For the semester finale of the D&D4E campaign I'm currently co-DMing, I decided I wanted to do something a little bit different from normal. Drawing inspiration from equal parts the Avatar: TLA finale, the airborne sections of Gears of War 3, and tabletop Warhammer 40k, I gave my players each an airborne warship, set them adrift amongst roughly 40 or so enemy warships, and let them wreck havoc.
Overall, I thought it went surprisingly well. Because every character was "identical" and the possible actions were limited to about 3, combat went smoothly and quickly. In addition, because the die rolls were always standardized and no math was involved (only checking a small chart) people caught on very quickly and nobody ever flagged. I think it was a much-needed breath of fresh air in terms of how combat normally went, and a really cool new thing for my players that also gave them a chance to wreck serious havoc (their final kill-count was 24 ships at 32 people per ship). I figured I'd share the rules I came up with, in case anyone has feedback or wishes to adapt them for their own use. Enjoy!
Showing posts with label RPGs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label RPGs. Show all posts
Friday, December 16, 2011
Friday, December 9, 2011
The Crafting of Worlds: Addolorata
So I'm currently in the beginning stages of planning for a winter Black Crusade campaign of 3-5 sessions in length, which naturally means a lot of background, character, and rules creation, some of which is sharable to the general public. The following is the setting details for the players, who have already seen it but I figured I'd post as well because, well, why not? Feel free to give feedback. :-D
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
The Crusade: The Pits
Due to popular demand and my own interest (since no one else is doing it) I'm going back and recording the events of our fall semester's D&D 4E campaign. Because I'm not feeling energetic they're much more straightforward and matter-of-fact that my chronicles are, and naturally they are nowhere near as hilarious as Mister Flask's, but oh well. Much of the detail (such as the map) has been provided in past posts, so if you're curious check back there. Anyway, without further ado:
THE GREAT AND MIGHTY CHRONICLE OF THE FIRST CAMPAIGN TO
OCCUR WITHIN THE REALM OF ALASTIA
A LIST OF THE PLAYERS AND THEIR RESPECTIVE PLAYER CHARACTERS
Matt (Co-DM): Cynan, a Half-orc Fighter from Kalin, and
Haroj, ibid
Blake (Co-DM): Bruq, a Half-elf Bard from Bann
Katie: Kaii, a Half-elf Rogue from Kalin
Daniel: Golem, a Warforged Rune Priest from Amdrah
Jeff: Acre, a Half-elf Warden from Bann
Will: Riven, a Human Wizard from the island of Corsicana
Monday, August 8, 2011
The Crafting of Worlds: The Free Cities of Bann, Pt. 1
[As some of you may know, I am currently working with Matt on creating the world on which our fall D&D4e campaign will occur. We're still roughly in the initial stages, but making excellent progress, and I would naturally like feedback when possible. However, given the semi-public nature of this blog, I can only post things that would be potentially be ok if the PCs saw. Hopefully you will enjoy what I do post though, and I'd love any kind of feedback you can give.
The world is a tidal-locked, low magic world, more in the style of GRRM than Tolkien. There are 3 major countries, and 3 major religions (those three sets don't necessarily map onto one another).
The following is two of the 5 major cities on the continent-state of Bann, known collectively as the Free Cities. As usual, any feedback is most welcome!]
The world is a tidal-locked, low magic world, more in the style of GRRM than Tolkien. There are 3 major countries, and 3 major religions (those three sets don't necessarily map onto one another).
The following is two of the 5 major cities on the continent-state of Bann, known collectively as the Free Cities. As usual, any feedback is most welcome!]
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
The Cycle of Fate: Decisions
His office seemed exactly as he'd left it; doubtless the servitors had cleaned it daily in his absence. None of the security systems seemed tripped, and the data terminal didn't seem to contain any urgent messages, for once. The inbox also seemed to have messages slowly trickling in as his retinue reported in their status.
All actually seemed calm, or as calm as any sector of the Imperium was. Naturally countless minor threats, cults, and conspiracies, but nothing too urgent, and more importantly nothing he needed to handle personally. He sat himself down at his desk, and withdrew the small data disks from him pocket and inserted them into the concealed ports.
Ghostly letters and symbols hovered above his desk. To anyone else it would look a confusing mess, but he read it easily enough: it was his personal cipher, which included not just substitution but also multiple languages. No cipher was perfect, but it was secure enough for the short time he had been transporting the documents.
He had transcribed the papers on the long journey through the Warp. One of them would have to be discarded utterly and forgotten, while the survivor would be submitted to the Ordo libraries as the official record of the mission. It would also serve as the template for his official report, a report he would have to submit soon; the Ordo officials were already hounding him, especially after the Astartes and the Assassin refused to speak of the matter. He sighed.
He brought one into focus. The paper spoke of a normal landing on a seemingly peaceful planet, only to be assaulted by huge, ferocious beasts that slaughtered the Guardsmen by the score and were immune to most of the weaponry on hand. It went on about the ordered retreat from the massed beasts, abandoning the transports to their ruin as they sought safer ground, and the seemingly endless march as the group quickly lost member after member with few kills in return. It spoke of the leadership of the Marines, as they controlled the frantic rabble of the terrified Guardsmen and attempted to still finish their mission; it spoke of the Assassin Veer being the first one to discover the weak points of the giant reptiles.
It went on at length about the various deadly flora and fauna the group encountered as they trekked across the planet, losing fewer and fewer Guardsmen as they became more adept with dealing with the various predators. It described when they finally found the crashed Imperial vessel that had likely been lost in the Warp thousands of years ago, and had impacted the planet, exploding its Warp drive and triggering the event. Satisfied, the group returned to their transports, only to find them wrecked by their beasts in the absence. The report explained the horrible slaughter as the group attempted to hold off the seemingly endless wave of beasts as they waited for the final transport to arrive, losing almost every Guardsmen in the process, with the rest dying of their wounds while leaving orbit, including the Librarian Oblinius, whose mighty psychic shield gave them enough time to escape.
It continued for several pages, describing the feats of heroism performed by all present, and recommending several commendations for the survivors, particularly Vindicare Veer for his tireless protection.
The report said many, many things, and in terms of specifics they were all completely false.
A knock at the door. A messenger entered, and politely but firmly informed him that the council was expecting his presence. The boy stood there, obviously expecting him to stand up and follow to the chambers. Instead he received a stark stare and an arched eyebrow; the page took the hint and left quietly. He would surely inform the council, which meant there wasn't much more time.
He tabbed over to the other report, which described the actual events of the mission. He had naturally been present for most of them, although was only dimly aware of what had occurred in the mountain towards the end. The Space Marines had been reluctant to speak at length about it, and while Veer had been quite pleased to relay the events to him (saying he was happy to talk about it before he forgot) the young man's enthusiasm was matched by his erratic story-telling ability, and discerning the proper narrative was somewhat difficult. Regardless of the clarity, the implications of the report were clear to him, and would be to the council as well.
He shut down the system, and extracted the two disks, taking one in each hand. It was a hard decision, to be sure. On the one hand, as prescribed by the Ordo regulations, his course was clear, and his duty more so. On the other hand, he had technically sworn an oath. In addition, while the Eldar activities were surely dangerous, he questioned whether it was a bigger threat than the myriad menaces that currently threatened the realm. Every ship, every soldier, every weapon was precious to the Imperium, and even the relatively small task force that would be required to eradicate the threat on the planet could be of invaluable assistance in half a dozen theaters he could think of off the top of his head. Then again, while he was an Inquisitor, technically the decision was not his alone to make.
His mind raced, calculating, analyzing, and doing everything but coming to a decision. He didn't have long, though: the page would be back soon, and likely with an armed "escort."
He opened a drawer and withdrew a small pistol and a pair of tongs. He grabbed the disk with the tongs, and held it out far away from him. With his other hand he pulled the trigger, and looked away as the searing heat disintegrated the data drive and melted the ends of the tongs.
For better or for worse, he had made his decision.
He exited his chambers, opening the door only to see the page's fist swing foolishly through the air as it missed the door that was no longer there. He made eye contact with the guard sergeant.
"Shall we?"
They took off in a brisk pace, walking towards a chamber that would ultimately decide the fate of a world. But really, he thought, what was one world amongst the thousands of thousands in the galaxy?
Perhaps nothing, he thought. Perhaps everything. Only time would tell what fate would bring.
(-HTMC)
All actually seemed calm, or as calm as any sector of the Imperium was. Naturally countless minor threats, cults, and conspiracies, but nothing too urgent, and more importantly nothing he needed to handle personally. He sat himself down at his desk, and withdrew the small data disks from him pocket and inserted them into the concealed ports.
Ghostly letters and symbols hovered above his desk. To anyone else it would look a confusing mess, but he read it easily enough: it was his personal cipher, which included not just substitution but also multiple languages. No cipher was perfect, but it was secure enough for the short time he had been transporting the documents.
He had transcribed the papers on the long journey through the Warp. One of them would have to be discarded utterly and forgotten, while the survivor would be submitted to the Ordo libraries as the official record of the mission. It would also serve as the template for his official report, a report he would have to submit soon; the Ordo officials were already hounding him, especially after the Astartes and the Assassin refused to speak of the matter. He sighed.
