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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Scurvy_Platypus" data-source="post: 4327045" data-attributes="member: 43283">Character Creation:I think it took all told... somewhere around an hour. That wasn't an hour of hard flipping around and all that either. My wife went to NY for the day and didn't think she'd have time to make a character.I didn't get around to making it for her while she was gone, but she'd given me the basic overall idea she was after. I read through the character creation bits and whatnots, and when she got back I basically asked her to what she thought about this option or that, and went from there. Kind of a collaborative exercise.The basic creation is pretty darn simple. You pick a background, which gives you a few base skills, and then you get a few points in each category for additional Elective skills. On a quick skim through there's no real difference between your base (Background) skills and your additional ones (Electives).Now, it turns out there actually _is_ a difference between them. The fact that there's a Talent that you can take which will allow you to change an Elective skill so it's considered a Background one is a big giveaway. It's only when you hit the Survival Points (page 118 after the whole Insanity portion) that you find out that Electives cost twice as much to improve as Background skills.So this brings me to my first 2 vague annoyances:1. There's no index.A well done index can make life _so_ much easier. There is an "unofficial index" that can be downloaded from the Yahoo group. It's nice that you can get _something_ but you'd really hope/think that if they're going to have support material, it's going to be where anyone can actually download it.Sidenote: It doesn't annoy me, but it kinda saddens me a bit to look at how nice and slick the Living Arcanis home page is, and then to go to the Witch Hunter one. There's nothing _wrong_ with the Witch Hunter page. It seems like a fairly standard setup. It was only after I went to the Living Arcanis page which was all slick with pop-out menus and so forth that I felt a bit sad. Nothing I'm upset over, but the presentation is just one of those little detail things.Like an Index.2. The character sheet isn't form-fillable.I'll note right up front that (once again) if you join the Yahoo Group, you'll be able to download a sheet that takes care of this complaint. It might not sound like much, and I'm sure there's plenty of folks that don't care. But this is a game where all the support stuff is online, and they don't even have a form-fillable character sheet. At least, not without joining the Yahoo Group. Which not everyone is really going to be interested in.Anyway, I get the character made and pass it off to my wife.The guys come over to our place, and we all sit down to watch the movie that I had my wife get from NetFlix to help put us in the mood. Everyone knew ahead of time what it was, and they all agreed to it.Van Helsing.Yeah yeah, it wasn't a great movie. Maybe next time I try this, I'll go with The Musketeer instead. I wanted people more thinking "monster hunting" and "supernatural", so it's the choice I made. Think of it as the price folks have to pay occasionally for my being such an easy-going GM. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />So, after the movie we all sat down to play. 3 of the four people had actually made their characters, and one hadn't. So, this is where I'll mention (sort of again) my first cool thing.1. They've got a bunch of pre-gen characters you can download, in addition to making available all the game scenarios for us people at home.While the game might seem to be strongly geared towards Organized Play, I gotta say that in this particular case, I actually feel like I'm benefiting from it. Paradigm Concepts has all the adventures up so I can download 'em, and they apparently don't plan on taking them down either. Sweeeeet. I've never been to a convention in my life, and I've got no idea if I ever actually will go to one.But I've bought the book and I'm running a game, and folks might even groove on it enough to buy a book themselves. It's nice to know that I can "participate" in the same experience as those folks that are going to conventions, and I'm not being forced to shell out additional money.And pre-gen characters are included to boot. That's great. More games could really do with including at least a couple of pre-gens. It's an easier sell to get someone to try out a game if they don't have to invest an hour (or more depending on the game) creating a character.Or if you have another person tag along unexpectedly.Ironically, the tag-along actually _made_ his character. It's one of the other regulars that didn't make his character.I might as well mention now the 2nd cool thing. I came across this in the course of pre-reading the adventure...2. Witch Hunter does mooks. Check it out, from page 209:[sblock=Minions (Mindless and otherwise)]You spend hours and hours designing opponents for your players with a care to rival Michelangelo’s attention while painting  the Sistine Chapel.   You’ve made  sure  that  the members of the Cult of the Flayed Apostate each have a name, a back story, individualized skills, combat abilities and equipment. These are adherents worthy of kneeling before the bleeding effgy of the Apostate and stand beside the High Priest and his trio of acolytes against the Witch Hunters. Your  players will marvel  at  the  depth  of  detail and life that you infused into each and every one of their opponents.<Insert sound of needle scratching across a record>What were  you  thinking?  Your  players may  be roleplayers worthy of an Oscar each and every session, but when it comes to combat, they have only one objective: kill and/or stop the big, bad guy before he kills and/or stops them. When they open the bronzed double doors leading to the inner chamber where the high priest is leading his minions in a doubtless bloody ritual that will mean death and destruction for all, your players are not going to stop and ask why this young mother of four is participating in such a vile rite. The players aren’t even going to stop to wipe their blades in their head long rush to confront the villain.So  if  they’re not going  to be more  than a speed bump for the players, why spend more time designing an opponent  than  the players are going  to  take  to fight  it? The answer  is  you  shouldn’t, but  you  still need  to have some sort of framework for these minor antagonists.[/sblock]You know what? If you're going to claim your game is about action/swashbuckling, etc. you bloody well should make sure you include something so that it _feels_ like the characters are appropriately larger than life. Witch Hunters does and I applaud 'em for it.Again, to break up the "wall of text", I'm going to put the actual session experience in the next post.</blockquote>

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