In the Beginning, There was Purple (The Introduction)

Apologies in advance for the disjointed writing you're about to read, I should really take better notes during the session and stop relying on my memory so much to write these posts afterwards!

Last night was the first session of the 8 week long block at the local +MK RPG club, of which I had offered to run "The Islands of Purple-Haunted Putrescence" using LotFP. LotFP character creation should be quick but I wanted these characters to be something special and to encourage a bit of player investment I implemented a few changes:

• Players could assign their rolled ability scores as they saw fit if they rolled on the "Darker Secrets Table"
• Players would begin at level 3.
• We would be using Daniel Sell's "How to Die Properly" to lessen the death rate (and tart up combat scenes) in conjunction with "Specialist's suck, Scoundrels rule, Everyone Else Dies".

On top of that, I allowed one player to select the "Alice" class from the excellent "A Red and Pleasant Land".

We had an extended chat about why they might each be visiting the islands, and got some background fleshing through idle chit-chat and a couple of questions lifted straight from the Purple source book. By the end, we had some brilliant characters:

• Lyrica, the Cleric. Young, sweet, and innocent Lyrica, she's off to the islands to prove herself and of course extend the faith of God.
• Randall, the Assassin (Specialist). Holy crap, this guy is tooled up. Thanks to the level boost and the sharing of gold between the party at item purchasing, he's packing several pistols and a rifle along with enough ammo to take down a small country. Coupled with maxed out Stealth and a high sneak attack, he's going to be deadly.
• Lost, the "Alice". Lost is a young lad who's convinced that everything will work out in the end and is sailing out to the islands to find his fiancée who went on ahead. With a startling appearance and a whimsical attitude, he's likely going to become the most dangerous of all the characters.
• Karys, the magic user. Karys, thanks to a roll on the Darker Secrets table, is in fact possessed by an alien life form that is currently looking for a new host. Karys looks stunning, but takes care to make sure that she shows as little skin as possible which is totally not to hide any stray tentacles or signs of alien life form.
• Ivy, the fighter. Ivy, thanks to some good dice rolls and the use of the new Death rules is a meat shield. She worships a ... special god, and something thats going to cause some amusement further down the line if her and Lyrica ever get talking about theology.

So What Happened?

We jumped right into the adventure, with the characters on board the "Criminal Goat", sailing towards the islands. They were sure they were getting near when the sailors above deck started yelling and panicking. The weather was atrocious and it was late at night but as they emerged onto the deck they realised that a giant tentacled behemoth was floundering in the sea in front of them, smashing up the other boats, while lizardmen riding eagles were trying to attack it with lazers.

It was at this point that Lost did the unexpected, and declared that he could not see any way out of such a terrible situation. This meant in turn a quick roll on the Alice "Exasperation" table, resulting in a result where I had to create a magical door which would lead them out of here.

I paused for a moment, my brain trying to think of how to fit a door into a boat that would take the players to safety when I opted for a slightly more open interpretation. Amidst all the chaos, all the screams of those being killed around them, and the torrential rain, a small life boat appeared next to the Criminal Goat. It appeared to be sitting perfectly sedately, seemingly unaffected by its surroundings.

They all clambered in, at which point it took them safely to the shoreline before vanishing as soon as they got out and looked away. They sat and watched the destruction of the Criminal Goat for a bit before taking shelter under some sort of rocky outcropping; the outcropping however turned out to be the frozen purple forms of several people running in terror. They decided to move east, in land, and this time came across an abandoned village where they set up camp inside the tavern and entirely failed to set up any kind of intruder alarm.

The next morning, they woke up and looked out across the lovely day to see some 40 villagers impaled on various spikes in the field behind the village, which was a lovely point to end the session.

Afterthoughts?

The Alice is going to keep me on my toes, with the ability to u-turn any plot direction at a moment's notice being both amusing and mentally taxing. I have a lot of hooks to work with thanks to an in-depth character generation but I need to drop in a few larger hooks to try and keep as many people interested as possible.. its going to be a fun few weeks.