I scheduled a Circle of Hands session last month at Gothcon, deliberately choosing a monster time-slot at five hours.
Four people arrived to play, the maximum I’d permitted, many of whom I did not know. Special mention goes to the exception, Johan, who actually played in the first serious revision of Gray Magick back in 2013, the session which convinced me that I was looking at a potentially powerful and unique fantasy game.
I brought this sheet with me for the venture preparation, rolled fairly a few days before, for double Rbaja and nothing else in Famberge. As usual, I wasn’t thinking of it so much as an investigation and was wary of anyone interpreting it as one, especially in a convention context.
They made characters, which is one of the reasons I’d chosen such a long play-period, although only one each. These plus two that I brought became our Circle, and they chose the following for play:
- Cora, low-martial freeman from Tamaryon
- Berthold, high-martial gentry from Famberge
- Elmo, sailor freeman from Rolke
- [Adalbert? sheet is missing] priest freeman from Rolke
As it happened, all four of the Circle knights were extremely low in the Wits department, which led to their perceptions being defined – after the primary lens of social rank – by Charm-based interactions. Therefore their take on what to do and why tied strongly into the views of those who had accepted them socially and emotionally, per character. This led to them focusing on the brother-sister interaction between Ingeborg and Horst, and the upcoming raid, rather than (for example) going hard into meeting Edith.
In fact, they didn’t get to that at all, and given that someone had been so clever or foolish to sic a nzagg on her, I suspect the next part of play would entail her response. I was a bit sad not to get to fight them with my draugr wolves, but perhaps that day will come.
If anyone who’s unfamliar with the game has questions, please ask! It’s a grim iron fantasy horror game with roots sunk deep in a couple of 1970s games as well as in early-early Magic: the Gathering, and it originated as my very own never-published fantasy heartbreaker in the mid-1990s. Plus weird rules about playing characters, plus occasional musings concerning Schopenhauer, plus really evil rules for unicorns.