may not want to put a lot of time or thought into your background story. The character still has to fit into the series, if only a little. I really only need the following defined for every character.
*How you got to Germany
*Why you joined the special tactical regiments
The easiest answers to these questions are that the character was born in the NGR or one of the D-Bee border settlements and that he or she (or it) is attempting to gain citizenship, but feel free to be creative. Anything else you take the time to write will be read, provided that it's legible, and I may end up incorporating portions of it into the metaplot.

==Participant Log==
{|width="50%"
| '''Player''' || '''Sessions''' || '''Points'''
|-
| Chewie || 4 || 2000
|-
| Dylan || 4 || 2000
|-
| Kyle || 2 || 1000
|-
| Nick || 2 || 1000
|-
| Rachel || 1 || 500
|-
| Tess || 5 || 2500
|}

==Session One - August 8, 2011==
I was excited to hear that as many as six players were interested in playing Rifts on Mondays. I was not very confident that I would get many takers for a non-D&D game Monday nights. That only three showed up wasn't a real discouragement either. For this first Session, I had Dylan, Rachel, and Tess. Dylan brought his own character, a Grackletooth Gunfighter called JW (John Wayne). Rachel played Ashara, the Shing Lioness. And Tess opted to play Peta Grüber, a glitterborg from Rifter 52. This presented a small problem as I am not completely versed in the powers that Dylan's character has available. I ended up short changing him a little during the second fight.

The session revolved around two combat encounters. I opened with the aircraft that the group was traveling in being attacked in midair by a couple gargoyles. I could have short handed this scene by saying that the plane was forced down by monsters and jumping directly into the second encounter, but since the objective of this game is to offer players the opportunity to learn the rules, I played it out. Ashara easily removed one of the two gargoyles by casting net at it. JW opened a door and drew a bead on the second while Peta braced her laser cannon on his shoulder. The gargoyle got one good swing in on the engine before they shot the hell out of it.

The crash permitted us to use the plane crash rules from the core book and highlight how dangerous megadamage situations are to SDC creatures. The Shing was forced to leap out of the plane and invoke its Giant spell rather than be killed in the crash. This came up again later. The crash also permitted me to eliminate the pilot and copilot from the cast.

After the crash, I left it up to the players to decide whether they would attempt to return to the coast or trek north to Germany. Neither route would be short. The plane crashed in the former territory of middle Pyrenees in what used to be France. Moving out, I told Rachel that her character was sensing supernatural energy all around them. And after a short trek, I had the characters with Detect Ambush and Detect Concealment make a skill check. They easily detected a group of humanoids in unknown battle armor staked out for an ambush. Playing true to her character, Tess attacked without hesitation with one of her fragmentation mini missiles. This could have led to a pretty brutal assault, but the players managed to figure out that the men in white armor weren't trying to ambush them. I gave Tess a chance to reign Peta's behavior in, the character is suffering from the Homicidal insanity, and she was successful.

Before the men could adequately explain themselves, only identifying that they were elves from ''Sceaduwe'' and that they are defending their forest from an undead menace, I had a dozen zombies assault the combined group. Using tokens to help keep track of combat actions, this went pretty smooth over all. Rather than track the NPC on NPC violence, I described the elves taking coordinated actions to take down one zombie every other turn and had one of them go down to enhance the potential threat of the monsters. 

On the players' side, the dice rolls were not in Tess's favor, but Dylan managed to make some called shots when they counted. Rachel struggled a bit to understand that the  monsters could destroy her character if they landed a single blow. Dylan and I provided some guidance to suggest an effective strategy for her and she managed to be more effective. Combat was over in approximately four melee rounds, or an hour of real time. My overall assessment of the combat sequence is that it easily becomes repetitious and that I will have to be more dramatic in my descriptions if I am going to keep it engaging. This was in part due to the monsters being mindless. I think things will be more interesting when the opponents are acting defensively.