He brought one into focus. The paper spoke of a normal landing on a seemingly peaceful planet, only to be assaulted by huge, ferocious beasts that slaughtered the Guardsmen by the score and were immune to most of the weaponry on hand. It went on about the ordered retreat from the massed beasts, abandoning the transports to their ruin as they sought safer ground, and the seemingly endless march as the group quickly lost member after member with few kills in return. It spoke of the leadership of the Marines, as they controlled the frantic rabble of the terrified Guardsmen and attempted to still finish their mission; it spoke of the Assassin Veer being the first one to discover the weak points of the giant reptiles.
It went on at length about the various deadly flora and fauna the group encountered as they trekked across the planet, losing fewer and fewer Guardsmen as they became more adept with dealing with the various predators. It described when they finally found the crashed Imperial vessel that had likely been lost in the Warp thousands of years ago, and had impacted the planet, exploding its Warp drive and triggering the event. Satisfied, the group returned to their transports, only to find them wrecked by their beasts in the absence. The report explained the horrible slaughter as the group attempted to hold off the seemingly endless wave of beasts as they waited for the final transport to arrive, losing almost every Guardsmen in the process, with the rest dying of their wounds while leaving orbit, including the Librarian Oblinius, whose mighty psychic shield gave them enough time to escape.
It continued for several pages, describing the feats of heroism performed by all present, and recommending several commendations for the survivors, particularly Vindicare Veer for his tireless protection.
The report said many, many things, and in terms of specifics they were all completely false.
A knock at the door. A messenger entered, and politely but firmly informed him that the council was expecting his presence. The boy stood there, obviously expecting him to stand up and follow to the chambers. Instead he received a stark stare and an arched eyebrow; the page took the hint and left quietly. He would surely inform the council, which meant there wasn't much more time.
He tabbed over to the other report, which described the actual events of the mission. He had naturally been present for most of them, although was only dimly aware of what had occurred in the mountain towards the end. The Space Marines had been reluctant to speak at length about it, and while Veer had been quite pleased to relay the events to him (saying he was happy to talk about it before he forgot) the young man's enthusiasm was matched by his erratic story-telling ability, and discerning the proper narrative was somewhat difficult. Regardless of the clarity, the implications of the report were clear to him, and would be to the council as well.
He shut down the system, and extracted the two disks, taking one in each hand. It was a hard decision, to be sure. On the one hand, as prescribed by the Ordo regulations, his course was clear, and his duty more so. On the other hand, he had technically sworn an oath. In addition, while the Eldar activities were surely dangerous, he questioned whether it was a bigger threat than the myriad menaces that currently threatened the realm. Every ship, every soldier, every weapon was precious to the Imperium, and even the relatively small task force that would be required to eradicate the threat on the planet could be of invaluable assistance in half a dozen theaters he could think of off the top of his head. Then again, while he was an Inquisitor, technically the decision was not his alone to make.
His mind raced, calculating, analyzing, and doing everything but coming to a decision. He didn't have long, though: the page would be back soon, and likely with an armed "escort."
He opened a drawer and withdrew a small pistol and a pair of tongs. He grabbed the disk with the tongs, and held it out far away from him. With his other hand he pulled the trigger, and looked away as the searing heat disintegrated the data drive and melted the ends of the tongs.
For better or for worse, he had made his decision.
He exited his chambers, opening the door only to see the page's fist swing foolishly through the air as it missed the door that was no longer there. He made eye contact with the guard sergeant.
"Shall we?"
They took off in a brisk pace, walking towards a chamber that would ultimately decide the fate of a world. But really, he thought, what was one world amongst the thousands of thousands in the galaxy?
Perhaps nothing, he thought. Perhaps everything. Only time would tell what fate would bring.
(-HTMC)
Monday, July 25, 2011
The Cycle of Fate: Equipment or Lack Thereof
For the past month or so (I actually realize I have no idea what number tomorrow's session will be) I've been GMing a campaign of Deathwatch. Because of issues relating to plot and design choices, I've actually been refraining from analyzing the game from a GM perspective thus far, but now that the campaign will be over in one or two more sessions, it's probably safe to start talking about certain aspects of the game, and how it went.
One of the key ideas that was the genesis for this campaign was the Space Marine Kill-team crash-landing on a primitive planet, and having to go some time without their treasured equipment. Most of the players probably did not realize to what extent this would be true. The idea was to hopefully prompt an experience that was different from the previous 40k RPG campaigns, and also give a chance to use the talents and skills that weren't directly associated with combat. Did it work? Let's look.
One of the key ideas that was the genesis for this campaign was the Space Marine Kill-team crash-landing on a primitive planet, and having to go some time without their treasured equipment. Most of the players probably did not realize to what extent this would be true. The idea was to hopefully prompt an experience that was different from the previous 40k RPG campaigns, and also give a chance to use the talents and skills that weren't directly associated with combat. Did it work? Let's look.
Sunday, July 17, 2011
The Crafting of Worlds: The Shinto-esque Religion
I should be busy in the wilderness playing Ultimate, far away from the internet. However, I made a promise to myself about posting, so if all goes well the scheduler should be posting this at noon on Sunday, and hopefully it works
[As some of you may know, I am currently working with Matt on creating the world on which our fall D&D4e campaign will occur. We're still roughly in the initial stages, but making excellent progress, and I would naturally like feedback when possible. However, given the semi-public nature of this blog, I can only post things that would be potentially be ok if the PCs saw. Hopefully you will enjoy what I do post though, and I'd love any kind of feedback you can give.
The world is a tidal-locked, low magic world, more in the style of GRRM than Tolkien. There are 3 major countries, and 3 major religions (those three sets don't necessarily map onto one another).
The following is one of the three religions, the one modeled roughly after Shinto, with some various other elements thrown in. As before, feel free to respond in any way!]
[As some of you may know, I am currently working with Matt on creating the world on which our fall D&D4e campaign will occur. We're still roughly in the initial stages, but making excellent progress, and I would naturally like feedback when possible. However, given the semi-public nature of this blog, I can only post things that would be potentially be ok if the PCs saw. Hopefully you will enjoy what I do post though, and I'd love any kind of feedback you can give.
The world is a tidal-locked, low magic world, more in the style of GRRM than Tolkien. There are 3 major countries, and 3 major religions (those three sets don't necessarily map onto one another).
The following is one of the three religions, the one modeled roughly after Shinto, with some various other elements thrown in. As before, feel free to respond in any way!]
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
The Crafting of Worlds: The Neo-Pagan Religion
First off, Happy Birthday to my Blog! You've come a long way, and picked up a name. But now on to Serious Business™.
[As some of you may know, I am currently working with Matt on creating the world on which our fall D&D4e campaign will occur. We're still roughly in the initial stages, but making excellent progress, and I would naturally like feedback when possible. However, given the semi-public nature of this blog, I can only post things that would be potentially be ok if the PCs saw. Hopefully you will enjoy what I do post though, and I'd love any kind of feedback you can give.
The world is a tidal-locked, low magic world, more in the style of GRRM than Tolkien. There are 3 major countries, and 3 major religions (those three sets don't necessarily map onto one another).
The following is one of the three religions, the one modeled roughly after neo-paganism, with a decently strong Greek influence. The others are a Shinto-like nature focused religion, and a monotheistic one in the style of Old Testament brimstone and fire.]
[As some of you may know, I am currently working with Matt on creating the world on which our fall D&D4e campaign will occur. We're still roughly in the initial stages, but making excellent progress, and I would naturally like feedback when possible. However, given the semi-public nature of this blog, I can only post things that would be potentially be ok if the PCs saw. Hopefully you will enjoy what I do post though, and I'd love any kind of feedback you can give.
The world is a tidal-locked, low magic world, more in the style of GRRM than Tolkien. There are 3 major countries, and 3 major religions (those three sets don't necessarily map onto one another).
The following is one of the three religions, the one modeled roughly after neo-paganism, with a decently strong Greek influence. The others are a Shinto-like nature focused religion, and a monotheistic one in the style of Old Testament brimstone and fire.]
Sunday, October 3, 2010
A Slight Difference of Opinion: Roleplaying, or Lack Thereof
A follow-up to Stormshrug's recent fascination of these kind of things, I present the last two characters I made for a D&D and Orpheus campaign, respectively.
Shaima, son of Thaima (fall 2009 Dahmprealm campaign)
Dahn Gottesson (Summer 2010 Orpheus campaign)
-HTMC
Bonus! Since Stormshrug didn't post it (he made all of it though), here's Jesse's character from the same campaign Shaima appeared in.
Bertram (the Murder Bear)
Shaima, son of Thaima (fall 2009 Dahmprealm campaign)
 |
| (Middle picture credit to Stormshrug) |
 |
| (DM Rome states that the middle picture should be the same as the last. Oops) |
Bonus! Since Stormshrug didn't post it (he made all of it though), here's Jesse's character from the same campaign Shaima appeared in.
Bertram (the Murder Bear)
Thursday, September 30, 2010
New Veras Vengeance 3: What, No Goatee?
For reasons that should be apparent to anyone who looks at the opposite page, I'm writing this entry myself instead of letting Ahriman do it. The worst part is he seems to have taken a liking to be my scribe, and is now sulking that I won't let him do it. Perhaps if he improves his attitude I'll reconsider, but as it stands I like knowing what I'm writing won't suddenly be filled with expletives and suggestive comments about my mother.
