Never Trust an Old GM

So I have been away for a week an my own adventure that netted absolutely no gold or  experience points. I shall pause only to point out that I walked passed  a Warhammer shop in Helsinki. Specifically I didn't go in to see if it was actually war hammers they were selling as it was closed; the owner was absent presumably because his son had been captured by internet trolls.

 

So piecing the week's email evidence together it would seem that GM Bill has been having some fun with our 13th Age Party and life insurance may have to be cashed in. Quote:

"Life can be hard sometimes.
You're a big fierce Ankheg, you fear nothing.  You're enjoying a relaxing day, lurking in your burrow, when a whole row of meals arrive.  Juicy soft little creatures, no exoskeletons, you can just bite straight into them and eat to your heart's content.

That's how it was supposed to work.

But then somehow they turn out to have sharp bits, and weird explosions of fire and stuff, and before you know it you're losing legs left, right and centre and really not feeling king of the hill any more.

And then, to add insult to injury, the adventurers you barely scratched get themselves utterly mauled by a mere ochre jelly.

Bill"
 

Given the options between fighting a rather ugly, giant insectoid or a yellow jelly, I can see how guards may have been let down here. I would suppose jelly is something you have to reward yourself with after a particularly trying day or something to indulge in at Christmas.

 

Just remember folks, wobbly, delicious deserts are no trifling matter and can have you for Christmas too !

 

 

Five, Six, Seven

Over the past few weeks, I've been running my group through the fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons playtest. I will admit that I was not optimistic as I hated D&D4 and while I've enjoyed playing Pathfinder, it's more complicated than I like. I appreciate the retroclones for how they've opened up old-school gaming to a new audience, but most of them have mechanics or assumptions that I find difficult to accept; the notable exception to this is James Raggi's Lamentations of the Flame Princess, which I've mentioned before. It has the simple mechanics I prefer, but introduces a number of welcome tweaks to the basic D&D system, making it close to my perfect version of The Game.

All that said, D&D5 has impressed me. It has the same kind of mechanical simplicity as Basic D&D, so I can run it without breaking my brain, but it also seems -- the character generation rules have not yet been released for testing -- to provide enough complexity on the characters' side to keep my players -- who missed the mechanical options of Pathfinder when we played LotFP -- interested and happy. It does have some problems -- player-characters are perhaps too tough at first level, and spells are a bit erratic in terms of power; sleep in particular is either useless or overpowered, depending on the target -- but it's a first draft playtest, so such glitches are to be expected. My big fear for the final published product was that it would add more and more complicated parts to keep the D&D3 and D&D4 fans on board, but recent comments by Mike Mearls have suggested that a simple and streamlined core rules package is a goal for the design team, so I have high hopes. If all else fails, we'll just carry on playing it using the playtest documents!

Also on the way -- but arriving much sooner -- is the sixth edition of Warhammer 40,000. I entered the Games Workshop Hobby™ during the Rogue Trader days, but the boxed second edition of 40K was the one I played the most. I stopped playing with the release of the third edition, in part because I disliked some of the rules changes, but for the main part because of my two armies -- a Genestealer Cult and a small Ork force -- the first was invalidated by the edition change -- although an army list was later published in the Citadel Journal -- and the second was rendered unplayable by the game's general reduction of points values. I did pick up the fourth edition second hand but never played it, and the fifth passed me by; from what I can tell, the latter releases have been minor tweaks and polishes of the third, and as I never much liked that ruleset to begin with I haven't been moved to get involved again. The modern game looks absurd to my old eyes, with so many vehicles crammed on to a table that's far too small for them -- back when I played, the only vehicles available were the Rhino and the Ork Battlewagon -- making it look like a game of Space Marine played -- to paraphrase John Peel -- at the wrong scale. As such, unless the sixth edition brings revolutionary changes to the mechanics, I doubt that I will be signing up, but even so I've found myself interested in playing the game again.

Part of this is due to gaming at Stuart's place; while I've been enjoying our fantasy and historical battles, the Grim Darkness of the Far Future™ has always been where I've felt most at home. Part of it is to do with recent nostalgic discussions with friends who either play or used to play, and part is in discovering people like Warhammer Joey, who show such an honest enthusiasm for the game. I'm sure the announcement of the sixth edition had something to do with it too, even if I never buy the thing.

So I've decided to dip my toe back in and put together a small 500 point force. I'm going to go with the Eldar, as I had an Epic-scale army but never got a chance to see them in action in 40K; no one I knew had an Eldar army and they always seemed rather neglected by White Dwarf. I'm going to make no effort whatsoever to make it a competitive army and the troop choice will be made on the basis of the models I like, which in most cases means the older pre-third edition designs. I tend to have a 40K craving once or twice a year that comes to nothing and this one may also fizzle out, but we'll see.

Of all upcoming gaming releases, the most exciting for me has to be Call of Cthulhu's seventh edition, which I believe is going to be getting a preview -- if not an actual release -- at this year's Gen Con. I suspect it won't be too different to the previous six editions, but I've heard that the new rules will have some innovations; much as I love the game, it could do with a bit of mechanical tweaking in places, so I'm keen to see what the writers do in this regard. I own two previous editions and don't need another one, but I'm on board anyway, because it's one of my favourite role-playing games.

All in all, I have plenty to look forward to in terms of gaming in the next few months, but I'm a little wary of the effect all this will have on my bank balance!

Musings on Ian & the use of pre-written materials.

Kelvin's neat little article on Ian Livingstone on his soapbox got me thinking this morning.... and being on my summer holidays, with a brief window of TIME, I put fingers to the keyboard and got typing!  Here are some follow up thoughts from a busy GM!

The question was - do prewritten adventures aide in the roleplaying experience or hold people back?

Me at work ;)

As someone who is normally up to their eyeballs in work/ doing stuff....... my general view has always been to laugh at the 'snobbery' of the 'purist'..... but I have never been a diceless rpg-man/ LARPer or desired to be on stage as an actor...... and whereas in the past I loved intricate plots, red/dead herrings and spending hours on a backstory etc (running Masks of Nyarlathotep every week for over 2 years).... that was WAY BACK THEN when I was obviously insane, had tons of energy.... now I am knackered most of the time and need a decent bit of killing in a session to stay conscious! But I digress.  ;)

Prewritten modules, if well chosen (afterall there are plenty of duffers out there - so I am careful), and appropriately adapted in advance (thank you paizo message boards for kingmaker!!), IMHO, can help a busy GM!!! Without using such things, I sometimes would have run nothing...for ages!  Pathfinder is a stat heavy game and thus it has been great to have that side of things handled in the Adventure Paths Paizo churn out.  Moreover their stories, NPCs, flavour etc in the APs are top-notch.

Eg: The Carrion Crown Adventure Path.


I have been slowly amassing resources to run this at some point in in the not too distant future. Each scenario has advice on music - which I have gone and bought various cds.... as well as the appropriate map tiles....minis.... The message boards, like for Kingmaker, are chock-full of advice on problems in enounter design, or on motivational issues etc...  I really liked the ideas of the path - and having read the whole thing and have a solid overview of where this thing is going helps you, as a ref, set up the game from the beginning with pc and party design... There is still tons of work to do to bring the games to life - to breathe life into npcs, to make sure there are options for pcs so they can achieve/ fail at things and there are consequences for that.... and in the case of Carrion Crown, to reflect on, with the players, the horror mechanics and sanity loss in the game and other 'touches'..... especially since Carrion Crown will be a big change from the current sandbox style of play we are liking in my current WFRP Marienburg game El Kel has flagged up on this blog, in his Tales of the Jolly Butchers.  ;)

But I am prepared to admit that pre-written adventures can get in the way of a good game.

I played in a brief game of a game that will not be mentioned by name or genre....but some of you may have fond memories! It quickly became apparent that the GM not only had no understanding of the rules system (only one player did since it was new), but that they had not read the massive 100 + page adventure!! The gang quickly got bored, started sand boxing  away from the attempts to show horn us into a fixed path, and eventually destroyed the 'set', ending the game. Classic!!  I don't to say any more since I don't want to bruise any egos :S

Having believed for ages that I didn't have the mental space to create my own stuff, with work being insane, I realise now that I have used published materials as a prop... And that I have let this prop at times ' wag the dog', do to speak.... In that by relying on them, I was limiting my roleplaying possibilities and experiences.

