Ten Jolly Butchers

Englebert the cat burglar has been tasked with restoring his family's control over the Doodkanal district of Marienburg; with him he has brought two slabs of muscle, the Norse berserker Steiner Eriksen and the dwarf Hammerhead Harry, and the smuggler Gisbert Lufthansa. Together, they are the Jolly Butchers!

The Jolly Butchers were without two of their number this time around, with Lufthansa still busy with his business at the docks, and the mighty Norseman Eriksen off wenching somewhere in town. This left Englebert and Harry to investigate the mansion they had taken from the Red Hand Gang; they found that the rooms at the back of the building -- abutting the supposedly haunted garden -- had been locked and boarded by the previous occupants, and considered asking a priest of Morr to come and investigate. They were interrupted by one of their network of street urchins, who told them that a riot had broken out at the prison on Rijker's Isle, involving some members of their gang; this news concerned Harry, as the Butchers imprisoned on the island were of the old order and were of higher rank than the current leadership, all of which could cause problems if they broke out and returned to the Doodkanal. The young guttersnipe also told them that Jorn, one of the doormen at the Moby Dick, had been arrested; since the bouncer wasn't involved in any direct criminal activity, both Harry and Englebert found his arrest to be unusual.

Jorn's arrest was deemed to be less of a headache to investigate than a full-blown prison riot, and they discovered that the doorman had been identified by a witch hunter named Kurtz as being the necromancer Heinz Gerber, and that he was to be given a trial in seven days, at which point he would be burned alive. This would not do, so the dwarf and the burglar went to the guard house in which Jorn was incarcerated in an attempt to get him freed. The guards proved unhelpful, and Kurtz more so, but Harry and Englebert nipped around the back and managed to talk to their employee through the window of his cell. Once they were happy that Jorn was not in fact a dangerous necromancer and that he was being treated well enough, the pair planned their next move.

They had a number of options: to discredit Kurtz, to break Jorn out, to present exonerating evidence at his trial, or to find the real Heinz Gerber. They considered the first two options to be very unlikely, and the latter two just implausible, and thus the choice was made. They set about assembling friends, colleagues and family members who could vouch for Jorn and also started researching Gerber. They discovered that he was indeed a notorious magician with an interest in peering beyond the veil of death, and his chief interest was in a necromancer who was reputed to have found the secret to eternal life. In a cross-setting tribute to Gary Gygax, this necromancer was named Bigby.

The Jolly Butchers decided to put the word out that they had found an artefact belonging to this Bigby and, sensing that there was something a bit off about it, were eager to sell it as soon as possible and for a low price. After a day or two, an urchin arrived on behalf of an "old man" to look at the artefact -- an ornate box stolen from the tomb in the first session -- and having done so, headed off to report his -- or her, urchins are dirty and difficult to identify with certainty -- findings; Englebert made excellent use of his stealth abilities to follow the child back to a house across from the very graveyard from which the box was stolen -- and which they'd been searching for the creature which had been bothering the rat catchers -- and right next door to Skinner's funeral parlour, one of the Jolly Butchers' front businesses.

Popping in to speak to Alf Skinner, they found him nervous and shifty and he explained that some bodies had gone missing. He seemed less bothered by the theft itself and more that the Butchers would be angry that he'd been filling the empty coffins with junk to cover the absence of the rightful contents; as it happened, neither of them cared. They told old Alf to lock and bar his storage room in the basement, and they went next door with four Jolly Butchers as backup.

The gang members were reluctant to enter the house, which was run down and exuded the sickly smell of decay, and so took up covering positions with their crossbows, leaving Harry to venture inside alone, with Englebert just behind. He was attacked by three stinking, flabby pale things with poisonous claws, but Harry proved resistant to their venom, and with the aid of supporting fire from Englebert's short bow, the dwarf smashed his opponents. They threw the bodies into the streets to be burned and sent a message to Kurtz to tell him that the necromancer was still quite active and that he should perhaps come down to the house to see for himself, but a reply came a while later suggesting that the creatures they'd killed were just remnants and that the danger had passed now that Gerber was in custody.

With a sigh, Harry and Englebert went back into the house to investigate, finding nothing of interest except steps leading down into an ominous cellar. Harry went first, to find a crude laboratory inhabited by some misshapen patchwork creature.

At first, even Harry's stout dwarven mettle wasn't enough and he was frozen in fear as the thing swung at him, but he was lucky to avoid injury and snapped out of his paralysis in time to fight back. It was a tough battle, with the creature able to absorb a great deal of damage and not even Harry's mighty hammer was enough to bring it down; two massive strikes to Harry's head put great dents in his helmet and left the dwarf unconscious on the cellar stairs.

The creature bawled "FOOD!" from a slack and ill-fitting jaw and Englebert ran for it; at the time it was unclear if he was just saving his own skin or if he was trying to distract the thing from eating Harry, but it did indeed follow the thief up the stairs. Englebert climbed the outside of the house and on to the roof, thinking the thing couldn't follow, but it proved more agile than it looked and thus ensued a rooftop chase that ended when Englebert's nimble footwork had him ducking out of the creature's overextended grasp, causing it to fall into the vat of a conveniently located tannery.

Harry rested and healed, while a search of Gerber's house went on -- with an eye to a possible future career as a physician, Harry pocketed the necromancer's surgical tools -- and the Jolly Butchers found a trapdoor leading into a warren of tunnels under the city. When he was fit to move, the dwarf ventured in and identified the passages as belonging to some old necropolis, perhaps forgotten by the people of the city. Their henchmen refused to go into the tunnels, but did continue the search of the house, turning up what seemed to be Heinz Gerber's journal. The mad ravings of the necromancer were difficult to decipher, but the Butchers did find a partial map of the tunnels below their feet, as well as a number of entries concerning Bigby's tomb, dated after Jorn was captured.

They took this clear evidence of Jorn's innocence to the witch hunter and the belligerent sod did not release the doorman, but declared that the matter was worth investigating, and so agreed to go with the Jolly Butchers as they pursued Gerber into the tunnels below the city.

Seven Jolly Butchers

Englebert the cat burglar has been tasked with restoring his family's control over the Doodkanal district of Marienburg; with him he has brought two slabs of muscle, the Norse berserker Steiner Eriksen and the dwarf Hammerhead Harry, and the smuggler Gisbert Lufthansa. Together, they are the Jolly Butchers!

This session was heavy on the old fisticuffs, and because of the unique way in which Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay handles combat, it was also quite heavy on the gore, even more so than usual.

Following the events of the previous session, the Jolly Butchers decided to stake out the headquarters of their rivals, the Red Hand Gang; setting up shop in a, um, shop across the street, the Butchers watched and waited. The mansion was fortified with a strong gate for the outer wall, and the windows on the ground floor had been converted into arrow slits, but there were only a handful of guards visible. After some time, a cart came out of the front gates, accompanied by four gang members, and the Jolly Butchers decided to see where they were going and if possible pick them off, so reducing the opposition within the mansion itself.

Harry and Steiner followed the cart, while Englebert went to send a message to the rest of the Jolly Butchers and have them meet the core group; Gisbert was still busy with some smuggling activities down on the docks. The Red Hand Gangers took the cart -- Harry noticed from the way it was moving that its cargo was heavy -- to a warehouse where they were met by two other ruffians, and together the six of them entered the building. Englebert had returned by this time, and sneaked up on to the roof of the warehouse to peek through a window; inside he saw the enemy loading crates on to a waiting barge at the back of the building, and so he returned to the rest of the Butchers.

Four other Jolly Butchers had arrived -- Kaspar, Waldred, Grimwold and Hamlyn -- and with only one way out for the gangers and their cart, an ambush was arranged. Englebert took up a sniping position on a nearby rooftop, while Harry and Steiner took two men each and hid on either side of the narrow alleyway leading off from the warehouse.

The Jolly Butchers launched their ambush, the Red Hand launched a counter-ambush, and the little street was soon awash with gore. Through strength of numbers and the uncanny bloodlust of Steiner's unusual elven blade -- pilfered from the tomb in the first session -- the Butchers prevailed with nary a scratch, and while most of the Red Hand Gangers were left dying in the muck, there were a couple of survivors. They told the Butchers that only three men, plus the halfling Steevil and his lieutenant Catspaw, remained in the mansion, but more were supposed to be on their way from out of town. Harry -- with an eye on the interrogator career -- also found out that the gang had a secret knock with which to identify themselves at the front gate, and a plan was formed.

