Tales from the Table - Brian

A round of questions with a long-time beta-tester

Q: Say hello! Introduce yourself with whatever name you would like us to use, and briefly describe your player characters in .

Hello! I'm Brian, and so far, I've been in two campaigns in . In the first one, I was playing as Baltiel Gambol, a peacekeeper in Dalhart with a gambling addiction, who would sneak dairy products to his venture partner's cat. He had an interest in spellcraft and animathurgy, and had a side gig with crafting boutique anima that would power various contracts.

In the second campaign, I am playing as Devere Valmont, a recent peacekeeper graduate working in the Arroyo Keeping Force, who uses the famous Valmont name liberally in pushing to get his way, while bucking the family expectations and traditions where he can. While still in the Athenaeum, Devere found an egregoric, bird-like pseudo-deity, Belov, and formed a compact with him (which is apparently forbidden by amagiate law, but never seemed to come up as an issue during his years of studying). Despite this, Devere has had mixed results with spreading the word of Belov.

Q: What are your favorite moments with those characters so far?

From the first campaign, one of the early moments stands out most to me. The party had been divided into two groups, with one going to handle a giant draugr that had formed in a junkyard, and our group was sent to handle a bear-like chimera that had taken over the rooftop of a school. I imagine the intent was to get some familiarity with the characters and combat, and the folks taking on the draugr did that, but our group chose to use subterfuge.

One member in our party was able to communicate with the chimera and found that it was demanding food. We devised a way to meet its demands with Baltiel using an illusion to pull out a giant platter of cooked meat that we slowly brought up. But it was so large it would take two of us to carry it up. As we neared, the chimera was dancing with glee at the bounty. And as we got within range, Gem, the other party member carrying the platter, reached out and hit the chimera with the spell Hand of Slumber, putting it to sleep, and allowing us to take it into custody. Not quite the fight our Fate Master had planned, but a fun way to use the skills and spells we had to solve an issue.

For the second campaign, I think it's been more the smaller things that add up. Devere is a bit of a showboat, so when an experienced keeper leading the group fails to jump a gap, Devere practically flies across with his jump. When the group needs to rush to a portal past some foes we've been fighting, Devere takes the particular route that has him weaving back and forth between each and every enemy without them able to even attack him, even circling one completely for good measure. When Devere was given the spotlight to speak at a press conference about closing dangerous rifts, he took it as the opportune time to showcase Belov, and spread the word of the deity. Sadly, that last one didn't quite get the converts he was hoping for. But he did get a rise out of his cousin, who tried to strangle him for doing that publicly.

Q: How experienced are you with fantasy, TTRPGs, and gaming in general? How does compare to other TTRPGs you've played?

With fantasy and gaming in general, I'd say fairly experienced, but with TTRPGs specifically, not so much. While I've played some video games such as and , I've only had one proper TTRPG campaign with a group and a DM that ended a bit before we started the campaigns. That one was (with lots of house rules).

with , I'd say that the character creation and advancement is the main standout to me. In the campaign, I had a selected character class, and had a rough idea of where I was going to take him as he leveled up, though the DM threw some fun curve balls to add some variation. With Anno Amagium, you have the different curriculums and traits to select to form the toolset of the character you're going to be playing. Admittedly, throughout the first and second campaign, this structure has been evolving and getting more fleshed out, but it has been interesting getting to look through the selection and find what goes well together, and you might end up taking a very different direction as you go.

With Baltiel, I was originally thinking of being a more melee style of combat and choosing curriculums that could help enhance that, but found some pretty effective combat magic in those schools that I tended to rely upon, and leveling up, I added more things that helped bring those out. Of course, with any TTRPG and a good game master, I think it gets to be more fun when you say, "Oh yeah, I have this!" and come up with a completely different method for a solution than what would have been expected.

Q: Tell us about learning the game. What mechanic took the longest to figure out? Did anything click immediately or take you by surprise?

Easily the longest has been using Techniques in combat, and I still check in to confirm the order of operations. Regular attacks, you roll the dice and add your corresponding stats. Sorcery/Contracts, you draw from the ability deck to modify your stats, then find how well you did, whether it was a passable, strong, or critical (or failure) on the spell. With techniques? You roll to see if you hit, then draw to see how strong your effect is. Admittedly, I think I barely used the Techniques with Baltiel, so it wasn't until the second campaign that I was really using them, and we have a much larger party in this campaign, so there is a lot more going on in those combat sessions.

I've been an Anno Amagium reader from the beginning, so the magic system might have been easier for me to readily understand, but I think the options for spells from the curriculum was one of those that clicked. In one of the early sessions in the first campaign, our party was being attacked by a group of coyote-buzzard chimeras. I had Baltiel with the Principles of Sound curriculum, with the intent of adding a bonus attack/damage to the escrima stick attacks, but while waiting for my turn, noticed that there was one spell that happened to be a weak AoE attack and had the extra effect of adding fear and causing those with sensitive hearing to flee from combat. So, my turn rolls around, and then I asked, "Hey, do these guys have sensitive hearing? Does this get them for that extra effect?" And I ended up driving away all of the remaining enemies. That definitely shaped how I would try to use spells as the campaign went on.

Q: Where the setting and lore is concerned, what do you think is the most intriguing or exciting aspect of the Anno Amagium universe?

Honestly, there is a lot. Different world setting, different magic system, different set of politics and choices being made. In the novels, shorts, and web serial, you were already covering the peacekeepers' side of the story, as well as conflicts with the Faed and the courts, dealing with a Stranger and xenomancy, or even with your typical criminal groups, so I was pushing for other POV aspects of the world—the underground/thieves perspectives, the average folks living in the world, or members of the amagium that were focused on non-combat roles. With the first campaign, I was pushing to see what could be done from the supplier side, and thus Balitel had that side gig as an anima producer. I think there are a lot of areas that can be explored in the setting, it is really up to the FM and its players of what they want to explore in that world.

Q: If somebody were to ask you about Anno Amagium, what is the first story from around the table that comes to mind?

The first? Definitely the food delivery to the eagle-bear chimera. But there are a lot of examples, and honestly, I think it comes from the table you have that you can laugh about later. We were investigating one home when our second in command rolled poorly on an investigation of a shed and said "All clear!" And the FM asked if I wanted to double-check, wink-wink, nudge-nudge. And I said, "Nope, I trust my command officer!" Who knows what that might have led to, or what came about later because we didn't check? Or that time that our beefiest fighter was enthralled, and jumped to attacking me, but we didn't know that that. So, I responded, "Jeez, sorry! I'll stop giving your cat the coffee creamers already!"

Q: What improvements would you like to see in the future?

I think the spread of information from across the spreadsheets we've been using to the system that you've been building to house our character sheets. The sheer number of Banes and Boons to keep track of, the list of skill modifiers and passive bonuses, the number of action points and reaction points we have available to use our attacks, skills, techniques, and spells. It is a lot to jump back and forth and compile a plan and make sure we're adding our bonuses while not ignoring a rather important debuff.

It honestly reminds me of that comic, where in one of the early bits, a cleric had to be reminded of each of the modifiers to go from missing an attack to hitting twice and beating a goblin. I'm definitely looking forward to seeing how everything is displayed and tracked on the website, so that we hopefully aren't having to jump through multiple pages to confirm what we can do.