I have always been aware of this...but the complexity of some systems always put me off writing my own material....

Take Deadlands. Great ideas. First edition Deadlands was a nightmare system...manageable if you were a player - but an act of love and dedication to make work as a GM.... But I loved it still... But the scenarios were utter garbage!!! So we never managed to play more than a mini series of games before time to stat up and create stuff ran out!





Same for Fading Suns: I loved the setting, the writing, the art..... like Deadlands it is a fantastic game - BUT-  for me, their in-house Victory Point system sucked!! & thus was tricky to create material for


All of these games have encouraged me to run pre made stuff.......






HOWEVER....more recently running Pathfinder at 12th level.... Nightmare!!!! So much prep for the poorly designed encounters in Kingmaker (loved the idea of Kingmaker- it falls apart in books 3-5)...... plus...interestingly... we have been having this debate about how Pathfinders Kingmaker was not a real sandbox, my gang got talking about creating our own (which started and then stopped)...although we couldn't agree on a system....in the meantime, I got worn out by the poor design of the high level scenarios in pathfinder's Kingmaker (which were not designed with the powers of pcs of that level in mind!!), as well as the general intensity of rules at that level and stuff you have to know in your head (eg all the spells of witches, mages and clerics to level 7, & what all the short hand terms in the bestiaries mean!!)...involving tons of prep every week..... I thought s#d this....I need a rest!!

& somehow, by chance, I thought let's try my bonkers "GTA meets the Sopranos" game and set it in WFRP (since I love the game, as I realised the others did - and for some reason we hadn't played any together!!) and Marienburg it was....to play a proper sandbox, not Kingmaker's faux sandbox - thus there was to be no over-arching metaplot.... And, without any premade material, other than the Marienburg book from which I have used a rough map and some names.... It has been my own work needing minimal prep because the system is so much easier than pathfinder! Thus the stories and adventures of the Jolly Butchers was born! & born in a busy time for me... despite the madness of life, I found the energy and joy to create and run stuff for it.....


Admittedly I now need to do some more homework on the sandbox and flesh out the next possible npcs, locations of interest, and random tables and stat them. But I am loving it. But also, having said that, I look forward to running Carrion Crown in late 2011, if there are enough players in my gang, and if I can tear them away from the Mean Streets of Marienburg ;)  Especially since I intend to run a seperate sandbox in the same city, with new pcs as detectives.... possibly ones with 'the gift', as in spellcasters, rooting out deviltry, occult, and all things chaos to keep the streets and canals of Marienburg safe (or probably make them less safe after they have accidentally opened up a chaos gate and sucked the city through it!  ;)

Oh dear..... where did Marienburg go? Can I re-roll?

Three Sheet Firefight

There's a new version of Small But Vicious Dog out, and it's even better than the last. I spent the morning reading it, and it's clear that something in it inspired me, as I then went off to write a very quick and dirty skirmish wargame.

It's very basic, and it has a fair bit of Nottinghamshire DNA in it, albeit more from Blood Bowl and Epic than either of the Warhammers. It's intended for quick games with whatever figures are available, and it's more than likely full of all sorts of holes and problems; since I haven't yet played it, I can't predict what they'll be, but the turn order might be a bit wobbly. Still, if you fancy it you can download it here, and if you do, please let me know how you get on.

Return to Orc's Drift

Stuart was home alone over the weekend, so a couple of us went over to his place to play the second scenario in the Orc's Drift campaign. Ric had observed the last few rounds of the first battle and is a veteran Warhammer 40,000 player -- discussion turned to that after the game, and if we can scrape together some armies, we might have a battle, perhaps using the Killzone skirmish rules -- whereas I'd played the orcs last time, and Stuart once again took the role of referee. Ric gave me the choice of armies, and since the first scenario was weighted towards the orcs, I decided to play as the defenders this time, a small group of dwarven gold miners.

You'd be forgiven for not spotting the dwarves in this picture, as there are only about eleven of them, whereas the orcs brought this lot along:

Half-Term Blood Bath

Stuart at The Great Game likes to run a gaming day every so often during the half-term holidays; it's a canny way of keeping his kids entertained without him having to do all the heavy lifting, and he gets to get in some quality gaming at the same time. I tend to miss these days, as although I work in education I don't get the half-term break, but it happened to match up with a day off I already had booked, so the Stars Were Right.

The day began with a scenario from the Warhammer campaign Blood Bath at Orc's Drift, from back in the day when Warhammer had narrative campaigns, although we played it using the more modern The Lord of the Rings rules. I had no experience of these rules, as they were introduced long after I left the Games Workshop Hobby for more inexpensive pursuits, like polonium-210 trading, but the game was very easy to pick up and play and seemed to me to be a more streamlined and elegant version of the Warhammer ruleset, so I'm keen to play another episode of the campaign.

My side won the battle, slaughtering the elven garrison to a man, er, elf, aside from one pointy-eared coward who fled into the forests where my orcs could not follow. In fairness, Stuart's young son handled the opposing forces on his own, while I had both a larger force and a co-general -- although Ben surprised us all with the revelation that he'd never played a tabletop wargame in all his many years of gaming! -- and the scenario was weighted in our favour.

Oh, and we also had a giant.

After a lunch break, Stuart's son ran a bonkers freeform sandbox type of thing which -- despite using the Pathfinder rules -- felt much more old-school. We had a great deal of freedom, and the game seemed heavy on random tables and on-the-spot adjudications, all of which was a great deal of fun and felt very liberating. We did wonder later on whether it was worth using Pathfinder at all if we were going to ignore most of the rules, a subject with which I've struggled before, but the GM didn't seem to have any problem with it and ran a very fine game, so that's probably our answer.

While I enjoyed the Pathfinder game, the highlight for me was the Lord of the Warhammerings battle, which reminded me of how much I enjoyed playing tabletop wargames before I was priced out of the hobby. I'm half-tempted to buy a box of orcs, you know, just for old time's sake.

One Issue Campaign, UK Edition

I've decided to have a go at Jeff's brilliant idea. First of all, here are the rules:

1. Start with set of core rules, preferably one a small amount of setting material or a strongly implied setting. Too much setting info will spoil the soup I think, while none whatsoever will serve as an insufficient basis.
2. Get a single issue of Dragon or some other gaming mag.
3. Squeeze every possible of iota of usable information out of that magazine and nothing else to flesh out a campaign for your ruleset.

I don't think I've ever owned a single issue of Dragon, so I'm breaking the rules already. Delving in my rpg box, I have uncovered White Dwarf #67, from July 1985, somewhere in the middle of the magazine's Back When It Was Good period.

In this post, I'm going to go through the magazine and pull out the most useful material as it strikes me. In the next post, I'll try to meld it all together into a playable campaign.

Let's start with the cover, by Mark Bromley. We've got a warrior -- perhaps a proto-Warhammer Chaos Warrior -- bursting through a wooden door, only he's not. From his pose, we can see he's not moving forward with any great speed, and yet the door has been smashed to the ground, and one of the metal hinges has been bent out of shape. This suggests either that the warrior is moving through a gap someone else has already made, or he's of such great strength he doesn't have to take a run up to annihilate a wooden door. It's also not clear if he's human; there's an element of dwarfishness to him, but the door also seems to be scaled to his size.

Jeff's cover star became the main villain of his campaign, but I don't think this fellow is destined for that. Instead, let's say he is a dwarf, and let's also say that he's possessed of some kind of Juggernaut type ability with which he can deliver massive kinetic blows without a run up. Behold the Juggerdwarf!

Inside, we've got adverts for what appears to be a Games Workshop edition of Middle-Earth Roleplaying as well as Grenadier Miniatures' UK division. There's not much there to steal, although the Grenadier page has a photo of a samurai taking on two ninjas, and that's worth importing.

After that, there's a nomination form for the Games Day '85 awards, including an award for "Best Games Magazine"; given where the form is printed, and that Games Day is run by Games Workshop, I'd be surprised if the Dwarf did not go on to win this one. It does give me the idea of including some form of -- potentially rigged -- election or contest in the campaign.