The session ended with the player characters being guided to Sceaduwe and introduced to the leader of the elves, Wisfæst Dökkálfar. I described Sceaduwe as a miracle of organic looking architecture. The buildings being constructed from a strange white material similar to stone. The Shing Lioness, with her ability to see the invisible, was able to see the remarkable network of mystical energy that flowed from the trees surrounding the city, through circuitry-like patterns on the buildings to the central tower where Wisfæst Dökkálfar's audience chamber is located. As they traveled through the city she was able to draw more and more Ley Line energy, at the center it was equivalent to a nexus point. The leader of the elves introduced himself and offered the players his hospitality.

As with my Encounters sessions, I am awarding experience points to players rather than characters. The pregenerated characters will never level up, but any player may elect to create a new character at any time using their accumulated experience points to determine the character's level. So, if one of the players wanted to bring a new character in next week, the 500 experience I am awarding this week will apply to it.

==Session Two - August 15, 2011==
I was quite nervous about my second session. Rachel and Dylan had both told me that they would not be present, and not knowing Tess well it seemed likely that I would be killing the evening by myself. Fortunately for me, Dylan's plans fell through and Tess brought Chewie along. I attempted to cajole another guy into joining, but he was reluctant to take part and doubly reluctant to use a pregenerated character. About a half hour in, I had a kid somewhere around 12 years old ask to join in. I turned him down on grounds that we were already into the meat of the session, but to be honest I am reluctant to bring a minor into the group. If he asks again, I'll tell him that I need to get his parents' permission before he can join. The last thing I want is to have an angry parent yelling at me because I am corrupting his or her child with my language or violent role-playing game. Anyway...

This session really was about the player characters gathering information on Scaeduwe. Dylan and Tess continued with the characters that they played last session, Chewie elected to play Jimena. I am thankful that he went that direction because it permitted me to give the group a lot more information than they would have gotten with one of the technologically focused characters. Some important details that were gathered; Scaeduwe has been standing at least sixty years, the alien trees that the elves are protecting extend almost exactly twenty miles in all directions from the city, the trees act as powerful PPE collectors, so powerful in fact that they effectively consume a ley line that formerly crossed the border of the forest, and that Wisfæst Dökkálfar is a powerful supernatural being. 

The session also involved a brief fight with a werewolf and its fenryr allies, and Peta blindly lashing out at one of the trees to see what would happen; she got blasted with a huge energy discharge. Shortly after her attack on the tree, the elves attempted to take the group into custody. The cyborg dramatically leapt from the top of the central tower and scaled the city wall to escape while Jimena used her jetpack to evade pursuit by taking to the air. JW was interrupted during his breakfast and locked in the stockade. If not for his disarming manner, he would likely have been left to rot there. Fortunately the grackle managed to convince Wisfæst Dökkálfar that he could insure his friends wouldn't join forces with the necromantic menace. 

Mounted on the back of an enormous draft horse, JW caught up with his companions; the cyborg's trail was far from challenging to follow. After bringing his partners up to speed on the elves' concerns, Jimena's sixth sense alerted her to a nearby threat. As a group all three realized that they had been surrounded by terrible necromantic monsters. Stitched together horrors made of man, elf, monster and animal parts confronted them on all sides. And that's where I left it. I love a cliff hanger. 

Overall, I was pleased with how the session went and the feedback from the players was positive. Chewie indicated that he would be returning and that he wants to make his own character. The fight with the werewolf ended faster than I expected. Jimena happened to be in the right place at the right time to decapitate the monster before it could present a credible threat. Ironically, she was also the only character that could actually harm him. Partly this is due to my ruling that headshots are automatic critical strikes. I don't intend to change that rule, though I may revise some MDC values to compensate for it a little. I'm shooting for a delicate balance between a short, exciting, battles and threats that are genuinely dangerous. Under the normal rules, combat seems to drag so something needs to be adjusted.

==Session Three - August 22, 2011==
Tess informed me via email that it was possible she would be unable to attend this week's session. Fortunately that turned out to not be the case. 