The Butchers pulled up their hoods and took the cart and one of the survivors back to the mansion. With the rest of the gang hanging back, the survivor went up to the front gate to request entrance, while Harry -- tall for a dwarf but still just small enough to hide below the gate's viewing grille -- kept a tight grip on the survivor's, ahem, crown jewels.

The group was let in, Harry pushed the survivor to the ground and rushed into combat with the guard, with the rest of the Butchers following up. The guard managed to let out a few shouts but soon he too was dead; not soon enough though, as crossbow bolts started whistling through the air towards the Jolly Butchers. Harry rushed over to the arrow slits, while Englebert scaled the house itself, and Kaspar, Waldred, Grimwold and Hamlyn ran for the mansion's front entrance, which was in an alcove and would provide some cover from the crossbowmen.

Where was Steiner? Well, expecting a somewhat different welcome, the big Norseman was hanging off the bottom of the cart, ready to jump out and into combat, only now he found himself in cover but perhaps pinned. Nonetheless, he made a break for Harry's position, just as the dwarf chucked his favourite mining lantern in through the arrow slit; as planned a small fire started up, which only got larger as Steiner then lobbed a bottle of spirits in through the same slit. Spotting a stable door and a possible side entrance, the dwarf and the Norseman headed in that direction.

Meanwhile, Englebert was on the roof, removing tiles in an attempt to get into the space below, and Kaspar, Waldred, Grimwold and Hamlyn found the front door of the mansion locked and barred, and the alcove not as safe as they had thought, as the pernicious halfling Steevil had installed murder holes above them. Poor Kaspar was shot twice in the head -- "Now he's a ghost!" said the GM -- and the rest of the thugs ran back to the relative safety of the cart.

In the stables, Harry and Steiner did indeed find a back door, through which they heard frantic voices and "the sound of pumping", a description which provoked a long round of laughter at the table, although I can't think why as we're all sensible adults. Honest. The two meatheads took a round or two to smash down the door and into the mansion's kitchen, by which time the, um, pumpers had returned to put out the fire. Steiner went into a berserk charge, Harry tried to keep up, and the pair burst through into a large room; the two Red Hand Gangers inside then faced the difficult choice of putting out the fire or fighting the two slabs of muscle pounding towards them.

At this point, Steevil -- robbed of easy prey -- made his way downstairs, and buoyed up by his presence, the two thugs chose the latter option, which in hindsight would prove to be their last mistake. Upstairs, Englebert poked his head in through the gap in the roof and got a crossbow bolt in the face from Catspaw for his trouble; this knocked him off the roof and into a handy hay cart in the street below, where he lay unconscious for the rest of the fight.

Back inside, the fight got brutal, with even the big Norseman into critical condition, his arm numbed and his sword dropped... except the eerie elven blade would not allow itself to be dropped, so Steiner remained in the fight. The Red Hand Gang, with their fondness for crossbows and fighting from the shadows, were no match for Steiner and Harry, whose enthusiasm for toe-to-toe fighting came to the fore, and soon enough the Red Hand Gang ceased to exist as a going concern.

As a result of all of that messy business, the Jolly Butchers have taken up residence in the mansion, and have taken control of the Red Hand Gang's assets. Next up is the exploration of the mansion itself and of its gardens, which are reputed to be haunted. When that will happen I'm not sure, as Stuart has a busy calendar over the summer, and Manoj is expecting a baby very soon. It's been great fun playing a bit of WFRP though, and a pleasant change from the heaviness of Pathfiner; the big fight at the end was very smooth and quite quick, for example, even with about twelve combatants. Ben's trying to get me to run something in the same setting, and I have some ideas on that front, but I'm also really enjoying playing.

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:

Eight Jolly Butchers

Englebert the cat burglar has been tasked with restoring his family's control over the Doodkanal district of Marienburg; with him he has brought two slabs of muscle, the Norse berserker Steiner Eriksen and the dwarf Hammerhead Harry, and the smuggler Gisbert Lufthansa. Together, they are the Jolly Butchers!

Last time, the Jolly Butchers were scouring the local graveyard for evidence of some kind of beast that had been bothering the local ratcatchers, and causing them to go on strike until it was dealt with. Although we'd done a bit of grave-robbing and earned some cash as a result, we were no closer to finding this mysterious creature, and so made the decision to put aside the ratcatchers' strike for now and focus on other issues.

We had only just arrived in town and our control over the Doodkanal was still almost non-existent, so there were a number of roaming thugs causing trouble in the area. Furthermore, a bigger and more organised gang -- the Red Hand Gang -- had taken over half of the district, although had not yet allied with the Marienburg thieves' guild, so could technically still be ousted without political repercussions.

We chose to go after the lesser thugs first, and soon ran into a group causing trouble at the fish market. As planned we roughed them up, a task which took much longer than it should due to Harry's inability to hit anything with his not-so-trusty hammer. Only one survivor remained -- covered in the blood and bone fragments of his fellows as a result of WFRP's lethal combat system -- and he was persuaded to join the Jolly Butchers, bringing the number of enforcers up to eight. Harry took the survivor off to get his gang tattoo, while Steiner and Englebert -- Lufthansa had been called to the docks on business matters -- set about displaying the corpses in public as a warning to other opportunistic ruffians.

Next up was the Red Hand Gang. They had taken up residence in an abandoned mansion in the eastern part of the Doodkanal, and were under new leadership, a halfling poisoner called Steevil. That part of the Doodkanal bordered on the Little Moot, a halfling district, so we got in touch with the halfling boss Rudolf Ingo Pickles, who was also the head of the bakers' guild of Marienburg.

We met Pickles in a lovely patisserie called The Crepe Hole where Harry enjoyed some spiced pork pasties -- Harry's human comrades declined to partake, which he put down to some kind of strange human religious practice -- and Englebert set about charming the diminutive crime boss. It seems he was none too fond of Steevil, would be quite happy for us to expel him from the Doodkanal and gave us a bit more information on the poisoner and his gang; there was some talk of owing favours at this point, but Harry was too busy munching away on a pasty to pick up the details, although he did hear something about a back way into the mansion.

The Jolly Butchers were too few and too disorganised to make a frontal assault on a dozen career criminals holed up in a fortified building, so we decided to pick off as much of the gang as we could while they were out and about on their business.

We took over an abandoned building in what the Red Hand optimistically called their turf, spruced it up a bit and opened it as a pawn shop. As expected, a group of Red Hand enforcers wandered by after a couple of days and took notice of the new shop; they entered and intimated to the shopkeeper -- Harry, in an unconvincing disguise -- that he should pay them some protection money. Harry said he didn't understand what they were getting at -- this may or may not have been a ruse -- which angered the thugs, and they grabbed him, which is when the rest of the Jolly Butchers sprang into action.

Englebert had rigged the door to spring shut behind the last of the Red Hand thugs, trapping them in the shop with an angry dwarf, a bored Norse warrior and a bloodthirsty cat burglar. Once again Harry missed with pretty much every strike of his mighty hammer -- despite a Weapon Skill of 51 and two attacks per round -- giving his foes a chance to whittle away at his stockpile of Wounds with little in the way of a retort. By the end of the fight, Harry was battered and bruised, but the Red Hand Gang members were all dead or unconscious, largely at the hands of Englebert and Steiner.

Once again, there was a lone survivor, Wolfgang:

"Tell us what you know about the Red Hand hideout!"

"I don't know anything!"

"Then you're no longer useful to us."

"I might know something!"

The Red Hand often met in a tavern not far from the mansion, called The Sea Hag, so we decided to press our advantage and attack them there before they could withdraw to their fortified headquarters. Harry was too injured to go straight into another fight however, and was forced to rest for a day or two, a delay which may yet prove disastrous for the Butchers.

We went to the tavern and attempted to pick up some gossip from the locals -- this is where Harry did shine in the session; despite not having the Gossip skill, and so defaulting to a modified Fellowship of just 11, he succeeded with each and every attempt he made -- but were unable to learn anything helpful, although they did make the acquaintance of a boat captain who went by the name of "The Captain". As Harry chatted to his new friend The -- being a dwarf, Harry either didn't understand or didn't care about the difference between a name and a title -- Steiner's sixth sense warned him that trouble of some sort was on the way.

