sanjurotokage
Initiate
Hey Folks,
Thought I would share my learnings and comment on the challenges I faced on running a mini campaign of Rivers of London
Starting with session zero, I felt there was some challenge without guiding the players into a suitable Folly group. with the three players I ended up with a PC (non magical), A NCA Officer (Newtonian Magic) and a Social Worker (Hedge Magic). Probably should have made one of them in the academic or medical types, namely the NCA officer.
In character creation, if choosing magic type characters - the game is rigged towards the Newtonian school of magic where the Hedge Magic has limitations, especially if you don't take impello - this proved to be problematic when advancing in fields.
For non-magical, the limitations come in the offer of Talents in other fields.
When creating a group at session zero, I would make sure there is a good mix on what makes a good Folly team - a PC, a social worker, an academic type and a science / media type if the player group is small. Only one needs magic. Would be my suggestion.
The way I decided to run it was like the 'case of the week' style starting with the Book Store followed by Going Underground then Font of All Evil (though they missed some parts of the encounters) with us moving on to the fan-based ones - Boy Band Bandits which was fun though there were some options to amend and followed it with Fiery Vengeance. We were about stop there but Jimmy's Last Dance came out and ran that which I enjoyed as it felt like a good balance of magic and investigation with a conclusion they liked.
One item I noticed with the style of play was that the players weren't really getting into building connections as the cases themselves are stand alone and don't really build though contacts and groups. Partly as the style of play doesn't pitch them against an antagonist in the background for them to pitch against. This may be something worth looking at. An expansion to the fields of magic would be beneficial too.
Player did like the luck and the unskilled abilities to fill in gaps (oh, it appears I do know architecture and forensics).
As magic affected electrical hardware, the players were reluctant to use magic and in some of the scenarios where is expect the players may use magic to trigger an encounter there wasn't a requirement as technology allowed them to skip the scene. It wasn't until the later scenarios they opted to use magic more.
Thought I would share my learnings and comment on the challenges I faced on running a mini campaign of Rivers of London
Starting with session zero, I felt there was some challenge without guiding the players into a suitable Folly group. with the three players I ended up with a PC (non magical), A NCA Officer (Newtonian Magic) and a Social Worker (Hedge Magic). Probably should have made one of them in the academic or medical types, namely the NCA officer.
In character creation, if choosing magic type characters - the game is rigged towards the Newtonian school of magic where the Hedge Magic has limitations, especially if you don't take impello - this proved to be problematic when advancing in fields.
For non-magical, the limitations come in the offer of Talents in other fields.
When creating a group at session zero, I would make sure there is a good mix on what makes a good Folly team - a PC, a social worker, an academic type and a science / media type if the player group is small. Only one needs magic. Would be my suggestion.
The way I decided to run it was like the 'case of the week' style starting with the Book Store followed by Going Underground then Font of All Evil (though they missed some parts of the encounters) with us moving on to the fan-based ones - Boy Band Bandits which was fun though there were some options to amend and followed it with Fiery Vengeance. We were about stop there but Jimmy's Last Dance came out and ran that which I enjoyed as it felt like a good balance of magic and investigation with a conclusion they liked.
One item I noticed with the style of play was that the players weren't really getting into building connections as the cases themselves are stand alone and don't really build though contacts and groups. Partly as the style of play doesn't pitch them against an antagonist in the background for them to pitch against. This may be something worth looking at. An expansion to the fields of magic would be beneficial too.
Player did like the luck and the unskilled abilities to fill in gaps (oh, it appears I do know architecture and forensics).
As magic affected electrical hardware, the players were reluctant to use magic and in some of the scenarios where is expect the players may use magic to trigger an encounter there wasn't a requirement as technology allowed them to skip the scene. It wasn't until the later scenarios they opted to use magic more.