After that there's the contents page and a superficial editorial from Ian Livingstone -- perhaps the above election is to install or depose a limp figurehead -- then a three page article on ghosts in Call of Cthulhu. Since this is actual game material we should use it, but it's also quite detailed, so ghosts will be a big part of the campaign and they'll have lots of special abilities as per the article. I am not turning down the chance to use a power called "Psychic Violence".

More adverts follow but there's little to swipe, aside from this delightful fellow from a strange graffiti-inspired advert for the UK series of D&D modules:

I'm not sure if this beast appears in any of the scenarios, but he's in the campaign, disco lights and all.

Reviews follow, for Star Ace, the second, third and fourth Dragonlance scenarios, and Monster Coliseum [sic] for RuneQuest. There's not much to borrow from most of the reviews, but the colosseum is in, so somewhere in the campaign setting will be a place where characters can fight captured monsters and perhaps gain employment; someone has to go out and capture the things in the first place, after all. Reviewer Oliver Dickinson has a moan about the price of the boxed set -- £16.96, or just over £40 in today's money -- so that'll be a feature of the campaign colosseum too; while it's a popular entertainment, it is considered expensive, but then it's the only game in town... until the players get involved.

Dave Langford's book reviews are next, and the most interesting thing here is the review of Brian Aldiss' Helliconia Summer, which makes me want to include great big century-long seasons in the setting. The next article is a piece on barbarian magic in RuneQuest, so we'll borrow that too, which means that we have to make room for a barbarian culture somewhere.

Thrud the Barbarian -- king of the aforementioned culture? -- follows, with Lymara the She Wildebeeste using her ample curves to distract some opponents before beheading them. That's all there is to the strip, but I'm sure we can find a space for Lymara and Thrud in our campaign. After that we have the first of the issue's scenarios, Peking Duck, a multi-faction brawl set in a Chinese restaurant in modern-day London, and with statistics for Champions and the mighty Golden Heroes, now known as Squadron UK. This may be difficult to include in a fantasy campaign without considerable modification.

Then we have an episode of The Travellers -- see a digitally remastered version here -- involving an NPC patron with arbitrary, dice-based reactions to the protagonists. Of course this is in. Facing this is a single page article on social customs in Traveller; it's basic stuff, but it prompts me to decide that social rules and customs will be a big part of this One Issue Campaign.

More adverts follow, then a mystery scenario for AD&D1, A Murder at Flaxton. Or rather, the first page of said scenario, then an early pull-out Citadel Miniatures catalogue. It features Citadel's The Lord of the Rings range -- I'm not sure if we can use that -- as well as some great hobgoblin and orc miniatures; as such, hobgoblins and orcs will be the major humanoid races in the campaign. As an aside, a set of three Citadel miniatures would have set you back between £1.50 and £1.95 in 1985, or about £5 in modern coinage. Hobgoblins are 60p each!

A Murder at Flaxton is an investigative scenario involving dwarf smugglers -- as in smugglers who are dwarves -- slavers and pirates. It's a low-level scenario, with the NPCs hovering around third level, but it might make for a good starting point. Aside from the maps, the main illustration is what looks like an early John Blanche piece showing dwarves drinking from bottles of Bugman's Best Rum, implying that the scenario is set in the Warhammer world. I don't think we'll go that far.

Even more adverts follow, including one with a picture of a nude woman with very 80's hair, make up and earrings, covered in blood and wielding two glittering swords. As a modern enlightened male, I of course deplore such horrible, exploitative cheesecake, but as a gamer I recognise that it's so over-the-top that I have to include it somewhere. After that there's the letters page, which like every other White Dwarf letters page in history is full of people moaning about how wrong White Dwarf is getting pretty much everything; the campaign will feature a bunch of grumpy old dwarves who can't stop going on about how rubbish everything is. They may be involved with the rigged election.

Following that, we have two pages on various different ways spiders in AD&D1 can kill a character. I doubt anyone has ever used this in the twenty-five years since it saw print, so let's be the first and make spiders a major hazard in this One Issue Campaign. Then we have more adverts, including one showcasing Games Workshop's seven -- yes, seven! -- shops, and featuring pygmy orcs with parachutes:

Holy Hecuba in a hairnet, these little chaps are definitely in.

The next article is the good old Fiend Factory but instead of the usual gonzo monsters, we're given the Vivimancer, an odd sort of prestige class for high level AD&D1 characters. It's not clear if this is intended for players, although since they are barred from the Prime Material Plane and only increase in level once every fifty years, I'd guess not. They seem to be a Neutral Good equivalent of the lich and use enchanted flowers to focus their magical abilities; even so, I think we have found our campaign villain.

More adverts follow -- and people say it became a glorified catalogue only after Games Workshop booted out all the rpg stuff -- but one has a picture of a centaur in a bowler hat, so he's in. Then there's Tabletop Heroes, which would eventually become the regular 'Eavy Metal modelling and painting pages, and is here hosted by Joe "Lone Wolf" Dever, although John "John Blanche" Blanche is hovering about in the shadows. There's little of interest here, although one of the figures covered is a Citadel Miniatures Jabberwock, and they're such great monsters that I have to include them in the campaign.

Then there's an article on magical backpacks, all of which have some kind of minor teleportation ability, and I can definitely see them getting some use. Then there's an advert for GURPS which is just pictures of a superhero, a Viking, a British "redcoat", a knight, two stetson-and-sixgun-toting Western characters, a Roman legionnaire and a couple of brutish monsters; this mismatched group will find their way into the campaign, I'm sure. After that, there's a news page, more adverts, the ever-popular small ads -- which could be a whole blog post in itself, although I will note for now that Jonathan Welfare of Tavistock Road is offering the all-new gladiator character class for the bargain price of £1 plus a stamped-addressed envelope -- then two colour adverts, one on the inside back cover for Citadel starter sets -- adventurers and monsters -- and one on the outside for Citadel's D&D miniature line; there are no examples of the latter, although the artwork looks like early Blanche again, and features a warrior and a wizard in mêlée with a green dragon. This pair of idiots may very well make it in.

So there you have it, White Dwarf #67 more or less cover-to-cover, with most of the playable material stripped out. Next up, I'll try to turn that lot into a campaign. I will also be choosing a ruleset, which I should have done at the beginning, but I'm a maverick, and if the pencil-pushers at City Hall don't like that, then they can shove it!

---

EDIT: The second part of the exercise can be found here.

Blood Bowl (Nintendo DS)

Games Workshop's Warhammer is a juggernaut of a franchise. Its runaway success has changed the company from a single hobby shop in Hammersmith to an international corporation, and the game has expanded beyond the tabletop into board games, role-playing games, video games, MMORPGs, novels, comics, and even, in the latter stages of 2010, a straight-to-dvd film, although reviews haven't been too good on that last one.

Warhammer is the company's core product, but there's also a horde of lesser games, lost to the mists of time and commanding high prices on eBay, stuff like Chainsaw Warrior and Lost Patrol. Somewhere in between is a middle tier of games that have never been huge money-spinners, but have remained popular enough to remain in production, on and off, throughout the company's life. Blood Bowl is one of these, a Warhammer-ised version of American football, with orcs and goblins beating seven shades out of dwarves and elves, and with maybe a touchdown or two thrown in. In the game, players take it in turns to advance their teams up the pitch, seize the ball, and through applied brutality, agile footwork, or dead-eye accuracy, attempt to get the ball into the end zone to score. Their chances of doing so are modified by their teams' skills and statistics as well as a significant amount of luck, as generated by the rolling of dice.

In 2009, Blood Bowl was released to a number of video game platforms, including this DS version. It lacks the 3D environment of the PC and console releases, opting for a isometric viewpoint; while some may view this as a negative, and it does at first glance seem like a retrograde move back to the 16-bit era and a waste of the DS' capabilities, the viewpoint works in the game's favour, allowing for a wider field -- pun intended -- of vision, as befits what is, after all, a game of strategy.