The Butchers left the tavern, and detected they were being followed. Suspecting the Red Hand, Steiner and Englebert dropped back to set up an ambush, while Harry provided the bait; a short fight ensued between the Butchers and a pair of suspiciously skilful swordsmen -- we suspect that the GM was cheating a bit here, as he is wont to do on occasion -- which ended with Englebert once more turning on the charm and negotiating a truce. The two flashing blades wandered off into the night, and the Butchers made a quick retreat back to base to plan their next move against the Red Hand Gang.

Fight On! #12 Released in Print and PDF!

Mutants! Androids! Robots! Pure Strain Humans! Fight On! is back, with another 88 pages of gut-wrenching, laser-pulsing, fist-pounding action! Rules variants, tables, adventures large and small, science fiction and fantasy, races, classes, monsters, spells, magic items, NPCs, history, opinion, and lore can be found herein! Featuring art and articles by Mark Allen, Ian Baggley, Lee Barber, Erin "Taichara" Bisson, Daniel Boggs, David Bowman, Simon Bull, David Coleman, Fat Cotton, Michael Curtis, Liz Danforth, Ndege Diamond, Ron Edwards, Kelvin Green, Tim Kask, John Larrey, John Laviolette, Lester, Gabor Lux, Heron Prior, Jeff Rients, Chris Robert, Zak S., Alex Schroeder, Jason Sholtis, Tim "Sniderman" Snider, Jennifer Weigel, and this issue's dedicatee James M. Ward, alongside many others! If want to take your FRP experience to the next level, don't delay - buy this issue and Fight On!

The print version is available here and the PDF is available here.

If you buy by the end of the day TOMORROW (July 15), you can save even more on all of these – lulu is offering a site-wide discount of 20% off everything with the coupon BIG (BIG305AU, BIG305UK for some foreign readers), making this one of the best times to check us out for the first time or check back in if you’ve missed a few issues! While you’re at it, check out some other lulu gaming products – there is a ton of good stuff on there from all kinds of producers.

Thanks for your interest, and whether you pick up an issue or not, keep fighting on!

Table of Contents
Champions of ZED (Daniel Boggs) 3
Fast Company II – Nonhumans (Schroeder & Shieh) 11
It’s All in the Cards (Michael Curtis) 12
The Tomb of Kaman-Doh Rey’d (David Coleman) 17
The Apen (Andrew “The Venomous Pao” Trent) 20
Geologians (Tim “Sniderman” Snider) 22
The Witch Doctor (Scott Moberly) 24
Knights & Knaves (Barber, Green, Rients, & Cal) 25
Grognard’s Grimoire (Erin “Taichara” Bisson) 27
The City State of Dusal Dagodli (Gabor Lux) 28
The Darkness Beneath (Heron Prior & David Bowman) 32
Education of a Magic User (Douglas Cox) 44
Doxy, Urgent Care Cleric (J. Linneman & K. Green) 45
Sir Tendeth (Tim “Sniderman” Snider) 46
Creepies & Crawlies (T. Snider and Jeffrey P. Talanian) 60
Monstrous Ecology (Ron Edwards) 63
Random’s Assortment (Peter Jensen & Random) 64
Curses Gone Wild! (John Laviolette) 65
Artifacts, Adjuncts, & Oddments (Jason Sholtis) 67
Treasure Types (Simon Bull) 68
Dungeon Modules: The Rondo Rooms (Jeff Rients) 69
Pigdivot! (Chris Robert) 72
Where the Action Is (Zak S.) 80
Merlyn’s Mystical Mirror (Gabor Lux & Jo Kreil) 84
Notes from a Master (James M. Ward & Tim Kask) 86

(I should mention that I have some art and a comic in this issue, so this post has a hint of self-promotion to it.)

Discover D&D Day at BattleQuest Games, Horsham, West Sussex on Saturday July 23, 2011

I've organised to run a "Discover Dungeons and Dragons" day at my local games shop, BattleQuest Games, here in Horsham on Saturday July 23 from 9:30am until 5:00pm.

The aim is to hopefully introduce people who've never played before to the hobby of roleplaying games as well as hopefully raising awareness locally that there is some roleplaying being organised.

We're hoping that BattleQuest Games will be able to take part in the forthcoming Worldwide D&D Game Day (Saturday August 6) and a future season of D&D Encounters.

If you are in the area, maybe consider dropping by and checking out what's going on.

Thanks

- Neil.

Maniac Mansion

The Jolly Butchers didn't venture out onto the mean streets of Marienburg last night, as Steiner Eriksen was laid low by some Nordic ailment, so instead we broke out the newish Mansions of Madness board game from Fantasy Flight.

It's in a similar vein to Wizards of the Coast's Castle Ravenloft and Wrath of Ashardalon in that it's a tile-based exploration game intended to emulate, at least partially, a tabletop rpg. In this case, the emulated game is Chaosium's Call of Cthulhu; Fantasy Flight already produce Arkham Horror, which is in the same milieu -- and indeed Mansions is part of the same line, although the games seem to be incompatible - but Arkham Horror is at the summer blockbuster special effects end of the scale, while the newer game is more of a low-key horror movie type affair.

In the game, players are sent into one of the titular buildings to track down some MacGuffin, along the way encountering various gribbly beasties -- axe-wielding maniacs seemed to be popular in our game -- and sanity-shredding shocks. While the D&D games mentioned above feel like stripped down and simplified versions of the parent system, Mansions is very much its own thing, emulating a Call of Cthulhu investigation but not attempting to replace Chaosium's original game; for one thing, mysteries seem to be quite linear, which isn't an issue in the board game, but would kill the rpg equivalent stone dead.

There are some neat mechanics -- there were some grumblings about the card-based combat system, but I quite liked it, and am already thinking about ways to import it into an rpg -- and there's an interesting balance of play between the investigators and the Keeper -- the player who runs the Mansion's monsters and effects -- with a larger party giving the Keeper more options for mischief, but also enabling the group to search more thoroughly, for example. There's also a fun time limit mechanic, which came into play in our game last night, as we rushed to the finale with one turn left and had to kill an undead creature; the gangster fired two bursts from his Tommy gun -- missing with the second -- and the detective did the same, leaving the hobo to wrestle with the thing -- having dropped his axe in an earlier fight with no time to recover it -- and needing to roll a 7 or less on a d10. It would all come down -- literally -- to the last throw of the die.

The die came up as a 9.

A tense ending then, but still good fun, and I'd be very keen to play again. The system enables the same mystery to be explored up to three times, with differing paths through the plot, and I'm interested to see how that works out in play. All in all, it's a good fun game, and in many ways I prefer it to Arkham Horror, not least because it's much faster in play.

I'm not sure I would ever buy it though, as I don't think it offers good value in its current form. It's an expensive game, but I wonder how much of the cost comes from the thirty included plastic miniatures. The designs are rather uninspiring, and the miniatures themselves are completely superfluous; each has a slot in the base into which is inserted a little token, much like the ones from Arkham Horror, on which is a picture of the monster -- or rather a picture of the grey, unpainted miniature, which strikes me as a bit cheap -- as well as all its game statistics. As such, all the miniatures seem to add to the game is price; I'd have much preferred to see the game use the tokens alone, and the extra cost either dropped or used to provide more monster or layout options. After all, Arkham Horror does just fine without plastic figures.

That is my only criticism of the game -- admittedly based on only one evening of play -- but it's a significant one, and one that prevents me from recommending the game to others, let alone buying it for myself. That said, now that the group has it, I'm keen to play again, and I'm quite interested in taking a turn as the Keeper.

Based on gameplay alone, I'd give Mansions of Madness four out of five, but the pointless miniatures bump it down to .

Small But Vicious Dog

As you may have noticed, I quite like Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, so I'm very pleased to see that Chris over at the Vaults of Nagoh has completed the first draft of his WFRP/D&D mash-up Small But Vicious Dog.

Well, to tell the truth, I am both pleased and annoyed. Pleased because it's already a great piece of work, with solid mechanics and hilarious writing -- WFRP is supposed to be funny, and Chris understands this -- and annoyed because my group has just started a WFRP campaign, and I don't know how I'm going to get them to playtest it.

