Avzinnia Sessions & Genesys Impressions

 

I recently got to play an utterly fantastic game in a friend's campaign, as one of a pair of mismatched priests hunting down heresy in a Meso-American inspired setting. He ran it in Genesys, a clear favorite of his. Augustus is on the left, an ambitious sun priest on the hunt for a promotion. Tiago (my character) is in the middle, a secret anti-priest devoted to prolonging the slumber of a destructive serpent god. We had made it clear at session zero that we were playing bastards who would do anything to achieve our goals, which helped set the tone.

Long story short, it was a supernatural mystery/horror campaign. We investigated a whole array of village politics, deceitful hosts, chosen ones, possessed maniacs, and dangerous treks through the wastelands. Each priest was a heretic to the other, and many tense scenes were devoted to reconciling their differences, at least long enough to meet their common goal. In the end, Tiago sacrificed himself by allowing the serpent god to partially possess him, then taking a fatal leap into a pit before it could take him over entirely. Augustus spent the epilogue disillusioned with his faith, warning away the church, and setting up as a hermit. It's hard to sum up in a paragraph, which is as much as I can expect anyone else to read about someone elses's campaign, but it was one of the finer experiences I have had in role-playing and a story I will always remember.

Genesys notes:

Character creation: the system was flexible enough to make these odd characters, but also had what I felt were unnecessary complications. You choose archetypes that give you different attributes and starting skills, then choose a career which affects how much favored skills cost, etc. I didn't see the point to the different costs and really just wanted to pick attributes and skills as I pleased without worrying about that. But again, the important thing is that we could still make the characters we wanted in the end.

Magic System: a warding spell was our first try at the magic system. We were using a combination of "Realms of Terrinoth" and "Zynnythryx guide to magic" for guidance. We ended up just winging it, rolling Discipline with two purple difficulty dice for an effect that would scare people away. Scoring a few successes, the GM judged that only someone with a strong will could enter afterward. I was impressed by how easy it was to just make things up on the fly with magic, as it definitely suited the emergent story better than predefined spell lists.

 

Later we realized we weren't using Implements like wands or staves, which explained why our magic felt a bit underpowered. It definitely kicked things up a notch when we retconned some of our weapons as implements.

Dice as Oracle: one of the most controversial things about Genesys itself is how the dice are used. In most games the dice settle uncertain outcomes, but in Genesys you also use them to guide the emergent story. They have cues about what happened beyond success or failure. Our GM understood this well but it took me a while to come to grips with it. 

 

In one example, we had difficulty finding a trail to lead us to the top of a mesa, because we failed our checks to do so. But, in doing so we were also building up Threat results! The GM interpreted this to mean that one of our foes came down from the mesa to confront us, which also revealed the hidden path. In essence, this was a good practice fail-forward event encouraged by the die result itself. It's a different way of thinking and without it I can see becoming frustrated with the weird results of genesys rolls. It demands an oracular approach which isn't everyone's strong point. But when it works, it really does add a lot of wonder to the story. 

One of the most striking features of this campaign was that it had character arcs and massive personality changes without the input of sanity meters, bonds, etc. None of the characters had lengthy backstories, social bonds, or even last names. I'm definitely finding that a lot of character detail and rules "support" for such things are not necessary at all.

 

Anyone else have similar experiences with Genesys or other oracular die systems?