Similarly, the lack of a real-time mode turns out to be a missing feature which is not missed, as the end result is something which is more or less a straight translation of the board game into electronic form. The original board game is strong enough that 3D graphics and arcade-style gameplay are not improvements but unnecessary distractions, and for whatever reason they were removed from the DS edition, it has resulted in a better game. The fidelity to the source material also means that those players who want a quick game of Blood Bowl, but can't find an opponent or don't have the space to set up the board, can instead whip out the DS and indulge. There is also a rudimentary local multiplayer option, as well as a "hot seat" mode, which may be a misnomer on a portable system.

All that said, some features are indeed missed, such as the wilder players and options some of the teams bring along with them, and while eight types of team are included it is disappointing that evocative races such as the dark elves and undead have been overlooked. It is possible however that only those familiar with the original game will miss these bells and whistles, as the core gameplay offers plenty of complexity to keep strategic thinkers happy. On the other hand, those same strategic thinkers may not be quite as happy with the difficulty of the game; while the single-player mode will prove a challenge due to an aggressive CPU, the AI does on occasion seem to engage in some wild and hare-brained schemes, such as sending players to the far corners of the pitch to await passes which are never likely to come, or withdrawing strong blockers from the front lines, and so on.

The game benefits from good graphics, with good designs and smooth animation, although it would have been nice to have some variation in how the players moved. There are some neat cut scenes during the game, with the referee stepping in to conduct the opening coin toss and adjudicate fouls, and so on, and there are is a brief appearance from the game's commentators, familiar to those who have played the board game. Perhaps the most important cut scene of all is that which plays when a touchdown is scored, and alas this is the most disappointing, with dodgy-looking cheerleaders and no variation in the animation at all; it would have been a neat touch to have included burly orc cheerleaders, ethereal elven cheerleaders, bearded dwarven cheerleaders, and so on. The game also lacks much in the way of music, with only one or two tunes in evidence, although perhaps a wise move to shun in-game music, which could have become annoying with individual matches taking up to an hour to play.

This lack of polish can sometimes be an annoyance, but the game survives. There are some glitches in the code that may prove to be a more fatal issue. Outside a match, the game can sometimes take a long time to move between screens, which could be put down to loading times were it not for the simple fact that Blood Bowl is a cartridge-based title. At times, the game can lock up during these pauses, necessitating a restart and the subsequent loss of data, most annoying during a league game where a team has built up money and experience over a season. Other editions have been fixed by updates, and a new version of the game was released in 2010, but neither have made it to the DS alas.

All in all, Blood Bowl on the DS is a very basic game, and the lack of features and polish can be a bit disappointing at times. That said, the core gameplay is strong, a faithful adaptation of a great board game and at the end of the day, it's the gameplay that matters most.

Absolutely Nothing!

Yesterday Stuart posted some musings about wargaming, and it got me thinking about the fine art of pushing little tin lead white metal soldiers about a table.

As a teenager I did a fair bit of wargaming, although it was all of the Games Workshop variety, aside from one afternoon playing The War Machine mass combat rules from the D&D Rules Cyclopedia. I have a poor head for tactics, one that borders on the comedic -- some of my opponents might say moronic -- so I was never much good at these games; I won my first game of Warhammer Fantasy Battle with a bold undead cavalry charge and thrashed a GW staff member at a display game of the then-new Epic 40,000, but aside from a long unbeaten run at Warhammer 40,000 -- because Genestealers were very, very broken in the first two editions -- that was the extent of my success as a general. Even so I still had great fun playing, before rising costs and rules changes -- in the case of 40K a combination of both, with the increase in the basic army size in the third edition -- pushed me out of the hobby.

Also, if I'm honest, I'm rubbish at the painting. I have a smidegeon of artistic talent, but I can't transfer that to the painting of figures to save my life. My neon pink Genestealer Cult is an embarrassment to this day.

So that's why I don't play these games any more, despite there being a sizeable community of tabletop wargamers here in Brighton. I'd love to play, but I can't afford an army and even if I could, it would look like a four-year-old painted it. A blind four-year-old. With no hands.

Even so, Stuart's post woke my long-dormant love of wargames, and so I did some poking around. Even after being out of the hobby for over a decade, I knew enough to know that Warmachine is a popular alternative to the Nottingham hegemony, and I've seen some of the models in use in our various role-playing game campaigns, so I know that they're well designed bits of kit. The game is based around small warbands -- just like the Warhammers back in the day -- which might make the painting a bit less painful for me, and the game's emphasis on the mechanised warjacks with infantry as support reminded me of the Workshop's Space Marine, my favourite of all their wargames, despite being no more successful at it than anything else.

Then I saw the cost of the models, comparable to GW's pricing but for even less stuff, and that killed my interest in Warmachine. Maybe if I win the lottery. In the meantime, the world is spared my neon pink Cygnar warjacks.

So that was that, but then for some reason the Dreaded and Unmentionable D&D4 popped into my head, perhaps because it's often criticised as a wargame masquerading as an rpg. I don't think that's entirely fair, as it's more that the strong emphasis on the combat system makes it very easy to ignore everything else, but it did get me wondering about what could happen if one embraced that criticism and played D&D4 as a wargame.

The first step would be to create an interesting battlefield, with lots of environmental features to add some tactical flexibility to the game. Pits, areas of difficult terrain, things to climb on, and so on, nothing too unfamiliar to the average wargamer. After that's done, there seem to be two options:

• Classic Mode in which one -- or more -- player creates a party of heroes and pits them against a monstrous force. This would be D&D4 as written, more or less, only there'd be no plot or role-playing, as the emphasis would be on the battle, which has the handy side-effect of heading off the problem of the fight taking up the entire session, as so often used to happen.
• Total War in which the players decide on an XP budget as described in the DMG, then buy monsters -- which need not be actual bug-eyed beasties -- and set them against each other. This version would feel much more like a traditional wargame.
  

I don't know how exciting it would be, or if D&D4's mechanics are too involved and complex for a wargame, but based on my experience of it, I don't see why it shouldn't work. This is more or less what the Dungeon Delves book does, after all, it's just less honest about it.

Musings & thinking ahead to the next campaign!

Setting search
I am wondering what setting I’d at some point like to run some non-generic fantasy in. As much as I am enjoying Kingmaker, it is a generic-quasi-Greyhawk setting (magical Europe)…. And in that respect it feels limited/ limiting… and even non-magical…. (no worries to those playing it - it is still a blast - I am just aware that I need to also slowly plan ahead - it is How I Am ;)
But what next (as in in 2+ years time)…. Various settings interest me:

• Shattered world concept – SW have a setting for it ‘sundered skies’ – but it is not quite what I am after (don’t like linear paths to start with)
  
  
• Swords and Sorcery concept – ala Conan/ Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, with low magic (Iron Heroes perhaps?)

Post-apocalyptic world – taking some of the ideas from Dark Sun – but in a different political setup.

• 
  
• Steampunk – early age – ala Defoe (the comic) meets New Crobuzon from Mieville’s work (but I am aware an rpg is apparently been made for this). Iron Kingdoms d20 has some classes and gear which could be nicked for this purpose.
  
  

1600s Europe – ala Solomon Kane (but not a replica of that) – Gothic – black powder weapons, clockwork, think Sleepy Hollow.

Party concept
I also have another conundrum –what kind of adventuring party concept? I like to set up a game, in liaison with the Team, as to what kind of party angle they would like a stab at, as well as what kind of game….. Having made the guys I game with play good pcs, and with Stuart chomping at the bit to play more of a ‘grey’ moral pc, (ala the anti-heroes of old, as well as Conan/ Fafhrd being heroes who were also pursuing self interest)… I am keen to have a party set up which captures those possibilities…..