To return to the subject at hand, however, I must record the last mission the Veil has so kindly given us. It seems we had finally decided to launch a full offensive on a terrorists group to the North, and we were about to be sent along (accompanied by Kaidar, who had returned from... something? He never quite told us) when we were waylaid and told we were being sent on a "special" assignment, namely a noble who had recently received a death threat. We were all a bit perplexed by this, since noble's usually have their own (often highly skilled) bodyguards, but as we were briefed it turned out this particular noble was the local Governor and he had kindly lent his forces to the current Veil operation. Also it seemed he was an old friend of Kaidar, so he in particular felt obliged to help him.
What made it more serious was that the death notice was from the Midnight Sun, a notorious assassin who had never failed to kill a target she had earmarked as deserving justice--in the form of death.
To return to the subject at hand, however, I must record the last mission the Veil has so kindly given us. It seems we had finally decided to launch a full offensive on a terrorists group to the North, and we were about to be sent along (accompanied by Kaidar, who had returned from... something? He never quite told us) when we were waylaid and told we were being sent on a "special" assignment, namely a noble who had recently received a death threat. We were all a bit perplexed by this, since noble's usually have their own (often highly skilled) bodyguards, but as we were briefed it turned out this particular noble was the local Governor and he had kindly lent his forces to the current Veil operation. Also it seemed he was an old friend of Kaidar, so he in particular felt obliged to help him.
What made it more serious was that the death notice was from the Midnight Sun, a notorious assassin who had never failed to kill a target she had earmarked as deserving justice--in the form of death.
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
New Veras Vengeance 2: And On My Day Off, Too
Man, Drachon is going to regret having bought this permanent ink... hope he didn't like this poem too much, hehe. Not enough blood mentioned, anyway.
Also, you ђค๔Ŧ คєŦlןเ, I'm sitting on your chest right now writing in your precious notebook because you can't handle the heat. That's right! If you just unbound me I could be helping you out... but since I can't tell you that in person, I, Ahriman, shall detail exactly every fault you made along this road to show you why you are such a tเคl๔ภ๔ןєคl and why you deserve to be unconscious right now, if not worse.
Also, you ђค๔Ŧ คєŦlןเ, I'm sitting on your chest right now writing in your precious notebook because you can't handle the heat. That's right! If you just unbound me I could be helping you out... but since I can't tell you that in person, I, Ahriman, shall detail exactly every fault you made along this road to show you why you are such a tเคl๔ภ๔ןєคl and why you deserve to be unconscious right now, if not worse.
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
New Veras Vengeance 1: Fire Cleanses All
That's Drachon, if I ever get these sigils of bounding off. Thrice-damned mortal thinks he can control me? I'll prove him wrong, the [weird sigils].
What? Yes, yes I'm writing down what you're saying. Just because you're too lazy to write yourself while walking you think you can-!
What was that? Ya, your mother!!
Just because I have wings doesn't mean it's easier!!
....
....
Just because you can order me doesn't mean I'll like it.
Well yes.
Fine.
Monday, September 27, 2010
New Veras Vengeance: The Prologue
[Note: The New Veras Vengeance series will be the title and tag for the chronicles associated with the current D&D4e campaign being run, and as such will be the in-character writings of my character. Hopefully they'll be entertaining even if you're not a part of the campaign, but they are mainly meant for those who are a part of it (and the DM's who are now desperate for someone to record the happenings :-P)]
I sometimes wonder why I bother to commit my thoughts to paper, as I now do. I would normally associate diary writing and the sort with people who either lack self-confidence or are too full of it; but seeing as I know my strengths and limits, and I don't believe this will become some prized piece of literature in the future (although one can only hope) obviously this isn't the case.
I think the main point is this scribbling allows me to better consider the events that have taken place, especially during such a turning point as I am experiencing now. Veil employment is far far different than the last few years of my life, to be sure, and that's just from the standpoint of being in training. However, it seems we have finally proven our worth, and today we had our final test of sorts before setting out into the field. I think it's only fitting I recount the occasion.
I sometimes wonder why I bother to commit my thoughts to paper, as I now do. I would normally associate diary writing and the sort with people who either lack self-confidence or are too full of it; but seeing as I know my strengths and limits, and I don't believe this will become some prized piece of literature in the future (although one can only hope) obviously this isn't the case.
I think the main point is this scribbling allows me to better consider the events that have taken place, especially during such a turning point as I am experiencing now. Veil employment is far far different than the last few years of my life, to be sure, and that's just from the standpoint of being in training. However, it seems we have finally proven our worth, and today we had our final test of sorts before setting out into the field. I think it's only fitting I recount the occasion.
Monday, August 23, 2010
Sinister Sacrilege: The End
(What, a post not about Starcraft? Heres-*BLAM*)
Last night was (sadly) the final session of the Dark Hereblam campaign, and so now that the plot is over I'm finally at liberty to discuss some overarching things I'd been trying the campaign. First though, a short synopsis.
The story began on a Black Ship on its way to Terra (unbeknownst to the above) that suddenly suffered a massive failure, due to the 13th Black Crusade breaking out (again without the PCs knowing). In their investigation they eventually discovered that parts of the Guard unit stationed on board were in fact Genestealer cultists, and eliminated them and the Genestealers with extreme prejudice. After landing they were tasked with following up another section of the same tainted regiment that had landed days earlier, and eventually tracked down the group and avoided a large shoot-out in a saloon, but let the cultists escaped. They pursued, and found the cultists in a firefight with another group of cultists. The 'Stealer cult was finally killed off, and the PCs turned on the other cultists and killed many of them, but not before they finished summoning a Daemon. They managed through extreme cleverness to kill it off, and were sent home, but sent back the next day to continuing hunting down the heretic leaders, since reports of other daemon-summonings were occurring all across Terra. Despite failing abjectedly at investigative skills, they eventually determined found a safehouse of the heretics, which happened to be the main base at the moment. Despite an early attempt at subterfuge the infiltration again quickly turned into a run and gun fight, eventually culminating in an epic confrontation involving a number of heretics, 4 psykers, 4 arco-flagellents, and a heretic leader clad in power armor, as two warp circles seemed to be being summoned. Through a heroic sacrifice by #4 (and much to by chagrin), they managed to stop one of warp circles and kill all the heretics, preventing a flood of daemons from entering the Eternity Gate (the idea was that a single powerful summoning would be quickly noticed by the forces of Terra, but if dozens were occurring all over the planet they could only respond so quickly, so opening two in one location: one to the Warp, and the other (ideallly to the Golden Throne but Warp-magic is rarely so precise) to the Eternity Gate would cause massive massive problems). Fortunately for the Imperium "the Good Guys" managed to prevent this, and also dove heroically through the warp-portal after their fallen comrade, only to find him barely alive in front of the Eternity Gate, being stared at in shock by a number of Custodes and two Imperial Titans. Luckily they managed to avoid getting shot by a narrow margin, and forces arrived to apprehend them and take them away, and thus this chapter of their story ended.
I mean, in all likelihood they were all executed for extreme exposure to the Warp and Chaos, but hey, you never know. They were designed to be somewhere in between regular acolytes and a full inquisitor, and while the former would be executed, the latter definitely wouldn't. You decide ;-)
Anyway, the biggest thing I tried this time around was planning. For the "Inquisitor" campaign, I did a lot of pre-planning, had a cool story and arc planned out, etc. For this campaign, while researching Dark Heresy things online, I found a guide suggesting to not plan and just be spontaneous. I decided I would try it, for better or for worse.
Of course, it wasn't completely without planning. I had to have a little bit of an idea before each session, if only to make maps. But I was never planning ahead more than the immediate session. As stated, this session started aboard a ship. I like ships, because there is only a finite number of places to go and things to do, and I like genestealers, so that's what it was. It was a great way to get used to the system and try out the whole "be spontaneous" thing, so I let my PCs do whatever they wanted, and I think it was a success. We then got to Terra, and although I gave them a bit of direction, once they got to the first location they were all on their own, ending up with things like The Linear pointing a gun at an innocent guard's head to wake him up or the group deciding to rappel up a building to avoid spiders and try to snipe the driver of a tank. I think overall the last few sessions went the smoothest, since I had figured out what exactly did need to be planned and what didn't, and also was familiar with the system and what I needed to do/not do (like not show models on the board before they explored a room). I think we had some great moments that would not have occurred had I not planned ahead, and although I was slightly panicky at times wondering what I was going to do this session, I always figured out something, and despite the complete lack of fore-planning I think the overarching story is remarkably coherent. This style meant I was able to deal with PC spontaneity well, since I was being spontaneous too.
Another facet of this style was hopefully unexpected by my players, and that had to do with a questionnaire I had them innoncently fill out early on. I held off using it for the first few sessions, but the entire time I had a list like this:
Last night was (sadly) the final session of the Dark Hereblam campaign, and so now that the plot is over I'm finally at liberty to discuss some overarching things I'd been trying the campaign. First though, a short synopsis.
- #4, played by Kory: A young, talented and most importantly brainwashed and intellectualy stunted assassin
- The Linear, played by Rome: A quiet, trigger-happy man from an out-of-touch space wreck where he was the law
- "Cantor" Remski, played by Jesse: A priest who spread his word through heavy raaawk and flames, and his passion through... flames.
