So, somehow it happened (someone mentioned role-playing, while others continued) and this is how we decided to play some pen and paper style role playing. The real role-playing. I’ve had a reason to remember and freshen up my a lot of years ago forgotten knowledge of GURPS. And I enjoyed it to the last part of it.

So, as you can imagine, I volunteered for being the GM this time. First of all, none of my friends who was thinking of joining the game have never played RPG according to GURPS, and just a few of them have played role-playing games before. This means, tiring and exhausting beginning of the session with explaining the rules, helping with character creations and etc. I’m not going to expand more about that.

Briefly about the world – one moderately large kingdom, with one King who knows everything what is happening around and is quite powerful. Really. Times are of knights and damsels (which means, analogy of our worlds medieval ages). And thats about it.

And the journey begins… Not actually a journey, because all four characters are chained, handcuffed and footcuffed in a guard carriage on their way to the place of their death sentence execution. And more or less the story should end here. Not. That is not how role-playing works. Four so-called or wanna-be villains of this kingdom – ordinary looking man in his twenties, a little bit older apparently (from the golden handcuffs) royal man, quite strong and ferocious woman of a little bit younger age and the silent kid who looks like he was living on the streets his whole life – are traveling in heavily guarded carriage. And of course, thinking about an escape plan. Or at least try to.

First attempt was made by a royalty of the party – George “Geordie” Gordon. You won’t believe. He tried to bribe (although after the trial he was quite broke) the guards in letting him free. What a naive guy. Anyways, after that, the one more with the skill – that first one ordinary looking man called Zorathan. With the help of the lady Avana in the carriage he found an appropriately sized splinter of the carriage wood. And he tried to pick the lock of his own handcuffs. During the third attempt he finally managed to do that, although he broke his lockpick. After several more attempts at finding additional splinters and lock picking attempts, the street kid named Locke offered a hand. Or a bird to be exactly. He was actually living in the wilds all the time, and he tamed a hawk for himself (quite an achievement for such young lad). He was able to summon the hawk and even ask hawk to fetch him something useful for picking locks. That is how the unlucky four got hold of a copper wire which was more or less appropriate for the job. Or at least it didn’t break after an attempt to pick a lock. Several moments all the passenger were without any kind of cuffs. Oh, by the way. During all the lock picking Geordie started to sing. For no reason. But then he was forced to be silent by one of the guards and Zorathan.

Continuing their strive for freedom (or life, to be exactly), they were creating plans of how to escape the gauntlet of king’s guards. After several stupid ideas the group settled on the plan of waiting for the evening, when, let’s hope, majority of guards will fall asleep. The plan worked better than expected. All of the guards except one went for sweet dreams at night and the one remaining was not that much of a resistance. Especially for femme fatale. She lured him to open the carriage door and step inside (without suspecting that prisoners are not restrained) and the  Geordie was supposed to choke him with the help of his golden handcuffs. But he just supposed to because he missed the guards’ head terribly. Luckily, lusting for freedom Zorathan dashed through open doors knocking guard over and out of the carriage without giving any time for the guard to draw his sword. Avana  followed his steps and put the guard out by giving him friendly “hands-throat” greeting. By that time,  Geordie and  Locke were out of the carriage to and Zorathan was standing up from the touchdown with the guard.  Geordie  instantly went for the sword of the guard and mercilessly slit his throat. That was quick, quite lucky, but still effective. Locke was looking around for horses while other party members where “silencing” other 5 guards who where just sleeping around nearby campfire. Whole party looted the corpses of guards and armed themselves with the swords and knives they had, changed the clothes from their prison rags (although Geordie  had new set of shirt and pants – another privilege of being royal convict) to guard armor suites, tossed the bodies in the bushes, packed everything else to the carriage, Locke harnessed the horses to the carriage and they just decided to ride back to the larger road. And at least for now, to stick together.

What’s next? We will see, because this is where the first session ended.