I’m going to be running a BE game in about a month at the Endgame mini-con in Oakland, CA. As it is a con game I need to have pre-gen characters to hand out. My general idea is that the players are part of an elite Special Forces unit. The setting will be on a planet that is mostly water with massive island sized mining vessels which are guarded by a Navy fleet. I pictured a naval Iron battle, leaping from the deck of one ship to another (ok, I don’t need Iron, but I’m a huge fan of Appleseed and Iron reminds me of Land Mates, so of course I want them in the game).
That brings me to the purpose of this post: Character Burning. Since Iron is only available to nobility, I guess that I’ll have to make all of the PCs nobles or some of the PCs will have to get by without Iron. I’m wondering what suggestions people have for this.
And remember that this is for a Convention game, not a bunch of my friends. I don’t have the luxury of sitting around for 4 hours to collectively burn the world and their characters. I have to hit the ground running and give them an idea of what this game is all about.
I’ve only done 1 FoN for Humans and 1 FoN for Vaylen since I doubt we’ll make it through more than two maneuvers.
The Human FoN will be the Fleet Admiral; a paranoid man who is hellbent on eradicating all signs of Vaylen presence.
The Vaylen FoN is the Fleet Admirals XO; a sleeper agent of the Vaylen who slowly drives the Admiral crazy with the perceived threat of a worm invasion.
So yeah, the FoN’s are the highest powered they could be. Given that each will have many troops loyal to them it should prove a challenge for the players to accomplish whatever goals they set out for themselves. Their mission is to observe the Admiral and confirm if he is infected and to eliminate any Vaylen threats.
It seems odd to burn up 6 Anvil Lords just so they can all have Iron. Perhaps it’d be better to make only the team leader a Noble Anvil Lord and the other team members Anvil Elite. As you say, I could always use the tech burner to create Iron-like armor for the other team members.
With an 8 hour time slot and a game that no one out here has played, I’m expecting to get through 2 or 3 maneuvers at most.
You want a planetside war, but you’re making the prime FoN a Hammer Lord?
If you want Iron, shouldn’t the prime FoN be an Anvil Lord? I wasn’t saying to make all the characters Anvil Lords, just Lords Pilot-Anvil. Then they can head down their individual paths. You can have a Captain, a Cotar Fomas, a Circle of 10,000 Psychologist and so on.
BTW, I strongly urge you to run the game for four players. It’s really not designed for 6 PCs.
To give an example, here is an example of what the planetary web for just 4 PCs looks like. I am just glad I have over 6 sessions to explore my way through this chaos :):
Out here, 6 players is pretty much a minimum requirement if you want to run a game. Any fewer than that and they won’t even schedule your event.
Navy, as in ocean going ships not Hammer. I figured that a Naval fleet would be Anvil since they’re planet based. So no, the prime FoN will be Anvil not Hammer. Ocean ships not Space ships.
I’m planning to give the players 6 LPs each. That way they’ll be plenty competent. To have Iron I gather that they just have to have taken the Lords Pilot-Anvil LP at some point.
As for that planetary web thing, I’m still somewhat confused by it. I’ll try to draw one out for the con game but something tells me that may get put off for all the other prep work I have to do.
Right Craig, you can have Iron if you’re a Lord-Pilot (which basically means a knight or man-at-arms). You can have squads of guys in Iron. They’re part of an elite social group (the lowest form of “noble”), but aren’t required to be the rulers of worlds.
We had the same here but people seem to be growing more understanding that some games don’t suit commonly assumed player numbers. Talk with them.
Well it might not have the same utility in a one off where I am guessing you are going to determine all the GM scenes in advance. However, it is very useful in coming up with those scenes especially when you are creating them without much prep.
1 GM
4 Players
1 Coffee Slut (he gets me coffee)
1 Cheerleader (their job is to encourage the players and say things like: “Man that was Awesome!” and “Whoa! I wish I could do that!”