- Callidon, played by Aaron: An optimistic psyker who didn't explode into Daemons, much to everyone's disappointment (especially my own)
- Daret, played by Max: A pragmatic techpriest hankerin' to be a
cowboynerfherdergroxherder.
The story began on a Black Ship on its way to Terra (unbeknownst to the above) that suddenly suffered a massive failure, due to the 13th Black Crusade breaking out (again without the PCs knowing). In their investigation they eventually discovered that parts of the Guard unit stationed on board were in fact Genestealer cultists, and eliminated them and the Genestealers with extreme prejudice. After landing they were tasked with following up another section of the same tainted regiment that had landed days earlier, and eventually tracked down the group and avoided a large shoot-out in a saloon, but let the cultists escaped. They pursued, and found the cultists in a firefight with another group of cultists. The 'Stealer cult was finally killed off, and the PCs turned on the other cultists and killed many of them, but not before they finished summoning a Daemon. They managed through extreme cleverness to kill it off, and were sent home, but sent back the next day to continuing hunting down the heretic leaders, since reports of other daemon-summonings were occurring all across Terra. Despite failing abjectedly at investigative skills, they eventually determined found a safehouse of the heretics, which happened to be the main base at the moment. Despite an early attempt at subterfuge the infiltration again quickly turned into a run and gun fight, eventually culminating in an epic confrontation involving a number of heretics, 4 psykers, 4 arco-flagellents, and a heretic leader clad in power armor, as two warp circles seemed to be being summoned. Through a heroic sacrifice by #4 (and much to by chagrin), they managed to stop one of warp circles and kill all the heretics, preventing a flood of daemons from entering the Eternity Gate (the idea was that a single powerful summoning would be quickly noticed by the forces of Terra, but if dozens were occurring all over the planet they could only respond so quickly, so opening two in one location: one to the Warp, and the other (ideallly to the Golden Throne but Warp-magic is rarely so precise) to the Eternity Gate would cause massive massive problems). Fortunately for the Imperium "the Good Guys" managed to prevent this, and also dove heroically through the warp-portal after their fallen comrade, only to find him barely alive in front of the Eternity Gate, being stared at in shock by a number of Custodes and two Imperial Titans. Luckily they managed to avoid getting shot by a narrow margin, and forces arrived to apprehend them and take them away, and thus this chapter of their story ended.
I mean, in all likelihood they were all executed for extreme exposure to the Warp and Chaos, but hey, you never know. They were designed to be somewhere in between regular acolytes and a full inquisitor, and while the former would be executed, the latter definitely wouldn't. You decide ;-)
Anyway, the biggest thing I tried this time around was planning. For the "Inquisitor" campaign, I did a lot of pre-planning, had a cool story and arc planned out, etc. For this campaign, while researching Dark Heresy things online, I found a guide suggesting to not plan and just be spontaneous. I decided I would try it, for better or for worse.
Of course, it wasn't completely without planning. I had to have a little bit of an idea before each session, if only to make maps. But I was never planning ahead more than the immediate session. As stated, this session started aboard a ship. I like ships, because there is only a finite number of places to go and things to do, and I like genestealers, so that's what it was. It was a great way to get used to the system and try out the whole "be spontaneous" thing, so I let my PCs do whatever they wanted, and I think it was a success. We then got to Terra, and although I gave them a bit of direction, once they got to the first location they were all on their own, ending up with things like The Linear pointing a gun at an innocent guard's head to wake him up or the group deciding to rappel up a building to avoid spiders and try to snipe the driver of a tank. I think overall the last few sessions went the smoothest, since I had figured out what exactly did need to be planned and what didn't, and also was familiar with the system and what I needed to do/not do (like not show models on the board before they explored a room). I think we had some great moments that would not have occurred had I not planned ahead, and although I was slightly panicky at times wondering what I was going to do this session, I always figured out something, and despite the complete lack of fore-planning I think the overarching story is remarkably coherent. This style meant I was able to deal with PC spontaneity well, since I was being spontaneous too.
Another facet of this style was hopefully unexpected by my players, and that had to do with a questionnaire I had them innoncently fill out early on. I held off using it for the first few sessions, but the entire time I had a list like this:
Ways to mess with PCs
-Make a saloon for Daret
Make Grox for him to catch
-Bring #4’s master back
-Bring Boris and Slant in for Callidon
Bring out Catachan Mega-Bees for Callidon
-Arcoflagellents for Remski
Noise Marines for Remski
Transport back to Bio Anthem for Linear
-For fun bring back Brutus, Slant, and/or Grant
The ones marked with a hyphen I actually accomplished, and had the session gone one further I had been contemplating something like the Warp Gate contaminating them but sending them to the Bio Anthem, where they'd have to search for a cure on the Linear's old home while fighting off things like (you guessed it) Catachan Mega-Bees. I think the coolest example of how this worked out well (well, a number of them were cool, but this was was also rail-breaking) was having #4's master reappear an Arco-flagellent. I felt given his master's crimes, such a punishment would have made sense, and since it's hard to perform I figured the likelihood of being sent to Mars to have it done was pretty high, and then to be shipped to Terra (and then stolen) not unfeasible. Remski also being terrified of them helped a lot. When I introduced the fact that one of the "scary guys" in the back was also #4's master, I didn't prompt Kory to do anything about it, I just let him know. He responded with an excellent piece of role-playing where he froze for a number of rounds (prompting much concern from his teammates) and apparently he ended up flipping a coin as to what #4 would do, and got the better result, that of charging his master (and ALL of the remaining combatants) and setting off 3 frag grenades on his person, killing everyone within an 8 meter radius (i.e. ALL of my enemy NPCs). He also disrupted both warp circles, but a well-played Drama Card meant he instead got flung through the portal to the Eternity Gate, which had coincidentally just finished being made.
The irony was that besides the leader and the arcos (the former having been laughing the entire time) there was just one apiece of the heretics and psykers, and the next turn I actually would have unleashed the arcos, and the turn after that was when the Gates would have finished manifesting, and the Leader would have led a swarm of daemons into the Imperial Palace where an epic showdown between the Custodes, Titans, and swarms of Daemons would have taken place, with the PCs stuck in the middle of it all. But an excellent piece of role-playing prompted by my dickery stopped all that. I'm actually incredibly pleased with it, since despite losing a cool set-piece idea it was a really cool martyr moment that stopped a horrible horrible sacrilege from occurring. And I think now that my players read this they will also be happy they managed to stop that :-P
Finally, on the subject of drama cards, they were much more appreciated than I expected. At the end of one session I offered either one player a fate point (which are far more versatile and, I thought, more useful) or two players a drama card (which can be sometimes bad and always situational). I thought it would be a tough choice, but there was hardly any debate and they went straight for the two drama cards. I'm curious whether had I offered two of either which way they would have chosen. This may however just my players sharing my enjoyment of the drama cards'...well, drama.
Anyway, I know I have more to say about this campaign, but I've already written a lot, so I shall save the rest for another day. I enjoyed DMing the campaign a whole lot, and my players state they did as well, so I hope someday in the future we may once again embark on a quest to rid the world of evil and redeem all the bad guys ;-)
-HTMC
Thursday, August 5, 2010
Sinister Sacrilege: The Third Session
When we last left our brave Acolytes, they had successfully fought off an attempt at Tyranid incursion aboard a Black Ship and were now landing on Holy Terra as the 13th Black Crusade erupted around them. Ignoring that major event, they were tasked to keep hunting Tyranids! In case another ship carrying more of the troops that had the Genestealer Cult had made it to Terra. Hilarious hijinks and a lot of bad rolling later, you get this. But our brave Psyker does a lot better at summarizing than I would do, so I turn once again to the GM's perspective on things.
First off, as I've written elsewhere (although maybe not on this blog?) I really like leveling up and advancing and getting shiny new toys. One of the chief complaints with Orpheus that I had was that once you started, it was incredibly hard to really get better, and you were pretty much at your peak from the get-go. Contrast this starkly with DnD 4e, where you're constantly improving both in stats, skills, and if you have a cool DM, equipment. I think Dark Heresy strikes a good balance, since your stats are mostly maxed although you can spend to improve them to a certain extent, but you are constantly learning new abilities (and again, if you have a nice GM getting cool equipment). However, this is besides the point. Since I do like leveling up and stuff, I suspect that it rubs off on my GM style in how I reward my players. The DH rulebook recommends something like 200xp for every 4 hours played, whereas I last session awarded 500 xp for about the same amount of time played. I know in my position I would want to get to the higher ranks quicker, to be able to start to do really cool things, thus I was pretty generous with my doling out (plus, killing a heretic is something like 50xp, I feel that killing a bunch of Genestealers is thus worth a lot more). Unsure of the money thing, I just gave the same amount, 500tg to do with as they wanted (and as I suspected, a lot of them bought armor). I also found the cool set of Drama Cards, which I adjusted for use in Dark Heresy, and I actually want to give them out, since although they can make my work slightly harder in some cases, they're really cool effects and I look forward to seeing how my PCs make use of them.