Thus possible party structures:

1. Mercenaries - like Conan was for part of his career - in the sense they are members of a merc group, have a code of honour, are not evil, but neither are they good - but certainly would be united against the hordes of chaos etc. Could be any pc classes & pure sandbox - although they could seek out missions (for money), as well as developing their own ways of making hard cash - works in low magic S&S/gothic/planar settings OR
2. Thieves Guild - they could start off as lowly scum in the city's Thieves' Guild - and the first arc is them rising to mediocrity in the ranks: rogue, fighter, ranger, wizard/ sorcerer - play it out like GTA - with missions, as well as with sandbox - think the Sopranos meets Fafhrd & Grey Mouser here - works in an urban adventure setting - and events could see them having to leave it for a while.....(eg falling out with their bosses).... works in gothic/ S&S/ planar settings OR
3. Witch Hunters – they could be members of a religious order & hangers on: inquisitor, paladin, cleric/cavalier, wizard and rogue/ranger - again like GTA - a mix of sandbox and missions from your bosses. Think Van Helsing & Solomon Kane here - works in the gothic/ planar setting

Obviously some party concepts may work better in a certain campaign. Here's one example:


Witch-hunter setting/ campaign - fleshing it out a little
Reasons for joining the witch hunters: personal gain, joy in hunting, with one party member possibly playing the role of a believer in the cause, but also believing in using whatever tools (eg other pcs despite their greed), and methods they can (since they can rationalise anything in their warped ethical code)

Style of game....thus you have a party moving through the countryside, like in The Witchfinder General, hunting down trouble - for gain (honour, gold, power, women's favour, fear of locals, etc). It could also be part urban - Gothing up Ptolus for example - its backdrop of the Spire, and all the undead in the graveyards is a perfect backdrop for a Gothic witch hunter game for d20.

Development. Of course - as pcs progress, the game could explore how the pcs develop - or otherwise - a broader perspective - eg morality etc - but initially - for 5 levels or so – the game could encourage them to act it out as immoral basterds doing pursuing self interest in the name of their gawd.

Technology levels: I am thinking the backdrop would be airships, guns, etc - but these would add flavour initially - rather than being the centre of attention, eg the party could have either a pc or maybe better npc arcane mechanik in their mercenary band who helps upgrade gear - so long as the pcs get them the resources they need to do the work on their portable workshop inside their steam-wagon. Defoe is of interest here - with the zombie-apocalypse as the backdrop, and the famous scientists of the day pressing fast-forward on the tech levels as they try to create better guns and tech to beat the zombie hordes - applying ideas from Deadlands to 1669 England.

System: either
Pathfinder – with classes such as the new ones from the APG: inquisitor, alchemist, cavalier (?)… as well as old ones: paladin, cleric, rogue – with tech levels – I prefer those of 1600AD-ish for this .. OR

WFRP could be the other setting/ system for this game of course. 3e or 2e this is the question!!

Plenty of loose ends here - assuming I stick with this concept:

• what system? WFRP (2e/3e) or Pathfinder (I know there are others - but these will do for me)
• tech levels: Solomon Kane of 1600 - black powder only; or the more souped up stuff from Defoe, or even New Crobuzon, with trains..... Renaissance/ just pre-industrialisation/ industrialisation - all of these choices have profound consequences!!what world? Do I modify/ modernise an existing one - what would happen to it if.... (advantages - people may be familiar with it, eg WFRP - but in an industrial age, so some things would be strange), or start from stratch? (won't upset people, but involves more work!) This partly depends on 'what system'.
• What world? Do I want to modify/modernise a familiar world - what would it look like with these new technologies/ if a zombie-apocalypse happened etc or create a new one from scratch? Each has stengths and weaknesses.
• Is this the game I want to run? (ie I still need to explore the other ideas as well!

More musings another time. Time to bust a groove now and do some work!

For the Emperor! (and Charity!)

I wouldn't normally use the group blog for selling something, but this is in a good cause.

In celebration of the upcoming Deathwatch Space Marine rpg and the new Storm Wardens Space Marine chapter introduced within, a group of gaming bloggers are putting together a complete Storm Wardens army for the Warhammer 40,000 tabletop wargame, and then are giving it away in a charity raffle.

To enter, just go to this post and donate as much as you like, via Paypal. $1 gets you one raffle ticket, you can buy as many as you like, and all proceeds go to Doctors Without Borders.

These guys, and this competition, are in no way affiliated with the Brighton Gamers group, or myself, but I thought it was a good project, and one worth mentioning to others.

Rogue Trader Session 15: Part 15 of a 1-Part Limited Series

Characters:

Aphesius Alesaunder, zealous yet charming missionary of the Imperial Cult. (Manoj A)
Mordecai the Cautious, twin-hellpistol-wielding weapons monkey, sent to the newly-acquired Thunderhammer to make sure all is shipshape, since David was off buying a car or something. (David)
Maximillius XVIII, tough-as-nails tech-priest from a death world. (Ben F)
Octavius Sol, seneschal and quartermaster. (Stuart F)
Triptych, mutant navigator and his harem. (Ric R, playing from Manchester, via Skype)

---

As a group, we had decided that we'd had fun with Rogue Trader, but that it was perhaps time for a change. With plenty of plot threads still to finish, we decided to call this the end of the first "season", to use US TV terminology, and revisit the game later in the year. In the meantime, there was the small matter of the infestation of the walking dead at Jameson's Hollow.

It was a bit of an experimental session, with the group entering the twenty-first century by using Skype to have Ric join us for the finale, and in that spirit, I designed a little mini-game to handle the battle against the undead hordes. Running it as a series of fights would have been a grind, and we'd already done a big battle on the bridge of the Thunderhammer, so I didn't want to go over old ground in our last session.

Instead, I designed a modified exploration challenge. There were three known groups of survivors on the station, and each group would be at 50% strength by the time the players got to them; this survival rate would be modified up or down by 10% depending on the results of five skill rolls per group. If the players went after one group at a time, any failures would also count against the other two groups, but if they went after all three groups, they would have to split the party. Any skill could be used in the challenge, as long as the player could come up with a good in-context reason, or even better, narrate the skill use.

Ben burned a fate point in order to rescue the third group without having to make a test, then the team split, with the priest and the militant going after the second group, while the rest of the team went after the first lot. Through some clever tactical nous, some stealth, and a bit of shooting, the two teams got to their destinations, discovering hundreds of exhausted people, shivering in the dark. Aphesius and Mordecai found that many of their group were injured, which slowed down the evacuation, which in turn led to more of the Risen catching up with them; they had a choice between letting the dead pick of the stragglers, or stopping each time to fight off the attackers, and in a rare moment of altruism from the priest, they did the latter.

Over at the other side of the void station, the rest of the team found their group of survivors apparently held hostage by the former astropath of Jameson's Hollow, now quite dead, but still somehow in control of his psychic abilities. A short battle followed in which the dead psyker was killed once more, his death unleashing a torrent of warp energies which twisted reality in the immediate vicinity, plunging the area into unnatural darkness, and allowing some daemonic presence through just enough to whisper blasphemous secrets directly into the minds of the explorers.

Even so, the explorers returned victorious, rescuing the vast majority of the survivors before turning their new chemical weapon on the station, melting the dead inside as they did the crew of the Thunderhammer. As a result of their success, they were able to negotiate an exclusive deal with the authorities, barring any Rogue Traders other than themselves and Moullierre from using the station's facilities.

They then headed to their holdings in the Mianded system, to fill out their crew and get some shore leave, before returning to pick up Moullierre and her alien husband; both Aphesius and Sol attempted to charm Moullierre, hoping to gain some kind of advantage, but the canny Trader got the better of both of them. The party then headed to the Soangre system, where the Eldar had told them they would find a way for him to contact his people. Sure enough, suspended in space at the mid point between the system's binary stars was a shimmering portal, something Triptych knew was akin to a Warp tunnel, but at the same time not. It was also far too small for either of the explorers' starships, but would accommodate a shuttle. Their xeno prisoner indicated that this portal would lead them to their destination, and with considerable reluctance, the team got in a shuttle with the Eldar, with Moullierre and some hand-picked troops in the other, and headed for the portal.

As Triptych, at the helm, guided their craft through the unnatural passage in space-time, their vox units crackled into life, with a message from the Banshee bridge crew alerting them to the presence of other starships in the system. Before they could respond, their momentum carried their shuttlecraft through the portal and into the unknown.

Which is where we left it. Perhaps we will return one day to discover what's on the other side of the portal, and perhaps not; there is always a hint of sadness when a campaign comes to a close, but we got fifteen sessions out of what was only supposed to be a one-shot, so I can't complain.

