Andy - I think what I mentioned to you was that the setting and comic had a definite feminist streak to them, and that the author cited a critical film theorist as his initial inspiration for the setting. I'll stick by the feminist comment (and I mean that in a good way). The lead character in the comic is a strong woman warrior with magical abilities and ties to the spirit world who has carved herself out a queendom (I originally wrote kingdom, thus confirming the power of language to uphold the patriarchy . The old pagan religion of the setting (which is portrayed in the comics in a very positive light) is headed by Yhera, a creator goddess, and most of the big players in the pantheon are female. This plays off the decidedly more male oriented rival Divine King religion (which is sort of a cross between christianity and mithraism).
As for the game, I share people's concerns about the Fuzion rules (believe me, Over the Edge is about as complex a rules set as I would normally run), but I'm sold enough on the setting to put the effort into learning the system. Mark has integrated the setting material so thoroughly into the system, that I'm not going to pull my usual trick of using the setting with OTE rules. So far, the Fuzion adaptation looks functional, if a bit old-fashioned, overly detailed, and clunky from my perspective. One of my players who is more familiar with the various incarnations of Fuzion/Interlok/Hero says that this version looks like a nice implementation.
We did chargen last Friday night for my small group (myself running and two players). It took way longer than I'm used to (the players are still working out their skills and spending arcana (experience) points on gifts, etc.), but man was the lifepath fun. You come out of the chargen process with so much detailed history and story hooks that is is a GM's dream in terms of doing a character centric game. I'll outline our session so folks can get an idea of how it runs.
First, we determined that we had two options in terms of how to approach chargen. We could come up with an initial situation (type of story to run) and do some heavy tweaking of the lifepath results to get characters that would work with that situation, or we could do completely random lifepaths and see what kind of story we could work the resulting characters into. We chose the latter. (I should note here that in the game as written, you have the option of rolling or choosing all lifepath entries, with some advice for GM's on limiting players from getting too powerful that reads a little old skool to my post-forge player-empowerment ears).
You start the lifepath process by determing which of the five ethnic or cultural groups in the core region that you come from (for those of you familiar with the comic, the game is centered in the same region of the Middle Kingdoms, and beginning characters can be Athairi, Aurian, Daradjan Highlander, Danian, or from the Watchtower Kings). You then determine what kind of settlement you came from (ranging from wilderness hovel to Capitol city with lots of options in between, and all specific to your culture/region). Next you roll your social level (modified by your birthplace), and determine your parents occupations based on that social level. Next you roll for your lineage, i.e., whether you had any notable ancestors. (At this point I should note that ALL of your stats are determined through lifepath results, although you also get EPs through the process which you can spend to tweak stats of your choice later. There is no random stat generation OR point allocation. Various lineages and other lifepath results modify your stats, which all start out at the average value of 5.)
After determining where you come from, we get to your birth, and roll to see if there were any unusual omens when you came into the world. These are very colorful, and provide stat mods as well (you can choose a moundane or heroic campaign, with birth omens much more prevelant for the heroic). You figure out your birth sign, and how strong was it's influence (again, this modifies stats). Childhood is handled by rolling for one notable event, then it is on to adulthood at 16.
For each year from 16 to your starting age (which defaults to 21, although you can roll randomly, which we did), you determine if a noteable event occured. These are tied to the setting beautifully, and can add lots of cool backstory to the character. It is assumed that you will follow in the career of your same sex parent, but you can roll once per year to try and switch to another career in the same or lower social level (and some lifepath events allow you to switch temporarily or permanently to a new career). You start your adult life with a pool of money and skill points which you can spend on default (everyman) skills, your cultural skills, and your personal skill (chosen by the player). Each year as an adult you gain points to spend on skills, arcana (experience) points to spend within your arcana (experience paths based on the setting's version of the tarot, which basically cxhannel your experience into things related to your career but with a nice metaphysical feel), and some money.
The first character we rolled up was a Daradjan Highlander from a decrepit wilderness hovel whose father was a Thug. Not a very auspicious beginning for a PC, and he had no birth omens (we rolled on the mundane table). However, it turned out that he was descended form a Highland hero of the Age of Legends and gained some mystical powers from his blood (ability to see spirits and insight when choosing between two paths). He started out following in dad's footsteps as a Thug, but after his first year of adult life (16), the player made the roll to switch careers (in the same or lower social level), and got recruited into one of the Highland's infamous Brigand Bands. He spent the next six years living the life of a romantic highwayman, and ALL of his lifepath events were from the Romance table (lots of partners, a romantic rivalry, two-timed by a lover, and finally, his lover mysteriously dissapeared). Needless to say, the player chose Seduction as his personal skill... That last lifepath event gave me the story hook I needed to decide what kind of story we would play, which I'll describe below.
Our second character was a woman from the Watchtower Coast, born in a small coastal town to a household servant mother and scout father. She was descened from two hero lines including a Spring-Queen from the ancient Golden Kingdom from whom she inherited great beauty and an alluring form. Her childhood event was an encounter with faeries or earth spirits, which marked her as otherworldly and may have set her on her eventual career path. Her adulthood was relatively uneventful (the player rolled lots of "no significant event" results), with just a busy year of dating at 16 and nothing else until her starting age of 21. Not wanting to start out life as a servant, the player made her roll to switch careers and entered the scandalous career of witch, dissapointing her Freeman parents (her homeland, the Watchtower Kingdoms, is nominally a Divine King worshipping area and witches are sometime burned at the stake). I suggested that in the course of her busy dating year she had approached the local hedge witch for a love potion, who noticed her otherwordliness and took her on as an apprentice. Her stats worked out well for perfroming Folk Magic, and it looks like she'll be a pretty accomplished magic user in that tradition.
In terms of campaign structure, we decided to go for a traditional style game with individual "adventures" based on the character's histories at first, and slowly work in the big events of the setting (the default starting year in the game is the year before the comics start, and Mark provides lots of hints about big events in the making for the setting as potential campaigns, including the war from the comics). At this point I want to praise Mark for including something I think should be mandatory for games with detailed, intricate settings. He has included a two page spread of interesting events that have occured during the last 25 years for each of the PC homelands, the wider world, and the backstory of the comic. Given that you can determine the specific year of the setting in which your lifepath events took place, this allows you to tie your character solidly into the canon past of the setting (my test character got involved in a war, and there happeend to be a war on the chart during that year in his culture area which was also part of the backstory of the comic, which I found pretty cool).
For our first adventure, I decided that the Brigand's missing love had disappeared into the west, beyond the Watchtower Wall into Lost Uthedmael or possibly the Isliklid kingdoms (a magically blasted area of the setting chock full of nasty evilness). The area is also home ot the Vale of Barrows, ancient resting ground of kings, and an area that the highland brigands sometimes frequent. Given the witch's interest in magic, I think I can rationalize her presence in the area, and that's our starting point.
Sorry for the ridiculously long post, but I hope some folks get a better feel for the setting and chargen out of it. I'm more excited about this game amd setting than I have been about any game for a long time, and I'm really looking forward to playing.