I suspect in certain ways being generous like this makes life as a GM harder. PCs are better equipped and harder to kill and have more ways to get out of traps, jump rails, etc. But on the other hand, I feel like it leads to a lot more interesting gameplay with your PCs trying different things. For instance, I gave Max grappling hooks since he asked nicely, and they ended up doing a wall-walk with the Psyker to get on top of the building. I think the group I play with prizes cleverness and imagination over straight killing of things, so giving them more skills and equipment to do this leads to more interesting events. And on the plus side, it gives me an excuses to throw harder enemies at them, which is more fun from my perspective.
The one thing I'm unsure of is how much people like drops vs. buying their own stuff. It's definitely easier for me to let people just buy what they want (and given the Inquisitorial background this makes perfect sense) but I also don't know if people in general prefer to find their own things. I know with the last D&D campaign I played it was much more about person specific drops, but in D&D it's also much more about armor and main weapon, whereas in DH you have a lot more choices and things you could get (such as gun sights, grenades, special ammo, etc. as well as a large range of weapons). If anyone has any insight on this, let me know.
To switch topics, I also tried out something new that somewhat worked. Dark Heresy pretty much boils down to either investigation or combat. The problem with investigation is it is often not controlled in any way. There are ways around that, but things like "you need to find the control panel before the ship blows up" have their own downside as well. Instead, what I decided to try was to punish failed investigations, something that doesn't happen in a normal session. Emma (who would be quite the sadistic GM given her suggestions to me, such as one of the first questions after a session being "Did anyone die? Any serious injuries?) wanted to have her own spiders inserted into the plot (specifically large, radioactive spiders that paralyzed people) so I created the Extreme Mobile Mutant Arachnids. Basically what happened was the cargo hall the PCs were investigating was, well, large, and I assume places like that have vermin. How it worked was whenever a PC would do an investigative roll, if they failed the roll by more than 2 degrees, a pair of EMMAs would spawn and attack, with an additional EMMA for every additional degree of failure.
They were meant to be more annoying then truly deadly, since they were fast but also very low toughness and weak attacks, and the paralyzing could be treated with a simple medicae test. However, for whatever reason the PCs had difficulty killing them, and they also investigated far far less than I expected, and went the more combat route (see: Rome pointing a gun at a Guardsman's head to wake him up). However, I think it worked well and I might adapt the idea for the future.
Also, strangely enough, my rolling was unnaturally luck for my NPCs whereas the PCs suffered from an unending string of bad luck. For instance, the Chimera driver managed to stave off spasming from a psyker attack despite having low Willpower, and an on-fire Guardsman managed to critically avoid getting hit a second time with a flamer... twice (that's two 5% rolls) and given how awesome that is, he put the fires out with his amazing dodge. Meanwhile, Max managed to jam his gun twice in one session (again, that's two 5% likelihood rolls) and various other bad things happened, like Rome diving into a glass window and bouncing off and Kory failing to read a basic written document. Despite these setbacks the PCs still emerged triumphant.
Finally, one complaint about the DH as a system. DH relies on a lot of situation modifiers, especially in terms of combat. I'd been struggling to keep all of them in mind during combat, but given how many different things could be in effect, this was at times hard. Luckily Kory in a move of brilliance wrote out all of them (an impressive achievement) which will hopefully help the others remember them, and between us we'll actually get all of them. I do think in general it's a cool idea, and if you're playing DH a lot I imagine it'd get a lot easier and simpler, but adding a lot of modifiers in general can be a chore and can slow down gameplay. But as I said, hopefully the group working together can alleviate this, and maybe it gives a reason to pay attention during other people's combat turns.
Because I missed last week, we're doing a second session tomorrow night, so expect another update then.
-HTMC
First off, as I've written elsewhere (although maybe not on this blog?) I really like leveling up and advancing and getting shiny new toys. One of the chief complaints with Orpheus that I had was that once you started, it was incredibly hard to really get better, and you were pretty much at your peak from the get-go. Contrast this starkly with DnD 4e, where you're constantly improving both in stats, skills, and if you have a cool DM, equipment. I think Dark Heresy strikes a good balance, since your stats are mostly maxed although you can spend to improve them to a certain extent, but you are constantly learning new abilities (and again, if you have a nice GM getting cool equipment). However, this is besides the point. Since I do like leveling up and stuff, I suspect that it rubs off on my GM style in how I reward my players. The DH rulebook recommends something like 200xp for every 4 hours played, whereas I last session awarded 500 xp for about the same amount of time played. I know in my position I would want to get to the higher ranks quicker, to be able to start to do really cool things, thus I was pretty generous with my doling out (plus, killing a heretic is something like 50xp, I feel that killing a bunch of Genestealers is thus worth a lot more). Unsure of the money thing, I just gave the same amount, 500tg to do with as they wanted (and as I suspected, a lot of them bought armor). I also found the cool set of Drama Cards, which I adjusted for use in Dark Heresy, and I actually want to give them out, since although they can make my work slightly harder in some cases, they're really cool effects and I look forward to seeing how my PCs make use of them.
I suspect in certain ways being generous like this makes life as a GM harder. PCs are better equipped and harder to kill and have more ways to get out of traps, jump rails, etc. But on the other hand, I feel like it leads to a lot more interesting gameplay with your PCs trying different things. For instance, I gave Max grappling hooks since he asked nicely, and they ended up doing a wall-walk with the Psyker to get on top of the building. I think the group I play with prizes cleverness and imagination over straight killing of things, so giving them more skills and equipment to do this leads to more interesting events. And on the plus side, it gives me an excuses to throw harder enemies at them, which is more fun from my perspective.
The one thing I'm unsure of is how much people like drops vs. buying their own stuff. It's definitely easier for me to let people just buy what they want (and given the Inquisitorial background this makes perfect sense) but I also don't know if people in general prefer to find their own things. I know with the last D&D campaign I played it was much more about person specific drops, but in D&D it's also much more about armor and main weapon, whereas in DH you have a lot more choices and things you could get (such as gun sights, grenades, special ammo, etc. as well as a large range of weapons). If anyone has any insight on this, let me know.
To switch topics, I also tried out something new that somewhat worked. Dark Heresy pretty much boils down to either investigation or combat. The problem with investigation is it is often not controlled in any way. There are ways around that, but things like "you need to find the control panel before the ship blows up" have their own downside as well. Instead, what I decided to try was to punish failed investigations, something that doesn't happen in a normal session. Emma (who would be quite the sadistic GM given her suggestions to me, such as one of the first questions after a session being "Did anyone die? Any serious injuries?) wanted to have her own spiders inserted into the plot (specifically large, radioactive spiders that paralyzed people) so I created the Extreme Mobile Mutant Arachnids. Basically what happened was the cargo hall the PCs were investigating was, well, large, and I assume places like that have vermin. How it worked was whenever a PC would do an investigative roll, if they failed the roll by more than 2 degrees, a pair of EMMAs would spawn and attack, with an additional EMMA for every additional degree of failure.
They were meant to be more annoying then truly deadly, since they were fast but also very low toughness and weak attacks, and the paralyzing could be treated with a simple medicae test. However, for whatever reason the PCs had difficulty killing them, and they also investigated far far less than I expected, and went the more combat route (see: Rome pointing a gun at a Guardsman's head to wake him up). However, I think it worked well and I might adapt the idea for the future.
Also, strangely enough, my rolling was unnaturally luck for my NPCs whereas the PCs suffered from an unending string of bad luck. For instance, the Chimera driver managed to stave off spasming from a psyker attack despite having low Willpower, and an on-fire Guardsman managed to critically avoid getting hit a second time with a flamer... twice (that's two 5% rolls) and given how awesome that is, he put the fires out with his amazing dodge. Meanwhile, Max managed to jam his gun twice in one session (again, that's two 5% likelihood rolls) and various other bad things happened, like Rome diving into a glass window and bouncing off and Kory failing to read a basic written document. Despite these setbacks the PCs still emerged triumphant.
Finally, one complaint about the DH as a system. DH relies on a lot of situation modifiers, especially in terms of combat. I'd been struggling to keep all of them in mind during combat, but given how many different things could be in effect, this was at times hard. Luckily Kory in a move of brilliance wrote out all of them (an impressive achievement) which will hopefully help the others remember them, and between us we'll actually get all of them. I do think in general it's a cool idea, and if you're playing DH a lot I imagine it'd get a lot easier and simpler, but adding a lot of modifiers in general can be a chore and can slow down gameplay. But as I said, hopefully the group working together can alleviate this, and maybe it gives a reason to pay attention during other people's combat turns.
Because I missed last week, we're doing a second session tomorrow night, so expect another update then.
-HTMC
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Sinister Sacrilege: The Second Session
Last week was the second session of Dark Heresy, although in terms of my overall campaign planning it was more like session 1.5. However, we did finish the session plot arch and apparently everyone enjoyed themselves. For another excellent summary see that other guy's blog. But again from my perspective as GM, some other things came up during the session that I felt like I should comment on, so I shall.