Rogue Trader Session 14: Death by Pointy Stick

Characters:

Aphesius Alesaunder, zealous yet charming missionary of the Imperial Cult. (Manoj A)
Mordecai the Cautious, twin-hellpistol wielding weapons monkey, sent to the newly-acquired Thunderhammer to make sure all is shipshape, since David was off buying a car or something. (David)
Maximillius XVIII, tough-as-nails tech-priest from a death world. (Ben F)
Octavius Sol, seneschal and quartermaster. (Stuart F)
Triptych, mutant navigator and his harem. (Ric R)

---

This is quite a long one. We played for an extra hour, but barely any of it was scripted, as the players spent most of their time pursuing their own schemes. They're also a cautious lot who like to cover every eventuality before they take action, so there's always lots of planning and dealing going on at the table, and I don't have to do anything except listen. This game has been easy, and a lot of fun, to GM for that reason.

The duel of honour between Octavius Sol and Imperial Commander Ernst Kruger would begin at 06:00 hours, and already there was a palpable buzz aboard the ragtag fleet of refugee vessels surrounding the Risen-infested void station of Jameson's Hollow. While Sol busied himself with practising his mêlée skills, the rest of the gang set about stacking the odds in favour of their seneschal. Maximillius created a small hidden poison dispenser which would attach to Sol's spear; the hope was that since it was a weapon of xeno design, such an addition would be difficult to spot. He also met up with some of the Banshee's underdeck scum and purchased a cheap home-made version of the combat drug Frenzon, just to give Sol a further edge in the fight.

Meanwhile, the priest studied the rules of a formal duel and also tried to uncover any particular weaknesses Kruger might have, and which they could exploit. It was discovered that the Commander was a solid, even boring, man, devoted to military service, but with a strong sense of honour; it was this stability which led to him being assigned to the frontier outpost in the first place. He was also discovered to be an orphan, adopted into the Kruger family, but Alesaunder did not have the time to turn up any more on this line of enquiry. As one last action, the priest made it clear to Kruger's men that any attempt to interfere in the duel would not be appreciated, and that he had two starships bristling with weapons with which to make the point, if necessary.

The hour of the duel arrived, and the explorers arrived at the makeshift arena constructed within one of Moullierre's vessel's cargo holds to discover a sizeable crowd. A twenty metre square area at the centre was roped off, and the audience sat around this on barrels, cargo crates and anything else they could find. Another area was roped off for the assembled dignitaries and nobles; present was their own Trader Locke, Aurelie Moullierre the host, and Kruger's second-in-command, Augustus Schtolnik. Zarak was not present, and Triptych discovered that the suspected Inquisitor had been found dead in his room on Moullierre's vessel earlier that morning, a victim of poison.

(This poison was created by the explorator and administered by the seneschal, at the very same dinner at which Sol and Kruger had the argument which led to the duel. Triptych was not aware of this plan, however, and Ric played his reaction as genuine shock and surprise.)

Alesaunder accompanied his cousin Sol to the ring, and used his considerable social skills to not only whip Sol up into a frenzy, but to also distract and demoralise Kruger; Sol was already under the effects of Frenzon as well as the still-unknown influence of the alien spear, so the players hoped that they'd done enough, as the odds were very much in favour of the military man. Alas, Kruger fumbled his roll to resist the taunting, which changed everything.



Sol, in a murderous rage charged the Commander, who seemed to just stand there with a look of confusion on his face. The first blow was but a scratch, shaving off a slice of Kruger's ear, but a second pierced his thigh, blood welling from the savage wound. Watching from behind the rope barrier, Alesaunder was surprised to discover one of the red-robed figures from his dream standing beside him, apparently enjoying the duel; a discussion followed, in which the figure made another offer of power and immortality to the priest, mentioning that Aphesius was of particular interest to them, as the explorator and navigator were barely human, and that Sol "belonged to another".

Meanwhile, Triptych was scanning the crowd with his Warp eye, on the look out for baleful energies, and spotted the hooded figure talking to the priest. Recognising the figure from the description Aphesius had given him of the dream, Triptych pushed his way through the crowd to tell Moullierre that there was a Warp entity on her vessel.

Sol jabbed again at Kruger, who again failed to put up a solid defence, and this time the alien weapon sunk into the muscles at the Commander's shoulder, rendering his left arm useless. Sol felt some force empowering him, something other than the combat drugs, something which seemed to fill him with energy and in a blur of speed he made a second attack, once more to Kruger's leg, this time shearing the limb completely. The crowd gasped in surprise as the military man fell to the ground and blood gushed all over the deck. Triptych shuddered as he saw his seneschal surrounded by blasphemous xeno energies no one else could see.

The red-robed figure was overjoyed by this display of violence, which perhaps contributed to Alesaunder once more rejecting the offer. With a shrug, the figure claimed that he had "other options", walked into the middle of the expanding pool of Kruger's blood, and with a salute to the priest, sank into the pool as if it had real depth. Meanwhile, the Commander had begun twitching, but before anything could be done to prevent his rise from the dead, Sol screamed that same unnatural scream the explorers had heard on the bridge of the Thunderhammer and brought the spear down through Kruger's chest and into the deck plating underneath, with a shower of eldritch red sparks. Those who were present at the spear's discovery couldn't help but note the similarities.

Shocked by this series of events, the crowd dispersed, and the explorers warily approached the howling seneschal with an eye to calming him down. Many minutes later, Sol came to his senses, with little memory of the duel, but a feeling of elation flooding through every fibre of his being.

After a brief detour to see for themselves whether Zarak was indeed dead, the explorers returned to their ongoing plan to turn the situation at Jameson's Hollow to their advantage, offering to clear the station of the Risen in exchange for exclusive access to the station's facilities. Kruger had not been keen on this suggestion, seeing it as dishonourable at best and blackmail at worst, but with him out of the way, the team hoped that Schtolnik would prove more open to the plan. He did, although it seemed more through weariness than anything else, and so the explorers moved forward with the next stage, which was to find out more about the Risen before they attempted to rescue the survivors still on the station.

To do this, they met again with the Eldar held captive in a secret part of Moullierre's vessel. He again repeated his offer to go to his people and ask for assistance, in return for his freedom from his prison. Although they still did not trust the alien, the explorers felt that he was their only option to find out a way to stop the undead plague, and so tentatively agreed, on the grounds that they would accompany him to his destination. They also convinced Moullierre to allow her husband's freedom, although she too insisted on accompanying them, albeit in their vessel, as she wasn't keen on her "in-laws" discovering her. With the bare bones of an agreement in place, the team decided to first rescue the survivors on the void station, and returned to their ship to formulate a plan.

Rogue Trader Session 13: Come Dine With Me

Characters:

Aphesius Alesaunder, zealous yet charming missionary of the Imperial Cult. (Manoj A)
Mordecai the Cautious, twin-hellpistol wielding weapons monkey. (David)
Maximillius XVIII, tough-as-nails tech-priest from a death world. (Ben F)
Octavius Sol, seneschal and quartermaster. (Stuart F)
Triptych, mutant navigator and his harem. (Ric R)

Full house again!

---

On the battle bridge of the Thunderhammer, the explorers fought a horde of undead crew members, while a hulking figure they took to be the captain, Telemon Maul, waded through the mêlée towards Octavius Sol, having issued a formal challenge to the seneschal.

Perhaps it was decided that the dead have no need for honour, or perhaps the priest simply did not care, as he fought his way to Sol in order to aid his ally in the duel. Meanwhile, the rest of the team fought the massed dead, Maximillius swinging his power axe to and fro, lopping off limbs and heads as he went, and the Banshee's elite guardsmen turning their flamers on the shambling dead, their aim guided by their faith in the Emperor, as well as the commands of the battle-hardened Mordecai. The navigator Triptych fared less well, suffering a grievous wound as a lucky knife strike took him in the belly, spilling his innards across the deck. If it were not for Triptych's mutant healing abilities, he would have died there and then, lying amongst his own intestines.

(To run each of the zombies individually would have fried my brain, so I instead ran the mob as one creature with multiple attacks. It had 300 Wounds, and was capable of three attacks against each player-character per round; reduced to 200 Wounds, it would only be capable of two attacks, and once down to 100, it could only attack each character once per round. This was an experiment, but it worked out well, and I'll be using it again.)

