After weeks of planning, we finally played our first session of Age of Animus Role-Playing on Saturday. It was a full day for me.
I had a well-thought out plan: I would go up to Trois-Rivieres with Frank early in the morning. While he was at work, I’d grab breakfast, head to Zone 51 to pick up my comics and then go down to La Bande Dessinerie, where we were going to be playing that evening, and finish some last minute prep work on my laptop until the others arrived. It was a good plan.
I went to bed at 11:30pm on Friday night. I had a number of things I needed to do so I’d be ready to go at 7:30 in the morning without having to run around. One of these things was to transfer the files I would need from my computer onto a USB key. More on that later.
While I had expected to wake up at 6:30, my bladder told me to wake up an hour earlier at 5:30. Rather than go back to bed, I worked on the game some more. Frank texted me at 7:30 to say he was on his way. We got to the mall where he works at 8. I grabbed breakfast at the food court and played around on my smart phone (free Wi-Fi!) until the stores opened at 9. I did a little shopping until 10 and then off to Zone 51…which I learned opens at 11…DOH! Okay, Let’s go to Tim Horton’s for a donut and an iced tea (more free Wi-Fi!!) for an hour.
It had been close to a month since my last visit to Zone 51 so I knew I’d have a lot of comics waiting for me, and that I’d chat a little bit with Didier, the store owner. I figured, I’d stay an hour and then walk down to La Bande Dessinerie at around noon. I ended up leaving at two. The distance between Zone 51 and La Bande Dessinerie seems short when you’re driving. When you’re walking, carrying a laptop, a shoulder bag full of rule books and a shopping bag full of comics and four new pewter chess pieces, it seems like the walk will go on forever.
I got to La Bande Dessinerie a half hour later and my arms felt like rubber (they’re still sore now actually). I had no strength left. Even taking my gloves off was a challenge. I took a few minutes to just sit (I’d been standing for over three hours after all) and then it was off to Giant Tiger for some soft drinks for the evening. More carrying. Luckily it was only two blocks this time.
It was past three by that time and I had done none of the work I had hoped to get done on my laptop. I decided I’d do without the last minute prep work and just make due with what I already had. I gabbed with Steve and his friend until the others arrived. Frank was working until 5 at Toys R Us so he was the last to arrive. Once he got there, we ordered supper (my treat) and gabbed some more until it arrived and then we chowed down.
Before starting, I gave a little speech, explaining how I’d missed hanging out with my friends like this. Also, the free feed was in part because they were going to help me playtest my game. Any time we get together for Age of Animus related evenings, they can expect more of the same. I feel it’s the least I can do. It may be fun work, but it’s still helping me out a lot.
Next came creating their characters. My memories of playing Star Wars D6 were that making a character took about 5 minutes. Granted the character creation process for Age of Animus was a little more elaborate, but I thought we’d be done in an hour. I don’t remember exactly how long it took, but it was more than an hour.
Fab created a weasel character named Wilhemina, a gossip-loving rogue who can’t hold her tongue, Steve made a Shiny-counting, entrepreneur-in-the-making wolverine named Raz, Frank was Bunwick, a beaver with an interest in architecture, and Lyne, a roleplaying novice, decided she wanted to be a frog named Zouly who, despite his skills as a healer, was pushed from his home community for being a terrible grouch. Overall, they were short in stature, only the wolverine was above Small size.
We were finally ready to play and so I went to open my adventure notes file…only to find it wasn’t on my USB key (I said I’d get back to that). I had transferred everything in my RPG folder onto the key, but apparently, I had saved the adventure notes in another folder. Okay, that was embarrassing. I accepted some good-natured mocking (particularly from Fab, who famously forgot to bring the second part of a D&D module back in high school one time leaving us stuck without an adventure to play when we made an unexpected choice that ended the first part of the module within minutes after starting. We never let him forget it and now neither would he).
I decided to try to start the adventure without my notes. That adventure presupposed that the characters already knew each other when it started. Now though, we could spend some time discussing how those first encounters took place. Ultimately, the first encounters ended up making up the entire play session. We had a lot of fun playing. Everybody got into their characters. Lyne got unlucky with her dice and accidentally hit Fab instead of the fox they were chasing. Then she got extremely lucky on her damage roll and knocked Fab out in one hit. Fab flubbed his stamina roll to stabilize and almost died before Steve and Lyne combined to treat his injuries. It was a hilarious sequence of events that will be long remembered.
Sometime around 10pm I introduced a story hook that would lead to my planned adventure and decided it was a good place to stop for the night. We’ll pick up from there another time.
It was a day where very little proceeded according to plan. I had a great time though, and my friends seemed enthused about playing again. Lyne in particular, enjoyed her first foray into roleplaying in a group, so I consider the day a rousing success!
Our roleplay sessions will lead to new features on the site. “From the Gaming Table” will be a series of illustrations depicting key scenes from our group’s adventures. “ The first will be available on the site on Wednesday (replacing this week’s Mash-ups). “RP Chronicles” (working title) will be short stories also derived from our adventures that will allow you to follow the adventures of Bunwick, Raz, Wilhemina and Zouly in Pelaria. I hope to have the first story, written from Bunwick’s point of view, up this Saturday. Future installments of both features will follow our roleplay sessions as we have them.
I didn’t get any of my regular work done for the site on Friday and Saturday, so Sunday was a big day for drawing. I drew a page for Animus Wars, two Funnies strips and the first installment of “From the Gaming Table”. Today at work, all I wanted to do was sleep but I powered through it. It’s a small price to pay.
Have a good week y’all!