[whswhs]

I've just held the third session of a campaign based in Worminghall, in which the player characters are students of magic. The first session focus on their getting admitted to the university, enrolled in classes, and hazed by older students; the second on their setting up a daily routine and starting to learn Symbol Drawing; the third on their going through their first Michaelmas Term, acquiring basic Symbol Drawing skill, and starting to study their first spells (variously Light, Sound, and Ignite Fire), and on their developing social ties with each other. It looks as if the fourth session will look at how they spend the Christmas break between Michaelmas Term and Epiphany Term.

Having the maps of Worminghall is proving helpful; for example, one of the PCs was looking for an inn where he could sing and earn a little extra money, and by checking the map I spotted that as he came up the hill from Cyprian House he would spot first the Halberd (occupied mainly by soldiers and the town watch) and then the Rose Bush (very receptive to performances by entertainers).

I've been having mixed success from weaving in NPCs from the book; the players weren't very interested in Kate Foxe, but several of them have taken notice of Robkin, and one of them is doing volunteer labor at the Hospital of the Franciscan Sisters under the supervision of Sister Patience.

The rules for learning spells are working out pretty well. They provide for gaining the ability to cast a spell at default (IQ+Magery-6) after spending 8 hours studying it and practicing it, which comes out to skill 7 or 8 for the PCs; Symbol Drawing can boost the chance of success, especially if the caster spends extra time drawing the symbol just so on parchment or on their wax tablet. One of the PCs got a natural 18 on his Symbol Drawing roll; I improvised by rolling on the critical failure table for spell casting, which resulted in his inflicting 1 point of injury on himself—I decided that he had come up with a variant on Ignite Fire that blistered the tip of his finger. I made a point of having each of the masters assign a first spell with easily visible results, so that they could tell when a student had cast it successfully—and so that the student could see their own success as well.

The rules for study time as "income" from "working" as a student have helped give the campaign a sense of direction. The PCs have gained either just under or just over 400 hours of learning in their first term, which has gone into Symbol Drawing (Image Magic) and various other subjects—Acrobatics, Hobby Skill (Rock Collecting), Housekeeping (for the one who's a student at Cyprian House), Linguistics, and Public Speaking. The players have a lot of interest in this, more in fact than they have in spending experience points to buy up skills. I think this is probably a good sign in a scholastic fantasy campaign.

We've had only one actual fight, in which one of the PCs quarreled with the leader of a party of monitors and found the party waiting for him and his friends outside King Henry's Inn. Neither combatant was very skilled; they had Brawling and Wrestling at around 10. Under those conditions, actually having the fight resolved took a lot of play time, especially as neither of them was ready to back down after first being hit. I finally settled things with a Quick Contest of Brawling skill, which the PC lost. This actually seems fairly plausible for a couple of boys fighting without weapons.

The rules in GURPS Social Engineering have been a big help, especially the expanded search rules, but also the expanded reaction tables in the Appendix. Several of the PCs have influence skills, but at fairly low levels, so they often just rely on reaction rolls. I've made a point of noting the Loyalty of the various masters to their students, as something I can roll against when a student asks for a special favor.

The players aren't desperately eager to rush into adventures; they're more focused on exploring the environment of Worminghall itself. But I may have to expose them to rumors of strange goings-on and see if they choose to pursue them, now that their characters are getting settled in.

Bill Stoddard