Sol found himself struggling to harm his opponent, even with the strange spear he'd rescued from the Eldar ruins, but death seemed to have made the captain sluggish and clumsy, and his attacks went wide, allowing the seneschal and priest to wear him down, with Sol striking the final blow, an attack so brutal it split the captain in two; at this point Sol uttered an inhuman cry, chilling the bones of everyone present, and the seneschal wondered what kind of influence the alien weapon had over him.

Eventually the battle was won, and the explorers found themselves in control of the bridge, but there was still the pressing problem of the 95,000 dead crew members roaming the halls of the Thunderhammer. Checking the logs, Maximillius discovered that the ship's drives had suffered some kind of malfunction while in the Warp, flooding the vessel with deadly radiation, killing many, and allowing them to rise as the restless dead. Outnumbered, the survivors were picked off one by one, before making a final, and apparently futile, stand on the bridge. A number of plans for cleansing the ship were considered, and most rejected as being too impractical, until the explorers hit upon the idea of unleashing some kind of toxin which would destroy biological material. The tech-priest made some quick calculations and came up with a suitable formula and, making contact with his deputies aboard the Banshee, gave them the instructions to mass-produce the toxin. The process would take three days, which matched up well with the distance between the two starships. Now, all they could do was wait.

The Banshee arrived with the bio-weapon, as well as the news that the suspected Inquisitor Zarak had moved to the Rogue Trader Aurelie Moullierre's vessel, the Dark Filament; this concerned the explorers, as they suspected that Zarak was working against them in some way. That would have to wait, however, as they had a job to do. The Thunderhammer's life support systems were loaded with the toxin, and the ship was flooded with the deadly concoction; a day or so later, and the chemical had done its work, melting the dead crew into a greasy mulch. Maximillius vented the poison into space and recycled the ship's atmosphere, making it safe once more for the living, and the explorers set about transferring enough crew from their vessel to operate the massive battleship.

They sent a vox cast to the Dark Filament, informing those present that the Locke dynasty had claimed the Thunderhammer as salvage, and requesting a crisis meeting with Moullierre, Imperial Commander Kruger, and Inquisitor Zarak. A sumptuous banquet was prepared aboard the Banshee, and the dignitaries were made comfortable as talks began on how to deal with the undead menace. In the background, the explorers arranged to have refugees from the abandoned void station moved to the Thunderhammer to serve as temporary crew, and Sol had Zarak's meal poisoned with the same toxin used to deal with Flavion so many months ago, an act he kept secret from his fellows. It was perhaps a prescient move, as Zarak greeted the explorers with a smile, which further convinced them that he was up to something.

It seems that whenever the player-characters get into tense negotiations like this, everything goes wrong, and they start making enemies. Perhaps informing Kruger that they wanted control of his station in exchange for the release of their new bio-weapon was not the best tactic, as the noble became enraged with such double-dealing in a time of crisis and called the explorers' honour into question, which then enraged Octavius Sol, who called for a duel. Kruger agreed, and stormed out of the negotiations, returning to his temporary base aboard Moullierre's vessel. For her part, Moullierre seemed to be amused by all the testosterone floating about, but also asked the explorers if the rumours she'd heard about the alien ruins they'd discovered were true, and that they had explored an Eldar temple. When this was confirmed, she asked them to meet her aboard her own vessel at midnight, before returning to the feast.

After the meal, and with negotiations stalled, the explorers got in contact with Augustus Shtolnik, Kruger's second-in-command, to discuss the details of the duel. Shtolnik informed them that the fight would take place aboard the Dark Filament, and that it would be to the death, although they would be allowed to choose the weapon used. Perhaps under a xeno influence, Sol chose the spear, and went to his quarters to practise.

Leaving the seneschal to his training, the rest of the team headed over to the Dark Filament as requested, and suspecting a trap were surprised to find Moullierre waiting for them alone. She had each of them swear an oath of honour to not reveal what they would see aboard her vessel, and then led them through a warren of passages into the depths of the ship. There, hidden behind a number of secure doors, they were shown a single dirty cell in which was chained a humanoid figure, clearly malnourished and mistreated. As their eyes adjusted to the gloom in the unlit prison, they recognised the figure as one of the treacherous Eldar, and Moullierre introduced it as her husband, before leaving them alone.

The Eldar captive listened as the explorers explained what they had seen on Zeesol, and he confirmed that they had destroyed one of his people's temples. He also told them that the Eldar knew a thing or two about death, and that it sounded like the door between life and death had been opened, which was allowing the dead to return from beyond, hence the current plague. However, he also informed them that we was no expert on such matters, although he could find such experts. The price he gave for such aid was, of course, his freedom.

Rogue Trader Session 12: Never Trust a Priest

Characters:

Aphesius Alesaunder, zealous yet charming missionary of the Imperial Cult. (Manoj A)
Mordecai the Cautious, newly-promoted weapons monkey. (David)
Maximillius XVIII, tough-as-nails technician from a death world. (Ben F)
Octavius Sol, seneschal and quartermaster. (Stuart F)
Triptych, mutant navigator and his harem. (Ric R)

Full house! Ding!

---

Aphesius and Mordecai stood above the bloody remnants of Telemachus Locke, the son and only heir of their Rogue Trader, but the guards they'd brought with them were busy subduing the cultists, and the cultists were busy being subdued, so no one else had yet discovered the cult leader's true identity. So they quickly hid the incriminating medallion, and turned a flamer on the corpse, proclaiming that such heretics should be burned, particularly as they'd not yet solved the problem of the rising dead. In order to deflect attention away from the cult leader, the priest ordered that the remaining cultists should also be executed, and with some reluctance, the guardsmen unleashed fiery death upon the restrained death cultists, most of whom accepted their demise in a state of religious ecstasy.

The cult leader's assistants were led away for interrogation, and through the application of violence (Mordecai) and weird psychic manipulation (Triptych) the team discovered that the cult was being led by someone they called the "boy king", and that he had come to them during that period when the Banshee was lost in the warp for two hundred days; the explorers wondered whether some malign daemonic influence may have infiltrated the ship during this time in the empyrean. They discovered more about the cult's beliefs, but could not pin them down as true heresy, as the cultists seemed to believe that they were worshipping the Emperor in his aspect as a being hovering on the border between life and death. At this point, Aphesius made an executive decision and declared the cult heretical, which just so happened to tie in nicely with his previous order to have them all burned to death.

There followed a sequence which touched my cynical GM's heart, as the players began conspiring against each other. This was a great bit of roleplaying, as the players were all aware of Telemachus' death, but only the characters of Mordecai and Aphesius knew, so they decided to keep the truth from their comrades. Aphesius went to Locke, spinning a tale the boy had not attended his spiritual lessons for a number of days, and the Rogue Trader tasked him with finding Telemachus, who'd undoubtedly just gone exploring in the lower decks again. Then the priest and the gunbunny began planning to arrange evidence to support their version of events.

During the night, Aphesius was woken by a knocking at his door, and answering, he found himself looking out on a vast plain of bleached white skulls stretching out as far as the eye could see, with foreboding black storm clouds boiling in the sky ahead. He attempted to return to bed, but found that the door was now behind him, and locked. Not only that, but he turned to find himself facing eight red-robed figures, who all spoke with a single voice, acknowledging his killing of their champion, and offering the priest the chance to take his place. Aphesius was briefly tempted, but his faith returned to him, and he uttered a prayer to the God-Emperor, which seemed to break the illusion, and he found himself back in his cabin, drenched in sweat.

The next morning, the priest mentioned his dream to his companions, and Triptych's long study of the esoteric meant that he found some elements of the dream familiar, but he could not quite place them. In the meantime, Aphesius arranged for Telemachus' medallion to be "discovered" in a service duct, and we had some more good roleplaying, as Ben, playing an explorator with a fanatical desire to uncover hidden truths, decided to investigate further, and found that the only person to go anywhere near the duct in recent times was the acolyte Aphesius had sent to "discover" the medallion. Already suspicious of the preacher, Maximillius kept his discovery to himself for the moment.