The first has to do with players. Although I already know they can be surprisingly inventive (especially the group I play with) I got lulled back into a false sense of security the first session, since everything pretty much went Blaykakudori (Blaykaku means Blake's Plan). This session was full of surprises, though, from having Jesse's character start a rock concert to attract the attention of some heretical guards, Aaron attempting to go Inception-like on an unconscious Navigator, and Max made a smart but not expected by me move of accessing security records for the ship. All of these were very good ideas and most of them ended up gaining the PCs some advantage, but also meant I was constantly adjusting, which was interesting. The Inquisitor campaign I did was much more railroaded, almost like an on-rails shooter, whereas this session was designed to be "you're on a ship, go whereever you want." Thus the more interesting ideas.
Probably the most unexpected one had do with Inquisitor Schuld (alternatively called many other things by PCs, who have an annoying habit of never remembering any NPCs name). My plan for him was to be a nice friendly trainer Inquisitor just for the ship-board portion of the campaign, and then once the Broodlord and Genestealers rushed onto the scene, he would valiantly take on the Broodlord and they would mutually murder each other. What I didn't expect was for my PCs to ignore the Genestealers (and be finished with the Servitors and Guardsmen) and focus their entire fire for a turn on the Broodlord. I obviously couldn't just let them do that without any effect, so the Broodlord ended up seriously mauled while Inquisitor Schuld (or Badassius if you're Max) waltzed in and finished him off. So in effect, my PCs saved an NPC I had earmarked for death. I suspect this will have significant ramifications later. I guess the moral of the story for me is be prepared for anything.
Another factor that I'm forced to be conscious of is game balance, not in the sense of difficulty but in activities. I have 5 PCs, all with different talents and foci, and it would be bad form to focus on one are too much. For instance, a couple of the PCs are definitely combat-focused, whereas one is pretty much all out of combat mischief. Overall they're lacking in people-skills (as they found out when their friendly cleric went AWOL and the person with the best people-skills was, of all things, a Tech-priest) and are stacked more so in the ranged department (again found out when their cleric disappeared and they all stuck to ranged fire). I think this last session struck a good balance, with about 2 hours of investigation and 1.5 of combat, and future sessions will hopefully be somewhat more tailored to skills they have and enemies will also be made with them in mind.
Finally, a third problem I encountered (that hopefully wasn't a problem) was again linked to PC initiative and creativity. Obviously I had a lot of background planning and stuff done, in terms of what has happened before the "session" starts and what is going on during it. Obviously this was meant to be discoverable by the PCs, although they can't do it naturally. The problem arises when they either fail their skill checks or they don't bite on the hooks you give them. For instance, had they investigated the cargo room before attacking it they likely would have learned about the weirdly broken boxes, but they didn't follow the hints I dropped and choose to go later purely on the attack, and thus not be able to investigate. Thus the Genestealer attack probably seemed a lot more out of the blue than I intended, although hopefully my after-action debriefing made it make a little bit more sense. Although I didn't hear any "wtf's?" from the players, when I brought them out I totally had a "seriously guys this has an explanation, trust me" mindset. And of course Rome choose to question things like shift schedules and guard rotations, something I had never considered at all. So moral of the story is again don't plan on PCs necessarily investigating where you want or asking the questions you'd think they'd ask.
But, as I said, it was another great session, and brought to light (as you can see) a number of issues that'll hopefully make future ones even better. Emperor knows where the merry band of "The Good Guys" will end up next (hint: it won't be pleasant).
-HTMC
The first has to do with players. Although I already know they can be surprisingly inventive (especially the group I play with) I got lulled back into a false sense of security the first session, since everything pretty much went Blaykakudori (Blaykaku means Blake's Plan). This session was full of surprises, though, from having Jesse's character start a rock concert to attract the attention of some heretical guards, Aaron attempting to go Inception-like on an unconscious Navigator, and Max made a smart but not expected by me move of accessing security records for the ship. All of these were very good ideas and most of them ended up gaining the PCs some advantage, but also meant I was constantly adjusting, which was interesting. The Inquisitor campaign I did was much more railroaded, almost like an on-rails shooter, whereas this session was designed to be "you're on a ship, go whereever you want." Thus the more interesting ideas.
Probably the most unexpected one had do with Inquisitor Schuld (alternatively called many other things by PCs, who have an annoying habit of never remembering any NPCs name). My plan for him was to be a nice friendly trainer Inquisitor just for the ship-board portion of the campaign, and then once the Broodlord and Genestealers rushed onto the scene, he would valiantly take on the Broodlord and they would mutually murder each other. What I didn't expect was for my PCs to ignore the Genestealers (and be finished with the Servitors and Guardsmen) and focus their entire fire for a turn on the Broodlord. I obviously couldn't just let them do that without any effect, so the Broodlord ended up seriously mauled while Inquisitor Schuld (or Badassius if you're Max) waltzed in and finished him off. So in effect, my PCs saved an NPC I had earmarked for death. I suspect this will have significant ramifications later. I guess the moral of the story for me is be prepared for anything.
Another factor that I'm forced to be conscious of is game balance, not in the sense of difficulty but in activities. I have 5 PCs, all with different talents and foci, and it would be bad form to focus on one are too much. For instance, a couple of the PCs are definitely combat-focused, whereas one is pretty much all out of combat mischief. Overall they're lacking in people-skills (as they found out when their friendly cleric went AWOL and the person with the best people-skills was, of all things, a Tech-priest) and are stacked more so in the ranged department (again found out when their cleric disappeared and they all stuck to ranged fire). I think this last session struck a good balance, with about 2 hours of investigation and 1.5 of combat, and future sessions will hopefully be somewhat more tailored to skills they have and enemies will also be made with them in mind.
Finally, a third problem I encountered (that hopefully wasn't a problem) was again linked to PC initiative and creativity. Obviously I had a lot of background planning and stuff done, in terms of what has happened before the "session" starts and what is going on during it. Obviously this was meant to be discoverable by the PCs, although they can't do it naturally. The problem arises when they either fail their skill checks or they don't bite on the hooks you give them. For instance, had they investigated the cargo room before attacking it they likely would have learned about the weirdly broken boxes, but they didn't follow the hints I dropped and choose to go later purely on the attack, and thus not be able to investigate. Thus the Genestealer attack probably seemed a lot more out of the blue than I intended, although hopefully my after-action debriefing made it make a little bit more sense. Although I didn't hear any "wtf's?" from the players, when I brought them out I totally had a "seriously guys this has an explanation, trust me" mindset. And of course Rome choose to question things like shift schedules and guard rotations, something I had never considered at all. So moral of the story is again don't plan on PCs necessarily investigating where you want or asking the questions you'd think they'd ask.
But, as I said, it was another great session, and brought to light (as you can see) a number of issues that'll hopefully make future ones even better. Emperor knows where the merry band of "The Good Guys" will end up next (hint: it won't be pleasant).
-HTMC
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Sinister Sacrilege: The First Session
This past Thursday I ran the first session of my Dark Heresy Campaign. A post from the player's perspective (and a considerably more entertaining one at that) can be found out at Mister Flask's blog, but I will add my own thoughts in from the GM's perspective (also skip down below for some additions to what Mr. Flask wrote).
For the record, Dark Heresy is a pen and paper RPG set in the Warhammer 40k universe, and this game features myself GMing and 5 PCs all playing over the internet.
First off, a problem I forsaw but didn't suspect would be quite so large: programs. When I ran Inquisitor (another 40k RPG, but not quite as good) last January, it was text-only and so we ran it exclusively through Vassal (with some Skype group IMing supplementing). We all had had Skype for quite some time, and the 3 PCs (Stormshrug, Flask, and Jesse) had all used Vassal before with me to play tabletop 40k. So set-up was relatively painless.
However, the addition of Voice for this campaign made things considerably more difficult. Although I had tried to make sure everyone was set up ahead of time, here's how things went down.
6:00- Kory and Rome are on. Rome realizes Voxli, the internet based group chat program I had planned to use, wasn't compatible with Linux, which I didn't know he was running
7:00- Rome manages to get Mumble/Murmur (think open-source Ventrilo/TeamSpeak) running on a personal server. We start trying to get everyone to install Mumble.
8:00- Problems installing Mumble continue. We realize not everyone has Vassal up and runnin
9:00- Stormshrug arrives, needs to download both programs. Takes some time.
9:30- Flask arrives, needs to download Mumble. Takes some time
10:00- Rome decides to restart computer since he's made so many changes. Problems occur and the Murmer server goes down with it
10:30- Finally, everything seems to be working, although Flask is having significant difficulties hearing and being heard. We start anyway
11:00- Jesse arrives, downloads Mumble, joins later
12:00- We end.
So despite having everyone try to be on by 8, we don't actually start until 2.5 hours later and only play for 1.5 hours, and probably less than that when you factor in interruptions. However, the PCs were very efficient in that short time frame. Here's my synopsis, since unfortunately Flask left out a couple minor details, probably due to the aforementioned voice difficulties.
PCs awaken on a ship yanked out of the Warp, and are tasked with investigating. They first head to the Bridge and look around, questioning a man who looks like he's in charge (he was actually the First Officer, but the PCs never bothered to ask, for whatever reason). From there they proceeded to the Power Generator Room, which led to the Engine room, only to be blocked to to lack of access privileges. After a lot of diplomacy they managed to secure the name of a commanding officer, and headed to a prison ward to meet with him, and eventually managed to secure the necessary authorization to enter the engine room. They also got hints about strange goings-on on the ship prior to Warp trouble, which presumably occurred during the long period they were in a virtual reality machine undergoing training.