Still, that shouldn't stop you from downloading it and having a go, even if it does end with your player-characters all dying of trench rot in an alleyway while mutant rats gnaw on their faces.

Four Jolly Butchers

We played Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay last night, and it was everything I expected it to be. Stuart has a summary of events over at his blog, so I'll try not to go over too much old ground.

The setting was Marienburg, a prosperous but independent trading port that is a little bit Amsterdam, a little bit New Amsterdam, and a little bit Bristol. Apparently. Local crime boss Smiles Vanderveel had fallen ill with a mysterious malady, and with his withdrawal from the day-to-day running of his turf, his men had either deserted or been picked off by other gangs moving into the area to take advantage of his perceived weakness. As such, Vanderveel's boss, "Uncle" Smalls decided to send in some heavies to see if anything could be salvaged from the situation.

So on Angestag the ninth of Brauzeit, four unsavoury sorts got off a leaking boat at the rotting docks in the Doodkanaal district of Marienburg. I played Hammerhead Harry, a dwarven slab of muscle with a hammer, Stuart played Steiner Eriksen, a berserker from Norsca, and Stuart's son Sebastian played a boatman-turned-smuggler named Gisbert Lufthansa.

Now that last one is quite a silly name, but it's very much in keeping with the tone of WFRP, and is one of the things I love about the game; you could have the same tone in any fantasy game, but for some reason it just doesn't fit as well as it does in WFRP. I've seen people complain about how grim and depressing they find both Warhammer settings, and I wonder if they've missed the point.

Rounding out the party was Manoj's cat burglar Englebert, who was one of Smalls' "nephews" and as such was supposed to be in charge. Our gang headquarters was in the back room of a butcher's shop called, er, The Jolly Butcher, so after some initial missteps -- "You can call us... The Dicks!" -- we took our gang's name from the shop.

Our GM Ben had set the game up as a sandbox seeded with clues and rumours, so we were free to roam and restore the gang's fortunes in any way we saw fit. In our initial forays we discovered another group -- the Black Dogs -- selling narcotics in one of our pubs -- the Moby Dick, hence our first, failed, attempt at a gang name -- so we found their hideout, roughed them up -- which, due to WFRP's brutal combat system, ended with two of their men bleeding to death in a cellar -- and forced them to join the Jolly Butchers.

We also rounded up all the protection money that had gone uncollected during Smiles Vanderveel's absence, and gathered enough to hire a physician from one of the posher parts of town to come and attend to the boss. The doctor suggested that although Smiles seemed to be suffering from a tropical disease, it was more likely that he was under the effect of a magical curse, and that we could either find the original magician and kill them, or find another magician to dispel the enchantment. We decided to look for a necromancer who was reported to be causing trouble in the Boneyard, a nearby cemetery; it was possible that this necromancer had cast the original curse, and even if not, he might be able to undo it. Furthermore, the local rat catchers' union -- who were supposed to be under our thumb -- were on strike following the killing of two of their number by some sort of beast, also in the Boneyard, so we saw this as an efficient way to deal with a couple of problems at once.

We found neither beast nor necromancer, but did run into a couple of grave robbers who claimed to be working for a rival boss, Mad Eye Eddie; they were taking the body out of the Doodkanaal area and into Eddie's turf, but we decided we weren't tough enough to take on another boss just yet, although we did warn the robbers not to mess about in our backyard again and to tell Eddie that if he wanted to do business he could get in touch, and didn't need to be so sneaky about it.

Returning to the Boneyard, Englebert decided to do some grave robbing of his own, but was paralysed with fear when he ran into a bunch of animated skeletons. Harry remained stoic and waded in with his warhammer, until the rest of the group shook off their fear and finished off the undead. Steiner was quite annoyed with the burglar for taking the group on such a pointless and dangerous digression, but the discovery of a cache of gems changed his demeanour somewhat.

That's more or less it for the session. What perhaps doesn't come across above is how funny it all was, with fluffed rolls and comedy accents aplenty, and the decision to mark all our gang members with a tattoo of a smiling pig, even those who had "joined" the gang while unconscious. We had a couple of very tired players at the table, but even so everyone was enthused, and I haven't seen so much laughing in a game in a long time. It was a brilliant three-or-so hours, and I'm looking forward to more of the same next week.

Star Wars Plus

A while ago I mentioned my interest in running a Star Wars game, and also noted how the oppressive weight of that franchise's canon has more or less scared me off. I had considered the Knights of the Old Republic era as a more friendly gaming environment, but I have since managed to read the relevant campaign supplement for Wizards of the Coast's version of the game, and it didn't strike me as particularly evocative, presenting the setting as that same old sprawling, intimidating expanded universe, only with the dates cranked back a few thousand years.

I realised that I was after something with the energy of the first film and the old Marvel comics, and then the solution to my problem became apparent.

So Star Wars Plus then. The general idea is that only the first film is canon, and then everything else is fair game. So Darth Vader killed Luke Skywalker's father, Luke and Leia needn't feel bad about liking each other in that way, and Han shot first. I have not yet decided if Jabba the Hutt is a fat bloke in a fur coat.

This approach should eliminate a lot of the setting's accumulated cruft while retaining an essential familiarity, allowing for a bit more freedom of play while still being Star Wars; if the players kill Luke Skywalker -- accidentally of otherwise -- it's not going to affect the events on Cloud City or Endor, because those events may not necessarily happen.

So that's the idea. I'm still a long way off having this ready for play -- I don't even have a system for it yet, although Savage Worlds is a frontrunner -- but at least I now have a solid core idea from which to work.

Perilous Adventures

I'm quite excited because I'm going to be playing Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay this Friday. I love WFRP to bits and it is probably my favourite fantasy rpg -- if you don't count Pendragon; if you do, then they're joint first -- but I never seem to be able to play it. I played a bit of the first edition back in my school days, and we got about a third of the way into The Enemy Within, but that was it; the second edition passed me by, and although one of the group does have the third edition with all the bells and whistles and fourteen bumpillion fiddly bits, we've not had a chance to play it.

So I'm very much looking forward to this week's game. We'll be playing the second edition, in an urban thieves' guild setting the GM has described as "The Sopranos meets Blackadder", which is just about the perfect tone for a WFRP game. I'll be playing Hammerhead Harry, a less-than-clever dwarf enforcer who's not much good at thievery but can kick a door down if you point him in the right direction. I can't wait.

Savage Eberron IV: The Caverns of the Kobold King

The session began with the players getting into a debate about what to do with the young Jenna ir'Wynarn; the half-ogre bard Jon Loger and human duellist Fibulon wanted to press on with their plan to form an underground organisation around Jenna's claim to the throne of united Galifar, while Galaxy Jones was undecided and the dwarf artificer Stones McGuffin wanted nothing to do with any of it and just wanted to go looking for adventure. As it turned out, adventure found them.

Edie Stone -- occasional player-character and their employer -- told them that she'd been contacted by Morina Wood, a Sharn resident whose father was missing. The team headed off to speak to Wood, finding her in a somewhat disreputable tavern, engaged in a drinking competition that she seemed to win with ease. Any suggestion that I lifted this scene straight from a classic adventure film would be completely unfounded, obviously.

Morina Wood explained that he and her father Roderick were archaeologists and that they often went on expeditions abroad to explore ancient ruins and bring back artefacts so that modern society could better understand its past; it was on his most recent trip, into the monster-ruled nation of Droaam, that the elder Wood made his last contact. His plan was to cross the border between the coast and the southern edge of the Greywall Mountains, and Morina was to travel later by the more traditional -- and safer -- route and meet him in Greywall itself; Morina arrived to discover that her father had indeed crossed the border, but was lost somewhere in the southern part of Droaam. She offered the player-characters three thousand gold pieces if they could bring back news of Roderick's fate.

They accepted and spent a day or so looking for clues and following leads in Sharn, running into the fixer Fennifee, who appeared to be a vampire but was revealed -- after some cajoling and threats of violence -- to be a poser. They discovered that the Woods were less into academia and more into grave robbing for cash, and also found out more about Roderick's expedition; he'd taken a group of mercenaries with him as protection, and Fennifee was also able to provide a fairly detailed plan of the expedition's route.

