Game 0

Intro to my Torg Campaign.

As I am a newbie to the world and system, and have no ties to the game’s past, I have taken my own route with the story. This game is also the first I have run in a decade. It is heavy with silliness, pop-culture references, and storylines that I’m sure veterans of the system will find appalling.

There is a certain level of transparency that exists in my gaming groups. Most of us have been gaming together for decades and when we start a new game oft times the GM will pitch ideas and the players will pick what sounds cool. Sometimes there is no choice but the GM merely seeks feedback.

The Main Premise

“My idea is ‘Rod of Seven Parts,’ but in Torg, spread through all the Cosms.”

Those not in the know, the “Rod of Seven Parts” is an artifact from D&D that has been around since the 70s and as the name implies it is a broken item were each part has powers and when you put it together it becomes even greater. Since I have 30 years of D&D experience and it is the game I play in the most. So, I tend to use terms from it to pitch ideas.

Before I started my campaign, we spent a couple of weeks running some modules to get the players and myself used to the new system and then we launched the campaign after a two-week break. (Game night was to be shared between GMs, with me running 2 weeks and then one of the players running his World of Darkness game for 2 weeks).

Basics of the Storytelling

Torg is broken into Acts and Scenes. With a gaming session usually being one act (sometimes acts might take 2 sessions) consisting of 3-5 scenes. It makes writing both easier and harder. Having the structure is great but trying to figure out what direction players might take and what clues they might mistake does tend to create branching paths to multiple scenes.

I have three players and as they had gone through the module games, I allowed them to start with the experience they earned from those games. They were also told that they would be sent in as a team of specialists into the Living Lands.

The Living Lands is a Savage setting ruled by lizard men called Edienos. While it has no tech and little society it is mighty in life energy and spirit. It also has dinosaurs and lost worlds and plenty of secrets. Think Savage Lands from Marvel, or Land that Time Forgot, Journey to the Center of the Earth, or any pulp adventure book in a savage setting. I also picked it as it is the Cosm that crashed into Manhattan.

The Characters

My players went away for the two-week break and returned for game 1 with a rather eclectic mix of characters. A teenaged Russian street urchin telekinetic, who escaped from Russia before the Tharkold invasion. Player 2 is a J-pop idol electric samurai; whose family is a long line of Samurai. My last player is an old man from Orrosh who is a scientist turned to monster hunter. It is a game of grandpa and his two deadly grand-daughters.

This is a rather convoluted intro to the game and the characters, but there you go. I will be doing a weekly update running through the story of these characters (and other characters) as they preform missions for the Delphi Council against the invading Cosms.