I began the session by describing a horrific four-legged monster that a humanoid figure in black armor approached the group on the back of. The beast appeared to be a twisted combination of rhinoceros and horse with huge predatory claws and teeth. The armored figure dismounted and approached to within a few feet of the player characters, then began to question them about where they had come from and their relationship with the elves. He then noticed the hilt of Jimena's sword and insisted that she hand it over. That rapidly precipitated events. JW shot him square in the chest without warning. 

The combat that ensued was not something I had planned for. Generally I think that players are sensible enough to take my description of a "zombie horde" to mean that they probably shouldn't try to fight. Regardless, I think it went fairly well. The party was swarmed by two to four undead monsters each. As might be expected, the players haven't yet worked out how to best coordinate their attacks, so the fight was effectively broken up into smaller conflicts. Hopefully the inevitable slide towards doom that they experienced in this session will help motivated them to find more effective means of fighting off larger numbers of foes. They did attempt to avoid the monsters and go after their master, which could have worked if not for the large number of creatures working very hard to keep them busy. 

About the second melee round, Nick and Kyle approached and I invited them to join the game. I've played several games with Kyle before. While he can be frustrating at times, he is an enthusiastic player and a welcome addition to the group. Nick and I did not meet under the best circumstances and up to this point I think he has been reluctant to participate in my games. Hopefully they will both return next week. Nick took on the role of Milosh and Kyle played Theophorus. They did well for being unfamiliar with the system or the characters. I think another session with the same characters would help them be very effective, though my impression is that they would like to create their own characters.

Anyway...combat concluded after approximately five rounds. It quickly became clear that the player characters had little to no hope of successfully defeating the undead horde. Both JW and Peta's armor had taken significant hits. The huge undead mount had nearly shredded the grackle's suit. Additionally, JW was the only character to fail his saving throw against ''Speed of the Snail''; a devastating spell that reduced the character's combat abilities to a fraction of their normal effectiveness. Peta heaved him up on her shoulder once the mount had been destroyed and used her bionic speed to flee. Jimena took to the air with her jet-pack. Unfortunately this left Theophorus and Milosh to fend for themselves. Which they didn't do well. Theophorus went down under several of the monsters as they tackled him and Milosh surrendered rather than see his friend killed.

I concluded the session by describing two interrogations. The group that fled back to Sceaduwe were questioned by Wisfæst Dökkálfar while Theophorus awoke to find himself strapped to a table in a torture chamber. Meanwhile Milosh was offered hospitality and a tour of the necromancer's home. Finally, the group that returned to the elves was confined in a sitting room while Milosh spilled his guts to save Theophorus. Milosh successfully saved against a Sleep spell, but decided to play along with it. When last we left him he had been sealed into a confined space.

Even though I was substantially less prepared for this session that I had been for the previous two, I think it went more smoothly. The combat system continues to be something of a challenge to keep exciting, but I think I can address that by shifting antagonist tactics more frequently.
==Session Four - September 5, 2011==
I was out of town August 29th, so no session was had. We almost didn't have a session this week either. I left my notes, including the pregenerated characters at home. Fortunately, both Tess and Chewie had mostly completed writing their own characters. I was able to help them finish a pair of dragons and assist Nick with a Burster with a little time left to play. 

Since a couple characters had already been captured, we elected to continue with the story in that direction. The group found themselves confined in a circular pit with a huge grate over it. Chewie's character attempted to force the grate and was rewarded for his efforts with a magical blast of energy. Tess's character circumvented the issue entirely by teleporting out of the cell. The escape would have been ludicrously simple if not for the presence of Nick's character. Because dragons are not able to teleport others along with themselves, they were faced with the choice of abandoning their friend or discovering the means by which the cage operated. They chose the latter.

Utilizing her telemechanics power, Tess's character was able to operate the mechanism controlling the gate and free her friends. Nick and Chewie's characters exited the pit to discover a woman had just entered the room. The woman then transformed into a snarling werewolf and flung herself at them. The fight was cut short as Tess managed to get the hangar doors open so the group could flee into the air.