The team felt that they had exhausted their leads in Sharn, and hired horses and a cart for the journey into Droaam. Just before the border they were stopped by a group of Breland soldiers who inspected their paperwork, and it seemed as if there was going to be a fight -- players being players -- but the episode passed without violence, although the soldiers suggested that the team either turn back or take a safer route into Droaam.

Moving on, they crossed the border and picked up Roderick's trail, which was later crossed by another large group of tracks. The second set seemed to be newer and to be heading off to the north, while Roderick's carried on into the west, suggesting that the two groups had not met; still, there was some brief discussion over whether to follow the new trail, and Galaxy Jones took flight on his glidewing Trixie to see if he could get a better view of things from the air. He saw that the second group were still quite close and seemed to be made up of around twenty to thirty gnolls, marching at great speed northward. The team were aware that gnolls made up a large part of the military of Droaam, and so decided to stay out of their business and carry on following the Wood expedition.

They soon came across evidence of a camp, and so decided to rest for the night in the same spot. During the night they were assaulted by small robed figures wielding daggers, and despite the hard-of-hearing McGuffin's inability to wake up, the team captured or despatched their assailants. The would-be-assassins turned out to be kobolds and were no opportunistic bandits, as they claimed that they had been sent to do away with the player-characters. The team also learned that Roderick and his party had also been ambushed further along the trail, and had been taken back to the kobold lair to be fed to "the Big Big Boss"; some of the more paranoid members of the group wondered if the Big Big Boss might be a dragon, but their captive assured them that he had no wings, which didn't seem to make them feel any better.

The players did not treat their captive well, and this was one of the stranger parts of the session for me, as they were quite happy to torture the poor thing to the point of death, heal him with magic, then do it all over again. Perhaps it was fatigue, or blowing off steam at the end of a long week, but it all seemed a bit unnecessary to me. Since we're using Savage Worlds and not D&D proper, there's no alignment -- not that I'd use alignment even if I were running D&D, but that's a subject for another day -- and Eberron as a setting was designed to be far less tied to that moral framework, but even so this whole sequence struck me as a bit off and I found it quite uncomfortable.

The team managed to glean the location of the kobold lair from their captive and began to plan their assault. A quick flyover from Galaxy Jones revealed that the lair was a cave complex within a butte and that there were entrances both at ground level and on the top; despite the presence of a couple of guard stations, and the inherent difficulty of reaching the summit of the butte unseen when only when party member had the power of flight, they decided to attack from the air.

They approached with relative stealth but once again it seemed as if they were expected, and although the kobold guards retreated, the team's path into the complex was blocked by an enormous red kobold they took to be the Big Big Boss; a brief taxonomical discussion followed as the players pondered whether a really big kobold wasn't just a dragonborn, but then he started hitting them with his flaming meteor hammer and that soon stopped all talk of science.

The Big Big Boss was big -- obviously -- and strong, and also had some magical abilities, throwing up a ring of fire around the edge of the battlefield and reflecting the energy from one of Stones' inventions right back at the artificer, but even so he did not last long against a combined assault by the players. Jonark's mind-affecting magic is quite potent against even the strongest creatures and did much to soften the target for the others, aside from poor old Stones McGuffin who spent most of the fight trying to catch up with the others after a misunderstanding between myself and Stones' player regarding relative distances. Though I loathe battlemaps, I need to find a middle ground so that such confusion doesn't arise again.

As was inevitable, the Big Big Boss fell but laughed at the player-characters as they struck the final blow, something which didn't seem to faze them one bit, although this laissez faire attitude would catch up with them later. They explored the inside of the butte -- no sniggering at the back -- discovering a beaten and malnourished minotaur chained up in one cave, and a midden in another; after some discussion, they healed and freed the minotaur, and digging through the kobold refuse the party found what was left of Roderick Wood and his soldiers.

Considering their job done, the player-characters fled the cave complex and headed back to Sharn. Upon arrival, and wanting a bath and a meal even more than that three thousand gold, they discovered that their home base had been razed to the ground and that Edie and Jenna had disappeared.

It Is Better to Give Than to Whine, Moan and Fall Out With Your Friends

Everyone needs to calm down and stop getting so uptight about something which is supposed to be fun.

Here are some more monster tokens to print and cut out. These are all from my most recent Savage Eberron game, and include a dullahan, some dwarves on snowboards, a dwarf warrior, a dwarf wizard, some ogres, some city guards -- from Sharn, although they can fit in anywhere, as only their shield emblem is specific to the locale -- and of course the AVALANCHE ELEMENTAL. Also included are the alert tokens I mentioned in the session report; these can be used as action points or condition markers.

Savage Eberron III Cast of Characters (1.6mb pdf)

Also still available for download are various types and sizes of elementals:

Elementals (3.5mb pdf)

And some minor undead:

Lesser Undead (970kb pdf)

If you have any suggestions for improvements, or a wishlist of creatures to include in future releases, please do leave a comment.

Savage Eberron III: The Secret of the Forgotten Vault (Part 2 of 2)

Part one is here.

The party dipped into the savings of Stone Investigations, plc in order to buy lightning rail tickets for everyone, and made the journey in about four days; they spent the rest of the week drinking and gambling and ordering vast quantities of room service comestibles while staying in a fancy Krona Peak hotel, before dragging themselves, bleary-eyed, to the meet. There they encountered a nervous young dwarf who took them back to what seemed like an abandoned clockmaker's shop down a quiet side street.

The dwarf had not heard of any Vault 13, but suspected that the Jhorash'tar might know and arranged for the party to meet with the orcs the next day.

He took them up into the mountains, a difficult journey which ended with everyone getting a fatigue point — it was only a minor dent in their abilities, but for some reason they took it quite seriously — and found themselves surrounded by a group of orc archers. The orcs claimed that they had not destroyed Vault 13 and that in fact it still stood, and they agreed to take the party to the vault's general location, although they made it clear that they didn't trust the party enough to take them to the vault itself. On the other hand, they did give the characters a set of skis each, in case they needed to make a quick getaway. The foreshadowing was so heavy at this point, you could call them Chekov's skis.

Arriving at the vault, the party found a vast sealed stone door and a small guard hut built into the mountainside. Tossing stealth and subtlety over the edge and into the valley far below, they assaulted the hut and slaughtered the old dwarf and his blink dogs within, before moving on to the vault itself. It was of course sealed by magic, and the group remembered from the Kundarak tour that such doors could be opened only either by a dragonmarked member of House Kundarak, or a blood relative of the vault lessee; they weren't sure of the latter, and their best guess — young Jenna — was back in Sharn, so after some experimentation, they dragged the dead dwarf guard over to the door, pressed his cold dead hand against the door, and were relieved to see it open.

Beyond were stone steps heading down at a steep angle into the darkness. Jon the bard decided to ski down, only just catching himself before the stairs ended at the edge of what seemed like a bottomless void. The rest arrived — on foot and much later — to find a large stone cube suspended in the blackness, held there by some kind of magic, and in its side another door. Galaxy flew over on his glidewing Trixie and inspected the door, discovering some sliding brass panels inscribed with circles, and another panel showing the panels in a certain arrangement. This was my attempt to challenge the players not the characters, by throwing an old-school logic puzzle at them, and it worked quite well with them huddling together to throw ideas around.

After a couple of attempts they solved the puzzle and the door opened to reveal an inky, unnatural blackness.

This turned out to be a magical effect similar to a portable hole, and on the other side was the true vault, filled with sealed crates. Trixie ferried the party over one by one, and Stones and Jon detected a faint magical aura in the vault, theorising it to be some sort of stasis field. The team opened a random sample of the crates, discovering many fine works of art, all of which were either of Jenna, or included her alongside the last king of united Galifar, Jarot ir'Wynarn.

The team decided that these pictures were evidence for their theory that Jenna was indeed an unknown scion of the ir'Wynarn royal family, and furthermore, given the lack of other children in the images, and the few dates they could find, that Jenna was the oldest of Jarot's children. There followed a long and fascinating discussion between the player-characters as they decided what to do with this new evidence, and while there was no consensus on their long-term plan, they did at least agree to take some of the art with them. The team then made the long climb out of the vault, ready to return home.

Which is when I threw the ski chase at them.

