Quick IRL Update: loving the new job.
Steel Wrist, Velvet Glove kicked off last night. I got together with some friends of mine, we made some awesome gazpacho, and then spent about 2 hours creating characters for Flashing Blades. There was plenty of goofing off in the midst of that but it is a slow process, especially if the players aren't already up to speed on 17th century Paris, swashbuckling tropes, and related stuff.
We ended up with Ukranian giant (or giantess...no one's sure yet), a small and stocky rogue from the Netherlands, and a German Knight of Malta. No one wanted to be French nor did anyone want to start with a profession.
We're going to get together again, hopefully in a couple of weeks, to actually play. I have lots of threads I can work on in the meantime to give them lots of adventure opportunity.
We did have a good time and that, to my mind, is the important thing.