A while ago I posted that I would like to arrange a pbp game, and some people wanted to join, but they stopped contacting me half-way through character creation.
However, I'm still fond of the idea so I'm taking another crack at it. Here goes:
The game will start with a magus and companion for each player. The magi should be under 25, and fresh out of gauntlet. The companions can be of any age. The game will be set in southern England, at 1220. I'm not yet sure of which forums we will use or which dice roller, and the game will be played in French, if possible.
Don't you want to start with more experimented magi? Something like +40/60 after gauntlet... this brings different sagas than the ones we commonly see in pbp...
In all the games i see, magi are allways a few year later than gauntlet... it's so common and that's not really fun if done 4 times in a year...
I'm just an onlooker but I see all sagas start with equally aged characters after gauntlet.
What if the characters are for example 1d6*5+1d10 years after gauntlet? Or x + 2d10?
We are doing this in our current saga. We have so far:
1 Magus age 62 (Severin)
1 Magus age 37 (Presteris)
1 Magus age 22 (Peter, Being a Jerbiton, he refused to change his mundane name)
We also have a cast of characters that come and go, comprising different ages (12 - 67) that are PCs, but those 3 are our main covenant. Our current saga looks more like a TV series played by 5 actors (the troupe) than anything, though, so in a few adventures the characteers above have not even appeared despite being heavily hermetic.
Having a diversity of ages as PCs is enriching in our opinion It is the first time we do this, but it is unlikely we are going back. ArM5 has a lot of material on older magi that you can mix and match to create your own older characters (MoH is fantastic for this), so the tedious process (for me, others in my troupe enjoy this) of creating older characters has become much easier.
We like the tensions and opportunities this creates, and most adventures are unlikely to attract the attention of only one of the magi, just because your interests change with time. We prefer that troupe style with only one magus most of the time, so that is good for us
Anyway, i'm still tempted for a "normal +5yo" magus but as i want a saga for more experienced magi, i created mine in the GM looking for players forum .
Well, I don't mind either way. If you want to start with older magi, then great - My plan was to age characters rather quickly, but we could just start them of older.
What I would like to ask you is wether you guys want all the magi to be at the same age, so the power level will be equal, or do you want to roll for age? Or just decide yourselves without dice? I'm cool with it either way
I really like the idea of starting the characters older: experienced character can bring a political dimension to a game that recently gauntleted mages can't. Also rushing through the first few years or simply giving us the chance to develop the mage won't make that big of a difference. I also don't mind that the mages are of different ages: asymmetry can bring some interesting challenges.
On the other hand, if we're to start with experienced magi, I don't think we should use the 30xp/year rule, as it doesn't come close to reflect the real advancement of a magus. A possible way to work this out would be split our progression every 3 years and give the GM a basic plan for the activities we did over those 12 seasons. For each of those, we should have an important event (it will gives hook to the GM! ) and he could give use a certain amount of XP/Vis/contact/Items/Mystery Virtues/etc for those 12 seasons. Once we band together to form a covenant, we can decide together what happen in those 3 years, so we could even have the first few years of the covenant done before the start date of 1220.
It is the first time we do this, but it is unlikely we are going back. ArM5 has a lot of material on older magi that you can mix and match to create your own older characters (MoH is fantastic for this), so the tedious process (for me, others in my troupe enjoy this) of creating older characters has become much easier.