They climbed out into the sunshine with Galaxy taking to the air to see if their delve had been detected, and saw a large group of dwarves armed with crossbows and snowboarding down the mountainside towards them. Galaxy remained on watch, the rest strapped on their skis and they all made a break for it.

I ran this as a chase, and it worked quite well, although it took a little time to adjust to the more abstract positioning involved in the chase rules. I threw in some obstacles and about three rounds in, some of the team heard the tell-tale rumbling of an avalanche, something they'd feared from the moment they first climbed into the mountains. Except that Galaxy, from the air, saw the tumbling wave of snow swerve around obstacles, and then they all knew I wasn't going to settle for a boring old avalanche.

So the second half of the chase involved the remaining crossbowmen, a group of increasingly battered and bruised player-characters and a dwarf wizard riding atop an AVALANCHE ELEMENTAL. Asap the half-orc did a runner and skied off into the distance just before the avalanche made its appearance, so Seb had to decide whether to remain safe or return to help his friends; he chose the latter and got bashed about by the elemental, thus revealing the character's weak spot, as Seb had put the majority of his points into offensive capabilities and a high Toughness, but struggled for a number of turns to remove a single Shaken condition due to his poor Spirit. Stones and Jon engaged in a magical duel with the wizard, while Fibulon attempted to pick him off with his crossbow and Galaxy — the only member of the team able to reach the magician — dove into mêlée with him.

In the ensuing battle, Galaxy feared he might lose another mount, and Jon took some heavy wounds; every Benny at the table was spent but the player-characters managed to get the better of the dwarves right at the end, and as the avalanche elemental disintegrated around them, the party made their escape.

Like the climactic battle in the previous adventure this fight had an epic feel, but it was much less of a grind than the tussle with the manticore. Part of this, I think, was because the team had a clear goal — to escape — and so their tactics were more focussed, and the chase structure worked well to add tension and excitement; the chase rules are going to be changed for the upcoming Savage Worlds Deluxe Edition, but I have no complaints about the existing set. After the manticore encounter my players said while they enjoyed it, they felt a bit powerless towards the end, but this time they all seemed to enjoy the big battle, and the adventure as a whole; I also had great fun, and any misgivings I had going into the second session were long forgotten by the end.

Savage Eberron III: The Secret of the Forgotten Vault (Part 1 of 2)

This scenario had been brewing for a while as I waited for a gap in our gaming schedule; as a result it went through a number of rewrites as time went on, resulting in enough material for two sessions. Dave had long since returned to the sweeping tundra of Canada by this point, but we were rejoined by Manoj and his half-ogre vuvuzela-toting bard Jon Loger. Returning from last time were Stuart with his duellist Fibulon, Ben with the dwarf artificer Stone McGuffin, and Rick with both his private detective Edie Stone and the halfling dinosaur rider Galaxy Jones. Also returning was Sebastian, although he'd generated his own character this time, a half-orc battering ram called, I think, Asap.

Last time, the team had discovered that the mysterious "Jewel of Galifar" was in fact a young girl who seemed to have been held in a magical stasis for the entire duration of the Last War, and that her name was Jenna ir'Wynarn, which would make her a member of the pre-War royal family, perhaps even the heir to the throne of a united Galifar.

Jenna could remember nothing more than her name, but this name did not appear in the historical record, nor was there any known reference to a sixth child of the ir'Wynarn dynasty. Determined to find out more, the group got in touch with an academic at Sharn's Morgrave University, who promised to research the matter if they would track down the last resting place of a notable figure from the Last War.

The session began with the player-characters having found said resting place, and discovering that the Butcher of Breland was not quite as dead as was thought. I was hoping to start the session with a bang, but Asap waded in and took out the undead monster with one swing of his blade. To be fair, while the Butcher was powerful, I didn't want to kill the party off in the first scene, so he was only an Extra; even so, I was not prepared for quite how combat-tuned the half-orc was, although this specialisation would come back to haunt him later on.

After this brief warm up, the team returned to Sharn with the remains, and in return the professor told them that while he could find no record of Jenna ir'Wynarn in any historical document, he did find a reference to the iron casket in which she was found, in the journal of a servant of the ir'Wynarn household. The journal did not go into much detail, but it did suggest that the casket was due to be taken to a "Vault 13", with the number written as a dwarven rune.

They suspected that this was a reference to one of the vaults owned by the dwarven banking guilds of the Mror Holds, in particular the dragonmarked House Kundarak.

As narrative convenience would have it, the Bank of Kundarak in Sharn was due to host a dinner party for prospective new customers, so the party pulled some strings to get on the invite list. Their plan was to see if -- with the wine flowing -- they could get some information from Kundarak's employees and if not, take advantage of the distraction of the party in order to sneak about and look for clues.

I came up with a little mini-game to handle this, based around an alert level that would rise or fall depending on how stealthy characters were, whether the party-goers managed to cover for the absence of those sneaking around, and so on. I made counters with little Metal Gear Solid exclamation points on them and everything.

It didn't work very well, in part because I had expected that only one or two of the group would leave the dinner party to skulk about, only for the whole lot of them to tramp around; Jon even blasted his vuvuzela a couple of times as "a distraction", so they were anything but stealthy. In all fairness though, the mechanics of the mini-game weren't very rigorous either, so I can't really blame the players for breaking something which didn't work in the first place.

Although it was a bit of a disaster from my perspective, the team did manage to get the information they needed, learning that Vault 13 did exist, but was emptied in the year 867. The official House Kundarak story was that the vault was destroyed by the Jhorash'tar -- an indigenous orc revolutionary group -- so the team decided to follow that lead. They found a bar for Jhorash'tar sympathisers in one of the more middle class areas of Sharn and started asking the orcs inside about the group, only to discover that the local contact was an elf. I thought this was a bit of a corny double-bluff when I wrote it, but they did all seem generally surprised.

Their discussions were interrupted by a raid by the Sharn city watch, who seemed to be looking for the mysterious elf. The group decided to help him escape, getting into a brawl with the guards and subduing them without loss of life. In return, the elf promised to put them in touch with the Jhorash'tar; he gave them an unusual blue stone and told them to go to Krona Peak in the Mror Holds in a week and look for a person holding an identical stone, who would then take them to the Jhorash'tar.

We ended the first session there, not quite on a cliffhanger, but good enough. I was quite disheartened by the first session, as it didn't seem very exciting, the players seemed distracted and the stealth sub-system crashed and burned. To be honest, I wasn't looking forward to running the second half at all.

Part two is here.

Savage Speculations

Chaosium's Basic Role-Playing system is my great love, and while Savage Worlds comes a distant second, it still dominates the pursuing pack. I've had great fun running an Eberron campaign under the rules, and I expect it to continue for a while yet, but even so I'm feeling a little stifled by all the fantasy gaming my group seems to be doing.

We've got a regular Pathfinder game on the go, there's Savage Eberron now and then, and Ben's got this big plan for a collaborative sandbox campaign again set in a fantasy realm. These are all good fun games, and I like fantasy as much as the next bespectacled geek, but sometimes I want my character to be able to lay down a burst of suppressive fire or jump off a building on a motorbike. We did have Rogue Trader for that kind of stuff, but I'm not sure that campaign's going to make a return, and anything cyberpunk is a no-go alas. So I've been thinking about more modern or scifi games I could run, using Savage Worlds as the engine.

Savage Star Wars was my first thought, a scifi-fantasy hybrid to be sure, but with enough droids and spaceships and blaster guns to provide a contrast to all the normal sword-swinging of our weekly games. The problem I always had with Star Wars as a gaming setting was that the plot had already been written and cast a long shadow across attempts to run a game; I know others have succeeded, but it was too much of a strait jacket for me.

This was long before Bioware came out with Knights of the Old Republic and in doing so introduced a proof-of-concept setting which had all the right Star Wars bits but was not as beholden to existing canon. Seeing potential here, I went online to see if I could get a second-hand copy of the Old Republic Campaign Guide, saw the price tag of £200, and then gave up on the idea.