Anyway! Notes on the session from my perspective.
One problem I didn't foresee was accents, strangely enough. Because I was actually having to voice my NPCs, I felt it necessary to differentiate my voice between characters. I tended to fall back on a British one automatically, for whatever reason, although I think a Germanic one entered at one point. I'm not sure how good/bad they sounded, but it's definitely something to both practice and write down for important NPCs.
Speaking of which, I don't know how much my fellow members have noticed, but I tend to fall back on straight German when in need of a non-standard name (which isn't surprising given my recent Austrian adventure). For instance, my Orpheus character had the last name Gotteson and he was a priest (misspelling intentional), two of my Inquisitors are called Glaub and Schuld, and an upcoming character has the surname von Droß, among other things. I actually don't know how many of them ran these names through translators (and I'm sure they will now), but they're usually appropriate in some way. I don't feel too bad about this though, since even Games Workshop has given us the Death Korps of Krieg and the Mordian regiment (War and Murder, respectively). Although sometimes I feel like I'm getting a bit too particular (not everyone in 40k can be Germanic) it's very useful to have another language to draw upon, especially one that fits well with the universe.
I also designed this session to be a bit more open-world. The PCs managed to find a map in the beginning, and had their choice as to where to investigate. I actually made a number of maps of common rooms in the ship, and the PCs were free to go whereever they wanted. I did have some concern over what kind of options they would take, and did a kind of quick practice run through with Emma (i.e. you're here and this happened, what would you do next?) and the PCs actually matched fairly well what she did, which is pretty much what I was expecting. What I was not expecting was the number of high rolls the PCs managed, including a few rolls I thought they were definitely going to miss since they had pretty high difficulty. They also tended to do a lot more social interaction and less straight up investigating, although I'm not sure if that's the situation in particular or the way I'm setting up the scene, so we'll see.
One problem that I'm lucky I planned ahead for was power and authority. In the 40k universe, the Inquisition has essentially unlimited power and ultimate authority. I guessed (and correctly at that) that the PCs would naturally abuse this as much as possible, which is especially easy while onboard an Imperial vessel where theoretically they have ultimate control. The solution was to make the PCs still in training while aboard the vessel, and thus not be official members of the Inquisition. They naturally still had an Inquisitor boss to fall back on when needed (and they did a couple times) but this handicap kept them from just charging through and doing anything they wanted without repercussions, which made for a much more interesting session, I think.
Overall though, everything seemed to be going pretty well. Once all the electronic problems were resolved, everyone was in character and making smart decisions, and putting asides Flask's communication problems (due to lousy internet) everyone seemed engaged and involved, which I think is in no small part due to the addition of voice. I have high hopes for the continuation of this session this Thursday, especially since combat is likely, and it should be a blast as soon as they make it off the ship (well, assuming they survive that long).
On a final note, the one biggest thing I picked up from Inquisitor (the last campaign) that seems really obvious but I didn't catch onto right away was that as a GM, I'm playing with the PCs, not against them. I think the problem was that as a video game player, I'm by and large used to competitive gameplay, where I'm trying to always "win," although the objective and means may change. Even as a PC in the other RPGs, I was still trying to "win" against whatever the GM threw at us. Thus I went into Inquisitor as almost "me against the PCs," which reared his ugly head when a PC came up with a clever way around a trap, and rather than let him do it I said no because it didn't fit with what I had planned. Obviously this led to a sour mood, and although I realized my error a bit later and "fixed" it, I still felt really bad for a while afterwards. Although there was some RPGs where it is indeed GM vs. PCs, Dark Heresy I feel isn't one of them. The PCs want to be challenged, want the potential to lose, but I don't think they want to feel that the GM is out to get them. Rather, I'm there to set a good scene and give the chance to overcome hard odds, and my enjoyment comes more from seeing the creative ways and approaches the PCs take. I made my PCs put a lot of effort into character creation, and I think it would be hard for both me and them if one of them died (not to say I won't do it if that's what happens, since it is 40k after all, but again that's not my goal per se). An RPG is a social event, and should be fun for everyone, if challenging a lot of the time. And if I want to get my way while still GMing, well, that's what NPCs are for.
Comments as always are welcome! Expect more updates weekly as the campaign progresses.
-HTMC
For the record, Dark Heresy is a pen and paper RPG set in the Warhammer 40k universe, and this game features myself GMing and 5 PCs all playing over the internet.
First off, a problem I forsaw but didn't suspect would be quite so large: programs. When I ran Inquisitor (another 40k RPG, but not quite as good) last January, it was text-only and so we ran it exclusively through Vassal (with some Skype group IMing supplementing). We all had had Skype for quite some time, and the 3 PCs (Stormshrug, Flask, and Jesse) had all used Vassal before with me to play tabletop 40k. So set-up was relatively painless.
However, the addition of Voice for this campaign made things considerably more difficult. Although I had tried to make sure everyone was set up ahead of time, here's how things went down.
6:00- Kory and Rome are on. Rome realizes Voxli, the internet based group chat program I had planned to use, wasn't compatible with Linux, which I didn't know he was running
7:00- Rome manages to get Mumble/Murmur (think open-source Ventrilo/TeamSpeak) running on a personal server. We start trying to get everyone to install Mumble.
8:00- Problems installing Mumble continue. We realize not everyone has Vassal up and runnin
9:00- Stormshrug arrives, needs to download both programs. Takes some time.
9:30- Flask arrives, needs to download Mumble. Takes some time
10:00- Rome decides to restart computer since he's made so many changes. Problems occur and the Murmer server goes down with it
10:30- Finally, everything seems to be working, although Flask is having significant difficulties hearing and being heard. We start anyway
11:00- Jesse arrives, downloads Mumble, joins later
12:00- We end.
So despite having everyone try to be on by 8, we don't actually start until 2.5 hours later and only play for 1.5 hours, and probably less than that when you factor in interruptions. However, the PCs were very efficient in that short time frame. Here's my synopsis, since unfortunately Flask left out a couple minor details, probably due to the aforementioned voice difficulties.
PCs awaken on a ship yanked out of the Warp, and are tasked with investigating. They first head to the Bridge and look around, questioning a man who looks like he's in charge (he was actually the First Officer, but the PCs never bothered to ask, for whatever reason). From there they proceeded to the Power Generator Room, which led to the Engine room, only to be blocked to to lack of access privileges. After a lot of diplomacy they managed to secure the name of a commanding officer, and headed to a prison ward to meet with him, and eventually managed to secure the necessary authorization to enter the engine room. They also got hints about strange goings-on on the ship prior to Warp trouble, which presumably occurred during the long period they were in a virtual reality machine undergoing training.
Anyway! Notes on the session from my perspective.
One problem I didn't foresee was accents, strangely enough. Because I was actually having to voice my NPCs, I felt it necessary to differentiate my voice between characters. I tended to fall back on a British one automatically, for whatever reason, although I think a Germanic one entered at one point. I'm not sure how good/bad they sounded, but it's definitely something to both practice and write down for important NPCs.
Speaking of which, I don't know how much my fellow members have noticed, but I tend to fall back on straight German when in need of a non-standard name (which isn't surprising given my recent Austrian adventure). For instance, my Orpheus character had the last name Gotteson and he was a priest (misspelling intentional), two of my Inquisitors are called Glaub and Schuld, and an upcoming character has the surname von Droß, among other things. I actually don't know how many of them ran these names through translators (and I'm sure they will now), but they're usually appropriate in some way. I don't feel too bad about this though, since even Games Workshop has given us the Death Korps of Krieg and the Mordian regiment (War and Murder, respectively). Although sometimes I feel like I'm getting a bit too particular (not everyone in 40k can be Germanic) it's very useful to have another language to draw upon, especially one that fits well with the universe.
I also designed this session to be a bit more open-world. The PCs managed to find a map in the beginning, and had their choice as to where to investigate. I actually made a number of maps of common rooms in the ship, and the PCs were free to go whereever they wanted. I did have some concern over what kind of options they would take, and did a kind of quick practice run through with Emma (i.e. you're here and this happened, what would you do next?) and the PCs actually matched fairly well what she did, which is pretty much what I was expecting. What I was not expecting was the number of high rolls the PCs managed, including a few rolls I thought they were definitely going to miss since they had pretty high difficulty. They also tended to do a lot more social interaction and less straight up investigating, although I'm not sure if that's the situation in particular or the way I'm setting up the scene, so we'll see.
One problem that I'm lucky I planned ahead for was power and authority. In the 40k universe, the Inquisition has essentially unlimited power and ultimate authority. I guessed (and correctly at that) that the PCs would naturally abuse this as much as possible, which is especially easy while onboard an Imperial vessel where theoretically they have ultimate control. The solution was to make the PCs still in training while aboard the vessel, and thus not be official members of the Inquisition. They naturally still had an Inquisitor boss to fall back on when needed (and they did a couple times) but this handicap kept them from just charging through and doing anything they wanted without repercussions, which made for a much more interesting session, I think.
Overall though, everything seemed to be going pretty well. Once all the electronic problems were resolved, everyone was in character and making smart decisions, and putting asides Flask's communication problems (due to lousy internet) everyone seemed engaged and involved, which I think is in no small part due to the addition of voice. I have high hopes for the continuation of this session this Thursday, especially since combat is likely, and it should be a blast as soon as they make it off the ship (well, assuming they survive that long).