In spite of my failure to come prepared, the session went reasonably well and gave the players some information to advance the plot. Coherency is a little low for my taste, what with the group composition fluctuating the way it does, but as long as everyone continues to have fun I will be satisfied. Nick expressed a desire to engage in more actual role-play, and I will admit that the series has been combat heavy up to this point. I will have to make an effort to insert more opportunities for the players to engage NPCs in banter.

==Session Five - September 12, 2011==
This week I was slightly more prepared than the previous one. Instead of forgetting my notes, I left my books at home. While inconvenient for the players, that doesn't bother me at all. As long as I have a couple interested people, I can run a game. 

This week's session featured Chewie, Dylan, Kyle, and Tess. Tess elected to reprise the role of Peta while Chewie continued with his dragon and Kyle rapidly whipped up a dragon of his own. I have played with Kyle off and on for more than a year at this point. He has some tendency to over complicate things, leading to slow decision-making and bogging down the rest of the group in what should be a simple situation. Given its wide range of magical and psychic powers, I am not certain that a dragon is a good choice for him. However, the other class he expressed interest in was Techno Wizard, an effectively open ended crafting class, so dragon is clearly the preferable option.

After escaping from the necromancer's fortress, the dragons made their way back to Sceaduwe and were reunited with their comrades. The elves were excited by the opportunity to finally lay siege to their enemy's base and in the morning everyone was transported back to the cliff into which it was carved. The majority of the session was spent actually getting into the fortress. The elves searched the area for a concealed entrance while the player characters attempted to access the base through the same hangar doors that they had escaped from. With this objective in mind, they went at it from three different directions simultaneously. Teamwork is not their strong suit.

Kyle's dragon was the first to enter, doing so via teleportation. Upon entry he failed his check versus horror factor against the undead sentries who had been posted in the room. Perhaps confused as to what he should do next, and no doubt eager to try out one of his character's cool powers, he dissolved his dragon into a snowstorm and exited the room through the narrow cracks under the hangar door. 

Tess had Peta climbing the cliff face to reach the hangar door, a process that would take approximately five actions. JW, the grackletooth played by Dylan, was initially riding up to the hangar door on her back. Half way up there, it occurred to him that he could ride up on the back of Chewie's dragon much more quickly.

Chewie, after some deliberation on what would be the best way to go about it, elected to have his dragon fly to the hangar door. However, with no means to open it from the outside, he ultimately decided to teleport in. JW was already on the dragon's back by this point though, and some interesting aerial leaping to transfer him back to the cyborg was necessary before the dragon could actually do so. Once he was finally off, the dragon teleported inside and managed to succeed in his check versus horror factor when confronted by the zombie guards. Recalling his escape, the day before, he easily opened the hangar door and admitted his companions.

The remainder of the session focused on subduing the two zombie guards and investigating the hangar. The pits held around a dozen living occupants, there was a craft of some kind parked beside the pits, and there were two doors leading deeper into the complex. Both dragons had taken humanoid forms and a klaxon was alerting the base's defenders that intruders had breached their security. Below, with Peta's help, the elves had discovered the hidden ground-level entrance to the fortress and Wisfæst Dökkálfar used his powers to force it open.

We appear to be moving towards a climax in the story. For a couple sessions, it seemed like the group wasn't really going anywhere and I was concerned that the story would get stale.

==Conclusion==
At some point, I lost motivation to type up my notes for this game. No excuses. I just stopped doing it. The game continued from where it left off above for two more sessions. The elves managed to defeat the necromancer with the PCs' help. Before escaping, the fiendish mystic subdued and captured the dragon that Tess was playing and set off a terrible spell that created an expanding sphere that anihilated everything that it came into contact with. The necromancer sold Tess's character into slavery in Atlantis and her companions, the few that lived, returned to the elvish city and found themsleves unwelcome. At that point, I offered them the choice of following the grackle's story or the dragon's; they went with the dragon. I took the opportunity to offer them a chance to play more powerful characters and told them to build whatever they wanted at sixth level.
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<big>'''[[User:Bill/Rifts Week by Week/Setting Notes|Setting Notes]]'''</big>