Savage Sabre Team/Savage Counter-Strike/Tom Clancy's Savage Six
and
Savage Dozen/Kelly's Savages/Inglourious Saveges/Where Savages Dare
Years a go I played in a BRP-based game in which we played the parts of SAS operatives dealing with a hostage situation. It didn't last long, as the GM didn't think BRP was deadly enough as it was and doubled all weapon damage, so our team was all turned into red mist within minutes. Even so, it has always stuck with me as a viable game concept, and it's something which would work with Savage Worlds, although any such game would be more on the pulpy side, so it would perhaps be better off used to emulate those brilliant 60's and 70's WWII adventure movies.

This one could be a winner, but it does have some potential problems. There is a definite danger of it falling into a formulaic mission-based structure, which may not be a problem but might chafe for some players. There's also the possibility that it might be a bit mundane for some tastes, as I'd be keen to avoid the supernatural, although pulling in some Bond-type silliness or piles of Nazi gold might well alleviate that.

It's not something I've explored, but there's perhaps some potential in throwing this idea into the future, and running some sort of Space Marines or Starship Troopers type game.

Savage Feng Shui
I love Feng Shui as a setting, but the rules seemed to me to get in the way of the fast-and-loose feel they were trying to create. Savage Worlds has the right feel and the pace is just right, so this is one idea with which I've been toying for a while. It's another hybrid setting, but with plenty of guns and car chases to scratch that modern gaming itch, and it's broad enough for anyone to find something they like within. The only potential problem I foresee with this is that while Savage Worlds covers almost everything Feng Shui did, there's one curious omission in that it has no martial arts rules to speak of -- beyond the wonky ones from Deadlands -- so there would be some work needed to include this rather essential element.

Savage Cthulhu
As a BRP-diehard, it would feel like a betrayal on a cosmic level to run a Mythos game in anything other than Call of Cthulhu -- I had to shower for three hours after playing Trail of Cthulhu -- but I could see Masks of Nyarlathotep working quite well in a more Savage style. I'm just not sure I could live with myself afterwards.

Savage Final Fantasy
Bringing in some more technological elements into the bog-standard fantasy setting might make all the difference, but I'm not sure it's getting far enough away, so this is the least developed of my ideas. I'm also not sure it's worth emulating a video game when one can just play the video game, but that's a longer subject for a later post. This one is probably a non-starter.

So there you have it. I'd like to get away from fantasy, not out of any dislike for the genre, but just because we're already doing so much of it and I'd like some variation in my gaming. Feel free to chime in with any suggestions and while I've focussed on Savage Worlds here, I would be more than happy to have a look at any BRP-related recommendations.

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.

International Horror

I ran another Savage Eberron session last week, so look out for a summary of that in the next couple of days, including some musings on what I thought worked and what crashed and burned. I'm due to run another session this Friday, so the two reports might get bundled together.

In other news, my prize-winning horror scenario has been translated into Polish by the irrepressible Robert Oglodzinski of Ancient Scroll. If you're reading this, then you're probably comfortable enough with English to run the scenario from the original text, but if you want to see what it's like in Polish -- and Robert has added some tweaks of his own to the text from what I can tell with the aid of Google Translate -- you can find the translated Horror Comes to Haddonfield here.

Sandbox D&D gaming (with Pathfinder): some reflections

I have been running a Pathfinder ‘sandbox’ campaign for about a year now (I think – have lost track of time – I believe we started it late June 2010)….. and until last week I had been running it virtually every week…… Looking back on the game, I threw out some ideas to the guys on the email group we have for our gang…. Having gibbered on and off all day between three of us, I thought maybe our collective musings would be worth sticking on this here blog, if only as a warning to y’all about what not to do if running a sandbox. ;) Here is the transcript (with a few typos/ changes to make sure it makes sense!)

Me (BenTheFerg)
I think running the Kingmaker path has told me a lot about how to run - and not run - a D&D game.... Here are a few reflections.....for the next one we ever do (as in playing a sandbox game in which you clear out an area to create your own kingdom)....

1) You would have no backer/ patron. You'd be on your own, as your own mercenary band/ reclaiming your ancestral lands/ seeking your fortune in the 'wild west'

2) SLOW progression tracker - to make those low levels last a little longer... to keep up the sense of challenge

3) PC death. I wouldn't wish it, but I sure think it should happen. To keep the game with a level of realism, there would be need to be a supply of npcs who were affiliated to the pcs, eg a base camp of folks in your group (as in more npcs in your team - who remained at base camp whilst the pcs investigated. When a pc dies, you take an npc and they are seamlessly involved in the adventure. That's one solution anyway!)

4) a little more attention to rules on manufacturing of magic items...... I guess this would necessitate a discussion of Iron Heroes for the next such sandbox, or Pathfinder, but with class variants of spell casters which boosts them in other respects but tones down magic item creation.... (Kingmaker had massive time spans, allowing for the mage to create customised gear at half price – magic items lost their uniqueness, and the team are buffed to the hilt! Moreover, the rules on magic item creation are overly generous we now realise, and can be game breaking, like the permanent strongjaw gloves the monk uses)

5) more attention to smaller details, eg to your stronghold, npc guards, etc (for small skirmish warfare scenarios, assassination attempts, creating a feeling of threat and the need to counter that threat)

6) likewise more attention to various rival npc groups, local politics, local environments, hazards.........

7) level cap at 5th or at 10th? (when the pc has to retire and their kids take over?) or is that too arbitrary? :)

8) more small dungeons. More pot-holing and under-dark exploration. More difficult terrain situations, more environmentally hazardous battles. Diseases. Midges. Slavers. Traitors. Revenge. Mistrust.

9) disfigurement rules for massive blows/ physical traumas. A discussion on the limits of healing for damage from one blow above a certain value...... to make it more gritty. :) I think there are some in the GRR Martin d20 Game of Thrones rpg I still own. :) (and maybe in Black Company d20 rpg too.)

Just some thoughts……… I am thinking of running it as a homage to all things old school D&D (Keep on the Borderlands, etc etc)......

Kelvin (KelvinGreen), from now on called K:
The only problem with Kingmaker was that it had a very clear plot, and for all the hexmaps in the world, if you have a plot, it's not a proper sandbox.

Me:
Yes. This is something I would want to change – as in having rival groups all with their own agendas, who pursue their agendas, and try and find ways (through diplomacy, war, assassination etc) to get the pcs to do their dirty work (without you guessing of course – not that that would work!!)

Stuart (from the Great Game) – now called Stu.
Greg's old SLA Industries campaign was a bit like that. You could choose from a variety of missions (BPNs), but in addition, the team became increasingly embroiled with a number of competing factions, including Dark Knight and the Mob. At one point we even carried out a hit on another Slop (SLA Operative) for the Mob, believing we were on a legitimate mission!

We were constantly navigating the murky waters between what SLA wanted us to do, and what we could get away with in the interests of lining our own pockets and promoting the interests of our team.

But the key thing was there was not pre-scripted plot: after each session Greg would go away and decide what the various shadowy players would do in response to our own actions. We seemed to be constantly under investigation by internal affairs, always looking over our shoulders, characters took to sleeping with weapons under their pillows...all great stuff!

Thinking back, it WAS a sandbox campaign. Some missions were pushed at us, but we were not obliged to take them, and we had a number of sub plots (for instance the hunt for the serial killer Exsanguinator) running throughout the campaign.

K
Yes, it's one thing to have a plot develop through play, but what Paizo did was release something with all the trappings of a sandbox -- the hexmap, the wandering monsters, etc -- but then overlaid a standard adventure path plot on it, as I feared they would. There's nothing wrong with a plot, of course, but it's not a sandbox.

Stu
The question is, how does the sandbox evolve to keep pace with the increasing power of the PCs, particularly in Pathfinder, where the leap in power from 1st to 4th is pretty substantial. You want to avoid the "Oh yes, well, there is indeed a dragon in your basement, only he's been keeping very quiet up until now....because...er..."

Kingmaker does this by adding new territory to the campaign, with bigger challenges, like the more serious encounters to the south of the main map, and the undead cyclops empire on the second map. BUT, if the PCs by-pass something - like the derro lair - with the intention of returning to it later, the GM will need to do some buffing of the original encounter while keeping it credible.

(me: sadly every front cover had an image of what the Big Bad would be - as in the lich-cyclops opposite)

A sandbox dungeon is probably easier to manage in this respect, with some areas hidden, or only accessible once a boss is defeated, etc.

