I'm playing with a cleric called Sister Miranda (at least one other player got that it was a Serenity/Firefly reference). Other characters are Thog the half-orc fighter,
I gave my cleric a vague background of having joined a religious order after her husband and children died in "the floods," but character background became almost irrelevant when the DM had us wake up first in cages (having never played the A-series, I wondered if that was what it was) then rumble-crash-bang, we were free floating, and picked up by a spelljammer ship which dumped us off on some world near a valley with a town.
This kind of thing could be good for group cohesion, having a common stranger-in-a-strange-land orientation, but it puts us at odds with the whole world, with no contacts and no language.
We made our way into the valley and toward a riverside inn, and were jumped in the woods by what turned out to be some kind of fast-moving devouring undead (i.e. not standard AD&D zombies.) Our warrior-heavy party took care of them quickly (enough that I don't think half the characters have swung or struck a blow yet.)
At the inn, we had some troubles with badly-stored food, a couple undead, a paralyzing poison trap, and a panicked native girl who took a liking to Sister Miranda and a disliking to Varyel (you would too if some crazy elf in a crazy hat hit you on the head and tied you up.)
We posted watches and stayed in the inn until morning, then made our way to the town the next morning, where we were arrested and disarmed, and brought to a town leader who fortunately has tongues or one of the other spells for talking to buffoons who don't speak your language.
And that was where the session broke off. A decent start so far, hopefully it turns out fun.
I've been reminded of my dislike of AD&D2E's proficiency system. On the one hand it's fairly light and easy compared to most other games, even games of the same era. On the other hand, weapon proficiencies are less choosing what you're good at than choosing the one or two things you don't suck at. Nonweapon proficiencies make too precious and limited a resource for what in many cases are narrow skills of questionable value. Some of them are broad background skills, but others are very narrow and specific (and the expansion books and magazine articles kept adding to the list). The NWP system puts an overemphasis on the Intelligence score, as you want to pump that at the start to get extra slots to round out a character, otherwise having to wait at least three levels to get one more skill slot to finally ride a horse or speak Not-France-ese. Something more freeform and loose better suits my paradigm right now. Like a more thought-out version of 2E's optional Secondary Skills.