The group approached Locke and revealed that they had discovered a death cult aboard the ship, that it was probably a front for worship of the Ruinous Powers, and that the cult had likely killed Telemachus, although no body had been found. They gave Locke his son's medallion, and left the noble to his thoughts, turning the Banshee towards Jameson's Hollow in order to answer the distress signal they had received previously.

Arriving in-system, their auger arrays picked up a small flock of vessels in orbit around the void station, including the Dark Filament, the ship of Rogue Trader Aurelie Moullierre, with whom they had an alliance. They also detected the Thunderhammer, the vessel of the military minded Telemon Maul, hanging back at the edge of the system, apparently without power. They got in touch with the Dark Filament, and were surprised to have the call answered by Kruger, the commander of Jameson's Hollow. He revealed that the station had been abandoned due to the swarms of living dead, and that the survivors were packed into the vessels in orbit; the priority was overcrowding and resources, and Kruger requested that the Banshee help to lighten the load a little. The explorers were reluctant to let a bunch of refugees on board, and asked to speak to Moullierre, who seemed pleased to see them. Remembering how well she and Locke got on, the explorers suggested that she come on board the Banshee, in the hopes that she might be able to cheer up the distraught Trader. They also asked about the Thunderhammer, and discovered that no one else had noticed its presence; the explorers were immediately suspicious, and decided to check out Maul's vessel for themselves.

They sent the Banshee to meet up with Moullierre, and took a shuttle full of troops out to the Thunderhammer. Inching closer, they detected that the ship was active, but seemed to be on silent running, waiting for something. As they approached even closer, the cruiser's array of weapons came to life, and Triptych found himself having to weave the shuttle through a hell of plasma lances and explosive ordnance, a hair-raising few minutes, if the mutant navigator had hair of course. The shuttle docked with the vast ex-naval vessel at a point which Maximillius guessed was close to the command bridge. They found the corridors of the ship quiet and empty, and advanced carefully, getting to the bridge without challenge, that is until they opened the blast doors. Inside, milling about without apparent purpose, was a throng of walking corpses, all clad in flak armour, and wielding automatic weapons and monoknives, a shock to the explorers, who had expected to see more of the feral dead they'd encountered elsewhere. Slumped in the golden command throne at the centre of the bridge was an unmoving figure clad in the flak armour of an Imperial military officer, but the explorers had little time to pick out further details as the horde of dead surged to the attack.

The explorers and their soldiers opened fire, but a mêlée soon ensued, with the slashing and stabbing of monoknives met with close range pistol blasts and the bone-cracking thud of rifle butts. In all this, Sol and Mordecai attempted to pick off the figure in the command throne, but the mass of ornamentation and technology provided cover, and they could only score glancing hits. As the combat escalated, the figure rose from the throne with a painful slowness, smoke rising from the few hits which had been scored, and looked at each of the explorers, before turning to the sensechal. Raising its arm, the figure pointed its power maul at Sol and bowed its head, a gesture the seneschal recognised as a formal combat challenge. Then the figure began wading through the mêlée towards Octavius Sol.

Rogue Trader Session 11: Interview With The Zombie

Characters:

Aphesius Alesaunder, zealous yet charming missionary of the Imperial Cult. (Manoj A)
Mordecai the Cautious, newly-promoted weapons monkey. (David)
Maximillius XVIII, tough-as-nails technician from a death world. (Ben F)
Octavius Sol, seneschal and quartermaster. (An NPC this week, as Stuart F was off exploring the Emerald Isle)
Triptych, mutant navigator and his harem. (Also an NPC, as Ric R was trapped in the hellish dimension known as Manchester)

---

Last time, the explorers had been witness to, and a possible cause of, a bizarre Warp event which saw the dead rising from the grave. Concerned for their holdings, and curious as to how widespread this effect was, the team decided to head for their stronghold in the Mianded system. Arriving there, they discovered that the restless dead were a problem here too, but due to the way the population of the hive city of Antiriad interred their deceased, in vast sealed catacombs beneath the city, large scale damage had been averted for the time being. Even so, their majordomo Falcone was pleased to see them arrive to take charge.

However, their minds were more on experimentation than liberation, and the team set about a plan to capture one of the dead for study, before realising that there was a more efficient, not to mention safer, alternative. So they pulled a prisoner from one of Antiriad's prisons, strapped him down, killed him, and waited for him to reanimate. The unfortunate criminal did indeed soon return to a cursed half-life, and the priest Alesaunder began his interrogations, but even his vaunted social skills were not up to the task of communicating with the creature, which though not mindless, seemed set on breaking free of its bonds and attacking its captors.

On a hunch, the explorers took the creature to the Banshee, and dropped into the Warp, at which point the demeanour of the undead thing changed. Its hostile urges seemed to abate somewhat, and its previous personality surfaced, enabling communication at long last. The team discovered that the dead hated the living, envying and hungering for their life-force, but nothing the explorers had seen suggested that there was any transfer of life energy between the dead and their victims; it seemed as if the attacks were motivated by nothing more than an atavistic sense of spite. The dead criminal also told Alesaunder that there was nothing after death, that even existence as a cursed thing was better than the oblivion beyond, and that even the light of the God-Emperor did not shine into the darkness found there. The priest held to his faith, and shrugged this off as another example of the dead's spiteful nature.

Alesaunder called some of his priests to his side in order conduct a ritual to exorcise the undead blasphemy, during which one of his deputies reported that a couple of priests, Douglas and Turner, had not been attending services as regularly as their brethren. The high priest was disturbed by this display of lapsed faith, and set to investigating the matter. He called Douglas to his offices, and found the cleric to be nervous and agitated, clearly distracted by something. Alesaunder turned this to his advantage and quickly broke the man, discovering that he and Turner had found another of the ship's priests, Persaud, wandering the lower decks despite being quite dead. Uncertain of what to do with their brother-priest, they had locked him in a storage room, and went there on occasion to attempt to lay his spirit to rest.

Persaud had been beaten to death, his skull and hands smashed, his jaw broken, and his neck snapped, and was in no condition to communicate, even while the Banshee was in the Warp. He was assigned to give services to the inhabitants of one of the lower engine decks, and the explorers focussed their investigations there, pulling in the chief, a grizzled engineer named Serafina. She told them that she knew nothing about Persaud's death, but she knew of a cult that had sprung up among her people, one that Persaud may have been investigating, although Serafina herself had overlooked the group since their work had not been affected by their new religious leanings. Alesaunder saw this as heresy, and had the chief dragged away for re-education.

Mordecai roughed up some of the local crew members and got the location of the cult's meeting place, a basic mess hall, and Maximillius set up hidden surveillance in the room. For his part, Sol attempted to shadow one of the suspected cult members, but was spotted, his elaborate finery sticking out like a sore thumb in the dark and greasy underdecks, and the crew member fled. Despite this, the cult meeting went ahead, with a number of crew members packed into the tiny meeting room while a short robed figure with a deep gravelly voice pontificated on the subjects of death, how death is a sacred gift, and how these creatures returned from beyond death were a blasphemy to be destroyed utterly, with as much violence as the faithful could muster.

The explorers launched their attack at this point, sending in troops armed with stun batons to pacify the crowd, while the team themselves went after the cult leader. As they fought with the panicked crowd, the cultist fled to a side door which had not shown up on Maximillius' plans, and seemed to be cut off from his control, so the explorator was not able to lock it remotely. Mordecai took aim with his twin hellpistols and caught the cultist in the calf, slowing him down, and giving the priest a chance to catch up. Alesaunder put the barrel of his boltgun against the neck of the hooded figure and ordered him to yield, but with a snarl, the figure leaped for the door. A burst of automatic fire from the boltgun shredded the head and upper torso of the cult leader, and the remnants slid to the floor.

While the guards rounded up the last of the cultists, Mordecai rushed over to the leader's remains, intent on restraining them before they rose again. As he rolled the corpse over, he saw that underneath the robes, it was wearing a medallion inscribed with the symbol of the Locke dynasty. Not only that, but the leader's relative lack of height was discovered to be due to him being but a child. With a sinking feeling, the team realised that they had just executed Telemachus Locke, the son and heir of their own Rogue Trader.