K
Well, the simple answer is that the players know from the start that the dragon is there, but they avoid it until later. If they leave it until they're much more powerful, then they'll probably squash it, but one could argue that this is just sensible -- if a bit dull -- play.

I don't know if we can make a proper judgement on the power levels of Pathfinder at this point. Our current characters are rather overpowered, as we know, but that may not be the case for the game as a whole. Similarly, Kingmaker was a pretty poor sandbox setup, so I don't think we've had enough useful sample data, as it were, to decide if a Pathfinder sandbox can work.

Me
Thing is, I want there to be various plots (npc goals which they try to achieve) and for pcs to find ways around these…. And Kingmaker has done a great job I think in trying to do these. I have enjoyed running the game, where you have a good idea of possible threats and have used your resources wisely to circumnavigate the threats. As a player, this is what I prefer as well. It is not much fun to be stumbling around in the dark for long. Yes – pc strategies may fail (may have poor intel) but pcs can have a go.

I think there is a balance to be struck between narrative (which gives plot dynamic, motives, time pressures, cinematic material, great locations) and sandbox…..

I let us down by not understanding the delicate nature of Pathfinder, and thus the point buy has skewed the game (FYI I allowed a dice pool mechanic at pc generation which led to pcs having, by pure chance, awesome attribute scores, which made them tougher, I’d say potentially – by 2 levels) – and add that to a lack of prudence on the magic item creation front (mentioned earlier the issue of allowing for unique one-shot items to be made, which really made the pcs buffed up nicely, esp when the kitted out their cohorts gained from the leadership feat) (all newbie Pathfinder DM errors) and it made the sandbox too easy and not threatening enough. I have learned from my errors (I hope).

Paizo in publishing the setting have managed to create a scaled level of threat to higher level pcs, with the expanding map, and with events happening to trigger the exploration of those areas….. given space constraints, this was the best way forward given the market demand for a certain kind of look to a module.

Having teleportation, pegasi, and a Roc have made the hex map irrelevant in so many respects. Higher level play makes sandbox in such a limited setting pointless. Wilderness exploration is fine for lower levels. At your levels it should be more pc driven – we want to explore X, travel to the plane of Y to speak to Z to find where B is. Etc Planar adventuring is well suited to high level sandbox play.

Hopefully we have all learned a lot more about how to make Pathfinder work – and whenever we finally run Carrion Crown (or something else), I think we will all be keen from the outset to avoid errors we made with Kingmaker. Kingmaker is not over yet though- you have the tournament, and shadowfell left. I will abandon most of the sandbox from here on it- the tournament will be the last sanboxy part – in that who knows what you will do!! - let’s enjoy the ride of the story I think and hit that cinematic ending.

For your homebrew sandbox, one wants to use the approach of Vornheim – but for Wilderness exploration – to generate settings/ ideas on the fly, to complement other stuff.

Other things Kingmaker could have done better:
- rivalry between npc adventurers and yours
- more persistent npc foes
- foes who become allies against a bigger bad…
- more locations in a smaller area.
- A more claustrophobic feel

Will work on a setting starting this half term. Don’t know what sandbox wilderness ideas appeal….
1. Mythic wood (sentient) – emphasising the fey
2. a northern wilderness adventure (giants, northmen, dragons, and other mythic Viking/ norse creatures), with viking boat exploration, castle building etc – or of adventurers carving out a kingdom in the wilds in the north…..(beyond the wall/ somesuch)
3. an Al Qadim style game, of jungles, deserts, island hopping…

The smaller the setting the easier the task – so for 2) the idea of playing a bunch of pcs questing into the wilderness from a fort on the edge of civilisation (ala Keep on the Borderlands), to tame it, take it, would be easiest. BUT this is similar in premise initially to Kingmaker…..

Stu
Old school sandbox was a simple explore and purge mission, particularly in the first 10 levels or so. After that, the class descriptions seemed to assume players would start using the conquered lands as the basis for their domain - e.g. building castles, temples and thieves' guilds. But AD&D tended to skip over much of this - it could tell you how much an iron grill over a window would cost you, but not how to work out the tax base for a rural hex with eight farms and a human population of 150.

Plus, how did you run a dwarf domain? An elf one? The D&D Companion rules did address some of this, and the launch of Battlesystem did provide scope for bringing miniatures gaming into AD&D.

But once PCs get past 10th level, the scope for a sandbox wilderness and/or dungeon adventure becomes somewhat reduced, particularly if people start taking the Leadership feat. Then they begin plotting the downfall of other kingdoms, empire building or possibly planar adventuring. Is it still D&D in the classic sense of the word?

Much of the daily work of running a domain can be outsourced to NPC allies, of course, and the PCs can still expose themselves to danger in the form of high level adventures to meet threats to their own realms - e.g. a barbarian invasion like the one we had in Kingmaker.

"A pox upon the business of kinging it! It drained every last drop of a man's tissues, leaving him a querulous old hairsplitter without enough red blood in his veins to swing a broadsword. Surely, after twenty weary years of wearing the crown, a man was entitled to throw over honours and titles and set out toward dim horizons for one last gore-splattered adventure before Time's all-felling, implacable scythe cut him down..."

CONAN OF THE ISLES, L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter, Sphere Books, 1974

K
Ah, the wisdom of King Conan!

Well that's another case of plot developing through play, which is absolutely in keeping with the sandbox ideal. The key is to have lots of this going on at once, so there's a meaningful player choice; where Kingmaker went wrong was in a lack of alternatives, so our choice was a binary one of choosing between following the plot or not following the plot, when it should have been between following Plot A, following Plot B, following Plot C, and so on.

The other issue it had was that its plots were more interesting than the alternative, so the campaign presented us with a barbarian invasion, but then said "or you can go and explore some hexes instead", and of course that's not really a choice at all.

As such, it became a scripted campaign with a hexmap, which is not the same thing as a sandbox.

Stu
Keep on the Borderlands was great for levels 1-3, and Isle of Dread for 4-6, but the key is what happens when you have a 12th level party....? I'm really enjoying higher level play to be honest. It's been fun taking characters from lowly 1st level novices and ramping them up into Schwarzenegger-like uber-heroes. The key is devising a sandbox that can challenge at 1st and at 12th, when people may indeed have flying mounts, the ability to teleport, etc. This is less an issue of points buy, and more what players are able to acquire through innovative thinking, class features, etc.

PCs will still be able to manufacture magic items; it may take them longer, but they'll still be able to come up with a magic carpet or find some way of winning the loyalty of a flying monster like a pegasus. Plus, you can't really ban spells like Invisibility, Haste, Fly, Enlarge, Summon Monster, Entangle, etc. all of which play a key role in our strategy.

I guess the solution may be a bigger sandbox, something the size of North Africa rather than East Anglia.

K
Well, as Ben suggested, you can also expand beyond the mortal realms into the other planes. You're still running around in a sandbox, but it's not about clearing forests any more.

Stu
That is definitely one way forward, because ultimately the planes can really be whatever the referee wants them to me. The PCs can do a bit of library research on them, but at the end of the day, it is another great unknown for the level 15+ character.
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There you have it. I have really enjoyed Kingmaker. I would concur with K’s gripe: not enough positive options. Not enough dynamic forces jostling for the same area – with possibly different reasons to be there…… Moreover as a ref I found the Kingmaker Path badly designed in combat terms for the team. Yes the pcs were more powerful than most – but generally speaking the fights were not designed well – this meant I had to work very hard to try and make them more challenging. The fight with the trolls in the troll lair was the most challenging, and only because I gave them all 2x their hps, and had them all converge on the pcs after they were discovered in the troll lair – so they were taking on quite a few at once…. The barbarian was nearly downed during that combat.

‘Owlzilla’ (a giant owlbear) was another dangerous one (I gave her 4x the hps) – she managed to pick up the rogue and use him as a club. Fun. 4e (which I know the boys don’t like) has a better encounter design philosophy. In future I will stick more to the 4e design philosophy, and make sure I have a buffer and controller type, as well as brute and artillery for every major encounter. Without a spell caster, my critters were doomed from the outset! However, these gripes are of another nature –not sandbox issues in themselves – although the very nature of wilderness encounters means that one encounter in the wilderness will often not stretch the party’s resources like 4 encounters in a dungeon will – making designing wilderness encounters that bit more challenging.

TTFN

Ben