On a final note, the one biggest thing I picked up from Inquisitor (the last campaign) that seems really obvious but I didn't catch onto right away was that as a GM, I'm playing with the PCs, not against them. I think the problem was that as a video game player, I'm by and large used to competitive gameplay, where I'm trying to always "win," although the objective and means may change. Even as a PC in the other RPGs, I was still trying to "win" against whatever the GM threw at us. Thus I went into Inquisitor as almost "me against the PCs," which reared his ugly head when a PC came up with a clever way around a trap, and rather than let him do it I said no because it didn't fit with what I had planned. Obviously this led to a sour mood, and although I realized my error a bit later and "fixed" it, I still felt really bad for a while afterwards. Although there was some RPGs where it is indeed GM vs. PCs, Dark Heresy I feel isn't one of them. The PCs want to be challenged, want the potential to lose, but I don't think they want to feel that the GM is out to get them. Rather, I'm there to set a good scene and give the chance to overcome hard odds, and my enjoyment comes more from seeing the creative ways and approaches the PCs take. I made my PCs put a lot of effort into character creation, and I think it would be hard for both me and them if one of them died (not to say I won't do it if that's what happens, since it is 40k after all, but again that's not my goal per se). An RPG is a social event, and should be fun for everyone, if challenging a lot of the time. And if I want to get my way while still GMing, well, that's what NPCs are for.
Comments as always are welcome! Expect more updates weekly as the campaign progresses.
-HTMC
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Jumpin' on the bandwagon
So to avoid this blog standing at just an introduction, I shall follow up on a post made by my two cohorts-in-crimeGMing. The original posts can be found here and here.
To quickly actually write this down, here's my experience with tabletop RPGs (which have nothing to do with the far superior amount of hours spent with videogame RPGs)
1. Player in a Max/Aaron-co-DM'd, 13-session DnD campaign
2. GM'd a 4-session Inquisitor game
3. Player in a 6-sesssion Orpheus game GM'd by Rome
4. About to embark on an X-session Dark Heresy campaign, GM'd by me
Of those, all but one are/will be electronic only, and to further divide it 2 and 3 were text only while 4 will be text and voice.
With that said, I have overall more experience with face-to-face RPGs, but also a lot of electronic experience, and unlike Mr. Flask and Stormshrug (I think?) I have actually GM'd a session online, so I thought I'd contribute my two cents in that direction.
Advantages!
1. Maps. Especially for the 2 40k based systems that don't use a tile system, it has been way nicer and more convenient to create electronic maps, have electronic models, and do distance and movement without a lot of awkward use of rulers. Also quick switching to new maps is a lot easier.
2. Descriptions: As said elsewhere, the ability to copy-paste long descriptions and what I called "cutscenes" made it a lot easier to me to send out a lot at once, and because reading is more active than listening I could be relatively sure most of what I wrote was getting absorbed, at least somewhat.
3. Prioritizing: I know with the face-to-face, there would be moments where all 4 of us were trying to get Aaron/Max's attention, and obviously a person can only deal with so many inputs at once. I would end up trying to get the current DM's attention for a couple minutes, or have to wait patiently, or sometimes get my question forgot. This is no fault of anyone's, since a person can only pay attention to so much at once, but with text-only I can respond in order and look back at all the questions to see what I need to still address, which helps both the players and the GM.
4. Resources: When I GM'd Inquisitor, I had two monitors up, and on them I had the game board, a dice roller, Skype for the IMing, my planned notes, an electronic copy of the rules, notes for the current session, a browser up for quick searching, as well as a physical copy of the rules next to me. This made looking things up and dealing with problems super efficient, and it's simply not possible to have so much stuff up in face-to-face unless you steal an entire half of the table. And certainly not as efficient.
Disadvantages!
1. Side chatting: I've definitely done this as a player, so it's understandable, but as a face-to-face DM you're always partial to conversations players have, which means you can potentially shoot down bad/unreasonable ideas before too much thought is put into them. However, with online you can get players making plans in private chats, which means that they can potentially come up with elaborate plans that might have a fatal overlooked flaw (I don't think this has happened, but I could see it occurring). It can also cause players to get distracted from the main screen, since I know there were a few moments where I thought players weren't paying attention but were just talking to each other. Hopefully adding voice will prevent the latter.
2. Rules look-up: In face-to-face you can find a rule/power/etc and look at it together, whereas online you have to find it yourself, tell the player(s) the page, wait for them to find it themselves, and then discuss it. Not necessarily a lot of extra time, but it's still more slow-down in what is already a nuisance that pulls players out of the moment.
3. Friendly chatting: Although on one hand out-of-character conversation is bad, on the other you are gathered with your friends for a social event, so that kind of chatter can be very enjoyable. Being limited to a chatroom limits this a lot, and even though voice chatting should help a lot, considering how much communication is nonverbal I suspect it still won't be quite the same.
Conclusion(?)
Obviously while I do have the edge of GMing electronically, I don't have the experience of GMing face-to-face to compare it with, so I am at somewhat of a disadvantage for comparing the two. Although it's somewhat of a cop-out, it's probably safe to say that both methods have their benefits, and it might even be that certain systems benefit from one style more than the other. With that said, I'm really glad I have electronic means for breaks when physical meeting is impossible.
Well, that's the first real post. Now to hopefully remember all those other topics I thought it'd be interesting to write about and start on that. Also expect updates on Dark Heresy once we start.
-HTMC
To quickly actually write this down, here's my experience with tabletop RPGs (which have nothing to do with the far superior amount of hours spent with videogame RPGs)
1. Player in a Max/Aaron-co-DM'd, 13-session DnD campaign
2. GM'd a 4-session Inquisitor game
3. Player in a 6-sesssion Orpheus game GM'd by Rome
4. About to embark on an X-session Dark Heresy campaign, GM'd by me
Of those, all but one are/will be electronic only, and to further divide it 2 and 3 were text only while 4 will be text and voice.
With that said, I have overall more experience with face-to-face RPGs, but also a lot of electronic experience, and unlike Mr. Flask and Stormshrug (I think?) I have actually GM'd a session online, so I thought I'd contribute my two cents in that direction.
Advantages!
1. Maps. Especially for the 2 40k based systems that don't use a tile system, it has been way nicer and more convenient to create electronic maps, have electronic models, and do distance and movement without a lot of awkward use of rulers. Also quick switching to new maps is a lot easier.
2. Descriptions: As said elsewhere, the ability to copy-paste long descriptions and what I called "cutscenes" made it a lot easier to me to send out a lot at once, and because reading is more active than listening I could be relatively sure most of what I wrote was getting absorbed, at least somewhat.
3. Prioritizing: I know with the face-to-face, there would be moments where all 4 of us were trying to get Aaron/Max's attention, and obviously a person can only deal with so many inputs at once. I would end up trying to get the current DM's attention for a couple minutes, or have to wait patiently, or sometimes get my question forgot. This is no fault of anyone's, since a person can only pay attention to so much at once, but with text-only I can respond in order and look back at all the questions to see what I need to still address, which helps both the players and the GM.
4. Resources: When I GM'd Inquisitor, I had two monitors up, and on them I had the game board, a dice roller, Skype for the IMing, my planned notes, an electronic copy of the rules, notes for the current session, a browser up for quick searching, as well as a physical copy of the rules next to me. This made looking things up and dealing with problems super efficient, and it's simply not possible to have so much stuff up in face-to-face unless you steal an entire half of the table. And certainly not as efficient.
Disadvantages!
1. Side chatting: I've definitely done this as a player, so it's understandable, but as a face-to-face DM you're always partial to conversations players have, which means you can potentially shoot down bad/unreasonable ideas before too much thought is put into them. However, with online you can get players making plans in private chats, which means that they can potentially come up with elaborate plans that might have a fatal overlooked flaw (I don't think this has happened, but I could see it occurring). It can also cause players to get distracted from the main screen, since I know there were a few moments where I thought players weren't paying attention but were just talking to each other. Hopefully adding voice will prevent the latter.
2. Rules look-up: In face-to-face you can find a rule/power/etc and look at it together, whereas online you have to find it yourself, tell the player(s) the page, wait for them to find it themselves, and then discuss it. Not necessarily a lot of extra time, but it's still more slow-down in what is already a nuisance that pulls players out of the moment.
3. Friendly chatting: Although on one hand out-of-character conversation is bad, on the other you are gathered with your friends for a social event, so that kind of chatter can be very enjoyable. Being limited to a chatroom limits this a lot, and even though voice chatting should help a lot, considering how much communication is nonverbal I suspect it still won't be quite the same.
Conclusion(?)
Obviously while I do have the edge of GMing electronically, I don't have the experience of GMing face-to-face to compare it with, so I am at somewhat of a disadvantage for comparing the two. Although it's somewhat of a cop-out, it's probably safe to say that both methods have their benefits, and it might even be that certain systems benefit from one style more than the other. With that said, I'm really glad I have electronic means for breaks when physical meeting is impossible.
Well, that's the first real post. Now to hopefully remember all those other topics I thought it'd be interesting to write about and start on that. Also expect updates on Dark Heresy once we start.
-HTMC
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)