Today sees me working on what will be the first official convention scenario for Sand & Steam: The Undercity. I have run two convention sessions before (if you remember my talk about The Left Back Tooth of Sizzle Watts), which I will be using for The Getters, once the time for pimping that portion of the setting comes. But this will be the first bit of the Undercity that I will be sharing with the public.
The scenario is designed to be an introductory session, obviously, and as such used Lv 1 characters. What I am working on right now is the characters themselves. What I would like to do is have a wide variety of character classes to choose from. With the set up that I am considering, the characters that are not chosen by the players would be usable as NPCs in the session. That makes each session dynamic and different, as each character has different built-in motivations. Different combinations of PCs means different things for the session, let alone what the players themselves bring to the table.
The scenario focuses on a group called the Fixers. The Fixers are an Undercity reflection of the Getters from Kage proper. However, unlike the Getters, the Fixers do not work contracts to attain items for their clients. The Fixers, instead, work to better their members. Each person coming to the Fixers has felt a call of some kind, an urge to seek their destiny. The enigmatic leader of the Fixers, known only at the Sensate, sends various groups of Fixers on missions, the goals of which are to see each Fixer attain what they want. If this sounds very vague, it is. Some wonder what the Sensate gets out of this arrangement, and there is speculation that the Sensate is a prophet of some kind, having the Fixers run these missions to serve a set of goals known only to the Sensate.
The neatest part is that I am going to have a chance to playtest this scenario in a manner similar to that of a convention game. At the end of the month, I am going to visit some friends in Kansas, among them the inimitable Randall and Anna, whom I will be running the session for, along with a couple of their friends. To my knowledge, the group has little experience with Pathfinder, and I have never met two of the players. That sounds like a convention game to me! My hope is to make a fun and engaging session that both gives a good feel for the Sand & Steam Undercity, and a good introduction to the mechanics of Pathfinder.
Best of all, once I get the scenario written up, I intend to publish it. I believe that I will be receiving a very useful piece of software for Christmas, so by the end of the month I will have the ability to create (hopefully) professional-looking PDFs. I do not have a timeframe for getting the adventure released, but I do intend to get it out before Origins 2012.
I am excited to be taking this step with Sand & Steam. In addition to wanting to have the Fixers scenario ready to distribute by Origins, I am also attending SCARAB in South Caroline next month. If I get this scenario whipped into shape in time, SCARAB will serve as the public reveal of Sand & Steam.
So, here’s to the Fixers, and here’s to getting the necessary work done to feel ready to run the sessions.